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  So absorbed was he, he almost missed the fleck of white flaring in an alley to his left. “Come,” he hissed, shifting that way, unconsciously seeking shadows.

  Mistress Needles had seen nothing. “Eh? Where do you go, Brother?” Her voice was suspicious. But she followed him into a noxious alley cluttered with refuse, so unlike the bleak dusty paths of inner Maratrace.

  He knelt beside a trash-heap and lifted a severed dandelion puff. He crushed it and peered at the rooftops. “Gaunt is near,” he said. “Skath is with her.”

  He leapt upon the mound, jumped to catch a window ledge, and scrambled onto an adobe roof.

  “Brother, come back!”

  “You could never take Persimmon Gaunt on the heights, Sister. I trained her.”

  He struck out across the rooftops, ignoring the Comprehender’s protests.

  The buildings of the trading district formed a fractured maze. The Maratracians might impose starkness upon their own dwellings, but outsiders were not so rigid. As in so many lands, Maratrace could not afford to expel the foreigners it disdained, so it made do with isolating them.

  All this he noted with a barely conscious sweep of observation, along with the awareness that Gaunt had set a trap.

  She was not visible of course, nor was the girl. But upon a distant roof he spied the corner of a flower-bed. Despite himself he felt a distant flicker of pride. First, lure me into isolation. Then, force me to cross a long span full of ambush sites. And I must cross, for how can I be certain Skath isn’t beside that flowerbed after all?

  His own abyssmitude mocked him for admiring such childish games.

  The sword sang its outrage at the indignity of crossing rooftops.

  His guts as unbalanced as his mind, he slunk along a roundabout path, from time to time dropping and rolling to see if the ambush was upon him. None came. Perhaps he’d bypassed it.

  “Gaunt,” he murmured sadly, “you are brave and gifted. But sorry to say, I’m the master.”

  A glint met his eye up ahead, and he stopped, thinking at first to see a dagger, or a crossbow, aimed his way. But no. . . it was just a common leather money-pouch nestled in a nook between chimneys, just as if some ambitious trader had stashed it while conducting dangerous business. A gem or two glinted through the loosened top. Only someone of keen senses, passing in just this direction, could have noticed. He licked his lips.

  “Gaunt,” he called out. “I see what you are doing. But I am beyond such things. They are but stones, and I play for higher stakes.”

  He leapt onward toward the flower bed.

  A roof collapsed beneath him.

  Sloppy, he thought as he fell. He should have noted that stairway gap, concealed though it was by a mandala-carpet covered with sand.

  Tumbling down the stairs, Brother Box caught flashes of beauty foreign to Maratrace: brass statues of six-limbed gods, low oil lamps with wicks sticking out like fiery tongues, incense sticks trailing delicate smoky arms. Pain and distraction tore the sword from his grip; it lay upon another carpet of intricate swirling forms, flashing ruby light as if offended by the contemplative surroundings.

  Whatever foreign merchants inhabited this home, they’d gone elsewhere. Shaking his head and wiping his eyes, Brother Box saw only Persimmon Gaunt.

  Or rather, he saw the elephant-headed statue she slammed into his forehead.

  Through the exploding starfield that filled his eyes he heard her say, “Sorry, O unknown deity. Sorry, Imago.” As he reeled, she padded away. He heard a clatter of beads, and when his vision cleared, the sword was gone.

  He snarled and crawled through the beaded curtain into the sunlight. He saw Gaunt duck into another mud-brick home, two houses down. Dogs and chickens voiced excitement; humans gasped. The ugliness of existence slapped Bone in the face, but something deeper than his abyssmitude drove him on. He hated to lose. He got to his feet, spat at the onlookers, and ran.

  As he passed the next door, the girl Skath emerged and tripped him.

  Before he could recover, she darted inside.

  He needed both girl and sword. Best he make her unconscious now. He rose and tumbled through the doorway in one motion.

  Again an exotic interior confronted him. Red wall hangings coiling with flowing gold calligraphy trembled in a hot breeze. Monochrome scroll paintings of mountainous landscapes hung beside lacquer cases reflecting the dying light from a fireplace; these sheltered jade and ivory carvings of dragons, unicorns, and flying folk.

  Something old stirred in Brother Box, a desire to investigate and inventory these unusual trinkets. Something older longed to wander those imaginary mountains beside the dragons. His abyssmitude whipped him on, however, whispering that all human works were so much junk. . . the calligraphy, the carvings, the paintings. . . .

  The intricate ironwork of the hot fireplace poker in Skath’s hands. . . .

  She slashed and stabbed, leaping out of nowhere. The scent of hot metal and burnt wood shot past his nose. He scuttled back. He was far, far off his game. Yet though his reflexes were muddled, Skath was no warrior. On her next jab, he swatted the poker away.

  Skath kicked him, howling. He shoved her off, following with a gut punch. She toppled with an oomph.

  A flash of light warned him of Gaunt’s approach. He spun.

  Shaking, Gaunt advanced with the Sword of Loving Kindness. It shone with a lurid pink glow, bringing out the pigments in her rose tattoo. Rainbows sliced the air. Gaunt winced as one of the hilt’s rose-petals pierced her hand. But it seemed to cut her spirit more deeply.

  “Bone. . .,” she murmured. “My poetry. . . . So foolish and morbid. I should speak of sunshine, of virtue, of weddings and dynasties. . . .”

  “The sword,” he answered, “is awake. It is too much for anyone who lacks abyssmitude.” Indeed, his perspective was clearer with the sword lost. He perceived the entropy reflected in the fire’s ashes, the decay that would inevitably claim woman and girl. There was no escape. One could only Comprehend.

  “Bone, I am sorry.” Gaunt raised the weapon, and its lurid light intensified. It emitted a sound resembling a shrill birdsong, or frantic harping.

  “I am Bone no longer. I am Brother Box.”

  He slid beneath her swing. He sensed the sword’s eagerness to sunder his spirit.

  “You are not yourself, Gaunt.” He tumbled toward the exit.

  “You should talk.”

  He sped into the street and ducked into the final house on the row. He must improvise some weapon.

  But he found this home not just unoccupied but nearly barren. A life-sized porcelain cat with upraised paw welcomed him to a chamber bearing a little unadorned table with a miniature tree growing from a pot in its center. The very simplicity of the room drew the eye to the complexity of wood and leaf. Brother Box felt he could lose himself in that miniature world.

  A trifle, a vanity, a waste of time. Lacking cover, he picked up the little tree, crouched, awaited Gaunt.

  She stepped unsteadily into the room, a wary Skath beside her.

  “Give up,” he told Gaunt. “You grow progressively less certain. The weapon overwhelms you.”

  “Then we’re even. These madfolk have overwhelmed you.”

  “Gaunt, you do not see. . . we were foolish, chasing the beauties of the road. For beauty does not exist.”

  “No,” she said, assuming an attack posture, “we were wrong to seek beauty in wandering. We need to settle down, start a family, grow up.”

  “Stop it!” wailed the girl Skath, looking from one to the other.

  “I will stop it,” said Gaunt, and lunged.

  Bone threw his miniature tree. Gaunt whacked it away. Skath screamed and caught it.

  Gaunt jabbed again. Bone kicked the table toward her and tumbled, and thus avoided her main blow; yet a petal sliced his shoulder even as he stumbled into the porcelain cat and crushed it beneath his weight.

  He barely noticed the physical pain. For he screamed with the awareness of h
is pointless life. He realized he was severed from the essence of existence—the business of loving, of harvesting, of raising many children, of having the tidiest house on the row. He wept, for these things now seemed glorious, not the hollow grotesqueries the Comprehenders saw.

  Then the dark perceptions returned to him, whispering that the cycle of life was but a rotting millwheel, its only product a creaking noise.

  Yet in the midst of the screaming and the whispering there opened a clear space deep in his mind.

  And Imago Bone, who had some experience maneuvering between warring parties, found in that space a chance to know his own thoughts.

  The first thought was this: that neither Comprehenders nor Sword of Loving Kindness respected the life he’d chosen.

  “My life,” he murmured.

  “Do you yield, Bone,” Gaunt demanded.

  “To nothing. . . except you.” He tried to the squeeze the words out of his mouth, crystallize his new thoughts in language before they collapsed under the force of one impulse or the other.

  He rose painfully, turning to Skath. “Girl.”

  The young gardener stepped forward, cradling the little tree like a baby.

  “The Comprehenders hate you. The sword hates you.”

  Skath nodded.

  “Do you not see? You must play them against each other! Make your own way.”

  “But the sword is good,” Gaunt said, with a hint of uncertainty. “The sword is right.”

  “Then why should it hate Skath?” Bone found his strength now, and his voice. “No. This weapon cannot tolerate whimsical little girls. Or morbid poets. Or wandering rogues. None of us three is fit for grand purposes. And so all great powers despise us.”

  Gaunt stared at Bone a long while. With trembling hand she stabbed at the earthen floor and released her grip. The sword quivered there, perhaps angered by the indignity. Gaunt released a long breath.

  “Skath,” she said. “Bone is right. But I know something else. Your brother is right about something. You must take up the sword.”

  Skath looked mystified. “It hates me.”

  “Yes,” Bone said, turning to Gaunt, then back to Skath. “And I think it’s that’s because you know your own heart. You needed no philosophy, no etiquette, to become a kind person. Your intuitions surpass its powers. The sword may fear that quality.”

  “There is more,” Gaunt said. “Something I realized while wielding the weapon. I could not strike down someone I loved, even with the sword commanding it. I wonder if at its core it still carries, not just the fury of Nettileer Kinbinder, but the passion of Allos the Smith. If so, a gentle heart may be able to command it.”

  “I don’t know those names,” Skath said.

  “It may not matter,” said Gaunt, and she fished into her pack, and pulled out her pouch containing the powdered blood of Allos. She poured it upon the Sword of Loving Kindness.

  The powder hissed, liquified, and flowed into the sword. The pink glow flickered madly and reddened. It seemed tempered now with the hard, steady quality of forge-light. It stood within the earthen floor, looking less dainty, more solid, like some miniature redwood.

  “Take up the sword, Skath,” Gaunt said. “It may be your only chance to stand against the Comprehenders, and the Pluribus too.”

  “Is that,” Skath asked in wonder, “what I should do?”

  “If it is what you want,” Bone said.

  There came the sounds of shouting and pursuit. Bone peeked outside. Beyond the crowd he caught a glimpse of drab-robed figures. “Decide soon,” he added.

  Eyes shut as if testing whether she dreamt, Skath set down her miniature tree and grasped the sword. She winced in horror, teetered, but mastered herself.

  “No. I will not change. You will do what I want. I will command you.”

  The sword’s light grew yet more natural, less lurid, like a waning desert sunset. Rainbows and sparkles subsided. Although a child, Skath now seemed somehow taller than either Gaunt or Bone.

  “You do not care about people,” Skath told the sword. “But I do.”

  The silence that followed was swiftly broken. Mistress Needles rushed in, four maimed citizens close behind.

  “Success, Mistress,” Bone began cheerfully, as he tripped her.

  Gaunt smashed the porcelain cat’s head over a citizen’s. He went down, but the remaining minions advanced upon their foes, one to a person. Given his and Gaunt’s exhaustion, Bone calculated the odds at a hair less than fifty-fifty, if Skath did not act.

  Skath acted.

  Glowing crystal slashed her opponent’s arm. The Maratracian regarded Skath with shock and collapsed dead at her feet.

  “What have you done?” Mistress Needles hissed, rising from the floor.

  Skath pricked Gaunt’s foe in the back. He sobbed and fell still. Bone’s own opponent fled, and the final citizen ran close behind, brushing porcelain fragments from his hair.

  Mistress Needles sized up the situation, spreading her hands. “We called you Brother, Imago Bone.”

  “You used me.”

  “Out of expediency. Are you not using this girl, now?”

  “Ask her.”

  The Comprehender was silent.

  Skath stared at the bodies. “Lepton, are they . . . dead?”

  “Yes,” Gaunt answered after kneeling beside them.

  “I was so angry. . . the sword doesn’t think their dying matters. The sword really thinks they killed themselves. By living the way they did.”

  “What do you think?” Gaunt asked gently.

  “I think. . . . I think I am tired. Lepton, Osteon—come with me?”

  Bone and Gaunt trailed Skath, keeping watch on Mistress Needles. The Comprehender shuffled after them, pinching herself.

  Meanwhile the crowd had become a throng, Maratracians now mixing with the foreigners. They jostled each other to behold the strange girl with the sword, but they parted for the boy Skower, who charged at his sister, ending with a jump and a shout.

  “You command it!”

  “Yes,” Skath murmured.

  “Now you will be strong. Now you will not embarrass us, or make Mother and Father fight about you. You could become as mighty as a Comprehender. Or a pirate lord. Or a god.”

  “It is not that way, Skower. I could not use the sword as you wish, even if I wanted to. I must always be careful of it.”

  Skower’s smile collapsed. It was replaced—not by a frown, but by a bulging of the eyes, a set to the brow, that Imago Bone had beheld far too many times, on far too many faces. He tensed for a fight.

  “Always you are weak!” Skower screamed. “You don’t deserve this sword. Give it to me. I will show you how to use it! I will show everyone!”

  “Skower—”

  “Give it to me!”

  He lunged at her, and she gave it to him.

  But, Bone realized in horror, Skower did not understand it was a gift. The boy grabbed, brother and sister fumbled, and in a dozen places the crystal petals impaled Skower’s hands.

  Bone and Gaunt rushed forward, pulling the boy away. Gaunt cradled Skower as Bone wrapped the wounded hands with his Comprehender’s cloak. Skower had been cut more deeply by yesterday’s street game. But Bone understood what it meant to suffer a single scratch from the sword. It was too late.

  “I struck at kin,” Skower wailed. “There is nothing worse. . . .”

  “Skower, no,” Skath said. “It was an accident—”

  “Destroy us, sister,” Skower said. “Destroy us all. We deserve. . . .” The boy’s last breath framed no word, only the sound of surrender. His body went still.

  Gaunt touched Skower’s neck, shook her head at Bone. They lay the child down.

  Looking up into Skath’s face, Bone thought that Nettileer Kinbinder in her last fury could not have been more terrible. She raised the Sword of Loving Kindness and it blazed like a pyre as she confronted the crowd of people, Maratracian, Comprehender, and foreigner. They recoiled and whispered
and clutched at once other, sensing at last a promise of violence that was no game.

  Skath lowered the blade to underscore a command, and it dimmed like a shooting star as it fell.

  “Bury him.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The interment made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in coordination, and although Gaunt and Bone shared a look that said flight was indicated, they both helped, laboring wordlessly beside Mistress Needles and the other Comprehenders.