Chapter One: Holding an Edge

Night’s the only time I risk the streets. Dingy streetlamps are far easier to avoid than the sun—not that the ways I frequent ever have streetlamps.

My face isn’t a welcome one here. Too many have seen it too recently and too often. Everyone has their bad memories, their reasonable hatreds, and many of those injustices look like me. I’d started out hoping that maybe I could change that, but a year of stinking alleys, tear-soaked streets, and steel rusted by blood made me doubt.

Those with coin have ways to solve their problems; in the light of day, with the new law, with a few words in the right ears. Those without… they’ve got the real problems, the messy ones no one cares enough to handle. The ones there’s never a law for. Copper and bruised flesh buys a far less reliable brand of justice, and everything gets muddy down on the old city’s streets. Those who live there know it so well it’s not worth explaining. Those who don’t will never understand.

I’m no expert. I wasn’t born to those flophouses, sweaty basements, and alley shanties. I didn’t ask to come, either—but I guess no one does. The difference between me and most of the players in that rehearsal for Hell was that when I arrived, whoever threw me there thought they finished me. They might have scarred my body, stolen my respect, and broken everything I was going to be, but I came through. I wasn’t some sword straight from the fire, but sometimes even dross holds an edge.

Someone like the Varisian girl couldn’t afford a sword. That’s why she followed the rumors no guardsman would ever gamble on and found me. She said her brothers had been murdered. She knew by who but not why. That seemed convenient, but her people lied as easily as they spoke. The city watch would have dismissed her for that reason alone. For a moment I was tempted to do the same, but tears had dug twin graves in that soft face—a face that would never be as pretty as it was before. So I named my price.

She tried to bargain. I stopped her before she embarrassed us both. She went ahead anyway, and I was the only one embarrassed. She took my silence for disgust—an easy mistake; it’s difficult to read expressions through steel—and forked over some bauble of hemp and cracked beads that wouldn’t buy me a meal. I stayed quiet, and her desperation urged her further, but she had nothing left but words, the promise of future promises. It would have to do—favors seemed in short supply these days anyway.

I waited until well after midnight, until an hour when anyone with honest business was long since abed, before heading into the street. Even then I kept to the alleys. I didn’t care if the drunks and alley rats saw me—their kind only survived because they’d learned to keep their mouths shut. No one would believe them anyway. Most didn’t even believe their own senses, dismissing my steps as too soundless on the crumbling cobbles, doubting the metal glimpsed beneath my close-drawn cloak, disbelieving my face as a nightmare conjured by booze more poison than liquor.

It didn’t take long for the streets to give way to boards, and then from boards to muck. I hated the docks, not just because of rust and my obvious wariness of water, but for the constant noise. It compounded a disadvantage. Much of the world was muffled thanks to my helm, and the constant rasp of water over trash beaches and the clunking of moored boats didn’t help. But her directions had been specific.

If the Caterwaul had seen better days, no one ever visited to reminisce. I’d never spent a day of my life on a boat, so I couldn’t say why such a capable-looking fishing trawler had been abandoned in the first place, but it surely wasn’t leaving port again. Mold draped what rigging had survived, moss collected upon much of the wood, and though the masts still stood, the sails had disappeared as surely as the ship’s crew. What remained of a vandalized figurehead, ruggedly carved as a mangy cat, stared inland, yowling for its absentee captain’s return.

Light flickered through the ship’s bowed timbers, and a burst of nasty guffaws preceded a long string of repetitive curses, verifying rumors that the Caterwaul had a new crew.

Supposedly a gambler called Quil ran a nightly game of cheaters’ dice in the wreck’s hold. This particular game was widely known in Old Dock’s shadier watering holes as having relatively square dice and life-changing stakes. But those who sat and listened to the stories long enough eventually heard them repeated, and always from the same loudmouths—publicizers doubtlessly on Quil’s payroll. No doubt a game played out here nightly, but it wasn’t just this Mr. Quil gambling.

With the tide low, the Caterwaul leaned against the dilapidated dock, its hull sunk deep into the rancid muck. The noise and light drifted up from below the pier, as though the game were taking place right in the surf. Good. I wasn’t eager to try and creep across the ship’s deck, guessing at which rotted timber might give me away. Slipping across the muddy boardwalk, I dropped onto the dark of the beach below.

The forgotten temple of some imaginary goddess of sea-junk sprang up around me. Pilings marched in almost even rows parallel to the shore, their crusty coverings of muck and barnacles suggesting elaborate religious reliefs. Piles of discarded crates, small wrecked boats, and other unidentifiable heaps became the inhuman artistry of this weird sanctuary, while the heavy scents of wood rot and sewage made do as incense. Fortunately, the local congregation didn’t seem to be terribly devout.

Ahead, the hold of the Caterwaul gaped open, the terminal gash explaining the end of its days at sea. Within, five figures surrounded a crate making do as a table, dice and the coins of fresh bets scattered beneath a lantern wobbling overhead. None looked like sailors.

Despite the unlikelihood that anyone within could see me, I stuck to the deepest recesses of the under-docks. It wouldn’t look like it to most, but this was a classic Sczarni trap. In this trick, you make yourself the bait, setting up in the open so the guards, or thieves, or whoever you’ve pissed off this week think they’ve got the drop on you. That way most don’t even bother to look for the cutthroat hidden away in the dark. I’d fallen for it once before and almost got knifed. Lesson learned, I waited now, letting my eyes adjust, searching through the motion of the flickering shadows and lazy roll of the shallow surf.

I counted time in the rolls of dice. Two complete games passed as I stared into the dark, until finally a lean, excitable fellow won a significant pot. A wave of shouts, curses, and banged bottles rose and ebbed, rattling the lantern above and upsetting the shadows leaning away from the broken ship. One shadow craned its neck from behind an algae-draped stanchion, light flickering for an instant across the quarrel set in its crossbow.

Just one guard. Mr. Quil shouldn’t be so frugal with his security.

Quil should have brought more than a crossbow.

My response came faster than thought, and my armor immediately rebelled at the twitch of that old reflex. Three escapee syllables whispered within my helm, turning harsh inside my metal mask. Intonations that once came as easily as a child’s prayer tripped over my lips, becoming jumbled upon hearing themselves spoken by an unfamiliar voice. They sounded like lost faith.

I choked back the rest of what I would have once called magic, but it was only for the sake of stealth. If there had still been power in those noises, I would have felt some twinge, some hint of it building like steam in a kettle. Instead, all I felt was rust, biting leather, and my own tired muscles. The words—or the memory of what they should have been—made me feel weak, and I shoved them back into the scabbed over recesses of my mind, down with all the other wounds of what I used to be. I hadn’t chosen them, but I had other, more direct solutions now.

Suddenly eager to move, I slipped between the pilings, darkness masking my steel and the waves drowning the sound of my steps. His attention more on the game than his watch, the guard’s first hint of my presence came as I snapped upon him like the jaws of a hunter’s trap. My free arm locked around his chest and arms as my mailed hand dug into his face, slamming his head back against my pauldron. Hair muffled the clang of his skull striking metal, his body tensing for an instant before going limp. I let him drop into the muck. If he woke up, he’d have a nasty knot to nurse. If.

Gliding up to the hull, I slunk close to the hole that served as the entrance to the makeshift gambling den. Again I waited for a distraction, and this time it didn’t take long. Cheating was actually part of cheaters’ dice, so you couldn’t really call an opponent a cheater and have it mean anything. But at a game usually played with bare knives upon the table, part of the challenge was knowing how far you could push your opponents’ tolerance. Someone had just gone too far.

The dice clattered. Shouts rose without the accompanying laughter. A fist pounded the table, and a stool skidded across the floor. More shouts and thuds.

I drew my sword and stepped into the light.

My entrance was the flood that stopped the house fire. Suddenly no one was seated. A beast of a man was already grabbing for a whip-thin braggart wearing the melting traces of a gloating smile—I don’t think either of them even saw me as brutal intention drove them toward the hold’s shadowed stern. But others did. Doing a double-take as he looked past the brawlers, a formerly bored man with hair the greasy gray of pigeon feathers jolted to his feet, cursing and sweeping dice and coins into the pockets of a once-fine violet vest. A pair of less swift players—wet old stevedores, their leathery faces incapable of showing surprise—rose slowly amid the confusion. Over the clatter of silver, the coin collector pointed at me and shouted to the brawlers. Had a twenty-foot-long sea snake just washed into the room, he couldn’t have looked more startled. I singled him out as Mr. Quil.

I went directly for him. As I strode in, the coinless dockworkers clambered out, the hurried slaps of their steps soon receding in the muddy surf. Pointing my blade at Quil’s throat, only a stride away, I made my intention clear.

To his credit, he didn’t flinch, instead yanking up a crossbow from behind the crate-table. Although loaded, it was little more than a toy. Still, he fired, and the miniature bolt struck me solidly in the chest. Had I been some thug in scavenged rags, I’d be retching up my lifeblood.

I wasn’t. The bolt ricocheted away harmlessly, and a kick shattered the crate between us. The crossbow in Quil’s hands followed suit a half-moment later, my blade swiping it from his hands and crushing it against the ship’s sweating timbers. Quil pressed himself against those same moist boards, unsuccessfully trying to find some crevice wide enough to squeeze through and escape.

Something struck the small of my back. It shattered, and a man’s high-pitched scream rang out. I twisted away from the impact. Harsh words came to my lips, both curses and something more. I bit them back.

The smaller of the two thugs, his face already blossoming where it had caught three or four of the larger man’s punches, was stumbling back away from me. In one shaking hand he barely balanced the handle of a rusty chef’s knife, the shattered slivers of blade running deep between his fingers and into the meat of a lacerated palm. He tripped backward, whimpering, and bolted out through the broken hull.

Unfortunately, he had been the big fellow’s only distraction. Shuffling from the rear of the ship, the apelike goon had to duck to keep his head from scraping the deck above. He paused as he reentered the ring of lantern light, obviously not sure what to make of me. Quil shrieked at the brute.

“She’s one of the mad queen’s guards, you dolt! A Gray Maiden!”

I winced at the old name. Something in my head, something I still couldn’t banish, swelled with pride even as my teeth clenched and a spark of rage flared deep in my guts.

“Take her down!” Quil continued. “When you’re done with her, we’ll turn what’s left over to the guard for a prize!”

The bewilderment on the brute’s thick features peeled back in a lecherous smile, his eyes tracing the curves of my armor. A lewd chuckle croaked from over-plump lips.

There’s little I wouldn’t do for another day back in the life I had before my abduction. Before my armor. Before the queen. But occasionally a situation arises where I loathe my condition perhaps less than I should.

If the brute could see the smirk locked behind my visor, he might have rethought his intentions. But he couldn’t, and didn’t.

He rushed in, his hairy, broad-knuckled hands outstretched. My sword wheeled, a ribbon of silver, and a hand slapped a curved wall far from where anyone stood.

The breathy bellow that followed filled the hold. The big man’s face flushed, and the stump of his hand shoved across his chest into the cloth of his armpit, the yellow stains there swiftly overwhelmed by another shade. Too enraged to realize how lucky he’d been, the giant channeled his wrath into a howl and charged, his remaining hand reaching as if he hoped to crush my neck in a singlehanded grip. By the time his momentum carried him to the spot where I’d been standing, the light was already fading from his eyes, his prodigious belly split like a wet sack. What followed sounded like a fisherman slopping his haul onto the planks, but I had already turned. With a jerk, I again leveled my sword at Quil, blood whipping from the blade to spray the wall and his face with a line of sharp crimson. He flinched, and I grabbed him by his neck, pulling him close to the featureless plane of steel that was my face.

He gazed into the hollows of my helm. Whether he could see my eyes locked away beneath the mask or just the stifling darkness, he didn’t find what he was desperately hoping for—some sign of mercy. Of humanity.

All he could do was whimper.

Chapter Two: Silvered Skin

“Two brothers. Sczarni.” My words took on the hollow, metallic ring of my sealed visor. “Their blood is on your hands.”

The gambler’s eyes bulged like a panicked animal’s, his gaze torn between my sword point and the copper-scented mess spreading about my feet. “What?! No! I’m just a dicer,” he stammered—a total coward, and doubtlessly a liar. Obnoxiously, his voice had also gone up an octave. “We roll a friendly game here. Dice—just dice. The weapons are just for protection, you never know who—”

He screamed like a farm lass thrown from her horse, a surprised shriek followed by a stream of blubbering. Good the guards never patrolled these docks, as to someone above the noise surely sounded like something far worse than a thief getting what he deserved. I brought my sword level once more, Quil’s cheek reddened from the slap, but was no more bloodied than by a bad shave.

“You killed them.”

“No!” he whimpered.

My blade crossed his other cheek, releasing new reserves of pathetic noise. He dropped to the ground.

“Please!” he bawled. My blade rose. “No! The Calavetti brothers. You mean the Calavettis. I know why they’re dead, but I didn’t kill them!” The words spilled out almost faster than I could follow. When the sharp steel didn’t fall, the gambler ventured a glimpse at me between his upraised arms.

“They came to my game a week ago—less than that. They lost. But that happens—that’s the game—and they knew the risks when they got into it.” His shielding arms, slowly lowered. A twitch of my still-wet blade was all it took to jerk them back to position.

“All their coin, every copper, and more—they lost it all, but they didn’t know how to quit. There was some jewelry, a necklace, the hat off one of their heads. They got in that deep, and lost.”

“You cheated them.”

“It’s cheater’s dice!” he squawked. Another steel twitch, and he cowered. “No! No special way. No gimmicks, no rigging, no finger waggling. They knew the game—probably thought they had it all worked out—and they lost bad. We threw them out once they started getting… impolite. But they came back.”

He paused, waiting for me to urge him on. His discomfort in the resulting silence did that for him soon enough.

“The bastards jumped us as we were headed back into town. They wanted their money and everything else back. Scum like them’s why I hire protection and keep it well paid.” He flashed mangled teeth, momentarily forgetting I wasn’t some taproom floozy. When I remained silent, he quickly came back to the moment. “But before we’d even seen those two Sczarni saddle boys one of my men was fishing a bolt out of his side. I sure wasn’t polite about it, but I gave them their coin back. Then they got greedy and took the rest—the entire night’s haul.” He’d gotten his dander up. “I told them that wasn’t going to be the end of it, and it sure as hell wasn’t!”

“You and your men tracked them down.” I still hadn’t heard anything leading me to reconsider my condemnation.

A Gray Maiden’s armor is as much a part of her as her skin.

“No,” he said, sounding almost offended. “There’s people for that kind of work.”

“Hired killers. Assassins.” But of course I knew that nearly anyone in the old city would cut a man’s throat for contemptibly low prices.

“Nah. There’s a man who’s been lurking around here the last few weeks—a nasty sort. Unpredictable, but thorough.”

“You paid him to kill the Calavettis.” It wasn’t a question.

“Why pay when he does the work for free? I just had one of my boys find him, explain what happened, give him the name of the sty they spend most of their nights in, and he tracked them down himself. Those two were dead the next morning.” He nodded purposefully, gloating over the revenge he’d had another take for him. “But I still don’t have my money back! You can see I’m kind of like the victim in all this.”

“What’s this killer’s name?”

“Damned if I know,” he said. He was getting some of his spirit back. I let it pass for the moment. “He’s some crazy who’s shacked up on the Slug’s Trail.”

“You’re still the reason they’re dead.”

“They robbed me! That much silver was worth plenty more than the lives of two Sczarni sleazes.”

“Your crooked game lures in the desperate. Your accomplices spread lies and prey upon the hopes of the poor. You bully and rob those who come. You kill any who try to take back what you steal. You are a cheater, a thief, a murderer, and a coward.”

“What!? I don’t force anyone to come here!” His excuses sounded like a piglet’s squeals as he scooted back against and up the curved wall, trying to regain his feet. “And it’s not my fault if they don’t have the money to play. I’m no murderer!”

“You are.”

It wasn’t as clean as that. The dead men’s sister hadn’t muddied her brothers’ memories with unflattering truths. And Quil hadn’t murdered them with his own hand. His confession had even pointed me toward someone who might be even more dangerous. But being a lesser evil didn’t make him innocent.

My steel flashed again. This time Quil didn’t whimper.

∗∗∗

The back alleys and forgotten streets of the old city wound together into a singularly wretched urban quagmire. At times I found myself wading waist-deep through piles of trash, the wreckage of broken lives, and the filth mountains of rodent despots. At others I had to retrace my steps entirely to avoid a collapsed building or a gang’s territorial barrier. Fortunately, the prisoners of this labyrinth didn’t bother me—those who even roused at my passing knew well enough to squeeze their eyes back closed and hastily forget. But some things were bolder, and knew or cared less about my armor’s infamous reputation. More than once a hail of loose shakes clattered onto the cobbles behind me as something skidded upon the rooftops. I never saw more than a dash of shadows or the reflection of the moon off oily eyes, but I knew that more than men preyed upon those lost among these streets. In the old city, garbage collected in the gutters along both streets and shingles.

Despite the debris and denizens of the slums, I soon reached my destination. The Slug’s Trail was little more than a blind alley leading to the walled-in courtyard of a half-collapsed insula. It took its name from both its short length and the years of discarded oils and cooking greases that coated its walls, thrown from the rear stoop of a long-emptied fish fry. Flies congregated here in droning plagues, and the squirming things they spawned weren’t slugs. But despite the swarms of shit-eaters, this had also become a kind of wretched safe house for the most pitiable street dwellers. No gang or roof crawler cared to contest the flies for their home, and the high walls of the surrounding buildings sheltered against much of the wind and weather. The alley was filthy, infested, and disgusting, but still preferable to many of the hunting grounds where gangs of self-proclaimed slumlords insisted upon rents paid in either silver or skin.

Tonight, though, the Slug’s Trail was something other than a glimpse of urban Hell. It was empty.

Narrow and largely uncluttered, its shadows shallow, the alley’s rough stone formed an unobstructed channel to a sagging entryway, the inner yard beyond visible in ghostly shades as moonlight filtered through the night’s pooling mist. Barely noticeable in the dark, a narrow, uneven window watched from just above that opening, a single lazy eye lolling over the ugly alley.

It wasn’t difficult to recognize this for what it was—not just a dirty cul-de-sac, but a killing ground. Anyone attempting to enter the insula would have to pass beneath that window and whoever might be lurking amid the shadows within. I considered that I might be paranoid, but if I was hunting a killer, I preferred not to give my quarry any undue opportunity.

Somewhere over the buildings and across the nearby docks, a ship’s bell rang out the meager hour. By the time its echo had faded I’d found another of the insula’s exterior walls and, using slanting bricks as handholds, climbed through the window into a second-story apartment. There were few who could move as I did in full armor—but then, few had their armor specially fitted to their body’s every angle, the skin they were born with overridden by steel. I could hardly call it a blessing, but I am the creature I am, and tonight steel moved as soundlessly as silk.

The apartments within obviously hadn’t been rented for years, but also hadn’t wanted for residents in that time. Broken glass, shattered furniture, and other garbage littered the floor, while layers of crass graffiti and outdated gang symbols covered what remained of cheap plaster walls. The rats had been at the place as well. I didn’t see them, but their smell was thick in the air. Time and violence had thoroughly devastated the interior, reducing the multiple apartments into a broken hall, cornering at right angles around the central courtyard and divided only by the low remnants of walls and splintering supports.

Slipping through the wreckage as stealthily as the irritable floorboards allowed, I reached a corner and looked down another row of rooms. Here would be the one with the window overlooking the Slug’s Trail. There was more, though. By weather, shoddy construction, or more deliberate violence, much of the inner wall had fallen away, calving in great pieces into the courtyard below.

A figure in black, his form concealed by shadow, knelt at the window, his head resting upon the sill. I jerked back into the dark, not eager to lose my advantage if he looked over his shoulder. It seemed my caution had proved warranted. If I’d come down the alley, the hiss of a crossbow bolt would likely have been the last thing I heard.

A momentary gap in the night’s clouds threw a weak wave of moonlight over the figure. At first I thought he was much bigger than a man, his shoulders impossibly broad, but a glint of steel suggested that heavy spaulders had inflated my impression. The shoulder guards weren’t out of place, either, as plates weighty enough to bring the unaccustomed to their knees girded all but his head.

This was something I hadn’t expected. I thought for sure that Quil had lied to me, or gotten lucky by finding some thug with actual skill, but here was something else—someone either trained to wear that armor or suffering the worst kind of madness. Of his features, I could see little, the outline of a head shaved nearly bald being the only hint of a man beneath the steel plates. If he was armed, I couldn’t tell, the night and his dark steel conspiring to make him a shadow only slightly more lustrous than the rest crowding the wreckage.

At first I thought he was waiting—perhaps even for me. Could he be a guard, and this some elaborate trap? But as I waited and watched from the darkness, I began to see his head nod almost imperceptibly, slowly, with even breaths. He was asleep. This didn’t seem careless, though, with his vantage over the best approach and armor still fastened. He seemed more like a soldier in hostile territory, as ready as he could be while still at rest. Or it was a ruse.

Either way, I moved cautiously as I slipped around the corner, picking through the ruin to come upon him from behind. During my nearly silent approach he hadn’t moved. That changed quickly as I clamped one hand around his neck, digging my thumb into a tender point, my other lifting his chin with the cold length of my dagger.

“Who are you?” I demanded, the rasp echoing hollowly within my locked helm.

I could feel him jar to wakefulness and tense with surprise, but that passed in an instant—not a good sign. He’d been trained to control his shock, his instinct to go rigid. Without a word he reversed his balance, throwing his weight against my chest.

My own training countermanded my curiosity, and my blade slid across his throat. But instead of being gripped by the slight resistance of separating skin, the dagger screeched across a gorget hidden in the dark, doing nothing to slow the armored figure’s rearward charge. I suddenly became aware of the crumbled inner wall behind me, my legs kicking backward to keep me upright, heels skidding on glass and garbage. The remains of a plaster window frame caught me in the small of my back, and I reflexively released my grip, lashing out for any handhold in reach. I snagged a piece of wooden beam, only to have it crumble like a chunk of clay.

A vision of clouds made ghostly by moonlight blurred through my vision as I toppled backward through the air.

Chapter Three: Wounds that Rust

I crashed down on my upper back with a peal of metal thunder, the impact as much a sound as a physical blow, jarring every steel plate and fragile bone. Flashes of lightning exploded within my helm, and I fought to remain conscious as I slid sideways down a mound of rubble, part of a small avalanche of splinters and broken bricks. I think I momentarily lost my senses, as the next thing I remember was a commotion of unpleasant sensations, pinpricks cascading across my limbs as my confused body tried to either reawaken itself or rage against the grip of paralysis. Something in my memory urgently vied for attention, the lingering flickers of rational thought screaming at me, going hoarse with desperation.

A shadow fell across my unseeing gaze, and my mind rallied.

I kicked as fiercely as I could, silently exulting at the sensation of my legs—though heavy—actually moving. The motion slid me further down the pile of wreckage, spinning me just as a heavy object impacted the rubble where my head had been, pelting my slightly askew visor with debris. My heels hit the semi-level stone of the courtyard and I was up, taking two long stumbling strides as one hand righted my helmet and the other gripped my sword. I spun, my blade half from its sheath before reflex threw me into another motion more akin to ballet than battle.

The barbed spike of a halberd whistled as it swung, swiping through vision up-flung by the extreme arch of my back. Muscles like taut chains snapped my torso upright, and I faced my attacker with blade fully drawn, a deadly extension of my outstretched arm.

What light filtered into the courtyard barely glinted from blackened plates as much weapons as armor, bladed and forged with the visage of a fiendish skull dominating the breastplate, its monstrous teeth gnashed together in a wall of daggers. The infernal steel piled upon a mountainous figure, his face now hidden behind the featureless visor of a newly donned helm. Had the night itself sent its own legionnaire against me, its manifestation could not have been more menacing.

A Hellknight. Now it was clear who Quil had found to avenge him against the Calavettis so affordably. Initially I’d assumed just some sadistic gang member or bloodthirsty lunatic, but those possibilities had largely evaporated when I’d seen the Slug’s Trail emptied of its huddled occupants. So much for optimism. The Hellknights served no lord other than their own grim vision of justice, meting it out sometimes for the coin of those seeking lawful revenge, and sometimes merely to make examples of those who flaunted their crimes. I suspected Quil had convinced this monstrosity that the Calavettis fell into that latter category—they had robbed the crooked gambler, after all. It’d be easy to see them as the villains and undertake their execution with only half the story—Quil’s half. I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have done the same if Quil had come to me.

The Hellknight’s tempered, dispassionate voice jerked me from my fantasy of morality, his words sounding almost mechanical as they reverberated from his heavy helm to mine. “There’s no defense for your being here,” he said, his tone that of judge delivering his verdict. “Having rejected amnesty, you are a war criminal and a traitor to the new order. Throw down your weapon and submit.”

He was right. Just wearing this armor made me a criminal, an embodiment of slaughter and mad ambition. After the queen fell, the city’s new rulers offered us our old lives back. They humbled us and called it mercy.

But they didn’t know what it had been like. They might have had their families killed and their bodies scarred, but so had we—and worse, we had done it to ourselves. We were the Gray Maidens, the elite, the bodyguards of a queen as beautiful as she was ambitious—and viciously insane. Few chose to join the queen’s guard, but she and her followers were not to be denied. The beautiful, the talented, the unscrupulous—I forget which I’d been—all of us were made to serve. Those of us who hadn’t reveled in our cruel authority had our minds shackled as thoroughly as our bodies, the parts of us that made us who we were locked away, transforming us into the marionettes of a mad woman. The scholar I once was—the one who had dreams, who indulged in magic words, and whose blood I too often bled—died long ago, executed in all but body for deeds performed against her will, but performed nonetheless. And not the sweep of a thousand bureaucrats’ pardons would resurrect her. There was only this. Only a chance, a hope, that I could make something right in whatever days I had remaining. That I might have a chance to prove that something like a heart still beat within this armor.

But the Hellknight cared nothing for my redemption. His halberd hung in the space between us, its curved blade all too suggestive of an executioner’s axe. If I submitted, at best I’d be handed over to the city guard, put on public display, then executed as either a zealot or a dangerous lunatic. Or he might exact his view of justice here and now—as he did with the Calvettis. He didn’t appear to be carrying any manacles. In any case, I doubted he would be the first of his kind to show sympathy.

I stepped forward, as if preparing to lunge. The knight’s weapon came around in a predictable arc, but far faster than I’d anticipated, barely giving me an instant to dance back. The blade passed and I shot forward again, seeing how close I could get between scythelike swipes. Farther this time, but not far enough. The Hellknight channeled the momentum of the long-hafted axe like a deadly conductor, directing his steel around in a lethal figure eight, the weapon never even slowing as it wheeled around, intent on cleaving me in two. I flung myself back just barely in time, the point of the halberd’s spear tip clattering across the steel scales of my midsection. If he’d been able to adjust his weight fast enough, he could have impaled me in that instant. I slid farther out of reach, and regarded him even more cautiously.

He knew his weapon, had greater range, was likely stronger, and was at least as well trained as I. This was going to be nasty—but he didn’t have all the advantages.

The Hellknights serve no lord other than their own grim vision of justice.

His heavy blade waving between us, I darted in once more, directly toward the weapon. The spear tip shot forward to meet me, seeking to punch through my armor’s weaker scales. It hit almost directly—an inch closer to my middle and it would have skewered me. As it was, it struck where I’d intended. I spun with the impact, twisting hard away from the curved axe head. Flexible scales rolled the weapon’s point across my midsection, and for an instant the knight saw my back—probably believing he’d struck a deadly wound. I eagerly disillusioned him. My upraised sword arm came around with my spin, sliding my blade cleanly under his spiked gardbrace, tearing into his shoulder.

A growl of surprised pain rang within the dark armor and I yanked my sword back as though it were a knife, preparing to stab again. With me inside his guard, he couldn’t effectively bring his polearm to bear. I had him.

His armored fist erupted upward, catching me under the chin. Stars flashed across my vision, and the blow snapped my jaw up hard, rattling my teeth as though I’d caught a thrown rock in my mouth. I stumbled back, slashing wildly, but succeeding only in scoring the fiendish face snarling upon his sculpted breastplate.

My sword almost didn’t come up fast enough. The axe-head skidded along my blade and I had to use both hands to throw it aside, the power of his blow forcing me back another step. The vibrations of the impact rang through me, dulling the feeling in my arms. Just as fast, the next strike came. The bloodied Hellknight had perhaps lost a measure of his composure, but none of his vigor. His attacks hammered down, raining over me like a taskmaster’s lash. Before the tremors of the last strike subsided the next was already falling. It felt as though my bones were being reduced to dust in their sockets. I gave ground just to keep my balance, each impact forcing me back farther, each step a chance to slip or find myself backed against a wall.

I felt his rhythm before I even realized it, my limbs expecting the coming blow, my sword arm rising to parry an attack high and to the left. The Hellknights prided themselves on their mercilessness, on their unfeeling exaction of law, but obviously didn’t value imagination. This one had trained himself to be a clockwork soldier—deadly, but predictable.

I, on the other hand, had the dubious fortune of having been trained by maniacs.

The halberd came leveled for my head, and I wasn’t there. Dropping low, I slid under the swipe and drove my blade down with all my weight, puncturing the metal guarding his left foot, momentarily pinning him to the ground. His growl worsened to a roar as he reflexively tried to jerk back. Lashing wildly, the butt of his weapon came down hard on my shoulder, knocking me away. I rolled as best I could, slashing at his legs. The armor seemed weaker there, and my steel cleaved through leather and skin—but not without a price. The spear-tip fell, and I threw up my arm to catch it. The barbed spike grated through metal and flesh with equal ease.

Immediately, the length of my arm coursed with wet warmth, rivulets leaking through armored gaps. It looked black as oil in the courtyard’s shadows. My sword rose wildly, scraping the plates of my attacker’s groin. It didn’t find a mark, but the impact alone caused him to flinch, pulling his bloodied weapon along with him.

Bounding to my feet, I pressed forward, trying to keep him on guard as long as possible. We clashed like living swords, both of us weapons honed for similar purposes, but still far from alike. Where my armor granted me flexibility, his reinforced the impression of some hellish automaton, and what strikes he couldn’t deflect with his weapon he beat aside with gauntleted fists. Again and again my blade struck like a cat’s claw, his metallic hisses signaling a dozen minor scratches, but none telling. From the lines of dark droplets sprayed across the courtyard rubble, I had to be wearing him down, but his movements gave little sign. He fought like a fanatic, and as the fight ground on I realized he’d never back down. For him, this wasn’t a battle with another soldier—it was against an enemy of his blind convictions. Somewhere, someone’s word ordered him to fight unto victory or death. It was simple.

For a moment, I almost envied him. But my days of freedom through obedience died with the old queen.

Again the swing of that blackened halberd cleaved the air like a giant’s axe, carrying the force of a killing blow. Flecked with gore, the devil upon the knight’s armor sneered viciously, its cruel eyes acknowledging that out duel could only end in death. The Hellknight knew my speed now, striking lower to limit my motion. As agile as I was, attempting to leapfrog an attack was a deadly gamble. But if I was to survive, it wasn’t the only gamble I’d be willing to try.

With his next thrust, I gripped my cloak like the cape of a bullfighter and threw it directly for his horned helm. The heavy fabric rippled between us and I followed, ready to strike. He struck first, ignoring my attempt at distraction. The halberd blade swept the ground, extended too far to sever my legs, but the shaft bludgeoned my calf. The blade jerked back toward its wielder, catching my limb in its hooklike curve, tugging my leg out from under me. A moment’s weightlessness, and then I hit the ground with a rush of breath and a clangor of collapsing steel.

Two devils glared down—the one on the armor, and the one inside it. I gripped my sword, only to have a steel-shod boot kick it away. The first blow fell, punching through scale mesh and piercing my side. The echoes within my helm made me realize I’d screamed, more out of frustration than pain.

“You could have renounced your armor. You could have left with your sisters.” The Hellknight’s voice rumbled matter-of-factly through his heavy breathing and the blood-leaking helm. “Instead, you’ve persisted in the old queen’s madness. As a Gray Maiden, still within these walls, you prove yourself the embodiment of that madness. You and your order forced this city to the brink of chaos, and for all of you the punishment is the same.” The spear-point lifted again.

I was finished—but the dead woman inside me refused to give up so easily. The old words rang through my armor before I could compare them to faded memories. Numb fingers moved as though possessed, recreating delicate signs as I thrust my arms up to meet the plummeting blade. The crimson sensation of sharp metal sheering along my wrists matched the blast of energy that burst from my palms.

The arcane darts flickered and threatened to falter, they didn’t have far to go. They lanced into the black sliver of the Hellknight’s visor, then exploded in a rain of scarlet sparks. A wail like that of a malfunctioning machine tore through the courtyard as the Hellknight and his dripping blade toppled, crashing backward into the rubble.

I lay there breathing deliberately, letting the exhaustion of bruised muscles and split veins momentarily overcome me. When I rose, I cradled my left arm. Although my steel skin was little more than scraped, it felt as though the flesh within had been reduced to ribbons. Learning the extent of my wounds would have to wait, though. Recovering my sword, I walked to the fallen Hellknight.

A thin wisp of steam, smoke, or breath rose from the soldier’s visor, and I imagined I caught a whiff of burnt meat. He lay perfectly still, and through the leering armor I couldn’t divine any sign of life.

I didn’t regret toppling him—it had been his life or mine—but I had to admit that I could all too easily become like him again: a champion of a crusade sane people could never fathom, a killer without the inclination to see or the soul to judge the difference between law and right. How many had thought the same of me?

Just in case, I kicked that bloody halberd out of his reach. Then my sword slid between the thick plates at his neck, releasing a spurt of liquid darkness and a brief choking noise more gurgle than gasp.

“Gray Maiden?” The name came unbidden, even as the steel-skinned fanatic bled out at my feet. Was that all I was even now? A shattered sword that refused to stop killing? “We’ll see.”

I turned to start the shadowed walk back to Trail’s End, a Varisian neighborhood just outside Korvosa. I couldn’t say whether I’d done right tonight, or avenged anyone who deserved it. I couldn’t say whether I’d just murdered a hero or a monster. But I was pretty sure there was a Varisian girl back in Trail’s End who would sleep better for the rest of her days knowing that the ones who killed her kin had paid for those deaths, and that she’d bought the sword that struck the avenging blow. And when you can’t afford justice, you make due with revenge.