Peter sat on a crenelated cement ledge on the knight's tomb.

  The engineers would soon install a cannon in the empty notch.

  His legs dangling over empty air. He shivered in the chill, sweat and blood from his latest training session with Kulafu still damp on his clothes.

  Surprisingly, his new trainer hadn’t given him a single lesson with a sword or one of his Dinnian scimitars.

  Kulafu had Peter sprinting, rolling, and climbing. It seemed he was convinced the most important element Peter could train was mobility.

  Peter would have complained had he not seen how the Chief Warrant Officer could move. If he could get a fraction of Kulafu’s grace, he’d become vastly more deadly on the battlefield.

  A bugle sounded in the mid-evening air, calling the end of one shift and the start of another.

  The day went still as the horn ended its forlorn melody.

  That wasn’t accurate. There was no such thing as a still moment at Fort Zero. But the wind drowned the murmured voices, the casual cough of a sentry with a cold, or a child crying for their mother.

  Peter shivered, enjoying the bite of the breeze while he could. He doubted he’d find quiet moments in Stalpia, when Nine Fingers and Rahashel danced around diplomacy while searching for an exposed back to bury their knives into.

  There was no telling what this mission held. An instant ambush? A druk, shredding him from the inside?

  Peter wiped his nose, sniffing as his teeth chattered.

  Of course, there was always the strange possibility that Rahashel could figure out what was wrong with Peter’s court powers. Somehow fix him, and give Nine Fingers a proper chance. But then again—Peter recalled Tobias wearing the bedorvan, eyes predatory and hungry as he started to leech his own team. When he’d synced the band’s power, he lost control.

  Peter shuddered for reasons unconnected to the wind. His stunted court abilities were a shame—sure—but perhaps that was a fair price to avoid the madness that had temporarily possessed the Major.

  Footsteps sounded behind Peter, and he shifted.

  A squat figure huffed as he approached. White coat bulging at the sides and a bowler hat clasped to his head as the wind threatened to rip it free.

  Doctor Aarts hadn’t come empty-handed but carried a white bundle tucked under his arm.

  “Doctor!” Peter called, swinging his legs to the solid side of the low wall. “What are you doing here?”

  “Chose the worst damned spot in the fort!” the doctor grumbled as he glanced up at the gathering clouds. Not the maelstrom of the atmostorm, but a low-hanging nimbostratus.

  Peter rose, then he smelled it.

  His stomach churned, cramping at the scent. “Do you have bread?”

  The doctor withdrew the white parcel. “It’s not much, but I managed to snag a small loaf. Are you hungry?”

  “Ataggins’ Ash! Give it here.”

  Five minutes later, they sat, backs against the low wall, which provided a surprisingly good barrier against the wind, shielding everything except for the tops of their heads.

  “Jam?” Peter gasped after the Doctor rolled the small jar over to him. “Who’d you have to kill for that?”

  “Traded it to a quartermaster for some antibiotics. I guess his kid was sick. Still, he got the better deal.” Aarts bit into warm bread as Peter slathered dark sticky goodness across his slice.

  Looking at them now, Peter almost struggled to believe they were once enemies.

  Doctor Aarts was originally supposed to be the one who received Court Rasminfrey’s Bedorvan, but when it fell into Peter’s hands, and he refused to give it up—well, the Doctor had seen him as an immature obstacle. But after stealing Court Rahashel’s tiles and extended hours researching Peter’s court abilities, it seemed the Doctor found a peer in Peter. Not a true colleague—Peter was barely eighteen—but apparently, academic souls could recognise each other.

  Peter sank his teeth into sweet, spongy warmth and barely chewed before the bread slid down his throat. Like a refilled premernox lamp flaring bright, his energy stores seemed to replenish instantaneously—not a court power, just a sugar rush from a malnourished body.

  “This izsh sho good!” Peter gushed through his second mouthful.

  “Amazing what quarter rations will do for your tolerance for camp food,” the doctor agreed, cramming his slice into his mouth before pulling out a notebook.

  Peter swallowed. “Anything interesting?”

  “I’m coming with you to Stalpia,” Aarts said, thumbing pages.

  Peter’s head cocked to the side. He hadn’t expected that.

  “I can dissect ghoul hearts for the rest of my life, document the characters written on them. But I’ll never understand them.”

  The characters—the court glyphs burned into the heart of every ghoul. What did they mean?

  “I’ve never been able to have a civil conversation with a lich. A single interview can clarify and correct everything I’ve ever discovered about them.”

  “The Lord Commandant is okay with you coming then?” Peter asked.

  “It was his idea.” Aarts nodded.

  “Did you know it’s probably a trap?”

  “No shit,” Aarts grumbled. “That’s why I’m here. Look, Peter, I need you to look out for me. I’m not a soldier. I’m like a crown-board player dropped into a brawl—unlucky me, that’s where they set up the championship match.”

  Peter snickered at the image. “You really came up here to ask me to be your bodyguard?”

  “You’re our heavyweight champion, kid. You box, I’ll play crown-board.”

  “I’m hoping Sicco comes, or even Julian himself,” Peter said, as he slapped jam on another piece of bread. “I’m far from our champion.”

  The doctor’s face soured. “Have you let them indoctrinate you yet?”

  Peter sighed. Doctor Aarts and Julian, two of the smartest men he knew, were yet at odds in every facet of life.

  “I understand you don’t like their politics or practices, but you have to study their metasciences. There’s a shocking number of parallels with the court powers.”

  Doctor Aarts mumbled something under his breath, and Peter ate again.

  Chewing slower this time, he savored the moment. He set his head against the wall and closed his eyes, as if denying one sense would sharpen the taste.

  Would Rahashel at least feed them better than the Nine Fingers? He instantly rebuked himself for the thought. Outside, thousands were starving. He wasn’t going on a real diplomatic mission; he was going to war. Rahashel wasn’t a friend who shared; he was a tyrant who conquered.

  Peter’s eyes opened, tipped up at the sky, and he frowned. “Do you see that?”

  Six fiery purple orbs descended through the mist until a much larger shape broke through the haze.

  Adrenaline spiked.

  Peter lurched to his feet, with a curse, falling back, until his legs bumped against the low wall.

  The object in the cloud floated down towards them.

  It was large, like a kite the size of a field command tent, only it wasn’t constructed from canvas or tarp, but flesh.

  Its vague shape resembled a sting ray, but rather than a tail, six appendages, jointed like fingers, drifted through the air, each trailing a purple jet of fire. It glided, smooth and lethargically, drifting towards the camp.

  Doctor Aarts cursed, scrambling back so fast he almost went over the edge.

  Peter’s mouth opened to cry out, shout a warning, but no sound came. Figures moved on the entities back, or was it a machine?

  One of the shapes shifted, a short figure.

  The figure braced a tube three times its size on its shoulder.

  Then three incandescent globes zipped from the tube, each one growing bigger as it streaked towards the camp.

  Peter found his voice. “Take cover!” he screamed.

  One of the balls struck the front gate.

  Wood disintegrated in a flash.

  The second impacted the estate tent, and the third hit one of the premernox batteries.

  The artillery shell bunker belched a tower of flame.

  Peter shielded his eyes.

  The evening ignited in a hot flash, cries and screams filling the air.

  “Look to the sky!” Peter bellowed, ripping his hevigs from their holsters. “Doctor, take shelter!”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  But the doctor was already sprinting down the mound, stubby legs cycling impressively fast.

  Fearing a second barrage, Peter turned to the drifting aberration.

  The little figure threw the tube from his shoulder before pointing down directly at Peter with a cry.

  Peter took a shooting stance, hands tight on his pistols.

  Four figures dropped from the flesh barge, plummeting unconcerned with the gravity, each unlike the others.

  The littlest screamed in violent glee, no larger than a child, with a sharp chin, long ears, and teeth that ended in sharp points. From a distance, its skin appeared muted grey.

  Next to him, a cloaked being dropped.

  The figure looked like a man, but hairy mandibles twitched under his eight eyes—six black, two glowing purple.

  The biggest one fell on the back of a wheeled machine, like a bicycle if fused with a cannon and furnace. Its engine flared to life, an infernal chorus of voices wailing, like Peter’s leech field.

  A spectral track shot forward in front of the vehicle, towards Peter, and the rider zipped along it, as if descending on a ramp.

  The first two slammed into the ground, shaking off the trauma, but the fourth—a pale, gaunt woman in a white night gown—passed through the earth imaterially.

  The bike rider shot at Peter, through the air ahead of the others, wheels screaming along its spectral track. Peter sighted him first, holding his hevig steady.

  The rider seemed human, but with an oblong bald head, like an egg. Glass lenses glinted over his eyes, and a respirator of thick tubes hung from his jaw.

  What were these? Ghouls, liches? Neither looked like any Rahashelian Peter knew. Did they belong to Libshee?

  Peter fired one Hevig. Shock slammed his hand back as the slug ripped forward.

  The ghost track in front of the bike snaked, and the rider swerved out of the path of the shell. Regaining his bearing, the rider leaned off to one side.

  Steel talons gleamed from his arm, an entirely mechanized prosthetic.

  Peter fired his second gun, and the rider snarled as the bike wobbled, and sparks sprayed up into his face.

  The rider revved the engine, leaning down to swipe at Peter with his mechanical claw like a dragoon executing a saber pass.

  Peter saluted with the barrel of his Hevig as he tipped back over the wall.

  Talons raked air, and he plummeted headfirst off the mound. He aimed properly this time, dying on impact.

  He sprang to his feet, hat knocked off. Triggering the break action on his weapons, the hevigs snapped open, hinging at the barrels as brass casings leaped free. He hooked new shells on his belt, popped them from their clips, and they dropped into place.

  Horns and bells rang, dozens of men rushing to arms.

  The rider circled the fort, leaning hard on a sharp curve as he sped through the air. The spectral track perpetually raced out three meters ahead of him before fading away at his rear. Perfect. The track telegraphed his path.

  Peter flicked his wrists, snapping both hevigs closed and thumbed the hammers. He sighted, leading the speeding assassin.

  A maniacal scream sounded from above, and Peter’s gaze ripped upward. The small one and the one that seemed to be some hairy humanoid-arachnid dropped from the tomb, straight at him.

  Peter rolled sideways, a new maneuver he’d drilled with Kulafu, and his leech flare flared, drawing time from those two.

  The goblin-imp thing sprang at Peter, knives flashing.

  Peter shot him.

  The Hevig slug is sparking off stone skin, flinging the stone creature back with a scream.

  Owen appeared, backlit by the burning magazine. “Van Seur’s in trouble!” He bellowed.

  He dropped to a knee and leveled his long rifle at the arachnid man. He fired, and the prickly-haired assassin phased, becoming translucent for a heartbeat as the bullet passed through him.

  Six more riflemen rushed to Owen’s side, leveling gas arms.

  “Number Five, get the pawns!” the Spider assassin barked, voice deep and warbling from behind the mandibles.

  The stone goblin gathered himself and cackled as he sprang towards the infantrymen.

  Peter shot the spider warrior.

  His cloak jerked him to the side, out of the path of the bullet.

  Peter followed him and shot him with his off-handed Hevig.

  He flickered again, fading from tangible reality just as the slug passed through him.

  Peter cursed.

  Behind him, green pulses lanced after the rider, who fired down at soldiers and domestics with a shotgun.

  The gun didn’t hiss like a premenox gas-arm, but roared as it belched fire.

  The spider man threw his cloak over his shoulder, exposing four stubby spider legs that curled around his torso like external ribs, and he lifted a carbine—only it was sleek and pulsed with Court glyphs.

  Peter rolled to the side, but he followed.

  A purple bolt streaked from a rounded black glass point where a barrel should have been, slamming into Peter’s arm.

  Ice and pain tore a scream from him. From hand to elbow, his flesh darkened and withered, as if undergoing days of necrosis in a moment. His Hevig dropped from dead finger tips—then it was fine.

  But four more bolts tore after him. “Give me the bedorvan!” the assassin ordered, voice deep and alien.

  Peter rolled, violet bolts splashing the ground behind him.

  Men screamed as the stone goblin cut through them. It jumped from body to body, bearing them down as it slammed its knives deep.

  Owen fell back and shot it, but the slug sparked off its hardened skin.

  It turned to him, hissing before it sprang through the air.

  “Owen!” Peter cried.

  A shockwave blasted the thing back, and Sicco rushed to Owen’s side. “Peter, run!” he cried.

  Two purple bolts slammed into Peter’s chest but dispersed harmlessly against his coat.

  The spider warrior cursed in another language before flipping a tile from his weapon and packing in a new one.

  Run? No, these things would kill his friends. He was the weapon here.

  Peter tossed his hevig into his right hand and reloaded, mind racing. He had to get close, let his leech field do the work.

  A new bolt hit Peter’s chest, the ghastly wail from this one coming at a different pitch. His coat withered and melted off him in a perfect circle, leaving the back and sleeves hanging in tatters.

  Peter charged, otherwise unharmed.

  The spider reloaded and fired whatever the first curse was, light slamming into Peter's naked chest.

  He crumpled, necrosis spreading through his body, organs withering within.

  The spider dropped the weapon on its sling and drew a dagger, before leaping into Peter’s leech field—only it wasn’t a dagger.

  Peter screamed, throwing himself back as the druk passed inches from his flesh. Once planted, the blade would animate, shredding him from the inside until he gave up and removed the bedorven to escape the pain.

  Peter fell on his backside, the spider assassin towering over him.

  A shockwave passed through the assassin as if he weren’t there. The arachnid man turned to Sicco, brow cocked in confusion. So, he wasn’t a ghoul; he was living, and his iola was still up.

  Peter kicked, boot slamming into its knee.

  The joint cracked, and the spider shrieked.

  Peter scrambled back, fumbling to reload.

  The assassin turned back on him before flickering as two rounds passed through him.

  He whirled, snatching his carbine and returning a pair of bolts at Owen.

  Peter stared in horror as the deadly streaks of court light sped at his mortal friend.

  A pulse-veil, like a flickering shield, covered the two men, and the bolts struck through the wave, almost penetrating it before fizzling out.

  Sicco grinned victoriously, sweat pouring down his face as he maintained the veil. The assassin had dropped his iola. “Idiot,” he hissed before launching another, more focused pulse.

  The spider flickered, fading partially from reality.

  The metaphysical wave still slammed into him, sending him spinning across the dirt.

  Peter gasped, pulling himself to his feet. “Thanks!” he called. Then his eyes widened.

  He fired at the goblin who was rushing the pair again, one stone arm missing, and black blood pouring from the socket.

  His shot missed, and Sicco tried to knock it back, but it rolled deftly out of the way.

  Peter took a step forward to shield his friends from the little monster.

  A semi-translucent woman phased up out of the ground in front of him, skin pulled tight to her skull. She thrust a hand into Peter’s chest before he could react.

  Her cold fingers closed around his heart, and his body locked. A leech stream siphoned into Peter from her, but another one drew out of him, flowing down her arm and back into her.

  He choked, paralyzed as he aged. The spider assassin grunted, pulling himself up, druk gleaming in his hand.

  “I have him!” the banshee woman cried. “Do it now!”

  The rider circled the camp, leaning with the turn—one hand gripping a handlebar, the other pumping his shotgun.

  He flipped the weapon, catching it by its pistol grip, and blasted a hole in a clampist’s chest without slowing.

  Peter became a husk and then died of old age.

  He snapped back to consciousness, reset to his twenty-year-old body, which rapidly began aging again.

  The spider assassin staggered towards Peter.

  Peter’s eyes rolled helplessly. The cold, the helplessness. This was it.

  The spider’s mandibles wavered excitedly as he reared his druk back.

  A black glass spear stabbed through the bachee’s back, spraying Peter with cold, incomparable blood.

  The intangible ichot fizzled from reality.

  Purple glyphs flared along the black glass spear's haft, and the woman solidified.

  She slumped to the ground, solid hand fusing around Peter’s heart.

  A figure marched toward them. The spider turned, hissing.

  Peter panted, forcing the shock away, feeling the woman’s hand, foreign tissue tight around his heart.

  Whose hand slew the woman? Had Julian returned? He looked up, hoping for the High Steward.

  But it wasn’t Julian; it was Rahashel, puppeting Nebetka’s body.

  “Bounty hunters?” Rahashel thundered, a kopesh flashing into existence in his hand with a puff of violet fire. He thrust a finger forward. “Go!”

  Six ghoul charged at Peter, spears lowered. So here was the treachery. Now that he was weak and beaten, Rahashel could finish him.

  His hands trembled as he loaded a new shell.

  Dry, mummified feet thundered as they approached. Peter braced for the pain of spears running him through—

  They sped past him, falling on the spider assassin.

  The arachnid hissed, drawing a black glass blade, etched with glyphs, as it fired from the hip with its court weapon.

  Purple bolts struck the squad of ghouls, and they disintegrated where they hit.

  Rahashel tossed out three more tiles, and eyes flashed with purple fire. Each conjured six more sentinels.

  “Forward!” Rahashel bellowed. “Protect Van Seur!”

  The ghouls charged.

  “Get the prize!” the spider hissed, firing quickly into Rahashel’s footsoldiers.

  Peter couldn’t think, not with the severed hand still clutching his heart. He wasn’t supposed to reset, but this was combat.

  Peter put the gun to his temple and fired.

  His head snapped back up, and he heard it: the chthonic wail of the bike engine.

  He spun.

  The mechanized claw clamped around his face.

  The rider tilted on his ghost track, slamming Peter’s face into the ground and grinding it as he sped across the dirt.

  Pain and rage fused in Peter’s mind, and he ripped his trench-bayonet free and slammed it into the rider’s leg.

  The rider glanced down, nonplussed.

  Glass lenses reflected Peter’s fury, half of his face stripped away by the road, bathed in baleful leech incandescence.

  Peter jerked his knife free and thrust it up, hooking it around the tube of the rider's respirator.

  He jerked the blade.

  The tube snapped, spraying Peter with clear fluid.

  The Rider screamed, voice muffled by the mask, and the biked lurched up, pitching toward their aberrant vessel.

  The ground shot away from them as they began their climb.

  No, he couldn’t get abducted—had to improvise.

  His face reset, but the mechanical claws still gripped his head in a vise. Peter bellowed, stabbing his bayonet against the black glass elements of the engine.

  The blade snapped.

  Panic surged as they lifted past the tomb mounds, engine and leech harmonizing in an infernal song.

  Peter saw it—the rider’s shotgun, nestled in a sheath on the bike.

  He grabbed it, ripped it free, and thrust it against the engine.

  The rider glanced down, and his brows shot up in panic.

  “Smile, bastard!” Peter snarled. “I don’t miss.”

  He pulled the trigger.