"Valery. Kill."
Too late, Evelyn thought. It was the only thing she had time to think — the one clear thought in the second before her death.
GLANK!!
Steel fist rang against steel hard enough to shiver the pipes along the ceiling.
Evelyn had her eyes shut. She opened them.
"C-Claude...?"
He was standing over her — between her and the falling man — with his longsword raised crosswise above his head in both hands. Not the edge. The flat of it, turned up like a shield. And Valery Veilnoir's iron fist was driven against it with the whole weight of his body behind it, the full drop of a man who had come down out of the air to end her.
Claude's boots had slid back a hand's width across the metal floor. The blade was bowing. His arms shook with it, and held.
She was alive. She sat in the middle of that fact and could not make it feel real.
The pressure from above did not let up. Valery leaned into the fist and the sword sank another inch toward Claude's own face; Claude set his jaw and drove both arms upward against it, and for a long moment the two brothers held there, perfectly still, the steel between them humming faintly with the strain.
Then Valery let go, turned once in the air, and landed lightly on the far side of the table.
"What are you doing, Claude."
Claude did not answer. He lowered the sword by degrees and looked back over his shoulder — at Evelyn, for barely a second — and then away.
"..."
"Claude."
"I only think," Claude said, "that Lady Flaure wouldn't be happy to watch one of our own die in this room."
A sigh came out of the grille. Long, and thoroughly irritated.
The box sat at the head of the table. It was not large — a squat thing of black lacquer, without a single seam Evelyn could find, with a round brass speaking-grille set into its face like one unblinking eye. Every voice that had given an order in this room tonight had come out of it.
"Please — please stop it, I'm begging you, I don't want—" Flaure had reached it before anyone else could move. She had both hands flat on the table on either side of it and was bent down to the grille, the words spilling out of her too fast and breaking apart on a sob. "I don't want anyone to—"
"..."
"Hah. You've been wrong from start to finish, Valery. Bringing that girl here."
"My apologies." Valery bowed his head to the box — low, precise, exact.
At some point in all of it the table had gone over. Valery righted it with one hand and set the box back at its head, square to the edge, precisely where it had stood before.
Another sigh seeped out through the brass.
"Valery, you'll stay. I'm going to go and cut the line that carries that essence, and see to one or two other things. When it's done I'll come back and we'll talk."
"You can't!"
Evelyn was on her feet. She did not remember standing.
"I don't know what that is — I don't — but if that many people are going to die because of it, I can't accept that!"
She brought her fist down on the table.
"At least let us evacuate first!"
"..."
"Please. I'll swear never to say a word about this place — anything, whatever you want. There are neighbours of mine who haven't gotten out yet. There's MP, RMO, Army — thousands of them, still stuck in Eastern!"
"..."
The silence out of the grille went on long enough that Evelyn could hear her own breathing.
"Until midnight tonight."
Her eyes lit — for one instant only — before she pressed her face back into composure.
That's not enough to get everyone out. Not even close. But it's something — damn it all, it's something—
She bowed deeply to the box. "Thank you. Truly."
She was already moving, pivoting on her heel toward the door.
"Wait."
The voice from the box. She turned back.
"Yes?"
"So that you don't stray off course, I'll have Fifth observe you. Wait for him until—"
"Can't I go with her instead?" Claude cut in.
"..."
"You. Absolutely not."
"Why not?"
"Be quiet."
A sigh from the grille.
"Everyone except Flaure and Valery. Out."
Claude and Evelyn went out together and hauled the heavy door shut behind them — and then, by some agreement neither of them spoke aloud, both leaned back against the wall beside it, shoulder to shoulder in the corridor's thin, greenish light.
"What you did in there," Evelyn said. "Saving me. Why?"
"..."
"Lady Flaure would be wrecked if you died, that's all." He was looking at the wall opposite. "She doesn't have many friends. If you're honest about it, we're two of the very few people she's even this close to."
"And still so far away it's maddening. There's so much Lady Flaure hasn't told me..."
Something tugged at the corner of Evelyn's mouth.
"Hah. So you've finally learned to love a woman properly, you jerk."
"Whatever." He smiled — a little.
"Here he comes." Claude nudged her side with an elbow.
Down the long iron corridor, between the hissing pipes, someone was walking toward them — smiling, one hand raised in an easy, cheerful wave.
The Mirror Dimension. Thirty minutes after Aim woke.
The two of them were still where they had been, in the same chair. Isolde had only just surfaced.
"Aim, hey... ow..." She was barely awake, her words smudged at the edges.
"Here. C'mere, c'mere."
Aim gathered her up and set her down in the chair properly.
"Floor's so hard..." Isolde caught hold of him and pulled him back down, and buried her face against his chest.
"Uh — Sol. Let go."
"In a sec—"
Behind the two of them, Const laid one hand flat on the wooden table and, with the other, drew something out of his coat pocket: a small prism, glowing faintly from somewhere inside itself.
The table was a sofa.
It did not become one. It had simply always been one, as far as the room was concerned. And the light inside the prism had gone, very slightly, dimmer.
"Here. Over here."
"Whaaat — where did that come from!"
"Magic."
Aim scooped Isolde up and set her on the sofa. She did not let go of him, and pulled until Aim had no choice but to sit down himself and let her use his lap for a pillow.
"Close, aren't you," Const said.
"We've been friends almost twenty years, I think..."
"Magic like that's incredible, though..." Aim looked at the sofa, then at the prism. "How come a catalyst can't do anything like that?"
A smirk tugged at the corner of Const's mouth.
"A catalyst is a machine for making ready-made magic. So it only ever does — well. Ready-made things."
"Then how do I get to do it like you?"
Const closed his eyes.
"Well—"
Light burst open in the middle of the room.
A young woman with lavender hair stepped out of it — beautiful in a way that made the eye stall on her.
Her Majesty? No — maybe not her. Aim's thoughts were racing. There were two of them, back then. So which one is the real—
"...I heard Vine promised you something or other. She told me about it before she died."
Before she died? Aim could not make it fit. Miss Vine? When would she even have had time to tell anyone, as sudden as all that? And how could she possibly have died — someone that strong?
Too many questions. Leave them. He cut himself off.
"My friend..." Aim hesitated. That business about dying... what was that, really? Later. Leave it for later.
"My friend's not in very good shape. She — Miss Vine said she'd help heal her..."
Ask a little more.
"And I've had this strange feeling, too. A premonition, sort of. Could you look at her?"
The lavender-haired woman crouched and laid her hand, lightly, on the head resting in Aim's lap. Her eyes began to glow.
"At a glance there's nothing wrong with her. Nothing ailing in the body."
Aim let out a breath — some of the weight went off him — and then caught on something, and lifted his eyes to meet hers.
"It's embarrassing, but... I had a strange dream. A woman came and told me that she was going to die. Please. Look properly."
...
"But it seems you two got yourselves tangled up with Mivelle. Didn't you."
She knows that much? No — when could Miss Vine have told her all of this?
"Yes," Aim said.
The woman unrolled a scroll across the floor, and opened it out to its full length.
"Veranthos."
The scroll lit from within.
"So it's you, is it," said a voice out of the parchment. "Help me out of here."
"Not yet."
Behind her —
"Veranthos?" Aim whispered to Const, who had moved over to sit beside him on the sofa.
"Father of contracts."
Aim's eyes went wide. "Then how come he's just — paper?"
"According to history, he was sealed away by Mivelle. His own daughter. Let's just say that when we were at Sanctuary, Miss Vine went and took that scroll."
"Examine her for me. The green-haired girl there."
...
The scroll's light swelled, bright, for a long moment — and went out.
"Mivelle has made the contract and has already given her payment in full. But the green-haired girl — on whose behalf that man made the contract in Mivelle's name — has not yet given the payment Mivelle wants."
"And then what?" Aim asked. "What happens?"
"...Within ninety days, if she has not gone to ask, and given what Mivelle desires — I will crush that green-haired girl's heart until she dies."
Aim launched himself off the sofa and came down over the scroll on his hands and knees.
"You can't! Aren't you the lord of contracts? Is it really so hard to just cancel it for her?! And — and she's your daughter! Can't you go and tell her, at least, just once—!"
"..."
"I am sorry. If I wrong a contract — if I make it unjust — then I, too, will be killed by The World."
"Damn it!"
"And my daughter and I are not close. Because of the prophecy."
Veranthos fell silent for some time.
When the voice came again, the faint light left in the parchment seemed — just for a moment — to lean toward Flaure???.
"...In the presence of that ruler, I will explain no further."
Aim turned to Const.
"Please. Please, can you help me? Take us to Mivelle. Just this once — I swear it's the last time—!" He was crying. His voice shook all the way through.
"...I'm sorry." Const turned his eyes away.
"But Mivelle's power is—"
"—contract distortion," the lavender-haired woman cut in. "She twists intention. The hidden meaning beneath the words. She'll have that girl used, endlessly, with no end to it. Or, if the girl doesn't pay, she'll become one of the vessels Mivelle uses to be reborn — and die in agony, like a number of her contractors before her. Whenever Mivelle wishes it."
Veranthos said nothing at all.
The woman stood looking down at them, quiet, with eyes that held nothing warm. Const would not lift his gaze to meet Aim's. In Aim's lap, Isolde slept on, unknowing.
Aim's jaw was locked. The tears kept coming down his face, and he did not wipe them.
"Ninety last days," the woman said, breaking the silence. "I can give you a large sum — enough to live out those days happily, you and that girl, in the fine district near the Palace. On one condition: you don't go to Mivelle. Do we have a deal? Once she's dead, I'll send you money every month until the day you die. The condition is that you stop involving yourself in Orenthel's politics. Agreed?"
Aim ground his teeth. The tears were still running down his face.
"Is my friend worth nothing but money to you...?"
"Suit yourself. But I'll give it to you first all the same."
She scrawled out a cheque without care, and tossed it onto the floor beside him.
She opened her palm, and the scroll lifted and rolled itself shut and floated back to her.
She opened a great mirror in the air — and stepped through it, and out of the Mirror Dimension, and was gone.
"Mhm... mhmm..." Isolde stirred, and surfaced, and came awake.
"Heard voices just now. Something happen, Aim?"
Aim's face went numb.
The guilt of that day — of the contract he had made on his own, decided on his own, signed in her name without ever asking her — came down over him all at once.
His eyes had locked open and gone dry, fixed straight ahead of him. He could not bring himself to look down at the girl in his lap.
"What is it, Aim?"
"I'm sorry. Sol."
???
The body of Veranthos hung restrained in the dark.
"Tripped by the echo of your kind of deceit, you shall count every coin in your boundless well—"
"—yet die in the arms of the Sovereign, empty of the single drop that truly holds the depth."