Archive of Our Own ^beta

They are treading, all of them, on his grave.

It was a long climb up to this high perch, and Rebecca thought the words with every step she took, while the city that had been Marielda unfolded in all its chaos below. Smoke still rose from bonfires and pyres and simple arson here and there, in every district of the city. Marielda itself had been caught in a shuddering moment: a wall merged through the middle of a house as reconfiguration stuttered out half way, a market square that had begun to take on the properties of an orange grove but which would never fully become one, not without mortal sweat and mortal skill. Here is the instant: here we stopped being the city of Ingenuity Alive, and became, instead, a memorial.

Rebecca made it to the head of the stairs before Iris, labouring behind her—so it was Rebecca who saw, first, into the great hall of the tower—of the tomb—of the palace of Samot.

Who saw, first, Samot himself, and recognized him, for a dizzy moment, not as the new god-king of these lands, not as the long-standing enemy of the people, but as the original from which a mask was cast, which she had last seen resting upon the face of the traitor Prince Maelgwyn.

Iris groaned as he took the last step to stand beside her, and froze as she’d frozen.

“Come,” said Samot. He sat, relaxed, with one leg hooked across the other and his elbow propped on the arm of his throne, cheek rested to knuckles, as at ease as an animal. Behind him, a far greater figure rested in a far greater throne—Samothes, in sculpted effigy.

But Samot’s presence eclipsed that memorial all the same.

There was no other living thing in that huge chamber. Or—no—no thing of flesh, say rather, to add its own noise to the resonant echo of their footsteps.

Pala-din stood in long rows against each wall.

And a step behind Samot’s throne, in the shadow of Samothes’ memorial statue, stood the motionless marble body of Charter Castille.

The black scarring was stark across her pale features.

Rebecca flicked her eyes away from the sight, to Samot, Samot whose very presence demanded all one’s attention.

That made it easier.

“This is what remains of our late Lord’s Golden Lance, then,” Samot said. He made a sharp abortive gesture as Rebecca went to kneel, and she stilled herself; Iris, however, went resolutely to his knee. Samot regarded him with cool interest.

Rebecca tried to see them as he must see them. A young woman covered in scars and a tired old man. And the space where Claret fucking Holiday should be standing, if she’d just had the nerve to walk in their company through the city. Nothing much. Easy to crush and easy to bend to his will. She held her tongue.

“I can see you want to fight me,” Samot told her, turning his attention away from Iris. “But put aside that feeling for a moment. I’m not here to burn the churches and salt the earth. Do you believe your work is done? Or do you believe you must still serve the city, even if that means serving me?”

He smiled at her silence.

“And you, Marcus?”

Rebecca startled at that name—forgot it, often. Other Lance Nobles might have given names, but Iris was just Iris.

“I think there’s a lot to do,” Iris said. “And I think maybe I’ve seen a few too many things now for it to be on me to do it. But if you’re asking me if the Lance is done—”

Samot nodded.

“I think that’s your Lordship’s choice,” Iris said, quietly.

There was a breathless silence in the chamber, and in it the tap of Samot’s finger on the arm of his throne seemed loud.

One. Two. Three.

“I would see what you do, then,” he said. “In this city of mine. Go about your business as you will, and I will make my decision.”

One of Castille’s hands twitched, and had it not been for the stillness of the chamber Rebecca would certainly not have noticed it—the gesture was so quickly aborted.

Samot, although he couldn’t possibly have seen it, turned to look at her. There was a coldness in his eyes. Terror curled in Rebecca, although it wasn’t turned towards her. Castille seemed unmoved, but who could say—

“Observe them if you like,” was all Samot said, and then he had dismissed her once again from his attention.

Dismissed the two of them as easily, gesturing for Iris to rise. The rows of pala-din turned their faces as one towards the open door, the signal utterly clear. The audience was over; judgement would follow.

*

Rebecca was in the act of pinning a man to the cobbles of an ordinarily busy thoroughfare at the boundary between Orchid and Helianthus when Castille put in her first appearance.

It had been a dirty week. Not enough hands or eyes, too many pans to watch. Settle Orchid down and Helianthus boiled over. Turn to Helianthus and Chrysanthemum suffered. Brawls in the streets, fires in bars, and the pala-din’s heavy footsteps always rolling through the city like distant thunder. Worse was the mental difficulty of breaking jurisdiction. Helianthus would have it covered, right—?

But she was dead.

She was dead.

No Thackery to call on to sort shit out when it got really hot either. Just the dregs of them, three of them, most senior and most junior and weirdest.

So breaking up a mob had taken everything they had, and pinning down the leader had been a tiresome if not gruelling fight, and then just when she’d got her cane between his shoulder blades Charter fucking Castille came wandering in, took in the scene, and called her off in a sharp voice, as though she’d been given authority.

“Hey, fuck you,” Rebecca said, without thinking, and, just as reflexively, jumped a step back when Castille approached her, cane sparking.

The man scrambled up. Castille did—something—something unknowably strange, something violet and violent and shivering—

He dropped again.

“You’re meant to let us do our jobs,” Rebecca snapped. “I had—”

“No real jurisdiction at all,” Castille said. She didn’t sound like Castille. That annoyed Rebecca too. “I’ve got my own work to do here. Excuse me.”

She held Rebecca’s angry gaze with a level of infuriatingly cool indifference only attainable through being carved from stone, and when Rebecca didn’t lunge for her she turned, and picked up the man by the back of his collar with one marble hand, and walked away, apparently not particularly interested in the fact that his feet were dragging along the ground.

Rebecca strode after her.

“What is wrong with you? I knew you were the worst kind of criminal, but now you’re just being—ugh.”

“I’m not being a criminal, anyway,” Castille said. She didn’t look back and she didn’t stop walking. On the street, people cleared easily out of her way. “I can start again if it’d make you feel better.”

“That’s not what I,” Rebecca said. “Look, just let me—”

“I know about the Lance’s justice.” Castille turned down a side-street. The man was beginning to stir. “I need to ask him a few questions, and I’m not saying I couldn’t question a ghost, but it’s a lot of effort.”

Rebecca didn’t see that there was a door in the wall until Castille stopped and pushed it open with one foot, and finally looked back at her.

“Would you like an orange?” she asked, oh so sweetly, and once again it was all Rebecca could do not to punch her.

She’s made of marble and terrifying ghost-stuff, she reminded herself. You’ll wreck your hand. One replacement hand is pretty cool. Two is a bit tacky.

“I would love that,” she replied, and stepped inside.

She found herself in a sort of office. The room that Castille dumped her prisoner into seemed more like a supply closet than anything, crammed with shelves, although most of them were empty.

In the main room, a couch was pushed up against one wall, while a desk took up most of the available space, piled with books and papers. A small portable stove of the kind the tea-witches sometimes used when visiting clients also stood on the desk with a kettle balanced on it, which seemed like a bad combination, but Castille was welcome to burn her own place down if she wanted to. It probably wouldn’t really matter to her.

There were in fact oranges, because Castille was really, truly committed to being the weirdest person Rebecca had ever met, up to and including Claret.

“I’m going to make some tea,” Castille said. “You won’t want any. It’s—” she tilted her head, considering. “Probably not actually dangerous? But you know.”

“I do not,” Rebecca said stiffly, with emphasis on each word.

Castille smiled a little, and it was actually slightly more unnerving than her indifference had been.

“It’s a little bit disgusting, apparently,” she said. “If you care about that sort of thing.” Her eyes flicked to Rebecca’s paler hand, lingering pointedly, like she’d figured out the story somehow, all the bloody details of it.

“I’ll pass.”

The tea did in fact smell foul, like an old library left damp and closed up for fifty years, and also a bit like dead mice, which meant it was definitely the work of a tea-witch. No other reason for anything to smell that specific.

Castille drank it. Castille drank it—? She was a statue.

Yes, fine.

Tea-witches.

There was no grand transformation, in any case. But Castille seemed satisfied.

“Take a seat,” she said. “Might as well be comfortable, if you’re staying.”

There was a muffled thud from inside the closet.

“I think I will,” Rebecca said, and sat, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other.

“Good afternoon,” Castille said to the man as she opened the door to the closet, hauling him out. She sounded brighter. “Harvey, wasn’t it? I think you know Sige. I’ve seen you drinking together. We never had the pleasure. How is he?”

“Castille,” probably-Harvey said.

“Charter Castille,” Castille corrected. “Well?”

Harvey was silent. Castille hummed thoughtfully.

“Who burned the books, Harvey?” she asked. “It’s alright. You can tell me.”

“Well,” Harvey said, “it wasn’t me, anyway.”

It was absolutely him. The dart of his eyes and the way they went carefully blank the moment he realised he was doing it.

Rebecca felt a burst of nostalgic sympathy for him, and then remembered, irritated all over again, that she’d found him in the process of trying to get a crowd to attack a row of shops. Everyone was just so messy.

“Do you understand who’s in charge of this city?” Castille asked.

Her eyes were on Rebecca—

Harvey was silent again. He didn’t take advantage of her apparent distraction. Maybe he knew better.

“You can’t just destroy things you don’t like,” Castille said.

Rebecca thought of a dark knife, lengthening with each blow. The thought alone was like a severing stroke, her chest coming apart beneath it. No blood, but the expectation of it. Family after family taken apart. And for what? Just because Castille and her shitty friends thought they could decide what was worth knowing—

Well, it must be nice for her to have a new boss who agreed with her principles.

What did she do? What did any of them do, mages and thieves and murderers, deep in the burning heart of Samothes’ forge, in those moments before the final devastating crime? Only the Six had come out of it in any condition to say.

And who’d trust their words anyway?

“Lance Noble Orchid would very much like to kill you,” Castille added, and she was using that shitty sweet voice again—the one that made it easy to remember that she’d been a stuck-up mage before she’d been a criminal statue. “I’d like to have a nice talk with you about who all your friends are and why they think making more of a mess of the city is a good idea.”

You wanted me to follow you to be the worse cop, Rebecca realized. You piece of work.

Worse: it was working.

Worse: if it made the city less volatile, it’d be Castille’s win.

If it made the city less volatile it’d be everyone’s win—try to believe that, Rebecca—

She sat back with narrowed eyes and watched, tapped the base of her cane on the tiled floor. One two three, one two three. A waltz above lava, as Harvey started, reluctantly, to talk.

Quiet.

Castille put the burner away, and the packet of mouldy-library-and-dead-mouse tea beside it. She cleaned her cup and placed it neatly mouth-down on a shelf. She didn’t touch the mess of papers and books, seeming barely even to see it, but swept the floor thoroughly, emptying the pan out onto the street.

Rebecca watched all this with a low resentment still humming in her.

“Would it kill you to stay out of literally a single thing I do?” she asked finally. “Is this some kind of, of—weird way to keep—”

Castille blinked at her. Every shift of her expression was baffling. It was true that all the pala-din were made of a flexible marble, but Castille’s personhood had always just made the effect really, blatantly weird. Not much in the way of facial expressions on any of the standard models.

It was suddenly hard to imagine the world where Castille had hit on her ever existing. It was another place altogether, and they had been other people.

“Do you know what happened to Maelgwyn?” Castille asked.

Rebecca’s turn to blink. “Why would I—”

“Everyone he loved betrayed him or failed him.” Castille straightened from picking up a stray scrap of paper and placed it absently back on top of a pile, apparently chosen at random. “I’m not very interested in personal connections right now. Sorry if that disappoints you.”

“That’s not—I wasn’t—look, I mean it. Just once. Just one time, let me have something without breaking it.”

Castille studied her for a frozen moment.

“The test isn’t who stops most crimes,” she said, and there was a real softness in her voice, just briefly. “Is that really what you think Samot wants?”

Not Lord Samot or Our Lord or any other kind of title, any other kind of sign of respect.

Rebecca thought of the throne room, of the look that had passed between Samot and Castille. That profound coldness. A kind of hate, maybe.

The politics of this place were going to kill her.

*

Iris had found a replacement by the turn of the month—a girl from the Black Slacks, all bad attitude and bright colours, her dark hair cut strictly to a sharp line above her shoulders and her expression skeptical. Pulled her in for brunch. Pancakes covered in syrup. Sugar in his coffee. The girl ate scrambled eggs slowly, studying Rebecca.

Rebecca thought about other times. A group around a table.

About oranges, for some reason.

Fuck that.

“Bridge’s a good kid,” Iris said, which Rebecca very much doubted. “She’ll bounce back fine if you’re disbanded next week. I’ve known her since she was about this tall.” He stooped to indicate somewhere in the region of his knees—winced as he straightened.

“Okay,” Rebecca said. “You really think Claret’s going to step up and lead the show?”

“Nah,” Iris said. “I think you will. I can give you some tips for other people to drag in, if you figure it’s worth it. I put you at fifty-fifty for lasting the year.”

Bridge watched the two of them with a bored expression on her face, and when Rebecca looked sharply across at her she raised one eyebrow and shrugged.

“Hey, Iris,” Rebecca said thoughtfully, dismissing her, “has Castille been on your ass too, or am I special?”

Iris glanced quickly up at her, back down at his food. “What, she’s still running around the city? I thought she stayed up top. What’s she doing?”

Giving me food, taunting me, looking at me like she wants to kill me—giving me advice, for some fucked up reason—

“Getting in the way,” she said. “She’s all over. Asking questions. Taking people in and letting them run loose again. I don’t get it.”

Iris shook his head. “I wouldn’t get in her way, I tell you that.”

“That’s why you’re retiring and I’m not,” Rebecca snapped, and felt instant regret as Iris’s expression wavered. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Her lot have killed enough people I like,” Iris said. “She’s official now or something, but I wouldn’t forget it.”

“Castille?” Bridge asked, in the first display of active curiosity Rebecca had seen from her so far.

“Marble statue lady,” Iris said.

Bridge considered this. “Floppy hat? She always thought it meant we couldn’t see—”

She snapped her mouth shut hastily.

“That’s the one,” Iris said. “No hat these days, though.”

He scrubbed at his face. “Seriously, Rebecca, watch yourself.”

“Sure,” Rebecca said. “Yeah. Of course.”

Iris shook his head again, even more tired than before. He wiped his mouth neatly. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He considered. Sighed. “Hey, I’ll make sure Bridge is all up to speed for you. Couple more months.”

So many sharp things she could say back. I don’t need your advice, old man—why don’t you just—think I can handle—

Dead bodies in a train. A sword. Castille’s cool gaze.

A wall of fire. The wild ghost energy pulling at everything around her. The buzzing white pain of severance.

She nodded. “Thanks.”

*

No parish boundaries, Samot had decreed, and so where Rebecca had patrolled out of guilty necessity she now made a point of it. Circuits of the whole city, along dead train tracks left abandoned as reconfiguration stuttered to a stop and past the towering walls of factories, through great green parks and between manor houses. Hard not to think of herself as Orchid, but if Samot didn’t want lines drawn—whatever. She could play that game.

And if Iris thought she was going to become Lance Sovereign Marielda if the Lance survived at all then, shit, she might as well figure the rest of the city out now.

So, she thought, walking through Iris itself. Castille used to live here. I knew that. Why does it feel different now? Bridge’s amusement, like Castille was just some sort of local curiosity. When she wasn’t up to criminal stuff she just—walked around here, like people. That stupid floppy hat. Heavy clothing, like that wasn’t weird in itself in Marielda’s sweltering heat.

The tap, tap, tap of her cane echoed differently in each part of the city. Nostalgic, really—it would be so easy to fall into older patrol patterns, fall into Fontman habits. There was a bookseller on this street who used to strip the covers off of romantic novels and attach them with loving care to bundles of seditious materials. She knew where the Six’s old haunt was in Chrysanthemum, and found herself walking past it—the building was to let, the windows boarded—the sign for the dance school that had been its public face still hung there, not with peeling paint or covered in grime but still fresh and clean.

This is how quickly the world can change.

It wasn’t Castille she ran into first that day, although, on edge at the proximity to the abandoned safehouse, she rather expected it.

Instead, it was Sige Coleburn.

He was crouched at the corner of a nearby intersection in the failing light, elbows on knees, deep in conversation with a cobbin she didn’t recognise, nearly hairless in his youth, his snout an odd fade from pink to green, and whatever the conversation they were in the middle of was about, the cobbin looked glad to be having it. Nobody else around them now, nothing much on these roads to draw foot traffic after hours.

Coin changed hands, Sige to the cobbin, a little clinking pouch accompanied by a loaf of bread.

“Oh, come on,” Rebecca said. A couple of sharp raps of her cane on the paving stones, large and smooth in this district. The cobbin looked up in obvious alarm—Sige, though, turned slowly and stood slower. His eyebrows rose faster than he did.

“Hey,” Sige said. “Come to hear me talk shit about you and yours some more? I’m not really in the mood.”

He took a step pointedly in front of the little cobbin, who did his best to completely obscure himself from view behind Sige’s bulk. It mostly worked. The tail was still sticking out, a little fuchsia curl with a tiny tuft at its tip.

“Well, I’m not in the mood to deal with whatever it is you’re doing,” Rebecca shot back.

“Sure. Keep walking, then.”

He took in her face and sighed, rubbing at his jaw.

“Look,” he said. “It’s not whatever you think it is. Just a guy helping a buddy out. Not everything’s brawling and stealing.”

She kept looking.

“Most things are brawling,” he admitted—oddly enough, a little sheepishly.

“And stealing,” she prompted.

“Depends. Not this.”

“So your cobbin friend can go,” Rebecca said, leaning to one side to not at the kid, who scurried for it. “Not you. You’re trouble. I’ve got enough trouble right—”

“I’ll vouch for him,” Castille’s cool voice said, from behind her.

Sige—froze.

“Look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Castille said, and there was a smile in her voice, but not a terribly kind one.

“Think I’d rather,” he said. Winced. “Hey, uh—how’s Aubrey?”

A long silence.

“Busy,” Castille said.

“You really have changed, huh,” Sige said, quietly.

“Excuse me,” Rebecca said. “I’m still here.”

“He gives money to orphans,” Castille said. “It’s very sweet of him. I don’t know if he steals it. Honestly, I don’t really care.”

There was something very hurt on Sige's face. That was what really threw Rebecca, probably—big brash Sige who told her he wasn't sorry for his crimes, that he'd do it again—

"You two work together now?" he asked.

"No," Rebecca said, at the same time as Castille said, "Yes."

Castille stepped past her, up to Sige. His bulk made her look less massive herself. Her marble hair lay in startlingly naturalistic waves, an imitation of a roll of hair pinned loosely in place. Care in design. The illusion was spoiled where a crack spread across it, but otherwise she looked, if anything, better without that stupid hat—

Never mind.

“Don’t worry about it,” Castille said. Her marble hand rested on Sige’s dark cheek. He looked uncomfortable. How did it feel to be touched by Castille? Weird, right? She’d always figured it would be weird. But they’d been—friends, or something—colleagues—familiar.

“If you guys aren’t on the same page—I’m just saying—things can get real—you know.”

“I don’t trust her,” Castille said. “So it’s fine.”

“Yeah, but you, like—”

“Do not,” Castille said. “Do not, Sige Coleburn.”

“Uh,” Rebecca said.

Such a weird flash of—of something familiar. A familiar Castille—just in those two words, close to a laughing exasperation. It didn’t quite connect. Slipped away.

“You watch out for her too,” Sige said to Rebecca, looking past Castille.

“Everyone wants to tell me that,” Rebecca said. “I can make my own decisions. Thanks. I don’t need advice from—from petty criminals.”

“Okay,” Sige said, and he was subdued now. “Okay. Sure. Gonna try to arrest me for giving candy to children or what?”

Castille gave Rebecca a long flat look, still not turning fully away from Sige.

“No,” Rebecca said. “Fine. No. I’ve got bigger problems. Get out of here. And you—”

She made a noise of frustration towards Castille, sharp in the throat, flattened between the teeth.

Castille stayed statue-still as Sige walked away, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, shoulders straight.

“We’re working together?” Rebecca snapped, once he was gone. “I should—ugh! I could punch you sometimes. Usually. I could usually do with punching you.”

“Maybe it’d be good for you,” Castille said. “You’re very tense.”

A lot of people had said a lot of things about Rebecca’s temper over the years. A problem child, a delinquent teen. A hot-head, always pushing things to their limit. Rebecca tended to take offence at that. She could be perfectly reasonable, liked to be reasonable, it was only that some people—some goddamn people—

She swung, not with her fist but with the heavy blunt head of her cane, sending it swinging at speed into the side of Castille’s shoulder, and Castille—

Well, she staggered, and for a moment it was the most gratifying thing Rebecca had ever seen, and then she had a hand curled tightly around the shaft of the cane, catching herself, and from her hand a strange light began to waver its way along the wood—

“Oh,” Castille said—

Snatched her hand away.

Rebecca’s breath hissed angrily between her teeth. Her next swing was with her fist, and she knew it was a stupid idea before her knuckles even connected with stone, but her weight was already behind it—

Castille’s hand around her wrist was harsh, the fingers closing so tight that Rebecca felt like her bones were creaking with the strain, right at the place where old arm met new hand.

She went down in a heap as Castille tossed her aside, hissing as her shoulder hit the ground, rolling her weight quickly to follow through, over, back up onto her feet—

Her shoulder was going to kill her anyway as soon as the rush wore off, and in the moment there it felt like there was some sort of shitty logic to just charging Castille so that this was the side of her that connected, making her cry out at the impact but sending Castille reeling—she was going to fuck up any part of her she rammed into Castille hard enough to hurt, so hey—

Hot-headed, Thackery used to say, amused. Indulgent. He’d liked her. As though she were a favoured niece, though he wasn’t much older than her.

Fuck, fuck fuck—

She swept her cane between Castille’s legs at the knee.

Yanked it sideways.

Castille fell—

Laughing. She fell laughing. Threw her head back against the stones of the street with a grinding thud as Rebecca pushed her advantage, knee to chest, tip of her cane to the hollow of Castille’s throat.

Castille didn’t seem to be able to stop the noise she was making, now she’d started, and the shift of it was strange, uneasy, wavering—

How did a statue cry?

All the satisfaction drained from Rebecca at once.

“Why do you have to make every single thing so weird?” she asked, and where she aimed for sharpness her voice came out strange and tired.

She let her weight fall to the side, sat beside Castille with her knees pulled up to her chest while Castille slowly pulled herself back from the worst edge of—of whatever it was.

“Things are just weird,” Castille said, finally. It had grown dark around them. A couple of people had walked past—walked across the intersection, thought to go up this road—seen its occupants and retreated. Who wouldn’t? They looked a mess. “It’s not me. Try them.” The volcano. The tower that was a tomb.

“You work for—”

“And you want to,” Castille said. She covered her eyes with her hand as though wiping away tears—lifted it quickly away as though she’d remembered. Stared up at it.

“Not really,” Rebecca said. “He got that right. But I want—”

“The authority to bully people over brunch?”

“Oh, screw you.”

She drew a deep breath, sighed it out.

“Don’t worry about it,” Castille said, and what a strange dissonance it had—to have the same words in the same tone used on one as Castille had recently used on Sige.

There’s something wrong with her, Rebecca thought. Or just something—off. She’d thought it every time she’d seen Castille, but what the fuck did she know about Castille, really?

It was just—

Sige thought there was something off about her too.

You can’t be a mess, Rebecca thought. Angry. Okay. That felt a little better. You can’t be a mess. I want to enjoy hating you. I want that spark. I want to punch you and I want you to punch me back and I don’t want to have to sit next to you in the dark while you cry—I want a broken jaw. I want a gash across your stupid marble chest that I left there, a big obsidian scar you can’t ignore.

I want—

I want to know what happened to the woman who offered me an orange and meant something nice about it, for some stupid reason. Who was an ass but who mostly wasn’t an ass. She’d thought, once, that maybe—maybe if Castille had just decided to be a blacksmith like she was meant to be—maybe if they’d had some real serious talks about—well—about all kinds of things—

Maybe one day—even if she was a weird statue lady—

But it’d only been an idle thought. And it’d been before she’d really seen the things Castille could do. The big things, sweeping in their disastrous scope.

“You said it wasn’t a competition,” Rebecca said. She leaned her forehead against her knees. Breathed deeply. One breath. Two. Straightened her back. “Who solves most crimes. What the hell is it, then?”

“Figuring out if you can accept that the rules have changed.”

“Great. Pretty cryptic for a god of learning.”

“Sometimes you have to learn your own lessons,” Castille said. “At an advanced level it may be a teacher’s primary duty to provide the opportunity and the materials, and to discuss the results.”

Parroted words.

Samot’s?

Fuck, probably Samot’s.

“What lesson are you meant to be learning, then?”

Castille was silent.

“Well?”

“I’ve learnt mine,” she said quietly. “He was very clear. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Rebecca looked up at the sky. At the newly-born stars, glinting faintly even through the glow of the city.

“We’re not working together,” she said.

Castille was silent.

There was a strange beauty to her in this light. In the deep shadows and sharp highlights of her face. A strangeness that wasn’t bizarre behaviour so much as an unworldly quality in that place between pala-din and mortal being. She had stripped herself back to the essential but in most ways, but she still clothed herself when none of the other pala-din did. Still laughed and let it fade into hysterics and then into sobs and fuck if Rebecca knew what to do with a single part of that.

“We’re not,” Rebecca repeated, but her true response was evident to her in the weakening of her tone. “Oh, damn. Shit. Fuck it. Don’t look at me like that.”

She got to her feet, wincing at her various spreading aches. Castille followed.

“We’re going to go and get a drink now,” she said. Paused. Considered. “Damn.I’m going to get a drink now. You can—watch? No, never mind—”

Castille’s eyes fixed on her throat as she swallowed.

“I’m still not interested,” Castille said. “I mean, if you want to—I don’t mind if you want to let off some steam.”

Rebecca closed her eyes and counted to ten.

“We’re not doing this,” she said, and knew, already then, that they very much were—was unsure, only, what this was going to be.