22. Hull - Breakdowns (Patreon)

Chapter 22

Breakdowns

I was halfway through the forest on my way to the Lows, picking my path carefully on a moonless night, when suddenly my mother appeared at my side. “No torch? You didn’t end up with our kind’s darksight, did you?”

I had two source overhead, cards in hand, and was already scrambling for cover before my mind caught up with who I was seeing and what she was saying. Clawing my way free of my battle focus and getting my heart out of my throat and back in my chest where it belonged left me panting and embarrassed. “What’s wrong with you? We’re in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Give a fellow a little warning!”

She shrugged, nonchalant. “No darksight, then.”

“No, I don’t have darksight,” I snapped. Then, frowning: “You do?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Not in this form, no. Wearing a human feels like having thick gloves on, and not in a good way.”

I squinted at her. My Nether source gave off a faint illumination, so I left it circling – we were far enough from the War Camp that no sentry would see it. I could just make out her features next to me. She looked like she had when I’d first seen her: not like the mother I remembered at all, but instead a fair-haired young woman only a few years older than me. With a pang I realized she’d shape-shifted into the face I barely remembered, which meant that was yet another disguise – yet another stolen card. I’d never actually seen my own mother’s face.

She didn’t need to know that bothered me, so I set off for the city once again with a forced casualness, and she fell in beside me. “It’s been weeks. Where have you been?”

“Ah ah,” she said, wagging a finger. “The less anyone knows, the better, at least until the negotiations are finalized. It’s not that I don’t trust you, of course, but the secrecy is vital. You haven’t told anyone about me, have you?”

“No,” I said. I’d thought about telling Basil a dozen times, but somehow it felt good to have this little nugget of something that was just mine.

“Good,” she replied. “I’d hate to have to kill any of your friends, but I’ve been told to kill anyone who so much as smells me, both by my own leaders and by your father. Not that I care so much for what he says, but in this case it makes sense. Had I not recognized you that first time…” 

I suppressed a shiver. She’d come with a hair of killing me before she even caught sight of my face. I was suddenly glad I’d kept my mouth shut to Basil and Esmi. “What’s darksight like?” Time to talk about something else.

“It’s like all the shadows give off their own light,” she said. “You hardly notice it until it’s gone. I’d hoped you’d get the trait, but I suppose it’s for the best you’re so human on the outside. Makes sense that the weight of your father’s Legendary soul would weigh more heavily in your development.”

I licked my lips and strained even harder for a casual air, not even looking in her direction. “You must have known I didn’t have darksight – you wore my appearance a time or two before you gave it up, didn’t you?”

She sighed. “I couldn’t ever bring myself to use your card that way, Hull. I’d thought having it would bring me comfort, but the reminder of what I’d lost hurt too badly. I never looked through your eyes.” She clicked her tongue. “Besides, being in a child’s body is frustrating. They’re all so short.”

I tried a different tack. “It must have been a good card. Was I Rare?”

Her hand landed on my shoulder and massaged me gently. “It’s gone, son. Dwelling on it can only harm you. Let it go.”

I shrugged and painted on a smile. “Oh, it’s nothing like that. I wanted to tell you as soon as it happened, but I haven’t seen you. I have a new card!”

She stopped us dead in our tracks, holding my chin in one hand and summoning her own Nether for a little extra light as she peered in my eyes. “Incredible. A second soul card? It’s unheard of.”

I reveled in the way her eyes were drinking me in, feeling proud and excited and a little sick to my stomach all at once. “That’s what they told me, but here I am,” I said, trying to sound gruff and uncaring.

She pulled my face closer. “Let me see it,” she said, sounding hungry. 

Alarm bells rang in every piece of my body, and I pulled away, smiling as I did so to soften the blow. “I’ve never showed anyone before,” I said, starting back on the path toward the city. “I don’t know how.”

“I can show you,” she said, following after me. “It’s as simple as falling into water.”

I scrambled for something to say. “Basil mentioned that he’d shared his with Esmi, the girl he’s going to marry. I think he said something about needing good light for it. It’s so dark out here.” Basil had never said anything of the sort, but it was all I could think of.

“Hull, I’m your mother,” she said, a hint of hurt in her voice. “You can show me.”

“Sure,” I said, heart beating like a hammer. “Next time, maybe. We need more light.”

She was quiet for a long time, and as the silence stretched on and grew cold I thought about relenting and showing her the card at least half a dozen times. Each time, though, the cold, practical part of me said, Are you sure she won’t steal this one too? I had no good answer for that, so I squirmed and sweated and kept my mouth shut.

Finally I couldn’t take it any longer. “I know you can’t tell me about your secret meetings, but you can at least tell me this: is Hestorus as much of an insane asshole as I think he is?”

She gave a throaty chuckle that eased the ice in my chest. “Asshole, yes. Insane? I’ve never been able to tell. The whole silly king act is just that, of course, but I’m sure you’ve seen past that by now. Truth be told, I’ve never met anyone so driven or so far-looking. That can look like insanity sometimes to those who lack vision.” She shook her head and made a frustrated noise. “I include myself among those who lack vision, because I can’t figure out what he’s up to nine times out of ten. Even in the beginning that’s how it was. For all he knew, I was a noblewoman from Dalrish, old-blooded and rich as could be, and I thought he’d make me his queen once he knew I carried his child. Instead, well…” She gestured back and forth between us wryly. “It would have been a very different childhood. Less than a fortnight after he turned me out they sent out the banns for him and Daenona, and this despite the fact that he’d told me she was as dull as rusted spoon.”

I was silently soaking up and cataloging every shred of information she was letting slip, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could test what she said against what I already knew. If I caught her in a lie I could feel more justified in not showing her my card. “It can’t be easy spending months negotiating with a man who threw you out.”

She chuckled and gave me a sidelong glance. “I don’t blame you for not knowing, but demons don’t hold grudges. Where a human might stew on an injustice or a slight, we just kill our enemies. It’s much simpler.”

Steering a conversation was hard work. I wanted to ask her how long she’d been meeting with the King, but I couldn’t just come out and say so. Hestorus had asked me how my mother was during the Tournament, meaning he hadn’t seen her at that point and didn’t know where she was. If she said her negotiations had been going on longer than that, I’d have caught her out. Unless Hestorus was lying about not having seen her. Did he have any reason to do that? I had no idea, and my head hurt from trying to think through all the possible twists and lies that might be in play. All I could do was press on and keep trying. “But still, you can’t kill a Legendary, and like you said, he’s an asshole. How many months have you had to put up with him?”

She idly broke a low-hanging twig and whipped at the grass with it as we came out from under the trees and saw the dark bulk of the city ahead. “It hardly bears thinking about. Every interaction is a trial.” 

Twins damn me, say something specific, woman! “Did you at least get to see some of the Rising Stars Tournament when you first got here?”

She took my hand and patted it, making me tense up. “Oh, how I wish I could have. I was nowhere near Treledyne at the time, nor did I have any idea you still lived. I will say, though, that your father spoke very proudly of how well you did.”

My heart warmed at the praise, and I tried to shake the feeling off. A pat on the head from her was suspect at best; from Hestorus it was intolerable. At least I could take comfort that what she was saying lined up with something I already knew. Catching her telling a single truth wasn’t enough to build any trust on… but it was something.

“Can I see you in demon form?” I asked.

She cocked her head at me. “You want to see mama as she truly is, eh?”

I shrugged, feeling embarrassed for some reason I couldn’t quite name. “It’d be nice.”

Her smile had a hard edge. “I told you it’s not pleasant to change. Some other time, maybe. When there’s better light.”

I couldn’t miss the mocking twist on those last words, and I scrambled to move on to something else. “So you can only transform into someone whose card you still have, right?”

“That’s right.” She decapitated the tall grasses along the road with her switch.

“So who is this I’m seeing?” I said, gesturing to her pale, freckled face.

“Someone in the right place to be useful,” she said, sounding sad. “Someone who had access to the right places and right people. In a just world I wouldn’t have had to take her card, but when the fate of entire peoples and realms are on the line, we do what we must.”

It was strange to think that my parents – mine, Hull the street rat – were steering the lives of both human- and demonkind from the shadows. I’d barely begun to adjust to being in the same room with noble folk in their day-to-day dealings, and this kind of espionage was leagues beyond. “So what other faces do you carry beyond this one and the one I knew?”

“Only a couple,” she said. “The most effective ones. I have to turn most of them over to the Primarch, of course, and if I keep too many then it cuts into my deck size, and a girl never knows when she’s going to need to fight.”

I ached to ask again about my own card, but I didn’t dare. She’d already told me it was gone; what was the point? She was right. I needed to let it go. Instead, I started telling her about the two-on-two fights Edaine had us practicing in War Camp. Basil and I made a hell of a team, and we’d beaten the pair of paladins we went up against like they were redheaded stepchildren. She was a perfect audience, laughing as I told how my Marauders had rushed Paytr, scaring him so badly he’d tried to run away from the fight, and murmuring in appreciation when I talked about how effective Basil’s protective Spells were when paired with my in-the-face bruiser style combat. The time flew by, and we were on the edge of the Lows before I knew it.

She pulled up short before we crossed into the neighborhood. “No point in being seen by anyone around here,” she said. “Not that anyone would recognize this face, but still, better safe than sorry when you’re on an errand like mine.”

“What was your errand tonight?” I said. “You just showed up out of nowhere. I thought I’d never see you again after that once.”

She put a hand to my face. “My errand tonight is you, Hull. I wish I could spend more time with you, but I savor every moment. I don’t know when I’ll be able to sneak another conversation like this, but I’m always close. You’ll see me again; count on it.”

“Yeah, all right. Whatever.” I looked away and nodded cooly. No need for her to see my guts were in a knot.

When I looked back, she was gone. I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding, and I couldn’t tell if what I felt was disappointment or relief. I could almost wish she’d never found me.

Roshum’s shop was open as usual, and he greeted me warmly when I came in. “There he is! You’re late. I’ve been waiting all day for you to see this.”

My heart quickened. “You got it?”

He laughed and slapped a wooden box the size of a brick on his work bench. “I got it.”

We’d been working for weeks to gather the materials for a proper card breakdown, and while Roshum wasn’t keen to let me use his shop to process my Chaos cards, he’d agreed to help me get the right mix and show me how to start the process so long as I stored the developing bath somewhere else. Not only that, he’d ended up having to play go-between for me, and now it looked like the old man had come through in spades. 

The problem was that only person we’d been able to find that was shady enough to sell me the expensive, highly-regulated alchemical salts needed without reporting it who was also well-connected enough to access to the goods was my good old friend the tailor, the one whose shop I’d burnt down and whose Epic I’d stolen. He wasn’t a tailor now – he never had been, in truth; the shop had been nothing but a front – but he’d set up a new concern in on Warehouse Row on the edge of Dockside and was now going by the name of Marksam Bellwether. His little office was ostensibly for shipping insurance, but in reality it was the new location for his black market card shop. Roshum had heard mutters from some of the other Relicsmiths he knew that this Marksam fellow ran a trade in card materials as well. I couldn’t very well skip on in and ask for the goods without a hell of a fight – I had no doubt he remembered my face, and not with any fondness – so I’d sent Roshum with the Fire Epic I’d taken from Priyam to manage a trade. This was the first visit I’d managed to the Lows since then.

“Let me see,” I said, coming in close. Bryll was sitting on the workbench top playing idly with a set of calipers, and she leaned in to see, her gold-flecked eyes curious. Her amber-brown eyes had made the flecks hard to see when we’d first met, not to mention the fact that I only ever saw her in dimly-lit spaces after midnight, but now that I knew her power, the gold was easy to spot.

Roshum carefully lifted the top off the little wooden box, revealing a set of glass vials in regularly-spaced slots, each one full of differently-colored salt crystals. The vials were not large.

“That’s it?” I said, indignant. “I paid an Epic for a couple handfuls of salt? Throw the whole thing in a pot and you’d barely taste the difference.”

Roshum snorted. “These aren’t table salts. With most of these, a single grain on your tongue would be enough to kill you, or at least make you wish it had. We’ll only be handling these with gloves, and we’ll be wearing masks and gloves when we do. Alchemy is nasty stuff.”

Bryll leaned back, thinking better of her curiosity, and went back to doing her level best to break Roshum’s calipers. 

“More to the point,” Roshum said, gently pulling a vial full of bright orange crystals out of the case, “you have enough here to process two dozen Mythics so long as you measure carefully. And we will be measuring carefully. Some of us don’t come across Epics every day.”

“You can keep a portion if you need,” I said, very carefully easing out a vial full of midnight black and inspecting it up close. Each crystal had a strange shimmer, almost as if there was a pinpoint star hiding deep inside. “You helped me get it, and you’re teaching me, letting me use your shop. It’d be only fair.”

The old codger gave me a funny look. “I’m trying to imagine Ticosi in your shoes saying anything remotely similar, and I’m failing entirely.” 

“Good,” I grunted. “He’s half the problem around here even now he’s dead.”

“The King’s inspectors would ask questions I wouldn’t want to answer if they found expensive goods like this suddenly hanging about,” he sighed, stroking the top of the box. “But I do have a special project or two that I’ve been dreaming about for ages. If the opportunity comes along to jump on something like that, I may ask you to bring the box back for an evening, if you’d be so kind.”

Kind wasn’t something I was used to being, but with all the help and support Roshum had given me, I’d have cut off a finger if he needed it. Well… a pinky. The end joint. “Let me know and I’ll do it. How’s the Salamander working out?”

He cackled with delight and pointed to the blackened forge sitting against the far wall, currently sitting empty. “Cuts down my heat times by three quarters. Makes me wish I’d thought to trade for such a thing years ago.”

“Good.” I felt a smile growing on my face, and for once it seemed to fit there. “Okay, boss. Tell me where to start.”

He was letting me use his lead-lined soak tray with the tight-fitting lid so it’d be safe to transport, and that was the first thing he had me fetch. Bryll was tasked with fetching a pitcher of pure water from the clay-and-charcoal filtration rig he kept in the back room. The tray was small, its inner cavity only a finger’s width larger than a card on all sides, perhaps two knuckles deep. The lead made the little thing heavy, but if the alchemical salts were as dangerous as he’d suggested, I was glad of the extra protection. 

Roshum used long tongs to pull a brick from the ashes of the forge; he laid it on a metal plate in the center of the workbench. “We need a little heat, but not anything near what the Salamander would give us,” he explained. He snapped his fingers at me. “What’s the best working temperature?”

I blinked. He liked to rattle me with questions that he’d taught me before, and they always caught me off-guard no matter how often he did it. “Uh. Wait, I remember this. ‘Cooler than tea but hotter than soup.’ Right?”

“That wasn’t the part that I wanted you to remember,” he grumbled, setting a metal dish on the brick and splashing the water Bryll brought into it.

“Maybe don’t tell me things that are so memorably stupid, then,” I retorted. “Soup can be hotter than tea.”

Scowling, he held up the finger next to his pinky. “Use the softest finger. Hot enough to be uncomfortable, not hot enough to scald.”

I used the same finger and dipped it in the water he’d poured into the dish. The hot brick was making the metal dish ping and creak softly, but the water was only lukewarm. “Not yet, then.”

“We’ll measure our materials while we wait,” he said, a gleam of excitement in his eye. “Get the tweezers.”

Each vial was labeled with a slip of paper around its middle, the penmanship was neat, the lettering was tiny, and the names were massively long and hard to read. Phystulinum regindica, the purple one said, and Gorbeghast Ximpicalis for the dark blue. A waxed cork stoppered the tops, and Roshum was working the cork free from the bone-colored salts with heavily gloved hands. “What’s that one?”

“Gloves!” the old man snapped. “Do it right or don’t do it at all, you know that by now. This is Arindinus Maleficum. It’ll leave blood blisters for a month if it so much as touches your skin, and you’ll be pissing black.”

“No thanks,” I said, slipping on a pair of forge gloves. They made the tiny tweezers hard to wield, but I wasn’t about to go without after hearing that. “How much?”

“Two grains,” he whispered, holding out the vial with both hands. “Not into the pot yet. Lay them on the paper tray.”

Bryll was already folding the stiff rice paper Roshum used for so many things into a tray shape, all four edges turned up to keep the salts from rolling away. She stood well back when I dropped first one grain of the whitish salt and then a second onto the paper.

“Always two grains of Arindus, no matter what you’re working on.” Roshum corked the vial and wiped nervous sweat from his forehead. “It’s a Chaos card you’ll be breaking down, I assume?”

“That’s right,” I said. 

“Then to strip the source identity we need Luscum Quaringes, Varicellin Geo, and Blescha Orchadin,” he muttered, pulling out the vial of pale blue. “Rarity?”

“Epic,” I said. 

He paused, raising an eyebrow. “Might be wiser to start with something less expensive.”

“You know what you’re doing, don’t you?” I said.

He huffed at me. “Course.”

“Then that’s the one. I have lots of upgrades in mind, and the sooner I can get to them, the better.”

He nodded, his eyes licking up to the ceiling as he made mental calculations. “With Luscum it’s one grain for Common and two for each elevation beyond that. Seven grains.”

“How many shards will I get?” I asked as we painstakingly moved the tiny specks of death salt onto the paper tray.

“Fate lets Fortune play his games,” Roshum replied. He sounded like he wished he could sigh, but gusts of air were a bad idea at the moment. “The average is three. Never less than two. I’ve heard of as many as six, but they tend to be of lower quality the higher the yield. Six midgrade Epic shards will sell for more than three high-quality ones, yes, but if you’re going for upgrades, high-quality shards are what you want. So long as you measure carefully, invoke the Twins regularly, and time the soak right, you’ll get three good shards four times out of five.”

“Lots of numbers,” I said.

“Get used to it,” he said tersely, fetching a vial of green. “If you have as many cards as I think you do, you’ll be doing a lot of calculations in the days to come, and getting them wrong means wasting a good card at the very least.”

“At least?” I said. “Sounds pretty bad to me.”

He gave me a testy look. “If I put a single grain of Varicellin into just-right water with two of Phystulinum, I can change Order to Air. Two grains of Varicellin with one of Phystulinum will turn the card into a sludge that will eat right through the lead.”

“Oh.” This was a fiddlier process than I had imagined.

“And if I put either combination into boiling water, they’d be picking our teeth out of the wall plaster three streets over,” he continued, jerking his chin at the dish of warming water.

I hastily stripped off my gloves, dipped my fourth finger into the water, and immediately took the dish off the brick. “Just right,” I said with a weak grin. “Maybe I’ll have you walk me through this process for the first few times.”

“The first dozen times, more like,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want you to die just yet. Folks are starting to ask about meeting you. That huge demon of yours disappears all day and then tramps around the streets all night scaring the pants off everybody.”

“I’d hoped he and Harker would be done by now,” I said as we measured out three grains of the green salt. “The point is to make people safe, not to scare them.”

“Both work in your favor at this stage, if you ask me,” Roshum said. “I’ve spread it around that you’re cleaning out the old guard, and more are happy about it than not.”

The different kinds of alchemical salts we’d separated went from the paper tray into the water once the old man had double-checked the temperature, and after exactly twelve widdershins stirs with a metal spoon, the dish went back onto the brick for more heating. Once the water – now a pale lavender – began to bubble up from the bottom, two other salts went in, the black and dark blue ones. Then the mixture had to cool while being continuously stirred, at which point one more grain of the bone white kind went in.

“Now it goes into the soak tray. Half full, no more.”

My hands were sweaty. “Maybe you should do it.”

“No,” he said sharply. “The Twins know how much effort we give, and who gives it. Better if it’s you.”

I picked up the dish, imagining myself spilling it all over, but I managed to fill the little lead-lined container half full without a single drop over the side.

“Now, quickly,” Roshum said, gesturing to both me and Bryll, who was lounging in the corner. “Hold hands.”

“What’s this?”

“The most important part,” he said. “The prayer. I’ll do it now, and you need to repeat it every night right at this time, no matter whether you’re next to the card bath or halfway across the world. I’ll write it down for you before you go.”

We all linked hands, and Roshum closed his eyes, looking heavenward. “Twin of mercy, Twin of grace; thou whom we call Fortune, thou whom we call Fate: Take now the gift ye have given, enriched with our care, and elevate it further to heights utmost rare. We use these gifts and they make us more bold; return us one greater that all power we may hold. So be it, so be it, so be it.” Opening an eye, he nodded to us both.

Hesitantly, we echoed, “So be it.”

A faint tingle traveled up my arm from Roshum’s hand and back down the other. Bryll’s eyes popped when she felt it. I couldn’t be entirely sure, but in the light of the shop’s glow globes, it looked as if the water suddenly had a hint of that extra-realness that summoned Souls had.

“There,” Roshum said, clapping his hands. “That’s as good as it gets.” He put the lid on the soak tray and handed it to me. “If you’ve got half a brain the card’s not here. Whichever one you’re breaking down needs to go in the bath within the hour, so go do what you have to. Come back after and I’ll have the prayer written down for you.”

I cradled the heavy gift in my hand. “Thank you, Roshum. I never could have done this myself.”

“That’s why I did it,” he said, a hint of his usual crankiness creeping back in. “Take the salts with you, and keep them safe. Once we’re sure this first one has processed correctly, we can do a few at a time next time. You’ll know when it’s ready – everything within ten feet of the box will smell like rotten eggs.”

“How long?” I asked.

“A month, tops. Could be less.”

A rhythmic, shuddering thud sounded from the center of the Lows, getting louder each time. I tensed for a moment as I listened before I realized what it had to be. “Finally,” I sighed. “Looks like we’ve got company.”

“Take that great bastard with you and be on your way,” Roshum said. “He breaks the cobblestones.”

I laughed. “Is the Big Man supposed to pave the streets, too? This job just keeps growing.” To Bryll I said, “Been practicing with that card?”

She nodded, grinning fiercely. “People step lively when I have him out.”

“It’s for helping, not for making people scared,” I said sternly.

“I know,” she growled. “But that part is nice too.”

“We’ll duel next time I come, and if you’re doing well maybe you can earn another.” Her eyes went even brighter at that. “Keep practicing.”

I met the Night Terror at the corner where the street opened out onto the washing-fountain square where Dachs and Kernona had first brawled with each other. Before you had them killed. I shook off the thought. “Look who’s finally come slinking back,” I said up to the huge demon. “I thought you’d be off the leash for a few days, not a few weeks.”

The great beast spread its taloned hands. “Getting a death just right takes time. And, in this case, even managing a death poorly does the same. These enforcers might as well have been cockroaches for all the hiding and scurrying they did.” The towering face broke into a fanged grin. “Cockroaches never screamed that prettily when they go squish, though. I’ll give them that.”

My stomach turned at the thought, but showing weakness in front of this Soul was a bad idea. “Is it done?”

In reply, a massive hand descended in front of me, a short stack of card balanced on the tip of the jagged talon. Dried blood showed in the crevices. I snatched the cards and put them in a pocket. I’d have time to look through them later and decide which ones to hand out to my little squad of urchins. “What about Harker?”

“Her tears were most delicious of all,” the monster purred.

My fists clenched. “Dammit, I told you not to kill her.”

“I did not,” the Night Terror said. “She walked away from me this very evening, whole in body if not in spirit, and never once looked back.”

“Then why are you talking about her tears?”

The demonic smile widened. “Because I discovered that when I had her kill her compatriots, the misery was doubled. Every one made her weep harder than the last, especially when I made her do it slowly.”

I massaged my temples, a painful throbbing building behind my eyes. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”

“You didn’t have to. I promised you a symphony of pain and blood, and by the powers beyond, I have delivered. Perhaps you will be a worthy one to carry my card after all.”

I didn’t want this creature calling me worthy. “Pick me up and take me to Maidenhead Square.”

I rode on his shoulder, thinking on Harker and how my mercy had gone sour for her. They were dark thoughts.

“You have earned information,” the Night Terror rumbled at me.

I jerked out of my reverie. “What?”

“Our deal,” the demon reminded me. “You give me opportunities for death and disorder, and I give you information. Unless you no longer desire it?”

“No, I want it,” I said. I hadn’t thought about the Night Terror when I’d been trying to test her honesty, but here was another angle to get past her defenses. “What are her soul abilities?”

The huge demon gave an appreciative rumble. “Straight to the heart of things. We were not so close that she ever showed me her soul card, of course, but I observed her changing her form on multiple occasions, and heard her speak of stealing others’ soul cards.”

“Does it hurt her to change form?” She’d resisted changing more than once when I’d asked her.

“What is pain?” the demon mused. “I may have heard a grunt or two from her during the process, but she did it often enough that either she is inured to the pain or she enjoys it. Our kind views these things differently. Pain can be as good as an embrace when your mind is in the proper frame.”

“Hmm.” I’d wondered if she was just putting me off. Then again, hadn’t I put her off when she’d asked to see my card? “She told me she can only shapeshift into cards she still has in her Mind Home. Is that true?”

The demon’s head tilted toward me, its great red eye looking down on me in surprise. “You have spoken to her? She is here?”

I cursed myself inside. I hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Yes.”

The Night Terror mulled that over for a long moment. “Do not offend her, little human. I would not wish to face her in combat.”

“She’s my mother,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

“That means something very different among demons than among humans,” the creature warned me. “Have a care. For my sake if not your own. I find I enjoy roaming a Mind Home once more, even one as sparse as yours.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I have only ever seen her shift into forms that were present in her Mind Home alongside me,” the demon said. “That is not proof, of course, but it is the best I can offer.”

“This is the place,” I said, pointing to the window on the far side of Maidenhead Square where Ticosi’s rooms lay. “Lift me onto the balcony.”

It did so with surprising gentleness. He’d mostly confirmed what my mother had said. Maybe changing didn’t hurt her as she’d said, but what did that really mean? I wasn’t sure if I was glad to hear her words confirmed or not.

“One last tidbit I will offer unasked,” the demon said. “You gave me so many lovely deaths, and I can see you are unsatisfied with what I have said thus far. When she is in other forms, she can only use the soul abilities of that other soul, not her own. This I know for certain.”

I raised my eyebrows. She could use other people’s soul abilities when she changed into them? My estimation of her power level kept going up. She was the perfect spy, and she was brokering a secret peace between humans and demons. Certainly they’d send one of their most powerful for something like that.

“Thank you,” I told the demon. “I hope you enjoyed your weeks of freedom. Back in you go.”

With a sigh of regret, the Night Terror fell into mist, and I felt its weight settle back into my Mind Home. I wasn’t sure what to do with the new information it had given me, but every shred I could get would help me balance the scales. Maybe my mother wasn’t so bad after all. I could hope. Don’t be stupid. She stole your card and you don’t even trust her enough to show her the new one. My inner street kid still spoke strongly. I wished I weren’t so sure he was right.

I unlocked the window leading into the rooms and entered the Big Man’s private space holding the soak tray and little box of alchemical salts. Once the window was locked behind me I quietly moved the wardrobe forward a few hands and pried up the tile that butted against the wall. It had taken some time to hollow out the space underneath, but the Big Man’s rooms were the safest place I could think of in the Lows. I pulled out the bag of cards and quickly sifted through to find the one I wanted.

Any of the Epics would have done just fine; it wasn’t as if I planned to use any of them. This one, though, had always bothered me, probably because the son of a bitch had used it against us when we fought. I wouldn’t be sorry to see it turned to shards.

I set the soak tray flat on the table and pried of the cover with the greatest of care. I didn’t know what spillage would do to me now that the solution was ready, and I didn’t want to find out. I wished I had gloves, but I’d left them at Roshum’s. The liquid in the tray glimmered silver in the faint streetlight coming through the window.

“I know this isn’t the right prayer, but Twins, favor me now,” I whispered. “I need this. The Lows need this. Hell, until I can take care of Hestorus, the whole kingdom needs this.” I shrugged, embarrassed. “I’m not good at prayers. Sorry. Uh, so be it.”

I slipped the card into the tray, careful not to splash any on my fingers, and the silver swallowed it completely. Tiny bubbles rose to the surface, and I quickly put the lid back on. After a deep breath to still my shaking hands, I put the soak tray and the box of salts in the hollow under the tile and put the wardrobe back in place. I’d have Bryll ask a few of her little friends to watch the place to make sure no one was trying to get in while I was spending my nights at Roshum’s or in War Camp. If she continued to prove trustworthy, maybe I’d let her stay here. I’d never liked these rooms.

I left the apartment through the front door, locking it tight behind me. I felt a strange energy in me as I walked back toward Roshum’s shop. I’d taken the first real steps to unlocking the treasure trove Ticosi had left in my hands when he died, and it might just make the difference both in War Camp and in lifting the Lows out of poverty. I felt good. I felt like I had the beginnings of a plan. One day, I might even be ready to face my father and help put somebody on the throne who was a little wiser, a little kinder. Somebody like Basil.

A smile curved on my lips. Strange as it seemed, what I was feeling was hope.