Peter hurried toward the gate of Fort Zero, blinking in disbelief at the city of tents that surrounded the tomb-turned-fortress. His stomach ached; the smell of rice and beef triggered a cramp. Other odors likewise mixed in the wind, less pleasant. Unwashed bodies, sweat, and a lingering hint of feces, indicative of a camp far too full, with insufficient facilities.

  He stepped through the smoke of a cooking fire, scanning the clotheslines and mismatched tents. Where had they all come from?

  Murmuring voices droned behind the call of Nine Fingers cadences. A dog barked, and a child wailed.

  He shook his head; he didn’t have time to gawk, he was going to be late.

  Peter marched with the column through the open gates, beneath the timber rampart and the massive Premernox gas cannons that faced outward over fortifications that hadn’t existed three months ago.

  The guards at the gate stepped back as he approached; they knew the drill—stand too close, lose time.

  Six mounds rose beyond the wall. They were the ancient tombs of Nosmerian royalty, kings whose bodies Rahashel had animated and turned against their people.

  For a heartbeat, the present slipped.

  Fog. Screams. The night the Kings had returned, manic laughter on their lips and sharp steel in their hands. Norah, his trainer, was lying in her blood on her drilling ground. The animated corpse of King Adrichem, Nosmeria’s former ruler, delivering a message, all to lure Peter into a trap.

  When Nine Fingers had abandoned the tombs to raid Court Rahashel’s time vaults, Peter never would have imagined they would return.

  He blinked, and the memory shattered.

  Sunlight washed over a fortified stronghold. Battlements and timber walls now ringed the burial mounds. Towers, mid-construction, rose directly on the burrows, towering above the walls from the fort’s center. Crews cleaned cannons mounted atop the artificial hills, creating multiple tiers of artillery.

  Peter split off from the column, jogging towards his old training tomb. “Make way!” he called. “Make way or be leeched.”

  The Nine Fingers soldiers knew to respect the warning, and a team of combat engineers jogged out of his path.

  He muttered an apology to the men as he passed the monument. The wooden post etched with names from the first generation of Nine Fingers rose in the center of the fort, where the long tombs opened in the middle. It had been planted right where the torch had lit the mass grave pyre.

  Peter nodded in respect, an acknowledgement to those who had only one life to give.

  “Van Suer, incoming!” he announced before stepping into the workshop. Formerly, the tomb had been a training ground where his trainer, Norah, had drilled him into fighting shape with a brutal cycle of death resets. She’d driven him to exhaustion, then sped up his recovery by shooting him in the head. He had to have died over thirty times that night.

  He glanced at the place where the mad ghoul, King Adrichem, had murdered her.

  “Van Suer!” a voice called excitedly.

  Peter turned, now, gunsmithing tables lined the area, components and weapons laid out in various states of repair.

  “Cas, Fin. Good to see you.”

  The identical twin gunsmiths set down their tools, stretching their hands as Peter approached. Both men wore carbon-stained aprons. Cas grinned, his thick dark green hair shining in the gas lamp light. The unusual color indicated hereditary Ataggin resequencing. While such genetic anomalies weren’t common, they certainly weren’t abnormal.

  “How were things back here?” Peter asked.

  “Peachy!” Cas exclaimed. “Best job ever, always making new ways to rekill things! How’d she do?”

  Peter grimaced, then reluctantly drew the Tweeledig, the bottom barrel blasted open.

  The twins inhaled sharply, exchanging a quick glance.

  “Guys, I’m sorry,” Peter muttered, thinking about how he had used it to parry a sword.

  “Told you this would happen,” Fin said, his soft voice barely a whisper.

  “Yeah … Our bad.”

  Peter looked up abruptly. “What are you talking about? You—you knew this would happen?”

  “Wasn’t ready,” Fin murmured.

  “Yeah, I may have sped through the welding, and we didn’t include a relief valve. Wanted it to punch, but not be too heavy.”

  “Wait,” Peter frowned. “You handed me a gun you knew might blow up in my hand?”

  Cas grinned innocently.

  “Not every day you get an immortal lab rat willing to shoot anything you put in their hands,” Fin said softly.

  Peter scoffed in indignation, then a laugh escaped him. “You’re both crazy. Think you can get it fixed?”

  “Or—” Cas drawled, reaching under the table and sliding out a brace of Slagters and gunbelt over. “You could try the Hevigs.”

  Peter cocked his head as they slid the handcannons to him.

  Cas leaned over the table, eyes shining with insanity. “Like the Prime, but they fire eighteen-and-a-half-millimeter slugs. Roughly point seventy-three caliber.”

  “Every shot will hurt like Ataggin’s ash, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you,” Fin said, mournfully rubbing a bruise on his palm.

  Peter picked up the belt, surprised by the weight. “That means I won’t be able to shoot sixty-two cal. That’s the most common shell on the battlefield.”

  Cas shrugged. “Yeah, we’ll have to supply your ammunition. Oh, these shells will auto-eject with the break action, but they won’t auto cock like the Tweeledig. So you can snap them closed with the flick of a wrist and use them simultaneously.”

  Peter nodded and glanced longingly at the broken Tweeledig.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Cas said, sweeping it from the table into a garbage pail. “We’ve got big plans for her. We’ll get’er back to you in a little more stable condition.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Peter said, buckling the Hevigs. “I need to run. History lessons with the House.”

  “Let us know how many fingers you lose when it malfunctions,” Fin mumbled as Peter rushed out.

  Sicco found him in moments. The butler had changed into his House uniform—a tailored black suit with a white apron and gloves. “Peter,” he called, hurrying over. “Your lesson starts in fifteen minutes. Have you eaten yet?”

  “No, I had to—” He motioned helplessly back at the armory, then abandoned the explanation. “I’ll hurry.”

  “You haven’t gotten dressed yet,” Sicco noted, looking suddenly exhausted.

  “Do I have to?” Peter groaned. “The Lord Commandant makes me wear a Nine Fingers uniform for briefings, and you make me wear the footman uniform for my lessons. I spend more time getting dressed than doing anything productive.”

  “Van Seur!”

  Both men turned as Tobias jogged over. “Emergency war council. Time, now.”

  “Hang on,” the butler turned to the Major, brow climbing. “He’s on our schedule for the rest of the day.”

  “Julian should be there; he’ll understand.”

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  “The High Steward?” Sicco asked in confusion. “No, he’s not going to be there. High Butler Anton will probably take his place. Julian had a more important meeting.”

  “More important than a coalition coordination?” Tobias folded his arms.

  Sicco didn’t answer, glancing at Peter expectantly.

  Peter groaned loudly. “Fine, I’ll skip chow, I’m going to the council, then I’ll make up time for my lessons, and no, I’m not changing for either of them.”

  Sicco inhaled, then sighed. “Okay, but hurry.”

  Peter followed Tobias toward the command tomb, irritation bubbling over.

  “You know, if you two keep pulling me in different directions like that, you’ll rip my arms off.”

  Tobias’ dark eyes flashed, an unspoken acknowledgment of the inconvenience, then his lips twitched up. “Then, it’s a good thing you’re immortal.”

  Peter found himself in the command crypt, sitting in a lone chair in his safe corner. The other knights lined the briefing table to either side of Colonel Van Den Hoek.

  The only notable exception was Chief Warrant Officer Kulafu Mendoza, a Dinnian with two scimitars on his belt, who stood at the door, scanning the room. He was a knight as well, but had been acting as a bodyguard to the Lord Commandant.

  All Peter knew about the Dinnian was that he was a master with those curved blades.

  Other general officers sat on the other side of the table.

  Lord Commandant Sebastian Van Graif sat at the head, hands steepled, white hair slicked back, and his beard trim and tight. His eyes danced from his knights to his general officer, then to High Butler Anton on the other end of the table.

  “Welcome,” he said simply. “I’ve asked Chief Warrant Officer Weyzero to brief us. Chief.”

  With that, she rose.

  Chief Weyzero—Director of Intelligence—had midnight-dark skin, indicating Churite ancestry. Allegedly, one of their sister planets was primarily populated by people of her ethnicity. Her lean face took in the room, a dreadlocked comb of hair spilling over one of the shaved sides of her head.

  “Thank you, Gentlemen. To get to the point, we’re gassed—”

  Peter tensed at the sound of her voice, primarily because of her reputation. She didn’t see people; she only saw resources and numbers, which made her a notably good analyst, but a terrifying ally.

  She continued.

  “Fort Zero is currently at two thousand, eight hundred present capacity. That doesn’t factor in the reality that the number of refugees arriving increases steadily every day. Given our current projections and with another halving of rations, we will run out of food in three weeks.”

  She went silent, momentarily allowing the silence to speak for her.

  “Most of these refugees have been from the surrounding regions where an assassin, designated the Blood Wraith, has been targeting magistrates in the surrounding areas. The only instance of a deflected attack is from Astria, which is currently under Green Rose control. Reportedly, they were able to resist this assassin with the aid of Ataggin exprites.”

  At the mention of the House’s rogue counterparts, High Butler Anton’s eyes flashed angrily. Also, Green Rose? Wasn’t that a Dinnian crime clan? Had they taken control of an entire region?

  Wayzero turned to the House representative.

  “High Butler Anton, could you spare valets to guard the camp as a rapid response force to this Blood Wraith in the case of an attack? Nothing short of Nyamarian boons seems to have worked.”

  Anton cleared his throat, his hawk-faced and dark hair giving him a wicked glare incongruent with the character Peter had observed.

  “Yes, as of now, Fort Zero has the highest concentration of Valets and War Maids across Boslic. An attack here would be madness. On the point of rations, the House has lost three estates across the planet in the last week to various courts. Each one we lose represents a breachport closed. We’ll start consolidating rations here, but this war rages across the planet. Hunger plagues everyone.”

  Peter stroked his chin, nodding. The house could transport supplies instantaneously through breachports, usually attuned carefully within the estates, but he knew that was a dangerous and taxing process.

  “Very good,” Chief Weyzero said. “I’d love to discuss logistics after this meeting.” She turned her attention back to the rest of the room.

  “Refugees can only bring what they can carry, so they’ve proven to be liabilities rather than assets. Many of them are from the surrounding areas, but we’ve started picking up refugees from Indeland, which brings us to the true purpose of our meeting. Indeland has fallen.”

  “Fallen how?” Van Den Hoek asked.

  “A court who calls herself Lady Libshee has claimed the majority of the country. Only Chateaumer remains, but I should be surprised if the siege there lasts longer than a week. The evidence is conclusive; she marches on Nosmeria next.”

  Peter inhaled sharply and leaned back in his seat. With Rahashel to the east and Libshee to the west, the two powers would meet like a thunderclap, crushing them in the middle.

  “In conclusion, we’re trapped, grossly overpopulated, undersupplied, and know far too little about either enemy. Rahshel has been silent since Jullek, sending out only small raiding parties to harvest crops.”

  “He’s preparing a trap,” Peter said, “and Libshee’s part of it. She’s a rival, he’ll be wary of her. But us? We’re just fuel. We haven’t stopped him; we’ve just given him time to build a funnel.”

  The participants at the table glanced back at him in his corner.

  “Thank you for that input, corporal,” Chief Weyzero said dismissively.

  “Van Suer’s right,” Tobias said, adding the weight of his rank to the argument. “I, for one, am tired of waiting to let him get all of his pieces in place. If anything, all these refugees are being herded to us. One final harvest for him before his real enemy arrives.”

  “Yes,” Weyzero agreed. “These are our only options moving forward. First, we can reject the Refugees, driving them away and making them easy targets for Rahashel’s harvesters. Our second path is to accept them, stave, and fall to Rahshel in our weakened state. Finally, and the most tactically sound option, engineer a high casualty conflict.”

  “What?” Tobias raged, fists pressing into the table. “You mean kill them off?”

  “Look at the scenario tactically, Major. These are not soldiers. Living non-combatants are a resource to Courts, but to us, they’re only a drain on supplies we can’t afford. If they were to die in combat, we’d deny Rahashel the time he needs for his ghouls while saving our reserves. Additionally, if all things go well, they might even inflict losses on him.”

  “You’d be supplying him with a new army of corpses,” Tobias snapped.

  “Corpses that would be useless without time tiles.”

  “Chief Weyzero, your math doesn’t check out,” Van Graif said, and every head turned to him.

  “If we killed off every able-bodied refugee, it would leave us only with dependents. We’d still run out of food, but we also wouldn’t have soldiers.”

  Weyzero frowned. “Lord Commandant, what I’m proposing is to utilize those who wouldn’t be conventionally considered combatants.”

  “I am not sending women and children into combat,” Van Graif said, his voice taking an edge.

  “Then we starve while we wait to be crushed between two superior foes.”

  Van Graif nodded. “Thank you, Chief, that will be all.”

  Her face clouded, then she sank into her seat.

  “Sir,” Peter spoke up again, knowing half the people in the room would revile him for his lowly rank.

  The Lord Commandant shifted to him.

  “Why don’t we attack Rahashel now? Not to kill off the civilians, but to win. Julian has a druk, you’ve got me. With the House, we can win. Why are we giving him time to build his trap?”

  Lord Commandant Van Graif smiled, almost fondly. “We’ve fought Rahashel before; you haven’t. I mean this with all respect: you’re not ready.”

  Peter flinched, more pricked by how readily he agreed than by the fact that the words came from someone he respected.

  Van Graif Stood. “Unrest stirs at our walls, all together, we don’t have the force to police this mob. Nine Fingers operates by martial law. It’s time to remind them. If someone steals, flog them. If someone kills, execute them publicly. It’s time to tighten our grip on the fort.”

  He turned to the knights. “Major Visser, I’m putting you on Lady Libshee. Find out everything you can about her, her ghouls, and her chain of command. I need actionable intelligence.”

  “Van Den Hoek, you’re my eyes on Rahashel. I need to know what he’s planning.”

  He turned to his general officers. “I’m sending Commandant De Zwert to pillage the countryside. If there’s anything edible in the abandoned towns, he’ll gather it. In the meantime, no more food for anyone who’s not in a uniform. I want mass conscription. Start female support brigades and develop non-combat roles for children. We have no room for parasites, innocent or otherwise. If they’re not in our chain of command, they’re not touching our supplies.”

  Guilt knotted within Peter. He understood the logic, knew the numbers. This was no mere war; they were facing extinction. Still, he fought to help his people. To protect them.

  “What about me?” Peter asked, eager for an assignment.

  “You—keep doing your lessons.”

  Peter’s face flushed hot as he felt the dirt of bureaucracy start to bury him. His nails dug into his knees as he scanned the room, eyes falling on Kulafu for a brief moment. The Dinnian watched him carefully.

  No, Peter couldn’t allow himself to sink into abstract lessons, reading policy, or straddle House and Nine Fingers schedules. It wasn’t ideal, but he was Nine Finger’s best weapon, and they couldn’t afford to waste him.

  Van Graif turned back to the rest of the council, and Peter felt the lid begin to close on the coffin of the decision. Bedorven clicked twice, encouragingly.

  He snapped to attention. “With all due respect, sir. I spend all my time learning history and changing uniforms.”

  Van Graif turned back again, Chief Wayzero’s eyes narrowing at the intrusion.

  Peter had already made a fool of himself, so he surged ahead. “You were right, I’m not ready—so get me ready. Norah trained me to face Rahashel before, but she’s gone now.”

  “Your training on our side will continue with the knights,” Van Graif said, patience rapidly fading.

  Peter’s teeth ground, his body tightening. It wasn’t enough, it could never be enough. “Sir, I’m a court, but a broken one. I should be spending every free moment drilling, becoming the best humanity has to offer. Every second I’m not on the front line or training to kill Rahashel is a second that we can’t afford to waste. Sir, I need a new trainer—someone dedicated to preparing me.”

  His eyes darted to the door, and he almost couldn’t choke out the words. “I want Chief Warrant Officer Kulafu Mendoza.”

  Kulafu blinked, glancing at the Commandant in confusion.

  The Lord Commandant hummed thoughtfully, glancing from Peter to Kulafu.

  Peter continued. “I’ve heard he’s a master swordsman and martial artist. That’s what I need, not briefs and lessons.”

  Van Graif mumbled under his breath. “‘Course there’s still the problem of the leach field, but t’s not a bad idea.” He looked up, grinning as if he had conjured a brilliant idea on his own. “Kulafu, I have a new assignment for you. You’re going to carve Van Suer into a Court killer.”

  If you were Van Graif, which option do you pick?