You have to leave the chrysalis if you want to survive.

  Sometimes, somehow, that message failed to take hold. The weak clung to the warmth of their cocoon for too long, didn’t even think about getting out until it had already started to suffocate them. Those were the ones Sagramore sneered at, as their bodies were wrapped in flax-cloth and sent tumbling down the mountainside.

  Essegena was a cold, hateful place, poisoned right down to the soil. He’d felt it the moment he arrived. This world had never known the shelter of the Butterfly’s wing. It hadn’t even felt the reflection of the light within her. The kind of place a right-thinking man would call forsaken. But Sagramore did not complain. You couldn’t expect comfort beyond the chrysalis, nor warmth. That was the price you paid to survive, and not be choked.

  He was here for a purpose. The pendant around his neck reminded him of the old times, the old places, and it ensured he wasn’t tempted by the common weaknesses of man.

  On Essegena, he was Peter Beynon. The name had belonged to someone once, but Sagramore knew it only from a fading gravestone. There was no better place to take a name. Gravestones were for the dead, and they would never rise to complain.

  Aergarth was the last unblemished sanctum. It had its home in the cradle of a spearing massif, sheltered from unkind wind and high above the sullied lands. That was why it remained pure. The forces which had blighted the Butterfly’s lands as she slept could not reach Aergarth.

  Sagramore had been born there. His oldest memory was of the dark stone tower at Aergarth’s northern extent, the one that seemed to go all the way to the stars. The tower, according to Lynesse, was so tall that no man or woman could ever reach the top. You would freeze if you tried, or run out of air. Aergarth was so old it hadn’t been built by mortal hands; the apostate Gods had made it many thousands of years ago, long before the Betrayal, long before the Dream. Sagramore had never needed to try to reach the top. It was wonder enough to sit on the ground and look up at the tower, look up until your neck ached.

  That same wonder had been hard to find in the years since he’d left. The old worlds had all been poisoned beyond salvation, every one of them a monument to humanity’s perfidy and avarice. Essegena was doomed to the same fate―all lands were, while men were still devoted to imposter Gods―but for now there was still something to cling to. Twilight might never be as bright as noon, and twilight was always the fading throes of a day defeated by night, but in twilight there was still some light. Essegena was stricken but not yet sunk. Some of its nature was still beautiful.

  When you stood on the shore of the big lake, for instance, you could see nothing but water and moorland all the way to the horizon. He’d been caught in a daydream a few times, imagining the infinity. Lost in it. The foreman wasn’t pleased with that.

  But then, the foreman was rarely pleased with anything. Gattegan was his name. He was an altogether unpleasant man, with a podgy face and ruddy cheeks, upon which rested an uneven smattering of grey stubble. Gattegan wore glasses with broken frames, loosely repaired. The tape was insufficient. He was forever raising his sausage-like fingers to his face to push his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. Sagramore didn’t dislike him for his appearance, though. It was Gattegan’s horrible manner that he hated. The man had a foreman’s job by virtue of a pre-existing relationship with Fyffe Peulion, a job he was assured of keeping despite having never demonstrated even a modicum of aptitude.

  Gattegan lived beyond the Butterfly. Most did. In time his death would come, and Sagramore would take great pleasure in executing it. For now he had to bide his time. There were far more egregious apostates than a corpulent foreman with a sneering superiority. Sagramore had come here for the heretics of Tol Manase, those who had defiled the Butterfly’s name and those who had used her falsely.

  And he’d come at the orders of his worldly master too. The Ealdor’s purposes overlapped with Sagramore’s, though they were by no means the same. By tying his mast to the Ealdor, Sagramore benefitted from a powerful apparatus. The means to gain passage on the Eia under an assumed name. The means to disguise his face. All he had to do in return was serve, on occasion.

  The job he was engaged in today―that Peter Beynon was presently employed to do―was an engineering concern at the southernmost shore of the lake. It had acquired the name ‘Caroline’s Pool’, after the deceased wife of the Governor. A vanity name, no doubt. In any case the lake was in a precarious location just above the Eia Valley, barred from tumbling down to the lower terrain by a surprisingly narrow strip of land. The powers-that-be were worried that the water in the lake might very slowly be eroding the rock wall that stood between it and the Valley, and that there was a risk of catastrophe should the lake breach that wall.

  Erosion, on a human timescale? The notion was ridiculous. The unending war between water and rock was measured in eons, each battle an age in itself. If Sagramore really was Peter Beynon, he’d have told Gattegan just how ridiculous the idea was. But he was only playing the part of Peter Beynon. He kept his mouth shut, and wasted his days at busy-work. They all were, really. What could people even do against forces of nature itself?

  Now and then he thought of Lynesse. What sort of woman might she have grown into? They’d become friends when they were both very small, neither of them really aware of the workings of the world. He had an idea that Aergarth’s many towers were responsible for their friendship. The awe of them opened a person’s mind, a child’s especially. Friendships took root where guards were lowered. Friendships were harder than weeds to remove once they had a hold.

  They were both eight years old―Lynesse four months older than Sagramore―when they were brought under the Butterfly’s wing together. Formally. Infants had their place for so long as they weren’t actively corrupted, but infant protection was not infinite. Growing older meant casting aside their childish fantasies. The day of their Protection was the day Sagramore had learnt that boys and girls were not the same. Lynesse wore a gown of cobalt blue, encrusted with rubies. Sagramore’s gown was a blood-bright crimson, with diamonds at the hem. The male and female, sharing aspects of one another but ultimately distinct. They might share a place in Aergarth, but the two could not truly be friends. Not unless they were married.

  By the time Sagramore had outgrown his childish aversion to marriage, the situation had changed anyway.

  Now, the situation had changed even more. Lynesse was dead. Everyone was. Sagramore alone bore the Butterfly’s candle. He alone knew the truth of the celestial wars of bygone millennia. The treachery. The Dream.

  “I hear old Gattegan’s going to bring Master Peulion up here himself,” said one of Sagramore’s fellow labourers, as they made their way back down the Mettywood Road late in the afternoon. The man who was speaking was short, with a squeaky voice and a marvel of a moustache. Latimer, his name was.

  Sagramore didn’t engage in conversations. He didn’t have the patience for it, and it was better if nobody came to befriend the character he was playing. One of Latimer’s companions, a scruffy man with a flash of red hair hidden beneath a muddy cap, took up the chatter. “This problem’s beyond him,” he said.

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “You know he spends half the night in the library on the Eia, head in a book until he falls asleep in it,” the scruffy man continued. “Heavy volumes too, real boring stuff. I reckon he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. Trying to learn the basic principles so he doesn’t look like such a fool every day.”

  “What have you been doing in the library, Gus?” asked Latimer.

  “Keeping an eye on that librarian,” the scruffy man replied. “I’ll make a woman out of her yet.”

  “I know the one you mean. Miss Ambrosia.” Latimer made a grotesque noise with his mouth. “Food of the Gods indeed.”

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  The name poked at something in Sagramore’s mind. “What did you say her name was?”

  The two men looked at him for a second with shock. “He does speak,” said Latimer, after a while.

  “We thought you was mute,” Gus added. “Her name’s Mariella Ambrosia, and she is delightful. But hands off. She’s mine.”

  “I don’t want her,” said Sagramore, irritably. “I thought I recognised the name is all.”

  “And did you?” Gus was looking hungrily at him. He was hoping Sagramore would deliver Mariella Ambrosia to him on a platter.

  Sagramore had half a mind to, in fact. But no. That would complicate things. “No,” he lied, shaking his head. “I don’t know her.”

  It was a good thing to finally get away from the others; Sagramore got his chance as they crossed the bridge by Master Hultry’s farm. The mass of labourers, with Latimer at their fore, went off to invade the Tavern. Sagramore went another way entirely. He had an appointment to keep.

  The man he knew only as the Ealdor insisted on meeting him out in the open. A different place every time. Never where too many prying eyes might see, and never indoors. Summons came in the form of ciphered slips of paper. Sagramore didn’t like not knowing. He didn’t like being in service to a man from outside Aergarth either, but the Butterfly had spoken to him in pictures. She had assured him that this was the correct path.

  When he was in the Ealdor’s presence, he was not permitted to be Sagramore. He wasn’t Peter Beynon either. The Ealdor had fabricated a third identity for him, a man who worked a non-existent job. There were times when the task at hand called for Sagramore to enter restricted areas, places that Peter Beynon would have no right to enter. In those times, at the Ealdor’s behest, his name was Tiriotte. He didn’t like the name. Just giving it voice always brought on a premonition of horrible things. But the Butterfly was always right.

  As always, the Ealdor wore a long cloak of silver and black, trailing on the ground and rising to a hood over his head. Beneath the hood was a pale mask, featureless, another concession to his need for anonymity. The Ealdor was somebody, Sagramore was fairly sure. The identity he wore as a puppeteer was incompatible with the identity of his everyday life. Linking the two would ruin him. And yet for all his fear he wasn’t good at disguise. He wasn’t a master, like Sagramore was. When you were good enough, you didn’t need masks and long cloaks to conceal yourself. A shift in the way you walked, a new comportment, a change of facial hair, and you could be anybody in the world. Sagramore hadn’t shown an honest face in years.

  There was a woman at the Ealdor’s shoulder today. He’d seen her a few times before. She stood out every time; the Ealdor seldom had people with him when he summoned Sagramore, and most of those people, taking his lead, concealed their identities with hoods or masks. This woman alone kept her face bare. Her hair was umber, her skin like yellow sand, but it was her eyes that Sagramore saw the most. They were dead. Empty vessels of coal, with nothing behind them.

  He didn’t let his unease show. You didn’t see people like this very often. Their bodies had been claimed by the false Gods, no longer inviolate but instead physically transformed into weapons to be wielded. The flesh was the steel, and the steel the flesh; it was an indelible connection. Most of those who had been so claimed had no idea what had been done to them. The few that did were body-and-soul sworn to the false Gods, ready to destroy themselves if their masters’ lack of divinity were even hinted at. In either case, they were less than human. Worse, far worse, than apostates who had fallen to the false faith because they were never shown the truth.

  “Tiriotte.” The Ealdor spoke slow.

  Sagramore dipped his head. Such was the expected obeisance. “I am at your service.”

  “How is your blade, Tiriotte?”

  Sagramore frowned. The Ealdor had used him as ears to gather intel and as a mouthpiece to make crude threats, never as an instrument of violence. In truth he was itching to do something exciting. “Sharp, milord. And true.”

  “As a blade should be.” The Ealdor’s face was impossible to read behind the mask, nor did his tone bewray any kind of emotion. The woman, however, smiled. Sagramore focused on her for a second. Who was she, to feel so at ease in this scenario? Her face was discomfiting. “You know, of course, the paean of Resilane?”

  Sagramore did. Resilane was a slippery figure, a false God who might one day have sat in the pantheon of the true; the self-same qualities that may have seen him worthy of the honour were the reason for his downfall into apostasy. He was the greatest assassin of old. So great that the Gods―the Butterfly and her ancient peers―had elevated him into their own. For their gift, he had slain many, and the others had fled, to find sanctuary and to sleep. The Church of Lightness taught that Nameth was the father of the Gods; the truth was that Resilane was the first of the falsehoods to ascend. His domain was a deathly one, though. Incompatible with the image the Church had wished to project.

  Of course, Resilane had been adored by humanity’s underbelly of assassins. He was their idol. His was their creed. “‘Men crave the gift of lethal steel’,” Sagramore recited, solemnly. “‘For the taste is sweeter than any. It is the taste of liberation, and all desire it.’”

  “There is one to whom I want you to give that taste,” said the Ealdor. “The Lady Wrack rises beyond herself. Let her suckle on the ice-cold bite of your blade, such that her blood washes the floor. She carries a child inside her. She must not be allowed to bear that child.”

  Sagramore froze. An unborn child? Even in places so far remote that there was no chance of feeling the embrace of the Butterfly―or any other true God―an unborn child was not to blame. The womb was sacrosanct. In it, you could not be corrupted. You could not be led astray. It was the true meaning of innocent.

  For the first time, the woman spoke. Hers was an accent Sagramore couldn’t place; something remote, not from any of the major cities. “You hesitate. Is this task beyond you?”

  Sagramore shook his head.

  “Then why do you hesitate?” The woman managed to intone in such a way as to make it clear she was asking a question, without any hint of curiosity seeping into her voice.

  “This is a cruelty.” Sagramore spoke without judgement. He did not relish excess cruelty, but sometimes it was necessary to send the required message.

  The Ealdor shook his head. “It’s only cruelty if you allow it to get out of hand. The Lady Wrack does not need to come to any significant harm; nobody else needs to be hurt at all. We need only to show Governor Ballard that he is not the only one with power on this planet.”

  A voice whispered in Sagramore’s ear then, the voice of the Butterfly. She was frenzied. “They must all die, the babe too. Bathe them in the blood of Essegena’s baptism.”

  Sagramore smiled. The Butterfly had given her blessing to this one, specifically. The taste of her power would be intoxicating. He nodded his head. “It will be done as you desire.” The affirmation was as much to the Butterfly as it was the Ealdor.

  He made it back home, yawning, just as the last blushing tendrils of sunlight disappeared beyond the horizon. It would be cold tonight. The tenements were as draughty as they were cramped, strictly temporary accommodation. Built without a thought to what life would be like for the thousand or two who had to endure the temporary. What comfort was it when you were shivering in your bed that the powers that be fully intended to tear the whole shitty residence down in a year or two? Sagramore would have preferred to stay on the ship. He was a labourer though―by the logs, at least. A labourer would stay close to his workplace. A labourer wouldn’t be fussy.

  He shrugged off his coat as he stepped through the door, tossing it onto a nearby chair. And breathed. The day was done. In the privacy of his tenement room, he didn’t have to pretend. For the rest of the night he was not Peter the labourer, nor Tiriotte the killer-for-hire. Not until the morning. Tonight, within the walls of his room, he was unabashedly Sagramore once more. He reached down the collar of his undershirt until his hand grasped a string, and pulled free the pendant around his neck. The silver butterfly was still untarnished. That was good. He brought it to his lips and kissed it, the metal like ice on his tongue. For you, my sweetling, he thought. I do this for you.

  The pendant dropped from Sagramore’s fingers as his eyes fell upon a curiosity, a letter in a vaguely yellow envelope resting upon the table beside his bed. Had that been there this morning? He was sure it hadn’t. His brow creased as he approached the table, suddenly taking care to avoid the creaking of floorboards as he stepped. The fact was, a letter left out was odd. He was normally very particular about putting them safely away out of sight, just in case someone came spying. Picking it up, he noticed the still-unbroken seal. The writing on the front was in an unfamiliar hand. His name, and that alone.

  He ripped it open.

  The paper was rigid, and mostly blank. What few words had been written on it were crammed together at the very top, as though they were shrinking back from the heart of the paper. The hand that had written the letter was the same that had addressed the envelope.

  ‘I know what you are,’ the words read, in letters precisely formed. Beneath them was a crude drawing―crude but unmistakable. A butterfly. Sagramore’s blood ran colder than the pendant.

  For the first time in a long time he felt fear. Nobody was supposed to know who he was. Sagramore, devotee of the Butterfly, perhaps the last man of true honour in the universe, wasn’t on the Eia’s manifest. He hadn’t come to Essegena. Only the disguises he wore had come to Essegena. The letter meant someone―an apostate no doubt―had seen through those disguises. That same someone had gained access to Sagramore’s room.

  He looked quickly to each corner of the room, to the long and lengthening shadows, but saw nothing there. Nobody was waiting for him. Tonight he would sleep, and tomorrow he would execute the Ealdor’s latest order. And then he would start making plans to become somebody new altogether.