We’d only traveled along the outskirts of the Ironworks, barely dipping more than a mile into the ever-growing network of factories. Even still, it was half an hour ter before we pushed through into the comparatively less busy neighborhoods surrounding it.

  My skin felt like it was covered by hives by the time we got out, I’d had half a dozen different kinds of slur yelled at me. Two others had tried ramming us with their own carts, and one lunatic had charged towards the bench, rambling about his sister. As soon as his finger had touched the cart, I’d pulled a knife out and he’d sobered up, confusedly backing away. Tagashin’s work, from the scent of incense wafting from her in that moment.

  Good. If I’d actually id a hand on him, some of those who’d been staring and jeering might have decided to intervene.

  “You should probably get back inside the carriage,” Tagashin said as she moved into the maze of tenements the workers of the Ironworks lived in. With most of them in those factories, it was comparatively empty. Which still meant easily tens of people in the streets, all of them looking our way.

  “Probably,” I agreed with a stiff nod. “I underestimated how bad the reaction would be.”

  “If you’re that desperate to enjoy a ride up top, you could always do it in the quarter?” she said lightly. “Unless you’re worried about appearing too posh.”

  I stared bnkly back, and her own expression cracked just a little as I didn’t respond. Eventually we slowed enough and I got down, hurrying to the side and getting in the carriage before anyone else could get foolish ideas.

  Fool of a kitsune, I had not gotten on that carriage out of some desire to enjoy the wind! Restraining the urge to hiss, I instead went to the side of the carriage. I pulled out something I’d left there a little earlier.

  I’d been sticking to knives because of how conceable they were. You could hide them, same with my revolver, and no one could panic even more over not just the Infernal, but the Infernal carrying weapons.

  Right now, I really did not care one whit as I pulled out the scabbard of my saber. An entire day of my store’s income had gone into buying this from a reputable bcksmith. Let them worry. Right now, I honestly wanted more of that and less of the feeling they could throw their god’s symbol in my face without consequence.

  I didn’t bother looking outside the carriage window as we continued, instead leaning back and closing my eyes. If I fell asleep and my mind decided to bring me back to memories of the past? I’d perhaps prefer that.

  I wouldn’t, and I didn’t sleep as we continued on, and just sat listening to the sounds of the city until we finally came to a stop.

  ***

  I opened the carriage door and looked out at Bishop Derrick’s estate. Then up. Then up some more, till my neck began to hurt.

  Bishop Derrick’s establishment was beyond Vesper’s, rivaling that old estate of Lord Montague’s as I stared up across four stories of stained gss windows set in stone walls of white. Up top was a statue, a long dark figure in a robe, a scythe held in their hands, positioned so it both stared and appeared to be readying a blow for down here.

  I blinked, and stared in disbelief as it leaned down further, reacting to being perceived.

  I blinked again and it returned to stationary stone. Really? Was it just expected that every estate in the city come with some kind of rge guardian lurking on the roof capable of disguising itself as a statue? Pick something different!

  I looked down the street, ignoring the few people walking on the brick surface. All the way to the corner of the street? Bishop Derrick owned quite the estate, which was a little surprising. Clearly she had a high rank inside the church, but this was quite the expansive estate, ringed by very well kept bushes that would be hard to get through without leaving a trail for others to spot. The stonework was immacute. Not a crack to try and dig a tool into to start scaling, and all the decorations were well out of easy to hook range for a climbing handhold. Stained gss windows, the ground-level ones just out of comfortable reach to try and open. No ledges to rest on while working on them either. Very well-maintained and with a decent amount done to ward off break-ins. Not a side entrance in sight either, although I wasn’t walking all the way to the back.

  I wasn’t actually going to break in. Unless there was a comfortable enough bed. Some good tea blends? A nice chair?

  Alright, enough joking. I got out of the carriage, letting my hooves hit the ground with a soft clop.

  “And this is where I leave,” Tagashin announced, still up on the carriage.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked, looking back at her with a frown.

  “Aww, does someone need a driver to chauffeur them around all day?” She teased.

  “No,” I said ftly. “I don’t want to be held responsible for letting you out of my sight in case you cause some nonsense.”

  “Oh, I think I always cause some. But no, I’m off to handle a task our mutual boss has decided to assign me.”

  I paused, waiting for her to eborate. “Which of them?”

  “The detective,” she replied, giving me a wink. “Don’t worry about it, not a difficult one.”

  Questions bubbled up in me, like why was now the perfect time to begin this, but I forced them down. If she hadn’t felt the need to inform me on the way here, I doubted she would now. Besides, we both had our own tasks to focus on.

  “Good luck,” I said, and after a second’s pause “and try not to die.”

  “Aww, you mean that?”

  “Yes. I am not having your death held against me any more than whatever nonsense you get up to.”

  She chuckled. “You know, I can see where you get it from.”

  Tagashin cracked the reins and the carriage surged into motion, and I was not yelling after her asking what that meant like some character in a cheap pulp novel.

  I watched her depart. Then I felt an itch along my shoulderbde and gnced over said shoulder.

  A well-dressed young dy with a very…interesting figure quickly turned around, her fingers falling out of the impromptu sign of Halspus they’d made. Damnable deity.

  At least the gate required me to open it and didn’t try to bash itself against my tail. I made it to the doors, rapping the knocker three times. Reliefs of a battlefield were carved into the door, an interesting choice of decor but perhaps not too out there for a deity of the dead.

  After a minute, a young, rather dashing acolyte opened the door, short brown hair framing a pair of piercing blue eyes.

  “Ah,” the acolyte said, wrinkling his nose as if I’d crawled out of a sewer. “The defiler.”

  “Apologies,” I said with such fake cheer my voice practically dripped sugar. Why did all the nice looking ones have to be racists? “I was looking for Bishop Derrick’s estate, but I appear to have found Bishop Galspie’s instead.”

  The acolyte snorted. “Oh, very droll. Yes, surely the only issue I must have with someone who has defiled the dead is their race, and not how they ruined the dignity of people after death.”

  I dug some nails into my palm, but kept my face and smile as pleasant as I could manage. I couldn’t tell if I succeeded, his expression didn’t shift in the slightest.

  “I believe I am expected,” I said. “So, whatever our personal disagreements might be-”

  “Follow me,” he said gruffly, spinning around and heading inside.

  I gred at his back, but well, at the end of the day I did need to see the Bishop. And everyone else if they’d made it here too.

  I did move a table a little bit, keeping the door propped open before walking after his retreating back.

  Quick strides to catch up, not enough to give the impression I was running after him. We were traveling down the halls at a contrast to Vesper’s, the wide open spaces, dim lighting, and bare stone surfaces repced by rich red carpeting, lit candles every few doors on some cabinet or table.

  “Bit of a fire hazard?” I remarked to the acolyte, who was setting a blistering pace.

  No response, and I squashed that bit of irritation. Focus on something else, anything else. The nice rear belonging to the man who clearly hated me?

  Luckily, before I could debate that any more, he opened a door, and gestured rudely inside.

  “Your guest, Bishop Derrick,” he said, and without a word more stalked off.

  I spared an idle gnce as he left. It really was a well-defined a-mind out of the gutter!

  I headed into the room instead, a well-appointed study, Derrick sitting in one of several chairs with a roaring fire going even in an ornate firepce. Up above, a ndscape picture showed a battle, a group charging across a field into a horde of the dead, skeletons with scraps of flesh and skin and at their rear a tall, nky thing of bones stretching eight feet tall. She seemed entirely focused on the building fire, even as the sun slowly descended in a rge window not far away.

  “Ah, Miss Harrow!” she said brightly, turning her head to face me. “You’re the first to arrive! Coffee?”

  “I don’t suppose you have tea?” I asked her as I moved to one of the other chairs.

  “I do, but the brewing kit is in the kitchen,” she said. “I can ask for Joseph to get it?”

  “Coffee is fine,” I said. “I get the feeling that Joseph would not appreciate breaking it out just for me.”

  “Oh,” she said with a wince. “He-”

  “-made his opinions on me very clear.”

  “Apologies for Joseph,” Derrick said as I settled into my chair. “He’s of very particur opinions.”

  “I could tell,” I said as I enjoyed the softness of the cushion. So much softer than the hard wood of the carriage.

  “For some who follow Zaviel, the desecration of the corpse means as much as the desecration of the spirit,” Derrick expined. “Your practices probably offend for that reason.”

  “I am beginning to get upset about how many people have apparently heard of my exploits,” I replied, looking over my shoulder at the doorway Joseph has exited through.

  People with access to the Imperial records knowing? That didn’t shock me, especially given who I suspected Versalicci had worked for this entire time. Random people, even well-connected ones knowing? Much more disconcerting and also likely to make dealing with them that much harder.

  It was harder to have reasonable conversations when the other side could only see a blood-soaked murderer. Tagashin had ruined that for me and Gregory.

  “I do apologize, he doesn’t know anything specific,” Bishop Derrick said. “I told him you were a former Bck Fme diabolist, and as he’s involved in my program…well a lot of research was done and then discussed about the varying methods of diabolism, including the favored ones of your former employers.”

  “Please don’t give him the dignity of ‘employer’,” I replied immediately. “Criminals, exploiters, assholes. He doesn’t deserve the legitimacy of an employer. So then, his irritation is over how we used corpses?”

  Corpses as fuel for diabolism had been a common thing. Dead flesh, especially dead Infernal flesh, could be used in a variety of rituals, but also for providing the physical materials when a Devil crafted a body in this world. Devils could come in their natural forms, but with Halspus and his clergy’s efforts at making as thick a barrier between the material world in Avernon and the Hells, dead flesh worked well as an insutor protecting devils from it. Much the same when dealing with priests wielding Halspus’ light or other divine magic sources. Dead flesh provided a barrier that was at least some protection against it.

  Not much, but some was better than none.

  “Yes,” Derrick said. “As you can imagine, to someone who believes the corpse after death is sacred, using it as raw materials to let another entity wear as a flesh puppet is not very respectful.”

  It didn’t sound like she shared those opinions herself, which I counted as a bit of good luck. Hells knew how I’d deal with both the bishops wanting my head over my past or my nature.

  “Although speaking of necromancy, you have a particur aura about you,” Bishop Derrick said politely. “One I know all too well.”

  Damnations. She could sniff necromancy? I guess when one hunted them, something like that would be handy. Just incredibly inconvenient.

  “In my defense,” I said slowly, “I only intended to visit a very skilled diabolist. The necromancer being there was a coincidence. A practitioner of bones who seems to dislike you a fair bit. Vesper?”

  “Him?” she said. “Oh, he’s practically an old friend at this point. I don’t really care about his little experiments and wanting to feel like the old days are still here. Seizing his books that are banned under Imperial service is honestly just an obligation. So many of my comrades in Zaviel’s service, so obsessed with bones. Important, maybe, but the soul is the most important part of what is left when our ability to function in the mortal realm ends. Once the truly important part is handled, let those who obsess over what’s left py with the bones and meat.”

  I eyed the door Joseph had disappeared behind again. “So you’ve mentioned before. Something you disagree with, I take it?”

  “I think one must draw their lines in the sand where they can afford to,” Derrick said. “We live in an empire where yes, Necromancy is greatly restricted and shackled, partially as a compromise with us. But also where it is legal if you acquire the necessary paperwork. Oh, there will never be a lich allowed to exist, and entire armies of skeletons or legions of specters is out of the question. But say rituals to call up a spirit of the dead from their peaceful rest to ask questions? Say if they were murdered? Perfectly fine and legal. Even if done on a soul that certain people should have known it wouldn’t work on at best, would have ended in catastrophe at worst.”

  She stared at me, the warmth having drained from her eyes as she finished that statement. I considered if I could bme kicking Voltar next time I saw him on thinking it was Tagashin instead.

  “I advised against it,” I said a mite nervously. “Both any genuine attempt and also using it to try and distract from us breaking into Father Reginald’s secret chambers.”

  Technically not breaking and entering since we had a key but I was not going to talk about a technicality against a cleric who’d sin a fucking lich.

  “I’m aware,” she said. “I’m saving my full ire for your employer whenever he arrives.”

  I blinked, wondering which Voltar she meant. Couldn’t really ask since she might not even know the second Voltar existed.

  “Ah, well, I won’t argue he doesn’t deserve it,” I said. He probably knew better than I had. She seemed to settle back down, and after a few seconds I decided to risk a question.

  “It’s an expansive estate,” I noted. “Seems a little big for a bishop’s sary. Whatever that pays.”

  “Syer of the Dead, please,” she said. “I don’t want to tread on Matthew’s sensibilities too much, but I’ll be addressed by my proper title in my own home, please. Also, are you accusing me of graft, Miss Harrow?”

  “No,” I said. “My knowledge of religion can be described as angry people in white robes yelling Halpsus’ verses and occasionally throwing things. For all I know, being ‘Syer of the Dead’ could come with its own manor.”

  “It doesn’t,” she said, gesturing towards all the decor around us. “This is pity.”

  “Pity?” I repeated, idly looking over the room once more. “Pity is more generous than I remember it being.”

  “Well, death has a way of invoking a stronger sense,” Bishop Derrick said, then chuckled. “Sorry, being mysterious. When I ended the Lich Lambert Gressen, I paid for it with my life. Just not as suddenly as he might prefer. I was but a young twenty three when I was the only survivor out of that group, all of my companions besides me, dead, decaying, drained of life or cut down by the weapons of the dead. When he rattled off about me joining them sooner than I expected, I thought it a spiteful procmation from him in his st moments of unlife. When a mere month ter, I’d aged a decade, it was for more clear what he meant. The church has been extremely accommodating ever since then. I’ve killed one of the greatest enemies of our god, a striking down of one of the greatest profanities, and in return I get to slowly rot to my end. No quick and glorious death, just a slow decline that still robs me of years I should have had.”

  She went silent, staring at that picture of what I realized must be a depiction of that moment. Macabre, to keep an eternal reminder of what was surely one’s most glorious moment and when they had been doomed right above one’s firepce. I sipped my tea, not quite willing to break such a silence but as the minutes crept on and she didn’t speak, I finally brought the moment to a close.

  “A curse?” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Liches are powerful, but I imagine if-”

  “They’ve tried,” she said, still staring at the portrait. At herself, about a decade back. “But the most they can do is forestall the worst effects. I still mostly have my full range of motion, my wits, my faculties. Only in the st little stretch will I suffer the truly debilitating effects. But I will die before even what most would consider the halfway point of my life. So, I will be gone with him, although with more of a legacy. He doesn’t have anything besides his pce in history and his books. If any survived.”

  “His books?” I asked, curious despite the fact I’d never practice. Knowing two forbidden and restricted schools of magic seemed an overreach.

  “Gone,” she answered without much emotion behind it. “I kept them for a while, to make sure that they didn’t hide spirits in their pages that might be consumed when cast into the fmes. Some necromancers bind the dead’s souls to their literature, to well, narrate it to them. After? I wanted to see if I could find any hint to undoing my curse. And found nothing, so into the fire they went. Some might have survived, if I missed them when rummaging through his ir.”

  “I can’t compare my current situation to yours,” I admitted. “After we both shuffle off this mortal coil though? Devoted servant to a deity who safeguards the souls of the dead, I imagine your soul will be well kept for.”

  “One would hope,” she said. “Don’t think death is just…another pce after life. Most things I can’t speak to, but it is not just a continuation of life.”

  Hrrm. Well, based on where my soul was going, I thought that was the case. Speaking of.

  “I can’t speak to that,” I said. “I do know what my life after life will be. On the other side. Daver, my Diabolism teacher in the Fme, once spent time in the Hells, searching for someone he knew who’d died and gone over. What he found…well, some might say that the ways we are treated here might be an improvement.”

  I’d never liked Daver’s drunkenness or his tendency to retreat into a bottle. I could never deny what had initially driven him there, not after he’d forced me to peer through a scrying circle at it.

  “It’s a certainty few are afforded,” she agreed. “Maybe not the most pleasant of certainties, but more than most are allowed.”

  I kept that stab of irritation ncing through my stomach to myself. The fact that she kept on trying to phrase it as if I had a gift. As if knowing that my soul would be fodder for some noble devil’s war was something good versus not knowing at all.

  “It is something,” I said, and from the look in her eyes I’d failed to conceal my bitterness. Well, the time for chit-chat was about done with anyway. Time had passed and no one else had come. Either that or the acolyte had been so rude they’d decided to come back ter.

  “No one else here yet,” I noted, looking out the window.

  We were swiftly heading towards evening, the single sun to make an appearance today sinking rapidly towards the artificial horizon of roofs.

  “Indeed,” she said. “Errands must be keeping them long. Why?”

  “I dislike asking people for information they’ll need to repeat multiple times,” I said. That, and not having multiple minds besides my own to pick apart whatever lies might be woven. “We need to talk about this program into diabolism run by the churches.”