A stiff wind blows rain-heavy clouds across the sky.  Intermittent gaps allow the stars and moon only brief opportunity to shine down upon the palace courtyard below.  Esmeree slips through the trees and statues, following the familiar paths through the shrubbery.  She stops and crouches by the fountain at the center of the gardens, grateful to set down her heavy bag for a little while.

White statuettes of naked children stand on the fountain’s edge, offering themselves in suggestive manners.  Water streams from their penises and vaginas, spraying into the faces and mouths of their playmates in the pool.  All of them are permanently frozen in inappropriate, erotic joy.

Across the gardens, sellâria gather and gossip beneath a pavilion of imported marble.  Their dresses and jewelry shining in the gaslight, the girls are like delicate flowers precisely arranged in a vase.  Their laughter and voices carry in the cold breeze like bells.

From her hiding place by the fountain, Esmeree watches them with disgust until they part to meet their arriving patrons.  How could she have wanted such an existence?  Ironic that it took a man like Jacobus to show her emptiness of a life as a sellâria.

The party is just beginning.  As the garden clears of the last sellâria, Esmeree summons.  Her newest spell shrouds her body, blanding her face, bleaching all detail from her clothes and person.  It won’t make her invisible—such a feat is still beyond her skills—but she hopes it will make her so unremarkable no one will take notice of her.  Her spell complete, she checks her scimitar, picks up her bag, and makes her way into the palace.

Esmeree carefully scouts the fringes of the party, keeping to the secret passages and little-used galleries.  She knows these rooms intimately and navigates through the palace unerringly.

Her spell works well.  Sellâria and patrons—even people she knows and has slept with—ignore her as she glides by.  In the courts of the Seven Kingdoms, wellborns are taught to ignore slugs and servants unless something was needed from them.  Esmeree keeps herself looking busy and avoids eye-contact.  It seems, she will only need to take care to avoid the guards and other servants, especially Polaris.

She checks each of Jacobus’s favorite haunts, but the Viscount is nowhere to be found.  She finds Schliem catering to a group of sellâria and trying diligently to recruit other patrons for service in his Court of Love.  His eyes meet hers briefly, but they quickly glaze over and he returns to his mistresses.  Esmeree slips out of the room quickly.

Taking cover in an empty foyer, she wonders what to do next.  Is there some way the Viscount knew she was coming?  Could the Lady have told him?  Esmeree shakes her head.  Certainly it is possible, though she deeply hopes against it.

Besides, there is one last place for her to check.

A naked boy lays barely conscious on the floor, the product of Jacobus’s violations still running down the inside of his leg.  Esmeree slips into the room and closes the door.  She is nearly silent, but the filthy old man still stirs in his opulent bed.  Sensing danger, he sits up with a drunken gasp and peers blearily at her.

She lets her spell drop, and his bay-sotted eyes focus on her at last.  His eyes widen.  “The fucking witch,” he whispers.  His face creases into a mask of rage.  “The FUCKING WITCH!”

Her Hammer lashes out, smacking the Viscount on the forehead.  The old man rocks backwards and disappears temporarily within his overstuffed bedding.  Rising weakly, he watches her with frightened eyes as she drops her bag with a wet plop and kneels by the boy.  Checking his eyes and mouth, she finds flecks of green bay lodged between his teeth.  He is near death from overdose.

With a sigh, Esmeree rises and looks around the room.  This will serve perfectly.

“What are you doing here?” the Viscount whimpers.

She looks at him as she draws her scimitar.  “What’s his name?”

“What?”

She nods down at the boy.  “You ard-vitchoor monster!” she spits, “What’s his name?”

The Viscount blinks, a swollen bruise slowly growing where her Hammer struck.  “I— I don’t know…”

“You poison him with bay.  You fuck him up the ass.  And you don’t even know his name?”

“Nadir,” he says suddenly.  “Nadir, I think.”

Esmeree looks down at the dying boy.  “Nadir?” she calls.  The boy shudders but doesn’t respond.

“Nadir?” she asks gently, “Please look at me.”

He moans and rolls his eyes up at her.  His face, hands, and feet are growing discolored.  Soon, the pain will come.  “Nadir,” she says, “You must sit up.  It will be OK.  I promise.”

With shuddering, twig-like arms, he pushes his body up from the floor.  He looks at her with pleading eyes, and she smiles.  With a glance at Jacobus, she swings her blade.

The boy’s head rolls across the floor with the hollow sound of a ripened melon.  Blood fountains everywhere, but an automatic summoning from her ember keeps any from getting on her.

Jacobus gasps in drunken horror and clutches at his bed sheets.  “What you’ve done!” he howls.  “What you’ve done!  And you call me a monster?”

The boy’s finger twitches vacantly against her ankle.  She turns slowly, bloody scimitar in hand, and regards the terrified Viscount coldly.

Anger burns in her blood.  She can feel it surge through her body with each heartbeat.  She can feel it ooze through her skin and soak through her clothes.  First one tiny purple tongue, and then another, flickers in the dim light of the bedroom, but soon her whole body surges in a dark inferno.  Jacobus scrambles away, kicking up sheets and pillows, and cowers against his headboard.

“What I’ve done,” she hisses quietly, “is end the pain of yet another innocent.  Pain?  Oh yes, pain.”  She steps closer, her flames rustling the drapes hanging from the bed’s canopy.  “You see, I’ve seen what happens when someone overdoses on bay… and I suspect you have too…”

Her eyes narrow as she glares at him.  At first, he trembles beneath that stare, but then borne by the courage of the intoxicated, he straightens and glares back.  “You bitch!” he screams.  “You horrible bitch!  You UNGRATEFUL horrible bitch!”

Turning to the door, he barks, “Polaris!  Schliem!  Help m—”

With a snarl, Esmeree turns and extends one blazing hand.  A stream of fire lances down to the floor, curling the rug and blistering the wood beneath.  Jacobus lapses into timid silence as he watches her draw a circle around the cooling body of the boy.  She works carefully, following her ember’s directions when adding the necessary eldritch designs and runes.

She scores three circles in all into the floor:  one for the boy, another large one by the bed, and a smaller one between.

At last, something clicks within the Viscount’s bay and terror drunken mind.  Even as she finishes her last circle, he leaps from his bed with a cry and lunges naked for a trunk in a nearby corner.  Esmeree pays him no mind as he shuffles through its contents, eventually emerging triumphantly with a small wooden charm clutched in one hand.  With a sneer of loathing, he charges her.

With a gesture, her Hammer lashes out.  With a crack like the snapping of a tree limb, Jacobus’s knee shatters.  He howls as he tumbles to the floor, but arm out-stretched, he keeps crawling towards her.  The ruination of his other knee leaves him moaning on the floor.

Her circles finished, Esmeree’s flames shrink and eventually flicker out.  She opens her bag and dumps out its contents.  The mass of flesh and fat lands bloodily on the floor.  She smiles at the Viscount—though he is in no condition to appreciate her joke—and summons again.  With a shudder, Deacon Mummenschanz’s skin rises and begins to take shape.

“What are you doing, Esmeree?”

She looks at the Viscount.  Whether it is from the pain or the fear, he finally sounds as though he’s sobering up.  “I’m preparing a scene for you, my dear Viscount,” she says.  As the gory skin prances across the floor, she locates the boy’s head and gently kicks it into the small center circle with her toe.  “But everything has to be perfect.”

He moans and tries to rise, but the pain in his knees must be agonizing.  He collapses in a shuddering heap and vomits.

With a gesture, the tapestries hanging on the wall over the boy’s circle tear away and pile in one corner.  The skin skips through the air to take their place.  Snapping into the frames, it hangs like a grotesque crucified rag doll.

Jacobus groans, pawing at his dropped talisman.  Looking at him, she wonders if he’s capable of throwing it at her.  She decides to not bother finding out and uses her stone to pluck it easily from the floor.  Keeping it hovering in the air at a safe distance, she considers what to do with it.  Looking up at the Deacon’s skin, a smile spreads across her face.  Ah yes, the Deacon was a sorcerer, wasn’t he?  What more suitable restraints for a sorcerer?  She points, and the talisman floats over to Mummenschanz and drapes its cord around his neck.

How delicious.

“No,” Jacobus mumbles in his pool of bay and alcohol vomit.  “This won’t work.  They’ll know it was you.  They’ll come for the Mill, and everyone there will die.”

She walks over and looks down at him.  “It’s all in the presentation, my lord,” she says brightly.  “Attention to detail is everything, right?  Trust me!”

She points at the skin.  “The skin of our dear Inquisitor, who was last seen with the accused witch in the prison.  But now she’s gone!  Oh dear!  How could she have escaped?  Did she have outside help?”

She points at the boy’s headless body in the circle beneath the skin.  “The demon’s vessel.  The body of an innocent child.  Remove the head so the possessing demon cannot cast or speak but merely do your bidding.  How clever of you!  Imagine the Deacon’s surprise when a headless naked boy arrived to tear off his skin!”

She points at the small circle at the center of the room.  “Here are the gifts for the demon.  Rewards for a job well done.  What better prize than the very head you denied it?”  She looks pensive.  “But what else?  There must be a personal sacrifice.  Something important.  Demons don’t like working for people who invoke them on a whim…”

Making a fist, she pulls at the air, and with a scream, Robertus’s genitals tear away from his body.  Esmeree shakes her head sadly as the Viscount howls.  “This won’t do,” she sighs as the calliacus join the boy’s head in the small center circle.  “Eventually, all this noise will attract attention.”

She summons a minor healing spell, and the Viscount’s pain is eased, the hemorrhagic bleeding slows and then stops.  He shudders on the floor, descending into shock.  Grabbing him beneath the shoulders, she drags him into the second large circle by his bed.  “This,” she says conversationally, “is where the focus of the ritual—the necromancer—would kneel.”

Grabbing an ankle and a thigh, she forces one of his ruined knees to bend.  Though his pain is numbed, he twitches reflexively as shards of broken bone and cartilage pierce his thin skin.  She administers similar treatment to the other leg, and when finished, she sets him upright in a proper kneeling position.  She summons her healing spell and casts it upon his knees.  As it did for Squirrel’s back, the bones of the joints fuse.  Jacobus will be going nowhere any time soon… if ever.

She steps back to admire her work.  The demonologist kneels within the protection of one circle, the focus and vessel for the demon lay in the second, and in the small circle between, personal sacrifices from both parties to cement the deal.

There is sudden pounding at the bedroom door, and in a flash, Esmeree’s ember locks it.  Quickly, the pounding and shouts become more frantic, and the door rattles in its hinges.  It won’t hold for long, but Esmeree is nearly finished anyway.

Mustering the last of his strength, Jacobus tries to scream for help.  Without warning, his tongue tears from his mouth.  Esmeree watches with surprise as the pulpy muscle traverses the room and joins the other offerings in the center circle.

She didn’t mean for that to happen.  It was something her homunculus did on its own.

Perhaps she’ll need to have a talk with it when this is all over.

Jacobus vomits copious amounts of blood, and his eyes glaze as she bends over him.  “There are many things that I think you deserve, old man.  I regret I can do only one of them to you.”

She gestures around the room, “However, I have learned that I have neither the talent nor the inclination for judgement.”  She looks towards the door.  “Rather,” she says quietly, “I’ve found there are other people who would relish the opportunity.”

Turning away, she picks up her scimitar and walks to the door.  “So, I’ll leave you, accused practitioner of circle magic and worshipper of demons, and let the Inquisition decide the condition of your soul.”

Standing to one side, she releases the door as she summons her spell.  It bursts open, and servants and patrons rush in, weapons in hand.  Several scream in horror at the sight before them.  Some of the more level-headed recognize what they see and restrain the others from helping the Viscount.  No, not until the Church can be summoned.

No one notices the servant girl that flees the scene in terror.

Esmeree lifts the lock on the gate and eases it open.  Her old room is dark, but its topography is familiar.

The night is late—the party ruined—but the palace still reels from this evening’s events.  Officially, no one can believe the rumors of what the Medianists found in Jacobus’s bedroom, though there are some who whisper to the contrary.

Now, scant hours before dawn, the palace slumbers uneasily.  Hallways are thick with weary, irritable Templars, but they were easy to avoid.

Standing in this familiar space, Esmeree closes her eyes and listens.  She can hear the soft breathing of her three handmaids across the room.  She pauses before moving on and listens again.  There’s a fourth person sleeping in the room too!

Quietly approaching her bed, she peers through the curtains.  A small girl sleeps in the soft folds of its linens.  A quick spell confirms Esmeree’s worst fears.  The girl is a sorcerer.

Young as she is—and as tiny as her stone is—it seems the Viscount was planning to repeat his successes with Esmeree.  She shakes her head.  This is unacceptable.

Stalking across the room, she waves her hand, and the lamps of the room burst to life.  Her three handmaids moan in surprise as she kicks their beds.  Drwg gasps when she finally recognizes Esmeree.  “My lady!  We thought— we were told…”

Esmeree points towards the little girl in the bed.  “Who is she?  Where did she come from?”

Drwg stammers, “We had no idea!  My lord brought her after you didn’t return with the cing!”

“Who is she?” Esmeree repeats.

“My name is Iall,” the girl mumbles, rising from her bed and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.  “It means ‘sunshine’ in Brackish!”

Esmeree is momentarily stunned.  Slowly, she smiles.  “Yes, I know.  That’s a pretty name.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Esmeree.  I used to work for the Viscount too.”

Tired as she is, the little girl brightens.  “You were his magic helper too?”

Esmeree smile turns into a grimace as she looks back at Drwg.  “You, me, that inigena, we have to get out of here.  Tonight.  Do you understand?  This place isn’t safe anymore.  Get her and yourselves ready to leave now!”

Drwg nods silently.  She doesn’t question her mistress.  Without prompting, she snaps her fingers at her sisters, and they immediately leap to the business of packing possessions.

Esmeree crouches by the girl’s bed and looks her over.  She is a simple-looking child—a typical fry of maybe 8 years—with brown hair and large eyes.  She’s not Brackish, though she might have Brackish blood.  “Where are you from, Iall?”

“Sir Schliem bought me from some Chroani,” she says solemnly.  “I used to live in Or-Knit before monsters came and ate my parents.”

“Monsters?” Esmeree asks, surprised by the concept.

Iall nods sadly.  “That’s what the Chroani said.  They said the monsters came and ate my parents and they would have to take me away otherwise the monsters would eat me too!”

“Iall,” Esmeree asks carefully, “Can you do tricks?  Can you do things no one else can do?”

The girl nods enthusiastically.  “Yes!  The Chroani liked my tricks!  Want to see one?”

“Not right now,” Esmeree mutters as she stands.  She suspects the monsters didn’t arrive in Or-Knit until after the Chroani saw Iall’s sorcery.

Drwg clutches at Esmeree’s clothes.  “After you left with cing Hiisi the last time, we heard Jacobus talking as if you were dead!  We feared what could have happened to you!”

Esmeree nods at Iall.  “Drwg,” she says carefully, “Has she… has Jacobus…”

Drwg shakes her head vehemently.  “No, I don’t think anyone has taken her maidenhead.”

“Thank Kahedin.  By the Ice,” sighs Esmeree.

“By the Fire.”

Gwæth and Gwaethaf Oll hustle over and drop two bulging bags next to Esmeree.  She frowns as she looks down at them.  “They’re your clothes too, my lady,” Drwg explains.

Esmeree blinks up at the maid.  “Thank you.”

Drwg grimaces.  “You were always a good lady to us.  I’m happy to see that you’re still alive.”

Esmeree smiles.  Yes, thank God for the small things.

As she rises, Drwg tentatively touches her shoulder.  As Esmeree turns, the maid presses a heavy leather bag into her hands.  “This is your money, Esmeree.  We kept a close eye on it, though Schliem tried real hard to find it.  We had to take a little bit and hide it someplace where he’d find it—just so he’d stop looking, you see—but the rest of it is all there.”

Esmeree is speechless.  Opening the bag, she finds all the silver and gold Guilders she’d been collecting and earning as sellâria and sorcerer hunter.  Truth be told, she’s never seen it all in one place before.  She never imagined she’d own this much in her whole life!

She never imagined these girls would have kept it only to give it back to her.

Esmeree caresses her maid’s cheek.  “Things will be happening here, Drwg.  The Inquisition will be coming, and I don’t think anyone here is safe.  Especially those not of EroBernac blood, understand?”

Drwg steps forward, her eyes glistening.  “Is it true what we heard?  About Jacobus?”

Esmeree hesitates and then nods.

“It was your doing, wasn’t it?” Drwg asks, but when Esmeree refuses to confirm, the maid smiles and nods understandingly.  “You have no idea how many times he’s threatened to take our tongues.  The things he’s done… the things I’ve endured, to protect my sisters from his interests.”  She looks directly into Esmeree’s eyes.  “Whoever it was that did that thing to him, we are forever grateful to her.”

Esmeree smiles and embraces her.  “Thank you,” she whispers into Drwg’s ear.  “but you have to go.  You and you sisters must leave with me!”

Esmeree crouches down by Iall again and takes her hands.  “Iall, sweetheart,” she says softly.  “Iall, I have to take you away from here.”

Iall frowns, obviously not thrilled by the idea of getting out of bed at this hour.  “Why?”

“There are bad people coming here—monsters,” she corrects, “and they’ll eat us if they find us here.”  She looks up at Drwg.  “They’ve already eaten Viscount Robertus.”

Iall retreats slightly into her bed.  “I don’t want to be eaten.”

“No, of course not,” Esmeree assures as she picks the girl up.  “And I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.  Jacobus asked me to take good care of you, and that’s just what I’m going to do.”

Giving Iall her leather bag, Esmeree fishes through it with one hand and extracts six silver Guilders.  She wants to give her handmaids more, but to do so would only invite them being robbed and probably killed.  “These are for you,” she says, pressing the coins into Drwg’s hands.  “Use them, and get out of Cliffs Reach.  Find someplace safe.”  She smiles, “Find yourselves some good donioses with long beards.  Men who won’t cut out your tongues.”

Drwg laughs as she gathers her sisters.  They are poor servants—barely more than slugs—and it has hardly taken any time at all for them to collect their few possessions.  Each of the handmaids tearfully embraces Esmeree, and then the five of them slip out of their room.

“Where are we going to go?” Iall whispers in Esmeree’s ear.

“You’ll see,” Esmeree promises.

As they rush through the Viscount’s gardens, Esmeree screams when a hand suddenly closes on her shoulder and jerks her to a stop.  The cold metal of a pistol’s muzzle presses against the back of her neck, and she hears the click of a doghead. “Esmeree,” Schliem says from behind her.  “You shouldn’t have stayed.”

“Schliem?” she stammers.  “How did you know—”

“What?  You didn’t think I recognized you earlier at the party?  Bad form, girl.”

Her three handmaids stand in mute shock, and Esmeree slowly lets her young ward slide to the ground.  Esmeree waves them away.  “Go!” she commands.  “He only wants me.”

She can almost feel Schliem’s smile.  “Yesss,” he drawls.  “The bitches can go.  I really don’t care what they do.”

Slowly, Drwg reaches to take Iall’s hand, but Schliem hisses and presses the gun harder against Esmeree’s neck.  “No, the little witch stays too.”

“Please let her go,” Esmeree pleads.

“No.”

Esmeree nods briefly, and the handmaids scurry away.  Drwg hesitates before leaving.  “Be well, Esmeree,” is all she says.

Esmeree and Schliem stand motionless together for some time, with Iall watching a couple steps away.  The courtier seems to enjoy her close presence.

“I always liked you, Esmeree,” he mutters.  “I remember that first night… in the alley…  Verole had all the fun.”

Esmeree struggles to think of a spell she could cast.  There are several available to her, but most require some kind of direct eyesight.  She isn’t really sure where Schliem is, exactly.  She might summon her Hammer, only to graze him or miss him completely.  Should that happen, he would certainly shoot her.

“What happens now?” Esmeree finally asks.

“We wait,” he hisses in her ear.  “At dawn, the Inquisitors arrive.  At dawn, I will turn over the foul succubus that seduced our lord and her evil offspring.”

“But why would you do this?” Esmeree asks, shocked.  While she knew Schliem had consorted with the likes of Verole and Hiisi—and knew him as a scoundrel—she never imagined he would betray her in such a way.

Schliem chuckles.  “You do such things to our dear Viscount, and you have to ask?  Oh, ho!  Certainly your capture will free poor old Jacobus.”

“Oh, yes,” Polaris adds suddenly, “And surely protect your hide from the Inquisition.”

Esmeree swallows as the stern seneschal stalks up to them.

“Now, Polaris,” Schliem warns.  “Let’s not confuse the issues, right?”

His voice sounds worried, and she feels the muzzle of his gun waver slightly against her skin.

“Oh, no,” Polaris agrees, raising his eyebrows, “Let’s not.  Piously capturing two suspected witches will most assuredly protect you from Inquisition scrutiny.  And a good thing, too.  I fear, digging too deeply into your past might raise some troubling questions.”

“Shut up!” Schliem shouts.

Esmeree feels the gun move again, and it is all the opportunity she needs.  Spinning away from the muzzle, she swings her bag of money upwards.  The heavy bag catches Schliem beneath his jaw, snapping his head backwards and sending him sprawling to the ground.  The gun discharges uselessly into the air.

Not hesitating, she draws her scimitar and presses its tip against the courtier’s belly.

“Oh, fuck,” Schliem groans, nursing his jaw.

Esmeree quickly takes stock of the situation around her.  Polaris hasn’t moved, though Iall has run to his side.  It seems Polaris has a certain affinity for sorceresses in the Viscount’s employ.

“What did you mean by that, servant?” she demands, struggling to keep an eye on both him and Schliem.  “What did you mean?  Speak!”

Polaris approaches and lays a hand on her shoulder.  “Esmeree,” he says, looking down at Schliem, “Most certainly, you know now the methods of the Inquisition.  With the Viscount accused of witchcraft, no one in this household is safe.  Everyone will have an Inquiry, most will suffer an ordeal, and some may die.”  He nods down at Schliem.  “This is our friend’s concern.  He simply sought an easy escape from that fate.”

Esmeree looks down at the prone mercenary.  Would killing him now be a kindness?

“Polaris,” she sighs.  “Tell me one thing.”

“What is it?”

“Two people testified against me to the Inquisition.  One was the Viscount.  Who was the other?”

Polaris hesitates, and the two men’s eyes meet.  At last, Schliem looks away.  “It was me,” the courtier says.  “Not that the Viscount gave me much choice.”  He smiles up at Esmeree.  “You remember how he was…”

She stares down at him for a long time.  By whose world should she judge him?  God’s?  Andelliza’s?  The Viscount’s?

“Esmeree,” Polaris says tentatively, shaking her shoulder once.  “You can’t stay here much longer.  You have to leave.”

Iall gently laces her fingers into Esmeree’s free hand.  “Please, Lady Esmeree, please don’t hurt Sir Schliem.”

“Yeah,” the rogue grins, “Please don’t hurt Sir Schliem.”

Esmeree grinds her teeth.  The vitchoor courtier certainly can be charming when he wants to be.  Finally making up her mind, she sheathes her scimitar and gives Schliem a swift kick.  “I leave you to your fate, walking-dog, whether it be in the hands of the Inquisition or on the blade of some jealous husband in some distant land.”

Schliem hesitates and then grins broadly.  Leaping to his feet, he scampers away.

Before she realizes it, Polaris has pressed her bags into her arms.  “You need to leave.”

She stops in surprise.  “No!  You’ve got to come too!”

Polaris shakes his head.  “I was the Viscount’s seneschal, the head of his household.  I am a foreigner and a pagan.  The Inquisition would no more allow me to go free than they would you or Iall.  No place in the Seven Kingdoms would be safe for me—”

“Then come with me!” Esmeree says urgently.  “We’ll find a safe place together!”

He shakes his head sadly.  “I’m too old and tired to live as a fugitive, child.  Besides, perhaps my testimony can buy some time for you.  Or at least cover your escape.”

“No!” she says.  “We can’t leave you to them!  We—”

“Listen to me!” Polaris snaps.  He takes her arms and looks into her eyes.  “It is too late for me.  I have thought this through, and I have made my decision.  I have already taken the slow poison, as is the custom of my people.  I have, maybe, 4 hours left.  If I am to suffer, I assure you, I will not suffer for long, but perhaps I can do some good before I die.”

Esmeree stares at him in mute shock.  He looks up through the garden’s trees at the sky.  Already, their leaves have begun to turn.  “It is nearly dawn.  The Templars will be arriving soon.  You have to go.  You have to go now.”

Taking up her bags and the little sorceress, Esmeree flees the palace.