I’d forced myself out of that stupor in the coffeehouse eventually, and it was half past one in the afternoon as I strode out the front door.

  Tagashin had parked the carriage a few spaces down, either finding or bullying her way into a space that it just fit into.

  Given the rather anxious look the carriage driver behind kept giving her as he fed his horses, the tter.

  The horses looked well, and I just assumed they’d been taken care of. The water in the trough was at a low level, so perhaps?

  I hesitated as I walked closer to her. She reclined on the driver’s bench, the brim of her top hat pulled over her eyes. You couldn’t tell if she was awake or napping. I doubted the tter.

  I paused by the door to the carriage. My earlier snapping at her repyed in my mind. This should not be weighing on my mind, it was entirely reasonable to be suspicious of anything from a mind as warped and twisted as hers. Besides, it was entirely none of her business. And on top of that, no disguise as a simple servant would be asking their passenger questions like that!

  Okay, I was hardly dressed finely enough for that to matter, but still. The wind whistled, building up from a pleasant breeze to a more blustery force, even more reason to take refuge in the carriage itself.

  With an almost inaudible sigh, I hopped up onto the driver’s bench right next to Tagashin. It creaked under our combined weight, as she shed the illusion of napping as she avoided sliding into me.

  “Surprised you’re up here,” she noted. “Imprompiety of the passenger riding with the lower css driver not going to set off arm bells?”

  “I’m not dressed any better than you,” I said, looking down at myself. Trousers, my knee-length coat, waistcoat, and shirt underneath. Hells, with the top hat, Tagashin might be more fancily dressed than I was.

  We sat there, the tension only building as she refused to say another word or even get us moving. Damnations.

  “What happened earlier,” I said. “I was…rude about it. My apologies for that. I was needlessly blunt.”

  “Apology accepted,” she replied cheerily. “Any other apologies you want to offer as well?”

  “I apologize for criticizing some of your fashion choices,” I said after taking some time to think about it. “It came in handy for drawing that crowd’s attention.”

  She sighed, a long-drawn-out one that brought back memories I did not need with Tagashin slotted into a retive’s pce.

  “Malvia-” she started.

  “My life is my own,” I said firmly, cutting her off. “My personal affairs? Mine and mine alone, and that includes whether or not I discuss them with any of you.”

  “As is your right,” she said. “As is mine to take notice and worry when the most brittle of us starts breaking down and sobbing. Especially when she’s never done that before.”

  I bristled and idly pushed my tail away from fishing for my revolver or a knife.

  “I’m the most ‘brittle’?” I said, tone barely restrained. “Is this where you reveal that you’ve been testing me this entire time, instead of needlessly poking and prodding until I poisoned you?”

  “No,” she replied flippantly. “That doesn’t change the facts. You’re capable of faking pleasantness with people Malvia. I’m sure it grates, especially with that empty shell masquerading as a bishop or that poor boy it’s busy hollowing out, but you’re lucky it’s only me around when asking why you were sobbing gets you throwing around barbs in an attempt to drive them off.”

  “I was not tossing barbs off,” I said, teeth scraping along each other as I almost grinded them against each other. “You can hardly bme me for thinking even sympathy from you would just be the lead-up for another cruel prank or joke. Tell me, which person would you have witness me eating a cow raw next?”

  She gnced my way, took in my expression, and burst into ughter.

  My fists balled as I glowered down at her, my tail wrapped firmly around the mppost so it wouldn’t act on any of the feelings rushing through me as Tagashin got that out of her system.

  “Very amusing,” I hissed. “What, does revisiting that joke make you feel happy? Deciding to careen into my personal life and setting parts alight to amuse you?”

  We were drawing stares now, with Tagashin’s ughing and my seething. Some people were keeping a wary eye on us, probably wondering when the Infernal servant would give in to her base urges and rip her innocent human fellow apart.

  The nails on my fingers pressed further into my skin as I focused every urge I had on not giving into those presumptions.

  Tagashin finally finished ughing, her expression sobering just a little bit.

  “If you think that part was not already being set afme by your own actions before or after, how were you going to hide that from him? Wait until one day he asked why a cow's intestine got in his mouth after you and he enjoyed some private time in a corner?”

  “You’re baiting me,” I accused, forcing my tail to unwind from the mppost before it ripped it off the carriage’s side. “Is this your new bit of fun Tagashin? Instead of pying pranks on me, deliberately try and get me to crack?”

  “I can do both,” she said with a grin that then vanished. “But no, I wasn’t going to. Not until your reaction to someone expressing concern for your well-being was to snap at them. That’s dangerous, especially given what we are.”

  “Yes, because clearly one of us is much more of a pain for our handlers than others,” I said, keeping a wary eye out for anyone nearby. That was the only thing keeping my tone low enough to be a harsh whisper instead of anything louder. “I’m hardly going to take advice from you on being nice.”

  “I’m just prickly,” she said. “They can deal with that, especially when one’s such a unique asset. Diabolists? They have others besides you, they’re sending you to one who's more experienced in learning. Someone who is struggling with something, something where they sh out at anyone who asks about it? You think that is more tolerable to them, Malvia?”

  “I can keep my emotions in check-” I began, only to get interrupted by more ughter.

  “Laughing in my face right when I was starting to like you isn’t doing you any favors,” I muttered as she almost fell off the far side of the carriage. If she had the space, I was sure she’d try rolling along its surface. “Knowing this is bait means I’m not rising to it. Please stop before you draw even more attention to us.”

  “Well,” she said, leaning half off the carriage. “You’ve already decided to just be angry in response to anything I say, maybe with a couple of added apologies to assuage what small pangs might be hitting your head. I might as well just see how far it can go.”

  It figured it was just a game after all.

  “Can we just leave?” I asked. “You’ve had your fun, I’m sure everyone else watching has had their ugh as well. We actually have things to do today.”

  “No one but me was ughing,” she replied.

  “That does not matter,” I hissed. “You baited me. Congratutions. Can we please leave?”

  “You know, is it easier to just slot me into the antagonist role?” Tagashin said instead, agonizingly not just grabbing the reigns. “The moment I’m inconvenient for you? Does it work better than telling him you were a monster?”

  “You’ve been more than inconvenient,” I said, paying no attention to that other nonsense. “Can. We. Leave?”

  “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I don’t suppose anything productive is going to come out of talking further.”

  She maneuvered the carriage out onto the street, and we traveled in silence as I ignored the pain in my hands. I’d bandage where my nails had cut into my palms ter.

  ***

  As we traveled through the streets of Avernon, I increasingly wished that I’d gone inside the carriage.

  Not because of the awkward silence between me and Tagashin, that I could withstand easily. The default between us before now, and probably after.

  No, instead it was everyone else.

  It wasn’t too crowded, most working folks fully in their jobs, and the only traffic was those whose work had taken them there and those who didn’t work. Still enough to clog the street.

  People were staring as we passed, some of them just innocent ones, people noting an Infernal out of the quarter. Younger folks seemed like they hadn’t seen one of my kind before. Probable, even with the w no longer confining us, people found their own ways to keep us settling outside the District.

  Even the ones who openly stared with hatred, who rushed forward to scream “Foulhorn!” or other things about devil-fuckers, those were too few and too fleeting to bother me too much.

  The others though? Those who shied away to the edges of the sidewalk? Who made the signs of Halpsus that made me wince and my skin prickle? Who wasn’t bold enough to make their distaste apparent when I was on a swiftly moving carriage, but I could tell was disturbed by me being here?

  That bothered me. Because that was too many to count.

  I winced again as another sign of Halpsus was made, the itching across my skin intensifying.

  Tagashin raised an eyebrow next to me. “That really bothers you that much? I thought they’d need to be a priest in order to actually have an effect?”

  “Magnitudes of scale,” I muttered, gd to have anything to distract me. Truth be told, I hadn’t been able to break the ice between us. “Halspus is probably the most important deity in this empire, he has probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of adherents, primacy over his pantheon, his very nature is opposed to mine, and his priests have spent decades since Her Most Profane Majesty’s defeat to drive worship and reverence into every part of this city outside the Infernal Quarter. Even someone with little faith invoking his symbol in the city and directing it at an Infernal will make their skin crawl. Actual drawing on his granted powers to cause damage, but making hostility known isn’t that powerful an effect.”

  Tagashin whistled. “Could be worse. Could be your kind finds steel and iron allergic and comes to a city making buildings out of both of them.”

  “This shouldn’t be some comparison of who has it worse,” I replied, wincing as some old crone made the sign at me as we passed. Even worse, she was trying to get her brats, children, or grandchildren, to make the damnable sign as well.

  “Not trying to make it that,” Tagashin said as resisted the urge to scratch at my skin until it bled. “Just noting. Lesser fey in the surrounding wilds have been driven further out over the decades. Everything wild being closer just means easier access for people here. Part of the reason I’m gd I don’t have any roots here. It’s depressing.”

  “Mining and logging?” I guessed as I gave in to temptation, idly scratching my upper arm.

  “Among other things,” Tagashin agreed. “You know how sad it is listening to some water nymphs talk about how they used to swim in that pool of waste you call a river, how it used to be clear to the bottom? Now it’s barely even water and the only things living there are as clogged up with gunk as it is. Forest spirits are trying to flee, they already got a taste of what fighting the loggers would be like. Underground is even worse. Since your queen couldn’t get any mineral wealth out of the dwarves, she’s busy trying to find it anywhere else she can.”

  “A rough deal,” I muttered.

  She snorted. “How would you react if I called what happened with the Infernals a rough deal? You, I think, have a way out. The Fey? Again, I’m gd I don’t have roots here. Some of them don’t want to leave, they’re just waiting to get paved over and have it end.”

  I winced, and this time from no symbol. I knew those types, some of them from the Fme towards the end, some just in general. Who’d decided that nothing would change for the better, only ever for the worst.

  I was trying to think of anything to say in reply when a cart veered into our path, the driver dropping the reigns so he could make Halspus’ sign at me.

  “Fuckin’ lunatic!” Tagashin said as she pulled on her own reins, stopping just short as the cart rumbled past, our own horses rearing back while he veered away, spooked by the near collision.

  “You and her got some gunpowder barrels loaded in your fancy carriage?” the driver yelled at us.

  The traffic took him past before Tagashin could snap back a reply. He was still yelling, but the carriage driver behind yelling at us and him for holding up traffic drowned it out.

  Gunpowder in a carriage could only refer to one thing, and I wish it could be bmed for all of this. But no, it was just the test thing to have riled people up.

  Halspus’ priests had stopped pushing that sentiment when it was made clear Her Majesty’s Government would only tolerate their activities so far. What they’d stirred up though hadn’t dissipated a bit. That final gambit with the explosives? It had seemed more bloody at the time like most explosions did, but people had died. And now the newspapers were circuting the news of these test killings, and sadly they would be the most accurate compared to what the rumor mill must be doing to those events.

  “I think that path out you were talking about is smaller than you believe,” I told Tagashin, and for once she didn’t seem to have a response.

  She clicked her tongue, flicked her reins, and we set off again.

  “This entire empire is turning into one of cast-offs,” she muttered as we continued on our way. We were almost to Howlett’s Square, a major intersection round a monument to Admiral Howlett, the man who’d sunk the Vertarde armada, and from there…well, I guess I hadn’t actually looked at the address yet. But before that.

  “Cast-offs?”

  “You people, the dwarves, the fey. The Kelts since their isnd got taken over. Throw in a few other nds since then. The orc and ogre tribes that got absorbed. About a dozen other groups. Even allied groups like the Elvish tribes of Quilotinue, half of them live in Anglea these days and the rest are so small the Empire could crush them if it wants.”

  “The Queen has an expansionist streak,” I agreed. “I think most of them expected her enlisting them to take down Her Most Profane Majesty meant…being taken off the list. Or at least she would perhaps focus on internal matters for her reign.”

  Instead, she’d been procimed Halpsus’ chosen, and short of being killed didn’t have to worry about time. Ten years after had come the decration of war on the Kelts, citing their use of certain kinds of magic for the many diabolic incursions across the Isles.

  “Very fragile cloth she’s sewn,” Tagashin said. “A dozen different threads being pulled a dozen different ways, fighting her loom every step of the way.”

  “She’s succeeded so far,” I said, gncing the monument’s way as we continued around it. There was a crowd today, someone giving a speech. We weren’t too far off when the King of Vertarde sent his fleet to assist Charlie Fawlkes in Iltennd. Storm and Howlett had ended them all,a nd Vertrade had avoided engaging Anglea ever since. “Where are we going Tagashin?”

  “Street after this next one,” she replied, and I looked ahead. Only one pce that street led, and it was telegraphed by the silver street sign prociming it’s name.

  “Address is in Silver Road?” I asked, getting a confirming nod.

  “You didn’t look?” Tagashin asked teasingly. “Leaving it all on the poor servants to handle besides themselves?”

  “We’ve had enough on our pte recently,” I seethed. “You said you knew where, I didn’t think we’d be going here.”

  Silver Road was one of the oldest districts in Avernon, and before the st four decades considered the beating heart of magical research in Anglea. Noble families and old magic lineages put vast amounts of coin into the research of the arcane, apprentices and schors from all over flocking to see if any of the houses or archmagi would give up any of their secrets. The Ironworks and North Bellings though, with its factories and metallurgy and alchemy were encroaching on it, especially with rumours about enchantments capable of being produced by mundane hands growing louder and louder.

  Silver Road, with its fairy tail castles, stately manors, and old families tracing their lineage back to archmagi, was beginning to be left behind.

  More roads, more streets traveled down, smaller as we went. We got fewer stares now, partially because there were fewer people on the street, partially because there were other things on the street drawing the eye than me. Floating carriages, a couple riding unicorns, some creatures I didn’t even have names for. At least one ettin in a smartly dressed suit escorting a young girl who couldn’t be more than six floating in the air. We eventually came to a halt, and I turned an eye to where we’d ended up.

  When Samuel Voltar mentioned meeting up with Alberta Vesper, I thought he meant something like a cafe, a square, or some public pce to meet and talk. In Silver Road? A fancier than normal one, but still a public space.

  In front of us, a three-story mansion loomed over us. Shorter than most other buildings here, it still manages to be the one that loomed the most. Three stories of grey mixed with bck around the windows, shadows behind those despite it being afternoon still. Rosebushes lined the outside of the manor, and then a yer of gravestones beyond that, before finally the metal spiked fence that denoted the property line.

  “Tombstones?” I muttered before movement on the roof drew my eye upwards.

  It y across the roof, staring down at us zily as its wings shielded it from the sun and its tail zily drifted back and forth. It yawned, massive fangs even rger than the cws already peeking out over the roof’s edge.

  Not even a spirit-possessed statue, that was a living, breathing gargoyle perched atop the manor’s roof.

  Somehow, despite that being the only magical feature I could see, it stood out more than the neighbors, and the tower next door was rotating. Even the sun felt dimmer than it had been a few minutes ago.

  “I think it might be best if you stayed with the carriage,” I said as Tagashin lept down from the driver’s bench.

  “Malvia, always such a killjoy,” she said with a fake pout.

  Killjoy? One of these days I needed to talk to Voltar about if these were actual words or not. This one I could at least understand from the components.

  “Yes,” I said drily. “I am if it means you not poking the evil-looking house.”

  “That seems more like a reason to go with you inside, not less,” she said.

  “I think you going inside would be more dangerous,” I said, matching gazes with the gargoyle again. It theatrically yawned, dispying a set of granite fangs. “I don’t think she’d react well to a powerful fey creature unexpectedly crossing her threshold.”

  Assuming Tagashin even could, as I eyed the fencing. It almost seemed like overkill, the iron spikes topping the fence, but the tips glowed just faintly. I didn’t even need to look on the astral to see it. Warded, and probably to the point anything that was mostly comprised of magic would trigger them. A fey definitely would.

  “Holler twice and I’ll break in to save you?” Tagashin asked.

  I eyed the gargoyle again. “Sure.”

  If I was screaming, I’m pretty sure any diabolist worth their pentagram would keep her out long enough to finish me off. I paused, considering what I was getting myself into.

  So you go to betray me, The Imp whispered melodramatically. Tossing yourself like a piece of meat to the first alternative.

  “Statements like that are why this is happening,” I replied, and got off the carriage, my mind fully made up. I started towards the manor.