“So, you think I have a chance with Alain?”


    Anya walked with Renee through the streets of Parisi. They were just outside the slums, where the city closed into a warren of gloomy alleys, and wore plain clothing Renee had chosen. Even with a large purse, the weasel weaved through the streets as she spoke, navigating between larger animals, mudholes, and refuse with seemingly instinctual ease.


    “As in, romantically?” Anya clumsily dodged out of the way of a large deer, earning a sharp hoof against her flank and a snort of annoyance.


    “No chance there, but what’s a girl to do? Lady Penrose would still fit nicely.” Renee turned to wink, then maneuvered Anya out of the way of a chamber-pot dumped from above.


    “I don’t think I understand.”


    Renee skipped next to Anya and gently lifted one of her ears.


    “I met Alain years ago at a molly-house on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, in the company of a particularly standoffish wolf. Now the wolf is happily married, and Alain is getting to the age where a lack of a wife becomes a liability.”


    “So you would enter a loveless marriage?”


    “For food in my belly, and a firm roof above my head, guaranteed until my dying breath. Seems a fair trade.”


    “And what if you met a man you truly loved?”


    “I’d tell my heart to sod off, and sew until it stopped aching.”


    Some bitter part of Anya wanted to respond that at least Renee had a choice, but she remembered the terror in Annette’s eyes, as her husband lay dying because he lacked a claim-seal. No choice there.


    “I thought species marriages were frowned upon.”


    “They are. But if Yvon can do it, surely his knight can as well. Not like the real gentry wouldn’t be looking down their snouts at me in any case,” Renee replied.


    “Have you broached the idea with Alain?”


    “Working on it. Need to find a way where he doesn’t think I’m trying to blackmail him.”


    They came to an open plaza, its crumbling fountain covered in slime and rotting leaves. There was a reliquary of St. Guenievre on one side, surrounded by hawkers selling saint-icons and questionable remedies.


    “Um, Renee? Does Yvon also…prefer men?” It would explain some things from the single night they had shared.


    Renee laughed, a clear, crystal sound.


    “Hah! No, you should see the sheets the next time and Sofia are done going at it. He is perfectly ambidextrous.”


    The weasel climbed onto the rim of the fountain, stretching her long body to scan the square.


    “Oi! Annette! Over here!”


    Anya’s breath caught as Annette approached them, and she instinctively scanned the rat’s face for the marks of fresh grief. Mercifully, her eyes were bright, and her steps were full of vigor.


    “Renee! Miss Anna, Miss Anna! George was up and walking today! Just a few steps, but still! Oh, Miss Anna, may St. Artimus lay a thousand blessings on your heart!


    Annette embraced Renee, then took Anya’s hands and clasped them inside her own.


    “I did very little. If he lives, it is because his body is strong,” Anya replied.


    “How are the others taking Mirabel’s passing?” Renee asked.


    “Not well.” Annette’s snout drooped. “Bernard says he won’t hold a funeral without the remains, and the we’re at the ends of our tails trying to talk sense into him. Father Levidis told us we aren’t welcome no more either, after your wolf spooked him.”


    “By the saints, I’m sorry.”


    The rat leaned forward.


    “Renee, even before Miri, I didnae trust him. Something was real queer about the man he was with, but he acted like there was nothing odd at all about bringing in a stranger to poke around our…relics. For the other congregants’ sake, I’m glad you’re going to take a look. Just be careful, alright? Don’t need you dying on us too.”


    “I will. I promise.”


    Annette shook herself, and began leading them out of the square. They entered a narrow alley, its sky obscured by dozens of sagging clotheslines.


    “Renee, there’s a wee problem. I can get the two of you into Janusgate, but I don’t know where the church is no more.”


    “It’s fine, we’ll find it. I know how to get around Janusgate.”


    She doesn’t know where it is? Does the priest have a draugr that eats memories?


    They came to a solid steel door built into the end of the alley. It had two horizontal slots, one sized for coins, and the other above it in the shape of a flat book. The top slot opened, and a pair of wary eyes gazed down at them.


    “Good morning, Frederic. My companions mean to enter Janusgate.”


    The person beyond the gate replied with a gruff, weary voice. It was oddly echoed, as if he was much farther away.


    “I know the weasel’s scent, but the rabbit’s far too posh to be from around here. You setting her up at the Convent?”


    “By the saints, no! She means to visit our church.” Annette held up two weathered bronze coins, each bearing a boar’s head on both sides.


    “Another quack? Well, none of my business. Pass ‘em over.”


    Annette inserted the coins in the lower slot, and before Anya could react, the door opened and a cold hand pulled her through. There was an excruciating moment of disorientation, as if her brain was being squished into paste, and she found herself collapsing onto a wooden walkway. She wheeled, and saw that a surly jackal had a firm grip on her neck. With his other hand, he closed the gate behind Renee.


    Anya gasped. She was still in a sort of alley, but the half-timber buildings had been replaced with cancerous masses of of planks and beams, structures jumbled into loose vertical assemblages and linked by vein-like staircases and narrow gangplanks, most of them seemingly recently built. Through the gaps in the walkway below her, she saw a dense web of stilts descending downwards, anchored against a substrate of ruined stoneworks protruding from a seeming lake of murky sludge. The place was lit by flickering lamplight, and the sky above held unfamiliar stars.


    “Deep breaths, dearie,” Renee said, helping Anya up. “Most everyone pukes the first time.”


    “Where…what…”


    “Janusgate! Listen, every city has cracks, right, places that got built a long time ago and now nobody ever thinks about them. Parisi got enough detritus piled up at some point that it congealed together into a whole separate place.”


    “It’s nighttime here.” Anya pressed her knife against her skin through her sleeve, and was relieved to feel Enkidu’s continued presence. If anything, the connection was clearer than usual.


    “Yeah, time gets a little odd when you’re going over the threshold. Sometimes the buildings get reassembled, too - that’s why Annette didn’t know where the church is.” Renee opened her purse and removed a stiletto dagger, placing it in a pocket-sheath hidden by her overskirt.


    “But you think we can find it.”


    “I know someone who can give us directions.”


    “A friend?”


    “Not particularly.”


    As they moved to go, the jackal gave Anya a hostile look.


    “Be careful, rabbit. Nobody’ll fish your corpse out of the water when you fall.”


    Renee nodded to the jackal, and began leading Anya through the maze of walkways. Anya noticed that the intersections all bore strips of colored cloth, arranged vertically in what seemed to be a code. Renee ignored them, following a sequence of signs proclaiming Madame [X]’s Convent and bearing crude drawings of smiling young women. There was something odd about the woman’s name, like an eel that slipped out of Anya’s fingers whenever she tried to grasp it.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    “Grew up here, you know. Mom killed and ate a claimed squirrel, and had to find a place to lie low. Worked great, until consumption got her. Madame [X] ‘adopted’ me after that.”


    The same effect. There was a sound, but Anya couldn’t perceive it.


    “Madame [X]?”


    “Person who’s going to help us out. She’s a magus with a draugr that eats names. Mostly other draugr, but it works a little on people too. So I’m Stitch, and you’re Snowshoe.”


    I know the type. Craven parasites, shunned to the far reaches of Nowhere. I have dealt with them before, and my name is veiled by several layers of antisemiotics.


    Anya thought of the first time she held the knife, and Enkidu had inscribed his name in her mind. He had taught her to write it after that, in both Rusyn and the language from which the name had come, burning the paper each time. Until she could not possibly forget.


    They came to a central square. A squat tower, perhaps once part of Parisi’s walls, rose from its center, and colorful banners were draped across its crumbling stonework. It was a degree or two off-kilter, and Anya saw that the listing side was braced against several tree-trunks.


    They passed through a doorway and into a dim hall done up in done up in a gaudy mockery of a nunnery. The tower’s arrow-slits had been closed off and converted into alcoves, and each held a marble bust of a female saint. Church-benches were arranged around tables covered with altar-cloths, and each held several surprisingly well-dressed men and women. The man were in various states of drunkenness, and the women led them in rowdy parodies of church-songs, occasionally leaning over to attend individual men with kisses or invitations to their bosoms. Along the walls, large men holding truncheons stood at attention.


    “Stitch! St. Magdalena’s bubbies, what are ya doin’ here?” A young mare dressed as a nun approached them.


    “Turnip, I need to see Madame [X]. Can you get me in?”


    The mare sighed.


    “Listen, ya can’t be here. You got out, and you should stay out, ya ken? For the both of our sakes.”


    “It’s for my friend, Annette. Please, it’s important.”


    The mare shifted between her hooves, her brow knit with worry.


    “Alright, alright, your funeral. But don’t ya dare tell the Madame my name.”


    “I know how to deal with her. I won’t.”


    The mare walked away, up a staircase.


    “You…worked here?”


    “Yeah. Stitched clothes until I was old enough to work for real. Hey, don’t give me that look! Madame [X] is a real bitch, but she keeps her girls safe, and I found out I didn’t mind knocking with strangers. Got pretty good at it, too. Course, she had my name, so it wasn’t like I could leave.”


    “But you did leave.”


    “Won it back at cards. Took a little cheating, but she couldn’t figure out how I did it, so she had to keep the deal.”


    A weight began to churn in Anya’s stomach. Looking around, she noticed that almost all the women were grass-eaters, while the men were mostly hunters.


    “And now you’re-”


    “Stitch! You’re up!”


    The mare waved from the staircase, and Renee clutched her pendant, whispering an inaudible prayer.


    They were led down to a basement level, past a series of heavy doors from which faint sounds of exertion could be heard. Eventually, the mare showed them into a steam-filled room with a large stone tub carved into the floor. It was filled with hot water, and flower-petals had been scattered across it. Going by the rings bolted to the wall, the room had once been a jail cell.


    “You can still run. Leave the sorry fates to the rest of us, and don’t look back.”


    “No. I need to do this.”


    The mare shook her head. Anya noticed she had a long claw-scar under one eye.


    “Make yourselves at home. The madame will be along soon.” She left.


    “Guess the Madame’s office is too good for us. Come on, let’s get ready.”


    Renee stripped, and Anya saw that the weasel’s lower neck and shoulders were covered in old scars and bite-marks.


    Not from Yvon. He doesn’t bite hard enough to leave scars.


    “A real mess, isn’t it?” Renee said, noticing Anya’s gaze. “Don’t worry, they haven’t hurt for a long time.”


    Anya stepped into the tub. The water was as hot as a spring on the Black Sea, and Anya felt a pleasant lightness as her fur was lifted away from her skin. There was a shelf inside the tub, and she hid her knife beneath her tail. Renee anxiously brushed at her ears.


    “Renee Vassier. What an unexpected reunion.”


    The door swung open, and a female bear entered, her hulking figure barely contained within a lavish dress in the Gaulish court style. Renee swallowed, and Anya instinctively pressed back against the walls of the tub, legs tensing against the shelf-floor in preparation to leap away. She hid her scar-covered left arm below the waterline.


    “A pleasant one, I hope.”


    “How could it be otherwise, dear? No daughter of mine should feel unwelcome in my home.” The bear’s jowls were pulled taut in a seemingly permanent smile, pushing her relatively tiny eyes into upturned slits, but whatever warmth her face possessed was wholly absent from her words.


    She removed the dress, revealing a voluptuous figure of fat and muscle, and climbed into the tub. Waves splashed up to Anya’s ears.


    Her hands are the size of my head, and her claws are longer than my fingers. One swipe, and not even Enkidu could piece me back together.


    “Come, Renee. Allow me to embrace my wayward daughter.”


    “I would rather we-”


    “Come. Now.”


    A hand went around Renee’s chest, easily reaching around its full circumference, and Renee found herself lifted onto the bear’s wide lap. The bear leaned her head down, idly running her tongue across Renee’s head and neck.


    “I plucked a starving kit from the streets, and fed her from my own table. She grew, and I taught her to sew, and to whore, until she was better at both than any of my other darling daughters. Yet she cheated me, and left me without a single look back. What ever shall I do with her, Renee?” The bear locked Renee beneath her arms, crushing the weasel’s sternum against her chest. Renee tried to speak, but all she could do was gasp for air.


    “My first inclination was to paint the walls with her guts, as a lesson to my darling daughters on the importance of gratitude. But I remembered that I am singularly blessed by providence. If I am so unfortunate as to lose her, it is only because she will return with something of even greater value. And now this beautiful creature lies before me. Fur white as silk, and a body that is exquisitely…vulnerable. We will need to do something about those incisors, but that is a problem easily solved.” The bear looked to Anya, pinpoints of lamplight caught in the dark of her eyes.


    “Mmmmphf.” Renee struggled, but the bear continued grooming the weasel’s fur.


    “You are the consort that recently arrived from Rus, correct? Let’s see, that would make you Vadimivna Vasilyev. Are you Katerina? Ludmila? Anna? Ah, there we are, I can see it in your face. But I imagine you go by Anya. Well met, Anya Vadimivna Vasilyev. Am I correct?”


    “Don’t say yes! She…ack!” Renee spoke up, but could only get a few words out before the bear tightened her grip.


    A cold, suffocating sensation passed through Anya’s mind, like she was being pushed into especially viscous mud. She found herself wanting to reply, wanting to go along with whatever the bear said.


    Careful. Deep breaths, and shake it off.


    “Where are your manners, rabbit? Do I have the right name? A simple ‘yes’ would do.” The bear narrowed her eyes, muscles tensing and bulging under her well-combed fur.


    If she tries something, overload her neurons.


    “SAY IT.”


    The bear tossed Renee away and leaped towards Anya, her maw twisting into a hideous snarl. Anya’s hand found the dagger in an instant, gripping the naked blade with all the force she could muster. The bear’s body twitched violently, and she collapsed just before Anya.


    “What did you do, doxy!?”


    The bear tried to swipe at Anya, but her movements were slow and dull. Her eyes went to the blood-plume blooming from Anya’s hand.


    “Blood arts. I should have guessed. Does your demon hail from the lineage of Koshchei, or perhaps Myslata?”


    Anya felt the pushing-down sensation again, but this time it seemed to pass through her. The bear frowned in disappointment, and seemed to regain her composure.


    Hah. This leech is young, and knows nothing of the old names.


    “All finished? Maybe we could get to, unf, business.” Renee peeled herself off the floor, clutching what looked like a broken arm.


    “Business? Business? You wound me, dear. Perhaps I should pop off that cute little head of yours, and claw out the rot that has taken root.”


    “Your movements are still dulled. Any closer, and my companion will stop your heart. For good, if needed.”


    The bear glared and shuffled away, taking a seat opposite the two of them.


    “If I had not taken you, you would have become worm-food in a Parisi gutter, or worse. Unless you wish the same for every one of my daughters, I suggest you refrain from making threats. Tell me what you want.”


    “There is a church of St. Artimus in Janusgate. I need directions.”


    “The bug-buggerers? I know the way.”


    “I have a hundred livres in my purse.”


    The bear brought a claw to her snout.


    “Tempting, but surely you recall that the desperation of the buyer must always be taken into account. What am I to pry from your thieving hands? Ah, I know. You were once close to the mare called Turnip.”


    Renee bit her lip.


    “She is docile, and has been ‘Turnip’ for long enough that the name gives me some hold on her. Yet my most dedicated clients require a finer touch, and a more precise means of control. Before you left us, she told you her real name, did she not? Answer me, Renee Vassier.”


    “I don’t remember.”


    “Lying ruins the mind, dear. Try again.”


    The bear slowly rose out of the water, until she towered over Renee and Anya. The rabbit felt her heart accelerate


    “I have no time for those who cannot pay. The choice is yours, dear, and the clock is ticking.”


    “Wait,” Anya interjected. She held up her knife, then set it on the edge of tub, within easy reach. “The first letter of my draugr’s name, as it is written in the ancient language of Sumer. In exchange for the directions.”


    “Oh? And how do you plan to offer that? No draugr takes kindly to betrayal.”


    “My draugr and I have a special relationship.”


    Keep your face neutral, and look her in the eye. Breathe in, breathe out.


    On the edge of her vision, Anya saw her knife vibrate of its own accord. Probably threatening to kill her if she went through with it.


    Just give me a second. I haven’t forgotten what you taught me.


    The bear’s face split into a tooth-filled smile.


    “You would hardly be the first to think so, rabbit. All right, you have my attention. On my honor as Evangeline [X], a single letter for directions. Swear by your last name, at least, so I will know if you lie.”


    Anya traced her finger in the air, forming four lines intersecting at a central point.


    “Four lines, thicker at one end if you’re using a carving-tool. It’s pronounced dingir, or something like that. As a Vasilyev, I speak the truth.”


    Another wave of grim coldness, and the bear nodded.


    “Behind the tower, Renee. Red twice, then green, then blue. Look for the bee carved under the doorknob. Now, rabbit, why don’t you pick up the knife. Let us see that special relationship in action.”


    Anya hesitated for a moment, imagining her body exploding in a fountain of blood. No, she knew what she was doing. She picked up the knife.


    Clever girl.


    “…cheat. Cheat! You cheated, didn’t you? I swear, I’ll cut you both open and hang you by your-”


    Enkidu pushed the blood from the bear’s brain, and she fell back with a tremendous thud. She would not wake up for a minute or so.


    Renee looked to the bear, then at Anya in amazement.


    “How?”


    “Dingir just tells you the letters that come after give the name of a draugr or a saint, not a mortal. It’s not part of the sound.”


    “If you say so. Anyways, time to scram?”


    “Looks like it.”