The only thing she remembered vividly of Amaranth from ten years prior was the stench. Fish and spices. Livestock. Slaves. The deep divide between the wealthy and the destitute and their stenches intermingling across the entire port. Perfume mixed in with human waste.


    It had not changed at all. It washed down the cliffs and assaulted her nose before she was even down the gangplank. And this was only the advanced part of the port, the wooden latticework of its piers clinging to the side of the fjord like great barnacles. It was what the wind dragged down from the city proper.


    She and Gheeor joined the press of bodies lining the long wooden pier, walking towards the elevators in the distance. Where Dior had wrestled order out of pure chaos, Amaranth’s piers were simply mad. Animals bellowed and filled the air with the stench of their droppings. Men cursed in every dialect of Vas. Merchants walked flanked by armed guards.


    Catharina stepped aside from such a procession lest she be shoved off into the green waters of the Divide by a merchant herding a group of half-naked women. The temperature close to the water bordered on freezing, even this early in wither.


    “Good to be back on solid ground,” Gheeor said as they rejoined the bustle, leading the way past other ships waiting at anchor. A small army of menials carried off goods to storehouses and great lifts.


    “Debatable on the solid part,” Catharina answered. The wooden pier creaked and swayed underfoot, the water deep enough below to swallow whole ships were they to crash against the rocks. Only the most skilled captains dared docking Amaranth, spurred by the richest merchants delivering every imaginable haul. Most of the others remained out at sea, sending out boats with their loads.


    The Skull and the Lady drew into port as well. She saw their sails furling up and anchors going down as they got close. On schedule, as expected.


    The city itself was accessible by overcrowded lifts where great four-legged beasts spun a wheel to lift the loads. Whips cracked across thick-furred backs. Bellows of protest managed to rise above the crowd’s roar. A great cacophony assaulted the senses as they waited in line at a random platform, being jostled and shoved by the swaying of too many people crammed together.


    How humanity stank compared to the aelir.


    “Little wonder they think you animals,” the god whispered in her ear. Catharina raised her hand as if swatting away a gnat. He retreated without protest, gone away to wherever half-dead gods hid.


    Even the platform swayed as it rose into the air, four thick ropes keeping it attached to the complex system of pulleys needed to accomplish this transfer. Catharina envied Nen their beaches and the slopping shores that allowed cities like Dior to become so plump and rich.


    Staring up at the sharp cliff, she couldn’t help but resent the aelir for damning all humanity to this place. Vas did not invite habitation. It was a violent, unlikable place, all of it made of sharp edges and deadly drops. Humanity had clung to it like a drowning man to any debris left after the storm. They clung on and built their world in a place that hated them.


    Little wonder things had happened as they had so often across history. She would change that.


    Again, she shook her head and tore her eyes away from the looming shape of Amaranth’s twisted architecture, back across the water. Neptas rose high now, its light breaking against the crest of waves, splintering into rainbow hues across the spray.


    “Silver for your thoughts?” Gheeor asked. Across the journey he’d grown fond of the idiom.


    “None. Admiring the view.”


    “And the fresh air?”


    She laughed. If anything, the stench got more and more gagging as they rose higher and the city approached.


    “I have smelled tenday-old corpses with more pleasant fragrances,” she said. “How anyone gets used to this, I cannot imagine.”


    “You get used to a lot when the alternatives are worse.”


    And they were worse, weren’t they? Survive in a city like Amaranth and you’d at least find something to fill your belly and a dry place to lay your head. Go out into the wilderness and you would fill something else’s belly. Vas hated them all equally.


    Too many dark thoughts crowded her mind and she shook them off as they stepped, finally, onto solid stone. Walls rose around them, buildings clinging to the uneven shore, climbing and dipping across the cliffs. She echoed Gheeor’s feeling from earlier: it was good to be back on solid ground.


    They ate a small meal off a vendor plying his trade in a gutter, serving cold meats and hard cheeses from a cart. After, they made their way deeper within as Neptas rose over the cliffs and its heat warmed the cold stone. A wet, searing heat that promised the storm to come. Already, between the gaps in the buildings, Catharina could spy the horizon growing darker by the bell, a sheet of black clouds racing to overtake the sun’s light.


    Others also noticed the encroaching darkness. Shutters were drawn down early, fastened into place with rope or metal nails. The markets were frenzied with activity, as if every merchant aimed to sell their entire stock before the storm crashed into them.


    She took note of the guards standing on every corner, all wearing a motley of colours and types of gear. They were men serving merchants. The higher the station, the shinier the breastplates and keener the edges of their weapons. Polearms, bardiches, spears, and halberds. Swords and axes. Every possible assortment of liveries and an equal amount of weaponry.


    This, she understood well. Amaranth existed in a fragile balance with no real central focus of power. It had always been so. It rarely united under a single banner, and the alliances were ever short-lived and treacherous.


    How to even gain a foothold here? Under what banner would Amaranth come together once and for all? She knew the answer and prepared for the work.


    “No time like the present,” she said beneath her breath, her voice swallowed whole by the ever-present din.


    She didn’t need Gheeor’s guidance towards her target. If she hadn’t memorised the map, she would still have known where the man she sought plied his trade. All she needed to do was follow the sullen trains of harried slaves. Men and women shackled together, marching grimly uphill, made up stinking, despairing processions, impossible to mistake or miss.


    The first head she’d take come the storm was of the flesh seller Mihaal, who led the Holding of the same name. He was one of the most powerful men in Amaranth and, arguably, on Vas itself. She didn’t know him by face, but she didn’t need to. The first thing she couldn’t abide on Vas was the selling of flesh, and it would be the first thing she would cut off the Empi—


    No. As much as the sight of men and women marched to the song of the whip got her gorge rising, she would not get ahead of herself. A foothold. To gain even that, first she would need blood on her hands. First that. Next the rest.


    She reached out and caressed the surface minds of these poor wretches. An overabundance of fear. Uncertainty. Resignation. The future had been beaten and lashed out of them. They walked to terrible fates and none hoped for better. None dared.


    The aelir treated the elends and the vanadals pretty much the same. Catharina had never stomached it. She wouldn’t have stomached a great many things were it not for Yriea tempering and guiding her through the customs of her people. Her friend’s presence had taken the edges off the unsavoury things her people did, had reminded her of what she was there to achieve.


    Unwittingly, Yriea had kept Catharina true to herself. It had been easy to stray from the goals, follow the whispers and get herself lost in the ambitions of a half-dead god. It, t least, had the grace of being quiet now.


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    Yriea was an ocean away, bent now to her own misery, paying a price she needn’t have paid if not for small men thinking themselves grand. Blood boiled in Catharina’s veins thinking at Heinrich and she wished she would’ve done worse to him.


    “If you’ll stare any harder, the guards may take notice,” Gheeor whispered by her ear. “The ones in purple aren’t looking at us friendly-like.”


    There were two of them watching the line shuffling forward into the auction market. One had turned his stare on them. Fury ignited before conscience reacted. Catharina reached out and squeezed the man’s mind until blood erupted from his ears and he collapsed with a whimper. His companion laughed and kicked him, asked if the noon heat was too sharp after a night of drinking. Laughter turned to concern. Then a panic. Then shouts for help.


    Catharina drew a deep breath, exhaled away the effort, and moved on, skirting the bidding to head into higher Amaranth. She mentally chastised herself for lashing out.


    The first wisps of clouds began gathering above, grey as smoke, gathering speed. Soon, the storm.


    Soon, the mission.


    “A bit early for blood on our hands, I think.” Her companion tutted. It was one of Gheeor’s better traits, that he spoke his mind to her. The man was entirely sanguine.


    “None yet,” she answered.


    “That guard would disagree.”


    “He chose his bedding. Served the wrong man, looked at the wrong woman at the wrong time.” She shrugged. “It’s not blood on my hands if this is where his choices led him. Wouldn’t you agree?”


    “That’s grim. Makes all of us victims of circumstance.”


    “After a fashion. Circumstances can be chosen. They can be averted. Raise your voice at the right time and you may send an empire toppling. Keep quiet, and you may be crushed under marching boots.”


    Even as she chastised herself for the lapse of control, it was hard to keep from grinning. Her power quested out. Touched minds. Searched for other channellers. There were some, hidden in the crowds, keeping their heads low, pretending to be only human. Witches and wizards hid well in the crowd, but she could sense their ripples, feel their minds keeping tight leash on their abilities.


    They could be useful. Not now. Not yet. Later. Another part of the plan, one for a later moment, in a different place. It was good to know there were still some that carried the blood.


    Low fishermen homes made way for more opulent buildings as they followed the crowd headed forward. Guarded mansions. Decorations and sculptures began crowding for attention. Down certain roads, the city looked almost to be flourishing if not for the wear of the sea onto the buildings. Markets became richer, clothes better tailored, scents crisper, many streets wider. She even saw carts and palanquins. What wouldn’t change was the underlying stench of rot and fish.


    The wealthy roosted atop, lords of the sea and the river, their homes built to oversee their ships far below. To reach their wealthy abodes, one needed only search for the quiet and follow the widest roads. All the power of Amaranth clustered together in a single district, each home trying to out-lavish the next.


    Mihaal’s home was a two-storied monster of a mansion that looked like it could fit several generations under one roof. It was corralled by high fences of wrought iron twisted into leaves and flowers, hiding a garden of potted plants that she recognized from the forests of Nen. It must have cost a fortune to have had them brought over across the Divide.


    Servants bustled about the garden, covering the plants and tying their pots to iron rails in the ground. Already the midday light had dimmed as the sky ahead turned the dull colour of lead. Wind rattled shingles and storm shutters. A chill cut through sodden cloaks. Children playing were ushered indoors.


    To the side, towards the other part of the city, a large annex overlooked the mansion, built just outside the gardened area. Ugly, squat, and narrow, this was where Mihaal housed his complement of guards. They’d passed several similar buildings on the way up, each of them keeping the peace over some store, auction house, or simple slave prison.


    “Who’re you?” the guard at the gate asked.


    “I’m here to see your captain,” Catharina answered, tightening her cloak about her. The first drops of rain sizzled on the cobbles.


    “He ain’t seeing none t’day,” the guard answered. He was a young man, barely budding into manhood, given a weapon and a post, and decided to wield them for all their worth.


    “We were sent to him,” she went on. “Heard you were looking for… help.” A smile flashed at the man went straight past his attention.


    The youth scratched his patchy cheek and looked up at Gheeor as he loomed. Catharina had him wearing a large sword at his waist and a shield on his back, half-hidden by the cloak.


    “We don’t take serving wenches,” the boy said. “You need t’ask at the servants’ house. Down th’ road. Next t’ Golle’s Fresh Fish. Can’t miss it.”


    He took another look at Gheeor, down and up, and scratched his other cheek. Boy was likely to give himself an infection.


    “I’m not here to be a serving girl. Not the kind you’re thinking of.”


    “Oh.” A grin spread across his pock-marked face. “You could’ve said so. He your guard? He’ll need to wait outside.”


    She smiled at him and encouraged the scratching with a mental prod. Petty, but he deserved it. “Sure. He can come out of the rain, I hope.”


    “Aye. He can wait there, under the eaves. Captain’s up the stairs on the right. Knock or he’ll have my hide.”


    Such a nasty little storm kicked off across the boy’s thoughts. He’d want a turn once the Captain was done. There was quite a knot of longing there, and indignant outrage. His thoughts screamed with a thousand frustrations. Poor thing.


    She nodded to Gheeor and he squeezed himself in the narrow space, out of the rain, as she tightened her cloak and climbed the rickety wooden stairs. She heard the boy asking, “So which of the brothels sent her over? Thought th’ matrons refused sending any of th’ girls after last time.”


    Rain began falling in earnest. She distinctly heard a dull thud and splash just before she opened the door to the Captain’s office.


    The man was obese. He was seated behind a large, overladen blackwood desk, chewing on the end of a pipe. Smoke hung thick in the narrow room. Red-rimmed eyes turned to her as she closed the door, a raised eyebrow predicting the question to come.


    Captain whatever-his-name dropped the pipe before he could utter a word. Catharina had his mind in hand a heartbeat later. It was barely an effort.


    “Where is your master?” she asked as she approached, pulling back the cloak’s sodden hood. “I have business with him.”


    Like a scalpel, her power cut through his protests, his curiosity, and his defiance. It was insultingly simple. Such a man entrusted with the protection of the filthiest swine in Amaranth, and she had to dirty her hands on him. It sent her eye twitching.


    “He’s in the house,” the captain said haltingly. “Upstairs floor. First door. On right.”


    “How many men guard him?” She circled the table and cast an eye at the paperwork on display. Bribes. Shipments. Nothing of interest for her right in the moment.


    “Five,” he answered.


    “Where?” Sifting through the mess revealed nothing of interest.


    The door opened and for a moment the storm screamed inside. Gheeor squeezed through the narrow passage, hair dishevelled and wild, clothes soaked through.


    “Right pisser out there,” he complained.


    “Hid the body?”


    “No need. Rain’s thick enough to do it for us. Lad decided to sleep through the bad weather.”


    She sniffed in annoyance. It would do for now.


    “Where are the men, captain?” Another push and something gave way in the man’s skull. Some memory unravelled. It began dawning on him that this would only end one way and Catharina had to restrain him from bawling. A stench of fresh piss competed with the bitter remnants of cheap tobacco.


    “Four. In the lower house. One with him. My-my-my… my… best.”


    “And how many here?” She gave up on finding anything of use in this pigsty of an office. Instead she pulled the captain’s chair along with him and turned it around so she could see the fear in the man’s piggish eyes.


    Choose the wrong circumstance in life. Face the results.


    “Ten.” His eyes darted to the door, wide in terror. “Nine,” he corrected. Fat beads of sweat ran down his forehead to be blinked away. “Please…”


    Gheeor drew his sword and Catharina drew a step back. The captain’s head split like ripe fruit fallen off the tall branches of the Olden. Blood made a soft squelching noise as her executioner drew out his sword from the ruin it’d wrought.


    “Eight men, Gheeor. A decent challenge to begin with, wouldn’t you say?” Pascal’s sources had been reliable enough it seemed, putting the count in a similar area. But much could change in nearly two seasons.


    Lightning lit up the darkness outside, followed immediately by the thick rumble of thunder. Catharina allowed herself a smile and drew in illum properly. Her homeland’s ethereal blood flooded her vein with strength, stung with the hidden violence of Amaranth, and sang for what was to come.


    At last, after so long, she could use the other side of her power. She sheathed the scalpel, and readied the sword.