Two hours later, nearly everyone had left. Amaranth was tucked into the back office to rest, all of the discussions and the scratching of pen to paper, the pacing and the scraping of the chair on the floor giving her a headache. Or maybe it was just the discussions. An hour and a half of testimony and another fifteen or twenty minutes of debating how best to use the information. The adjuticator would take it to the Trade Minister, they decided. As a gesture of good faith. There wasn't anything in that they couldn't top eventually, if this worked out. It was just that they'd gotten something concrete a little sooner than anyone had expected. And it didn't hurt to show results quickly.

And now everyone was taking a break and trying to relieve the stress and tension the best way they knew how and Amaranth was huddled on a pallet in the corner, rubbing her temples. One of the women, the one Spider called Little Petal, knelt next to her with a cup of honeymilk.

"Don't you ever get ..." Tired of working for him, was the first thing that came to mind. Or maybe, tired of serving. "When did you come to work for Spider?"

The woman didn't answer her. Didn't even look at her, though that was more to the fact that she was now busy going through stacks and stacks of notebooks more than actively avoiding her gaze. It was as though Little Petal just didn't hear her. Or didn't want to hear her.

"Why did you come to work for Spider?" she asked, figuring she might as well be ignored for an audacious question as for a mild one. And as expected, Little Petal didn't respond.

"Did he give you that name or did you have it yourself?"

That, of all things, got a smile from her. A very small and fleeting one, but still a smile. "He did." And then, after a moment, lifting her head in thought. "I didn't like my name."

And that could mean any one of half a dozen things, all of them confusing. Did she not like it simply because it didn't sound good? Because it was associated with some great tragedy or atrocity? Because it was associated with some personal tragedy or atrocity? Amaranth went back over all the history that she knew, trying to match up what she guessed might be this woman's name to all the terrible things committed by women. It was a short list, and it didn't take long to discount most of them. People just didn't name their children certain things anymore.

Well, that was a little more than she'd had before, at least.

Spider came into the room just as she was asking another question. He touched the woman's arm, and she nodded and left, closing the door behind her. Which left Spider to crouch in front of Amaranth, still expressionless. "How are you feeling?"

"What did you do to them?" she asked instead. It came blurting out before she could stop herself, and Spider gave her a peculiar, confused look.

"What do you mean?"

"Those..." she gestured. "Your... those. Brides." That was what Tolliver had called them, wasn't it? Someone had. Or maybe her mind had just supplied the term with the image, she didn't remember anymore. Spider knew what she meant either way, going by the look of disgust on his face.

"I wouldn't touch that magic to kill my worst enemy. It's gross and foul. It's corrupted, it corrupts whoever uses it."

"... All right." She didn't know what to do but agree in the face of that loathing. Not even loathing, she thought he had the same expression he might have if he realized he'd stepped in some dog leavings.

Spider shook his head. "There's magic and then there's that. I don't know why some of it corrupts people more than others, and I don't know why ..."

"Why a person would want to do something like that to another person? Do you want a list? I might not have worked at the Finder's Guild for very long but..." He gave her another look and she shut her mouth. Of course he knew why, he was a criminal, he collected information and passed it on to other criminals, he knew all the whys and wherefores of people doing bad things to one another.

"I don't know why certain parts of it are more proscribed than others. Some spells that people consider innocuous I've seen used to do terrible things, and other spells..." He shrugged. Thought about it. "No, actually, very few spells on the proscribed list I could think of ..."

"There's a list?"

His lips thinned, pressed together, and he rolled his eyes. But he didn't say anything further, which made her realize that if she wanted to find out how Spider knew so much about the bureaucracy of magicians she should have kept her mouth shut. Ah well.

More silence between them as Spider settled into a chair and started flipping through papers. She didn't see any percentage in interrupting him, now.

Instead she sipped at her honeymilk and thought about the women. Spider hadn't told them much about her, at least in her hearing, but they knew what had happened to her. Of course they had, they were collecting information for him. He hadn't told anyone about the women, which was interesting. Amaranth would have thought that he would at least give them a name, something more than what he had, which were cute names and good for whores and musicians but not for assistants. Transcribers. Whatever they were.

They didn't seem like they had any kind of sexual relationship with him, but the way he touched them was loverlike. Or at least like there was some physical affection involved. Maybe he hadn't bedded them. Maybe they were lovers between them? Amaranth's mind spun and the next thing she knew Spider was picking the bowl up off the floor and setting it on the table, frowning.

"Are you all right?"

Her turn to give him a look.

"Are you less all right than you were a little while ago," he amended, sounding impatient but the corners of his mouth curling a bit. Up and down. "Get some sleep. You should get some sleep, leave us to ... Yes, we are capable of looking into things without your help." A more definite smile that time, irony in his tone and softness in his eyes. The first time he'd looked at her with less than his usual iron will.

"What if I can't sleep."

He tipped her by the shoulders onto the cot. "Then lie back and close your eyes and count to a hundred."

She'd fallen asleep. She hadn't meant to.

Maybe Spider had drugged her drink, but after waking up a little more she decided it was more likely that she really had been that exhausted. Was that a bad sign? Or was it just a sign that she had been worrying and in danger and her thoughts were curling in on themselves like a snake again. Deep breaths. She had time, a little time, she could figure this thing out.

There wasn't anyone in Spider's offices. She went to the door, looked out, and it was nighttime. They would all be at the public houses, then, eating, talking, pretending that nothing was wrong while they gathered information and the Ministers talked over the testimony Tyrell had given. They must have it by now. It wasn't enough to bring down both pirate captains, but it was much more than they had ever expected to have this soon. It was more than she and Spider and the rest of them expected to have this soon.

Everything was going so well, something had to be going wrong soon. It was going too well. And when things went this well something came up to put a hitch in everyone's plans.

Out of fear, terror, paranoia, something like one of those things, she darted back to her cot and lay down again when the next set of footsteps turned towards Spider's offices. The door creaked open as she pulled the blanket over her that she'd discarded, and she had time enough to close her eyes and realize that Spider had tucked her in before the door to the back office opened, too.

"Mmph." She couldn't feign sleep, not well anyway, but she could pretend she'd been woken by his coming into the room. Malachy, she saw. "What time is it?"

"Late. You slept for a long time." He rummaged through some files, sat down to read some papers. At this angle she couldn't see what he was reading, but she imagined it had something to do with whatever it was they discussed.

Which he wasn't telling her. They still treated her like an invalid. Which in a way she was, but she could at least provide some sort of input or other point of view on the problem. Amaranth threw something at him, the closest thing to hand, which proved to be the threadbare cushion Spider had probably looted from some old lady's estate.

Malachy looked up and over, blinking. "What is it?"

"Well? What did you discuss? Did you come up with anything?" She spread her hands, shrugged, fingers twitching in impatience.

He looked at her for a second, a very long second, and then shook his head. "No one came up with any new angles of attack or investigation. We're tossing around the idea that maybe we should spread the net wider, keep a closer eye on them and their activities before we ... run out of time," he changed whatever he was going to say, catching her glare.

"You're not going to run out of time. I'm going to run out of time," she grumbled. "For all I know you'll live forever."

Malachy looked down, whatever expression crossed his face was hidden by the shadows and the fall of his hair. "No one is meant to live forever."

Her eyebrows shot up. There was something in that, something pained. Maybe one of his friends had been one of those Brides? Or maybe he just knew too many people who had tried, risked everything, and paid the cost without the benefit. He wasn't going to tell her with how strong that emotion was in his voice. Someone had died for that kind of bitterness.

Of all things, it was the bitterness that reminded her. Death, the death of friends, was bitter in her mouth still when she thought about it. "Maybe there's a place you can go. Or, you can't, but I can. Or..." No, she couldn't, not the way she was. She didn't dare. "You can bring someone here."

Standing too quickly made her dizzy. Malachy reached over and caught her by one arm, supporting her entire weight in one strong hand. "Hey. Hey, don't do that, you'll hurt yourself."

"Go screw," she muttered, shook her head. "Better yet, go to the Finder's Guild. If anyone has any lead start on a case against these clans, it'd be at the Finder's Guild. Ask for someone named Blue. Tell them you want to speak to him about a lost ..." Damn. What would she be able to tell him that would identify Malachy as someone she knew and trusted, someone Blue could trust. "Lost necklace. Amber and jet. Tell him you suspect someone in your household stole it, but you have no proof, and you want him to investigate the lady's maid."

There weren't that many households in this city that had ladies' maids. He'd remember that case, especially considering how spectacularly she'd fumbled the evidence. It was a black mark on both their records, and it had set Blue back quite a bit of money to smooth it over and keep it from being a black mark on the Guild itself. The only reason he hadn't kicked her out at that point was because she had uncovered something even worse and deeper, something that couldn't be made public but that kept them from being hauled up befor an adjuticator or a tribunal. Even in these cities, certain kinds of slavery were met with near-universal disgust.

"And you think this will get us information on pirates, lost necklaces?" Malachy would give her the benefit of the doubt, but she still rolled her eyes at him.

"It's a code. It'll tell him that I sent you. And then you can talk to him, ask him for whatever information you or Spider need, and maybe bring him back here and swear him into our little conspiracy or whatever it is we're calling it."

He nodded, still frowning, but in thought more than disbelief, now. "If you think he can help..."

Amaranth shook her head, slow enough that she didn't make herself dizzy this time. "I don't think he can help, I think the Guild's records can help. Anything about the pirates, anything about Bartiss or Tolliver, even if it seems obscure. It's more information than we have already, and it's probably information no one else has access to."

She'd heard Spider talk about the value of having all the possible information before acting often enough. Even if he seemed to act before he thought, let alone knew all the facts.

"Is there anything else you want me to tell him?" Malachy gathered the papers and put them back where they had been, scooping up his cloak along the way.

She thought back about Martius, about her own difficulties. Curse. Whatever it was. Martius's death would have reached the Guild by now, there were still couriers between the ground and the sky cities and his body would have been found. What was left of it. No one at the Guild took kindly to that. And she didn't know what they would do with her curse.

"No. Nothing else." If she had to meet Blue she'd do it on her own two feet and with as much disguise and such as she had to use to make herself seem normal.

Malachy seemed to understand. Spider would have. He nodded. "I'll get what I can."

Amaranth opened her eyes when she could no longer ignore the voices in the other room, or the light coming in from under the door. Which meant the outer door was open. She had to stop spending so much time in Spider's offices.

Once she stopped fighting sleep she was more able to catch the tone of the voices, which wasn't a tone she had wanted to hear. Upset, angry. Worried. Scared. One or two voices were identifiable, Spider's being one of the upset ones. The rest weren't. She didn't hear Malachy's.

After sleeping in her clothes going out presentable wasn't likely to happen, so she did her best to appear alert instead and stood, opening the door. Blinding daylight greeted her, disoriented her, and by the time she stepped into the room everyone had already taken note of her presence, not that it made too much of a difference.

"... unprecedented action, their presence here means..."

"You don't know what it means," Spider retorted. "No one knows what it means, because things like this just don't happen. And where the hell is Malachy?" He looked over at Amaranth as though she could tell him, but she only shrugged and stared, wide-eyed.

"I asked him to go to the Finder's Guild and talk to my old boss, I didn't think..." Spider had already turned away to yell at someone else. Well, at least he didn't yell at her for sending Malachy off to certain disappearance.

A slender man she hadn't seen before shook his head. "The streets are teeming with their spies. It's not safe out there, he shouldn't have gone in the first place."

"All of the trade delegations came in late last night, he probably didn't know." Whether Spider was making excuses for her or for Malachy or if he was just trying to get things straight in his mind, it was difficult to tell. He had his sharp face on, stern and jaw-set. "Some of them could be real traders, you know."

"That organization's been a front for pirates for at least two generations, you know that. There are no real traders left in there, the only question is, how many of them work for Tolliver and Bartiss and how many of them work for, I don't know, Sage. Or someone else."

Amaranth twitched at the mention of Sage. She wasn't the most savory of captains either, notable only for her bloodthirsty habits in battle and the fact that she refused to solidly ally herself with anyone, or to make any stronger enemies than she already had. Her shrewd negotiating skills helped with that last point.

"All right, all ... you think they could have gotten word that Tyrell gave testimony already?" Everyone stopped, looked up and around at each other at that. Amaranth bit her lip. "I mean, they already knew that he had turned against them, they were trying to hunt down and kill him."

"If they're trying to stop the Trade Ministry from bringing a trial against them..." Spider mused out loud. "That would explain the sudden presence of a lot of people who are legitimate on the surface."

"You think they would be able to sue to stop the investigation?" Dodger looked skeptical at the thought. "They don't have that kind of power here."

"No," Spider agreed, his face grim and his hands clenching for just a moment. "No, they'll do something else. They'll overwhelm the city. Give everyone too much to do so they don't have time to consider the testimony of one lord already considered to be a liar and of worthless reputation. At outright worst, they'll lay siege to the city."

Everyone looked to the windows, looked at the very least if not outright went to the window and stuck their head out. Amaranth stayed where she was and closed her eyes and tried to focus on her hearing, finding it coming to her much more easily than it had before. Now that she was working on it, setting her will to it, it was easier to block out a couple of senses and turn up the others. And now that Spider mentioned it, there was something stirring down the street. Several houses down and maybe one or two streets over, but something was brewing. Angry voices and clattering equipment.

"Well, not right now," Spider added, after a moment for everyone to discover for themselves that the city wasn't in flames.

Nervous laughter tittered through the silence. No one else had an observation to make or a question, or they were too busy worrying about what might happen all on their own without someone offering to make it worse. As the voices and clatter grew closer, Amaranth opened her eyes and stood up again.

"Where are you going?"

"Well, we can't just cower here in Spider's office, right?" Anyone who looked like they were going to protest otherwise got a withering look, while Spider not so handily concealed a snicker behind his hand. "Oh come on, we can't. So let's go out, let's hit the streets and see what we can find out about what's--"

Breathing became painful. Speaking required breath, so she didn't do it. She'd been focusing too much on balancing her senses, not enough on listening to the street outside, looking around. If she had looked around she would have seen the owner of that crossbow and the cloak that flapped around the corner with its threadbare edges, as though the person kept stepping on it. And she knew she had been shot with a crossbow because the bolt feathers still stuck out of her chest.

Spider swore, as Dodger caught her when she toppled backwards through the doorway. He had a knife out, she didn't remember him having a knife, but he did leap over her and looked up and down the street.

"He's gone," she rasped. "She's gone. They're gone." It hurt to breathe. She thought she could feel her lungs moving around the bolt in her chest. It was an odd feeling. She didn't like it very much. "I'm going to pass out, now."

"I'm going to kill him."

Spider gritted his teeth as he ran, Dodger carrying Amaranth behind him. It hadn't taken him long to figure out what was happening and send everyone scattering, the girls to a safe house that only the three of them knew about and the rest of them to whatever bolt-holes they could find. Granted, he thought he knew about most of them, but there was always the chance that there were some he didn't know about, and he wasn't going to either breach the confidentiality of the people who were supposedly on his side.

Not like his former friend had. "I'm really going to kill him this time."

"Talk later, run now." Dodger grumbled. "Do you know a place where we can take her?"

"She's still alive?" Spider was a little surprised by that, although maybe he shouldn't have been. There was something else powering her life, now. She would fight to live, and if she had access to the captain's life force she would take it.

He wondered if that meant she'd been shot in order to create that dire circumstance, to drive her into pulling from Tolliver. Which meant that Malachy wasn't playing what he'd thought he was playing for the few moments it took them to run from the front door to this narrow alleyway. He was playing something deeper, and aimed at Tolliver and not Bartiss. Possibly working for or with Bartiss, although he wouldn't put it past Malachy to be crazy and clever enough to attempt something like this alone.

"But why the hell didn't you say something..." he muttered. Though Spider could come up with an answer for that too. Whatever had driven his friend to take such a drastic action against the Pirate captain, it also probably drove him to greater lengths of impatience than could tolerate the deliberate pace they were taking. They were still talking, and Malachy had decided to do something about it.

Too bad for Malachy that that something had involved shooting Amaranth. Spider might not like her very much, she was impatient and impetuous, but he respected her ultimate goals. And she was young, which explained away a lot of her bait habits.

"In here," Dodger grunted, shouldering open a door. A warehouse, it looked like, a small one that stocked dried meats and other groundside imports.

"I'm going to kill him," Spider repeated, closing the door behind them and hauling out a couple of bales of something, cotton, cloth, or whatever, to lay Amaranth down on. The crossbow bolt still jutted out of her chest; they hadn't dared remove it. "I'm going to find him, and I'm going to string him up by his toes."

"You can do that after we've figured out what's going on," Dodger grunted, checking the windows and doors for signs of approach.

"I already know what's going on. Some of it, anyway. We've been sold out. Malachy told them where we were, and he made sure she was first in front of the door. Maybe paid someone to shoot her." Quickly, Spider outlined what he'd guessed on the way there.

Dodger scrubbed a hand over his face. "That's cold. That's ice in his veins. He was one of the ones..." Neither of them said anything; both of them glanced at the skewered woman on the bales. "He liked her. He really did like her, I'd stake my reputation as a thug and a bastard on that."

Spider opened his mouth to contradict him and then shrugged and admitted the point when he qualified the reputation part. "For whatever it's worth, I think you're right. But whatever it was Bartiss and Tolliver took from him, it was big. And it meant a lot to him, and it was worth sacrificing her for. Either that or he didn't believe it would kill her, or both." Except it should have killed her. Nothing he knew about Malachy said that he was that good a shot. He might have hired someone, but who would he have trusted to do such a thing?

Missing information, he was missing valuable information, and he hated that. "We're going to lose her," Dodger said. It was so quiet Spider almost missed it.

"No, no we're not, we are not." His jaw clenched, having more to do with anger at his former friend than concern over Amaranth's life, though he hated losing people. Doubly so when it came about because of betrayal and a failure to read the situation correctly.

"Well, it's time for either a healer or a priest, and I don't know any tame healers, so if you..."

Spider did know a healer; the problem was he didn't know if he could get to Ginger's in time. The woman had a healer on call and in her house at all times for her girls, and if there was anyone who could be trusted to answer and ask no questions, it would be Ginger's pet healer. But the roads were dangerous, and he didn't know how long it would take to cross the roof-tops.

Amaranth's fingers twitched beside Spider's perch. He looked over at her, reached to hold her hand because what else could he do for her, really?

It took her some visible effort to curl her fingers through his, but when she did she held on with a willful grip. Her eyes were wide and white rimmed with red at the corners. "You get him," she breathed. It must hurt to breathe at all, let alone to gather air to speak. "I'll hold on to Tolliver. Till you get him. You get all the bastards."

Spider blinked. Pieces slotted together. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, to the startlement of all three in the room.

"You hold onto him, you get him, we'll get everyone else."

Dodger stared after him as he turned and headed for the stairs that took him to the loft entrance, from which he could jump to the next roof. "You have a plan?"

"I have an idea, at least. We'd be idiots not to take advantage of this weakening of Tolliver, and if Tolliver's weak, Bartiss is going to go for the throat as soon as he hears about this. Which means he's going to have to stick his own neck out, and that's when we'll get him. You stay here with her, I'll see who I can round up to help us out with this."

Spider clambered over the rooftops with much less agility than he had in his youth. The chaos below didn't help; the city wasn't in flames yet, but there were armed folk all through the streets, some of them in the uniform of the city guard even if they weren't, some of them in ordinary clothes. It was hard to tell just what was going on, who was assaulting whom, and everyone who could had barricaded their doors with whatever they could find.

He wondered if this had been brewing for some time or if, while they were holed up inside, runners had flooded out of the dockyard district through the city warning people that there were pirates on the way.

More rooftop running, but Ginger's district was easier on him for all that. The roofs were more even and closer together, by necessity, as some of the buildings opened onto others. The place had been built to be a brothel district centuries ago by two of the first councilmen in the city, and the convenience of hidden doors and secret passageways was so tempting that it had remained either a brothel district or a smuggler's haven or both ever since. He landed on the roof of the neighboring inn and pulled open the door of the copse, descending the stairs and through a secret side door into Ginger's establishment without a sideways glance from either the Finder on the roof or the young man he was, er. Quite. Yes.

One of Ginger's girls almost ran into him in the corridor. "Spider! What are you..."

"I need to speak to Ginger, and I need to see her healer. Is he available?"

"I think so, yes..." she nodded, drawing her skirts up off the floor and leading him in a rush down the corridor and a flight of stairs to Ginger's office. "There she is, I'll get the healer."

Now that he was here in her doorway with the red-headed woman staring at him he half forgot what he was going to say. She lifted her brows at him and waited for him to continue, then held up a hand. "Asper, if you're going to eavesdrop, wouldn't it be better practiced on your classmates?"

Spider whirled. Not one but two small pairs of feet darted away from behind him; more of Ginger's girls, intrigued by their unexpected guest and trying to spy. He shook his head and came further into the room.

"You may as well shut the door behind you, we'll have no peace otherwise. I've had everyone shut up in the building to keep them from getting trampled, what's going on?"

"Tolliver and Bartiss have brought their little war to our streets," Spider drawled, flopping into a chair and wincing. "Sometimes I think I forget I'm not young anymore."

"You ran the rooftops, didn't you." Ginger wasn't openly laughing at him, but her smile wasn't far from it. "Tolliver and Bartiss, why here, why now?"

"For proof? I haven't the faintest idea. But off the top of my head, because Amaranth is here and Tolliver needs her alive. Because Tyrell is here and Tolliver needs him to be dead or silent or else he'll be hunted down like a dog. Not that he knows Tyrell's already given his testimony..." Ginger blinked. Spider had forgotten she didn't know that part of it. "Because Amaranth is here and Tolliver needs her alive, and Bartiss would prefer her dead. She was shot not long ago. Crossbow bolt, as she was coming out of my place."

Her breath hissed out as she sank back into her chair. "The poor woman. After all that..."

"She's still alive."

Even a deeper frown, now. "How..."

"Tolliver's keeping her alive. He's got to be bedridden by now, if he can even move. And I haven't seen Malachy since before it happened, I'm pretty damn sure he sold us out. What I don't know is why."

Now Ginger's face cleared, and she interrupted him with a finger, rising and going to the lock box in an alcove on the wall. "Actually, I think I can clarify that one for you. When you mentioned the Houses and their allegiances, family ties, I started doing some digging. Do you remember about three or four years back, when he took up with that girl? Sweet girl, slight figure and beautiful black hair, not a wicked bone in her body."

"I think I remember that, she disappeared shortly after ..." It clicked halfway and stopped. "After the last time the two ships were in dock. But what does that have to do with anything? If she'd become one of Tolliver's brides...'

"She didn't. I think maybe he meant to, but she was killed in the attempted kidnapping. Her brother witnessed it."

Two more clicks. "Her brother..."

"Malachy and her brother were friends. Ambrose went to him when she died, told him everything. They've most likely been planning this ever since, they just had to wait until someone came along who could give them access."

"Amaranth." And that was the last click of everything falling into place. Spider could feel an ache starting in his temples. "I'm still going to kill him."

"I wouldn't be surprised if he's counting on it." Ginger sighed. "As you said, she's what's keeping Tolliver alive right now. I don't know how good of a shot Malachy is, but I know Ambrose was for a while one of the deadliest marksmen in all the floating cities. And if anyone could convince him to go along with this plan, it'd be..."

"Dammit." Spider's hand scrubbed over his face. "She's keeping Tolliver alive, but ..."

"But by now they're both so weak that only one of them can live."

He nodded. "So he's going to want to ensure that it's her. Which is something, at least. But..."

Ginger made faces at his back as he stood up so sharply he knocked over the chair, bolting out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door of the former brothel.

Getting back across the city was even more difficult. The longer this inadvertent, informal siege went on, the more chaos swept over the streets. He didn't take the rooftops this time, he had the feeling he knew where everyone would be, and it wouldn't be over until Malachy made it so, anyway. And he still knew his friend, or at least he thought he did. Malachy would want Tolliver to know what was happening to him and why. He would want to be there. And if it were Spider's sister, he'd want to be there too. Two people with an interest in prolonging the death agonies.

It took longer than it should have. Some ducking into alleyways, some pretending to be part of a mob, going and coming and taking the long way around and by the time he got there he did half think that one of them was dead. Or maybe both.

But they weren't. He could tell because of the guard around the ship, a strong guard, four men thick at the dock and on the boat and now he really didn't have any idea how he was going to get on the ship. Climbing the ropes was too risky with the wind currents, and there wasn't any traffic for him to stow away aboard some crates. "Dammit," he muttered. "Damn, damn... I'm sorry, girl, I don't think I can..." Bootsteps on the deck interrupted that train of thought. He looked up to see the swordsman Amaranth had described looking out over the dock, checking for intruders.

It wasn't his best move, or even his first choice of a move, but they were out of options. His people, that is. Spider rose up from behind the salt barrels and stared down the length of several swords and at least two pistols now pointed at him. "You must be Ambrose."

The dark-haired swordsman arched a single eyebrow and spoke in a voice that sounded hoarse from screaming. Definitely Ambrose, by Amaranth's description. "You must be Spider. Malachy was expecting you."

He blinked. Only once. "Lead on, then."

There was no sound from the city. Amaranth might have heard something, even Tolliver might hear them coming down from the deck, but he didn't hear anything. The wind cracked sails and ropes all around them, creaked the boards, but the men stayed where they were and stayed silent. Ambrose stayed silent, descending through the corridors and leading him to the Captain's chambers. It gave him the impression he was walking into a tomb.

And Malachy was there, of course. Standing by the bed with a creature so dessicated it didn't look human anymore. It looked like a wind-swept mummified corpse. Spider had to stare for a few minutes to see the puffs of dust where air moved over its mouth.

"You did all this... you told me about Tyrell, pushed her to investigate, got her onto the ship. Got her bespelled. Shot her. For this?"

"No..." He shook his head slightly, hair wisping in the breeze. "Not the first part. The situation was there. I just... took advantage of it."

"Of her. Of all of us." Pause. "You used me."

"Don't take it personally, Spider. I used us all. He needed to be stopped. They both do." Malachy took a couple of steps backwards, slow, unsteady on his feet. Spider wondered if he'd been drinking. "Once he's dead, his coalition will collapse. Once that happens, Bartiss will move to seize power, and he'll make a mistake. I know him, he's arrogant."

"You know him?"

Ambrose spoke up, startling Spider a little. Not that he'd forgotten the other man was in the room, but he'd somehow been under the impression that he couldn't or wouldn't speak. "Lady Serpentine talked about him a great deal. We knew enough to be sure of our moves. And his."

"But it isn't Bartiss you want, anyway. It's Tolliver."

Malachy nodded. Ambrose spread his hands, shrugged, as if to ask, really, what more was there to say? A breeze slid through the cabin again, highlighting how absolutely still everything was.

"I'm sorry, Spider. I couldn't let that go."

He should have known. That little two-step shuffle back was just enough to put him up against the table, with all its heavy objects and sharp objects and one thing even on fire. Too many weapons, however improvised. And the thing on the bed was still breathing. Spider rushed to intercept, Ambrose's hand moved to his sword, but Malachy was quicker than both of them. His fingers closed around the handle of the candelabra and, bringing it over both Spider and Ambrose's reach, he brought it down on the dying Captain's papery, brittle throat.

Lacing up her bodice took time, effort, and control. She hadn't done it for herself in days, and her last vivid waking memory was of the sensation of the bolt shaft through her chest. Her fingers kept straying over her breastbone, wondering that there was nothing there. And she was tired.

Tired as much from what she would do next as anything. Amaranth looked up, looked at herself in the mirror as she tied her laces and tried to comb her hair into something resembling order with her fingers. She was due to give testimony shortly, though she had asked if it could be in an antechamber rather than in the trial itself. And now three adjudicators and a clerk were waiting to take her testimony and then it would be over. Maybe.

No one had survived this kind of spell on the receiving end. No one knew what the after-effects could be, since the spell hadn't dissolved. She didn't think she felt any different from how she had before it all started, but so much had happened between now and then that it was hard to tell.

Now she just stared in the mirror, trying to recognize her own reflection. Fingers through her hair, then smoothing down the front of her dress. And the knock at the door-frame made her jump. She turned; it wasn't one of the adjudicators.

"Yes?"

The boy grinned up at her. He couldn't have been more than twelve.

"Told to give you this. Said there'd be a Finder's fee."

She paused halfway into opening the envelope, looked at him. "You cheeky little..." But the boy was already beating feet down the hall. She leaned out the doorway another second or two before pulling back in and this time closing the door behind her.

Spider wanted her to come work for him. Said he collected broken things and made them feel useful again. It wasn't his handwriting, it must have been one of the girls, which made her smile a little. And wonder, between that and this, what had happened to bring the girls into his service. If he had made them the same offer, or found them some other way. If he was even what he appeared to be or was he, too, running a game on her the way everyone had been running games the past fortnight or so. Her fingertips traced the deep burgundy seal on the envelope. Small indentation, eight rivulets streaming away.