For a while, I just stared at Malstein.

  It’s not like anything else was working besides my eyes, I was weak as a kitten, and my mind was preoccupied by what I’d been remembering.

  Those memories still echoed in my ear along with that echo of Malstein’s voice. More echoing sounds behind me, barking orders, and a wailing scream that felt like a nail slowly pushing inside my ear. Despite that, those old memories I’d been dreaming of stuck out in my mind.

  There must be a curse on me. Something to make me keep on falling back into memories of the old days. Had I even slept once without some fucking torment I’d buried long ago re-emerging to mess with me?

  Oh sure, Skall popping up for the first time since I’d seen her explode into so much fire and bones? Maybe that would knock some bad dreams loose, and give me a good reminder why never to trust a single word out of her mouth. And a reminder of how much a mask could falter over the years. I’d let it get soft, weaker since those days. Not needing to be kept on my toes had let things peek through Malvia Harrow that never should.

  But magic was the likely culprit for this. Either that or my mind was easily led astray.

  None of this changed the reality of the bemused half-orc guard Captain standing above me.

  “Captain,” I got out in a rough croak, my voice dry and rasping. “Wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you. Hurting a bit too much to think that. Not as much as I should be though?”

  Things felt….muddy. Fuzzy? That echoey quality of sounds hadn’t faded.

  He offered me a canteen, and after a second to consider then dismiss the possibility of poison, I tried to reach up for it, only for my arm to fail me once again. It at least moved towards it before slumping to the ground. I tried my tail only to feel nothing at all. Lazy limb.

  “Small sips,” he told me as he brought the canteen to my lips. “You shouldn’t even be awake, and if the doctor I brought says you need to sleep, we are sending you back to sleep. Assuming we don’t kill you.”

  I nearly choked on a little bit of water on that and was stuck in the awkward position of trying to spew water out when I was far too exhausted. Sputtering led to some of it dribbling out.

  “With the drugs,” he crified. “You’re on enough painkillers that you should be asleep already. You made yourself less affected by them with Biosculpting?”

  “Nope,” I said, not expounding on what a moronic thing it would be to do that. Painkillers came in many variations so their effects would not be generalized, it would be difficult to lower the intensity of one of the drug’s effects without lowering all of them, and also if I was in massive amounts of pain the st thing I’d want to be is more aware of it.

  There was also another expnation that my mind has already been on track for anyway.

  “Magic,” I said. “Magic is why.”

  Malstein raised an eyebrow, a tic that seemed very common in people around me. “Yes, Miss Harrow. Biosculpting is magic.”

  I took a few more swigs of water before answering, every little swallow bringing more feeling back to me and making my throat ache a little less. Enough that when I tried moving my arms they actually obeyed, letting me get a little off the bnket I was lying in.

  “No,” I said. “Not Biosculpting. Something else. I think. I could easily be wrong. Don’t worry about it, I’m active. Give me enough time, I’ll leap off the ground and make it out of here under my own power.”

  “Be careful not to tear your tail off when you do so,” Malstein said.

  My tail? What was he talking about? Oh sure it had taken a hatchet, but I could still move it-

  A cold shock as I realized I could feel nothing, not even just the sensation of air on my skin.

  My arms could barely move, but they still strained as I tried to see what the hells those bastards had done to my tail.

  “Don’t touch it,” Malstein warned me, hands grabbing mine. “We’ve got it bandaged and splinted but it’s hanging on by a strip of flesh.”

  I whimpered, then scolded myself for that. I could fix this, for Hells’ sake, don’t cry! It’s not like it was gone forever.

  Assuming the flesh hadn’t necrotized, or been fucked up. It would be fine.

  “You said only a strip of flesh?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the fear out of my voice.

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “It should hold, as long as you move slowly and don’t do things like grab at it.”

  As much as it pained me, I had to trust in that, at least until I had the strength to stand without potentially stretching, straining, or even ripping that strip of flesh. Fixing it would be difficult already, the st thing I wanted to do was make things worse by severing my tail completely.

  “How’s it attached?” I asked him.

  “Loosely,” he told me. “We’ve bandaged it as best we could, the bleeding has stopped, but keeping the cut parts joined together means it’s sticking straight. Two boards sandwiching it to keep it fixed and straight.”

  I winced. Okay, so at least there had been no fool idea to tie it to my back and stretch what was left to the point of breaking. Never mind exposing any veins or flesh to the open air. It meant moving would be…difficult. If not outright impossible. Best case, I’d have a four-foot stick extending from my rear till it probably hit the ground.

  Sensation returned slowly, and that meant being able to feel things against my skin, but it also meant feeling the raw ragged sensation along the stump of my tail. My breath halted, tears welling as I tried to move to something like a sitting position.

  “Perhaps it's best if you y down,” Malstein said evenly.

  “I can do it,” I insisted, and nearly fell off the bnket and down the manor steps.

  He grabbed me, pulled me up, and with my drudging acceptance helped me stay up. Every bit of me burned as I took a stumbling step forward, and I could hear the wooden scraping of the splint on the ground.

  “So eager to get underway,” Malstein said as we took a few more halting steps to the front of the manor, and I realized he might not even know what was going on.

  “I am here in association with a Watch investing-”

  Malstein held up his hand, and I cut myself off and eyed him curiously. The half-orc had made it clear about his distaste for me but had never been anything but cordial.

  “I’m aware of that,” Malstein said. “Even if I wasn’t, the Halpsus priest made it clear you were trying to help him and Syer of the Dead Derrick. Although he did imply a few kicks to the ribs might do wonders for your attitude as well.”

  Oh, that little glorified clerk was dead the next time I saw him.

  “You must have misunderstood,” I said, giving a small smile I hoped wasn’t ruined by the blood.

  “No,” Malstein crified. “He thought it was implication. It’s pretty clear what he intended. You are really good at making friends, Harrow.”

  My eyes narrowed at the chiding criticism. Hells to this, I hurt, I ached, and it wasn’t being helped by this.

  “Halspusian,” I said with forced pleasantness. “Hard to make friends when dogma makes it clear I should be dead. Souls, spikes, both eyes pierced, that entire deal. So Captain, a trip to the Coffin?”

  “Protocol says I should,” he said. “However, my instructions when I was sent out were to make sure everyone at Derrick’s estate was safe and then bring them over to the crime scene. Seems like you weren’t the only ones attacked.”

  Well, as much as my body ached and I wanted to sleep, making it there seemed much more acceptable than venturing into the Coffin again.

  The Watch probably wouldn’t try to keep me inside. Maybe. I was an agent of Imperial Intelligence now. Well, contractor. Probably still not in a position where they could comfortably start clipping fingers off.

  “I can go,” I muttered. “Bish-Syer of the Dead Derrick and uh, Acolyte Forcreek should probably have their injuries seen too.”

  Malstein raised an eyebrow. “Bishop Derrick and Acolyte Forcreek took advantage of me having to handle the hedgerow to make their own way away. After convincing one of my people they were well enough to leave. I suppose since they were both already healing their broken limbs, they may even be right in terms of health. You, however, are far from that.”

  “I can walk!” I protested, despite having not even tried yet.

  “You are currently on enough drugs to make most people pass out,” Malstein told me, eyes narrowed. “Never mind how you can’t even move without assistance. You aren’t in any condition to do anything.”

  “I’m awake, and I can conceivably move,” I said. “And to be frank, I don’t want to spend a night in the Coffin. Besides, the others might be-”

  “No one else is under attack,” Malstein told me. “At least as far as I’m aware, but my understanding was everyone is already at the crime scene. Except for you.”

  I groaned. Somehow, somehow I knew I being the st there would be commented on by someone. Never mind the tail, never mind the other wounds, never mind me passing out. The Damn Infernal had been te, which would probably be enough for Galspie to make some snide remark.

  “You seem so enthusiastic,” Malstein noted.

  “Turn me around?” I asked, not wanting to discuss any of that.

  It took some effort, but eventually, we got me turned around to face something besides the front of the manor.

  In front of the manor, sections of the hedgerows had turned red, weaving vegetation now sporting thorns the size of daggers that hadn’t been there before. Tendrils were slowly moving at a snail’s pace as they tried to recim corpses the Watch had hacked free. Some were still embedded in the wall of suddenly pointy vegetation, Watch using pikes and other polearms to try and cut them loose.

  “Uh,” I said, looking at the hedgerow, a question on the tip of my tongue but I could hardly ask it.

  “No one has been cimed before we got on the scene,” Malstein said, which did little to ease the tension. “As far as we can tell, the only ones swallowed by the hedges are those that you and the Syer of the Dead were fighting.”

  I rexed just a smidge, some tension leaking out of me. Not that any deaths would be my fault of course, entirely on the heads of those who had forced a fight with me. Self-defense with diabolism meant some degree of colteral that would have to rest on the heads of those who’d provoked me into needing to use it. It would be their fault for forcing me to resort to it to protect myself.

  That would at least be the argument I’d use if I ever found myself facing a noose over any of this. Legality would be determined then. Without me present, because I probably would have attempted to flee the city or slip into a different set of skin by then. Like Hells would I let anyone try to hang me for defending myself.

  “I suppose I am guilty of what you argued with me about on our first meeting,” I admitted to Malstein, forcing some contrition into my voice.”I suppose my defense is the same as st time.”

  “Well, you are Intelligence’s problem now in that regard,” he reminded me, and that put some joyous thoughts in my head about Samuel Voltar trying to tighten the grip held over my life. “They can also deal with Brexington too.”

  “Brexington?” I asked, the name familiar. Oh, the new golem being demonstrated in the Ironworks when Tagashin and I had traveled through!

  “He owns the manor,” Malstein told me. “Actually, he’s in the manor, and has only come out to lodge a compint about whoever decided to make his hedges turn into that.”

  As if to punctuate the Captain’s points, one of the hedges shifted, moving half a foot towards a group of nervous Watch dragging a corpse out of its reach. The rustling of leaves and branches made an unnervingly good facsimile of a child’s whine when denied a treat.

  “Well,” I said. “It was either this or death?”

  “I think he’d prefer you died,” Malstein noted.

  “A lot of people do,” I muttered. “Let them come do it themselves.”

  One of the Watch let out a string of profanity that was instantly recognizable as the hedge started trying to grasp him.

  “Hi Tommy!” I called out in the loudest rasp I could manage which made me cough and sputter for nearly twice as long.

  Now that string of profanity wasn’t just at the diabolically infused pnt life.

  “You recruit the strangest people,” I told Malstein as I recovered my voice and Tommy continued his diatribe. Honestly, individual words were familiar but I don’t think he repeated a single phrase from any of our prior encounters. I was holding onto Bonfire of fucking damnation, that actually sounded like a nice title to hang over my head. Harlot of every pissing unholy in this city however was about what I expected.

  “How he ended up in your service I’ll never understand,” I confided to Malstein.

  “Swearing is a very prized skill among the Watch,” he told me. “How could I turn down a recruit with such proficiency?”

  That drew an agonizing chuckle out of me that mixed giggling with pained croaks. Still, cops. Best to sober up and remember we were natural enemies.

  “Think you can manage to the hedgerow?” Malstein asked me.

  “If I can’t, I think I’ll let you pump me full of painkillers until I can’t even string words together,” I muttered. “Hells, I think I’ll take a tussle with the Shapechangers again. At least they made themselves an easy target.”

  Okay, snapping my leg in half probably surpassed the butchery they’d made of my tail, but that had mostly been localized. And Hawkin’s pincer burying itself in my side. And another one of them gave me a concussion. And melting my eye-no that had been me. That and liquifying all the tendons and ligaments in my arm.

  As we trudged towards the hedgerow, I frowned. That scream when I’d woken up was still there, and in fact I couldn’t remember it pausing at all. What the Hells was it?

  We made it through a gap in the hedges, and nearly face to face with the source of the screaming. The wreckage from the fight and the crashes remained strewn about, the charred, burst remnants of the steam engineer, the wrecks of both carriages, the now long dead horse, and other detitrus of the ambush and fight.

  Standing in the middle of it all was the fming ambusher I’d turned into a charred corpse, still near those barrels, screaming.

  By now all the flesh had burnt off completely, leaving only a bckened, charred skeleton standing upright in the street, skull open and an unearthly shriek emerging from its empty skull. Bck fmes still licked and clung to the bones, waxing and waning across its surface, but the bones themselves remained still and unmoving.

  “Uh,” I said, staring at the still-screaming, still-fming skeleton. “Has that thing moved at all?”

  “No,” Malstein said ftly. “It‘s just sitting there, screaming. I am not having anyone touch it.”

  “Probably the right call,” I said. “Imp, the hells is that?”

  A demonstration of power, of intimidation. It said. Evidence of what lurks underneath, a sign and message to the world.

  I sighed, closing my eyes and massaging my forehead.

  “Not an answer you wanted?” Malstein asked.

  “If I could punch myself in the face and be guaranteed it hurt it as much as it hurt me, it would be very tempting,” I muttered. “At a minimum, it might stop spouting meaningless, pretentious, useless twaddle.”

  You only consider it useless because you deny yourself understanding, The Imp hissed. Much like your refusal to partake whenever given the opportunity.

  I shivered, that memory of my mouth filled with that ambusher’s face returning. Was it the Imp who made every bite of flesh taste good, or just some part of me?

  “And now it’s angry I won’t eat people for it,” I said flippantly. “Honestly, if we could trade it for that, it might be easier on my mind.”

  The Imp’s indignant howl might have hurt if not for the much louder one being produced by the fming skeleton.

  “It’s not done anything?” I asked, taking a hesitant step toward it. No response.

  “No,” Malstein said ftly. “No one has tried touching it yet, but considering it’s on fire, I’m just closing off traffic. For now. A priest is coming to handle it.”

  The best move. Even if the skeleton wasn’t doing anything itself, it might as well be a beacon of the Infernal. Even just standing there would eventually shed enough energy to make something with a more active attitude form. Like the hedgerow.

  One of the Watch was considering the skeleton and raised a rifle to take a shot.

  “Please don’t,” I said, and she hesitated. “Best case, you provoke it and it attacks. Worst case you shoot and send infernally tainted bone splinters scattering across the street, and we’ll probably need a priest to track them all done.”

  I knew for sure I could not find every little piece that might get sent flying across the surface of the road, falling in the dirt surrounding manors, lying in the branches of their bushes and trees, embedded in the walls. Even a priest purifying the entire street might not catch all of them.

  Besides that though, looking over the dead and the remnants of their carriage, something I hadn’t had time to think about when fighting finally was on the forefront of my mind.

  “I smell shite,” I told Malstein as we looked over the carnage.

  “Some of them did void their bowels quite badly,” he replied. “Then again, I believe you had just finished causing that.”

  I swear the tone of the shrieking grew higher as Malstein gestured at the fming skeleton. Hells, could he at least move away so we weren’t near it? My ears were starting to ache.

  “Not that,” I replied irritably, then tried to force that tone out of my voice. The pain wasn’t helping. These drugs were fading fast in their efficacy, what had they put in me?

  “I think the simplest mistake we could make is assuming connections,” I said. “I don’t know which details of this case you know, but we’ve got potentially multiple Diabolists with the same end goal but not allies necessarily.”

  “All chasing the same promised reward?” Malstein asked and continued after I raised an eyebrow. Damnations, now I was doing it! “Even if I had no actual knowledge of the magic behind it, there are a thousand stories of offered deals from devils. When multiple people are involved, the devil isn’t nice enough to duplicate the reward.”

  “True, “ I said, and a sneaking question of why the Syer and the Bishop hadn’t thought of the same thing lodged in my head. Then again, maybe they had and were just keeping said suspicions to themselves. We were doing the exact same thing. “Mind you, depending on what’s being offered, it might not even be a case of the devil wanting them to kill each other. Even they have a limited supply of power, wealth, whatever they’re offering as a reward. But either way, my point is multiple perpetrators, and I don’t see why the attacks of the dog devils and these more mortal foes need to be connected.”

  “Have a suspicion?” Malstein asked me.

  I paused, considering. Malstein hardly needed to know about one of the killer’s potential reluctance to kill those they didn’t consider unholy. Didn’t need to know about the diabolism program the churchs were running. Hells, mentioning it might be enough to get both the churches and Intelligence after my hide. And both would find it very easily to skin me.

  Even admitting it, well, I was here, alone. Very injured. Oh, if Malstein made a move right now, I could send rot pulsing through his heart, and then immediately eat a dozen bullets from his subordinates. And if he let go? Right now I’d probably colpse, eat pavement, and be reduced to spraying fmes wherever I could and hope it was enough.

  “Keep it to yourself if you must,” Malstein said. “I can put together some things on my own. One going easier than the others? Or just trying to sabotage the actions of the other?”

  That tter part I hadn’t even considered. Those devil dogs had been meager opposition, by the Imp’s words bottom-feeding scavengers. Hardly what could be expected from a Diabolist who could deconsecrate churches as a side effect of the infernal powers they wielded. They had done wonders for putting us on alert before a series of bullets had hammered our carriage and nearly killed Derrick.

  I knew better than to think of myself as the target. They had clearly not even known about me being there, given their reaction to Diabolism being used on them. And bullets would be quite the problem solver for Syer of the Dead Derrick. They almost had been enough, and I think if their fire hadn’t been split between me and her, she easily could have died.

  A carriage was coming down the road, making way towards an importing barricade Malstein’s Watch had set up, another Watch officer yelling to be let through. Four horses strong, it plowed ahead as angry Watch got out of the way, stopping only a few feet from me and Malstein, disgorging an angry-looking Captain Walston, who for once seemed more angry at someone else instead of me.

  “Malstein,” Walston said, eyeing her fellow captain with wide eyes that quickly narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Pursuing my own leads on a separate matter,” Malstein replied, a small smile making his tusks jostle. “I happened to be in the area when our mutual acquaintance here caught my attention.”

  Walston’s gaze shifted my way, eyes narrowing even further. “Harrow.”

  “I cim responsibility for the skeleton, though he was trying to kill me, Syer of the Dead Derrick, and Galspie’s pet acolyte,” I said, any goodwill towards Forcreek curiously absent after he suggested Malstein kick me. “And some of the dead bodies. And the wrecked steam cart. That all happened after they shot the Syer of the Dead, and tried to kill all of us. Same for those little devils they set on us as well. And the hedges, that was my doing as well, but only in self-defense.”

  Interesting that Malstein hadn’t mentioned his clear knowledge of things. For someone just happening to pass through at the right time, he’d seemed quite sure about everyone else already being at the crime scene.

  Please let it just be internal Watch politics, I didn’t need things getting stranger than they already had.

  “Syer of the Dead Derrick and Bishop Galspie’s assistant were also involved,” Malstein told Walston. “They both left a while ago while only answering a minimum of the questions I asked. Ms. Harrow has been much more helpful.”

  “Happy to be a dutiful daughter of the Empire,” I said, getting ft stares from both Captain.

  “You’re tolerating that?” She snapped at Malstein.

  I kept my mouth shut, but interesting. They were both Captains, albeit Malstein was leading the thousandth iteration of the Watch’s secret police, supposedly. Walston, Dawes had expined to me a while back, was currently the designated Voltar support captain, which sounded like some punishment forced on her.

  And she didn’t seem happy to have him here.

  “I am tolerating it,” Malstein said. “Miss Harrow is not currently my problem, nor am I going to go out of my way to arrest her. I’d appreciate her dropping by ter to get a statement, but I think any charges Her Majesty’s Government wished to charge her with will be dropped. And not just because of who she works for.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” I said, doing my best to keep any sarcastic tones the Hells away from my voice. “Later this week?”

  “Time permitting,” Malstein said.

  Walston looked between the two of us, eyes narrowed. Honestly, it seemed the fire in them was more intense when they stared at Malstein than when they looked at me.

  I’d admit to a smidge of confusion as well. Malstein had been nothing but professional but had also been clear he held me responsible for the deaths of several people he cared about. Yet strangely it never seemed to color his attitude. I could admire that. A very good mask at work, which meant as little possible done to potentially crack it. Still a little disconcerting. Unnerving, having a glimpse inside made it only stranger when he was not like that normally.

  Oh, that might expin a lot about certain reactions to me. I scoffed inside my head. Yes, that and not the entire eating live animals, biting into people’s fingers, and threatening to stab others. Not my mask being a useless, imperfect vessel.

  “Well Captain, I believe I will see you ter,” I told Malstein. “But I believe I have a crime scene waiting for me.”

  Feeling a little more stable, I moved away from his support and nearly tripped. But hooves trembling, breath ragged, I still stood and slowly clopped my way towards the carriage Walston had come in.