In the end, we arrived a day later than we’d hoped to.

  The walls of Yadesh were tall and in perfect condition, whitewashed regularly so that they shined like a diamond from kilometres out. A paved road started up again to lead into the main gate, but unlike the dull, uniform bricks of the Imperial road, this one was composed of highly individualised cobblestones, each covered in mosaic of brilliant quality. Each step fell upon a masterwork, and it felt almost blasphemous to tread upon them.

  The main artery of Yadesh didn’t really flow with people, so much as they were bringers of coin.

  Four rows of a dozen guards lined the road, brilliantly appointed in their kasakreish, many layered skirts of silks, and wearing tall, plumed helmets. But despite their swords, they were not there to screen the crowd for threats, and wouldn’t be of much use even if one revealed itself. In reality they were customs officers, evaluating every wagonload and chest, patting travellers down for hidden bags, taking the city’s due taxes, and then their expected bribes. I told the Captain to slip one a handful of hacksilver, and they waved us through with deliberately glazed eyes. They were no more than a spectacle. They weren’t screening the crowd at the gatehouse in any way, and they wouldn’t be of much use if they did find something amiss. But they didn’t need to be anything more than pretty to look at, because Yadesh only indulged in economic warfare, and didn't suffer any other kind of threat. All were welcome, so long as they brought commerce, and coin covered in blood spent just as well as that which was clean.

  The vein flowing the opposite direction beside us were the blood cells that had delivered their value to the city, and were being sent back from whence they’d come, to retrieve more. The gate never closed, for the ins and outs never stopped. Few people actually stayed and made money in Yadesh. Food was expensive, lodgings even more so, and there were half a dozen operating licenses required for any business you might try to run. The whole city could probably subsist on a single coin, passed back and forth between everyone.

  “Siat Vort’s apartment is at the centre of it all,” I said. “Not hard to find, but stay close, or else you’ll arrive naked and probably missing some limbs.”

  “There is fighting?” said Briggs, casting a sceptical eye over the gaudily clad traders.

  “No,” I said. “There’s a market for organs.”

  Briggs pulled his duster closer around his kidneys.

  I knew Yadesh well. I had done my time here, as many had. Time, and skilled effort, were just as valuable as goods, so I had offered medical services to those who required them. And though I could charge just about as much as I damned well pleased, and was always paid in full without the batting of an eyelid, I never got ahead. I swear the same coin must have been passed back and forth between me and a grocer five times before I recognised the rort of the place. But there were always more who thought they could beat the system.

  I led the squad through streets covered by shade cloths of vibrant silks, bathing us in patches of purple and emerald. The plain white light of the sun slashed through in the gaps between, like scars amongst the scales of a gem-viper.

  The buildings were garishly decorated with mosaics of precious gemstones and windows of stained glass, each man trying to outdo his neighbour.

  The people, too, were extravagant works of art. Gold and gems dripped from their fingers, their toes, their hair. They wore layer upon layer of expensive fabrics, roasting in the heat just to prove, proudly, that they had more money than sense.

  “We look like pimples on the bottom of a baby,” said Church, brushing a hand over his duster as if she could wipe away the brown colour, the dirt of the road, and the stench of insecurity.

  “We’re not as conspicuous as you might think,” I said. “If anyone asks, you’re part of a guard retinue for a merchant - a spice merchant, specifically, if you’re pressed. Yadesh tolerates the Empire because of the unique luxuries we provide.”

  “Which one of us is the merchant?” said Briggs.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If we’re pressed for details, which one of us shall we say is the merchant we guard?”

  “Well, we can count you out,” said Tal. “Merchants have to be able to count past their number of fingers and toes.”

  “You won’t be asked,” I said.

  “But if we are?”

  I looked at the Captain, floundering, but she refused to reach down and pull me back above water.

  “It’s your plan,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m the merchant. Happy?”

  “No need to get sharp, Doc,” said Church. “Sometimes these things come back to bite you, if you don’t plan for them.”

  Amongst the stalls, there were some that were familiar.

  We slowed as we passed, Tal and Church looking wistfully at the displays and swapping memories of the last time they had tasted various things on the countertop. Clearly a little taste of home would have lifted their spirits, but the foodstuffs were well out of our range, with things you wouldn’t think twice about throwing the last crumbs of to the birds presented here as rare delicacies. And besides, the man behind the counter would only take coin, or maybe trade in kind, but not scrip, not here. He knew that anyone in this place offering scrip didn’t really have the capital to make good on it. Though no doubt he was adding handsomely to some ledgers back in the Core Realms, even if he might never return there himself. In the doorway of the home behind him, I could glimpse a Yadeshi woman berating him for his laziness while stirring a pot. He gave me a defeated nod, and I smiled in solidarity. Except for his obvious discomfort in the heat, he was as authentic a native Yadeshi as you might find.

  “Disgusting,” said Briggs. “They are accomplices to terrorists.”

  “Well, they’ll be gone soon,” said Tal.

  “No they won’t,” said Dassem. “Trade thrives on three things: necessity, scarcity, and war. And war only amplifies the first two.

  “The Yadeshi might hate us, but not enough to stop them scavenging our weapons after a skirmish. They cannot deny the quality of our steel, compared to their bronze. And they like our honeyed nuts. No, they won’t give up trade just because of a silly little war. They’ve acquired a taste for the Empire, not only the luxuries, but the essentials. That merchant will continue to grow fat, whereas the trenchers will be lucky to grow old.”

  “If anything, he’ll grow even richer, now that it’s harder for

  “I thought the whole point of this war was to secure new feeding grounds for the Empire’s livestock, to fill the purses of the Burgher Princes,” said Church. “If losing the war won’t affect trade, why are we fighting in the first place?”

  “Because it’s more profitable to conquer than to negotiate,” said the Captain. “But only slightly.”

  “That’s only half of it,” said the Dassem.”Negotiating means you respect your opponent. You are giving them the chance to profit too, after all. Whereas conquering only has one victor.”

  “Or one loser,” said Church. “Depending on which way you look at it.”

  “Disgusting,” Briggs said again.

  We walked through alleys where hawkers of all kinds tried to fleece us of a coin. One man placed a necklace of chunky gems over Church’s head.

  “Only three thousand!” he said.

  I whipped the necklace off before her smile could be construed as a contract of sale.

  “What price, what price?” he said, walking alongside us, his own chest dripping with more of the jewels.

  “No price,” I said.

  “None at all?” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Free, then? You want it for free?”

  “Sure!” said Tal. Her eyes were tinged with gold, and hunger, like all the others in this city. What soldier isn’t looking for a little extra booty while on campaign? And who could blame them. The Imperial Chit hardly covered their efforts.

  The hawker was shocked by the gall of her.

  “Here, then,” he said, tossing the necklace over her head. “Why not these, too? Why not all of them?”

  “Go on, then,” said Tal.

  The man scoffed. But, true to his word, he took the ropes of jewels off his own neck five at a time, and looped them around Tal.

  “Thanks!” she said.

  She tried to keep walking, but the man grabbed her around the arm, holding her back.

  “Thirty thousand!” he cried.

  “What?” said Tal. “You said they were free?”

  “Never! I say three thousand! Very good price. You take ten. You take more than ten!”

  “Well I don’t want them,” said Tal, making to take them off.

  The man forced them back down to her shoulders.

  “You already take!” he said. “Now you must pay!”

  “No, thank you,” said Tal.

  The man was going to wear her down, or else call for the merchant soldiers placed between every second pavilion and collect his money via bribe, until Briggs stepped between them and gently pushed the man backwards by the chest. Tal quickly stripped the jewels and left them on the ground, but we’d lost momentum. Two other men pressed in on me, one from each side.

  “How much for the red hair?” said one.

  “Your coat, your coat!” cried the other.

  “She’s not for sale,” I said.

  “Pah!” said the first man. “You think I deal in slaves? How much for the hair, I said. Does her no harm to cut it off.”

  “The coat is disgusting anyway!” said the other man. “But I will do you a big favour. I will pay you double what it is really worth, just so you are not embarrassed, my friend. We are friends, are we not? Come, you can dine at my brothers’ caf as an honoured guest, as only friends may!”

  And be drugged, and stripped of my coat anyway, and sold into slavery.

  We were being swarmed like we’d stepped into a nest of ants, and that was making Heavies cagey. Even the solid walls of the bazaar seemed to be closing in. So I raised my elbows and pushed at a right angle, trying to get off the thoroughfare before blades were drawn. We slipped down a perpendicular alley, a thinner, darker, cut between the buildings to allow for airflow.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The merchants didn’t dare follow us, didn’t even bother to crowd the mouth of the alley and call after us. The coin had flipped, and they had no interest in its darker underside.

  “Step carefully,” I called to the others. “They are harmless, unless provoked.”

  As if I were speaking of beasts. But these were still humans, men and women, though they were unwashed and underfed and as hopeless as no thinking creature should be.

  They were detritus, necessary casualties of the game of coin they had once tried to play, out there with the others, in the light. They hadn’t set themselves a loss limit, and now they couldn’t afford enough food and water to make it across the desert to another town where they might have a chance of finding work and restarting an existence.

  Perhaps if they had all banded together, they might have been able to afford a boarding house, or a bulk order of beans, where no one could on their own. Certainly joined as a mob they would be an overwhelming threat to the order of the city. But, having failed so badly under that system, their response, confusingly, was to carve out their own little fiefdom in the darkness, and to clutch at their meagre bundles of breaking and broken possessions. Somehow something, no matter how pitiful, was better than nothing. And the beggar lords amongst them, the highest of the low, ran stalls with unlevel counters, selling mouldy cabbage and patched rags, and the destitute browsed at them, in grim mockery of a proper market.

  Most pitiable were the children. They were on their knees, not even the thinnest mat between their bones and the cold stones, foreheads pressed to the ground, hands clutching little wooden bowls above their lice-ridden, patchy-haired scalps. Most were missing fingers and toes, or more significant limbs and facial features, preventing them from making a go of it. But how were they supposed to have ever made a start? Most were just bartering pieces to reduce their parents’ debt through indentured service. In Yadesh, if you were old enough to walk, you were old enough to work.

  It tried to keep my chin up, keep them all below my eye level. It was not that I didn’t care. If I saw something I could treat, something as easy as an open gash or a burrowed tick, I would have to stop. And I knew I couldn’t save them all. So I tried to shut them out of my world entirely. But that was difficult, when so many tent pegs and dirty feet thrust out into the centre of the lane, and nudging them even slightly would bring a diseased, three-toothed mouth clamping down on your neck.

  As we picked our way across the divide, towards the halo of light of another street, a rhythmic clinking began to accompany us. I turned to see what it was. Tal was dropping hacksilver into the bowl of every child.

  “Don’t,” I warned. “You’ll attract attention.”

  I looked up, to the edges of the flat roofs. Where there were earners, there were takers. They could be proper nasty, these back alley thugs. Had to be, even, to have survived along enough to take up the art.

  “We can handle it,” said Tal.

  We were nasty, too, and we were drilled and armed and fed enough that we could easily dissuade them.

  “They’ll only waste it,” I said. “Even if you had a fortune to give them, they’d be back here within three days.”

  “Then let them waste it!” Tal growled.

  I let it go. Soon we were out of the alley and back into the never ending, snaking markets soon enough. But now the squad had learnt their lesson, and they moved through the crowds with determination, allowing us to arrive at our destination without any further incidents.

  The building before us took up three whole blocks. Although there were only two floors, the ceilings were so high that it towered over the rest of the city. Clearly no expense had been spared in its construction. Each brick was carved and inlaid with gold, a fresca depicting a momentous achievement in Vort’s life. The frame of the double doors we currently faced, and all the other door and window frames, were similarly carved from imported timber.

  “Siat Vort’s room is in this building?” said Dassem.

  “No, Sergeant,” I said. “The whole building is Siat Vort’s ‘apartment’.”

  Even for a primary residence it was too much. For an apartment that saw use for perhaps a dozen days a year, it was disgustingly excessive.

  “I don’t see any curtains,” said Tal. “Green or otherwise.”

  “Must be the servant’s wing,” I said.

  “How many servants does he need?” said Briggs.

  “Need is the wrong word,” I said. “How many servants can he get.”

  We scouted around the building, and found on the East side a large balcony that protruded from the top floor, rivaling the square footage of many homes that accommodated ten or more people in other parts of the world. The shuttered doors were flung wide, and, sure enough, ribbons of green rose and fell in the breeze.

  “Tal?” said the Captain.

  The dead-eye turned a slow circle, assessing the scene.

  “Well, these flat rooves are certainly helping,” she said. “I’ll go up there. Here’s hoping we get lucky and can take him through the window. Cap, Sarge, see if you can get onto another roof and set up a cross fire. That way you’ll have eyes on the north face as well. Briggs and Church back to the main door. No one in or out. Chuckles, you’re at the far end. And the Doc…”

  Chuckles sighed.

  “With me, I suppose.”

  “No,” said the Captain. “Take him with you. He has to see how we operate sooner or later. Just try and keep him out of the blast zone.”

  “No promise!” said Tal as she skipped away.

  “Blast zone?” I asked as I followed our diminutive dead-eye.

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” said Tal. “There’s no zone. It’s usually more of a wave of destruction that flows outwards. Which makes it kind of hard to know how far away we need to be to be out of the zone.

  “The zone that’s not a zone,” I said.

  “You’re getting it. How are you at climbing?”

  Not as strong as I would have liked, as it turned out. But Tal would put everyone to shame, so it went unnoticed.

  We were in an alley bridging the moat of roads around Vort’s palace and the broader market street beyond. Tal easily scaled the rough brick wall, and at the top sprang like a cat to a second, higher roof, gave herself some space, then ran and leapt back across to her intended site. Fortunately she did not give me a chance to embarrass myself by attempting the same manoeuvre, securing a rope she had looped about her waist and throwing the other end down. I went to loop it via a jerk knot through my belt, but Tal flicked it out of my grasp.

  “Crossbow first, dumbass,” she demanded. “You think I’m going to sit up here all defenceless?”

  “I’d cover you,” I said.

  Tal snorted.

  “I watched you during the ambush in the desert,” she said. “Just give me the bow.”

  I secured the weapon and her pack in a few loops of the ropes, and she quickly hoisted the package aloft, then disappeared to set up her position. I tried to look as inconspicuous as one could when loitering in an alley, until the rope landed on my head a few minutes later, whereupon I slogged hand over hand on the rope while walking on the wall. Tal studiously ignored me as I hauled myself over the edge of the roof and lay there panting.

  She had moved some tall potted ferns to create a screen, then rested the end of her crossbow on the ledge facing the balcony and beyond, and squatted behind it, pressing the butt into her shoulder and resting her finger beside the trigger. How her legs must have been burning after only a few minutes, especially since she must have occupied a similar position in the dunes not two nights ago. But, having chosen her spot, she was still as a statue, even being careful that her breathing only moved her chest and not her shoulder.

  I crouched down behind her, matching her readiness to spring away at a moment’s notice.

  “No sign of the Finger,” she said.

  “It’s a huge building,” I said. “Or he could be right there, a metre to the left, in the corner. Be patient.”

  “I don’t tell you how to stitch a cut,” she growled.

  “Fair,” I said. “Teach me, then.”

  “Does this look like a classroom to you? Let me focus.”

  “It looks like a practical,” I said. “The Captain attached me to you so that I could see how things were done. So, why not the belltower?”

  I thought she might ignore me, but to my surprise, her enthusiasm to talk about her craft grew with each word.

  “You’d think the belltower,” she said. “It’s higher. Certainly a better view. And we could have just walked up the central stairs.”

  “Quite,” I said, still not yet recovered.

  “But the belltower is too good, you see. First thing to get hit when the fireballs start flying.

  “Besides, we wouldn’t be able to impact when called upon. We’d waste all our time and energy running back down the stairs.”

  “But that’s not the plan,” I said. “We’re meant to take a shot from afar. If you miss, the Captain -”

  “First of all, I don’t miss,” said Tal. “Secondly, the plan never goes to plan. But, in a way, that is the plan, you know? We’re all aware we’ll have to act, so we’re ready for it.”

  “And the Captain trusts you, to make those decisions yourself?”

  “Uhuh,” said Tal. “She has to. Too slow to wait on her direct orders.”

  I had suspected as much ever since Church had been delegated authority to plan the ambush. These were not like other trenchers; not the mindless brutes that heavies were so often portrayed to be, nor the weedy gut-cutters likely to run when out from under the eye of their commanders. They couldn’t afford to be. The Captain needed to be able to deploy them and have them think independently for long stints away from her direct command. She knew Briggs and Church were best placed to command when we got into a fix, and those two felt trusted enough to take command without having to ask.

  It was a sensible approach. If every member of every squad could act with that kind of independence and initiative, the Empire would have the most deadly military in the known world.

  Only I couldn’t think of a single other Captain who would think of it, let alone possessing a squad capable enough to carry it out.

  Except, I realised, the claws serving the Fingers. So long as each was working towards Azhur’s overall goals, they were entrusted to go about it in whatever way they thought best. So to the Hand itself. This greatly reduced the burden of command on Azhur himself, freeing his time and mind to do much worse.

  My mind wandered back to the task at hand. How long had it been? Hours? No, that was ludicrous. I was merely wishing the time away.

  Whatever the time passed, Tal never wavered from looking straight down the sights of her weapon, not even for a second. Whereas I could not maintain a focus on the gently rippling curtains for more than a few minutes.

  “He’s in there all right,” I said.

  “How can you tell?” said Tal.

  “Because they’re showing off for him.”

  Girls drifted across the canvas of the window from time to time. They were beautiful, with hair of all the colours, always down to their backsides. They were naked, and so trim and taunt that, were they to form up, they would put the women and most of the men in the Corps to shame. Tal grunted her approval any time she particularly fancied one

  They did nothing for me. They were not what I chased.

  My thighs were burning. I spotted a prayer mat in the corner, dragged it over and wadded it up beneath my knees, but even that position quickly became unbearable. I was not built for stakeouts. I was accustomed to working without break, a constant stream of patients entering my office just as soon as the previous one had left. But this was different. It was working, certainly, but with nothing to show for the long hours, only to fail in the space of a second if you lost focus. That was not my go. I was better when I had all the facts in front of me, enabling me to think and make a plan.

  My fidgeting was beginning to annoy my companion. She was far more disciplined than me, moving by small degrees, to release groups of muscles at a time, preventing them from going numb and useless.

  “Why don’t you go and get your bearings, before things get hot,” she suggested

  An amazing plan, I thought.

  I wandered over to the other side of the roof. Tal was facing North, and there was the main road, of double width, between our building and Torrent’s apartment. We shared a wall with a building to the East. To the West was the thin alley we had climbed. I would have a slightly better time falling down that gap than climbing up it, but it wasn’t the preferred option if we were forced to flee. Fortunately, iIt would be easy to leap the gap onto the flat roof, and the four behind it were all of the same level. We would have some sure footing that way, at least for a stretch. But what lay beyond the last building was unknown, making it a bit of a gamble.

  At our tails, where I now looked out over, there was a minor street, half the width of the main concourse. I looked over it closely, searching for soft places to land and safe places to hide. I also scanned for people that were suspicious of us being on a roof. But my eye was drawn to none of these things.

  Instead, on the second floor wall of the shopfront three doors down, I saw the strangest bit of graffiti. Someone had leaned well out of the window and scrawled, in an ark above the frame, two sentences.

  Ahmut is dead.

  Ahmut lives.

  It had been written in a shorthand of continental common; an uncomplicated - some might say blunt - series of glyphs that were meant to be read and understood at a glance. The second glyph, the one that gave meaning to the first which was Ahmut’s name-sign, was a combint: two glyphs set one atop the other so that their meaning was shared. The translation wasn’t two sentences at all. The writer was trying to say that Ahmut was simultaneously alive and dead. How could that be? I checked myself, but there was no mistaking the translation.

  I had, on occasion, treated patients who slept like the dead. No sound or pain would wake them. Most wasted away, their bodies continuing to function, all except their minds. That function required sustenance, and we could not pour soup down their throats, or else they would choke. But some did manage to wake before they were too malnourished or dehydrated to actually die. They had no memories of their days unconscious.

  I had also treated many soldiers who had received a blow to the head, and stumbled around in a permanent daze, unable to perform even the most menial tasks. They could not talk, or feed themselves. They just existed, drooling to themselves. Their squad mates called them better-off-deads.

  But I would hardly refer to either of those cases as a living death.

  I was so engrossed in the implications of such a medical mystery that I almost missed the more significant part of the message. Ahmut. That was none other than Azhur’s brother, and one of his Fingers. Could it be that we would find a part of the Hand already cold in the ground upon our arrival? Was there any significance to the message being written here, so close to the presence of another Finger. It would have been dangerous arrogant, if not for the fact that Yorrent almost certainly never visited such a low part of the city.

  I knew I would uncover no further answers from current position, so I returned to Tal. I lay down on the ground, squirming until my spine found a groove between the tiles, and stared up at the clouds.

  I’m not sure whether I drifted off completely, but I certainly lost focus, until Tal nudged me in the side of her head with her boot.

  “We’re on,” she said.