Southward, there crackled a holocaust, black
With your planet’s expulsion, the domains
Of your silence that moved in the algae
And jostled the lump of the ages.

Then, form was, alone, was magnitude
Sealed by a world’s agitation, wherein glided
Your leathern pre-eminence, mistrusting
The gifts of its nature: tenderness, power.

-Excerpted from “Leviathans,” by Pablo Neruda

* * * 

Thursday, December 12

When Indirk opened her eyes, she couldn't tell if it was day or night. The sun wasn't out, but night hadn't seemed to fall. The sky was overwrought with iron black clouds, hanging low over the city as though they were about to fall and crush it. The air was thick with salt and humidity, a cold ocean wind singing between shattered window panes and the twisted metal that had once held the windows in place. Rivulets of water ran down the blackened walls, making them shine like polished onyx.

A woman garbed in gray rags sat in the broken window, looking down on Indirk. There was a soft yellow flicker in this woman's hard eyes. Beneath her ragged gray hood, wet and heavy with the dew that hissed in the air, the woman's dark lips hung partially open as though in expectation. This Writhewife, the one named Sjeze-ze-ezje-reth, Szjeze Who is Twice Wed to the Roil of Betrothal, said, "Hello, Uncle Green. Welcome to the house of my Gray Love, though she does not greet you so warmly."

Indirk lay on her side, looking at her hands in front of her. So many times in her life she'd woken up like this, pained and disoriented, be it from a night of drinking or a brawl or just the staggering, dizzying turns of the world. She'd frequently felt this way in Mardo's bed, opening her eyes to stare in mute wonder at her reality. Was she really here? Had all this really happened?

There were black-gray lines on her arm. She'd been torn open there the day before. "You put me back together," Indirk said.

"One body stitching the wounds on another,” said the Writhewife. “Nothing has been left behind. Nothing is owed."

Indirk rolled and pushed herself up to her knees, the movement swift and sudden and painful and sickening. She groaned and swung her head back, swaying and almost falling before she could right herself. Shivering, holding herself carefully, Indirk said, "I don't fucking get you."

"I don't fucking get you either," the Writhewife said flatly.

Indirk chuckled at that. "Helping me works against her. Against your Gray Love, doesn't it?" Lifting her gaze, Indirk watched the Writhewife stare at her. "Gray Watch rejected me. If I'm working with Mirian, then I'm working with Cradsoun, and Cradsoun is betraying Gray Watch. They don't want Gray Watch to have too much power. Shouldn't you be helping Norgash? She's the one with the weapon that's going to destroy Pharaul. She's the one that's going to win the war for you and Gray Watch."

"I don't want to kill Pharaul," said the Writhe through Szjeze-ze-ezje-reth, causing her head to softly shake. "I don't really want to win the war."

* * *

When the sun had risen over Gray Watch that day, it wasn’t even red. Clouds washed the light to a mute glow that dimmed rapidly until, barely an hour after the day began in earnest, another night had fallen. A bitter overcast swept relentlessly across the sky. Horrible rumbling shook out of the darkest clouds—out of what primal worshippers would call the barrel chest of Oh, Driven Wind—threatening the kind of storm that could dump buildings into the sea and sweep ships away like silt. The storm stayed high and refused to fall, hanging dangerously over the sailors and laborers who tied off lines, fastened moors, and carried goods into secure warehouses.

On this morning, a humble fishmonger’s shop erupted in light, fire, and music. As splintered wood flew and Watch officers dragged disguised spies from the ruin, Mardo listened to the song of his magic echoing in the air. He pivoted to look toward Half-Face Mirian, to ask Cradsoun’s spymaster if he was satisfied, but then something hard struck the air beside his head. In a clamor of broken song, like glass chimes dashed on the ground, the protective barrier surrounding Mardo broke.

Mardo ducked to a side, into what remained of the fishmonger’s brick doorway. Well-trained sorcerers of the Thousand Year War knew that one iron bullet would be followed quickly by another, the first to break the warding song, the second to kill its conjurer. But no second bullet came. Instead, Mardo found himself crouching on the ground, looking down the line of the quay. A few hundred meters off there was a tall stone foundation piled high with blocky brick buildings. On a wood-wrought balcony hanging from one side there stood a figure dressed in all black.

From this distance, Indirk had her black and silver rifle aimed at Mardo’s head. She did not fire a second shot. Maybe that rifle couldn’t fire in quick succession like that, or maybe she just chose not to. Either way, she stood there, staring down the line of her rifle, her expression one of shockingly cold indifference. She stared, locked eyes with Mardo, held his gaze in the cold grip of her own.

Mirian was speaking to Mardo, but those words went unheard. Mardo’s chiming orb clattered the ground forgotten. He could bring himself to do nothing but stare at Indirk until she lowered her rifle, went inside the building, and disappeared. Then, putting a hand to his chest, he reminded himself to breathe.

He hadn’t expected to feel so deeply. For a moment, he almost thought part of the iron round had found his chest somehow, pawing at his fur and skin beneath his robe. But the only wound she’d left on him was intangible, like how, in his dream that morning, she’d still laid beside him, and he’d awoken to an emptiness he hadn’t known for some time.

Mirian shook his shoulder, but Mardo pushed the man away. Mardo’s chest and body throbbed with an impossible ache, his thoughts reduced to a mute, wordless uproar. Numbly, he faced the sea and sat down among the shattered wood.

* * *

"Do you want this war to end?"

"Desperately."

"When I first joined it, I didn't understand. Why were distant Cradsoun and Old Uncle Green fighting? Why were Pharaul--daughter of Wind, bitter but beloved, daughter of ever-singing Sunfire—and my dear Gray Love?" The Writhe shook Sjeze’s body bitterly, had her speaking with a breathy force, "I had to protect her, my Gray Love. I had to protect her! And then dear Vont, old Vont, beloved of Salt and Rime and Dim Fathom, why Vont? Why me?" She put her hand to her face, shoulders shaking in distress, "Trying to kill me? And then if I do what I must, to pull those ships into the sea and break that sweet, that salt-seasoned, that shining city?" Her words were laced with hesitation and confusion, and she took gasping breaths like she'd forgotten how to breathe. "And I'm in pain but they scream so, scream so, and so and so, and I feel... Feel what? Is it guilt? For what? What have I done?"

"Even back then, there were Writhewives. Some part of you must have understood-"

"Oh, but my Gray!" Sjeze leapt to her feet, eyes wet and shining. She gestured out the broken window to the city. "Oh, beautiful Gray Love! I can't do any less, nor regret these thousand years. Oh, these thousand years, love, I have watched this body grow, this mind invent and intuit, this heart beat and grow and change as faces change and lands change. This Gray house, this Gray heart, my heart, my dear love upon the shore, basking a thousand years between Salt and Sunfire."

Sjeze almost sang, leaping up into the broken windowsill so she could see the city all the better in the dark. She swept her arm to the lights and the dark roads beneath her one way and another, "See there the lines of lightening stone where she expanded her quay century upon century, and here, near here, how she ascends these steep hills with gently paved road, with limb and artery to stretch across these highlands and plant these fields like grass upon her head. Oh, Gray beauty, so much with every year."

Indirk stared at Sjeze, mystified at her animated movement and voice, at the sincerity of it. "You sound like..." What? A young woman enamored by a first love? An old woman reminiscing about a lifetime of romance? Something in between? Shaking her head, Indirk said, “I don’t understand you. Why are you saying all this?”

Sjeze pivoted to look down at Indirk. “I’ve never had the chance to speak to a Greenwife before. You keep them so deep in your dark.”

“I’m not…” Indirk started, but paused to ponder, to finally say, “It’s not like that. I don’t think the Green sees through me the way you-“

“Oh, yes, you do.” Sjeze said firmly. “Indirk, Greenwife, he hears me. He sees you. He knows. Deep there in the Green, green there in the Deepwood, he knows and understands. I hope he understands. I don’t want to hurt you. Him. Uncle Green, I just want to know why you did all this.”

Indirk pulled herself off the floor, groaning, grabbing at her limbs. She stood quietly for a few seconds, bent double over as she waited for her blood to settle, her senses to clear. Looking up, she said, “What did Uncle Green do?”

“He broke our family.” Sjeze spoke with a childlike pout. “Salt and Rime and Wind are gone now. Dim Fathom quiet in the corners. Sunfire singing distant and muffled, under something, I don’t know what. We’re all broken. We can’t go on like this. Don’t you know they’re going to kill us?”

Indirk straightened. “Who? Who is going to kill you?”

* * *

“I told you to lay low!” Mirian shouldered into Indirk hard, knocking her into a corner. Maybe he thought she was still injured, so he could just push her around, but he ended up slammed against the opposite wall instead. It was a dark enough alleyway, but they could hear the sounds of Watch officers running through nearby streets, hunting.

Pinning Mirian to the wall with one forearm against his neck, Indirk snarled, “Never touch me like that. Our bargain didn’t include a fucking leash.”

Mirian spat a shocked, “The hell?” and struggled, but only for a few seconds. Then the surprised anger in his one eye turned into a cold annoyance. “I told you to stay out of my way. I can’t have you messing with this operation or trying to save your friends.”

“They’re not my friends.”

“Or trying to kill Mardo too soon!”

She pushed harder against his neck. “Who did you catch?”

“Get off of me!”

“Answer.”

“Everyone,” Mirian huffed. “Yeah, we caught Amo, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She shook her head. “I need Edner. He’s our cryptographer. We need him in order to send and receive messages from the RVA. I can’t feed you intel if I can’t get it.”

“So, what? I can’t just let him go now that I’ve already caught him.”

“The hell you can’t. Figure it out.” She dropped her arm and backed off of him, but didn’t give him time to argue or catch his breath before asking, “How much do you know about the Writhe?”

Rubbing at his neck and adjusting the mask that covered half his face, Mirian grunted, “What? Why?”

“You know the League, so you’d know more about the Writhe, right? It was talking about its family. What family?”

“The primal pantheon. That’s something you should know about. They still worship Green in the Laines.”

“I’m not religious. I don’t like those stories.”

Grumbling in annoyance, Mirian said, “It’s all legends as far as I know. I don’t know what’s real. Story is there were three Writhes once, an identical trio of Writhes born to Vont’s primal gods down in the Eating Sea. The one that lives in Aldalneld is just the only one that’s still around.” He shook his head and walked toward the light, listening to Watch officers’ heavy footsteps on a nearby street.

“Vont’s gods are… Hey!” Indirk followed him. “Why is it afraid of the Redfall cult?”

“Afraid? I don’t know. They’ve got nothing to do with each other.” He swung an arm at her. “Get out of here before you get yourself caught. If you get caught, the deal’s off.”

Indirk backed up, watching Mirian go off into the light. Seconds later, she heard him talking to a Watch officer on the road beyond, trying to turn the man’s attention away from the alley, so Indirk pushed her way into the nearest door and snuck through a supply shop’s backrooms. She was thinking about the Writhe, about its so-called family.

* * *

Sjeze sat in the broken windowsill, staring out at Gray Watch, but she had an anxious, almost terrified aura around her. She had her knees pulled to her chest, hands up near her face. Her dark eyes flickered with distant yellow candlelight. The sight of Gray Watch was soothing to her, perhaps, like watching a lover in silent repose.

“You’re really afraid,” Indirk squinted, almost in awe of the possibility. “Of the Redfall cult? The Everliving?”

“Not him,” Sjeze muttered. “Just one body? No, not one body. An ugly, bloody claw of that twisted and tormented city. Redfall died, but it crawls on, and sprawls, and claws. It’s hungry. Something in it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What happens to the song inside your little body when it goes to sleep?”

“What?”

Sjeze flicked her candlelight eyes toward Indirk. “What do you know about Hell?”

Indirk flinched. “What?”

“She stole it, I think, from them. Norgash, calling herself Helldancer, stole the power of the Everliving and shares it with her own brides. They carry it into places they shouldn’t.”

Biting down on her teeth, watching Sjeze as though it were difficult to see her in the shadowed light, Indirk found herself remembering fire. Not just the fire in the dungeon, but in the warehouse, during the sickle-sough festival, people burning with a fire nobody but her could see, and Norgash could tell that she could see it. And more than that, afterward, the fire that burned in Indirk at the thought of the woman, the fire in the dreams she had…

Indirk pressed her hands to her chest. She could still feel a spark inside her bones. She thought she was imagining it. She thought that maybe she wasn’t. “Did I kill her?” Indirk said. “Last night, or whenever. I don’t know what happened, but did I kill Norgash?”

“You don’t know anything about hell,” Sjeze said.

Sighing, Indirk shook her head.

“She finds it inside of people, maybe,” Sjeze said. “Tears it out of them, maybe.”

What did Indirk know about Norgash? The woman was famous, though seemingly also secretive. A dancer who performed as she traveled, gathering acclaim that began far west of the Rhyqir Valley, her fanatical fans following her as she traveled through the Warring Lands and came here, to Gray Watch. Those would be the masked people that Indirk had seen on the night of the Sickle Sough, a mix of anthrals from both sides of the war and outside of the war united by their passion for a woman who danced with fire.

From the outside, it sounded incredible, almost cult-like, but not outright evil. Now, feeling the fitful spark of Norgash’s touch still flickering inside of her even after Indirk had bitten into the woman’s throat, Indirk wondered if Norgash had some unnatural hold on those people. Power stolen from the Everliving? From the Redfall Cult? The same power that so terrified a being as massive and mysterious as the Aldalneld Writhe?

It was too big, too complicated. Indirk shook her head hard, not wanting to look at it, but she knew she couldn’t look away. She needed to understand. “Why do you let this go on?” Indirk spat, suddenly turning a hard glare on Sjeze. “Even if she’s a sorcerer or something, she’s just a person. Her followers are just people. You’re the Writhe!”

* * *

Canvas had been strung up over the roof and walls of the Admiralty office. There, in the great, broken back room, near a cold fireplace all black and yawning, the Commodore still held court. Hands behind their back, fine green coat buttoned to their neck, shining hair tied behind their head, the Commodore pivoted as the Writhewife entered the room, and all conversation stopped.

Beneath her anonymous gray rags, the unassuming Writhewife flicked her candlelight gaze on the few figures in the room. One burly-shouldered sorcerer in sanguine-stained robes, several clumps of his great gray mane glued to his sleeves by fresh red blood, offered the bitter glare of a man who was rotting inside. Flanking him were commoners in leather jackets, their shoulders slouched with sadness that burdened them to the point of sickness; in one pocket, there was an ivory gleam.

The Aldalneld Writhe let silence linger in that room for a few seconds. Just as the Commodore was about to speak, the Writhewife’s lips parted with a quiet muttering, “So the body that stole the name Helldancer has passed away, has it?”

The question made the sorcerer and the commoners flinch. The Commodore’s pouting lips grimaced, their low voice saying, “We had negotiated that you will respect certain boundaries on this subject. This isn’t the time to be asking about minutiae.”

“The Helldancer lives, then?” The Writhewife tilted her head, showing her pale cheek in the shadow of her hood. “Masks in their pockets, these two, appendages harmed by the damage to the heart but not without their lifeblood. And this one, this Mardo,” she eyed the large man, “I can see the outline of the woman’s blood on him. How he cradled her wounded body. How he carried her to rest.”

A deep rumbling rose in Mardo’s chest, something instinctive and bestial. The Commodore spoke over him. “I think it’s time that you all leave, for now. I have work that I need to focus on.”

Mardo moved slowly, hesitantly, weighed down by whatever lay dead inside of him. The two disguised as commoners, two followers of the Helldancer, moved swiftly and fearfully, as though the Commodore had put a whip to their heels. They tried to slip swiftly past the Writhewife, but as they stepped past her, there came a hissing, snapping sound from her body. Something thin, gray, and invisibly quick cut the air with an audible scream. The two acolytes burst like oilskins, bodies torn open down the front, an instant’s rush of fluid and warmth, and then they were limp and twitching on the floor.

The Commodore advanced a step, voice a frantic crack. “You! What-?”

“They followed her here from places south of the Starmire,” the Writhewife said. She stood spotless in her rags though the red stained the floor all around her. Some thin creature detached itself form her, falling from beneath her robes to lap at the blood. It would’ve seemed like a large, sinewy rodent, except for its pallid baldness and the yellow flicker beneath its skin, the wriggling of black tendrils slipping in and out of random tears in its body.

The Writhewife said, “You’ve lost nothing, my Gray love. You know I can’t abide the stain of the Everliving, stolen or not.” Her gaze shifted toward Mardo. “Will you come closer?”

Mardo gazed at the corpses and offered no reply. He stared hard at the strange creature making a meal of their blood, and the little thing actually glanced up at him, some kind of animal insight briefly flickering in its yellow candlelight gaze as it considered him. Then it dipped its face back to the blood. Mardo struggled visibly to contain his disgust, body shivering, lips twitching.

“You can’t be permitted to slaughter people in this city!” The Commodore held their commanding tone steady, straining against some kind of anger. No, fear? “Not without explanation or process.”

“These fragments had already been removed from their roots. Pruning them has damaged nothing.” The Writhewife kept her gaze on the Commodore. “Do you not sacrifice of yourself to empower the Helldancer? I have discerned the end goal of Pharaul’s annihilation, yes, a strike powered by a spell long-conjured underground. Don’t think that I don’t respect your painstaking work.”

At this, the Commodore straightened, their features turning cool. “You intuit a great deal, then. It hardly leaves anything to discuss.”

“What dwells in the lighthouse, where I cannot see?”

At this question, the Commodore’s eye twitched. Mardo gave them a hard look, maintaining their own silence.

The Writhewife didn’t linger in silence. She repeated, “What dwells in the Lighthouse, oh Love?”

Taking a steadying breath, the Commodore said, “Perhaps our trusting relationship has been overtaxed lately. Are there doubts between us? Would you have Gray Watch prove its love?”

The Writhewife took a breath and straightened. “Our love has been unconditional since the very beginning, a passion swept from silt to sea to silt and hill.”

“And yet it’s a love that has always been informal, Gray Watch’s title of bride more mythic than legal. Well, I’ve never thought of it, have you?” The Commodore paced toward the Writhewife, unflinching as their footsteps took them into the warm red blood of the now-still bodies. “Not that you need more Writhewives, nor would any mere marriage represent what joins Gray Watch and the Writhe.”

“You confuse me, Love.” Dim yellow eyes watched the Commodore mutely.

The Commodore lifted one of the wife’s cold, pale hands, rubbing her fingers with their thumb. “Let us invent something worthy of it, then. A new ceremony, with documents and witnesses. Let me plan a wedding worthy of past millennia that will last for millennia to come. Prepare a Writhewife to represent you, and I will marry her. I need only one week to plan. But, distant Love, you ageless young creature born of Salt, of Rime, of Dim Fathom…”

The Writhewife watched as the Commodore paused and stared at her, the distant yellow in her focused entirely on the Commodore’s lined face. If any mortal had ever held the attention of the Writhe completely, the Commodore did now.

“You must,” spoke the Commodore, “Not interfere with the woman called Helldancer and the fools that adore her. You must trust me, that my fragmented and small thoughts will come to good ends with patience.”

* * *

“Sjeze?” Indirk pressed at the Writhewife’s chin, her body gone rigid and immobile for the past several minutes. “Is something wrong?”

“Her followers,” Sjeze said suddenly, head twitching to a side and face rippling with discomfort. Indirk flinched away from the sudden movement, but Sjeze spoke on lowly, “Her followers are mere fools. Love such as mine requires affirmations of trust, renewed and renewed and renewed. My Gray Love is mine, all mine, her mistakes as lovely as her triumphs, and I’ll not abuse her or crush her power even if it costs the war, the life, the other half of the sea.”

Shaking her head, Indirk huffed, “I’m not talking about hurting the nation. I’m talking about a plot by the Commodore. A person, not a nation. You can’t forget the difference when it’s important like this!”

“Have you ever made a marriage work?” said the Writhewife.

Stepping away from Sjeze, Indirk responded, “I’ve been told it takes a healthy amount of suspicion.”

“Not you, nor Uncle Green, nor any in your company,” the Writhewife fairly hissed, leveling Indirk with a glare, “Know the work of deep, dear, trusting love such as binds the Gray heart to mine. I will help you, Indirk Correlon. But I will not, as you have done, betray my Love.”

“As I have…?” Indirk squinted at the Writhewife. “Did you just judge me?”

But the wife turned her gaze out on Gray Watch and did not respond.

* * *

When the Writhewife had turned away from the Commodore and stepped out of the room, she’d paused and listened to hear the Commodore saying, “Mardo, I’m going to have the old highway around the southern cliffs repaired. For a time, I think it would be better if we shipped your reagents over land instead of sea.”

And Mardo said, “Can such repairs be done before Sunday? There’s a shipment of-“

“I don’t need to know the details,” interrupted the Commodore, in the tone of someone avoiding some disgusting experience. “Maybe an extra guard, then.”

“As long as they can be subtle. Starting from the crossroads, dawn, on Sunday.” And then Mardo spoke with an audible smirk in his voice, “Like church.”