“I love the pink of the walls! What a delightful shade! It sets up the exactly the right mood for meditation! I should find out what this color is called so we can repaint the railcar! Isha, don’t you agree that what the Old Rail Yard really needs is a pink railcar?”

“Ummm.”

I was too dismayed by the décor of the Moon’s Embrace, which inclined, as Ash had warned, towards faux-Iruvian. The lobby walls and front desk were plastered with varnished papers that had been painted to resemble swirling pink marble slabs. On the side closer to the baths and their humidity, the paper had already begun to peel, a state of affairs only partially concealed by lush palms in crude Iruvian clay pots and cliched posters of Iruvian beauties. All around us, bronze-skinned, black-haired, cat-eyed sirens in gauzy silk harem pants reclined against moonlit marble balusters and gazed down at us soulfully.

Could we convince Brannon and Irimina to take over the spa instead of the casino? I wouldn’t mind assassinating the owner of the Moon’s Embrace – or at least its interior decorator.

“Or,” Faith interrupted my thoughts, scrutinizing my face to see what got the best reaction, “maybe we don’t need to repaint the railcar. Maybe all we need to do is find out where the owner bought this gorgeous wallpaper.” I glowered at the poorly executed imitation marble. “Or these posters!” Satisfied by my involuntary exclamation, she continued mercilessly along that line of attack. “I think a few on the wall behind the bar will lighten up the entire common area!”

Luckily for Faith (and Brannon, Irimina, Ash, and the crew coffers), the bath attendant we’d pre-bribed marched up to us, wearing not sensual, flowing harem pants but a crisp navy blue nurse’s dress and a starched white hat, plus sensible black shoes with low heels. Thank goodness. “If you will come this way, please?” she ordered in a no-nonsense tone entirely at odds with the ambience of the place.

I liked her already.

Actually, I’d liked her since Ash and I approached her outside the casino, the night she lost a month’s wages at the gambling tables and stalked out with her face tight and lips pinched. Some women might collapse under the strain of maintaining both a home and a gambling addiction on a bath attendant’s salary, but not Una. She’d listened to our proposition with a hard expression and then bargained so effectively that Ash’s eyes lit up at the challenge.

Now she led Faith and me down a long hallway lit by yellowish gas lamps shaped vaguely like ancient Iruvian turbans. Who was the interior decorator? If he had come to Doskvol to avenge the family honor and kill me, could I persuade him to avenge the honor of all Iruvians and kill the interior decorator first?

“Awwww, aren’t the lamps so cute?” gushed Faith, bouncing along.

Una responded for me. “No,” she stated curtly. “They’re a pain to clean.”

I could only imagine.

Undaunted, Faith flitted from door to door, peering at the bronze plaques mounted by each one and reading the names by gaslight.

“Opal Room.”

“Emerald Room.”

“Ruby Room.”

Each plaque had the name of the room engraved on it in ancient Hadrathi runes, plus an Akorosian translation. I couldn’t read the runes, but he’d started learning shortly before I left.

For a brief moment, I was home again, squeezed onto a sofa beside him and reading over his shoulder while he wrestled with the grammar or lack thereof. (Ancient Hadrathi was a language composed of more exceptions than rules.) He could have told me whether the Moon’s Embrace had spelled the words correctly.

“Which one is ours?” Faith demanded, interrupting my reverie and utterly ignoring the fact that Una was literally in the process of escorting us to our room.

“Here. The Moonstone Room.”

The bath attendant flung open a door at the end of the hall to reveal a room perhaps twice the size of our railcar common area. Most of it was taken up by a sunken pool lined with gaudy tiles crudely painted with stylized flowers. White candles flickered in little alcoves set into the walls, and carmine rose petals drifted on the surface of the water, their sweet scent mingling with the steam.

“Bathrobes are over there.” Una jerked her chin at a row of hooks over a bench and cubbies where we could leave our street clothes. “Towels are on the ledge by the door.” Stooping, she dipped a hand into the pool to gauge the temperature. “Your friend will be next door in the Ruby Room. I’ll leave you to it.”

I nodded my thanks, handed her half of the fee (the rest to be paid after the score), and shut the door firmly.

There was a loud splash behind me.

Faith surfaced, water streaming down her head and shoulders. “It’s lovely in here!” she called. “Come in, Isha!”

I shook my head. “No, thanks. We talked about this, remember?”

In the initial planning stages, I’d categorically refused to play patron of the Moon’s Embrace. Although I didn’t admit it to my crewmates, I hated letting anyone see the lacework of scars all over my body. (Bazso was an exception – but then again, he had an even more impressive collection. Not to mention deformed internal organs.)

Faith, naturally, had refused to accept the idea that anyone could set foot in a spa and keep all her clothes on. “But it will be a bonding experience!” she had urged. “Just think – our first girls’ night out!”

To my surprise, Ash had seconded that. “I’ve already been hired as a bath attendant,” he’d reminded me. “We don’t need two of us escorting Helene around the spa. It would be abnormal.”

“And just think how suspicious it will look when two new staff disappear at the same time! And what will your students think if they see you? It is an Iruvian spa, isn’t it?” Faith had looked as if she rather liked the image of the Zayanas turning bright pink when I came across them in a scented pool.

I’d retorted, “They’ll think that the Red Sash Sword Academy doesn’t pay enough.” And they’d be right. Maybe having a fencing instructor double as a masseuse would goad Mylera into raising our wages, but I doubted it.

“Oh come on, Isha,” Faith had wheedled. “You know these things are never fun if you go by yourself.”

Ash had just stared at me, waiting for me to decide.

“I won’t have to get into the water, will I?” I’d asked warily. Those silly, flimsy, little bathrobes would expose the claw marks on my calves, but maybe if I kept the folds tightly wrapped, they would cover the rest….

“You don’t need to do anything you don’t feel comfortable doing,” Ash had assured me. “You don’t even need to get in the water.”

But now Faith hopped back out of the pool and tugged me towards the steps. “Come on, Isha, you have to try it!” she urged. “Just look at how pretty the rose petals are! And the attendant even perfumed the water! And she lit all these pretty candles! You wouldn’t want to waste all her efforts to make us feel comfortable, would you?”

Planting my feet on the tiled floor, I braced against her tugging. “I’m fine, thanks.”

She switched to a different tack. “Just think how suspicious it will look if she walks in and you’re sitting in a corner, glowering like a murderer!” She put a finger to her cheek prettily. “Unless you’re trying to get more heat for us again?”

“What? No! I – ”

She plunged back into the water with another great splash, resurfacing with rose petals clinging like rubies to her pale blonde tresses. Treading water in the middle of the pool, she called, “Come on, Isha! It feels wonderful!”

Footsteps and voices in the hallway made me jump. Opening the door a crack, I peeked out to see Una rounding the corner with another patron.

“You see?” Faith said sweetly. “You’re as tense as – a really tense thing! You’re missing the entire point of a spa.”

A different bath attendant walked down the hall from the other direction, her white hat almost glowing under the lights. She smiled politely at me. “Did you need something, miss?”

“Er, um, no.” I hastily pulled the door shut.

“I told you so,” said Faith cheerfully, splashing water at me.

“All right, all right, all right.”

Turning my back and hiding under a towel, I stripped off my street clothes. With the thin bathrobe clutched tight around me, I tentatively descended the steps until the hem brushed the surface of the water. Then, in one swift motion, I whipped it off and ducked under the petals.

When I came back up to breath, Faith was ready. “I love the angle of that scar!” she proclaimed. “And the slash of that one….”

Sinking all the way to my chin, I folded my arms and refused to acknowledge her presence.

An eternity later, Ash’s footsteps accompanied an unfamiliar tapping pattern down the hall in our direction. I stiffened. Eyes closed, Faith floated on the water with her hair spread out like a tangle of canal weeds.

“I hope you found the massage and manicure to your satisfaction, ma’am,” Ash was saying meekly. The footsteps entered the Ruby Room. “Here is your wine.”

A harsh female voice demanded, “What vintage is it?”

Ash hesitated – cabernet empoisonné? – but she was already saying curtly, “You’ve let it sit open too long. Tell Remira to send me another one.”

“That’s not good,” I mouthed at Faith, who’d finally opened her eyes.

“Picky, picky,” she commented, although whether she meant that for Helene or me was unclear. Probably both.

“At once, ma’am.”

Ash’s footsteps hurried away. Well, at least he’d persuaded the sommelier, another of Helene’s debtors, to feign illness and take the day off, so he should have no trouble obtaining a replacement bottle.

All was quiet next door. What was the woman doing – sitting by the pool with her arms crossed while she awaited the arrival of appropriate wine? Paddling over to the steps, I half-sat, half-floated while all three of us waited for Ash’s return.

Not too long afterwards, he re-entered the Ruby Room. “Remira seeks to humbly apologize for the insult to you,” he said smoothly. “Here is a sampler of our finest wines to make up for it. At our expense, of course.”

Did Ash know anything about wine? I knew I should have played employee instead of patron!

“This is acceptable,” Helene informed him, sounding slightly mollified. “You may retire.”

A moment later, a quick knock sounded at our door. Ash opened it with his head pointedly averted and put a stack of fresh towels on the ledge, the signal that Helene had drunk the poisoned wine. In five minutes, she’d begin to feel sleepy, and in ten, she’d start to hallucinate. Stealthily, Faith and I rose from the water, changed back into street clothes, and hovered by the door.

After the ten minutes were up, we heard Ash enter the Ruby Room again. “Should I ask the sommelier to continue?” he inquired, continuing to play bath attendant.

There was just long enough of a silence to suggest that the poison had taken effect. I’d begun to relax when a terrifying voice boomed, reverberating through the wall and floor and making all the candle flames tremble: “DID YOU DO THIS?”

Something clattered and shattered on the tiles. The door slammed.

Feigning calmness, Faith and I strode into the hallway – to find Ash practically plastered against the wall under one of the lamps. Shudders racked his body from head to foot, and his glazed eyes stared fixedly at the door of the Ruby Room. Ringing his left wrist were blue-black bruises in the shape of fingertips. Catching sight of us, he stuttered, “Some– something’s wrong. It’s not her. Anymore. It’s – it’s – ”

I processed that in a split second. “Can we kill the body of a human possessed by a god?”

“I – I don’t – ”

The door crashed open.

I spun around to see a pretty, middle-aged woman framed in the doorway. A pair of majestic antlers blazed like torches above her dark gold hair. Her eyes, irises and whites alike, had turned to solid gold so I couldn’t even tell where she was looking, but that blind gaze stabbed into my mind, clenched around it like a gauntlet, and squeezed.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

Terror.

Terror and adoration and revulsion and an incomprehensible, inexorable compulsion to kneel and pray that I might be spared….

Black crystal, jagged and alien, glittered in the light of the flames of U’du.

Father’s voice, uncharacteristically reverent, breathed, “Children, this is the Spire of Ixis.”

A child’s version of my hand, still plump and soft and unmarred, stretched out, tentatively, tremblingly, and brushed the icy crystal with its fingertips. I felt – I felt –

An alien malice, unyielding as the mountains and insubstantial as smoke. A vast amusement, the ageless caprice of something that didn’t lack pity so much as the capability to comprehend such human trifles as mercy or compassion or grace….

Impatiently, Father crushed my palm against the crystal, and the jagged edges sliced deep into my flesh, and I screamed –

A tinkling laugh shattered my trance.

Faith darted past me into our room, towing Ash behind her. Eyes still fixed on the Golden Stag, Ash stumbled and stumbled again. Steeling myself, I dashed after them and flung myself to the side, forgetting to hold the door – but when it slammed shut, there was no sound.

In fact, there was no sound at all in the Moonstone Room.

Faith grinned at me and mouthed, “You can thank me later.”

Shaky and lightheaded, I crept around to the side, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t hiding, I was just repositioning myself so I could trip and fling Helene into the water if she should move this way….

Face taunt under the strain, Ash took a step back, followed by another. One heel slipped off the edge of the pool, and he flailed wildly, fighting to regain his balance.

Abruptly, all traces of fear washed away from his face. His back straightened and his chin came up, and he met those terrible golden eyes, holding that pitiless gaze, challenging the Stag –

Helene’s head rotated ninety degrees to stare at something to her side.

Her feet planted and her body angled slightly forward, as if she were pushing with all her strength against something massive, Faith stared back intently. She smiled.

All of a sudden, the antlers flickered and winked out, leaving only golden motes suspended above Helene’s head.

Faith floated up a foot above the tiles, eyes shut tight, lips slack, arms dangling limply at her sides.

Leaping forward, mouth open in a soundless shout, Ash grabbed at where the antlers had been and frantically traced runes in the air. A blue glow spread around the motes, trapping them.

Without warning, Helene collapsed like a puppet, crushing Ash beneath her.

Leaping into action at last, I grabbed her shoulders and rolled her off Ash, who moaned piteously but didn’t open his eyes. Helene lay limply in the deep sleep of the drugged. That, at least, had gone as planned. Seizing her arms, I started lugging her back towards the Ruby Room.

Shrill screams pierced my eardrums, unbearably loud after the silent battle. A trio of women who were peering confusedly at the plaques on the doors tripped over themselves in an effort to scurry away.

Feigning panic, I yelled after them, “Get help! I heard her scream and found her unconscious! She needs a doctor!”

Looking completely unconvinced, they ran away howling about murder.

“It looks like my services are needed once again,” Faith sighed wearily, coming up behind me. “I’ll leave you kids to your own devices. Have fun!” Picking up her skirts, she streaked after the eyewitnesses.

Moments later, I heard distant cries of, “She’s fainted!” and “Get a doctor!”

It sounded like Faith had matters well in hand.

With Ash out of commission for the foreseeable future, I hauled Helene back into her own room, kicked the door shut, rapped her sharply on the back of the head, and drowned her as intended. As I held her head underwater and monitored the little stream of bubbles rising from her lips and nostrils, a deep hunger roiled and surged within me. No, I snapped and stomped on it as hard as I could. That Which Hungers withdrew lazily.

Helene had stopped breathing.

Mechanically, I arranged her on the steps of the pool, making it look like she’d tripped, struck her head, and drowned in a tragic accident. After a moment of thought, I completed the tableau by positioning Ash in the doorway as if he’d fainted from the trauma of finding a dead patron. Then, working swiftly, I pinned my hair into a different style, removed my jacket, and balled it under my skirt to pad out my waistline. Having thus transformed my appearance, I sauntered out to check on Faith.

She lay in the center of the lobby in the middle of an entire circle of patrons and attendants, with a doctor leaning over her to administer smelling salts. Opening her eyes, she sat up so suddenly that some of the patrons gasped. She clutched the doctor’s arm and babbled, “You have to help! I heard a scream! I ran out of my room and saw an attendant on the floor! I think he died! You have to check on him!”

That provoked a panic. Attendants broke off and sprinted in my direction, shouting instructions at one another. Patrons snatched their handbags and started streaming out the front door in a mass exodus. In all the confusion, Faith rose unsteadily to her feet, tottered over to the front desk, and leaned against it as if trying to regain her breath. Only I saw her flip rapidly through the guest registry. Slipping over, I helped her locate the names and addresses of the eyewitnesses.

Unwisely, the three women were still there, huddled in a corner by a potted palm, speaking in hushed, urgent voices while trying to decide how much to say and to whom.

Faith helped them decide. Pattering over with a grateful smile, she cried enthusiastically, “Thank you sooo much for sitting with me until I woke! It was sooooo kind of you!”

They jerked up and gaped at her much in the same way Ash and I had stared at the Golden Stag.

I sidled behind the palm to eavesdrop.

“Oh no, miss, it wasn’t us – ” began the one with the ridiculous hat.

“In fact, it was sooooo kind that I shall simply have to call on you to properly express my gratitude!” Faith rattled off their addresses gaily, lowered her voice a notch, and, still beaming full force, added matter-of-factly, “And if you say anything to the Bluecoats, I’ll happily track you down and murder you too.” More loudly, she finished, “Well, until next time, then! Good day!” Passing by my hiding spot, she linked her arm through mine without even slowing.

Together, we flowed out the front door along with the other patrons and left Ash to extricate himself whenever he woke. Much as preying on our targets’ vices was key to our modus operandi, abandoning him at the crime scene also seemed to be tradition.