Archive of Our Own

The sword that's been left on Clorinde's doorstep is smeared with its wielder's blood, dark red running in fingertip streaks along the hilt.

Whoever had left it here is lucky that she had a duel this morning. She had spent the night with Navia in Poisson; she's only here for her uniform and her Duelist's badge. And now, it seems, for this.

She knows the make of this particular sword well. The blade with its long central channel and the grooves carved into the hilt, embedded with certain metals and just enough arkhe, is designed to help build a Bond of Life for those who, unlike her, have no Vision to aid in that art. It would be unlawful in any duel, but excellent for hunting monsters.

Clorinde knows, too, the blade itself. It's more battered than it was in her childhood, blade chipped and cracked in what must have been a final battle, for its owner would not permit it to remain in this state without repair. This is, though, the one that she held when her Master first decided, all those years ago, that she should learn to call ousia and forge a Bond of Life between her own blood and that of her foe.

If it is here, in this state....

Then Clorinde has a duty to carry out.

Another duty atop those she already has, and one that will wait while those others will not. Clorinde holds the sword, laid atop its wrappings, a minute longer in her hand. Then she sets it carefully aside and goes to change into her duelist's uniform. She's calm, and while she knows that is in part numbness, it will help; she mustn't take her own feelings into the ring.

Her opponent is boastful and proud up until she sees her face and her blade, and then she forfeits immediately. It's been three weeks since someone even started to attempt an actual duel with her, and six months since she's had to bring one all the way to a conclusion. She remembers that one's face, his trembling, his name. She remembers the name of every opponent she kills. Petronilla had taught her to keep such a record, if only in her own mind. It is the last token of respect she can give her foes.

Renard Bourdillon had possessed little else to respect. He had begged her even as he fought, his voice rising to a shriek as he insisted that his sister, who had slain the rich heiresses he seduced and convinced to rewrite their wills or sign over their holdings, was the one truly to blame. An easy excuse, when he alone had been captured and she had escaped. Clorinde had not answered his claims; such judgement is not her place. She is only the law's instrument.

Those who do forfeit she may remember, but she doesn't record their names in her memory in the same way. Her Master had taught her to recall opponents who escaped alive only to mark them as future prey. Her Master, working outside the law and fighting monsters as often as she did human beings, could and would pursue such prey as a Duelist doesn't.

Clorinde wonders if her Master would be disappointed by that. It wouldn't matter, these days. She's long since accepted that if her investiture as a Marechaussee Hunter was meant as some kind of test, if her Master ever did return to grade that test, its result would not change the course of her life. She has chosen her own path, and it's just as rewarding as her Master's approval might be, while her Master's disapproval wouldn't be enough to turn her away.

Now it matters even less. The sword is still there when she walks back through the door, battered and stained. Clorinde picks it up, and this next duty back up with it.

One of the rewards of the path she has chosen to follow is that she won't have to carry this duty out alone.

***

"Since we opened the vault together," Clorinde says, the wrapped shape of the sword lying on the table between them, "I hoped that you would come with me to leave this there. You did say that Petronilla was the Marechaussee Hunter you respected most."

"Aside from you, of course," Navia says, fighting the lump in her throat. "I don't think I said that at the time."

Clorinde looks the way she always does with a grim duty ahead, stoic and determined, with a certain set to her jaw and shoulders that tells Navia she isn't as impassive as she looks. She shrugs at Navia's qualifier. "It isn't a contest."

"No," Navia agrees. She touches the stained ropes binding the sword in the rags that wrap it. Their stiffness is familiar. "These ropes came from a ship, or at least were kept by the sea. You said you found it on your doorstep, right? Then someone carried it through the city, and someone will have spotted them, even if they didn't realize what they were carrying. I'm sure I can find out who."

"Why? If they were another Marechaussee Hunter, they wouldn't want to be known or seen. And if it was someone else carrying out an errand they'd been assigned, then they've carried it out successfully."

"Don't you want to find out how she died?"

Navia wants to; the urge has begun gnawing immediately. It's a morbid desire, she knows, but it's no salacious interest. She simply can't imagine--she had always known how her father died, but for so long she hadn't known why, and that had eaten at her terribly. This will eat at her too, the fate of the woman she had known so briefly but had left such an impact behind, in the form of Clorinde here before her. She can't imagine how it couldn't eat at Clorinde.

"If she had this sent to me, then she died as a Marechaussee Hunter." Clorinde shakes her head. "That's all that would matter to her."

"But what if she wasn't the one who had it sent? She could have been killed by an enemy trying to show off their success! Or she could have fallen with the job undone, and someone will have to finish it."

Clorinde looks for a moment as if it had never occurred to her that Petronilla might have left a job undone. Then her expression goes considering, and she eyes Navia thoughtfully. "If I don't agree, I assume you'll dig into this anyway. With the Spina's connections, you can start just as easily without me."

"Of course. If there's any chance there is foul play, or even- even if it's only to find her body...." Navia's throat tries to close again, and she sees the same flash of remembered pain on Clorinde's face as she recalls, too, all those who left nothing to bury when they dissolved beneath the waves. "My father would. I owe it to him to do it for his friend. And I owe her myself, because she brought me you."

For a moment Clorinde's eyes shine damp. Then she closes them, opens them again, and nods decisively. "Then I'll go ahead and help. If she did leave any work undone, I should see it finished."

Navia pushes immediately to her feet. "Good. Let's go. First stop: the Fleuve Cendre."

***

The Fleuve Cendre is under the Spina's protection, so Clorinde goes ahead and lets Navia lead. She heads straight to the L'or noir. It has fewer patrons at this time of day, but the bartender is on duty as always. Though it turns out he isn't the one who has an answer for Navia's questions.

"Potier brought that fellow here last night," Faustier says, strolling over to the bar. "He saw him placing the package while he was out replacing a lock. The moment Potier mentioned a bar, he was sold, so he brought him here in case it was anything suspicious, since you said to keep an eye out for Miss- for trouble."

His eyes cut to Clorinde as he corrects himself mid-sentence. Clorinde nods to him, and he quickly looks away. She can't be too annoyed, after all that time she spent in service to Mr. Callas' last request. Navia had probably added her to the Spina's protectorate even before Clorinde had begun spending more nights in Poisson than in the Court of Fontaine.

"Ah, the gentleman he brought here to drink himself into a stupor," Tetreaux says. "I didn't catch all of the backstory, just that Sonny and Luca went somewhere to check his bona fides."

Faustier shrugs. "He told everyone he was sent to deliver a sword, and they found a sword. Sonny decided it was harmless, and if it was something you'd ordered, Miss Clorinde, he didn't want to disturb your package. I walked him out of the city once he was good and drunk, just in case."

Navia nods. "When you walked him out of the city, did you walk him to a boat, or do you think he might have walked off and drowned?"

She, too, glances Clorinde's way, but Clorinde only nods at her, too. She's a Duelist, not a Garde; the Spina's activities only become her business if someone is charged and comes all the way to a duel. And Navia would never let any of her people fall that far afoul of the law.

"To a boat, Boss. He said he needed to get back to the Rusty Rudder before the next load of white wine came in. I put him on a barge hauling bulle fruit to Lumidouce Harbor, and he said he could get the rest of the way from there."

"What did he look like?" Clorinde asks.

"Skinny and strung-out. You could tell he was a drunk."

"A blond gentleman," Tereaux adds, "with a mustache. Terribly untended, both his clothing and his coiffure. I'm afraid I didn't catch his name. I didn't see a reason to ask it at the time. If Potier had told me the tale, I would have."

"Thank you, gentlemen." Navia smiles at them and hooks her arm through Clorinde's. "It sounds like our next stop is the Rusty Rudder."

***

The Spina has a few ships in port here, and Navia commandeers the fastest one. The Rusty Rudder isn't far. The whole ride there, Clorinde stands at the rail, the wrapped sword in her hands, staring out over the water. Navia stands beside her in silence until they come close to shore, when Clorinde abruptly slides the sword back into her pack and straightens up, gaze focused, at the ready for their task.

"Let me do the talking," Navia suggests. "The Spina has a good relationship with the people here."

Clorinde nods and lets her lead the way.

Their mysterious courier--stringy, blond, mustachioed, just as her people had described him--is sprawled out on the desk right beside the bar. Navia waves to Pitot and marches right up to him.

"It... *hic*... it ain't mine," the drunkard says, once she's managed to remind him of what had come before last night's drinks at L'or noir. "'S just a job they gave me."

"Who is 'they'?" Navia asks him.

"Whoever it is who leaves the Mora in the cave. It's a little place over there," he says, waving vaguely landward. "Mora once a week, with a list attached. I collect it up and... *hic*... bring it back to the Boss, and he gets what's on the list and sends me back. Pays for... *hic*... some good wine.... For me, at least. Whoever it is doesn't drink anything decent."

"Surely they didn't ask you for this sword."

"No. Last time, last night... no, last night was the bar in the sewers... night before last, or the night before that, they just left the sword. No Mora, no list. Just a note attached. 'To'... *hic*... 'to the Champion Duelist.' Boss said to take it there, and he'd still put it on my tab for me. Speaking of which! Boss! Where's... *hic*... where's my next bottle?"

"Oh! Do you still have the note?"

"Let me see...." He digs in his pocket, and pulls out a damp, crumpled scrap of paper, ink blurred nearly to illegibility. "Eh, I tripped into the water at Lumidouce Harbor... *hic*.... Must've fallen in. Boss! Captain! I need my drink!"

"I'll get that for you," Navia tells him, taking the ruined note, and whisks over to the bar. "One bottle of wine for the gentleman over there, please! Put it on my tab. And while I'm here, you can put some 'fine wine' on it, to boot."

Pitot doesn't bother to ask her for an opening offer; he knows she's good for it, one Boss to another. He just nods, opens a bottle and hands it off to another crew member to take to the drunk, and beckons her down to the far end of the bar. "What kind of fine wine are you looking for? Not about Choudy, I hope. He was my navigator in the days when this ship sailed, but when it beached up here, he took it harder than anyone else. But he's still my crew, so I keep an eye out for his sake."

His smile fades as he says that, and he fixes Navia with a gimlet eye. She smiles back.

"That's what a Boss does, isn't it? He's not in trouble with the Spina or anything. But speaking of what a Boss does, he did carry a package to a friend of mine, and we're looking for whoever sent it. He mentioned you took a look at it. Anything you can tell me?"

"Oh, in that case, don't worry about paying for fine wine--that's barely a mid-rate vintage. A woman showed up about a month ago telling me that she was going to be doing some investigation in Erinnyes Forest, and asked me to arrange for supplies. The only odd part was the cave, and that's not that odd. Since some traveler blew it open last year, it's become a useful spot for anyone who wants to keep a low profile."

"A woman? What did she look like?"

"An older lady, thin and pretty pale. She was wearing a cloak, so I didn't see a lot of details, but she had a nasty scar about here, with the eye missing." He runs a finger across his face, right temple to chin.

That's Petronilla, all right.

"I have one more question," Clorinde says from behind her. "Have you had any unusual monsters, or ruffians or murderers, around here lately?"

"Yes," Pitot says promptly. "Strange monsters that have been attacking people who wander too far into the Forest. That traveler cleared the whole thing out and cleaned up the lakes last year, too, and the village up there south of the Willow was growing again, but about two months ago people started showing up mauled or dead. Most of the newcomers cleared back out fast."

"Thank you," Clorinde says. "That's all I need to know."

"For now," Navia adds. "If I think of anything else, I'll come back for another vintage. Let my people know my tab, and I'll have it paid off right away."

"You always do."

"Come on, Clorinde. Let's check out this secret cave."

***

It's nearly useless, overrun with footprints. Clorinde notes the drop-off into an underwater channel, which makes it no surprise that it's become popular with smugglers, but there's nothing there that would suggest in particular that Petronilla has passed through. It turns out, though, that Navia's interest has more to do with evading prying eyes than with the cave itself.

"Pitot didn't say the monsters had stopped," she says. "We should look into that. It must be tied to Petronilla's fate. Since the sword made it to you, that might mean it was already taken care of, but we should make sure."

And find out exactly how her Master had died. Clorinde had resisted the notion when Navia first proposed it, and still should now. If her Master had the strength to deliver the sword here, then she must have considered her work done. But now that they're on the trail, her hunter's instincts are quickening. Either that, or Navia's own desire is infectious. Likely it's both.

"We'll see."

"There's one other thing. Choudy gave me a note--it's how he knew to take the sword to you. It's mostly ruined, but look." Navia carefully uncrumples the blurry paper. "Along with your name, she wrote something else."

Clorinde leans in, chest tightening at what she sees there. A short line, no more than a few words beyond her name, but she can just make out: 'take care.'

"Of what?" she says aloud, confused.

"Of yourself, I presume." Navia holds the note out to her.

"Possibly." Clorinde can feel the constriction in her chest threatening to tighten further, and firmly resists. "Or of someone... or something else. Let's see what the situation is with these monsters."

"If they're still around, we can't risk leaving the locals in danger," Navia agrees. She presses the note against Clorinde's palm, and Clorinde closes her hand around it and tucks it carefully away.

Returning to the Rusty Rudder, they get directions to the village and begin the hike up the hills to where it sits above the lake. Navia is doing her determined best to admire the beauty of the landscape; Clorinde, knowing that's for her benefit, does her own best to play along. Navia's chatter lasts until they come across the Treasure Hoarder camp set across the road.

When the familiar insignias come into view, Clorinde sets a hand to the hilt of her sword, and Navia rests her closed umbrella upon her shoulder. The encampment, though, is in utter shambles, fabric rent asunder, torches toppled, even the platform they'd built and the hut atop it shattered in places as if under tremendous blows. The characteristic windvane that had crowned it lies bent upon the ground. No signs of the Treasure Hoarders themselves remain.

"Oh...." Navia's eyes go eyes wide. Then her expression firms, and she turns to Clorinde. "Think these were our monsters?"

"Probably. I'm not familiar with anything that can do this, but let's take a look."

Clorinde keeps her hand on the hilt of her sword as she and Navia enter the cleared earth where the Hoarders had built their camp. The ground here is scored with the signs of battle. They circle it carefully, looking for clues. Round indentations pock the ground; there are places where it appears sliced open by claymores, which the Treasure Hoarders don't use, or struck by the same heavy blows that had shattered the wood of their shelter. Marks show, too, of the Treasure Hoarders' weapons: the shallower indentations of shovel-scooped earth, the marks of fallen hammers, and patches of broken glass and blackened dirt where flasks had shattered.

Either enough Treasure Hoarders survived to clean up afterwards, or locals of various sorts cleared it all out before any bodies began to moulder. There are no more remains of the monsters than there are of the Hoarders. At last, though, Navia calls out.

"Look! There's something stuck right here," she says, wrenching whatever she's found free as Clorinde approaches. "I recognize it from somewhere... oh, doesn't it look like the patterns on that golem Florian turned into when he was possessed?"

"It does resemble the crest of a Praetorian golem's helm," Clorinde says, taking it from her outheld hand. "Not all of the marks here match their weapons and fighting style, but it does make some of them make more sense. The Marechaussee Hunter are sworn to fight all evils that Remuria left behind. If there are golems here, that's what my Master came here to fight."

Navia tilts the broken bit of crest back and forth, raising it to the light. "But where could they have come from?"

"A good question. We'll see what the villagers have to say." Clorinde starts off along the path again. This time it's Navia's turn to follow behind her.

As she steps upon the road, there's a flicker of movement on one of the cliffs overhead. Clorinde's head jerks up, but by the time she focuses upon it, the movement is gone. One of the Hoarders? Another local? A monster or enemy? Or...?

Her stomach drops all over again. Master hasn't appeared out of the shadows to aid her since she was five years old. She certainly won't be doing so now. It's the useless fantasy of a child she barely remembers being, straining against the weight of the knowledge that the sword in her pack brings.

***

Pitot was quite right about the village's dire state. More of the houses scattered over the hilltop are decayed and deserted than are dwelled-in, and some that seem recently repaired have been boarded up all over again. The remaining villagers are those who were too stubborn to leave twenty years ago and remain too stubborn to leave now.

"Right, big creatures what look like they were carved out of stone," an old woman says. "They got Luarette's boy, and nearly killed old Gualtier down the way. Haven't come up to the houses yet, though, except those down there-" she nods in the direction of a cluster of shattered old buildings in which Navia and Clorinde had stumbled across more Treasure Hoarders, huddled behind hastily-reinforced walls and willing to back off after a quick Rosula Dorata salute "-and only late at night. So we all stay in at night, and the only people hurt since are those as what shouldn't be lurking around anyway."

The way she looks at them makes it clear that she thinks they're in that category.

Most of these stubborn holdouts are old; most of them are wary and distrustful, which Navia can't blame them for when there are so many Treasure Hoarders about. The handful of others they can find in the few other solid houses about are much the same as that woman. Finally, as the evening draws down and lights come on in windows, Navia spies one more place. Looking at it in daylight, she wouldn't have thought it was inhabited, but the glow through the shuttered windows is evidence enough.

"Hello?" she calls, knocking on the door. "Can you answer a few questions for us? We promise we're not monsters!"

"After all the Treasure Hoarders we've come across today, I'm not sure how reassuring that will be," Clorinde remarks.

Her doubts aside, though, after a moment the door swings open. The woman on the other side is much younger than Navia had expected, with soft green eyes and brown hair pulled back in a loose braid. Her dress is far more fashionable than any of her neighbors' clothes had been, a lovely yellow right out of the Court's last season, and she wears a gold-edged black ribbon in her hair. At the sight of them, she looks startled for just a minute, then smiles wide.

"Are you looking for shelter for the night? Please, come in. It isn't safe to be out after dark around here."

"That's very kind of you." Navia follows the woman inside, turning back to hold the door for Clorinde, who carefully latches it behind her as they enter. "We were thinking of going back to the Rusty Rudder for the night, but since it's gotten so late, we won't say no!"

"I'd be happy to have you stay overnight. It's very lonely out here all on my own. My neighbors are good people, but they're understandably cautious about newcomers, and...." Her smile falters, and she looks at them sideways in an almost wary fashion. "I have a spare room you can use. No one is staying in it right now."

Her accent isn't any more local than her clothing, from the Court of Fontaine rather than the eastern backcountry. Navia immediately senses a story.

"You're new to the area, you said? Pitot did say people had been starting to move into the village."

"I am," she says, but adds nothing more, only turns away to make some more space in her front room. There's laundry piled on one side of the couch that's the only seating; she drops it over what seems to be a harp in the corner, draping its curved lines in the unfolded linens before Navia can get a good look. All she catches is a glint of gold--like the dress and the ribbon, far more expensive than anything she would expect in such a modest home.

"You play the harp?"

"Not well," she says, with an embarrassed laugh, and turns back to them. "I have some bread, and cheese, and some soup on the fire in the kitchen. Nothing else, I'm afraid."

"That's all right! I have the makings for macarons right here. Let me get some started, and I can offer you dessert as repayment for what sounds like a delicious dinner."

It's not in any way a delicious dinner, but the cheese is sharp and plentiful, and good melted sharp cheese is enough to cover the worst sins of the doughy bread and the unsalted soup, with its overboiled onions and underboiled potatoes. Navia smiles brightly and compliments the woman's innovative, ingredients-first approach, while Clorinde simply eats hers quietly and thanks her for the meal without mentioning its quality.

After dinner is over and the macarons finished, Navia serves them out, with a double share for their host. "Please, take them," she says when the woman protests. "It's the least I can do to repay your generosity! By the way, what was your name? I don't think we were introduced."

A pause, and then, "Hilaire."

Oh, there certainly is a story here, though it would take some prying. Which Navia can pursue after they've found out what happened to Petronilla.

"A pleasure to meet you, Hilaire! I'm Navia, president of the Spina di Rosula, and this is my friend Clorinde."

"The Champion Duelist?"

"I'm not here in any official capacity," Clorinde says. "We're here looking into rumors of monsters."

"Oh, I remember. You did say you were here to ask questions. About the monsters, I take it?" Navia is pleased to see that, despite her protests, Hilaire is starting in on her macarons with every sign of enjoyment. "I don't know that much about them, but I did have one encounter."

"Tell us all about it, please," Navia asks her.

"It was a few weeks ago," she says, her eyes going distant. "I was late coming back from shopping in Lumidouce Harbor, and it had gotten dark before I could get home. I was nearly to the top of the hill when I was set upon. I'm afraid I didn't see all that much. They seemed like they were made of clay or stone, but they moved so fast, I thought I was done for. But just as they had me trapped, someone appeared to save me."

In the corner of Navia's eye, Clorinde tenses. "What did she look like?"

"An old woman with long grey hair, and a scar on her face, and a missing eye. She had a sword and gun like yours," she adds, looking to Clorinde. "I remember how loud the gun was when it fired. Haha, at that sound I screamed and started crying.... But she drove them off, then asked me where I lived and told me to get here and lock my door behind me. I ran all the way home from there."

"Did she say anything else?" Clorinde presses her.

"No." Hilaire shakes her head. "Where I lived, and to lock my door. That was all."

Petronilla was never a very talkative person, Navia recalls. "Do you by any chance remember which way she went?"

"I think... north. Yes, north. I looked back once I was at my door, and I saw her headed north, towards the lake."

"Thank you so much! That helps a lot. Now we know exactly where to search."

"It's a start," Clorinde agrees, with a nod to Hilaire.

There's no expression whatsoever on her face, not even the thoughtful anticipation of a duty upcoming. All Navia can do, though, is reach out to put a hand over Clorinde's. She looks drawn and tired, though Navia knows she hadn't kept her up all that late last night--but then again, it's been a very long day. She'll drive herself onward into the night, Navia knows, so best to cut that short herself. She was the one who insisted they come here, after all.

"Then we'll start out first thing in the morning. After a good night's sleep, of course!"

Once they're installed in Hilaire's spare room, Clorinde drops off with little delay. A necessary skill for a Marechaussee Hunter, she's told Navia, and it seems that even these circumstances aren't enough to get in the way. Navia wonders, before she can stop herself, if Clorinde had been able to sleep this deeply after her father's...?

She catches the thought halfway through and quashes it firmly down. It's not a question it would be fair to ask, especially in these circumstances. Besides, she knows what Petronilla's training was like. Clorinde's sleep may be far more troubled than she would ever let show. It has to be.

Laying down beside her, Navia wraps an arm around her and does her best to banish all thoughts of the dead, so that she, too, can find rest.

***

Clorinde comes awake all at once, holding very still. The room is dark, though her eyes are already swiftly adapting. She can smell gunpowder just beyond the door. Her Master is lurking there, ready to startle her awake and make her scramble for whatever weapon she can get to fend off the attack that's coming and the training that will follow.

There's a faint creak in the floorboards as someone's weight shifts, then the quieter, more metallic sound of the knob. Clorinde reaches for the sword on her bedside table--the gun beneath her pillow will wake Navia, and besides, she's supposed to fend Master off, not try to kill her. She waits until the door is just opening, then lunges, pulling it from the sheath and rising in one smooth motion.

One pulled off-balance by Navia's arm around her. Clorinde comes the rest of the way awake as she staggers forward and catches the doorknob with her free hand, pulling it open and bracing herself to level her sword at... their hostess.

"Eeeek!"

Hilaire scrambles backwards and throws her apron up over her face. When she pulls it down again, there's a strange cast to her expression, almost angry in the dark. Clorinde wonders if she's the kind of civilian who lashes out ferociously when frightened, but she only shrinks back against the wall after that first jump.

"Clorinde!" Navia is on her feet behind her, sweeping up her gunbrella and coming forward. "What's wrong?"

Hilaire looks away, down the hall. "I- I was looking in to see if you were awake. There was a noise outside, and since you said you're here for the monsters, I was hoping you could see what it was."

"I'll take a look." Clorinde lowers her sword to her side, steps back to dig her gun out from under the pillow, and nods. "You shouldn't startle a trained fighter. Especially in their sleep."

"I'm terribly sorry," Hilaire says, and leads Clorinde to the door, twisting the bottom of her apron up into knots in her hands.

Navia trails behind, gunbrella still in hand. "I'll stay here," she tells Clorinde. "We don't want whatever it is to come in and grab Hilaire while we're both outside."

Wise of her. If Clorinde needs her, she knows Navia will come the moment she calls, but there's no point in abandoning these thin walls without even a guard at the door. There's very little this is likely to be, in any case, that Clorinde can't handle with the knowledge of how quickly Navia will be at her back.

A quick circuit of the house shows nothing. Clorinde does another wider circle just to be sure a monster or Treasure Hoarder isn't lurking in the bushes, but there's nothing anywhere nearby. She makes herself as visible as possible as she returns to the house. If it's Treasure Hoarders, they ought to think twice after that.

"I didn't see anything," she reports when she steps back inside, "but I'll stay up the rest of the night to keep watch."

"There's no need for that," Hilaire says, shaking her head anxiously. In Clorinde's absence she's changed from the apron into a heavy dressing gown, pulled close around herself for comfort. "I don't want to keep you awake. You're my guests. Besides, it was probably just an animal. I've been jumping at shadows since I was attacked."

"It's no problem," Navia cheerfully assures her. "I'll trade off with Clorinde, so she gets some more sleep. You've already been so generous, and we're here looking into the monsters anyway! If we spot any, it just helps us out."

"Thank you," Hilaire says, still looking anxious. "I'll... I'll try to go back to bed."

"You can sleep soundly with us on the case," Navia says, and shoos her away with a wave of her hand.

Only once Hilaire has vanished through the door to her bedroom does Navia turn to Clorinde. "What did you leap up like that for?"

"I woke smelling gunpowder and hearing the door open. For a moment I thought it was my Master. So I rose as she would have expected me to, and only then realized where I was." Her face heats in embarrassment. "I truly felt in that moment that I was four years old again. I have never woken in such a state before."

Almost never. Clorinde isn't going to tell Navia about the first morning she'd woken in bed beside her in Poisson, not quite a year ago. For a few breaths she'd been sixteen years old again, waking beside Navia after a midnight revel, grateful and guilty for the long pre-dawn silence in which she could study that beloved and yearned-after face. Navia knows by now of that childhood crush, but Clorinde cannot share with her the desperate longing when she'd realized that it was no longer such a morning, and everything she'd dreamed of had been accomplished only at the cost of such a long period of pain.

In the dimness of the room, she can tell herself that Navia isn't looking at her with pity. "I would be shaken, too."

Clorinde wonders if she has been--if she's woken with that sense of a presence herself, in the years since Mr. Callas died. As always, she feels a sting of guilt at the thought. Though the dark room would hide it anyway, she makes an effort by habit to keep it from her face. It's not something Navia wants to see, nor something Clorinde wants Navia to soothe.

"I'll sit up for a while," Navia says. "You go back to bed, and I'll wake you... let's see, according to my pocketwatch, it's a little past midnight, so around three? And then you can wake me up at six."

Which will still give both of them about six hours of sleep. More than adequate for Clorinde, and while Navia might appear softer to those who don't know her well, she's very aware of just how late Navia can stay up and still be bright-eyed and cheerful in the morning when bright-eyed cheer is required of her.

"All right."

"Then off you go." Before Clorinde can start for the door, though, Navia leans in and catches her in a quick kiss. "Sleep well."

A soft smile rises to Clorinde's lips. "Safe watch."

She leaves Navia sitting in the front room humming to herself, gunbrella on her knees.

***

Navia wakes to the scent of cooking eggs and follows it into the kitchen to find Clorinde there, her watch ended, or at least eased, by the break of dawn. It's not exactly her special bulle sauce duck breast, but Navia isn't going to complain about an actually palatable breakfast.

Hilaire has dark circles around her eyes, but she smiles apologetically at them as she accepts a plate of eggs. "After I woke you up so late, too...."

"It's fine," Clorinde says.

"All's well that ends well," Navia tells her, putting on her best smile, and attacks her eggs with relish.

They leave Hilaire, at her own insistence, to wash up, and set out down the road northward towards the lake.

"If these golems do only come out at night, they must be spending the day somewhere," Clorinde says. "We'll look for the site of an attack and see if we can track down a den from there."

"We may not have to look far." Navia tilts her hat to shade her eyes from the morning sun, looking up the hill. "Doesn't that look like a torn-up tent to you? Not the sort Treasure Hoarders like to use, but someone's living up on that platform. Or was living, anyway."

"You're right. Let's be careful about our approach. We'll have to-"

What exactly they have to do is lost in the sudden clatter of nearby stone. Both of them turn as one, Clorinde pulling her weapons out, Navia leveling her gunbrella. For a second Navia isn't sure what she's looking at, scanning the bluff west of the road for the white shirts and assorted hats of Hoarders. Then her eyes manage to sort the grey-brown stone of their enemy from the duller grey of the bluff behind them. Those are a couple of Praetorian golems. Alongside them are a trio of four-legged golems in the same style and with the same orange glow to their eyes, light and deer-like, with their crests curving to long split points like antlers atop their sloped cervine heads.

"So much for only coming out at night."

"Those hooves," Clorinde says. "They would match the shallower indentations on the ground in that last camp. I don't think the Praetorian blades could have caused that damage to their building, though."

"Let's find out what they can do." Navia primes her gunbrella. "Comin' at ya!"

The golem she'd fired at stumbles back, and she launches forward, switching at once to her axe to spiral about and hammer at the two deer-like golems directly in front of her. Rather than the solid stony shields of the Praetorians, they light up with the blaze of Pyro. Navia takes a moment as they clatter closer to stop in place and swing about; their legs prove almost as vulnerable as a true deer's, and they stumble, one falling to its knees, before the other realizes that it should avoid her axe.

Navia brings it down on the fallen one, watching its curved crest split off with a satisfying crack and the orange light vanish from its eyes, before drawing her gunbrella and dancing back to choose her next targets. Clorinde is engaging in close with the two Praetorians, but her lighter blade and pistol are weaker against the thick Geo shield than Navia's shots would be. Navia takes a single shot at one of the closer deer-golems, sending shards of crystallized elemental power spraying outward to be absorbed into her gunbrella, then calls out to Clorinde. "Switch it up! I can handle those fellows if you take these!"

Clorinde gives her a nod, then darts away from the Praetorians for enough distance to raise her gun and call a flare of Electro around her. She starts taking shots at the deer-golems, the Bond of Life she's forging with them flaring like a shadow around her, and Navia levels a shot at the golems before they can march after her and interrupt her lunge.

While she tries her best to line it up on them both, one is closer, and the empowered shot cracks away most of its shield but little of the other's. Navia swings her axe to shatter the last of that shield, and ducks around the golem as it drops to its knees to hammer at the still-shielded one. Behind her, Clorinde's gunshots are interspersed with the Electro-snap of her lunges and the crackle-hiss of Overload.

The second golem, too, drops to its knees, and Navia draws her gunbrella and drives the end into its back before firing point-blank. With a shudder, it crumples, the orange glow fading from its helm and blade. She pivots to see the second golem rising back to its feet, stone armor starting to form over its body again. Beyond, Clorinde finishes a lunge and ends it standing over the broken stone of the third and last deer-golem.

Navia fires a second shot at the standing Praetorian, most of its armor once again crumbling off. Her eyes meet Clorinde's as she switches her gunbrella for her axe and darts forward; at the golem's back, Clorinde holsters her gun and draws her blade. She lunges forward as Navia's swing knocks the last of the armor off a second time, slicing swift and sure into each of the golem's exposed joints. It, too, topples into a pile of stone pieces, all the glow going out.

Clorinde opens her mouth to make a comment, then spins about instead. Her sword comes up in a guard stance as they both hear a rumble from the same westward bluff.

What comes tumbling down is neither Praetorian nor one of the little deer, but something far larger, so round and rotund that it could almost be laughable as a threat. There's nothing funny, though, about the great tusks that the huge stone boar sports, nor the speed with which it charges. Navia and Clorinde leap apart, each barely evading a tusk as it swings its finely-carved snout and whirls around.

Navia looks up at it, the stone body twice her height and swiftly sheening over with a thick shield of Cryo. "I think we found what tore up that Treasure Hoarder camp!"

"I concur," Clorinde says grimly, and raises her gun high once more.

It's no easy fight; the first impression of startling speed persists, and while it cannot seem to turn during its rushes, it's swift to swivel about as soon as it comes to a stop. The boar's Cryo shield, too, is far thicker than the flickering Pyro of the deer-golems and not so immediately vulnerable to Navia's Geo as the Praetorian armor, though at least it throws off crystalline Cryo shards to fuel her gunbrella. They've just gotten the shield worked down to a few last clinging shards of ice, and Clorinde on its far side has finished the last lunge of a Vigil and is breathing deep as she lets the Bond of Life settle to call upon again, when a gunshot rings out from the same bluff above that the boar-golem had charged from.

For a single, breathless moment, Navia's heart lifts with unexpected joy. Might they have been wrong about the sword's intent--does Petronilla hunt still? Is this her, here, come to aid them in their battle?

Then Clorinde gives a sharp pained sound, her step faltering just as the boar spins about and shakes its mighty tusked head. She's caught sidelong by one of those tusks and flung to the ground. At the same moment another shot echoes over the road, and Navia hears the whistle of a close-passing bullet. She stumbles back before the boar gores her, too, and scrambles sideways, putting its bulk between her and the bluff.

Clorinde is starting to rise to her feet, but she's out in the open; Navia grabs her arm and wrenches her into the golem's shadow. A third shot sends dirt spraying a few feet from where she had lain. The boar-golem has turned towards them and is stomping its feet, preparing to charge again.

"I'm fine," Clorinde says, though she doesn't shake free of Navia's grip as she gains her feet. "They have terrible aim."

"One lucky shot is all they need," Navia reminds her. "They winged you once, didn't they? Besides- Oops, this way!"

She scrambles aside from the boar's charge, dragging Clorinde with her. Another shot rings out and pocks the ground a yard away. Not far off, the boar squeals to a halt and spins, focusing its beady orange-lit eyes on them. She's certain of their ability to take the boar, but not of their ability to avoid being shot in the process. And if either of them tries to go after the shooter, they have no idea what kind of additional hidden force they might face.

Navia looks up the road towards that ruined camp, any shelter it could have offered already torn down, then back the way they came--from the village, where this boar could easily be drawn if they ran that way. Another shot from the height of the bluff scuffs the ground, the boar-golem stamps the earth, and to their left, down the hill, among the willows, calls a small voice.

"Here! Here, water!"

Of course. The lake. Bullets slow and lose their power in the water, and the boar will either freeze or sink. Whoever is calling for them, they have the right idea. Navia nods to Clorinde, and receives a nod in answer.

Clorinde keeps a solid grip on Navia's shoulder as they bolt downhill, both very nearly falling on the steepness of its slope, and go tumbling into the water. Far above, they look up to see the boar charging down after them, frozen patches glimmering over its stone skin.

At the top of the hill, a figure appears, looking down at them where they stand on the shore. It's beneath one of the pines above, half-obscured in the shadows and wearing a cloak; Navia can make out nothing but the hand lifting and the glint of metal in it.

"Water! Here!" the voice calls again, with a splash as whoever it is plunges into the lake.

"Right," Clorinde says. Navia nods to her, and they dive in together.

The water overhead roils with the passage of a bullet, losing all its force as it pierces the surface and then beginning to tumble slow and heavy towards the lakefloor below. The fast hollow thud of the boar's charge stops abruptly as it steps into the water and out on it, then freezes in place as Hydro binds to the Cryo of its shield. They leave it up there, helpless on the surface of the lake.

Clorinde lets go of Navia's shoulder to plunge down ahead of her, less impeded by her close-fitting clothing than Navia is by her skirt and broad hat. Navia can just make out the tear along her jacket's flank, and a thin stream of red rising from it to dissipate in the clear water. It isn't bad, she doesn't think; it certainly isn't slowing Clorinde as she swims. Then again, Clorinde was ruthlessly trained to carry on through any injury.

The sight below them is gorgeous: clear water scattered with colorful Fontemer aberrants, wound through with glowing roots, and at the very bottom an altar-like structure of clean pale stone and gleaming metal pipes. Navia can guess who the traveler was that Pitot said cleaned out the lake. Surely her old partner would have been able to figure out however that design down there works.

A ripple in the water beside them makes her turn to see a Melusine come swimming down beside them. Ah, so that's the voice, so small and high-pitched. She waves at them both. Navia waves back, then points at Clorinde and gestures upward. The Melusine looks where she's pointing, her eyes widening as she sees that streak of blood, and waves again, leading them towards one of the great roots sinking from the willow above down into the lake.

"The shooter," Clorinde starts to say as they surface alongside it, and the Melusine pops up to wave both arms.

"Pahsiv, hide! Follow root, sneak behind tree."

"She's right," Navia tells Clorinde. "If we stay on the root here, we're not visible at all with all that earth and the willow's trunk in the way. Just sit here and I'll take a look at that wound."

"It isn't anything to worry about."

"I'll be the judge of that," Navia says, and clambers up onto the root, reaching down to haul Clorinde after.

With a sigh, Clorinde submits to both being lifted out of the water and the subsequent examination. Navia realizes her fingers are shaking a little as she pulls up Clorinde's jacket to inspect the line of red on her side. The energy of the fight, of course, and seeing Clorinde injured, even as minor as this does indeed seem to be. She also remembers, though, the hope-shock of those bullets firing, and the very brief thought that Petronilla might still be alive. Had Clorinde hoped the same?

There's no reason for Navia's eyes to fill with tears, but they do. She focuses through them. The bullet had barely glanced Clorinde's side, leaving nothing but a shallow crease behind, no worse than a nick by a blade. She bandages it anyway, careful and slow, though by the time she's done her fingers no longer shake.

"There we go! All patched up."

"Mar-show-say, fixed?" the Melusine asks. She's still in the water, clinging to the root. In the distance, there's the muffled cracking of ice, and then the splash and thud of great hooves climbing up the bank and away.

"How do you know I'm a Marechaussee Hunter?" Clorinde looks sharply down at her.

"Pahsiv... know Mar-show-say." She points at Clorinde's cape, or more specifically where it lies askew over the root, and the edge of a Hunter's insignia can be seen on its inner lining. "Pahsiv, protect. Mar-show-say, protect. Pahsiv, duty. Mar-show-say, duty. Pahsiv, Mar-show-say, exchange information."

Navia feels Clorinde stiffen. "Have you seen them recently?"

"Pahsiv! Pahsiv, bring," she says, waving down at the water below. "Pahsiv, bring Mar-show-say, secret place."

Clorinde takes a deep breath. "Can you bring me there, too?"

"Pahsiv!" The Melusine hurls herself down into the water, under the roots. Navia reluctantly raises her hand from Clorinde's side and meets her eyes as Clorinde looks her way; then both of them push off and follow.

***

By the time they catch up, the Melusine is far ahead, or rather, below. Navia looks around, but it's Clorinde who spots her, pointing towards one of several underwater tunnels branching off from the depths of the lake. The Melusine waves again, pointing down it, then darts into its mouth. They follow.

The tunnel is long, a glowing root of the willow winding through it. In no time at all the Melusine has outpaced them, but there's no intersections or branches; they need only keep going until they see above them the flat sheen of surface. Surging forward, Navia leaps from the water beside Clorinde.

"Here," the Melusine says. "Here, ka-pow!"

Beside Navia, Clorinde has gone very, very still.

There's little dry ground in this cave, just a little grassy shelf beside the pool at which the tunnel ends. Someone, though, has set up a camp here. A fire pit, unlit, a tripod above it, a bag and a pile of books and papers on a small shelf of rock at one end, a bedroll on the grass at the other. And on the bedroll lies a woman even stiller than the unbreathing statue Clorinde has become, scarred face sunken and bruised, mouth and one remaining eye fallen open.

"Here, ka-pow...." The Melusine catches at Clorinde's cape, tugging. "Pahsiv... Mar-show-say, bring here."

"Oh," Navia says softly, looking down at the Melusine's worried face and feeling her eyes begin to prickle. "You brought us to Petronilla."

As if her master's name was her cue, Clorinde jerks into movement, striding forward and sinking to her knees at Petronilla's side. Her hand rises briefly to her Vision, but that wouldn't be what she's reaching for; beneath her Vision, beneath her clothing, Navia knows she still wears the dagger-shaped pendant that, alongside her cape, was all Petronilla once left her.

"Clorinde...." Navia follows her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Clorinde's own hand moves to touch the back of hers, and Navia quickly grasps it, squeezing tight. Clorinde squeezes back, just once, then pulls free. "I need to determine how she died," she says, her voice very nearly level, though Navia can hear the tremor not-quite-hidden in it. "She didn't die naturally."

"No," Navia agrees, looking beyond the sunken face to Petronilla's simple sturdy clothing, in terrible disarray, and the dried blood that stains it and the bedroll alike. She opens her mouth to offer to help--to do it herself, to spare Clorinde--but Clorinde is already reaching for the buttons of her shirt, undoing them with swift efficiency. She wouldn't appreciate the attempt to spare her.

"Look about for any other clues to what happened, before we trample them," Clorinde says, her voice even harder and flatter than before, which to Navia makes the tremor beneath even more obvious.

She has never cried easily, or willingly, before others. Navia wishes that her comfort might be enough to break that dam--but even if it might, that won't happen in front of this worried, wide-eyed Melusine.

"Got it," Navia says, the cheer she automatically tries to put into the words falling flat, and turns away to investigate further.

Her eye is drawn immediately by the muddy soil at the edge of the water beyond the pallet. There's something there: the imprint, she sees, of a broad clawed foot. Others are half-hidden by the grass that grows over the indents they left, but she can see that the creature--undoubtedly a vishap, with those feet--had come through the cave's open entrance, walked up to the pallet, scraped the ground in a way unfortunately already obscured by their own feet, and then turned and, it seems, dove into the water that leads to the tunnel beneath.

"I wonder why it didn't try to eat the body. They eat meat, don't they?"

"Melusine!" the Melusine says, waving her hands in negation. "Melusine, Melusine! Tidalga. Eat tidalga!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I meant that vishaps eat meat, not you."

"Melusine.... Pahsiv, blue thing, eat tidalga."

"Blue thing- oh, I understand. I still wonder what it was doing here."

"Pahsiv... bring!"

Pahsiv.... Navia has never met a Melusine who struggles so with language--but then, she hasn't met many who aren't part of the Marechaussee Phantom, and this one certainly isn't one of those well-trained elite. But there's a certain Paimon-ish nature to the way she keeps repeating that word. Navia forces a smile and goes down to one knee in front of the Melusine. "I'm terribly sorry, but I did skip our introductions. I'm Navia, and this is Clorinde. And you are...?"

"Pahsiv!" the Melusine says, both hands to her chest, to Navia's complete lack of surprise.

"A pleasure to meet you, Pahsiv. Now, were you saying that you brought a vishap here?"

"Melusine... Pahsiv, bring Mar-show-say, here!"

Which leaves Navia even more confused than before. Though it's possible she's fixating on something completely unimportant; maybe the local vishaps do in fact prefer tidalga, and this one was just coming through to hunt from the schools they passed in the tunnel below. Petronilla's body is untouched, so it doesn't truly matter.

"Yes, and thank you very much for that," Navia tells her, struggling to maintain the smile until she stands.

Setting the vishap tracks aside, Navia goes over to the pile of books and papers. They're in disarray upon the stone, and she can see dried handprints, Melusine-shaped, on several of the papers. Well, it makes perfect sense that the Melusine had been curious, even if Navia doubts she can read. She starts flipping through them herself.

The books are all dry compendiums of monsters, heavily annotated. A paper tucked between two of them has "Praetorian Golems," "Cervus Golems," and "Verres Golems" written upon it, with brief, flat descriptions of the deer-golems and the boar-golems beneath the latter two, and quick dashed-off tallymarks alongside each name. Recording her kills? At least the lack of another entry suggests that there's no third new type waiting in the wings.

The handful of loose papers are largely similar in nature, several frequently bound together with thread or tucked into some bestiary or another, with descriptions both of creatures Navia recognizes and those she's never heard of. Hopefully none of them are lurking around here too, though the crumpling and age of these papers, and how deep they're buried, suggest some relief on that front.

Among them, though, is another stitched-together booklet of loose pages written in Petronilla's hand that contains monsters only in the most metaphorical of senses. Navia's heart catches in her throat as she skims through the pages marked in Petronilla's cramped hand.

"These names...."

"What did you find?" Clorinde rises from Petronilla's body to join her beside the rock.

Navia tilts the handbound booklet towards her and slants it against her thumb to flip swiftly through the pages. "It's full of names. Some on the first few pages I think I recognize from my childhood. People who were in the papers as having been caught, or slain, by the Protector of Justice. And then...."

After a break of a few pages, more names start. Navia watches Clorinde skim down the page, her eyes narrowing. "These are those I've faced as a Champion Duelist. From the very first. I remember her very well--I had never killed someone in the dueling ring before, only bandits upon the road and common monsters. I see she's marked everyone I killed," she adds, brushing her thumb over one of the names on the page, tagged with a star.

Those, Navia had already noticed, diminish from one page to the next; these days, most people who face Clorinde forfeit, but that reputation had taken some time to build.

"Yet she recorded all of them, not only your kills. It's a list of your victories, Clorinde. She-" Navia is struggling not to choke up on Clorinde's behalf. "She was keeping track of you all along. She was keeping a record of what you'd done. She must have been so proud of you."

"Master...." Clorinde blinks hard and shakes her head. "It doesn't surprise me that she would track my progress. I was her student."

"I wonder how current it was when... it might tell us something useful, right?"

"Hmm." Clorinde takes the booklet and flips through, seeking the end of the list. As she reaches the last page, a slip of paper falls out. Navia catches it, then leans over Clorinde's arm to see the last few names. "Yesterday's isn't there, naturally. Nor last week's. The rest- odd," she interrupts herself, thumb resting in line with a given name. "She circled this one."

It's the last star-marked name on the list. "Renard Bourdillon. He was seducing and killing heiresses, wasn't he? I remember reading about that case in the papers. They caught him in Petrichor, trying to escape Fontaine by private boat, but his sister who was helping him got away."

Clorinde nods. "I thought he would forfeit the match. He was terrified, and those who are so afraid when they face me almost always do. But even as we fought he was still swearing that he was innocent, and his sister the only one guilty." She shakes her head. "Once I was sure he wouldn't give up, I made it quick. I would have liked to face his sister as well, though. He may not have been an innocent, but the Marechaussee Phantom were certain she was equally as guilty."

"Maybe that's why his name is circled," Navia suggests. "To the Protector of Justice, that sister would be another target."

"Mmm. That could be." Clorinde closes the booklet and tucks it carefully into her jacket. "Though speaking of targets, there's no doubt she was here hunting those golems, but it was a human hand that killed her. A golem wouldn't have had the intelligence to shoot her with her own gun."

"What?!"

"There's a particular arkhe residue left by the bullets of a Marechaussee Hunter. She wasn't just shot, though. She was crushed beneath a great weight beforehand. It broke a number of bones, but she actually died of blood loss from a bullet wound above her heart." Clorinde pauses. "I cannot swear it was her own gun, but hers is absent from its holster, and I find it hard to believe that she would run afoul of another Marechaussee Hunter."

"It would be a tremendous coincidence." Navia looks over her shoulder at Petronilla, but Clorinde has drawn the blanket around her body.

"I don't know how she made it back here. The bullet wound was badly placed, and bleeding out would have been... slow. Still, she shouldn't have been able to walk, or swim, in the state she was in."

"Pahsiv tells me that she brought her here."

Clorinde looks down at the small Melusine. "That must have been very difficult for you, but you did nonetheless. Thank you."

The Melusine's shoulders slump, and her ears droop. "Pahsiv... too slow."

"There's nothing you could have done. In that state, even the Court's best doctors couldn't have saved her."

"Melusine... Pahsiv too slow."

"You brought her to where she could die peacefully," Navia tells her, crouching down again. "And then you brought Clorinde... you brought a Marechaussee Hunter to- to give her whatever last rites she might need. Thank you so much, Pahsiv. You did everything she would have wanted."

When she rises, Clorinde is turned away, not meeting either Pahsiv's eyes or hers. It's very possible, Navia knows, that this wasn't what Petronilla would have wanted. To be seen in her final weakness by the woman she'd raised--maybe, from what little Navia knows of the Marechaussee Hunter, to be taken from the site of her final battle at all. She might have preferred to fall completely unseen and unknown, nothing to mark her death but the sword on Clorinde's doorstep and that blurred note, with its message now largely lost.

Navia doesn't care one whit what Petronilla would have wanted. Clorinde deserves to have the chance to say goodbye, in whatever fashion she chooses. More than that, she deserves the certainty of knowing that it is goodbye, and not the horrible edge of doubt that would come with only ever having that sword.

"This seems like a safe enough place to leave her until we've figured out who did this, and handled those golems to boot." Navia knows she and Clorinde are of one mind about leaving the golems to roam, with those innocent villagers so close by--and she cannot imagine Clorinde is any more willing than she is to walk away from such a foul murder. "Once everything else is sorted, we can take her to Poisson-"

"No." Clorinde's voice again has the flat quality that suggests she's struggling against a tremor. "She might have been friends with your father, but she wasn't of the Spina, and a Marechaussee Hunter should not be buried in a marked and public grave. Even in death, a Marechaussee Hunter does not wish for recognition."

Navia swallows hard, feeling her own tears threaten again. "Then... once everything else here is dealt with, we will find her a place where she can lie in peace."

"Once everything else here is dealt with," Clorinde echoes her quietly, still looking away.

Reaching out, Navia puts a hand on Clorinde's shoulder again. She stiffens under it; then her shoulder slumps, and she leans into it just enough to tell Navia that she can step forward and wrap both her arms around her. Clorinde doesn't turn all the way into her, but she wraps one arm sideways around Navia, too, and leans in, closing her eyes.

She takes a deep breath, then another. Navia imagines she's fighting tears. Her own are welling in her eyes, as much for Clorinde's unshed ones as for the woman dead on the bedroll. It's different from Father's death, in all ways--but Navia aches for her nonetheless. She leans in a little closer. The paper that had fallen from the booklet crinkles in her grip, and Clorinde tenses, eyes opening, and pulls away.

"I almost forgot," Navia says, to hide her regret at letting go. She uncrumples it. The page seems to have been torn from a professionally-bound journal, not the booklet; it's a hand-drawn map of Erinnyes Forest, with a spot to the south marked with a circle. As she makes to pass it to Clorinde, she sees writing on the other side, slashed in thick ink over whatever words were originally written there, and flips it over instead.

To the Champion Duelist Clorinde... I will not write your other title, but I call upon it now. We are besieged here by monsters of Remuria, and I know you above all can help. Please, if you are truly a Champion, come at once. No one else will do for this battle but you.

"Your 'other title'? Who would know about that?"

"Probably anyone who went seriously looking for Marechaussee Hunters. There was no way to completely erase the traces of Florian's meddling with the Tabletop Troupe's procedures. I expected rumors to spread." Clorinde shakes her head. "More importantly, this is addressed to me. Why did Master have it? She might have kept an eye on my duels in the papers, but I can't believe that she would waste her time monitoring my mail."

"No," Navia agrees. "The Spina would have noticed."

There's a shape forming in Navia's mind, little details of Petronilla's papers snapping together piece-by-piece. The circled name in the list of duels, the dead man's scandalous tale--'to the Protector of Justice, his sister would be another target.' The note addressed directly to Clorinde, evoking her secret status as a Hunter, which to Navia implies far more attention to her personally than Clorinde seems to think. Petronilla being in the right place at the right time, watching someone closely enough, to intercept this note.

"Because this was an ambush."

Clorinde's attention snaps to her. "For me."

"It has to be. And I think I know who by. Think of how this letter must have fallen into Petronilla's hands. If she knew about the duel with Renard, she surely must have known the story behind it. She may not still go about the Court of Fontaine as the Protector of Justice, or Order, or by any other name, but the ideals that made her do so were still there. If she was looking for his sister, and his sister was looking for revenge on you.... Petronilla intercepted this letter because she was already searching for her." One thread still hangs loose. "But where did the golems come from? It's awfully convenient that they would show up at the same time she was looking for a way to lure you in."

"I suspect they came from someplace nearby. The Remurians invaded Erinnyes multiple times, but they were always thrown back from the Lochknights. Their techniques for fighting and sealing the discarded weapons that Remuria left in their wake were the basis of many of the Marechaussee Hunter techniques that followed. I would guess that one of those Lochknight vaults has been unsealed. You are right about the timing, though."

Navia frowns, straining for the memory of a six-month-old newspaper article. "Renard was captured in Petrichor, wasn't he? Where our old partner found a way into Remuria. If his sister was in Petrichor too, who knows what she might have found there that would help."

Clorinde's breath hisses slowly out. "A perfect trap for a Marechaussee Hunter. Petronilla must have pursued her here after she intercepted that note, and was caught by it herself. Protecting the people from those golems would come before a human enemy."

"Not caught by it." Navia blinks hard, tears welling up in her eyes again. She can see... not Petronilla, standing between Clorinde and the shadowy form of an unknown woman, but her father, back turned, a lone and desperate shield between her and those who would have dissolved her life away. "If she intercepted this letter in pursuit of Renard's sister, she must have realized immediately that it was a trap. So she sprung it on purpose, to keep you from being caught in it instead."

Clorinde immediately shakes her head. "She was doing her duty as a Marechaussee Hunter. No more. If she thought she could handle it herself, she wouldn't have wanted me there. Unless she was training me in something, Master always fought alone. It was you who taught how to fight alongside others."

"Clorinde...."

Clorinde turns away, towards Pahsiv. "I need to see where she died. Can you take us there?"

"Pahsiv!" The Melusine darts back into the water, waving for them to follow.

Navia swallows back grief and frustration both. It seems so clear--but she remembers, the pain still like a sword through her own heart, how it had felt to learn that her father's death was for her protection. She cannot wish that same pain on Clorinde. Even if she also remembers, in turn, the sight of Clorinde drawing her blade from her father's breast.

She had given him a quick, clean death. To Clorinde, that is the greatest mercy, the swiftest kindness, she can give. It was a mercy denied to Petronilla.

Navia has worked hard to forgive Clorinde for the well-meant cruelty of that mercy. She cannot imagine Clorinde could forgive Petronilla's killer for the misaimed cruelty of its lack.

***

Pahsiv leads them back to the central well of the lake, then into another tunnel, this one even thicker with roots. It's a long, challenging swim, even with strong currents easing the way. Clorinde knows it wouldn't be so challenging if not for the ache in her side--but Navia has bound it well, and it doesn't matter that it hurts. She doesn't have time right now to rest.

They emerge into a rocky cavern behind a waterfall. As they exit the cave, Clorinde sees a harmonious reed pipe in the water, all old and tarnished brass. The tools of the Lochknights, once used against the tools of Remuria--the legions sent forth by their great grand golden harps tamed by simple reeds, even if they had needed to be cast in brass to be as lasting. More lasting, in the end, then Remuria's arts had proven.

Her Master had seen a lesson in that. She was no critic of opulence and display. The Protector of Justice, or Order, or whatever she might have chosen to call herself that day, had as much flair as any high-society lady. But she had reminded Clorinde, when she told her that old tale, that it was those you thought beneath you that might slip through your guard.

Surely Master wouldn't have disregarded Diuedonnee Bourdillon, who had strangled at least six of her brother's lovers, however bad a shot she might be. Not with the reminder of that danger all about.

Two more pipes flank the stream they descend down, and through a light fog that rises from the water she can glimpse more upon the hill to the east. "This was the Lochknight vault," she tells Navia and Pahsiv. "The reeds can open that altar, and there will be a pit beneath."

"You're sure it's this one, and not that big altar at the bottom of the lake? That looked far more grand."

"It also looked far too new. The brass would be tarnished and corroded if it had been there for all those centuries. I don't know who placed that one, or why. But this is also the location circled on the map. The vault is surely here."

"Melusine...." Pahsiv frowns, then points upward, where a curling blue trunk clearly related to the willow at the lake's center rises above the more prosaic trees. "Purple thing, evil, underneath. Purple thing, destroying root. Traveler, ka-pow!"

"Traveler, ka-pow," Navia says, her mouth twitching before falling back into its pained and thoughtful lines. "Of course."

"Of course." Clorinde shouldn't be surprised in the least. "It is quite possible a later Marechaussee Hunter used it to seal an Abyss incursion in this area, as well. The Lochknights' arts were the basis of our own. That would be effective, but if the Abyss weakened the seal, that would make it all the easier for someone else to break. It would also explain the altar in the lake. One seal alone wouldn't contain the power of the Abyss."

"Pahsiv, Traveler, key, unlock...."

"I'm sure our good friend the Traveler still has the key," Navia says. "And my old partner would never do any of this. No, we're looking for someone else."

Clorinde meets her eyes and answers her nod with one of her own. If the Traveler and Pahsiv had indeed unlocked the seal themselves, it was in the pursuit of a good cause, and there's no need to make the odd little Melusine feel guilty. Besides, she thinks Navia is right that this is the work of whoever killed her Master, whether it was Renard's sister or not. It's been over a year since the Traveler set off to Natlan, so at least that long since this seal was undone, and the golems have only now emerged. Whatever lure the Lochknights used might have kept them in the vault until this killer drew them out, or they might simply have been deactivated after all that time until they were disturbed.

There's no way to know for sure. But Clorinde contemplates the possibilities regardless as they follow Pahsiv along the shallow stream, past an altar that is clearly part of the array, and towards another cluster of reed pipes where the stream lets out onto the sea. One of them is half-crushed by the toppled shape of another Verres golem, cracked and motionless upon its side.

"Watch out," Clorinde says, slowing and reaching for her blade. "I think it's deactivated, but there's no use taking chances."

"Right behind you," Navia agrees, unslinging her gunbrella.

Around it, the streambed and cliffsides are torn and tattered by hoofprints and footprints, tusk-marks and bullet-marks, as well as the dark streaks left by an over-extended impaling lunge. The greatest muddle is in the middle of the stream, where armored crabs scrabble through the mud until they draw close enough to make them flee. No doubt, Clorinde thinks grimly, erasing any useful marks.

She steps carefully nonetheless, trying not to disturb any, as she circles the Verres golem. It bears signs of battle with one who knows the Marechaussee Hunter arts, the craters of bullet-holes and slashes that shouldn't have normally pierced such solid clay even with its Cryo shield scraped off, but the greatest wound is in its underside.

"The plating is weakest here," she observes. "Either its designers missed that, or they thought that it was too low to the ground to make a difference. It looks as if Master drove her sword in here. It's pierced deeply inside, and the marks match an impaling strike done with the strength of the Night Vigil." Hers is doubly empowered by her Vision, but even a Visionless Hunter such as Petronilla could forge a Bond of Life and send ousia coursing deep inside. "I believe that will be what brought it to a halt."

"And why she showed signs of being crushed," Navia says, hand to her mouth and eyes wide in horror. "If she was beneath it when it collapsed, she would have been trapped, wouldn't she? But she couldn't get the right angle any other way."

The marks in the mud of the streambed are indeed marred by the crabs' activities, but Clorinde scans the ground nonetheless. It paints no clear picture, but she can see outlines in the torn-up mud, just enough to sketch out a plausible scene.

Her Master not deliberately sliding, but falling beneath the Verres golem, hammered into the mud by its stone hooves, feeling bones crack and shatter as they were crushed by its weight. Knowing, as she laid there, that if she struck at the weakness she'd found, it would be impossible to free herself from beneath it--but choosing to do so anyway. Perhaps it was in the awareness that she was already too badly wounded to survive alone in this wilderness. Or perhaps it was in the awareness of that other, human presence and its malice, which in that state she could never have escaped.

"She was already beneath it," she says slowly. "It either knocked her over and trampled her, or had enough of its Cryo shield left to freeze her on contact, which would have the same result once its weight hit. There's a bullet-mark here, between the front legs. Then she realized the true weak point and drew her blade to strike it. She may have needed to drop her gun to get the right angle, given how low those legs are."

"Which gave Renard's sister a chance to snatch it away and shoot her." Navia looks the golem up and down. "Look! Those aren't swordmarks, are they?"

Clorinde looks up at the long, parallel streaks she's looking at. "No, they aren't. They look more like clawmarks. Something dug in on its side."

"Pahsiv, push!" the Melusine says. She holds out her arms and leans forward. "Pahsiv, lift up!" Her shoulders slump, and she looks down. "Pahsiv, too slow."

"If you had come any sooner, the culprit might have shot you too," Clorinde tells her.

She shakes her head. "Blue thing, fight! Pahsiv, come faster, blue thing, fight bad person, ka-pow!"

"Blue thing- Pahsiv," Navia asks, "when you told me earlier that you brought a vishap... do they listen to you? Did you ask a vishap lift this up?"

"Melusine! Pahsiv, blue thing, lift!"

"Oh, my goodness. You mentioned earlier that they like tidalga--have you trained a vishap?"

"Tidalga! Melusine! Pahsiv, blue thing!"

"That's very clever of you."

Any other time, Clorinde would gladly watch Navia try to communicate with this odd little Melusine all day, but right now she's itching for further action. "We're getting off-track."

"We are." The look Navia gives her is so sympathetic that Clorinde regrets bringing her back from her distraction. "I think we can hypothesize that Pahsiv brought a vishap to lift this off of Petronilla, and brought her back to the cave she was staying in. I do wonder... Pahsiv, did you take the sword to that cave?"

"Pahsiv! Mar-show-say... ask! Pahsiv, bring sword. Pahsiv, take sword, small throw, sneaking in cave. Stranger, take sword, very throw, very far away."

"Thank you, Pahsiv. That was a very good thing to do."

"Yes. Thank you," Clorinde echoes. It was her Master's natural last act, to pass on the message and duty of her blade. Whatever else Pahsiv might or might not have been able to do if she had been faster--and Clorinde knows better than to focus upon what-ifs like that--she had fulfilled Master's last request.

Navia reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. Clorinde reaches up and puts her hand over hers, then turns, startled, when Navia lets go and steps away.

She's looking at something dangling from the lowest branch of a tree nearby, caught on a twig. Tugging it free, she pulls the mud-spattered ribbon straight in her hand, brushes some of the grime away, and then looks up. The painful sympathy has given way to clear-eyed focus.

"Hmmm. Clorinde, do you recall what Renard Bourdillon looked like?"

Clorinde reaches for the memory of that duel, past the begging and the blood. "Thin, but not particularly tall. He had brown hair done up in curls, and the most ridiculous moustache. His eyes were green, as I recall."

"Brown hair and green eyes. Oh, I knew there was something strange going on. She sounded so odd when she gave us her name.... Clorinde, do you remember waking up when Hilaire was at our door last night? You smelled gunpowder."

"My gun was under my pillow."

"Yes, but you hadn't used your gun since the last time you cleaned it. I didn't smell gunpowder in bed at all, and I'm much less used to it than you. If someone was unfamiliar with a gun, though, and didn't know how to clean it, then it would smell much more strongly."

"Or my familiarity with gunpowder let me more easily pick up my own." But Clorinde is already re-considering that night, the sequence of events, anything she might have paid little attention to between the confusion in which she'd waken and the immediacy of a potential threat. "Hilaire hid behind her apron when I first opened the door, and immediately started bundling it up. She could have been hiding something in it."

"And why was she even wearing her apron in the middle of the night? She kept it all bunched up until you went outside, and then she went and changed out of it and into that gown. The perfect chance to hide anything she was carrying." The decisive set of Navia's jaw is familiar and unexpectedly reassuring. "I think it's time to go back and check in on Hilaire. If nothing else," and she holds up the ribbon, gold edging glinting from beneath the mud, "I'm sure she'll want this back."

***

Pahsiv wants badly to go with them; from what they can determine, she thinks that because Clorinde is a Marechaussee Hunter, Petronilla had left her the duty to lend her all possible aid. Navia manages to talk her out of it, with Clorinde's help, by convincing her that they need her to stay in the lake in case they need to dive back in.

"And if we're in big enough trouble, we might need you to get your vishap friend to help us," she adds, with a smile she doesn't feel.

She has the impression that Pahsiv sees right through her. But she only nods and says stoutly, "Pahsiv... guide. Pahsiv... blue thing," and heads back into the cave she'd brought them through as they start off on the path northeast.

As they walk, Navia keeps an eye on Clorinde. She's quiet, a grim focused silence, and striding determinedly along at a pace that even Navia has to work to keep up with. Clorinde always likes to carry out her duties efficiently, but this is more than that. It's the same stiff determined way Navia had walked around in her first months as Spina's president, dedicating herself to her duties as distraction from the horrible ache that had burned through her at every reminder of her father's absence. She, though, had been moving as if through a fog, pausing often to fight back tears. Clorinde....

Clorinde had looked like this in the months after Father's death, too, at least from a distance. Up close, on the rare occasions she let Navia get anywhere close, she became hesitant and overly careful, flinching from any mention of her work and duties and never meeting Navia's eyes. From far away, she had possessed this same grim energy, avoiding other friends and associates almost as assiduously as she'd avoided Navia, while Navia watched her do so from across the room.

Standing right next to her when she looks this way, now that she's not flinching from Navia's gaze, somehow makes Navia still feel like she's a whole ballroom away.

"Clorinde...."

"Yes?"

It isn't cold, but it's not a tone that invites conversation. Navia sighs, then sets her shoulders and barrels on.

"I'm sorry. I know it's not the same, but... I do know how you feel. It's all right to be sad."

"Master wouldn't wish me to be."

Navia clenches her jaw and resists the urge to argue. She recalls enough of Petronilla to know that it's possibly true.

The silence stretches out for several minutes. Then Clorinde says, softly, "When she first left me, when I was ten, I used to think that someday she would come back. Surely it was a test to see how I fared without her. I resented Mr. Callas for trying to care for me as much as he did. I thought he was making it impossible to prove myself. But when you tried to help, too, I couldn't resent you the same way, so I ended up giving in." She shakes her head. "I know now that if it was a test, that wasn't its nature. It's been a long time since I've expected I would ever see her again. I knew I might someday receive her sword. But even once it came to my doorstep, I didn't truly think we would find her. I was only looking for what unfulfilled duties she might have left behind."

Navia swallows hard, her frustration dissolving, and reaches out to grip Clorinde's arm. "It's possible that she always planned to come back some day. We did find that list. It proves that she was still thinking about you."

"We did find that," Clorinde says without any conviction, and falls silent again. But she lets Navia take her hand when she reaches for it, and wind their fingers together, and squeeze it tight. Navia thinks Clorinde's shoulders might loosen just a little when she does.

***

The same grumpy old woman who'd shut the door on Navia last night is out gardening today, and Navia gives her the best sunny smile she can muster. "Hello there!"

"You again?" The woman squints suspiciously at her. "What are you about now?"

"We're checking in on Hilaire. She was kind enough to put us up last night, but we heard monsters around her house in the dark. Then my partner and I were attacked by monsters up the road today, so we wanted to make sure she was all right, and they hadn't hurt her before they came after us."

"In the day?" The old woman's disturbance at that seems enough to overpower her suspicion. "She was out this morning. Went up the hill and over, north on the road that way."

"Thank you for telling us! We'll go after her, just to be sure she wasn't caught out on the road." Navia musters the smile again.

She makes sure they're past a bluff and out of the woman's sight before she turns towards Hilaire's house. "Let's see if she's made it back home."

She hasn't, to judge by the locked door and lack of response to their knocks. She might be sitting inside with Petronilla's gun, just waiting for the door to open, but there's no sign of her through any of the windows. The one to her room is shuttered, but the rest are open, and the only change from when they left is that the laundry is back on the couch and the harp she had draped it over are both gone.

"We'll just have to let ourselves in, I suppose. That's a simple latch," Navia says, adjusting her bodice. "Come on... ah, here!" She triumphantly pulls off one of the tapered clasps that she happens to know work as shims and levers it into the base of the window. It resists a little at first, but then the tip catches the latch and throws it, and the whole window slides right up. "Let's see what we can find."

This window leads into the room where they'd slept last night. The bed is made as perfectly as Navia had left it this morning, and nothing else has been moved. She heads straight for the door.

Clorinde catches her shoulder. "Let me through first, just in case."

"No, I'm going first." Navia takes her hand and, gently but firmly, pushes it away. "You're the one she's gunning for. Besides, I do have this." She flourishes her gunbrella, opening it wide, and rests it along her arm as she reaches for the doorknob. Clorinde doesn't make another protest.

After that, it's anticlimactic to step into the hallway and find nothing there except closed doors. To the right is the open entryway to the sitting room; a quick glance suggests no real change there, aside from the missing harp. Another quick glance into the kitchen at the back of the house confirms that it's exactly as Clorinde had left it this morning, as well, though Navia makes a mental note to check the cabinets if they don't find clues anywhere else. It would be an odd place to put anything suspicious, but then, an odd place is the best place if you're trying to hide something sensitive. The Spina knows that well.

The last door on the hallway is Hilaire's room. "It's locked," Navia says, trying the knob. "Give me a moment...."

Another piece from her bodice makes quick work of the lock, which is barely more complicated than the window's latch. This isn't a skill the president of the Spina has to use often, but it's one that certain of its people do exercise now and then. Navia had been entertained well as a wide-eyed child by the lessons she was given by occasional unexpected babysitters, and she's tried not to let any skill she learned back then get too rusty. Who knows what a president might need to do?

Dig into the machinations of the person trying to kill her girlfriend, apparently. Navia has never been more grateful for this particular lesson. She'll have to thank that years-ago temporary babysitter--well, no, she died in the waters in Poisson. She'll have to leave her some flowers.

Which makes her think of Petronilla, dead on her bedroll, murdered with her own gun. Navia blinks against the prickling in her eyes. She can't slow down to mourn now any more than Clorinde can. Not until someone has paid for her death.

The room contains a wide bed, poorly made, a wardrobe that Clorinde immediately opens, and, squeezed beyond the bed, a table set up as a desk. The shuttered window is directly above it. Navia wonders if Hilaire had considered the flimsy shutter and the miserable lock security enough, or if she had decided that at this point it didn't matter any more.

There are a handful of papers here, and a single book. Navia picks up the papers first. In an instant, all her suspicions are confirmed.

My beloved Diuedonnee,
I go today to the duelist's ring. I am matched to their Champion, and I have no hope of defeating her, but I cannot go to trial and risk that they might, in their researches, find you. I swear to you, however, I will not give up, not until my lifesblood flows. I will beg of the Champion my life, that I might come back to you. Take no offense at what I might say, for you, safely out of their hands, might be just as safely blamed. If she has any heart whatsoever, she will take pity upon me as an innocent you have led astray, and thus release me to come back to your side: your innocent, who I know you will forgive.
Eagerly awaiting your embrace,
Renard

Well. He doesn't know Clorinde's reputation. Nor her sense of duty, which Navia knows all too well. This man was truly a criminal, Navia reminds herself, all but affirmed by his implications here, and refuses to let her heart be stung by any false parallel. Easier to be angry--how dare he try to diminish Clorinde's honor so to save his miserable life, when her father had been so willing to let it be his death?

Beneath it is a few pages covered with disordered notes. 'Tabletop Troupe- favorite Game Masters?' and 'Marechaussee Hunter?' and 'weekly at the Rusty Rudder' and 'but where is she going' and 'broke six deer, need to figure out the boars' and all around the page little hand-written bars of music, some crossed over, some marked 'almost' or 'octave?' and a few circled around with words: 'deer, target,' 'boar, stop,' 'deer, charge,' and other such notes.

"So that's why she took the harp with her," Navia says aloud.

Clorinde looks up from the wardrobe. "Ah. You did mention she had a harp last night. I should have paid more attention at the time."

"You had plenty of distractions." Navia waves a hand, though it doesn't banish the pinched look around Clorinde's mouth. "It must have something to do with the golems, right?"

"Yes. Remuria did most of its magic through special musical instruments. She probably found it in Petrichor, perhaps in the same place she found that map to the vault, and was using it to control them." Clorinde pauses. "Or trying to. She could play as badly as she shoots."

"The golems we saw did seem pretty focused on us, and they did jump us in a very convenient spot. Let's assume for now that she's quite good with that harp."

Clorinde nods. "That's the safest assumption to make."

"That means we have to get it away from her as soon as we can once we catch up." Navia isn't even going to say 'if.' They will, and given the chance she'll break that harp over Hilaire-nee-Diuedonnee's head.

First, though, the rest of her papers. Navia reaches next for the book.

No title graces its cover; it looks to be the sort of blank journal someone might write in, though of a very old style, and its pages are yellowed when she carefully opens it. Just as she'd thought, it's filled with someone's handwritten notes. The faded handwriting is so crabbed she can barely read it. More interesting, and more relevant as she flips carefully through, are the maps. Sketches of various places around Fontaine, though as old as the journal itself: Mount Automnequi, the little bay that's now Lumidouce Harbor, Fort Charybdis when it still stood, Mount Beryl still unchanged, what she thinks is the landscape now devastated by the explosion of the Fontaine Research Institute....

Each is marked with a circle or X in one particular spot. And the style of the sketch matches exactly the map on the torn-out page in Petronilla's hideout. Navia pulls it out to compare, and, when she flips it, the faded text that had been written over matches this crabbed hand.

Each page opposite a map contains a few names of golems much as that Petronilla had written: Praetorian, of course, and "Legatus," "Cygnus," "Pardus," "Hippocampus," crossed through, "Lupus," and, on one page, "Cervus" and "Verres." Beneath them are descriptions she only half-understands in their brevity: "Cassidor's lock-style," "collapsed cavern," "third Este deconstruction technique." Some have numbers below them, or additional obscure notes.

"This may be some long-ago Marechaussee Hunter's notes," she tells Clorinde, beckoning her over. "Maybe it's where Petronilla got these golem's names?"

Clorinde comes over to peer over her shoulder. "Is there a name anywhere?"

Navia flips back to the front, sees nothing, and flips to the back. "No, I'm afraid not."

"Mmm. It is certainly a Marechaussee Hunter's journal, though. Very likely it passed down to a student, and their student in turn, until it was finally lost. There's gunpowder in the bottom of the wardrobe," she adds. "She must have been keeping the gun in there. I saw traces of dirty oil, so she hasn't been cleaning it."

Despite all the sober weight of the situation, Navia has to smile a little at the disapproval in Clorinde's voice. Then she flips back through the book, carefully, until she finds one of the last written pages. There, as she'd expected, is the shredded edge of a page, the proper map torn out--and the one she's holding matches it exactly. Down to the "Praetorian golems," "Cervus golems" and "Verres golems" on the facing page.

"Lochknight pipe-seal," she reads aloud. "Look, Clorinde, you were right. And, oh, dear, a sequence for the reed pipes...."

"Remurian golems weren't initially locked away in the intent that the seals would last forever. It was a stopgap measure when the Marechaussee Hunters were outnumbered by the scale of monsters they fought. Anything that could be sealed was, in the hope that they could be returned to later and dealt with once there was more breathing room. But over time, our numbers fell just as those of our opponents did, and records like these were lost. Besides, many of these golems, those based upon animals, aren't self-propelled," Clorinde adds. "Only the Praetorians and a few other special types have any animating spirit of their own. Even if a distant student had this in their possession, riftwolves and other Abyssal monsters would have seemed more important over time."

"Petronilla might have been trying to catch Hilaire in the act, to get the harp herself."

"We can't know exactly what her plan was, but that does seem likely."

Navia tucks the letter and notes into the book and the book into her pack. "Let's see if there's anything else around the house that could be useful, and then we'll go back and work out a plan."

Clorinde nods, and falls in behind Navia and her opened gunbrella as they head into the front room. They've just stepped inside when there's sudden movement to the left. Navia whips her gunbrella up and fires.

Crystallized shards of Pyro leap off the Cervus golem as it crashes through the window. Navia's gunbrella draws them in automatically, and Navia fires again, sending the golem crashing to its knees with its shield sputtering out--but the flames that shield had emitted have already caught on the wood of the shelf and the fabric of the couch. Another one follows it, landing atop it in a tangle of legs, its shield blazing up bright.

From the back of the house, in the kitchen, there's another crash. Then another from the guest room. Navia deliberately shoots the still-burning Cervus, darts forward to draw one of the new Pyro crystals close enough to be caught by her Vision and reshaped into a shield--Clorinde doesn't need to be told to draw another crystal in to make her own--and then starts back towards the hall.

"As soon as we get out there, she's going to try and shoot us! That cliff up there is perfect for it." Already, she has to raise her voice above the crackling of the flames. The house may be stone, but its roof and posts are wood, and it's stuffed with so much wooden furniture; even shielded from Pyro for the moment, they don't have much time.

Clorinde nods. "We'll have to go out her window and stay up against the bottom of the cliff, so she can't get a good angle on us."

"Good plan. Let's go!"

Hilaire's is the one room not burning, though the moment Navia throws the shutter open, she can see the trees at the base of the cliff aflame as well. "Time to move," she says, slams her gunbrella into the window, and hops out over the broken glass.

Even with the Crystallized shield around her, the heat of the flames batters at her, and the shield does nothing for smoke. The dry cypress is burning hot and fast. She claps her hand over her mouth, reaches out to touch the stone of the bluff, and rushes through. Behind her, Clorinde's hand closes on her shoulder.

They come stumbling out of the flames nearly at the edge of the lower cliff that drops off behind the house. A Cervus golem standing there stamps and lowers its head, stone antlers angled to strike. As it starts to charge, Navia swings her gunbrella up and fires, sending it toppling backward off the cliff. Not far from their feet, gunshots pock the ground. Clorinde was right that this makes the angle more difficult, but if they stand still too long, even Hilaire can make the shot.

"That looks deep," Clorinde says in her ear, pointing around her towards a pool on the ground below.

Navia blinks her smoke-teared eyes. "More than deep. I bet that's another tunnel," she says, looking at how its edges fall away into the deeps. "Unless- do you want to try and climb the cliff to chase her down?"

"Yes," Clorinde says, her voice tight, and then more evenly, "but we don't know what she has waiting there for us. There's no point in running into an ambush."

"No. Let's get away, and then," Navia feels anger welling up, a sudden fierce rage at the woman who had made Clorinde sound like that, "we'll figure out an ambush for her."

A few more shots ring out as they plunge to the ground and dash for the water, but Hilaire continues to prove a poor shot. Neither of them bother with the hilichurls lounging beside the pool, which scatter nonetheless at the pounding of hooves and crackle of Pyro behind them as a few of the Cervus golems attempt a pursuit. They won't be able to follow much longer. Navia grabs Clorinde's hand, leaps into the water, and doesn't look back.

***

As soon as they reach the curve at the bottom and meet another tunnel, Navia realizes where they are. She gestures to Clorinde, who nods; she recognizes the route too. This other tunnel is the one that had led from the basin beneath the tree to the site of the altar and seal. It's useful to have that junction, but for now, they need to reach the lake.

It's a quicker transit this time, with a current on their side. They emerge into the basin beneath the willow, and both of them tense as they do. Half a dozen bathysmal vishaps circle there, darting through the water as if playing with each other and the Fontemer Aberrants. At their intrusion, though, all of them pivot in the water to stare them down.

Then there's a roiling in the middle of their school, something throwing up bubbles, and as Pahsiv comes shooting out of that cloud of bubbles the vishaps all relax. She waves at them. Navia waves back, then points upward, and Pahsiv swims willingly up, scrambling with them onto the little floating island held in place by the willow's roots. Navia is privately glad that the vishaps don't follow.

"Pahsiv, blue thing!" the Melusine says proudly. "Many blue thing!"

"Great job, Pahsiv," Navia tells her, because she had, after all, done exactly as Navia asked. "Thank you so much."

She nods. "Mar-show-say, find?"

"Proof that we were right to suspect Hilaire, to start with," Navia tells her. "But also... I think we may have the beginning of a plan."

"Do we," Clorinde says.

"She ambushed Petronilla near the seal. As as her student, it wouldn't surprise Hilaire to find you headed back there for all the same reasons Petronilla went. But we need her to know that you're going there, and, just to make sure she absolutely feels confident about catching you, and to make it a proper ambush...." Navia takes a deep breath. "It's better if I'm not there."

Clorinde nods. "Tell me what you have in mind."

Putting her hand over Clorinde's where it's pressed flat to the ground, Navia does.

***

The most difficult part of the plan is working out where they're going to start. They need Hilaire to be observing them, and they're not sure where she's going to think they've gone. Finally, though, Navia has an idea, and in short order Pahsiv has dispatched all her vishap friends to look for high concentrations of golems. The report that returns a few hours later--if they've interpreted it correctly--is that most of the 'hot' golems are still near Hilaire's house, strung between the peak above it and the other on the far side of the pool they dove into.

Without a Vision, it's very likely she has no idea where the tunnel leads, or if it's more than a dead-end; for all she knows, they're simply trying to wait her out underwater. If they can't find any sign of her there, they'll try another place to catch her attention, but the presence of all those golems makes it the best place to start. It's also fairly close to the foggy forest path, which will be convenient for Clorinde.

It's night by the time Clorinde and Navia surface, stars dotting the sky above. As they emerge, two Cervus golems come charging towards them, shields flickering brightly, heads bent and curving antlers tilted forward. Beside her, Navia takes a shot at one of them and charges in to swing and gather up crystallized Pyro shards. Clorinde takes a few shots at the other and then rushes it as it draws close, piercing through its shield moments after that of Navia's target shatters. With their shields disabled, a few swings of Navia's axe and a quick piercing strike from Clorinde's blade at a glowing-orange heart has them both collapsing into dust.

"Good, I did understand Pahsiv correctly." Navia turns to Clorinde, arm out. "Let's make this a promenade, so she has plenty of time to get close."

Their promenade has a tension to it beyond Navia's tight grip on Clorinde's arm and Clorinde's equally tight grip on hers. They slip from one copse of trees to the other, back and forth across the road, very aware of their need for cover. Hilaire might be a terrible shot, but she only needs to get lucky once. She's gotten close enough already; Clorinde's side still burns when she stretches it too far, and aches now from just that brief fight. The cover will also force her to come closer to try and get a shot.

Which presumes that she is up there. If they're wrong, they'll just have to recalculate and work out where else she's gone, beginning again from the start. Clorinde hopes the vishaps and Navia are right. She can slowly and patiently stalk Hilaire if she has to, but there's an unfamiliar anger itching under her skin right now that doesn't want to wait.

Not entirely unfamiliar. She's felt it once before. Clorinde had known from the start that Mr. Callas had a reason for his sacrifice; she merely hadn't known what it was. He, however, who had been there for her as a child when she wasn't even his own, would never have left Navia if he had seen any other choice. She had always hoped to duel whoever placed him in that position.

As Navia and the Traveler bore down on those who placed Mr. Callas against her blade, Clorinde had been little help, but she had followed their progress with this same prickling anger. It had been Navia's right, and that of Vacher's victims, to make that kill. Clorinde had still itched for some of the same satisfaction. This time, she's determined it will be hers.

A soft sound on the slope above draws her attention, though she only looks sidelong. Movement in the trees, and the glint of moonlight on metal. Just seconds later, Navia's arm tightens on her own.

"I really don't think this is a good idea, Clorinde," Navia says, her voice projecting loud and clear in the quiet night. "If she's already killed Petronilla, what makes you think she won't get you? You'll be distracted with the seal, and I can't swear I can hold her off. Not if she has enough of those golems with her."

"It was Petronilla's duty to carry out, and she failed," Clorinde says, trying to pitch her voice just as loud. She can't quite reach Navia's volume without it clearly being on purpose, but Hilaire will just have to strain her ears. Navia has the most crucial line anyway. "As her student, it's my duty to take it up in her stead."

"And if you fail?"

"I am the Champion Duelist of Fontaine. I don't intend to fail."

"I just don't see why we can't bring in the Marechaussee Phantom. With them here in force, we could handle the golems and bring Diuedonnee to justice. I don't want you to die here. Petronilla wouldn't, either," she adds, the exaggerated pout falling out of her voice at her last words, which are too quiet and too sincere.

Something in Clorinde's chest contracts. "She would want me to do my duty as a Marechaussee Hunter. Which includes keeping our work secret, in the shadows."

"Then let me bring in the Spina, and they can help too! She may want you to do your duty, but she wouldn't want you to die doing it. Why did she come here after intercepting that letter if she wasn't trying to protect you from exactly this situation? She could have passed it on to you in the first place, if this was only about getting the job done."

"Master hasn't needed to protect me from danger since I was five years old. Once I reached a certain point in my training, any failure to defend myself was my own."

Clorinde says it more sharply than she means to. She knows what Navia wants this to be: she wants to see Petronilla as the heroic figure that Mr. Callas brought her up to imagine her as, and that their encounter with Florian and the Devorator showed she still does. She wants her death to be as heroic as Mr. Callas' was, shielding Navia with his own life from those who would do her harm.

It's understandable why she might want them in parallel. To see them as equal losses, ones that could balance the scales and even out the weight between them still, even now, of Clorinde's involvement in Mr. Callas' death. Far less a weight now than it once was, but present all the same. Clorinde would give much to see that weight leveled as well.

Not her Master's life, but that was never hers to give up. Master's life was fully, adamantly, inarguably her own.

"We don't know that," Navia says, louder again but still far too passionate and sincere. "She's been keeping tabs on you all this time, remember? This might not be the first time she's acted on your behalf. She saved your life once. Why not do it again if she had the chance? I'm sure she didn't intend to be killed in the process, but-"

The itching anger prickles sharply under Clorinde's skin. She knows Navia doesn't deserve to be its target, but Clorinde doesn't deserve this, either--to have that parallel drawn, to place one senseless death as equal to another. To bloody her Duelist's blade with not just one, but both.

"No, she didn't. She valued me as her student, but she was never as sentimental as your father. She didn't die for me, and she didn't ask you to protect me from her faults." She can almost feel the bloodstained hilt of her Master's sword in her hand as she adds, "You weren't her executioner, so she couldn't have asked."

Maybe they should have pre-scripted this fight.

Navia's gasp isn't feigned in the least. She pulls her arm free from Clorinde's and spins around to stare her down. Clorinde can see the storm gathering behind her eyes, the way her mouth tightens, the tilt of her chin, the hard blink against tears followed by the narrowing of her eyes. It's usually followed by the smile, then sweetly cutting words, or firmly authoritative ones, or fiercely defiant ones, depending upon the trigger and the audience. But this time, the smile doesn't come.

Her spin has taken her out from under the tree, and Clorinde's shoulders tense in anticipation of a spray of bullets, ready to leap to pull her into cover again.

"I'm going back for the Spina," Navia says, loud and clear. "I'm my father's daughter, after all. I'm also too sentimental to let someone I care about be killed when I can save them."

Clorinde holds her breath and turns to watch as Navia flounces off, still out of cover, and stomps back off down the road. Only when she's out of sight over the crest--far enough that Clorinde can no longer see any danger coming for her--does Clorinde turn back and continue the other way. Not far, still moving from cover to cover, until she reaches the thin trail that leads down to connect with the fog-blanketed forest path below.

She makes it down to that rough roadway and amid the trees again without being shot in the back. She hadn't truly expected it at this point. Hilaire must know as well as they do how skilled she isn't with that gun. She may want to use it--Clorinde can acknowledge the poetry of killing her with her own Master's weapon--but she knows what it took to take Petronilla down.

She knows that, and the location, and the terrain around. As long as Clorinde is examining a seal that it is, in truth, useless to reinstate now that the golems are already scattered across Erinnyes, she has plenty of time to surround her with those golems and pin her down. Hilaire may not have a Marechaussee Hunter's marksmanship, but she has enough of a common hunter's skills.

***

Navia makes sure to turn southward at the junction, as if she intends to carry on down towards the Rusty Rudder. Then she moves casually to press up against the base of the shallow bluff along the road, so she can't easily be seen by a watcher overhead. If Hilaire follows her instead of Clorinde, their whole plan is blown. No attack comes, though, and finally she's made it far enough for her next step.

Turning back, she slips from the shadow of the bluff to the shadow of the trees beyond, and then creeps slowly and quietly back to the pool. The frogs barely even pause in their singing as she drops into the water and dives. From here it's just a short swim ahead.

Not one she'll take alone. Pahsiv waves enthusiastically from the mouth of the tunnel that leads to the tree, then darts out to join Navia in the long swim upward in the other direction, towards the cave behind the waterfall and the seal beyond.

Navia hopes her vishap friends understood and will accede to their requests; if not, Navia and Clorinde will have to manage all the golems across Erinnyes alone. Though that, while more difficult, shouldn't be impossible. Navia has read Hilaire's notes over and over, and she's fairly certain she can figure out how to play the harp.

Even without being certain of the vishaps, though, Navia is glad to have the Melusine's company. She's trying hard not to be stung by Clorinde's words. She knows how it feels in that space that follows loss, even if their situations are different--she knows how much it hurts, and the urge to spread that hurt outward. Clorinde hadn't even been particularly cruel. Not nearly so much as Navia could be, and has been, in her own pain. Navia already regrets her own words.

What stings more than what Clorinde had said, though, is the fear that she thinks it's true. Navia knows her relationship with Petronilla was vastly different from Navia's with her own father. Yet they had found that list of Clorinde's duels, and Petronilla had chosen to come here when she intercepted that letter, surely suspecting it a trap for Clorinde. Why keep that list, or spring that trap, if she didn't care?

Petronilla must have loved Clorinde, however poorly she showed it. How could she do otherwise? Even her own father's death couldn't make Navia love her less. She hopes Clorinde believes at least in that.

***

Clorinde knows how unwise it is to go into battle with a troubled heart. 'A duel is a battle of wills, and the sword an extension of the duelist's spirit'--she's repeated her Master's wise words to many a friend and many a foe. Those who haven't listened she's thought less of, whether she fought beside them and had to compensate for their distraction or if she's taken advantage of it to bring them low.

She, though, is now the one unwise enough to go into battle with her heart uncertain.

Petronilla was her Master, not her mother, and she would have been a poor mother if she was. Clorinde has seen enough of other families, the Caspars not least among them, to know that. She had neither the experience nor the natural inclination to raise a child well. That Clorinde looks back on parts of her upbringing fondly, and still feels--felt--the desire to someday meet Petronilla's tests and make her proud, is something she knows others she's told about her childhood find pitiable. She's told the Traveler straightforwardly that she fears to impose such an upbringing on a child herself.

Yet Master had cared for her, in her own stern, unkind way. Clorinde knows that. It's why her affection lingers, why she can feel that fondness and maintain that desire to follow her Master's teachings well. Never in her training would Master have ever let her die, no matter how harsh the punishments if she did fail.

What if Navia is right? What if Master did, like Navia's father, die to keep her alive? It still isn't the same, for she hadn't intended to die, hadn't put herself deliberately in the way of a blade or begged any favors of the one who brought her down. She might well have only asked Pahsiv to ensure her sword reached Clorinde so that it could be put into the vault where it belongs.

'Take care' was part of a longer missive, and could have meant many things. It could easily have been telling her to take care of the sword, or of this situation. To do her duty, as Clorinde will.

Clorinde's eyes sting, and she blinks hard and shakes her head. No. Better that her Master have died in the course of duty, nothing more. That's far easier to imagine, easier on Clorinde herself to contemplate: a Marechaussee Hunter standing tall against the foe, falling against a monster she'd fought to the last, as did so many Marechaussee Hunters of old. Better than to imagine her thinking at the last of Clorinde as a child still in need of her protection, rather than a bullet she'd long since fired from her gun.

She blinks again, puts a hand to the hilt of her sword, and carries on to the altar, with its curving water-sapling above.

There isn't anything she can actually do here with the seal, now that it has been opened and the golems released. The book they found tells them everything that they need to know should they decide to seal them again, but given how weakened the seal was by the Abyss and the Traveler's work it would be better to just ensure that the golems are all destroyed, as that ancient Hunter expected from the start.

Hilaire, though, does not know all of a Marechaussee Hunter's arts, and surely cannot guess all that they can do. Clorinde moves from pipe to pipe, flaring ousia aimlessly to ensure it looks like she's doing something, straining her ears and keeping watch out of the corners of her eyes. She stays close enough to the trees to keep a reasonable amount of cover, in case Hilaire simply decides to shoot. Soon enough she notes the golems in deeper cover all around, gathering close as little snatches of harp-song flutter on the breeze.

When will Hilaire decide to strike? In the back of her mind, Clorinde keeps the time, subtracting out how long it took to get here in the first place. She knows roughly how much time it will take Navia and Pahsiv to get here if all goes well. Five minutes; six minutes; seven minutes. If her count reaches twelve, she can safely take the initiative and expect backup shortly after. Before that, better to stay guarded and wait for the attack.

She reaches the count of eight before Hilaire strikes. The Cervus golems come charging out together, Pyro shields flaring and flickering with stuttering flame, and rush the altar in a ring. Steam rises in bursts from the stream as they run through it, and then they're upon her, all sharp antlers and flashing fire and stomping hooves. Clorinde draws first her blade and then her gun, calling ousia down around her in the stance of a Night Vigil, and takes aim at her first foe.

The ousia and the Bond of Life, wound together, allow her to lunge past one of the Cervus, drawing her blade along its side as she goes. It topples, one last bullet past its shield expertly cracking the orange heart and robbing it of its glow. The rest follow her, but some have to wheel about, and they tangle together; it gives her plenty of time to level more shots, then to dart rushing among them as half kneel in a tangle of Overload and dying shields, striking out with both pistol and blade.

It doesn't finish all of them, but it gives her the breathing space to run, as a few bullets strike the water around her feet, for the cover of the next set of trees along the watercourse. Here the stream and path part ways; she stands at that crossroads and takes a moment to reload her gun, then turns and fires again at the oncoming golems.

Most of them are Vaporizing their own shields off trying to reach her. Those are easily felled. Those whose shields haven't quite yet failed them still don't manage to close before her gun gets them too. The last is nearly upon her when she once again yanks herself along the path of her current Bond of Life and runs it through.

When she stands from that strike, blinking against painfully hot steam, her side aches even worse than before. She will have to account for that going forward.

The next strike comes charging down the path as new notes ring out. Three Praetorian golems. In one sense, a relief; she knows these particular enemies well. In another sense, a problem; they can fight just fine on their own, so she can't rely on Hilaire commanding them to do something so foolish as running with Pyro shields straight through the Hydro of the stream. Her side aches even more sharply as she raises her gun high to call more ousia down.

Praetorian shields have weak points, places where bullets will chip away key joints and edges. This battle is largely one of movement and maneuver, chewing first one and then another away with endlessly repeated shots. She gets one onto its knees, blows its chest apart with a bullet wrapped in a full Bond of Life, brings down another and slashes its head from its stone shoulders with Electro all down her blade, then turns about too slowly as the third slashes at her from behind and is sent flying by the blow.

Scrambling to her feet, she finds she's kept a grip on her gun, but not her sword. Before she can dive for it, the earth shudders. A Verres golem comes thundering down the same path along which the Praetorian golems had arrived, stomping the sword into the mud as Clorinde dives sideways away from its Cryo-limned charge.

It hits the waterfall and freezes there, but she can see the little shudders under the ice as its mechanisms try to shake their way free. The remaining Praetorian golem is advancing steady step by steady step upon her. Three more bullets hit the ground, one close enough for mud to splatter upon her shin. Clorinde was supposed to keep Hilaire and the monsters out here where the vishaps could fall upon them if and when they arrived. She's going to have to change the plan.

Darting up the hill and around the shuddering Verres golem, her whole wounded side burning and her breath coming harsh, Clorinde sprints past the reed pipe beneath the second waterfall and into the cave beyond. She thinks she's kept her count. Nearly at ten minutes now.

The Praetorian golem advances first, and she shoots, jumps as another gunshot chips stone from the tunnel wall beside her, turns and rushes upwards, and pauses at the first curve to turn and shoot again. Around the corner before Hilaire's next shot, then turning again to take careful aim at the Praetorian as it follows. Out in the distance, she can hear the snap of ice and then, with a hum of harp-strings to guide it, the crunching and grinding and heavy thumping as the Verres golem navigates the hill.

Her Bond of Life is building high, pulling at her blood, straining along her nerves. She risks a second shot upon the Praetorian, which sends it to its knees, then lets the Bond of Life ride a third as she shoots out the orange glow in this one's helm. Clorinde risks a look around the corner past it and the Verres golem charges up at her, Cryo shield still bright and cold.

One shot. Clorinde has time for just the one, Superconducting against its shield, barely denting it. Then she turns and continues her sprint upwards.

Thankfully, the tunnel is a tight fit for the huge stone boar. She can hear it behind her, careening off the wall with each twist and turn. She can hear also the harp humming behind it as Hilaire follows.

At the top, Clorinde turns to watch the golem negotiating the last turn. It's having trouble, or Hilaire is; she keeps strumming the same note, sending it charging forward, but it can turn only a little in this tight space each time it hits the wall. Clorinde reloads again and readies another shot. From here, at least, Hilaire can't shoot at her. She takes another shot, chips off a bit more of its shield, then another, then a third. A fourth, humming with another Bond of Life but not enough to shatter its shield, and then it's charging at her.

She could dive into the water. But if she dives, they're all trapped in the tunnel beneath it, and Hilaire might get away. Instead she steps aside, flattening herself against the cave wall.

Its charge continues straight into, or rather onto, the water. Just as it had at the lake--it has to be the same one, for if Hilaire had more than one left she surely would have brought them both--it freezes to the surface, a flat sheet of ice beneath its feet. The cold of the ice bites at her skin, but Clorinde isn't wet and doesn't get frozen with it. She levels her gun.

Hilaire shoots first. And for once, her aim is almost, almost good.

It doesn't catch Clorinde in the center of the body, or in the head; it doesn't even strike an artery. But it gets her arm. As she gasps in pain, her gun falls from suddenly nerveless fingers and skitters across the ice, vanishing underneath the boar's frozen form. She can't dive for it, not with how deep its belly dips, and to squirm awkwardly beneath is to expose herself to a shot even Hilaire can't miss.

Fortunately, the same impulse that made Hilaire decide to use a gun she barely knows how to in the first place seems to be driving her still. She advances forward to the very edge of the iced-over water, gun held out until it's barely a foot from Clorinde's face. The harp is in the crook of her other arm, her fingers placed awkwardly on the strings at that angle. She smiles at Clorinde with none of the shyness that had been in it last night when she greeted them at her door. Her teeth are very nearly bared.

"I hope I don't have to explain to you why you're here."

"You let your brother take the fall for your crimes, and now you want vengeance upon the law," Clorinde says, meeting her eyes. "You aren't the first. Though most simply try to challenge me to another duel."

Her face twists in fury. "I don't want vengeance upon the law, I want vengeance upon you!"

"As Champion Duelist, I am an instrument of Fontaine's law. There is no difference."

"Yes there is. You could have forfeited. He begged you, he told you what I did, he told you he was innocent. You could have let him go!"

Clorinde will never understand why people think she can do so. "The law placed him before me. The law, and the very approach he took to it, had already determined his guilt. No one-" who isn't working on a self-sacrificial plan that has nothing to do with winning their case "-asks for a duel when they believe they will be exonerated by a trial. He could have forfeited at any time, and pled guilty without involving you."

Under the water, under the ice, there's a muffled and distant-sounding whoomph. Clorinde very carefully doesn't look down.

"You- you-" Hilaire's hand wavers, finger twitching on the trigger. Then she draws herself together and smiles that bared-teeth smile again. "You may have defeated poor Renard, but he was always the weaker-willed of us. You must know by now that you can't escape me. Your master couldn't, after all."

"Master couldn't," Clorinde says, listening carefully to the crackle and pop of ice. "But my Master came here alone."

***

There's a sheet of ice at the top of the tunnel. Navia can hear distantly echoing voices--Hilaire's all fury, Clorinde's work-mode calm but worryingly strained--even if she can't make out the words. She presses her hands against the ice and has to pull them quickly away before they freeze to it. Remembering the Verres golem yesterday morning, she knows what must have caused the blockage above.

Fortunately, thanks to poor Petronilla, they know exactly how to take these golems down.

Looping about in the water, she pulls out her gunbrella. Gunpowder weapons are chancy underwater. Clorinde would be entirely out of luck. But Navia's is powered by Geo, not powder and ousia, and while water slows her bullets too, a point-blank shot should be enough. She squints to make out the shadows of the Verres golem above, positions herself where she thinks she needs to be, and pulls the trigger.

Ice cracks overhead, but doesn't break. Crystalline shards of Cryo, though, come scattering off, floating in the water just a moment before she sweeps her gunbrella around in a loop to draw them into its shaft. She hears Hilaire shouting, Clorinde's more level answer, and then Hilaire's voice dropping low.

Another shot, and this time the ice cracks. Little lines run out at first along it, more Crystalization sending shards out for her gunbrella to sweep up. Then they widen, and the whole sheet shatters. The Verres' belly is overhead, unshielded; its legs work uselessly in water it can't swim in, defenseless now that its shield has cracked away. Navia shoves her gunbrella directly into that vulnerable underside and pulls the trigger for a third time.

Even muffled by the water, the sound of shattering stone is so satisfying.

Then gravity kicks in, and the Verres golem begins to plummet. Eyes widening, chagrined at her own lack of foresight, Navia shoots backward into the tunnel. It doesn't hit her--but it lodges there, blocking the opening, keeping her shut away from Clorinde and Hilaire as surely as its ice had just before. Navia has no idea how many gunbrella blasts it might take to crack a path through, but it won't be enough. Not with that strain in Clorinde's voice. She's at bay, and Navia knows to her core that she won't be able to escape alone. Her mouth opens, though her cry comes out only as bubbles and inarticulate sound.

Below her, a vast dark blue shape comes arrowing up through the water. The vishap strikes the golem's broken underside and shoves. Water surges upwards behind it, one of those currents from the tree's roots. Together, vishap muscle and water's force simply blow the golem upward out of the water, cracking it into pieces against the tunnel's roof. Chunks of stone patter back into the water and onto the ground past its edge as Navia kicks upward and springs onto dry land.

Hilaire is backing away, wide-eyed in shock. Navia swings the gunbrella, not at her, but at a falling shard of stone. It slams down atop her, pinning her solidly to the tunnel's floor, both her legs trapped and surely crushed. Landing right beside it, Navia stomps down hard on Hilaire's wrist, making her hand open around Petronilla's gun. She shrills in pain.

"You- you...."

"Hello, Hilaire." Navia grinds her foot against Hilaire's wrist. She can see that Clorinde's arm is bleeding; she's wrapping it quickly with her cape now that Hilaire is down. "Or is it Diuedonnee? Which do you prefer?"

Wide eyes and a white pallor don't hide the fury in Hilaire's gaze. "You... I know who you are. I did my homework. How can you do it? How can you work with her when she did what she did? I know about your father! Everyone knows! She cut him down, and you're still willing to stand by her side?"

In the corner of her eye Clorinde has frozen, cape half-bound around her arm.

"When I heard that Father had requested a duel, and her as his opponent, I knew what would happen," Navia tells her, soft enough to be sure her voice won't shake. She doesn't need to tell Hilaire this. It's not her business. But she isn't saying it for Hilaire. "I knew he knew what would happen when he asked for Clorinde. I didn't know why he'd done it back then, of course. I didn't want it to happen. I wrote him letters, I begged him, I wrote to Clorinde, I prayed-" her voice is shaking anyway "-but I knew. I still knew. And so did he."

She closes her eyes, just for a second, then opens them again. Unwise not to watch an opponent; more unwise to focus on the image painted, at this moment, on the insides of her eyelids. Her father's back blurs into Petronilla's, a long black cape falling free as she, as he, walk away from them both.

"I was angry about it. Of course I was. I didn't understand why it happened the way it did. At that time, I wanted Clorinde to be someone who would make her own judgements on the dueling field. But I knew she wouldn't be, because she's someone who knows her duty, and does what she has to do without any prejudice at all. It's something I loved about her before that day. It's something I still love about her, and always will. If she wasn't like that, she wouldn't be Clorinde."

"Navia," Clorinde says very softly, close behind.

Navia blinks the tears from her eyes and says, brightly, because if her voice is cheerful it can't shake the way it's trying to, "And that's also why Clorinde is going to be merciful and kill you now, instead of letting you bleed out slowly, half-crushed, like Petronilla did. That's what I would do if Clorinde wasn't here. But she'll be impartial about this, too."

Clorinde sighs. "I would prefer a fair fight."

"She used a whole giant golem! I just used a bit of rock."

"Mmm. Besides, I prefer a fair fight in the dueling ring... but a Marechaussee Hunter can't afford to make it a fair fight when putting down monsters."

Clorinde reaches back left-handed to flip her pack open and draws out a chipped and battered sword, dried blood still on the hilt. A moment to get her grip right, and then she brings it sharply down.

"I do like that," Navia tells her as she steps back, wiping a splatter of blood from her cheek. "Using Petronilla's own sword to finish her. I hadn't expected that much flourish."

"I lost my own sword in the fight. And my gun," Clorinde adds, frowning down into the water. "I'll have to collect it later. It would be unwise to leave it floating in such a pure lake."

"For now, you can use this one," Navia tells her, reaching down to scoop up Petronilla's gun. She makes to hand it to Clorinde, realizes her free hand is the injured right, and reaches around her to push it awkwardly into her holster instead.

Then she stays there, arm around her, when she feels the shaking in Clorinde's shoulders. Carefully she leans in, pulls Clorinde closer, and drops her gunbrella to hold her tight when Clorinde slumps alarmingly against her and shakes all the more. Her side is wet under Navia's fingers, the slick of blood.

"How bad is it?"

"Not that bad," Clorinde says, even as her knees buckle. Navia guides her carefully to the ground. "I bound my arm quickly, and my side is no worse than before. It's only bleeding because I pulled it open in the fight. This is shock."

That's no surprise. Navia crouches beside her and holds her close. There's a damp in Clorinde's eyes, too, that she's ferociously blinking back. At the sight of that Navia leans in and kisses her.

"She did want me to protect you," Navia tells her when she finally brings herself to break away.

"What?"

"Petronilla. She drove you so fiercely in your training, but she always took time away from that training to bring you to visit Father and I. She wouldn't have let my father encourage our friendship if she didn't want to see it encouraged herself. Why would she want us to be friends if she didn't want me to look after you?"

Clorinde gives a shaky huff of a laugh. "I'm sure there were other reasons... but I'll accept yours for now."

"You'd better." Navia kisses her again, on the temple this time, then collects herself. "Pahsiv's vishaps should have taken out all the golems they could find by now. We'll collect up that harp, then go back to the Rusty Rudder and call the Spina from there. They can bring a doctor for you and help us clean up any remaining golems."

"No. We'll do it now, before you call the Spina. This is my duty as a Marechaussee Hunter."

"Clorinde, you can't even use one arm right now. Let the Spina help."

Clorinde tenses in her arms as if to pull away. "I have to finish what Master couldn't."

"Melusine," a soft voice says. Navia looks up. Pahsiv--who's standing where the vishap who helped her was, before she looked down in distraction, and oh, that explains so much--walks up to the harp. "Pahsiv, protect. Pahsiv, willow, root, water veins, protect. Pahsiv, duty."

"Oh... of course! With all your vishap friends, you could call the rest with the harp yourself and clean them up just fine." If she can't handle the deer all on her own, as Navia now suspects. It doesn't matter; what matters is that she's clever enough to do it and strong enough to keep herself safe in the process, whether that strength comes from her own claws and teeth or from her friends.

"But-" Clorinde shifts under her arm.

"Pahsiv, duty," Pahsiv says firmly, directly to her. "Mar-show-say, duty. Pahsiv, very duty. New-va-let, give!"

"New-va-let, huh?" Navia smiles. "I think she's saying her jurisdiction outweighs yours."

"If the Iudex assigned it to her, then I suppose it does." Clorinde sighs. "If you need any help-"

"Pahsiv, blue thing, protect," Pahsiv says firmly.

"We can come back and check in as soon as you're all fixed up," Navia tells Clorinde. "Pahsiv won't let herself get hurt before them, will she?"

"Melusine! Ka-pow!"

"Exactly! Melusines are a lot tougher than they look. Oh," Navia remembers, digging into her pack, "you need this. ...Do you read music?"

"Pahsiv, hear bad person." She strums the harp softly. "Pahsiv, remember. Pahsiv, okay!"

"We'll still check back as soon as we can," Clorinde says, but lets herself be hauled to her feet.

They pause at the base of the waterfall, Navia looking over the smashed golems from Clorinde's fight, Clorinde looking... towards the other Verres golem, Navia realizes, though it's only half-visible through the trees. She wonders if that's something Pahsiv will get the vishaps to clean up, or if it's something they'll need to take care of when they check back in. She wouldn't mind blowing that one up too.

"Come on," Navia tells Clorinde, arm firmly around her waist. "Let's get back to the Rusty Rudder so I can contact the Spina. And then we can see if Pitot has the kind of fine wine in stock you can actually drink."

***

"There we go," Navia says, gouging the last line with the edge of her axe and stepping back to admire her work. It isn't in the same style as the other inscriptions, but Clorinde doubts that her Master would mind.

'Petronilla,' the ancient stone now reads, beneath all the names of other Marechaussee Hunters much, much longer dead. Perhaps it's arrogant to put a mere modern descendant alongside those nigh-mythical figures, but Navia had insisted, and Clorinde can't bring herself to protest.

Careful not to disturb the wreaths that the Traveler and Paimon had left, their flowers and greenery now dried and fragile but still bright, Clorinde drives her Master's blade into the ground, then goes to one knee to set her gun in front of it. She's left the blood on the hilt, the last physical traces of a woman now lying in an unmarked grave beside a wild and remote loch. She had, however, cleaned the gun. Her Master doesn't deserve to have some future Marechaussee Hunter think she'd kept it in such terrible condition.

Her chest and throat are both tight when she stands again. She stares down at the sword and the gun and reaches up beneath her cravat to touch the pendant hidden beneath.

"She didn't intend to die," Clorinde says aloud. "That wasn't the final battle of someone who didn't expect to live. And she would have gone to confront both Hilaire, for her crimes, and the golems, for their danger and for the honor of the Marechaussee Hunters, no matter what. Those were what she saw as her duties, and she always carried those out... without prejudice."

Navia catches her hand and squeezes it tight. Clorinde squeezes back, though she can't make herself look away from the blade.

"I am certain she felt she could handle the situation herself, without bothering to forward that letter she intercepted on to me. Once she failed, that note could well have simply been asking me to take care of the matter in her stead."

"Really?" Navia's tone borders on aggrieved.

Clorinde takes a deep breath. "She didn't die for me. I'll never know if she followed the trail of that letter with the specific intent of handling it in my place, or if she simply thought she was the closest or best person to do that duty. But I think... I will choose to believe that she meant that 'take care' for me alone."

"Of course she did. Whether she was trying to protect you or not, she always loved you, Clorinde."

Navia's view of Petronilla is just as skewed as those of anyone who listens to Clorinde's tales of her upbringing with open pity, simply in the opposite direction. Incorrect as it is, though, Clorinde doesn't truly want to challenge that view. It makes Navia the one person who can understand the affection Clorinde still holds for her Master. And in this moment, that's a comfort she needs.

"She did her best," Clorinde says. That she knows is true. And maybe Navia is right, and her Master's best did include her love, as sternly and coldly as she was able to give it. Clorinde would like to think that was so.

It doesn't matter now, though. Her Master is gone, vanished into the ranks of the Marechaussee Hunters who have gone before. Clorinde is left here among those who come after. Left, again, in her Master's unexpected absence--but, just as she had been then, not alone. She holds Navia's hand tight as she turns away from her Master's sword, towards the woman she loves, and whom she knows without any question loves her in return.

"I'm glad you're here," she tells her, squeezing Navia's hand.

"We're partners, aren't we?" Navia smiles at her. "I wasn't going to let you do this without me."

"Thank you."

Clorinde leans in and Navia meets her, catching her shoulder and pulling her close into a far fiercer kiss than Clorinde had meant to deliver. Not that Clorinde minds. She slides her arm around Navia's waist and lets herself be kissed breathless by the one person in the world who can't imagine anyone, even herself in the midst of outrage and grief, who couldn't love Clorinde.

At last Clorinde pulls back. "We should leave."

Navia laughs, a little sheepishly, and pushes a curl behind her ear. "I was starting to feel a little awkward. It feels like we're kissing right in front of them."

Though they've pulled apart, Navia hasn't let go of her hand, and she has no desire to tug it free. Instead Clorinde goes out with Navia hand-in-hand, through the entrance and back into the water, up to the beach. They emerge into the clear cool morning air, sun pale and bright upon their skin, miles from the fog of Erinnyes.

Her Master's bloodstained sword will stay forever in the vault below, her name recorded only there and in unwritten memory. Clorinde has fulfilled the duty the blood on that sword required. She isn't free of all such duties, for she never will be so long as she wears the cape that Master left her. But she trusts that, unlike her Master, she'll never face them alone.