The Panic Bells didn't sound like bells. They sounded like iron pots being beaten by frantic hands, a discordant, clanging riot that rolled over the Obolus skyline and smashed against the docks.
Kaelen Vance fell to her knees in the mud. The physical vibration of the sonic blast—the Laughing Note—was still humming in her marrow, making her teeth ache. It felt as though someone had struck a tuning fork inside her skull, and the resonance was trying to shake her brain apart.
"Get up," Inquisitor Valerius barked.
He wasn't looking at the city. He was looking at her.
Kae blinked, wiping a smear of rain and blood from her eyes. The tip of Valerius's shotgun was leveled directly at her chest.
"Valerius?" she rasped, the word tasting of bile.
"The signal," Valerius shouted over the rising din of the bells. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat, masking his eyes in shadow. "It wasn't just a noise, Vance. It was a trigger. A command code for the sleeper agents. Halloway was the White King; you're the Black Queen. Did the signal wake you up?"
Kae stared at the black barrel of the gun. The trust—fragile, thin as spun glass—that they had built at the Pneumatic Exchange shattered instantly. He was back to being the executioner, and she was back to being the rat.
"I'm not… one of them," she wheezed, trying to push herself up. Her arms trembled violently. The massive psychic discharge she had unleashed at the factory had left her hollowed out, a dry husk scraping against the raw nerves of her own body. She couldn't blast him away even if she wanted to. She couldn't even stand without swaying.
He's going to shoot you, darling, the Voice whispered.
It wasn't the manic, giggling presence from the theater. The Voice sounded cold. Sharp. Like a razor blade hidden in an apple.
He's frightened. Men like Valerius destroy what they can't categorize. Let me take the hand, Kaelen. Let me snap his wrist.
"No," Kae hissed, answering both the Inquisitor and the Passenger. "I'm me. I'm still me."
"Prove it," Valerius demanded, his finger tightening on the trigger. "The note. What did it make you feel? Joy? Obedience?"
"Pain!" Kae screamed, the anger giving her a sudden, jagged spike of energy. She clawed at the mud, forcing herself to her feet. "It felt like a drill in my ear! If I were a sleeper, Valerius, I wouldn't be talking to you. I'd be tearing your throat out!"
Valerius hesitated. The Panic Bells continued their chaotic rhythm, echoing off the warehouses.
Then, the screaming started.
It came from the landward side of the pier, from the maze of shipping containers and alleyways where the smugglers usually hid. It wasn't a scream of fear. It was a scream of laughter. Wet, gurgling, lung-tearing laughter.
A figure stumbled out of the fog, ten yards away. It was a dockworker, a burly man in a heavy canvas coat. He was clawing at his own face, his fingernails digging furrows into his cheeks.
"He sees!" the man shrieked, his voice distorted. "The Curtain! The Curtain is rising!"
He saw Valerius and charged. He didn't run like a man; he ran like a marionette with cut strings, limbs flailing in impossible angles.
Valerius spun, swinging the shotgun. He didn't fire—he conserved the shell—and instead smashed the heavy wooden stock into the man's jaw. The dockworker crumbled, but he didn't stop laughing. He scrabbled on the wet wood of the pier, trying to bite Valerius's boots.
"The sleepers," Kae whispered, horror dousing the heat of her anger. "They aren't spies, Valerius. They're... bombs."
Another figure emerged. Then three more. A woman in a baker's apron. Two Guild guards whose eyes were rolled back so far only the whites showed. They were all humming the same discordant note that Halloway's crate had blasted out.
"We need to move," Valerius said, kicking the biting dockworker into the dark water of the Iron River. He grabbed Kae's arm—not gently, but with the grip of a handler securing a dangerous animal. "The carriage is gone. The driver is likely turned."
"Where?" Kae gasped, stumbling as he dragged her toward the shadows of a crane. "The Ossuary is compromised. The Safe House is compromised. The streets are full of them."
"The salt warehouses," Valerius ordered, checking the load in his shotgun. "Salt dampens arcane frequencies. If we can get deep enough into the stacks, the signal might not reach us."
They ran.
Kae's lungs burned. Every step was a negotiation with gravity. She reached out with her mind, instinctively trying to find a stray memory to sip, just a drop of adrenaline to keep her moving.
Don't, the Voice warned.
She ignored him. She brushed her mind against the psyche of the charging baker woman—and immediately recoiled with a cry of pain.
The memory wasn't a memory. It was static. It was a loop of black geometry and the sound of breaking bones. The Laughing God's signal had poisoned the well. There was nothing to eat here but madness.
"Focus, Vance!" Valerius shoved her behind a stack of crates as a group of Laughing Sleepers surged past, tearing at the locked doors of a customs office.
"I can't feed," Kae whispered, clutching her stomach. "The minds... they're spoiled. I'm empty, Valerius. I'm running on fumes."
"Then run on fear," Valerius snapped. "It burns just as hot."
They navigated the labyrinth of the docks, moving deeper into the industrial sector. The fog was thicker here, mixed with the acrid smoke of the Obolus factories. The "Un-breathing" had ended, and the city was gasping again, but the air felt wrong. Heavy. Charged.
They reached the massive sliding doors of the Royal Salt Reserve. It was a fortress of brick, intended to store the city's preservatives. Valerius used a small canister of acid from his belt to melt the lock—arcane keys were too risky now.
He shoved the door open, and they slipped inside.
The silence was sudden and absolute.
The warehouse was a cathedral of white. Mountains of rock salt rose forty feet high, glowing faintly in the dim light filtering through the high clerestory windows. The air was dry, stinging Kae's bloody nose and cracked lips.
Valerius threw the heavy bolt shut and leaned his back against the door, sliding down until he hit the floor. He looked exhausted. The scars on his face stood out in stark relief against his pale skin.
Kae collapsed on a wooden pallet, her breath hitching in her chest. She pulled her knees to her chest, trying to stop the shaking. The Dimeritium cuffs were gone, but she felt more trapped than ever.
"Check your pockets," Valerius said after a long moment. His voice was raspier now. "Check everything. If Halloway slipped a tracker on you, or another... gift."
Kae patted down her coat. The Black Queen was still there, heavy and warm like a tumor. She pulled it out.
"Just this," she said, holding up the bone chess piece. "And the mirror shard."
Valerius stared at the Queen. "Dawn at Pier 4," he muttered. "That was the invitation. We arrived. The show started. What is the next move?"
"He called me the board," Kae said, turning the piece over in her fingers. "And Halloway was the opening move. You don't sacrifice a King in the opening unless you're playing a gambit."
Unless the King was never the King, the Voice murmured.
Kae froze. She looked at the chess piece. "Valerius. In the set... the King is the objective. But the Queen... the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board. The most dangerous."
"And?"
"Halloway wasn't the White King," she whispered. "The statue... he marked it after Halloway was dead. He assigned the role. If I'm the Black Queen... who is the White Queen?"
Valerius looked up, his grey eyes narrowing. "Someone powerful. Someone who can move freely across the board."
A heavy thud against the warehouse door made them both jump. Then a scratch. Then a laugh.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"They found us," Kae breathed.
"No," Valerius said, standing up and raising the shotgun. "Listen to the rhythm."
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It wasn't the chaotic beating of the rioters. It was slow. Deliberate. The same heartbeat rhythm they had heard at the Grand Guignol.
"He's here," Valerius said.
"He can't be," Kae argued, backing away toward the mountains of salt. "He vanished at the Pneumatic Exchange. We saw him."
"We saw a projection," Valerius corrected. "We saw a performance."
The scratching stopped.
Under the door, a fluid began to seep in. It wasn't water. It was black, viscous, and smelled of licorice and rot. It moved against gravity, pooling not on the floor, but rising up the wood of the door like climbing ivy.
It formed letters.
INTERMISSION
"He's mocking us," Valerius growled. He aimed at the door.
"Don't shoot!" Kae yelled. "If you breach the door, the noise gets in! The signal!"
The black fluid shifted again. The letters dissolved and reformed.
THE CAST IS INCOMPLETE.
Kae felt a sudden, searing pain in her right hand—the hand holding the Black Queen. Her fingers clamped shut around the bone piece, squeezing so hard her knuckles turned white.
She tried to open her hand. She couldn't.
"Valerius," she gasped. "My hand."
Valerius looked at her. "What?"
"I'm... I'm not doing it."
Her arm began to rise, lifting the chess piece toward her own face. She grabbed her right wrist with her left hand, trying to force it down, but the limb felt like it was made of iron. It wasn't her muscle moving it.
I told you, the Voice crooned, sliding into the forefront of her mind like a drop of ink in water. If you won't play your part, I'll have to understudy.
"Get out!" Kae screamed, thrashing against her own body.
"Vance!" Valerius lunged for her, dropping the shotgun. He grabbed her arm, wrestling against the supernatural strength of the parasite.
"He's taking control!" Kae cried, tears of frustration hot in her eyes. "He's trying to make me... make me..."
Her hand, fighting against both her and Valerius, slowly rotated the Black Queen. She wasn't looking at the piece. She was looking at the bottom.
The coordinates had changed.
The carving on the base of the bone piece was no longer Docks. Pier 4. Dawn.
The bone seemed to bleed, the scrimshaw shifting into new words:
The Cathedral of St. Aethelgard. Noon.
Bring the Fire.
"St. Aethelgard," Valerius read the words, his face going pale. "That's the Luminary Headquarters. The seat of the High Inquisitor."
Kae's hand suddenly went limp, dropping the chess piece into the salt. The Voice receded, leaving a mocking echo of laughter in her cerebellum.
She fell back, gasping. "He wants us to go to the Church? To your headquarters?"
Valerius stared at the chess piece, then at the black writing on the door which was slowly fading away.
"No," Valerius said, his voice hollow. "He doesn't want us to go there. He wants you to go there."
He looked at Kae, and for the first time, she saw true fear in the Inquisitor's eyes.
"St. Aethelgard is where we keep the fuel for the Purging Flame," Valerius whispered. "If the sleeper signal hits the Cathedral... if the guards turn... Obolus doesn't just go mad, Vance. It burns."
Kae looked at her trembling hand—the hand that had just betrayed her.
"Then we have to get there first," she said.
"We?" Valerius picked up his shotgun, but he didn't point it at the door. He pointed it at the dark shadows of the warehouse rafters, where the Dreg-ghosts were starting to gather, drawn by the scent of a fractured mind.
"I can't trust you, Vance. You're compromised."
"You don't have a choice," Kae said, standing up and wiping the blood from her nose. "You're the dog that chases cars, Valerius. But I'm the one carrying the keys."
She stepped over the Black Queen, leaving it in the salt.
"Let's go save your Church."