It was a fascinating thing, when Ibis was crowned Empress. Everyone could so clearly perceive the ending of one era and the beginning of another. The wave of the oncoming future loomed high overhead, threatening at any moment to break—on this, there was common and unconscious understanding. Even the commonfolk could feel it.

  Understand that the people of Vokia had been anticipating an Emperor Taro Zhon for over a decade now; as the sole progeny of an autarch in slow decline, the young prince's ascension had been assured for almost the entirety of his life. Taro was handed dominion over the Oculus Division as little more than a placeholder, a way to cut his teeth as an experienced leader of men. Few had expected him to take so vigorously to that work, to revitalize and to transform that old agency into something truly ferocious—for most, it was understood that the Oculus Directorate was only a brief stepping-stone on the young prince's road to Emperor.

  All this is to say that no-one saw Ibis coming.

  Here she was, then: a foreign usurper of Taro's throne, hot on the heels of her own father's mysteriously sudden demise. She was a woman possessing of few supporters and even fewer friends; Vokia's preeminent spy network currently rested in the palm of her most ardent enemy, and by and large the average citizen knew nothing of Ibis beyond the words new empress and outsider. Worse, her weakness was blatant for all to see—like blood in the water, already were the sharks on hungry approach, and already were carrion-birds circling eagerly overhead. Ibis was but a lamb amidst a snarling pack of wolves.

  How did Ibis contend with these challenges, then? The answer is very simple.

  She struck first.

  First, and fast, and viciously. The very next day after her coronation, in fact. Those twenty-four hours were marred by an unprecedented string of disappearances: ministers, chancellors, spymasters, stewards, guards, and even servants. The military's upper echelon was left largely intact, for Ibis had already secured their allegiances via secret de facto promises to end the Seven Years' War—but everyone else? Everyone else was fair game. And Ibis was very much on the hunt. Many of her opponents resigned, quietly, and disappeared to lives of obscurity and solitude. Some received generous stipends, in consolation. Some did not. And some of Ibis's enemies simply vanished outright, never to be seen or heard from again. These were no messy assassinations, no publicized killings. Never did Ibis take credit. Thus their deaths became naught but an unspoken and unacknowledged fact, 'the elephant in the room' as it were, and thus it was in three short weeks that Empress Ibis brought the entirety of the Vokian court to heel.

  She, in the end, had been the predator amidst a flock of unwitting prey.

  All of this followed, logically. To an outside observer this purge would make practical (if not necessarily ethical) sense; many, in the years to come, would even praise this so-called overturning of the old guard (whilst, of course, tacitly refusing to acknowledge the sheer mass of death at its core). What did not follow, however, was when Ibis did the exact same thing a second time—just five weeks before the night of her own death.

  Once again there came a sudden string of disappearances. No resignations this time—only killings. Only total cessation of life. Prime Consort Tiger Qelas woke one morning to find that one-twentieth of the palace regulars no longer existed; the servants would not speak of them and the guards all bluntly refused to acknowledge their absence. Yet overnight there had been, most assuredly, another cleaning of Ibis's house.

  Tiger had spent sufficient time enmeshed in the tumult of Shalasharan politics—his upbringing was dictated by the ruthless logistician Ralan Qelas, after all—that he was immediately struck by the oddity of performing such a sweeping purge at such a placid time. Ibis had just spent the last two years securing her base of power, after all. All this time she had been building for herself an unshakeable foundation—and now she was throwing it all away? There was no obvious motivation. It seemed to make no sense at all. Tiger pondered this and was subsequently worried; worse, he was also curious, and for the past two years of his Vokian stewardship he had been encouraged to pursue every one of his curiosities at whim. And so it was that Tiger, with total lack of apprehension, went to go and ask the Empress some questions.

  They spoke privately, the two of them, in her office—a warm and windowless little chamber that Ibis long favored over her more expansive throne room. Here did Tiger state the obvious aloud, and without any judgement or morality: that Ibis had ordered some fifty-odd people killed. And in return did Ibis, ever the cipher, do an exemplary job of neither acknowledging nor denying the seventh prince's claims.

  She did not flinch at these queries; he did not hesitate to voice them aloud. In a certain sense this was little more than a pleasant conversation between two old friends and ostensibly intellectual peers.

  Until it wasn't. Until Ibis said, offhandedly, whilst rolling a quill between her ink-stained fingers and staring off at some unknowable point just slightly to the left of Tiger's head, "At the end of the day, really, I did everything I could do."

  Even in such private conversations as this, still did Ibis always speak with some veneer of mendacity layered overtop. It was simply her nature; Ibis was by instinct an intensely guarded person, a woman the shape of whose soul could not possibly be determined. It was only in the surreal, twilit post-coitus aftermath—exactly once per week—that the veil was lifted by even the barest increment, and one might catch a fleeting glimpse of the peculiar being dwelling within. Tiger had long understood this and had long ceased to begrudge her. Tiger had long come to accept that to some degree, with Ibis, the mask was the person.

  This, however, felt different. Those words—I did everything I could do—felt real. Here they were, chatting in broad daylight, and suddenly Ibis seemed at once startlingly lucid and strangely, vaguely detached, as though her mind dwelt somewhere behind or ahead of the present in which all the rest of the world was stuck.

  So Tiger prompted, casually, careful not to betray his sudden intrigue—"Oh? I didn't know there were limits to what the Empress of Vokia could do."

  She gave him a very small smile, at that—possibly a real one—and sighed. "You have no idea."

  "Tell me," said Tiger, folding one leg over another and interlacing his hands in his lap. "Go on, complain a bit. You know I don't mind."

  "I won't indulge in self-pity," Ibis replied, dispelling his offer with a wave of one pale hand. "Nor to righteous indignation. Just know, Tiger, that last night cost me all the influence, and all the capital, and all of the favors I had left to spend. Ah, look at me—burning my own power like a candle at both ends." She leaned forward, and Tiger—on instinct, without realizing—drew slightly back. Her eyes were a thousand miles away. "And do you know why?"

  "I don't," said Tiger, slowly. Warily.

  The nails of her left hand went down upon the desk in perfect sequence, one-two-three-four-five.

  "All this," Ibis said, "is just buying time."

  And then she snapped right back to reality; abruptly, her eyes were on Tiger and Tiger alone, and she dwelt fully in the present once more. And the veil, once more, was drawn tight around her. "Wait—" said Tiger, in futile chase after that shred of her true self, "—are you buying time for...or from?"

  It was an excellent question. It was the right question to ask. It was also too late. Ibis just smiled a false smile, then, and leaned back in her chair. "Fret not, Tiger," she said. "All, as always, rests well within my hands."

  Ibis wanted him to be reassured. So, visibly, Tiger was indeed reassured. And perhaps on some level he really had been convinced—he certainly wanted to believe her, after all. And yet. Tiger's mind was a restless, overeager thing, and it loved nothing more than to work a problem down to the very bone. The seventh prince had always been one to pick his scabs.

  And so: later that afternoon, Tiger went to speak with Panther.

  He found her in her private gymnasium, approximately twelve meters below the ground, in the midst of savaging a sandbag with knuckles gauze-wrapped and bloody. Panther was in a good mood that day, and unusually talkative to boot, and so the two spoke animatedly and at length about a great many things of relatively little importance until, finally, the bloated and decaying corpse of the problem had floated all the way to the forefront of Tiger's mind and could be ignored no longer. And so he told her, apropos of nothing: "Panther, I've been...worried about Ibis, lately."

  "Welcome to my world," Panther grunted, now besieging the sandbag with a rapid-fire fusillade of punches before whirling around and sending the thing flying away with a spinning roundhouse that could very well have snapped bone. She glanced over at Tiger, held out a hand behind her, and went on: "Worrying about Ibis is my job. And my only hobby." At which point the sandbag swung back, made contact with her palm, and fell dutifully still.

  "Seriously," Tiger insisted, as Panther's left-hook feint caught the sandbag entirely off-guard. "All this is just to buy time, she told me."

  "Sounds like Ibis," Panther remarked, with a rising kick to catch the sandbag just below the belt.

  "Panther, you didn't hear her. It was bizarre—she was talking like a woman about to die."

  Those words—that last one in particular—were the truth that Tiger had been oh-so-carefully dancing around in his mind. They were that which he had refused to directly acknowledge—until the very moment that they ripped themselves free from his lips. And the effect was instantaneous. Panther stopped dead in her tracks; the chain creaked as the sandbag swung listlessly to and fro, and as Panther turned fully around to face him. Her expression was, as always, pure and steely calm.

  "Ibis and I have been together for a long time," said Panther, now unwinding the gauze from her fists. "Since we were practically teenagers. Do you know how many times I've had to save her life?"

  "Too many to count?"

  "More than I'd prefer," Panther agreed, glancing away. Reminiscing, perhaps, for just a moment. Then her eyes flicked back to Tiger, and she continued: "I meant it literally, Tiger. All I do is worry for that woman."

  "I know," said Tiger.

  "I know that you know," said Panther. "But still. Take it from me—if there's one person alive who you can always bet on, it's her. She's always got it all figured out, and she always wins. Every time." Panther rolled her shoulders, cracked her knuckles, tossed that wad of bloody bandages aside. "She also likes saying weird and scary shit like that because she is a weird and scary person. Which is why I love her." A rare smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, then, as she added on: "One of the reasons, anyway."

  This was, for the notoriously taciturn Panther, all but outright loquaciousness. This was about as close as she ever came to waxing poetic. And so Tiger, aptly moved, decided then and there to abandon his worries—but not entirely. That was simply not possible; his mind was meticulous in its hoarding, filing away even the scantest of dangling threads. And so his fears were not discarded; instead, they were buried deep and dormant below, quiet yet forever lurking and forever ready to claw their way to the fore once again.

  And it was, of course, just a few weeks later that those fears were made horribly prescient.

  "Ibis?"

  "Yes, Panther?"

  "Are you planning to die?"

  The two of them were entangled beneath a whole ocean of padded sheets and quilted blankets, utterly snug and secure, when Panther spoke up for the first time in nearly an hour. They were illuminated only by a dim lantern resting upon the left-hand nightstand; thus were Ibis's features plainly visible, whilst Panther's were almost entirely shrouded in ambiguous shadow. Panther, then, was naught but a blank void and a lone voice—a voice that had, unexpectedly, turned very much tight-clipped and controlled. Accusatory, even.

  Ibis, for once, seemed genuinely surprised. Her reaction was simple: she stared blankly at Panther, blinked two times, and then said: "What?"

  "I'm not stupid," replied Panther. Ibis worriedly ran her thumb along the length of the other woman's wrist; to this Panther did not respond, physically, in any way whatsoever. Her whole body was stiff and unmoving—her whole body was tensed, just like she always was in the last few seconds before a fight. "You told Tiger because you knew he'd tell me," Panther said. "But you wouldn't tell him outright, of course. You'd just imply it. And you wouldn't tell me at all. So here we are, Ibis. Now I'm telling you. Just like you planned."

  "Panther," Ibis pleaded, trying and failing to pull her closer. Panther did not budge. "Please—I don't know what exactly it is that Tiger told you, but I am certain that you have sorely misconstrued—"

  "Don't do that," Panther snapped. Her words were not quite a shout and not quite a growl; they were, above all else, a cold and immutable command. A wall. "Don't you dare." Her voice wavered by just one small degree on that final word. "The fake voice, the double-talk. The words that don't mean anything." Every word was fracturing, now. The ice threatened to break. "You lie to other people, Ibis. Not to me. Never to me. Don't—" and then her voice finally broke, and her shoulders slumped, and the whole of her form became a living and breathing thing once more. And then Panther concluded, with voice painfully raw: "Don't break your promise."

  "I'm trying not to." whispered Ibis.

  "You're failing."

  "I don't want to be."

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  "So answer me," ordered Panther, forcing herself back to rigid composure.

  "I will," said Ibis. Her hand around Panther's wrist had turned to a desperate grasp, as though the swelling tides might rip her away at any given moment. As though the only way to keep her here was to keep her here. It had been a long time since Ibis had felt this kind of fear.

  "Ibis."

  "Yes?"

  "Am I going to lose you?"

  There was something in her eyes, then. Something infinitesimally small and impossibly fast. One moment it was there—a mournful little flicker, a flash of deepest sorrow—and then it was gone, and then Panther forced herself to pretend she had not seen it. To forget it. And then Ibis said, "Come here," and Panther, broken, obliged. Urgently she crawled into the other woman's arms, and allowed the Empress to cradle her tight. "Shh," Ibis soothed, her fingers combing oh-so-gently through Panther's hair. "It's okay. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, Panther." And then, again: "I'm right here."

  So long had Panther lived a life absent security, safety, stability—neither kindness nor kinship nor joy—that now did she weep openly, from equal parts fear of the future and relief at a reality in which she could trust, so utterly and totally, in the love of another. Panther wept because she had been scared for so long that scared was all her body knew, and because safe was something she had spent all of the past few years trying to learn.

  Understand that Panther believed her, in that moment, because she wanted to believe her.

  They held each other for quite some time, then. Until finally Panther's tears had dried, and Ibis said—apropos of nothing—into that raw, vulnerable silence: "I mean honestly, Panther. Can you really imagine me dying?" To which Panther broke at once into a shaky, relieved little laugh.

  "No," she admitted, honestly, digging herself deeper into the other woman's arms.

  "Do you feel better now?" Ibis asked, faintly teasing.

  "Yes," admitted Panther, again.

  Ibis opened her mouth to speak—to joke, to jibe, to bright further light to the mood—when Panther muttered, very quietly: "You know, Ibis..."

  The Empress cocked her head. "Yes?"

  "I love you," said Panther. "But sometimes you really scare me."

  Ibis, for once, had nothing at all to say. So Ibis just sat there, silent, stroking Panther's hair, until finally the bodyguard had passed on to a blissful and loudly-snoring slumber. And so Panther did not see, all the while, as a lone tear made pilgrimage down the side of Ibis's face.

  She waited for two hours, after Panther had fallen asleep. Actually counted down the minutes in her head. And then, with careful precision, she extricated herself from the other woman's grasp. Bare feet touched down upon cool stone; Ibis tucked Panther in beneath a whole mountain's worth of quilted blankets and then slunk away, soundless, into the moonlit shadows of her private chamber.

  Ibis paused only at the door, her hand halfway to the handle—and only to look to me. She offered a curt nod; I offered her nothing in return, for mine was only to watch and to remember.

  And then the door creaked open, and Ibis was gone.

  For perpetually frozen Vokia, even a mid-autumn night such as this was turned to a harsh and forbidding affair. The wind howled and bit, gnashed and clawed. Every exhalation was a glimmering cloud; every inhalation, a raw and scraping pain. The moon hung amidst a cloudless sky overhead, already sickle-shaped yet still doused in its proper hue—that of brilliant silver, rather than the jaundiced yellow of the coming Equinox.

  He was waiting for her, there, beneath the shadow of the southern ramparts. He was leaned back against that frozen wall with one hand in his pocket and the other clenching a long, thin cigar. He glanced over; the Empress acknowledged him with only another curt nod and then, silently, took up her place on the wall beside him. The two of them stared dead ahead, out into the darkness, and neither one of them spoke a word. They only waited and listened to the sound of the wind, and of distant wolves, and to the rustling of dead leaves yet soon to fall.

  Until. "I take it we're on?" asked Casso Vos, with an exhalation of smoke to follow.

  "You tell me," Ibis replied. She reached into her coat; without looking, she passed over a leather-bound little book, to which Casso stuck the cigar back between his teeth and took the proffered tome with both hands.

  The old man's eyes flicked back and forth, back and forth, as he smoked and read in silence. Ibis too was quiet.

  Eventually: "Hang on," said Casso, glancing over at the woman opposite. "No payment in advance?"

  "Keep reading," Ibis answered flatly.

  Casso kept reading. "Oh," he said, a few moments later.

  "That is my only offer."

  "Not shit," Casso scoffed, without humor. Perhaps sounding a tad bit shaken. "Stars above. This is a cruel thing to dangle over an old man's head, you know. To even suggest it at all."

  "I want the best tool for the job," said Ibis, without sympathy. "I wagered this was the only way I could bring you out of retirement."

  "Well, you wagered right," Casso grunted. "As always." To this, Ibis replied only with a minute inclination of her head.

  A few seconds more passed. Both of them were marinating quietly in the contents of that little book. Until, again, it was Casso who broached the air: "Last time you and I spoke, y'know, things were..."

  She didn't blink. "Acrimonious."

  "Yeah, that's a good word," Casso agreed. "Acrimonious." The old man took a long drag of his cigar, then took it once more between his fingers and let it drop down to his side. There was now a cinereous spiral rising ghostly above his head. "And yet. So far tonight, you keep going quiet on me. Almost like you want me to say something." His hand went back up; he took another drag, blew out another cloud of smoke. "I dunno what you're expecting to hear. You used up all my sympathy a long time ago."

  "I do not need or care for your sympathy," said Ibis, her face and voice both utterly void of emotion.

  "Ah. You wanna know what I think of your shiny new plan, then."

  Ibis said nothing.

  "Well, what I think is that it's nasty. And mean-spirited. And genius, of course. They always are."

  Ibis said nothing.

  "I also think that you haven't changed a bit."

  Ibis turned her head. Glared at him. Her eyes were like wide, placid pools of silver.

  "What I wanna know," Casso continued, still staring dead ahead, "is whether or not you think this shit'll actually even work. Or if you're just scheming to scheme."

  "I do not know if it will work," Ibis replied, stonily. "Not for a certainty. But I do know that it can work."

  "Lotta smart people would disagree with you on that."

  "I possess a unique perspective. I envision futures that they cannot."

  "No doubt."

  "You really don't think I've changed?"

  That last question came absolutely out of nowhere, with no warning, and with just the barest hint of inflection creeping into her voice. And to that, Casso sighed, and flicked his cigar down into the ocean of shadow beyond. Sparks trailed, quickly dimmed back down to darkness. And then he turned, and for the first time looked Ibis dead in the eyes.

  He just observed her, for a few moments. Evaluated with little emotion. With seeming disinterest. Then: "Does the bodyguard know you're here?"

  "Her name is Panther."

  "Thanks. Does Panther know that you're here?"

  "No. She is asleep and will not wake for some time."

  Casso raised one bushy eyebrow. "Drugs or Sorcery?"

  Again, Ibis glared. "She's an insomniac," the Empress replied icily. "On the rare occasions when she does sleep, nothing can wake her."

  "Hmm," Casso grunted, turning away. Musing. Then: "I have a stipulation."

  "Name it."

  "I want to test her first."

  Ibis's eyes narrowed. "How so?"

  "How do you think?" said old man, shrugging his shoulders. "Look, if she's not up to snuff then I won't be getting my payment. That doesn't sit right with me—I don't ever work for free. So I'm gonna test her. And if she does well, then I'll follow this—" he thumps the back of his hand against the book, "—to the very fuckin' letter. You have my word on that."

  Ibis, coldly: "And if she fails?"

  "Well, then I'll probably kill her."

  Ibis hesitated very briefly. Then: "That is acceptable."

  Casso glanced back. "Is it?"

  "Panther will not fail. Nor will Tiger"

  "And you're willing to bet their lives on that?"

  "All great plans are hinged upon successful gambits. There is a hard ceiling to what one can achieve without luck on their side."

  "Uh huh."

  "How else does an orphaned young girl become Empress of Vokia?"

  "Fuck's sake," Casso muttered, blowing another cloud of smoke and looking off to his right—towards a wall of sheer frost-coated brick. Then: "Well, if nothing else, you did hesitate to answer my question. For a second. Maybe you have changed just a little."

  "Tiger and Panther will see that you are properly compensated," said Ibis, brushing right past the answer to her earlier query. There was no sign given as to what that answer might have meant to her. "You can count on that."

  Casso just scoffed. "Do they even know about my payment?"

  "You'll tell them, eventually."

  "Do they know about anything in this book at all?"

  "Knowing spoils the trick. Sleight of hand, Casso. You taught me that."

  "I never taught you anything that you wouldn't have worked out on your own. And I refuse to take any responsibility for the person you are today, Empress."

  That word was a curse in his mouth and a curse to her ears. That word sent them both right back to sullen and uneasy silence, leaving them at the mercy of the wind and little else. Casso smoked and said nothing; Ibis stood rigid, face blank, hands in her pockets. They did not look at one another.

  Until, finally:

  "You should marry that girl," said Casso, quietly. A tad bit gentler than before. "Before it's too late. She deserves that much."

  "Stars," sighed Ibis, in a voice even quieter. "I wish that I could."

  "Look, kid. I want you to know—" Casso glanced back, glanced over at the Empress of Vokia, "—that I wouldn't be helping you if you weren't offering me that as payment. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have anything to do with you at all. The only reason I even showed up tonight was that somehow, somewhere, at some point along the way I'm sure I ended up owing you one more favor. Just one more."

  "I know," said Ibis.

  And that was that. Without further ado Ibis leaned forward, dusted herself off, and turned on her heel to depart. Casso offered neither word nor gesture nor even a look in return; beneath the pale moonlight did Ibis stride silently away, and that was all there was to it.

  Except—Ibis paused, just three steps away. Hesitated. Her face, as always, was utterly inscrutable. And then she turned back, apropos of nothing, and asked him: "Could I borrow one of those cigars?"

  Casso didn't turn his head. "How the fuck are you gonna borrow a cigar?"

  Ibis made a noise of low irritation; Casso sighed, waved her over, said, "Yeah, fine." And thus did Ibis approach, and thus did she take a new cigar between her teeth, and thus did Casso light it with hand cupped around a decaying old match.

  "I didn't know you smoked," he said, as she attempted to do just that.

  "I don't."

  "You know what you're doing with that thing?"

  "I'm not an idiot," said Ibis—at which point she swallowed a whole mouthful of smoke and was immediately coughing and hacking, with involuntary tears welling in her eyes. She turned, hawked, spat, and all the while Casso was chuckling lowly under his breath. "Stars—!" Ibis snapped, with a rare look of genuine revulsion upon her face. "That is horrendous."

  "Yep. Much better if you've spent a few decades fucking up your body first."

  "Mmh," Ibis acknowledged, already straightening herself out. Already composing herself once more. "Suppose I've only got a few weeks left to catch up, then."

  "Suppose you do."

  And that was truly that. Reluctantly, hesitantly, a little awkwardly, the Empress and the mercenary shook hands.

  "I don't really give a damn about your plan," said Casso, then.

  "I know," said Ibis.

  "Still. Good luck, kid."

  "Thanks, old man."

  And then Casso departed, simply stepping back into those heavy shadows and vanishing utterly from sight, and so Ibis's boots clicked in relentless rhythm—one, two, one, two—against cobblestone stairs still slick and frozen from the rolling storms of the prior day. One, two. One, two. And so Ibis found herself atop a long and lonesome parapet, atop the very edge of a frigid and forbidding wall. The torches were all extinguished; there was no light, save for that of the moon and of the glowing cigar held in her hand. The wind cried out with even greater rancor than before.

  It was from this vantage that Ibis smoked, idly, and looked out at the whole world beyond: an endless vista of swaying treetops, an interminable sprawl of thatched roofs and orange-glowing little lights. A star-studded sky above, stretching on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. The world, in that moment, was so very large. It was everything, and it was without end, and it was there right in front of her. She stood at the zenith of it all, with the wind whispering ten trillion little heartbeats in her ear. Oceans of leaves, seas of rolling grass. The apex of the everything there ever was.

  It was beautiful.

  Ibis raised the cigar to her lips once more. She took a long, slow drag.

  Her hand was trembling.

  And then, after, her hand was perfectly still.

  I am loathe to speak of Ibis's secrets; you know this, just as you know my reasons why. But I will, now, peel back the veil by some small iota. I will tell you this: in that moment, Ibis was thinking not of the world. Not of the grand totality, of the vastness of it all. Of everything that she knew she was soon to lose. Ibis stood before it all and felt nothing, less than nothing.

  All that Ibis thought of, in those quiet moments, was just how greatly her enemies would suffer.

  The cigar burned out. Ibis crushed it beneath her heel.

  "Damn," she muttered, under her breath.

  And then she went back inside.

  End Credits Theme