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A pop. A wet spatter emerged from his abdomen. Protesilaus dropped. Next to Harrow, Ortus moaned in terror. The Sleeper turned back toward them, handgun raised, trying to draw a bead, a wisp of smoke trickling from the muzzle. When she found no head or limb sticking out to put a bullet in, she stepped back, pointed the gun at Protesilaus’s prone form, and—without looking—fired two more shots. The body jerked, then was still. Dulcie screamed.
There was silence, except for Dulcinea’s panicked, wheezing breaths, punctuated by a ripping cough. Protesilaus’s body lay heavy and unmoving on the cold metal of the facility floor, somehow still more animated in this death than he had been as the empty puppet of the seventh saint.
“Listen to your leader,” said the Sleeper. “Don’t engage. I’m not here for you, but don’t think you can’t die again. Just give me the girl, and the rest of you are free to go back to whatever hell you came from.”
Abigail said, from somewhere in cover, “You must be joking.”
The orange-suited figure raised the gun and fired it into the ceiling. Ortus cringed at the noise; Harrow dug her fingers into his arm, though what comfort that could provide she did not know.
“Harrowhark,” called out the Sleeper.
The Sleeper said it slowly, as though she had never said it before—Har-row-hark, as though the syllables were strange. That was not the most arresting thing about the monster calling her name. It was the untrammelled contempt with which it was said, as though her name itself were a curse.
The Sleeper said, “You can’t hurt me here. If you give yourself up to me, the ghosts can leave. If not, I end all of you. This is the only bargain. I’m giving you to the count of ten, then the offer expires. Ten.”
Harrowhark said, “Who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter to you. Nine.”
“I don’t negotiate with strangers.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. Eight.”
Septimus broke cover. She stayed low, darting from the doorway where she had hidden herself toward the shelter of a bank of instruments, her shadow huge and jumping in the light of the flickering candles. She was only in the open for a second, but the Sleeper pointed the little black gun as casually as Harrow might point a finger, and fired. Her orange-wrapped arm flexed with the recoil. Dulcie cried out and fell, her leg knocked out from beneath her. Harrow closed her eyes briefly; then she began scrabbling through Ortus’s panniers, winnowing for the best pieces, her fingertips slick with sweat as Ortus breathed through his teeth.
“Seven,” said the Sleeper. “Six. Five—”
“My cue, I think,” said Magnus Quinn.
Harrow had lost track of him entirely when the shooting started, and had assumed he was with Abigail, who seemed from her voice to be somewhere near Dulcinea. Now he emerged from the doorway immediately to the right of the one through which the Sleeper had entered. He flung himself at the Sleeper from behind, before she could turn to meet him, and grabbed her in his arms, locking them tight round her midriff, so her elbows were pinned against her sides.
From the other side of the room, Marta Dyas burst out of her own doorway, bent at the waist. The Sleeper managed to wrench her arm far enough to fire from the hip, but the shot pinged into the metal wall with a bright, hot snap. Dyas fell into a sideways roll—a much less beautiful movement than the Sleeper’s impossible handspring, but one that bore the spare efficiency of long practice—and came up holding the big gun with the wooden stock that the Sleeper had tossed away. She braced it against her shoulder, looking like a drawing of some ancient soldier on a far-off battlefield, her Cohort whites gleaming pale blue in that sea of unearthly candles, and fired.
Dyas flinched back with the recoil, and a hole split open in the Sleeper’s orange suit, high in the middle of the chest. But no mist of blood sprayed forth; the Sleeper twitched in Magnus’s grip, but kept her footing. Dyas fired again, and again, and two more holes appeared, clustered close with the first. Harrow caught a glimpse of black beneath the bright fabric, but nothing wet or red, and the Sleeper was still struggling hard against Magnus’s arm-hold.
Dyas dropped the gun and ran forward instead, hand flashing to the hilt of the dagger she wore at her side. The Sleeper jerked her head back; she was about Magnus’s height, so this had the effect of smashing the back of her skull—whatever skull she had under that shapeless hood—into his face. He grunted but kept his arms locked tight. Dyas had almost closed the gap, dagger drawn and eyes narrowed, when the Sleeper lifted both legs off the ground, drew her knees up to her chest, and slammed her feet out hard.
Her boots struck Dyas in the chest as she came charging in. Magnus, unexpectedly left holding her whole weight, staggered and fell backward. All three of them went down together. Dyas and the Sleeper came back up again with almost equal speed, Dyas perhaps a fraction faster, the dagger still in her left hand. She slashed diagonally upward; the Sleeper blocked her arm with a bent elbow, then stepped in and kneed her in the gut. Harrow heard her wheeze out a surprised breath. The Sleeper stepped through, grabbed Dyas’s knife-arm in some complicated hold, and twisted. The dagger dropped to the chilly metal tiles with a musical clatter. Magnus was struggling to his feet, his mouth and chin scarlet with blood from his nose, reaching for his own rapier; the Sleeper dropped Dyas in a heap on the floor, flung out one arm, and shot him in the stomach. Harrow hadn’t even seen the gun appear in her hand.
Magnus crumpled; Abigail screamed. Dyas had hauled herself up onto hands and knees, but the Sleeper kicked her hard in the ribs, rolling her onto her back. She pointed the gun down at her face.
“Four,” she said.
The fallen bulk of Protesilaus the Seventh heaved itself abruptly off the ground, crashing bodily into the Sleeper as he rose, knocking her away from Dyas. She swung the gun up, but he was already too close. He smashed his bunched-up chain into the side of her head with enough force to shatter bone. It whipped the Sleeper’s face mask to the side, and she stumbled, the gun slipping from her fingers. Protesilaus loosed the chain and lunged with both arms, and at first Harrow thought he had tried to grab her the same way Magnus had. Then she understood: he had wrapped the chain around her throat from behind, like a garotte, and drawn it tight. Against his muscle, even the Sleeper’s bulky suit looked small. Blood was pouring freely from three dark, ragged holes in his back, running down his thighs and calves and dripping onto the floor.
“I have known one death,” he said hoarsely, “and I swear that I will not know its like again.”
“Smart boy,” rasped the Sleeper, her voice still strangely fuzzy, as if she were speaking through a communicator. “Figuring out the limits, are we? Doesn’t matter. My rules.”
Dyas was back on her feet now and had drawn her rapier, but she was hesitating: it looked as though she was waiting to see whether the Seventh’s garotte would have any more effect than her bullets had. The Sleeper flicked out her arms as though trying to straighten the cuffs of an invisible robe, and a gun appeared in each of her gloved hands. She reached back, tucked the snub-nosed barrel of the left-hand gun against the outside of Protesilaus’s knee, and fired. There was a dull pop; he roared in pain and collapsed to one side as though someone had kicked out a stick he’d been using to lean on. As his chain went slack, Dyas lunged, in a beautifully clean strike at the Sleeper’s heart. Her rapier’s point drove into the haz suit and bounced, juddering to the side as though she’d stabbed a solid iron pillar. The Sleeper knocked the blade clear with her arm and smashed the butt of her other gun into the cavalier’s jaw, dropping her to the floor like a sack of snow leeks dumped from the arms of a tottering Drearburh drone. Then she placed her steel-toed boot on Dyas’s throat.
Harrow seized her moment, stood up, and made a long, underhand throw—
And the Sleeper shot the clump of bone she was forming out of midair. The Sleeper’s arm moved faster than an arm could move; the bullet more accurate, perhaps, than a bullet could be. As the bone burst into powder, no shapes sprang forth. Harrow felt it become inert at the moment of impact, as though the Saint of Duty had touched it and sucked it dry. A chill settled on her heart.
“Three,” said the Sleeper. “This is easy mode. Do you get it? No magic. No tricks. None of your foul bullshit. I’ve been doing this for years. The moment I want it to be over, it’s all over.”
Harrow could hear Dulcinea swearing weakly. At least she was alive. She pressed up against the icy side of the coffin and called out over it, “What happens? What happens if you take me?”
Ortus said urgently, “Lady, no.”
The Sleeper said, “You’ll die. It doesn’t have to hurt. I’m not here to torture anyone.”
“And?”
“I get your body.”
“And?”
“I finish it.”
“Finish what?”
