Lady Karsin took another sip of tea, visibly uned even as man-handled Lord Montague bato his chair. He loudly protested, but that halted as soon as my hand squeezed tighter around his throat.

  “Miss Harrow, if you wouldn’t mind cheg him for any more ons?” Voltar said.

  “Teach yrandmother to suck eggs,” I said back, already riffling through his pockets. I turned nothing else up except a small khe bde smaller than my pinky but coated with something that made the bde’s surface glossy.

  “Poison of some kind, I’d bet. Now, your lordship, shut up for a bit.”

  He looked like smoke might pour out of his ears and nostrils, but a nervous g the knife I know held made me doubt he’d start anything. I couldn’t identify whatever it was, but it must be nasty for the mere threat of being stabbed with it to keep him fruing.

  He’d brought it with such a tiny koo, one where a minor cut could be something else on his person with a sharp edge. Det odds he’d pnned on giving me and Voltar a pair of lethal cuts that could be bmed on act, and if the poison was slow-ag enough, we would never have known.

  “So, I am to answer questions, then?” Lady Karsin asked. “How do you pn on making me ahem, Miss Harrow?”

  “We have your son,” I said bluntly. “I think his safety might be worth a few answers, especially since your scheme has been thhly exposed at this point.”

  “You approve of this, Voltar?”

  I didn’t look at Voltar. Trusting he’d know presenting a united front was worth more than having our disagreements on the morality of this made public.

  One sed passed, then two, both feeling like infinity till he spoke.

  “In this case, I do Lady Karsin. One hardly expect to threaten other’s children and that no one will threaten their own iurn.”

  Lady Karsin’s expression turned even mcial. “So, then you’ll hold yourself to the same standards I do then?”

  “Discussing morality will not get you anywhere,” I said. “We have this versation ter, ohe Watch has had you in custody for a while. It won’t be as pleasant.”

  Actually, we would hande her over to the Drakes, but o mention that detail yet. They might be less willing to let us interrogate her after, but that would require her not to care about what would occur to Desmond. Was my guess wrong ht?

  Her smile finally colpsed in on itself, her expression faltering, as she could no longer keep it up, and fell into a sullen, baleful gre at the two of us.

  “You really are quite the devious little sadist when you want to be, aren’t you?” She said to me quietly.

  I shrugged. “ime, perhaps don’t drag me or the Bck Fme into your schemes. Pick fall people who are less likely to be vicious when they find out, perhaps. But we get to those events ter. First, I want to talk about Dustin Tary.”

  Lady Karsin muttered a few words under her breath in a nguage that I couldn’t uand but did not sound pleasant.

  “A name I’ve had the joy of not needing to say for a long time,” she said. “What information about that sadistic moron do you want?”

  Well, while it might be an act for now, I’d take this as an indicator of her feelings on her creator.

  “The beginning,” Voltar said. “The ending. How we ended up in this situation. The broad details are disable just from what happened. You and your fellows survived his failed attempt to repce all the nobles in his duchy with shape-gers and install himself as duke. You survived the attempt, came here, then id low and built lives for yourselves, then found out about your creator’s notes surviving and theed this pn.”

  She sighed in resignation. “I ’t speak much to what he wanted. He shared little more than orders with us. My life began in a b. Initially, I was only vaguely aware of what was going on around me. My capacity to think was there, but I had no actual ability to lear. No se touch, and very little ability to determine what different things meant. I was one of the initial experiments that remaiable, so he tolerated my inability to grow just yet. I suppose that’s why he grew impatient and fed me the first human he could.”

  No ohered to interrupt as she stopped, looking at us, daring us to pass any kind of judgment.

  “He’d fed me dead things before, animals and the like, to make me grow. To feed the crowing inside me. Perhaps he realized abs someone else’s intellect would enable me to think. Maybe he just o dispose of some victim of his schemes. He often would have breakthroughs by plete act, theend he’d phem all along. It was hard to tell. He hoarded secrets. I was the first to wake, but soon others joined me. Hawkins, who you’ve met. No one else from that first batch of gers survived his schemes. He tested to see if feeding us more would increase our capacities, but only the first corpse ever actually mattered.”

  She paused, taking another sip of tea. I used the lull to ask a question.

  “Did he ever say why he wahe duchy? His cim was already weak, and being the sole survivor atop the throne would have looked suspicious at any point after they discovered shape-gers in the duchy.”

  Lady Karsin scoffed. “The simple answer is he never expected to be caught. Or for us to be discovered. After that he decided he could be the power behind the throne, ruling behind one of his younger retives from the main line, safe from suspi. That sted till an adventuring party broke into his b, having traced one of us back to it. It may have even been deliberate, and I wouldn’t bme whichever of us it was. stant experiments with no care if one of us died. He couldn’t even bother to track which of us was whio names, no numbers, no anything. The only time he called us names were those of the people we were impersonating.”

  Sounded like a rotten deal. I might have had a spot of sympathy, if not for everything that had happened over the st few weeks.

  “Well, it took time for them to root him out. Time some of us took to escape, try to find a pce to escape, live, stay. We made our way here, only a bit over a dozen and no idea how to make more of us. We set up rules quickly. No repg anyone promi. Fake your owh every half-tury. Don’t let roots get set in to any identity. Don’t get attached.”

  “Failed that st one, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, gring at me. “Yes, I did. And you didn’t hesitate to exploit that, did you? Still, things went well. We slowly accrued wealth enough to live fortably, enough to pursue our own goals. Enough tet the past we’d left behind.”

  “Of course that’s when Iserand had to find our creator’s notes had survived. He worked briefly for the Archives, although not for long. Part of the rules was only to work pces like that briefly, just to check for them. Otherwise, it was too dangerous. But this time they paid off, and we knew where they’d gone. And it meant the possibility of making more of us, and some of us would never let a possibility like that go. Hawkins chief among them.”

  “He art of the archives, but you went after Lord Montague’s heir instead to have him grab them?” I asked.

  “It took bribes to get a list of restricted books,” Lady Karsin expined, a little impatiently. “Bribes that had already drawn attention. He never made it far in their hierarchy. Besides, a a pure human making it to the st yer ued is impossible. So ihey hatched a scheme to eventually gain trol of the archives. And breaking the code we’d set for ourselves to kill no one promi.”

  “sidering whose face you’re wearing, I find that hard to believe,” I said.

  “When I found Lady Karsin, she was just an elf wandering through the woods. I followed her for a few days, and she seemed so…tired. I thought it would be better than previous times.”

  “And so you attempt to put a pretty faurder,” Voltar said.

  Lady Karsin scoffed. “Like a this table is aer. Oh, do not look at me like that, Montague!”

  In all hoy, the look of disgust on Lord Montague’s face probably had more to do with her having killed a han the morality of murder.

  “So you went forward with the pn to poison Lord Montague’s son,” Voltar tinued. “Dragging Miss Harrow in. The decision to frame the Bck Fme was-”

  “A y,” Lady Karsin said. “Aartu would never have agreed to help if we couldn’t use it to hurt the Bck Fme. At the time I thought it was an invenie workable. The Fme would be a det bogeyman to use. If it weren’t for ohing falling out of pce, it might have even worked.”

  “What you get for hiring shoddy hen,” I said. “Pure-bloods being used were also one of their demands?”

  “No,” Lady Karsin said. “Far below her radar. We were hoping to find catspaws that would be easy to manipute and not insightful enough to figure things out until it was too te.”

  “How could you know the notes would help?” Voltar said.

  Lady Karsin cocked her head to the side. “Sorry?”

  “The he Imperials have had them for years, but have made none more of your kind. Or if they have, they’ve been much more successful at hiding their existence. How could you know they’d tain what you looked for?”

  “There’s a sed half to the notes,” she answered. “Ones we rescued from his b whehing was falling apart. Secrets of our flesh were written there, ones we used to stabilize, to assume forms for longer. Parts of our biology he wrote nowhere else.”

  My eyes narrowed and my gaze darted over to Voltar. That….I’d assumed the Tarry notes couldn’t possibly tain the secrets to create more shape-gers. If they had, the Imperial family would have surely started making some of their own by now. Given Her Majesty’s ambitions and tendency to grasp everything in sight, they would have been exposed by now.

  But if the secret y in some bination of the notes….

  “Iing,” Voltar noted. “Do these notes survive?”

  Lady Karsin's lips quirked, and she swallowed anh. “Burnt, st night, at my own hands. My race dies before it bees sves again.”

  “You didn’t memorize the tents?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, a hysterical giggle f its way from her throat. “Naining, no information, no anything. If they want to learn how to make more of us, they start from scratch.”

  The Imperial gover wouldn’t be starting from scratot with living shape-gers in custody, but this would be a setback to any program to make ones loyal to them. Once I’d discovered the currehod for deteg them, unsurprisingly, access to the experimental data from tests done on Hawkins had stopped arriving.

  Lady Karsin mao get her mirth under trol. “I suppose the moment I leave, the Watch will take me into custody.”

  “Yes,” Voltar said, not even a hint of a lie in his voice. “Or it might be Imperial Intelligence you eventually end up with. I suggest just telling the truth. It will go easier for all involved.”

  She grieeth lengthening in her mouth. I quietly reached into my pockets for the focus, but when she didn’t lu anyone I gave her a sed.

  “You left a detail out, Voltar. My son? What is going to happen to him?”

  Voltar stared at her, famoving for a few seds, before he answered.

  “He’ll be returo your estate and made the new Lord Karsin. You will die, probably said to be at a shape-ger’s hands, which will expin your disappearance. In actuality, taken into custody. Which is where things e to their end. Miss Harrow, could you please-?”

  “On it,” I said, getting up. “Do me a favor and don’t let Lord Montague poison you while I’m gone.”

  His Lordship still kept his mouth shut at that, but I kept a closer eye on Lady Karsin.

  “Afraid I’ll try to kill you all and escape from the wreckage?” she asked as I lead her through the house.

  “Always,” I replied. “But I don’t think it would work for you. Your secrets are too well known. I know where to stab with rot. Others know the tricks as well.”

  We’d made it to the front door by then.

  Lady Karsin paused.

  “If I were to leave through this doorway, what would I really find?”

  “Three drakes,” I answered frankly. “Same if you take any of the other ways out. They move rather quickly.”

  “Ah,” she said, then chuckled mirthlessly. “I should have guessed something like that is how your arraheir help. I ’t imagihey were too happy with you.”

  “They beat and drugged me,” I said. “I’ve endured worse. Holy got lucky I didn’t lose any digits. Those are always a pain trow.”

  She chuckled softly. “Defihe wrong target. Curse you Aartu, for both you and your deities’ obsession. I thank you for the warning, Miss Harrow.”

  I ined my head slightly. “I sympathize. A little.”

  Trying to hold one’s race together, finding a way to just survive in a world that feared and hated you? Oh, that resonated far too well with my own experiehe story of Tarry and his creations was a little more removed, but at its core was it really any different?

  “Enough for you to perhaps show me a more hidden way out?” she asked

  My smile turned into a toothy grin, every pointed fang id bare.

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  Sympathy, but she’d been one of those who’d ruihe life I’d built. Relutly, if you believed her story, but one of those ruiners all the same.

  She smiled. “That’s fair. Well, I do appreciate the warnings. My son will be taken care of?”

  That I did not know, but I had no reasons to doubt Voltar. “The Empire wants a ending. Having to deal with questions about if the Lady Karsin who fought Her Most Profane Majesty was-”

  “It was,” she said firmly. “Some madness o be stopped, no matter the risk of discovery.”

  “Well, I imagihey want as few inve questions as possible. Having your house survive and you be o victim of the shape-gers? That works.”

  It did for me as well, as much as I wanted her to bleed over what she’d caused to me. But this was good enough. I had no doubt the drakes would catch her.

  “I would have liked to talk to Desmond again,” she said, voice strained. “You ot call off the dogs set after me for-“

  “No.”

  A mirthless giggle. “Well, I suppose I deserve that. Goodbye, Miss Harrow. May our paths never cross again.”

  “I remain quite fident they won’t. Goodbye, Lady Karsin.”

  After shutting the door, I returo our little tea party, ign the sounds ing from the outside street. No matter what happened out there, I remained fident ihing.

  This mess was over. Now it was just the -up.

  Saithorthepyro