The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Evan's expression went flat. He stepped forward to put himself between the priest and Tina.

Tina didn't know the term, but Evan did. A holy maiden — the name was pleasant. The reality was a woman chosen for certain physical qualities, used to serve as the flesh-and-blood representative of divine blessing, an institution that the New Church had made a particular point of abolishing when it split from the Holy Eton Curia a generation ago. Martin Luther's equivalent in this world had listed it alongside the sale of indulgences as one of the Creationist Church's clearest corruptions.

"She isn't that," Evan said, cold and flat.

"She cannot be anything else. The Maker chooses who he chooses. Say another word and you're a heretic." The priest smiled with the confidence of someone accustomed to his authority being unquestioned.

"Now I understand why the New Church calls you what it calls you."

The priest's expression changed. He began to chant.

Tina had been piecing it together as they talked. When it clicked, her face changed too, and the saber came out.

She didn't need to use it. Evan's sword-cane produced a sound and a line of light, and the priest folded onto the street. It happened in the space between one breath and the next. A few people nearby stared. The sword-cane was a sword-cane again.

Evan walked away without hurrying. Tina followed. The bystanders remained stationary for several more seconds before anyone thought to run for the constable.

They went back to the inn, collected their things, paid, and left. A dead priest in the street was the kind of problem that required not being present for its aftermath. They were outside the city gates before the official response had properly organized itself.

The governor heard the report and smiled without warmth. "Let him go. But — a holy maiden, you said? The girl he's traveling with?"

"That's what the priest identified her as, my lord."

"Excellent. Inform the Church. This gives them something to chase, and it ties up their attention while we move. The Blood Rose people — has the shipment arrived?"

"Just today, my lord. The Church has identified the items as objects of impiety. The list also came with it."

"Good. We move now. The items can be lost if necessary, but that list cannot reach the Church under any circumstances. The Dominion Society's roster — if the Curia gets hold of it, everything we've planned is exposed."

Three cannon shots sounded across the city. A smoke signal rose. The gates closed.

Evan and Tina had cleared the walls by minutes. They heard the shots, saw the smoke, and didn't wait to understand the specifics. Evan put his heels to his horse and they rode.

They hadn't covered a li before he pulled up.

On a low rise in the road ahead: a priest in red robes, and two black-robed Inquisitors standing silent on either side. Watching them.

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Below the city, in the sewers, Blood Rose Teresa was surrounded. Three ranks of musketeers firing in rotation through the smoke-thick air, her people going down one by one. The man who had sold her out had done thorough work. The soldiers had her backed against the edge of a underground channel she couldn't see the bottom of.

"The Dominion Society's list, Teresa. And the skull. Hand them over and maybe you leave this alive."

"In your dreams." Her clothes were torn, her face was cut. She was carrying nothing that could be searched.

"Take her."

Four knights with activated runic arrays moved toward her through the black fog that had suddenly appeared. Bats moved through it with their high thin sounds. Swords cut at them. Something screamed. When the guns fired again and the smoke cleared, the spot where Teresa had been was empty. The underground channel below was churning.

At the Harpist Guild office, a similar scene played out — musketeers at close range, then knights on horseback cutting down the ones who managed to break through. At Fruit-dew Street 203, only blood thralls remained; Ferdinand had already gone. In the span of a single afternoon the governor had swept Kansas City's underground clean. The Church's presence alone remained untouched.

Evan didn't try to leave. He dismounted slowly, drew the rapier, and assessed what was in front of him.

He recognized the red-robed priest — the same man he had seen leaving the church the day he visited the Harpist Guild. Not a local figure. This man had a presence that Evan had clocked from fifty yards and moved away from. Whoever he was, he was serious.

"You killed one of the Maker's servants," the priest said. "The Maker does not forgive this. Did you think you could simply walk away?"

"He made his choices. I made mine." Evan cleared his mind. He was about to fight something more capable than the Silver Hand, and he had learned from enough close calls that thinking too much before a fight made the body late.

"Josef. Bring him down."

One of the black-robed Inquisitors stepped forward. Shield on the left arm — modified, with a blade formed at the center boss. Short axe in the right hand, edge catching the light. He came forward steadily.

They both began to move. Evan extended his left hand and spoke the Grease incantation. The Inquisitor's step stuttered — not a fall, barely even a break in rhythm — but the white light already building around his axe blade said he'd been trained for exactly this. He moved through it without disruption.

The axe came for Evan's sword. The contact was meant to break it. Evan's wrist rotated before the blow landed, the force redirected in an arc, and in the breath that bought him he drove a Mind Strike into Josef's head directly. Josef swayed. His holy light blazed in response, the trained defense activating involuntarily — but the moment of disruption was enough. The axe came down in a straight cleave and Evan stepped off the line, body turning right, the blade passing so close he felt the air of it.

He used the lich's eye. Green flickered briefly in his own gaze. The air went briefly wrong. Josef's head cleared in an instant — trained mind, strong faith, the Creationist Church didn't send amateurs outside the walls — but even an instant was what Evan needed. The rapier found its mark.

Josef went down. Evan stepped back.

The bishop's anger showed for a moment and then didn't. The second Inquisitor was already moving — named Shawn, apparently, because the bishop told him what Evan apparently was, a necromancer of some variety, and offered the Maker's blessing.

Shawn was faster than Josef had been. His greatsword and his body became one motion, a line of white light, and Evan didn't try to deflect it — he drove his own blade straight at Shawn's chest with everything behind it, the kill-or-be-killed geometry that gives neither opponent room to be clever. Shawn's body read the trajectory and angled away on reflex. Both attacks went wide.

They crossed. Evan's wrist turned in the continuation of the motion — a small redirection, the kind that a rapier permitted and a greatsword couldn't easily answer. The tip drew a line across Shawn's side. Not deep. Not immediately decisive.

But Evan was a lich.

Blood left the wound and moved toward him, and caught fire in the air between them, burning with the pale green of undead energy. The wound bled faster under it.

Evan smiled and brought his blade back around.