The Nameless Assassins

Unsettled Times

Even aside from Faith's and Ash's antics, the next few weeks continued to be unsettling. The Spirit Wardens kept searching Coalridge, forcing us to hide in Crow's Foot, while the Hive went on a citywide rampage. Djera Maha's death had indeed splintered it into many warring factions, but all were united in their determination to hunt down her killers. Some blamed Marne Booker and her allies, others the Lampblacks, and still more the Red Sashes, with the result that the Hive declared war against every scoundrel who had ever crossed it – including one crew of assassins who specialized in poetic justice. Luckily, no one had yet connected these last culprits to the altruistic teachers at Strathmill House, although Bazso and Mylera separately alerted us that they'd thwarted several attempts to burn down the orphanage.

While we waited for the turmoil to subside, we decided that it was as good a time as any to deal with lingering injuries. I'd never recovered fully from getting drained by a ghost and then falling off the Crow's Nest, and Ash was still seeing visions of the Sun from our attack on Professor Pritchard. Since the Lampblacks were at war again, Sawbones was spending more time in the coal warehouse infirmary, so that was where Ash and I headed.

Half a block from the orphanage, dainty slippers pattered up behind us, and Faith's voice called, "I'll go with you! I'm still a little shocked from one of our previous encounters."

That must have been when she nearly electrocuted herself by jabbing a leviathan spawn in a pool with a lightning hook, but when we turned to look at her, she only pulled an exaggeratedly appalled face.

"Aren't you always shocked?" Ash asked cheerfully, while I retorted, "Shocked – or shocking?"

"Yes," she replied with perfect, priestess-like serenity to both of us.

At the Lampblack headquarters, we found Sawbones' infirmary empty but for two injured thugs, which made for a nice change from the last time we were there. As usual, the good doctor was slouched against an operating table, a bottle of cheap whiskey in hand, while Danfield inventoried medical supplies and looked out of place in his spotless white coat.

As we walked through the door, Sawbones nodded to us, took a final swig, capped the bottle, and thumped it down on his table. "New injuries, or keeping up with the old ones?" he inquired.

Matching his casual tone, I replied, "Oh, just the old ones. Figured I'd come in for a check-up."

"That is good to hear," he said drily, waving us towards Danfield's table (which was cleaner). "I swear, for a while there, it seemed like every week I'd patch up the three of you – and then you'd come back in with some new life-threatening problem." Examining each of us in turn, he proclaimed Ash and me completely healed, and re-bandaged Faith's electrical burns.

"Oh, I feel so much better," sighed Ash, staring around the infirmary as if he were seeing it clearly instead of through a haze of Sun-spots. "Such clarity of purpose!"

To further his psychological recovery, he headed straight from the infirmary to the Orchid Salon. In the little sanctum that had been dedicated to the Golden Stag, and which he'd re-consecrated to That Which Hungers, he de-stressed by calculating the financial ramifications of each Ascendent's death for the Church. "Everything is all coming together," he reported to his god. "We'll kill this Ascendent and that Ascendent, and then Dunvil himself...." And he clenched his fist to crush a token that represented the Preceptor.

That Which Hungers must have approved. Feeling much more relaxed, Ash set about researching ways to sooth the citywide anxiety, which he didn't want to degenerate into an outright panic that would hurt the orphans. In typical Ash fashion, though, he interpreted "calming the citizenry" to mean auditing aristocratic finances (because throwing nobles in Ironhook Prison for insider trading would appease the proletariat?). After he identified the City Council families as potential scapegoats for our actions against the Church, he investigated their account books.