Krahe raised an eyebrow, not sure if this was a result of Favonia being at a stage where money begins to lose its value. Nonetheless, she began the process of opening up her kenoma sack. Infuriatingly, as if reading her thoughts, Favonia looked over her shoulder, adding: “Bet it seems like too much for what you did, but the church would’ve paid out almost as much if you had gone through the paper pushers. I’m just skipping the bureaucracy here. And I don’t need the money, besides.”

  CRC rings and other types of stable currency didn’t take up nearly as much storage capacity as their DD value would take up in liquid form, but swallowing up this snake of cash still took a while by virtue of the sheer quantity of arcane energy, and the resulting entropy that the storage process generated.

  By the time Krahe was done, Favonia was just about finishing her report. She had carved it with one of her left hand’s claws directly onto a brass memslate, and she sent it off by the means of a small bird automaton made in the same unsettlingly-lifelike style as the Red Hoods. The automaton shot into the sky far faster than any real bird ought to, and simply vanished from sight, becoming invisible.

  Krahe lit up another cigarette as she watched this transpire.

  “Food?” Favonia asked.

  After a moment’s consideration, Krahe answered, “Sure.”

  As they walked through the city streets, filled with a strange tranquility, a pair of Red Hoods rounded the corner, approaching them, only to simply walk past. A question kept gnawing at Krahe.

  “What did you say to him to make him look me in the eye?”

  Favonia, clearly having anticipated it, answered right away.

  “Based on past intel, I knew that he has an always-active truth discernment boon. I said that, unlike him, you were capable of putting me in the ground. Because of that ring, it’s true. You did the rest to complete the deception.”

  It was a satisfying enough answer that Krahe thought nothing more of it, and they walked in silence for some time, into a section of the city Krahe had never been to, nor had she even really taken any interest in it when it came to maps. Just another subdistrict. Here, there was a restaurant about two steps in niceness above what Krahe would usually go for. Besides being in the open, it was also clearly decorated in a manner targeting church adherents — from above the door, the upper half of a cross-armed god of musculature stared down at the passersby, with one arm and half his face clad in brass and silver that gleamed in the light. The figure’s left eye, a scarlet circle weirdly reminiscent of stereotypical borg optics, flickered to life at their approach, projecting the restaurant’s name. The style of this projection, too, felt unsettlingly familiar to Krahe.

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  ST. GAUNA’S

  Since 4953

  Nearly three centuries, this restaurant had been open — likely since the earliest years of Audunpoint, considering Audun Sorun had been in his early-mid 500s at the time of his death. The building certainly gave that impression, its architecture just as weirdly organic as that of Jas’raba.

  “Now watch, when we walk into the restaurant, Casus will be sitting there reading a book. Probably marveling at one of the decorations between pages,” Favonia said.

  “Did you tell him we would come?” Krahe asked.

  “No,” the banisher replied. She continued with a tone of amusement and some vexation, and as she did, the two of them slowed down, and eventually stopped to give room to their conversation. “This isn’t even my favorite restaurant — but Casus will have accounted for the location I fought Skullhead, of which I had told him, plus his own estimate of how long we might have spent in the gymnasium, and a dozen other small details. He predicts people and schemes at every turn, but refuses to acknowledge it, saying he merely acts with consideration. I say this not to undermine your view of his character, for it is exactly as chivalrous as you think it to be, but he engages in the deepest mind games at the strangest of times, often for the most inane of reasons. To tell the truth, I have yet to learn of how or why he was divested of his coupler and imprisoned by the Hashems, he refuses to tell.”

  “Perhaps just to see if you would come to get him. If that is so, it casts into question whether my rescue was even necessary.”

  “I don’t think him so callous. He is... Well, a fool, but he is not stupid.”

  “Then he exhausted himself fighting and got snatched up by an opportunistic Hashem. He might not want to admit it because he knows you wouldn’t let him live it down.”

  Favonia laughed, “That I wouldn’t.”

  The restaurant’s interior was richly decorated with countless curios, chiefly relics of the church and mounted heads of various truly alien creatures. Wherever one looked, one could see talisman papers stuck directly to the wall or fixed in place with wax seals, and a haze of incense clung to everything, instantly clarifying her thoughts and washing away remnant tension. A bar stood to the right, near the entrance, manned by a figure clad in masked robes similar to Favonia’s, even using mechanical tendrils similar to the High Grafter’s to handle tools and bottles as they mixed a drink.

  A towering form of twisted chitin emblazoned with the green and yellow sigils of Vedesis stood in one corner, a gaping gash yawning across its torso. Indeed it stood, tall and stiff and proud — upon a pedestal, whose brass plaque marked it a vedesian war-morph, and whose smaller writing stated that the exoskeleton’s supernatural properties had been “nullified,” whatever that meant. Perhaps it had to do with the dense cluster of protective talismen and various seals plastered around and inside the hollow shell, as could be surmised through the gaps. It wasn’t even really a taxidermy, the thing was displayed in a manner appropriate to a suit of armor.

  And there, across from the war-morph’s hollow shell, leisurely indulging in a book while intermittently glancing up at the evoy corpse, there sat a long-haired banisher, dressed in a manner near identical to Favonia.

  His eyes, burning orange and with crosses for pupils, flicked sideways to greet their arrival. As if entirely unaffected by Salt Mountain’s Visage, Casus met Krahe’s gaze.

  “Ah. It seems I overestimated in a few places. I have yet to reach the end of this chapter, yet here I thought I would be done with the next one ere you made your way here.”

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