Shielded from the coarse desert winds by a thick, lead-lined cloak, straddling the cracked leather seat of a Hem-Ollen three-point-oh-four Bjaka which had undergone one too many roadside repairs and now let out a tortured series of clicks on too-sharp left turns, Helegos Bezhel is thinking of a day twelve years ago, a day she thought marked the end of her youth, when coarse winds like these dashed salt against the dikes at Qezmi’s waterfront, and her uncle had presented her with a white pouch he rather fantastically claimed he had cut from an enemy ship’s sailcloth. It contained a tungsten astrolabe, the white-and-gold symbol of a crescent Muzna engraved and painted into its backplate. Helegos could, with some focus, recreate her uncle’s parting speech from memory.

“Muzna knows, child, how many times you’ve heard this story; let me a last telling, here, before you are gone. All true; all true. Years and years ago, pestilence struck quick after wretched arqala poisoned the water; it put your great-grandfather on his deathbed, with muscles stuck thin to his bones and frog-swelling on his neck. He was a dead man, and inherited the labos to navigate safely away from this world; when he took hold of it, Muzna had him cured within days, and in time our family recovered.

“Further—seventy years ago, your grandfather Heledi was out at sea, far from Qezmi, caught in a terrible storm, when his ship was cornered by a fleet five carrack ships strong, Hamzun pirates. An arqalim admiral tried to slaughter the whole crew, and would have, if not for Heledi, who had jumped in front of the captain—your grandmother, though she didn’t know it yet—to save her from a bolt that damned arqa had fired off, and this labos”—uncle traced his finger over the almost root-like pattern long-since seared into the astrolabe’s paint—“which took that bolt and saved Heledi’s life. In sense literal and divine, so much as you owe Muzna your soul, you owe this labos your life—your birth. Wherever you may go, it will guide you, and wherever you may end, it will guarantee your descendants; keep it safe, my little Hele.”

Helegos had, of course, kept it safe in her time at sea, though it was no easy task. For diplomatic reasons, the corsair vessels she sailed on were to be free of religious iconography; there were many points where she had pocketed the astrolabe underneath a false bottom in her lock box, or pulled a favor to smuggle it into ports of call within casks of wine. The previously white sailcloth-canvas bag took on a deep purple-red hue, and after enough drinking, Helegos knew well, her uncle’s yarn-spinning wove its way into her own tales; on occasion, during voyages on the laxer side, she would bring the labos as a good luck charm during friendly games of cards, and made a point of explaining that the canvas bag was really stained with the blood of enemy arqalim, the labos inside a trophy which, depending on which officers were around, was either the mutilated site of a rift carved carefully out of some deck mage’s chest, or a still-inert and unassembled payload she had found tucked beneath bundled torpedoes on an enemy cruiser, both of which were, naturally, to be kept from prying eyes.

Leaning left to help her Bjaka cruise around a sharp turn despite its pained click-clack-growl, her heavy masked helmet breaking the sharp southerly winds, Helegos begins to see the dock-and-hut filled shoreline of a fishery town. This must be Emiq, she thinks, instinctively reaching a gloved hand to check the inner pocket of her cloak, first for her uncle’s parting gift, and then for the contract-writ which authorized her military intervention here. She remembers the first job she completed without that writ; damned weasels wouldn’t cough up enough for petrol. At least, she thought, they didn’t write me up for homicide. She grips the brake lever on the left-side handlebar, and the bike slides to a stop on the side of the road.

Helegos takes off her helmet, a tin-and-lead piece which had, thus far, stood up to the years. She had engineered it not only to withstand exposure to toxic arqala, though that was naturally among her chief goals, but also to protect from heat, shock, bright light, and smoke: the most common tricks and threats in the standard arqa’s toolbox. One boot settled on the cracked earth beside her Bjaka, she wipes off the dust on the helmet’s tinted visor, and double-checks the integrity of her respirator.

Her quarry under this contract was an ex-arqalim, a man by the name of Hamoud Koeh. For two decades, Koeh had served his military faithfully. Desmere’s records marked him dead in service, medals and all, until about a month ago; though her contractor always refrains from specifying further about her targets, Helegos knows the type. Deserters from losing battles, usually junior officers wise enough to see the odds stacked against them, but not brave enough to go down swinging, and not clever enough to cover their tracks. A glance through Koeh’s deployment record, a greased palm or two, and a curt but illuminating conversation with a retired naval logistics officer, and Helegos had tracked the arqalim here to Emiq, a quaint fishing town along Desmere’s western shore.

Helegos takes another look at the contract-writ. 7,500 devics would settle well over three months' expenses—she sets a hand on the aged motorbike—not to mention the cost of repairs. She unlatches the storage container on the back of her bike, first setting down a box radio beside two lead glass cells; from the pieces in the container, she assembles and loads her military-decommissioned Javel M32 carbine, then slings it over her back.

Helegos flips a switch, and the radio hums to life. She pans its antenna from the road extending eastward around to Emiq's coast, and back. Adjusting the volume up on the second scan, she hears the familiar static interference produced by arqala, strong enough at this distance that its pulse is distinct; flipping the unfurled contract-writ on its back, she scribbles on a makeshift map of the area, connecting this bend of the road in a straight line to a circle that represents the town's perimeter. She notes the volume of the radio, calculates the angle between this and the last radio check, and confirms: arqala at her twelve o'clock, pointed straight into the fishing town. The officer's hunch was right on the money, assuming she hadn't erred in her calculations.

"There'nt none by that name't I know of, miss."

The middle-aged man behind the tackle shop's counter is wide and wrinkled from years of work in the water. He glares at Helegos beneath a yellow cap, and sharpens the rust from a hook over the countertop.

"Mm. Likely goes by something else, now. Older man, ex-military. He would've come into town a couple of months ago."

A gull caws outside. The man lowers his cap.

"Nrgh, no recent visitors. Military neither."

Helegos leans over the counter.

"I'm an old friend of his, boss." She shuffles her helmet to the arm opposite her holster. "I just want to make sure he's doing okay."

The man raises the brim of his cap up. Helegos sees his eyes clearer, now; the right one, his left, is slow, and heavily clouded, and takes a moment to catch up to the scrutiny of the other.

He sinks the hook into the wood rim of the counter. "Little purchasin' might jog my memory. Military budget'n all."

Helegos re-secures a wooden tackle box to the underside of her Bjaka's gun mount, and hops off the bike in front of a modest, newly begun home garden. Wooden planter boxes and lattices of rough-hewn ashen gray wood cordon off patches of amaranth, mustard greens, and cassava. The garden surrounding is dotted with sweet-smelling pear trees in full bloom. Helegos sees the house, a low bungalow of motley woods in gray and orange, with a covered porch. Wind chimes whistle and clink in the breeze. She slings her carbine over her back.

A young woman with a green kerchief over her hair and a wooden crutch beneath her arm adjusts the stake next to a pear sapling. She wipes sweat from her forehead with her wrist; the hand connected is shrunken and limp.

Helegos watches her for a moment. For your sake, she muses, be the gardener. Or just a friend.

The woman turns to the growl of the bike, and the crescent-moon bangle hanging off her sturdier arm imparts to Helegos two harrowing shards of knowledge: not only is this woman Koeh's wife, but they were married by Muzna's own rites.

The woman puts a hand over her eyes to block the afternoon sun. Helegos clenches her jaw and walks towards her.

"Who are yo-you?" She struggles to stand upright as Helegos approaches.

"An old fr—" Helegos cuts herself off. "I'm here to kill Hamoud Koeh—your husband, I'm guessing. He's not who he says he is."

A caterpillar crawls out from beneath a rotting cassava leaf. The woman begins to silently weep.

"Wha-what? Kill m-him? What wrong did-did he do?"

"He's a military target. The penalty Desmere puts on deserters is death. Did you know he was arqalim when he first came here?"

"Y-yes, we know he is arqalim. He was arqalim when he first came here, and now still. Not deserter. You must-must be wrong. He is retired from-from military work."

Why lie about retiring if she knew… Helegos recalls the deployment record. Eight years ago, before Hamoud's deployment overseas, he had indeed been here.

Helegos glances towards the bungalow. The door is closed, but she catches movement through the sheer curtains in the window. The wind chimes continue to ring.

"When did you first meet him?"

The woman shakes. "When he was first here as soldier—about-t eight years a-ago." She raises the bracelet. "When he gave-gave me this."

She must only have been eighteen at that point, Helegos estimates. He would've been near forty, and proposed knowing he would need to leave. She looks at the woman's young, tearful face, at the crutch she leans on, at the bangle on her arm. Arqa. Sinner. Monster…

Helegos lowers herself. "You were wronged. Have been wronged. Take that piece,"—she gestures at the crescent pendant hanging off the woman's wrist—"and run from this place."

"I-I—my-my son, our son, he—"

Fuck.

"Your son, he's in there?" Helegos points up to the house. The woman nods. "Wait for him. I'll make sure he's okay."

The breeze stops a moment, and the wind chimes fall silent.

Helegos pushes the bungalow door open with the butt of her rifle. The home is empty. She notices the open back window, and spots a robed figure bounding downhill. She begins to lines up a shot when all of a sudden, a blinding flash shoots out from between the branches of a shrub. She fires, and the figure ducks; she runs to the backside of the bungalow.

She leans over the side of the hill, and begins to line another shot up, when a thin boy with sunken eyes and atrophied muscles springs unsteadily from a hiding place behind the corner of the bungalow and tackles her, clamping his jaw down on the seam of her cloak. Helegos is caught off-balance, and they begin to tumble downhill. Her legs crash into each other, and she whips her head around. From behind the tint of her visor, the boy looks aged beyond his stature; his skin is tight on his bones, his eyes and cheeks swollen; the very image of death.

Helegos realizes. The fisherman, the wife, the boy—all poisoned by arqala. This is a cursed place—and this arqa the demon that cursed it, cursed the sea and the people years ago. They crash through a shrub at the base of the hill.

The boy stumbles back and tears the cloak; labos and contract-writ are flung onto the the caramel grass between Helegos and her quarry.

"Muzko, get away from there!" The arqalim stumbles up, some thirty paces away now, the purple, knotted tissue of his rift glowing visibly upon his chest from beneath his loose-fitting robes; his voice is smoke-guttered and shaky. "Now, boy!"

On one knee, Koeh holds his right hand out towards Helegos, ring finger beneath his thumb; she recognizes the gesture as the trace which indicates eruption. A Muzna charm matching his wife's hangs from his wrist.

Koeh's son begins to pull himself through the grass, away from the both of them.

"Koeh! Stop this! Don't you want to say goodbye to your wife?" Helegos barks. Saying 'your wife' shoots an ache up her jaw. She tries to put herself upright.

Koeh's weathered face drips sweat into matted grey hair. "Filthy Hamza! Muzna damn you, these tricks!" His rift agitates, and his arm quivers.

Hamza? A pirate? Who, exactly, Helegos thinks, does he believe me to be? She sees her M32 three paces ahead; if I make a grab at it, I'm toast—

"Leave now, or you'll burn, hamza!" He slurs his words.

—and if I turn around, who's telling what he'll do?

"You've till'a three-count to start pacing!" Something spins within his chest, glowing, and shooting bright pink sparks out the edges of his rift. Spots of blood begin to seep out.

His rift is ruptured? He's poisoned his own mind from arqala. He's a madman. He's—

"Three!"

—about to collapse himself; if I lunge now, I might save the kid. If I kill him, though—

"Two!"

—Muzna save my soul, killing a devout. Devout! He's a rapist—a, a criminal!

"One."

Helegos begins to dive at the rifle. Hamoud Koeh, the rift on his chest spitting blood and smoke, unfurls his ring finger. Fire extends up and out from his rift, along his arm, past the charm dedicated to Muzna, and leaps from his fingertips.

The afternoon sun hits the astrolabe flung between them. Its polished, root-speckled tungsten surface reflects blinding light into Koeh's cataract-clouded, arqala-poisoned eyes. He turns away as the flames shoot out from his hand in a chain of bursts. Caramel-gold grass ignites between them; Helegos's leg is barely clipped by the fiery plume. A thundering blast sends dirt in all directions.

She rolls through the brush, avoiding by an inch the detonation behind her that would have ended her life. With the half-second clap-click-bang of the rifle, Koeh falls to the earth, bleeding. After a moment, the rift on his chest stops its pulsing glow.

Helegos sees the boy in the brush; he is unconscious. She picks him up and carries him home.

Helegos limps back to the burnt-up contract writ; it crumbles to ash, which the wind whisks away. "So much for the repairs," she sighs beneath her tattered breath.

She picks up the astrolabe, and recalls her uncle's words. So much as you owe Muzna your soul, you owe this labos your life. She pats at where her cloak's pocket once was, breathes in the full, smoky air, and begins the trek back to Qezmi.