The cane erupted with all the striking charm's stored power; the brothel's window exploded into a burst of glass and splinters, Cuts thrown tumbling out, its porcelain body tumbling down to the street below.

Tongue hungrily out, Shard didn't hesitate. Swimming through the ecstasy of inflicted pain, she followed instantly, lunging after her sibling and landing astride it, a downwards blow of her hands bouncing its head against the street curb, ringing it like a bell. And there, again, before it could recover: both hands, down like a hammer, against the blurred paint on Cuts' head.

Shard howled with pleasure; the blow struck through. There it was: her sibling's jaw, going slack, yielding an opening into the tender flesh behind the shell. Shard thrust, jamming her hand into Cuts' mouth, its teeth grinding an ear-splitting whine against the surface of her arm. It choked, opening up wider, and Shard raised her other hand, claws gleaming, read to plunge it through the soft tissue, straight into the brain, straight for the kill.

There was a touch of something sharp on her chest. She looked down to see Cuts' own claws slipped past the torn-apart dress, and under the crack of Shard's shell, their needle-point tips touching poised to plunge into the exposed flesh, and up, towards the heart.

In the wordless understanding of what happened, they both froze. Half-buried into mud, they became a tableaux of a monstrous embrace, buffeted from all sides by a swelling sea of fear. But whatever it was that surrounded them - the street, the panicked shouts, the cries of alarm - couldn't find purchase in Shard's attention. The world, with all of its concerns, faded away. All she could think of was the steel-splittingly sharp death, resting inches from her heart. Time slowed down to a crawl.

There was no way for her to strike Cuts dead without Cuts getting a chance to slip its own deathblow in. But neither could it hope to kill her before Shard would rip its brain to shreds. And so all that remained for them was this guarded stillness, waiting for the other one to stumble, to show a lapse of attention, a weakening of the killing intent, any kind of an opening. So there was the calculus: no way to win without dying, no way to retreat without letting your guard down. They were both trapped, and they both knew it, imprisoned in their mutual death-grasp. What were the ways out? Hoping that the other would tire first, or that maybe the strangers around would overcome their fear and come with clubs and picks and hammers and provide a distraction? If neither of them was going to make a move - and neither of them could - it would come down to a chance, to the coin flipped by fate to decide which of them, if any, was to live.

The elation of the fight drained away; the brief, corporeal pleasure of blows stricken and weathered fading fast. Where it left Shard, the by-now familiar sense of sheel exhaustion came back in. It was only the animal fear of death, the cold presence of three claws pushing into her flesh, that held Shard from collapsing. Cuts gurgled, choking on her hand; the slight pinpricks of blissful warmth that coiled in the muscle of her arm seemed almost like belonging to a foreign body.

The scope and span of the world she inhabited collapsed down to its sibling below Shard, and the halo of packed dirt around its head. There was no way to take any of her attention from it; if the lowborns were going to come over and end this for them, she probably wouldn't know it until the first blow of the hammer to the back of her skull. There was no divining of their movement from swirls of their fear; there was only the pointless wait, for nothing.

Again.

Cuts' teeth gnashed; its tongue wrapped around Shard's wrist, its claws drawing a fraction of an inch closer to Shard's heart. She was choking it; she had to relent, or it would retaliate. She released some of the pressure, leaned slightly back, and felt the excited tension in her muscles spread out as her sibling sucked a breath in past her arm. For all of her exhaustion, her body never failed to ache for the kill, for the torture of this flesh below. Cuts had to feel the same. But this hunger was not their ally now, and with the weight of the day on her shoulders, and the taste of failure now a familiar friend, Shard to wonder if it had ever been one.

"This is pointless," she said, even though she couldn't let Cuts respond. "We are both going to die."

The wedge painted on Cuts' face was now little more than an ugly black smear, as if someone had spilled ink over the surface of its head. It offered no hint to what her sibling was thinking, or feeling. The children of the Lair-Mother read each other from their motions, from their gestures, from the voice. Without any of that, Shard could only try to think how she would feel in Cuts' place, and what kind of an offer she would then accept for their mutual survival. But that was not the kind of a calculation that she was used to considering.

"And I don't want to. Do you?" she attempted..

Cuts, for its part, gurgled something that could have been a laugh, an agreement, or a bitter snarl. But it wanted to live, too? Surely, it had to value its own survival more than Shard's death. They were the children of the same laboratory, of the same vat. They were born first to survive, and second to serve. Not for this vengeful spite of mortals throwing themselves at naked blades, just to hurt their enemies with one final lashing out. So maybe there was a chance to convince Cuts to step back together, to make sure they were both going to live through this encounter. But there was no way to broker. No way to argue for it. So what was left to her? Make the move, and trust that Cuts wouldn't take the opportunity afforded by the one-sided withdrawal? A suicidal move, certainly, but all the other paths that she could imagine all terminated in a pair of corpses, and that way, maybe one of them would get to live. And that, maybe, mattered for something.

"I'll count to three, and then pull back," she announced, surprised at how easy it was to say, and Cuts tensed under her touch. "I hope you do the same."

Was this suicide? Was she just asking Cuts to kill her, and end this cavalcade of failures? Was she just too tired to carry on, and offering what was left of her to be torn apart by a fellow monster?

"One."

Maybe. But the kind of living that was the alternative was kind of a death, too.

"Two."

The space between seconds yawed; her entire body became registered to her in a new way, every little detail of its continuing existence screaming for her attention. Between the fall of two and three, she could name every strained muscle, every lingering hint of the fight's exhilaration, every bit of hurt and every bit of pleasure that she was made of. Her consciousness contracted, and sharpened, enclosing her like a second shell of a skin, impervious to everything but the tumble of the word that was to follow.

"Three."

She yanked her hand back; she looked down, and saw Cuts' hand still holding onto the strike. She breathed in, fully expecting to never get to exhale.

"Something really broke in you, dear sister," her sibling rasped, its finger making half a turn between the shell and the flesh. A trickle of warm, black blood ran down its hand; a scratch, not a deathblow. It, too, withdrew.

Stunned, Shard stumbled back; without thinking, she put her hand to the crack in her shell, covering it. She lived. The ice cracked; time, no longer held back, flurried forwards. There were, again, screams surrounding them. Rush of feet, of panic. As before; as always; she missed the High City, where she could be without that. This yearning, however, was just another shade of living; and in front of her, its sibling lived as well.

"Why?" Shard asked, part Cuts, part herself.

"Look behind you," Cuts replied, rising from the ground and wiping mud from the surface of its head.

Shard stepped in half-circle, not turning away from her sibling, not until she was standing with Cuts in front of her. Above, the rising mountain that was the city opened in its panorama; and far in the distance, fire tinted the sky red. Through the dark of the night, Shard could tell the outline of the Glassmakers' tower. A fiery wreath surrounded it, black smoke billowing into the night; a cloud above the devastation. And still, the charms adorning the High City gleamed and glowed; Shard imagined their filigree glass bodies catching and refracting the burning red and gold, the fine ash of workshops, libraries, and dwellings settling onto them in a thin layer of filthy varnish.

"In the end, they didn't wait for me to drag your severed head in," Cuts shrugged, its entire stance relaxing, claws fading into its fingers. "Why bother, then?"

Wind carried the far-away, muted wail of bells tolling in alarm. But this far below the Table, the towers were a foreign country; the eyes of the street were on Shard and Cuts, and not on the devastation in the height. The matter of two demons abruptly pausing their mortal struggle had to appear far more pressing and distressing than some distant war among the mighty of the world.

Images of fire filled Shard's mind.

This was not supposed to happen. Master Glassmaker was always quick to brandish the scars he carried from the last time his guild decided, in a spasm of magic and violence, to decide on its leadership and its future. All he had ever worked towards was for there being no more flame, no more war, and no more rain of ash upon the white streets in the Middle City to follow the struggle. There was no price he was not ready to pay, no atrocity he was not ready to commit, no monster was not ready to strike a deal with, if only to arrest the possibility of the story of his ascent repeating.

Years ago, Shard had knelt before her mother, and listened to her commands: that she should go and prostrate herself before Master Glassmaker, as a token of the alliance between the high and low, and that she should serve as his dagger and claw, and that she should let the world drown in blood before letting a challenge to him stand. Now, fire swallowed the towers, and she could only imagine the bitter struggle, knives and charms tearing the family apart. She could only wonder which member of the family was a traitor, who would fight to the last, who would sense the wind turning and change ranks. She could only watch, and wait to see which face the coin landed on.

"I thought," Shard muttered, not certain what it was that she was thinking. "That.."

"I am not going to get myself killed," Cuts said, staring at the far-away conflargation, "if I don't even know if there will be anyone left to pay me tomorrow."

Shard almost asked who it was who put the price on her head. But did that matter at all? Her lucky break was the crimson light painted across the night's sky, announcing the war to the whole city. That alone saved her life, and that was all she could hope for here. Even if Master Glassmaker was to survive the challenge; even if come morning the corpses of traitors were to be dangled from the charred walls of the High City, she would still have failed. Because her purpose was to not let the flames come, or to stand in their path and beat them back. Her sibling's claw spared her only because her death was no longer relevant, which meant that so was her life.

Beneath the sea of flame which filled her mind, she could hear the sound of the chisel and the hammer. The crack in her shell hurt with its dull, phantom pain.

"I have a den nearby," Cuts offered, as if it hadn't tried to kill Shard mere moments ago. "Let's not play scarecrows in the middle of a street."

***

Cuts made its roost underneath a tidy little temple in the guts of the lower city. A sole nun greeted them inside, with her best effort at not noticing the pair of Lair-Mother's children entering. She kept herself to cleaning the little-used altar-piece, her blindness well-practiced. As was her deafness, when Cuts found the trap-door, leading down into the cozy cellar below.

It was warm inside, the air heavy and stale; it made Shard think of her kind's home at the bottom of the world. But if the winding passages of the depths she was born and raised were bare rock and cold light, hostile and unwelcoming, Cuts den was anything but. Rich, if tattered tapestries covered the walls in mesmerizing patterns of shape and color. Thick blankets brought from overseas cushioned the floor, weaving around scavenged chairs, tables, dressers. A hint of mould laced the air, and another of blood. Under the powerful, alchemical lamp shining above, Shard could make the claw-marks, and blood-stains marking the old wood. Back in the High City, back when she had a home, she kept her trophies in a small case; Cuts' display was more overt.

Shard moved in slowly, minding the floor below for snares, and making sure to keep her sibling in front of her. But Cuts' stance was relaxed now; she stepped lightly between the mess of her den, and towards a side-room, where a blue piece of glass, likely worth more than the entire temple, sat stuffed into a crack in the walls. A haze of water erupted from it as Cuts approached, shrouding its entire figure in warm vapour. Filth washed easily off porcelain, running down the gutters of the floor, and down to an unseen sewer.

Too exhausted to do much else, Shard crawled onto a rickety, rocking chair perched precariously atop piled fabrics, curling atop of it. It swayed with her weight, the motion strangely soothing. Of course it was a possibility that Cuts had lured her here only to finish what it couldn't accomplish in the streets, but what did it matter? It was difficult to not think of the magnitude of the disaster unfolding in the High City, and of the depths of her failure; but thoughts themselves came to Shard's head only sluggishly, as if some kind of fog filled her mind instead.

"You look so miserable, dear sister," her sibling announced, wiping its clean shell with a drab washing rag. "Then again you are fucked, aren't you?"

It sat by a dresser in the corner of its hideout, reaching for a brush and a pot of black paint. The fact that the mirror in front of it was shattered and gone did not seem to inconvenience it all too much.

The chair creaked under Shard, the wicker seat bending under her weight as if about to snap. Mortals rarely made furniture with the thought of accomodating for the Lair-Mother's children; after all, the world they were building was not meant for them. She turned the thought around a few times in the slowness of her mind, wallowing in the sense of solitude.

"Can't say I'm not happy to see this, though," Cuts added, filling in the outline of its signature black wedge. "I think it may even be better than seeing you dead. You know, it's a funny thing, but did you know that Mother has sanctioned that challenge?"

Of course she did. It made too much sense. If Cuts was allowed to hunt Shard down, it meant that whoever raised a hand against Master Glassmaker did it with at least tacit permission of the Lair-Mother. There had to be some kind of a deal brokered, some trade; the specifics of it were, however, ultimately irrelevant in the face of her mother's pragmatic calculations. Master Glassmaker ruled his guild with her consent; but others could too. The implications made Shard's stomach twist; she wrapped her arms around her knees, trying her best not to hear the sound of the chisel and the hammer.

"Hurts to realize, doesn't it?" Cuts snorted, clearly amused. "I forgot how good of a sport twisting the knife could be."

"Did Mother send you?" Shard managed to ask, in a trembling voice.

"Oh, no," Cuts replied, still working at its face. "No, no. I wouldn't be letting you go if it was her command. It was some mortal's ploy, and apparently not a very crucial one. Not worth risking my neck for. They'll always need me here, anyway. No, I'm not the one who will execute our Mother's displeasure with you, dear sister."

It sounded happy, maybe even giddy. Finally, Shard stopped fearing for her life. She wasn't going to die here; Cuts wasn't intending on killing her anymore. No, the torture wasn't supposed to end so soon. Shard knew this game, and knew the role that she had landed in it.

"It will be a great show, I think," it continued, shooting her a tooth-filled smile. "Mother will figure out something special for you. I hope I will get a chance to see it."

The words hurt, in a way Shard was not accustomed to at all - as if her shell was nothing, and her entire flesh exposed and tender. Cuts laughed; its sibling was providing a filling meal indeed.

"Do you have any idea how much I hate you?" it said in a tone of light amusement, putting the brush down and staring straight at Shard, black wedge on pristine white. "How much we all do? And it feels so good to tell you that. Come on, squirm a little more for me, dear sister. You look so miserable."

The chair rocked forwards and back; Shard listened on, learning about the kinds of pain she had never considered much.

"The favoured Shard," Cuts continued, "Mother's right hand. We watched you lick her feet and have rewards heaped on you. She allowed you gender, my dear sister. And you," its voice trembled now, a smile as wide as the crescent moon, pleasure dripping from each syllable, "fucked it all up! It made such news down below when that mortal bested you. And then," it clasped its hands, "again!"

It stood up, stepping lightly around Shard and her rocking chair, feet barely making a sound on the thick blankets.

"Food and vermin you called them," it savoured every pang of shame and guilt it could evoke. "Food and vermin ate you. Your shell is cracked, dear sister. Someone broke you. And what did you say about broken things? What did you call the broken things you've helped Mother dispose of? Useless filth, better to be forgotten."

Didn't Cuts know it was all a play Shard put on so that their mother would see she had learned well from her lessons? Did it really believe Shard wanted to brag? But she did, didn't she? She stood at the lip of the pit, and bragged, so very glad to be in the Lair-Mother's graces. Would she not feel the same way, if she was in Cuts' place? There was something revolting about that idea, as if opening a door inside her she had gone to great lengths to secure; but whatever it was that she had pushed behind it had to wait.

Cuts approached, looming over Shard; its finger touched the open pit on Shard's stomach, where the hero's spear broke her. It pressed into the flesh, gathering a single drop of blood on its tip. It raised its hand to its mouth, allowing its long tongue to sample the taste.

"I could kill you right now," it said, the power over its sibling's life so very sweet on its lips. "No risk to it anymore. But I really think I like it better the way you are right now. I hope she finds something sweeter for you than the pit. Maybe she will lop off your arms and legs, and hang you from her altar, so she always has a puppet for her to demonstrate her lessons?"

Its finger traced the imaginary cuts across Shard's shoulders and hips, the claw slicing through what remained of the dress Andronikos put Shard in.

"I hope you suffer," it whispered into the side of Shard's head, "like I wish we had not."

"All I have ever wanted," Shard whispered back, unsure what it was that she was feeling, peeking from under all that solitude and hurt, "was to survive. One more day, every day."

Was that not the full truth? She had never acted out of anything else; she just wanted to be safe, to know that there was a tomorrow waiting for her. And if that meant being her mother's favoured, what was the harm in it? In the great below her kind was born to, there could be no alternative. It was wrong of Cuts to resent her for what Cuts would itself do, if given a chance. Shard knew that, as clearly as she could know anything in her addled state. And yet, somehow, there was no comfort and sustenance in that knowledge, only more that dull novel, numbing anguish roiling in her. Everywhere she turned, she was met with screams, with fear, or with hatred. How could she deserve it?

Cuts petted her across the head; there was no care in the gesture, only mockery. It walked away, wiped its palm with a rag. Shard was still caked in filth.

"You can stay here for as long as you want, dear sister," it offered, "you are a pleasure to have around."

A dull and empty sound left Shard, like a banging of a drum.

"You're crying?" Cuts mocked, leaning in to watch. "Even better. I should drag you like that before Mother, when she sends for you. Shard of White Obsidian, now bawling on the floor."

It really was a spiral, and no matter how much Shard tried to break away, it kept dragging her back, down and down. Everything she has ever done culminated in this point, in her sibling leering and drinking her pain, because it could, and because even if Shard was to summon all of her rage, she wasn't sure if she had it in her to do more than push herself off the chair, and onto the blanketed floor. And besides, even if by some miracle she could smash Cuts to smithereens, what next? It was right; her mother would call for her, and come for her, and there was no one in the world who had ever managed to defy her will.

With one exception.

There was a kind of clarity to her despair, slicing cleanly through the haze of her exhaustion. There was a man who had managed to make a stand against the Lair-Mother's will, and emerge victorious, time after time. And there was hope to her despair too, in itself as wild and impossible as hope could only get. But she had not lied when she said that all she wanted to do was to survive. The idea hatched in her head with the wild desperation of someone too unready to let go, of someone unable to accept that she had lost. It was impossible; she had herself made sure that the one man who could help her never would. But Cuts was right: Shard knew what the alternative to this stupid hope was. The impossible could be hoped for, but not her Mother's mercy. So impossible had to be the choice - nothing else was there.

"Can I leave?" she asked, raising her head from between her knees.

"Hmmm," Cuts' pondered, scraping its claw at the side of its head. "You know, I do owe you for not killing us both earlier. So yes, maybe I could let you go."

Its tone was light, amused; Shard breathed in, waiting for the knife to be twisted. Cuts didn't leave her hanging for too long.

"If you beg nicely enough," it smiled.

Shard nodded, understanding. She didn't want to waste a moment of this apparent lucky break; she slipped from the chair, landing on her fours on the floor. A memory from a day before guided her as she crawled towards Cuts, head kept low. When was the last time she had knelt like that before anyone but their mother? She wondered how her humiliation tasted to her sibling? Probably little; there was not much room left in her for shame. Cuts stood above her, arms folded behind its back.

"Please," Shard whispered, "let me go."

With an ugly grinding sound, Cuts' feet landed on her neck, knocking her down onto her stomach and pressing her head into the blanketed floor.

"On a second thought," it leered, "why should I? You're too much fun."

"Please," she repeated, her voice quaking in fear. Cuts had to notice.

"Maybe I could get Mother to gift you to me, once she is done with you?" it said, twisting its feet, the weight crushing on Shard's neck. "Actually, what do you think? Wouldn't you prefer to be my toy, forever? I could keep you here, all mine. Mother would never get you."

The words were light like summer, happy. Shard shivered; such things have happened. Such things have been offered to her; it was only that she had always been too hungry for such extended pleasures.

"I would only have to defang you," Cuts continued to wonder, squashing Shard below its foot. "Maybe also take your tongue. You were never much of a talker, anyway. Imagine that, dear sister. No feet, no hands, no tongue… you would lounge all day, pampered until I would finally get bored with you. Wouldn't you prefer that to Mother's mercies?"

She could imagine it; against her will, she did. Cuts' pushed on her neck. There were feelings in her chest that she couldn't quite describe, ugly, piercing, so very fragile.

"Answer me. Wouldn't you prefer it?" it commanded, colder now.

So that was how it felt to be fully within someone's power. Not like with the hero, where it was life or death - no, it was like with that woman before, that low-born that Shard singled out for her amusement. And what was that feeling? Knowing what you had to do, and knowing how little it would matter. No matter what she said next, it was Cuts to decide if she was to ever leave this basement. And yet, she had to say something.

"Yes," she cried out, "I would."

"Then why not get started on it right now?" Cuts laughed. But then, it lifted its feet; Shard breathed in sharply. "But I think I'm not ready for the commitment. Scurry, now."

The wretched wave of relief washed over Shard; she was going to live. She began to rise from the floor; and the reward was a kick straight into her exposed flesh, and an explosion of pain like a searing light knocking the air out of her. She fell to the floor again, thankful for the blankets to cushion her.

"I said scurry," Cuts spat. "Not walk."

So she climbed to her fours, and started to crawl, through the room, and towards the stairs. Cuts walked slowly behind her, cheerfully clapping its hands.

"I want you to remember, my dear survivor sister," she offered as Shard started to slowly make her way up the stairs, worn to slippery smoothness in years of use, "that you would rather live as a torture puppet, than face the consequences of your failure. I want you to imagine yourself as mine, all the way up to the day when Mother finally takes her toll from you."

The trapdoor to above was almost within reach; Shard extended her arm to open it, only to be rewarded by another kick. She clattered down the stairs, her shell creaking under the strain. It didn't even hurt that much.

"Will you?" it asked, standing atop her crumpled frame.

"Yes," she begged.

"Up again."

Once more, she began to crawl up the stairs, waiting for the third blow to come in.

"I hope," Cuts sneered, the leisurely note all but gone from its voice, "that when she drags you before us all to make an example out of your failure, you will regret that I didn't decide to keep you. But you know that there is no escaping our Mother's will."

There were no more kicks, and no more words. Slowly, Shard made it all the way up to the top; Cuts opened the door, and let her out, onto the dusty floor of the temple, to where the nun did not see and did not hear.

"Go now," Cuts said, its voice fading into its den as it left. "We will be seeing each other again soon enough, all the way at the bottom of the world."

In the silence that followed, Shard couldn't bring herself to stand up. She knelt, and quaked, fragile, incorporeal, and alone. Everything Cuts had said about her was true, and now that her life was no longer in danger, and now that she could walk away, the weight of shame came crashing down onto her, piercing through all the other fears.

As she clambered up on shaking legs, physically sound and shattered in spirit, she longed for someone to hold her close and tell her that that things would be all right. And in that, she finally realized, far too late, just how badly did she misunderstand the alchemist named Ifi.