Chapter 720: The Nameless Run

Cessy hit the thread bridge barefoot, heels dangling from two fingers, chasing a brother who no longer knew her. The strands sagged under every step, singing thin notes above a dark that swallowed every echo of her footsteps.

Lucan strolled ahead in his black suit, calm as a man walking to a tea shop, never looking back once.

"Lucan, stop right now, this isn’t funny," she shouted.

He kept walking, the way a stranger walks when the voice behind him belongs to nobody.

’Light feet, Cessy, light feet. One angry stomp and this whole bridge snaps like a cheap necklace.’

A low whine crawled out of the spires, soft as a kicked dog, calling every nameless thing toward the edge. Three Hushbound dropped onto the bridge, pale and faceless, their mouths stitched into long flat lines across their narrow jaws.

She snapped her wrist, "Crimson Lash!"

Blood ran from her palms into two whips that cracked across the gap, bright red against the dim gloom. The first Hushbound folded at the knees, but the second caught the lash in one bare hand, pulling hard.

The bridge lurched, sliding her toward the drop with her toes scrabbling at the threads.

"Not today, darling, this dress cost more than your entire spire," she hissed, raking her claws across its wrist.

She twisted free, rolling across the quivering threads to loop her whip around the third one’s neck, tightening it. That move was her Rose Garrote, a name she invented at twelve, still beautiful on anything with a throat.

The Hush whispered through a hundred stitched mouths, "Nameless, nameless, come and sit with us."

"I have a name, thank you, it’s printed on every invitation in this city," Cessy snarled.

Two more Hushbound poured down a spire behind her while Lucan stepped around a falling body without even noticing it. Ahead the bridge ended in a ragged edge, where the Hush waited, black and patient, for its next nameless guest.

"Jump left, now!"

She jumped left at once, trusting the voice because it was Hajin’s, while silver light tore the thread. Twenty feet of nothing opened between her and the nearest roof, with no anchor left for her whip.

She swore, leaning into the leap anyway, "Damn it all."

For one long breath she fell, then something yanked her upward by the base of her tail.

"Got you," Hajin grunted, dangling from a chain lance anchored in the tiles, his free fist wrapped around her tail like a rope. He hauled her over the gap, swinging her onto the roof in a clumsy red heap of silk.

"You are holding my tail," she said, from somewhere near his feet.

"You’re lighter than I thought, Cessy," he said, steadying her by the elbow.

"I will bite you, Hajin... very slowly, with all of my teeth."

He laughed, brushing mist off her sleeve, "Later, he’s walking toward the edge."

She was already running again, over tiles slick with mist, to the drop where Lucan stood with folded hands. He studied the black below with the polite curiosity of a man reading a menu in a quiet restaurant.

"Hurry, he’s about to step off," Hajin yelled, pounding after her.

[ashley(mod): Cessy is RUNNING and my heart is in my throat.]

[CringeSlayer91: She’s not even doing the smirk, something is really wrong.]

Cessy hit him from behind, locking both arms around his chest as his polished shoes slid over the lip. They crashed down together on the tiles, one cufflink spinning away into the endless dark below the whole city.

"Madam, you are lying on my coat," Lucan said, rolling over to look at her.

She stared at the face she knew better than her own, pleasant and empty like a waiter’s.

"Don’t you dare call me that," she whispered, gripping his lapels in both fists.

"I apologise, I simply do not know what else I should call you."

"You taught me to fold handkerchiefs, you hateful, fussy man," she said, her voice cracking on the last word.

"That sounds like something a sister would do," Lucan said gently, "I am truly sorry that I cannot recall it, Madam."

Something cracked down the middle of her smirk, quietly, as her mouth stopped obeying her.

’He doesn’t remember the night I carried him through the rain, so who exactly am I now?’

Zarvine watched from a neighbouring roof with her rapier lowered, borrowed voices murmuring around her like wind in a keyhole. The duellist looked terribly tired, like a woman carrying the very same stone up the very same steep hill forever.

"I did not want this," Zarvine said, in a little girl’s voice, then a baker’s, then her own.

"Then give it back," Hajin snapped, hauling the chain around his shoulders.

"If I could, I would have done so already—"

"I named you when you couldn’t even talk," Cessy cut in, her forehead pressed to his chest, "you absolute idiot."

Lucan blinked down at her, politely puzzled, like a boy listening to a story about somebody else.

Hajin stepped toward her roof, the chain rattling off his forearm in a loud, bright, angry coil of links. Zarvine did not lift her rapier, only watched the links swing, as patient as someone who expected this moment.

"Who ordered it?" he asked, his voice gone flat.

Zarvine answered in a dry old woman’s voice, "A man who never needs to raise his own hand."

"He sat in the stands and nodded, didn’t he?"

She gave no answer at all, which told him everything he needed to know about that nod.

"Madam, you are crying," he said, offering his handkerchief with both hands.

"I am not crying, I’m simply... leaking," she muttered, snatching the cloth from his fingers.

Hajin crouched beside them with one steady hand on her back, saying nothing clever for once. Behind him two dark shapes were scrambling over the rooftops, shouting her name through the mist.

"We’re here, Cessy," Loccy called, dropping to the tiles with a thud that shook three chimneys loose.

Juna asked, nose already high, "Which of these ugly things wants biting first?"

She dropped into a crouch, silver claws tearing the nearest Hushbound off the tiles before it could scream silently. Loccy swung her hammer flat across the whole ridge, sweeping the remaining ones away into the mist like crumbs.

"Nobody else leaves us tonight," she said, sounding almost steady.

Cessy tucked the handkerchief into her sleeve, then rose with her chin up and her ruined dress dragging behind her. She wiped her cheeks with one thumb, as dry and sharp as ever, although her fingers refused to stop trembling.

"You don’t have to walk into that house," Hajin said quietly.

"Of course I do, he’s my brother," Cessy said, straightening her ruined dress, "even if he’s rude enough to forget me."

"Then I’m coming too, you still owe me a bite," he said, his grin crooked.

"Idiot," she muttered, though the word came out soft as a thank-you, her cheeks warming against her will.

A door creaked open on the nearest balcony, spilling a long strip of warm gold across the tiles. A tall woman in dark silk stood within it, her smile arranged like fine cutlery on a table.

"Bring him in, darling," Matron Ysolde said, "I know what name he was born with."