An early spring brought snowdrops and orange caterlilies, cascades of pink madelia and a sea of bright blue sylphettes that whipped like roiling waves when the wind swept through them. Vittenberg was famously lush, but even so, a vulgar fertility beyond the norm permeated everything. A slow patter of rain scored each night, punctuated by the sharp cries of men and women rutting in the city’s alleys.
Manfred Eisenfaust detested every bit of it.
The hook-nosed captain sat brooding in his study with a cigarillo when a runner arrived with a note bearing the seal of Vittenberg’s city watch. Each letter stumbled over the next, until it devolved into a maddened scribble Eisenfaust could barely make sense of.
It read:

Something ate the Wessels.
Graffiti everywhere.
Please come at once.
-Bernhardt

Graffiti. Eisenfaust’s thin lips turned to a frown.
In recent weeks there’d been an uptick of religious unrest in Vittenberg, accompanied by vandalism and violence of the worst sort. Worship of the old gods was forbidden in the free cities, but Vittenberg was full of proud families whose origins were tangled up in ancient loyalties. Many kept to the old faith in defiance of the restrictions.
Manfred gathered up his coat and dropped a kiss on his wife Johanna’s cheek as he left. “I have to work.”
“Will you be home for dinner?” she asked.
“Not likely. What are you making?”
“Stew.”
“Rabbit?” he asked, a note of hope in his voice.
“No,” she said. “Onions and sweet carrots.”
“Save a bowl for me. I may be hungry.”
“Be safe.”
It took an hour on horseback to reach the Wessel estate. Manfred did not enjoy the countryside the way some people pretended to. He did not like the bright spring colors, which struck him as gaudy, or the noise Stummesferd’s hooves made squelching in the soggy creeper moss of Vittenberg’s west road. If there were any silver lining to being called to work, it was that he did not have to endure the ear piercing shrieks of his children playing in the yard.
Franz and Gertrude Wessel lived in a large manor house at the edge of the Eichenvauld forest with their five children: Franz Jr, Ingrid, Mary, Dieter, and baby Helmüt. Ivy crawled up the walls from the base of the house, invading through windows and cracks in its mortar. A tangle of vines stretched from the roof to the branches of nearby willow trees, suspended above the manor’s grounds.
A spider’s web, Eisenfaust thought, looking at the vines. He wondered what that made him.
Private Bernhardt greeted the captain by the front porch. The sight of him irritated Eisenfaust. He was an odd looking young man with a weasel face and wisps of hair about his chin and mouth that would never make for a proper beard. Eisenfaust prized neatness and order above all else, and Bernhardt’s head possessed some irregularity in  shape that annoyed the captain to his very core.
“Glad you’re here, Captain,” the young man said. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Eisenfaust scoffed at the sentiment. It was a lie. Not that Bernhardt was unsure what to do—of that, there was no doubt—but the captain knew no one was ever glad to see him. Not even his wife. It was the way he liked it.
“You are paid to know what to do, Private Bernhardt.”
“Yes sir, it’s just…” he struggled for the words, “…this is different, that’s all. It’s a mess, sir.”
“It better be, Private. It is the weekend. I am a family man.”
Eisenfaust dismounted and tied Stummesferd’s reins to a gas lamp at the foot of the porch, then discarded the cigarillo he’d been smoking and stamped it into the loamy soil. “Show me the bodies.”
Private Bernhardt led the captain up the front steps of the house, onto the porch and toward a set of double doors that opened to a grand foyer. A thick mess of flowering vines covered the entry, hanging loose.
“What is this?” Eisenfaust asked the private, lifting one of the vines.
“We were forced to cut our way in. The doors were sealed shut. Overgrown.”
“We?”
“Mr. Brandt, the neighbor. He’s the one who sent for us.”
“You let him into the scene?”
“I’m sorry, Sir. I wasn’t thinking.”
“A habit of yours.”
A gnawing sense of discomfort grew in Eisenfaust’s gut as he examined the vine. The thing was as thick around as his wrist. Much thicker than it ought to have been.
“Summer growth,” he noted, casting a glance at Private Bernhardt. “Unnatural.”
“Yes,” Bernhardt concurred. “I thought so as well. Neither myself nor Mr. Brandt knew what to make of it. His cottage is a few miles up the road. Nothing like these vines there.”
The dining room table was still set, a roast pork at the center, sliced neat. A crystal bowl sat to the right of what Eisenfaust assumed was Gertrude Wessel’s seat. The baby’s dinner, only partly eaten. It looked for all the world as if they’d gotten up and left in the middle of their meal.
“Where are they?”
“The cellar.”
“And the graffiti?”
“It’s all in the cellar.”
Captain Eisenfaust followed Bernhardt to the root cellar door. Here, he saw the first signs of struggle, and paused to examine the door’s frame. Fresh scratches in the wood. A woman’s fingernail on the floor, torn loose.
“You saw this?” Eisenfaust asked, tapping the frame.
“I wasn’t sure what to make of it.”
“You found the children in the basement?”
“All five and the father. No sign of the mother. Mr. Brandt helped me confirm.”
“The children must have been killed first. The scratches start on the inside of the door frame, here—” he indicated the spot to Bernhardt. “Gertrude Wessel, I think, based on their height. She was trying to claw her way down. Someone held her back. Perhaps she was taken, or killed elsewhere.”
Eisenfaust took a lamp from a hook, lit it, and made his way down the stairs. The cellar was a large, open room with a few stone foundation pillars around its center. Moss carpeted the cellar’s earthen floor, garnished with alien fungus of a type Eisenfaust did not recognize; pale mushrooms dappled with bright white blisters, and a fluorescent ascomycota that bathed the room in unearthly greens.
“Nothing has been touched?” Eisenfaust asked, pausing at the bottom of the stairs, lamp held high.
“No,” the Private said. “I could not bear to stay.”
“You must be strong, Private. It will do you no good to look away now. You must numb yourself to it, or you will see it for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Captain.”
On the far wall of the cellar was a shrine for offerings, and a statue of the river goddess, Ambergresse. She beckoned with spread legs and dull, bovine eyes, her supple curves adorned by a strange, flowering vine. Blood everywhere—on her breasts and at her feet, and all across the wall. Even the moss at the foot of the statue was stained red, as if it’d gorged itself on the Wessels.
“You were right to call me.”
“Asterites,” said Bernhardt, spitting near the base of the statue.
“Indeed. They kept to the old ways.”
“Paid for it, by the looks of it.”
Eisenfaust conducted a silent inventory of the scene. Each member of the family was scattered across the floor of the basement, as if they’d been torn apart and discarded. Vines wound their way around the dismembered limbs, penetrating them. The body parts were shriveled and desiccated, as if they’d been dried out. He found the remnants of Franz Wessel, barely forty, laid out together like a mosaic with little Helmüt cradled near him. Marks covered what was left of Franz Wessel’s wrists, which were bound by a length of rope.
“A ritual.”
“What god would demand a sacrifice like this?” Bernhardt muttered.
“What is blamed on the gods is rarely their fault, Bernhardt. Men did this. We must find them and bring them to justice.”
Eisenfaust knelt in the dirt to examine the scene, and as he did one of the vine’s creeping tendrils seemed to reach for him. Its exterior was coated in a thin layer of mucus, and the vine itself the color of raw, bloody flesh. It looked for all the world like a length of intestine, sprouting yellow and brown leaves and fruited with thin, rubbery red sacs.
“What is it, captain?” asked Bernhardt.
“I do not know.”
“We should burn it.”
Eisenfaust stood and turned his attention to the graffiti Bernhardt mentioned in the runner’s note. All across the cellar’s outer walls were queer signs and sigils, scratched in stone or drawn in blood, letters whose shape changed from one moment to the next, struggling against observation. He recognized it at once as the divine language of the old gods, though he could not read it. The throbbing spirals and unnatural geometry of the script were the worst sort of magic.
Eisenfaust lifted his lamp and drew closer.
“How can you bear to look at it?” Bernhardt asked, “Doesn’t it hurt your eyes?”
“No,” the captain answered, lying flatly. Certainly it hurt its eyes to examine the scrawl, but not to any great extent. Some were more susceptible to the effects of the divine language than others. Through his forty years, the captain witnessed men bleed from their eyes or their nose when they looked too long. He’d heard rumors of people changed by the words. Transformed. Vittenberg’s asylums were full of its victims.  “We’ll need help with this.”
“The Council of Lords?”
“Vittenberg is an ancient city, Bernhardt. Many of her families still worship the old gods in secret. Any of the lords could be involved. We need someone else. An outsider.”
“The witch?”
By witch, of course, Eisenfaust knew Bernhardt meant Lady Grimsby of Volgstadt. That the woman was not a witch did not matter. She knew things others did not, like the proper balance of chemicals to make explosives, and how to harvest widow’s wail for use as a poison. As a young man, Eisenfaust worked with her on the investigation into the Rothmorrow murders. He did not particularly like the woman—he did not particularly like anyone—but he respected her efficacy. She possessed a rare intellect and a peerless knowledge of the old gods and their language.
“Yes,” Eisenfaust said, brow furrowing as he scowled at the undulating graffiti, eyes drawn to one word in particular, repeated throughout the room. “If there is anyone who can translate this scrawl and shed light on the purpose of this ritual, it is her. I’ll write to her and ask her to make the trip at once.”
“Are you sure that’s wise, captain?”
“You have a concern?”
“I’ve heard stories, sir, that’s all. Things have a way of going from bad to worse when she’s involved.”
“Look around, Bernhardt. How could it get worse?”

When Celia Ste. Marie slept, she dreamt of other worlds. In them, she saw quicksilver glimpses of rust-stained landscapes awash in orange and red, the rocky landscape dotted with ravaged bone-white temples and iron towers. Above, a field of stained-glass flowers hung in the sky, collecting the light of the hungering stars, their stems swaying in the wind. Crowded round below those flowers were the creatures she called Strangers; long-limbed, gangly fuckers, all scrapping with each other for a taste of liquid starlight. Once, when she was little, Celia joined them–drank from the stem of a stained-glass flower and felt a gold-brass burn spread all through her body and take up residence in her hands.
Each day she slept, and each night the sound of St. Seb’s bells called her back to the waking world, and the comfort of her loft. Thus returned from dreams, Celia clawed her way from bed and brewed herself a desperate cup of tea. This, she drank whilst sitting by her apartment window, looking down at the graveyard below. Local legend said the bells called back spirits from the veil, and more than once Celia thought she saw ghostly figures moving among the tombstones.
I am such a spirit, she thought. Awakened by the bells.
Unlike those spirits, Celia Ste. Marie was still a thing of flesh, blood, and hunger. She needed to eat, and eating meant working. When her tea was finished, she took up her artist’s tools: oil, paintbrush, oil, and acrylic, dug out a discarded plank of wood or else some canvas stolen from a trash heap, and painted. Because she was poor, she treated every color as something precious–deploying them with a kind of precision born from practice and obsession.
Some nights she painted for hours. Others, round ten, a light knock would find its way to her door–her girlfriend, Rhona. Curves and lips and ginger hair, smelling of sweet tarts and peach crumble pie. Celia Ste. Marie was always starving, and whenever Rhona came round she wanted to devour her. She made do with kisses. Thousands of them at the corners of Rhona’s mouth and up and down her arms and all along her neck. Then the two of them would tumble into bed, and Celia’s kisses would find their way up Rhona’s thighs. No matter how much they kissed Celia only ever got hungrier. Kissing meant not painting. Not painting meant not making money. Not making money meant getting hungrier. And when Celia’s money began to run out, Rhona’s kisses began to run out. Then, Celia Ste. Marie knew she would have to go to market and sell some of her work.

The Penny Markets

All cities possess one character by day, another by night. Having lived in Streissberg and Port Sorrow, Celia Ste. Marie knew this to be particularly true of Volgstadt. Under the sight of the sun, Volgstadt held all the charm of a humorless banker–driven by schedules and agendas–but when the sun dripped from the sky, the gray lady of Volgstadt took down her hair, applied rouge to her cheeks, and bathed her winding cobblestone streets in guttering lamplight. Brass bands played along the Old King’s Road and her public houses shook with the sounds of bawdy songs and raucous laughter.
On the nights Rhona did not knock and Celia Ste. Marie did not lose herself in paint, she gathered up a few of her pieces, wrapped them in wool, bound them with twine, and tossed them over her shoulder like a backpack. Down the stairs and out the door, past her landlord, Old Lumley, and the wild cats that kept him company.
“Off to market?” Lumley asked.
“That’s right.”
“Let me see ’em.”
“I ain’t got time, stalls will all be gone.”
The old man waved her off with a grin. “Sure and sure. No time for Old Lumley.”
Guilt caught at her. She stopped, turned on her heel, and walked back to give the old man a hug. “Come now, don’t read into nothing. One night this week we’ll drink and lay some paint down together. I’ve got two good boards I found near the quarry.”
“Alright,” said Lumley, nodding his head. “Sounds good to me.”
“Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.”
She left the building and cut across St. Seb’s Street, down the winding vein of Old King’s Road, until she came to the vendor’s entrance of the Penny Markets, where an acne-scarred man with bushy eyebrows stopped her.
“Stall or stand, lad?”
“Stall,” Celia answered.
“Three rams.”
“Three? Not two?”
“Price is up.”
“Bunch of shit.”
“Pay or go, I’ve not got time to bargain.”
“Three’s all I’ve got.”
“Lucky you, innit?”
Three rams for the man’s hand. She felt lighter for having lost them. That hungry something in her belly carved its way a little deeper. Silently, she did her calculations. Three rams, maybe four, for each of the three paintings she’d brought. One to break even, one to keep her roof, and one to keep her belly full.
Not enough for paint.
The stall was red and white number with a pinstripe canopy. A woman to her left sold birds, whilst a tattooed man on her right worked people up with ink and a needle. Pretty kind of canvas, she thought. The markets were quiet early and she chatted up the two of them. Talked pigments with the inker, while the bird lady watched her like a crow bothered by something it couldn’t make sense of.
“You a boy or a girl?” the bird lady asked.
“More or less,” said Celia.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Course it is. Just not the one you wanted.”
“Awful crowd tonight,” the lady muttered. “Not a coin in sight.”
“It’ll pick up. Coins’ll come when the bars close. They’ll come for music and drinks and bad decisions. Why you sellin’ birds at night?”
“Night birds is better.”
“Why?”
“Someone buys a bird during they day, they got a plan for that bird. Bird’s bound for a cage or an oven and a pie and not nothing will keep ’em from that fate. But someone buys a bird at night? It’s either cause they’re drunk and hungry or they’re havin’ a laugh. Either way, my birds’ll give ’em the slip. I got ’em trained so they come back to me.
“They come back to you?”
“Unless they get et, ya.”
“You train ’em?”
The woman shrugged. “Train some. Eat some. Birds is like people. The clever ones make it, the rest get chewed up and shat out.”
Fuckin’ Volgstadt, Celia thought. She loved the gray lady and all her mad children. Could meet anyone at any time and anything at all could happen. Not priced for a person to live with anything approaching ease–but her streets and the people on them brimmed with a strange magic that made the cost worth it.
As the night wore on, a motley collection of bohemians, bluecoats, and nobles poured into the Penny Markets. The first bite on Celia’s paintings came from a well-dressed couple out of Five Coins, both high on the green snuff. The lady obsessed over her riverscape, gushing over it at length–talking about serpents dancing in the sky. Celia smiled politely and agreed with everything she said.
When it came time to purchase, her man put up a fight. Fifteen minutes haggling back and forth, but the man held firm at two rams. Even when his lady whined and begged and covered him in kisses, the stingy bastard didn’t budge. At twelve bells from St. Seb’s, Celia reluctantly agreed to the sale. Best to cover costs, she thought. A small loss is better than a large one.
Next hour she got a lot of lookers, but nothing serious. An older gent and his young dandy. The older chap was dressed in outdated fashions and scars from the war, his dandy wearing gaudy makeup and dripping in fake jewels. Next, a stern-faced engineer from Streissberg wearing a tappertine suit and paisley blazer. Took a minute for Celia to realize the engineer was more interested in her than her paintings. After the engineer came the barkeep from The Harrowed Hen, looking to hide a crack in the wall of his public house. All made offers, none wanted to pay full price. Celia could not bear to take another loss, so she held firm. A mistake. Maybe the worst of her life.
Decent hours came and went and in that liminal space came a mangy looking fellow in moth-eaten finery. No touch of the green snuff in his eyes, but he looked off all the same. Chalky skin, dried like wax paper, and a peculiar frenzy in his manner.
“You painted this?” the man asked, stabbing a finger towards her painting of the Tenpenny Riots. She’d painted that one as she’d seen it. She and Rhona joined the mobs and marched up the Old King’s Road. Celia with her easel, Rhona carting her paints and canvas. A night of music, violence, and catharsis–if not liberation.
“I did.”
“It’s good. Quite good. What’s your name?”
“Celia Ste. Marie.”
He scoffed. “You’re a woman?”
“I’m an artist.”
“I’m Basil. Basil Reeve. I am something of an artist as well.” He gestured again toward the painting. “You were there?”
“I was.”
“Me too,” the strange man said, nodding vigorously. “Me too. Shame we stopped at the cathedral. Should have gone all the way to the assembly, put the piebellies on spits and eaten them like rats.”
“Maybe,” Celia said, trying to remain agreeable. “I think the unions got their point across.” In truth, she did not trust him. Not precisely, at least. Yes, the labor unions had marched, and yes they’d broken windows and defaced some walls, but they’d marched for fair pay, better conditions, and protection from the abuses of the city watch. Not to burn down the city they all loved.
“How much for it?”
“Three rams.”
“I’ll give you one.”
“Get fucked. That’s an insult, sir.”
“One is all you’ll get. Give it to me as a favor to a fellow revolutionary.”
She spat. “You’re not my fellow, and I don’t take favors in trade. They don’t pay the rent or put food in my belly.”
“I’m doing you a service, taking it off your hands.”
Celia prickled. For a moment, she was thirteen and Harlan Bright was lying bloodied at her feet, three teeth short of a full set. “Feels more like you’re wasting my time.”
Reeve would not budge, nor would he leave her be. As they went back and forth, his tone became more unmanaged, and the crowds began avoiding her stall. Some of them had fine coats and lots of rings and heavy purses full of coin.
“I’m not selling to you. Move on, you’re costing me business.”
“It’s a free city, I’ll stand where I want and say what I want.”
As the situation began to boil over, an impressive shadow cut between them. A great bear of a man with sixday of stubble and a wild mane of honey-brown hair stepped up to her stall. Celia thought he might be the biggest man she’d ever seen. He wore a fine doublet, leather breeches, and a pair of worn military boots. Veteran written all over him, but money, too.
He gestured towards one of her dreamscapes. “Pardon me, sir, did you paint this?”
Basil wheeled on him. “Wait your turn, sir. We are in negotiations!”
“I’ve been waiting patiently for my turn, but I have a feeling it might never come. The lad said to move on, so it’s time to move on.”
“I’m not leaving without that painting.”
The big man’s hand fell to the hilt of a large hunting knife at his belt. “You sure about that? Care to wager?”
Reeve bared his teeth and snarled. If he was scared, he didn’t show it. Reeve lunged and in an eye-blink the big man’s knife was at his throat. A brief struggle ensued, with the two men wrestling over the knife–to Celia’s shock, it looked as though the little man might get the better of the two.
“Think twice on that,” the tattooed inker called, not bothering to look up from his work. “That’s Aloysius Wulf, the witch’s creature. Best believe she would not like to hear of you marking up her hound. Cross her and you’ll find yourself a hunted man.”
Mention of the witch gave Reeve pause where the big man’s size did not. The madman drew back, releasing his grip on the other man’s wrist. “You’re Aloysius Wulf?”
“I am.”
“Do your business.”
“Thank you sir. You’re stronger than you look–but careless with your life.” Only when he sheathed the knife at Basil’s throat did Celia realize it had a sister–one held right to the little man’s belly and ready to paint the market with his intestines.
Aloysius Wulf turned his attention to Celia. Even so, she noted that he stood so as to keep Reeve at the corner of his sight. He inclined his head toward the dreamscape–one of the ones with the Strangers and their stained-glass flowers. “Your painting–you dreamed this?”
“I did.”
“My mistress would pay good money for this and any others like it. How much?”
Celia sensed opportunity. “Six,” she said, raising her number on the spot. She didn’t know much about the witch beyond her reputation for deep pockets and causing trouble.
The big man rubbed his chin. “Eight, but you give me that one of the riots as well.”
“You can’t–” Basil spat, bewildered by the turn of events.
“Done,” said Celia, unable to hide her grin. Her hands trembled as she took the paintings down and began to wrap them up. Eight and two made ten. Not as much as she’d hoped for, but more than she needed. Enough for rent and food and a few more pots of paint. “I have more.”
The big man passed a pouch of rams into her hand. “You know where her house is?”
“Ragsman’s Row, innit?”
Wulf nodded. “Come by tomorrow. She’ll want to talk.” Clasping her arm, he pulled her close and spoke in a whisper. “Be careful getting home, lad. Something off about that fellow.”
“I’ll be fine. All bark, no bite, that sort.”
“I’m not so sure. I think that one has teeth.”
“I got teeth too,” said Celia, putting her hand to her clasp knife.
She packed her things quick as she could and made for the market’s exit. Basil followed. She tried losing him in the crowds along the Old King’s Road, but the little man stayed on her trail like a bloodhound. She was beginning to panic when her luck turned and he bumped into a pair of bluecoats twice his size.
“Out of my way,” Reeve growled, trying to push his way past.
One of the bluecoats–a brick wall with a thick beard–gave a menacing laugh. “You mad, gutterboy? Putting your hands on me?”
Reeve looked small compared to the two of them. Small maybe, Celia thought, but not the least bit afraid. Perturbed, more like. Without warning, the little man launched himself at the bigger of the two bluecoats, biting and clawing at his face. The bluecoat toppled over, crashing hard onto the cobblestone and Reeve went with him, clawing and scraping all the while. The unexpected savagery shocked all present–including the other bluecoat, who was late to help his fellow. It looked as if Reeve might overpower the two larger men–but a bluecoat always has numbers on Volgstadt’s streets. A sea of union blues crashed into the fray from all around, kicking and stomping savagely. Celia watched unable to look away, until one of the bluecoats emerged, covered in blood and clutching at his face. His mouth was torn open at the cheek, leaving teeth and gums exposed in a grin and one eye hung loose from its socket.
What happened next, Celia could not say. She turned and fled, afraid the little man might somehow follow.