The carriage ride was lohan I expected. I almost didn’t notice because of the horrendous monstrosity Tagashin insisted on wearing.

  “I am not getting spotted alongside you with that on your head,” I said, pointing at the pink top hat perched atop her. “Or any of the rest of it, to be pletely ho. Some poor carriage driver is going to gn here as they pass by and crash after seeing what you’re wearing.”

  She’d ged into her Rebecca Barnes disguise by now, wearing that same bzingly pink top hat, a trim of white fur running on top of the hat’s brim. Worse, she’d jured up an evening suit in the same colors.

  “Worried about the disruption I’ll cause to society, venturing out like this?” she asked me, batting her eyeshes.

  “I couldn’t care less about society,” I replied. “Wearing explicitly male clothing when you aren’t of what’s sidered lower csses? Good, do it. Wearing bright pink? Not my favorite, but I have some pieces with it. Doing both, and enough of it that you’re practically a bea drawing every eye to you? While I’m going to be o you? Definitely not.”

  “A,” she pouted. “You’re no fun Malvia.”

  “We’re not doing fun,” I pointed out. “We’re going to where a diabolist murdered a priest. As the only one upon us stuck with horns, hooves, and tail, I would prefer not having attention drawn to me.”

  Hells knew crowds had tried tearing me apart for much lesser imagined crimes.

  “Fair, fair,” Tagashin said with a sigh, her clothes turning a muted brown and bck, but the top hat stayed the same color.

  I stared at it pointedly.

  “Uggh. Fine.”

  While Tagashin gmoured the rest of her outfit, I looked outside the carriage and frowhis was Belton, further out from the city’s beati, and we were making very good time, precisely because it was further out from the city’s heart. Not quite one of the growing parts of the city anymore, still too o gain any fvor like the older districts.

  “Belton?” I said, pulling my head ba as further up the street someoiced my horns and screamed shrilly. “The murder happened ion?”

  More screams. Not shog, my kind didn’t normally go to Belton. Or were permitted ion, even after the lessening on Infernal movemeris.

  The ade even more sehese people probably wouldn’t know the differeween an Infernal and an actual devil to begin with. Hells, Infernals looked more like eople expected devils to be than many actual devils themselves.

  I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. This was feeling too close to what I’d experienced before. People deliberately doing crimes to provoke the masses against Infernals. And a church, although a different ohan before. Tarver didn’t teach his disciples to hate Infernals.

  They decided on that themselves.

  ***

  Most of Belton was rows of homes, f what some had called the suburbs, although a different kind than what it had meant in the past. Now the poor were in the ter of the city, and the more wealthy were moving to the outside, although those living there still worked iy itself.

  It wasn’t all homes though. They had their churches, local businesses, watch stations, gover buildings, and even their own fire insuranpany and station.

  This had been one once, an interse that had once tained a church of Tarver, some shops, and a few more fanes.

  Had. You could trace the path of age with your eyes.

  It started at the churtrance.

  Two heavy wooden doors had once blocked that off. One of them had been snapped in half, part of it hanging loosely from the frame. The other was halfway dowreets, embedded in the sed story of a butcher’s shop.

  The path of destru traveled dowreets, mp-posts torn from the ground, the cobbles of the road torn up, a smashed apart wagon, the entire front half of a shop caved in. And the bodies.

  White sheets covered the bodies, hiding them from view. Most of them were already stained red in part, crimson soaking through the fabric. They’d been bleeding for a while, lohan a body should.

  The white sheets hid the worse, but they couldn’t hide it all. A multicolored pool of blood filled the cracks and low points between stohe usual red twisted bd blue by the mohat had rampaged through.

  A statue of the god Tarver y at the end of the street, shattered into ks. Branch-like vines of red and bck protruded from the ks, most of them still wriggling uselessly. Its head was mostly intact, the god’s usual carefree expression ed into a scowling demon’s face, fanged jaws stained with blood, horns pushing out of its forehead made of red stone in trast to the statue’s marble. Bck liquid was streaming from around the base of the horns, p onto the cobbles below.

  A k of someone’s head y in the jaws, and they tio slowly mash on it, staring in hatred at those of us it couldn’t attack.

  Watch officers had it cordoned off, and many mages were weaving walls of are energy that closed off the Infernally taiatue from the rest of the world. ks of the statues spread around the street were simirly separated.

  And beyond that was the crowd, a grim-faced, whispering assortment of residents staring fearfully at their once-blessed church. I shrank ba my seat as the carriage worked its way through them.

  To my m dread, I realized the shattered statue blocked the path further dowreet. We’d have to get out only a short distance past the loose picket line of Watch.

  A dozen uniformed officers, enough to keep an angry crowd from crossing the line when they didn’t have an easy target for their ire. They were about to. The carriage came to a halt. I opehe door, and stepped down.

  The hooded cloak could only do so much. The murmurs of the crowd picked up as I stepped off the carriage.

  “Devil-”

  “’t be. They wouldn’t let one iy.”

  “Infernal, it must be-”

  “Just as bad as devils, and twice as sly, did you hear about how they used shape-gers to-”

  I hurried up the street, but I could hear the sound of feet on the cobble. Watch officers yelled warnings, but I knew what was going on as I passed the shattered statue remnants. Members of the Watch looked at me with rese, and I couldn’t bme them. If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be a ce of the crowd breaking into a crime se that had a good ce of killing them.

  I turned around, seeing that the crowd had advao the loose picket of the Watch, and was threatening to spill past towards me. My tainted hand scrambled inside my pocket, feeling for a familiar symbol. My focus. Would a dispy of diabolism only make them angrier or scare them away?

  I might have to gamble those dice, as a heavyset man in a suit, eyes red fr, broke through, yelling ily about his wife.

  A pink Infernal in obnoxious suit and top hat of the same color came out of nowhere, tripping him and lifting his money purse.

  “Sorry,” she said to the fallen man. “But iween your pathetic moaning and your foul taste in clothes, I’ve decided you no longer need your wallet.”

  And then she was in among the crowd, snatg and weaving before they knew what hit them.

  People couldn’t look away, whether it was the thievery, the insults, or just the way she was dressed. An outfit that would cause offense and spectacle even more among the good people of Belton than elsewhere iy. And also a very direew avenue for their ire that didn’t involve fighting the City Watch.

  Some of them pursued, trying to catch her only for her to always be just out of reach. She vanished down a side street, half the crowd cursing and chasing after her to recim their wallets.

  The rest weren’t enough to push the Watch, and were also caught between deg what Infernal to chase.

  That stupid Kitsune, I thought with a small smile. Okay, good work Tagashin, and thank you.

  I wondered briefly if she was going to return the wallets as I walked further dowreet. While I walked, I looked at the Church.

  It had been made of white marble. Had, because now lines of red and bck crawled all over it like veins, tainted by a siess spreading from them. Part of the wall had fallen off, revealing ks inside colored the same.

  Ugly. It probably wouldn’t look aer iral, but I focused, blinking my eyes while fog on the effect.

  Simplest spell to lear one, in my opinion, although it roviding a rather nasty sight.

  Churches were always crowded in little wisps and minor spirits associated with that deity, usually keeping a wate to make sure I did nothing untoward. Chuchs themselves usually were painful to look at, none more so than those of Halspus which could be blind to an unprepared eye.

  All of that was goh this churot a hint of a spirit or wisp, not a little of shio its structure. Instead, red and bck thorns covered it, crawling over the walls and through the windows. Parts of the walls bulged, something inside pressing against the stone, while the wounds where the thorns emerged bled. Part of the astral stone broke, revealing a bulgirying to push its way out.

  This was going to need purification, if only so nothing else emerged ter to put the statue that had rampaged earlier to shame.

  Tagashin, still disguised as Barnes but in a much less eous outfit, stepped o me, keeping pace as I tinued dowreet.

  “It was a clever bit of work,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Hrrm?” she cocked her head. “What was that I heard on the errant breeze? Mayhap a little sign of appreciation for the humble helper?”

  My lips quirked a little. Strahis sudden kindness. I’d not expected it after we first met. Perhaps Intelligence had loosehe leash around her neck?

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re wele.”

  “We’re w with the Wat this one?” I asked Tagashin.

  I’d only sulted on two cases sihe Shape-ger affair, both rather mundane in parison ones where Voltar needed me to rus to firm his already formed suspis. It was far more enjoyable than my first experience, if only because I wasn’t the direct subject of being puppetered around by the mastermind. Also Voltar made for a much better Voltar than Tagashin ever had, being a lot less of a shit-stirrer thasuné was. Both had been at the behest of private ts, my services entirely as a tractor.

  “Never just the Watch,” Tagashin said. “Intelligence pulls the strings here, and while their involvement will never be mentioned-“

  “-all will assume it heless,” I finished quietly for her.

  Seemed natural that they’d take an i. Diabolism atta the middle of the capital? No matter how small, that would attratelligence’s eye. The empire seldom fot an old foe, and a possible resurgence of them even as its empress directed them to make plenty of new ones.

  The blood, I could tell with a brief peering into the are, was i. Probably some diabolic tainting, but it wasn’t traveling through the blood into the stoill, I did my best to avoid it. Further Diabolism was more likely to just twist me instead of directly harm me like it would others, but after the little ges I’d caught just burning a small hole in the Imperial Archives? I did not want to let anymore in.

  People already wanted me dead on sight as is. Hells help me if I grew wings.

  Speaking of the Hells helping me, a tall woman whose skin appeared carved out of solid stone waited by the entrao the church, the badge of a Watch captain, who glowered at the both of us as roached.

  “Miss Harrow,” she said gruffly, scowl deepening. “e to view your handiwork?”

  Captain Maria Walston, ah elemental blood. She did not like me. And unlike Malstein, who I could uand, her dislike stemmed entirely from me not being shoved inside a cell for past crimes.

  Holy, it’s very unreasonable.

  “I was in bed,” I said. “As I’m sure Intelligence tell you, which is holy more personally disturbing than any amount of hostility you give me Captain.”

  I wasn’t even lying. I’d started ging uhe covers.

  “Grisly sight inside?”

  Her grizzled expression faltered a little. “You get used to things in this city. ’t even say this is the worse. But I don’t bme those who’ve left heaving their breakfast onto the stones.”

  Joy. A messily murdered priest, probably beloved by his unity, done in with devil magic.

  It probably hadn’t even been an Infernal who’d do. It’s not like you o be oo use Diabolism.

  “No special greeting for me, Captain? You wound my poor little heart.”

  “Shut up, Barnes.”

  “Shut up, Barnes.”

  Well, I guess she liked me enough to add ‘miss’ in front of my name. Didn’t really feel like an honor when she spat it out with the same forceful dislike as my name.

  I walked through the broken doors, into a churerated and broken.

  Most of the furniture was gone, probably part of the ash coating the floor. Cracks ionework separated the floor into ks, the rgest over by the Altar, where Voltar and Dawes stood.

  A profane mockery hung from the altar. oral robes with the torn symbol of a lute embzoned on the front, a twisted hybrid of human and goat had beeed into the altar’s front.

  The pained face had horns poking from the skull, bone poking through, bits of skin carried with it, and blood leaking around the rims of both. Above, hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving a patchwork of wispy brown hair and red, irritated skin, ridges f. The eyes had been closed.

  Lower, the face was on its way to a goat’s, but only on one side, skin stretched tight over an unfamiliar shape, boting so hard it threateo break loose. Flesh hung loosely from the bone in most spots.

  One hand was half-formed into a hoof, bits of keratin poking out of skin, dried blood where they had pushed through skin. The other hand had sprouted more fingers instead, poking out between the existing fingers, out of knuckles, out of the palm, a chaotic jumble of digits. Strangely, they had been pressed up against his chest crossing each other.

  A sed face ushing its way out from his colrbone, skeletal but covered in red skin drawn taut over bone. Snarling, in its final moments of life it had started biting into the flesh of his shoulder.

  Beautiful, The Imp whispered in my ear.

  I paused, but for ohe creature did not suggest eating the dead body, so it must be rather taken with the…thing on dispy in front of us.

  “From a certain point of view,” I whispered sarcastically.

  Voltar raised an eyebrow, but no one else seemed to have noticed.

  “Miss Harrow, Miss Barnes, gd for you to join us. I’ll assume you are responsible for the noises outside?”

  “The crowd saw what I was and were not too happy about it,” I answered him. “Miss Barook care of it. I’d like to note for ime you could just arrange for the carriage to take us all the way here?”

  “We thought it would,” Dawes assured me. “Tensions are high enough that we wouldn’t want to risk it.”

  Risk causing a riot or risk my safety? Which had he meant? I squelched that uncharitable thought. Dawes had been nothing but pleasant to me, or as pleasant as he could be.

  “It’s fine. No injuries to ahat I know of.” Tagashin might have caused a few. “Our murder victim I assume?”

  “Father Albert Reginald, a priest of Tarver,” Voltar said. “Found this m, st seen alive the night before. Murdered by Diabolism, with further deaths due to the effects of the casting, although for now I believe those to just be colteral. Motive unknowhod obvious on the surface but of course I wa you in to help with that. Speaking of, if I could have everyone’s attention?”

  Various Watch Officers who had been going through the rubble came to attention, much to Waltson’s displeasure as she snorted. Not happy having her authority challenged.

  “Before we begin examining the corpse, we should listen to our expert on Diabolism,” Voltar said. “Miss Harrow?”

  Expert nothing. I was still learning and my book knowledge has not expanded much beyond what Versalicci allowed. Lessons from the Imp and proscribed books from Intelligence could only help so much.

  “First, no skin-on-skin tact,” I said. “In fact, skin on anything is to be avoided if at all possible. It’s unlikely everything in here is a vector to corruption, but it’s still a possibility. I’ll be a little more resistant, but not by much. I’ll test the body as the first part of my examination.”

  “Anything besides basic safety measures everyone should know?” Walton asked sardonically.

  “There is always someone,” I said, and from a few expressions among the gathered Watch, the reminder had been needed. “Needless to say, I suggest everyone involved get a blessing from a priest of their choi a sanctified church as soon as they are able. Low levels of diabolic corruptio noticeably harmful at first but cause health issues even decades ter. But, more importantly, they make it easier for a Diabolist to cast spells on you.”

  Ohe Diabolic had its hooks into you, short the intervention of the Divi only made it easier for the Diabolic to pull on you. Burning from the inside was one of the less insidious tricks. trol you, you, cast spells through you. I idly tapped my focus twice with my nail, and I felt a pool from quite a few people in this room. Well, the murderer probably wasn’t here.

  “We should have a priest on hand,” I tinued. “I don’t suppose there was more than one for this church?”

  “Just his apprentice,” Waltson said. “Poor ss had gone home at his insistence, e back to open the doors for the people only to find this. Which is wheatues came alive. Pirl’s with some of my ds and sses, barely speaking.”

  “She survived?” Surprising. Divine prote would help against diabolic corruption, but not the animated statue tearing a limb or head off.

  “She fled inside a room that mao not be unblessed by the Diabolism that killed Father Reginald,” Voltar said. “We found her outside of it, the door locked, and no key.”

  Ah. A room whose divine protes had been held under a diabolic assault that deblesed a church, and we now could not get inside?

  “Anyone found the key yet?” I asked.

  “No, and the Church has representatives due to arrive at any time. Speaking of them, Miss Barnes, if you would-“

  Tagashin had already disappeared, and while most of the Watch did a double take at where the Kitsune had stood o me just a sed ago, Voltar simply looked tired.

  “I have asked the Watch to dey them but-”

  “Until Imperial Intelliges people down here willing to piss off the church’s themselves, our stan this is not to get the collected religions pissed at us,” Waltson said. “Or at least the dozen biggest. I got my officers pig this pce apart for that key, but if the priests get here first and say we ’t open that room, we ’t open it.”

  “An unfortunate reality. Miss Harrow, you offer any expnation for the state of Father Reginald?”

  “There’s rituals to vert someoo a devil,” I said. “But they aren’t easy, they aren’t fast, and doing them on your own by hand is essentially doomed to failure. Devils try to make them as easy as possible so fools give them pawns in this world, but there’s only so much simplification you do to turn someoo something else without killing them.”

  You are correct, but the point of those rituals is to have a living Devil at the end. If instead, one wao simply inflict a painful death on the partit, and didn’t care about the limitations involved.

  I nodded slightly. “If yoal is murder, starting it manually with your hands would cause a painful death. But it’s ineffit.”

  “Ineffit?” Walton asked, trying and failing to look at the priest’s corpse directly. “What, you just nail a bolt of devilish fire or something to their heads instead?”

  “Pretty much,” I said evenly. “This, this is far too much power, far too hard to trol, and your trol over it is limited. Hence why the spillover was so bad in this case. Maybe a tenth of what the caster utting in the spell actually went towards ging the priest, and the rest spread into the church. Hence why the church is desecrated, and why what the corruption made was so powerful.”

  “If not for efficy, a different reason then,” Voltar said, pulling back from the body. “A message in the desecrated priest, but also something else. Wiping as much evidence aossible. We could pick through this for days and not find everything and much of what we could have found may be wiped away. Is there a way to trol how corruption is expressed, Miss Harrow?”

  I kept a scowl off my face. He could not know what discussions I’d made with the Imp.

  “There are,” I said. “I’d be hesitant to attribute all of the destru to that. Could just spray hellfire, hells, ur fire around for a simir effect. However trolling the corruption while using su unstable method would be hard. Suicidal even.”

  “The goat features,” Voltar noted. “There is some symbology to that, isn’t there?”

  I didn’t o sult the Imp to ahat. “Basic, but yes. There are animals generally associated with the Seven Sins and they’re associated with devils, although they’re aremely imperfect method of s devils. Not all devils associate with what we call a sin, there’s quite a few that express multiple animal traits, some that express them in a different category, and no one has ever mao fully icle everything that lurks, crawls, or skitters in the Infernal Pnes.”

  “But there is a general trend?” Voltar reiterated.

  “There is,” I said, looking at the corpse. “Non-magical creatures. Pigs and rats are gluttons. Snakes and fish are envious. Wolves are wrathful, cats are prideful. Lust is cimed by is and Sloth by cows. And goats? Greed.”

  Walston looked around the remnants of the humble little church. “Seems a mighty small posting freedy fellow.”

  “It doesn’t have to be greed for material things specifically,” Voltar noted. “Nor even greed he actually had. It could be a greed only the murderer perceived.”

  “Assuming there’s a meaning at all,” I said. “Could be he just made a deal with a demon of that sin.”

  While we talked I tested the corpse. I didn’t eveo cast Diabolism, an artifact attuo it would prove suffit. I held my focus pressed against the dead priest’s forehead for ten seds, brag myself in case any lingering Diabolism reacted.

  Nothing.

  “Corpse is . The Diabolism dissipated surprisingly fast, and before you ask I couldn’t begin to theorize why there’s no in his body.”

  “Could it be the are trying to imitate the Diabolic?” Dawes asked me, and everyouro face him, and he shied away some from the sudden attention. “Not that I am an expert iter, my iions with bodies are purely on the mundane scale. But all of this, well it screams the Diaboli a city where people who practice are quite limited even if we include…alternative sources of Diabolists.”

  My eyes narrowed. Intelligence’s little grouping of Diabolists I was well aware of existing, being part of it even if I didn’t know the other members. But sources made it clear he meant more than just them and whht be hiding their magic.

  “A good thought doctor,” Voltar said, stepping closer to the corpse. “Miss Harrow of course test the corpse to determine what energies remain, but more importantly, it ot be anything but the Diabolic. Miss Harrow?”

  Why exactly did he wao expin? He clearly khe reason why, so why keep on askihis hadn’t happened iwo previous cases. Still, he seemed more ied in examining the corpse, so I started to expin.

  “Divine and Diaboli’t mix well, but that’s not the reason,” I said. Less Watch around us now, so I could be a little more open. “Are magic, the various fields, utilizes existing magical phenomena and energy to cast spells or make entments. Sorcery taps into wild magic, pockets of it scattered about that attach themselves to people. Are magic is a formu to alter the world. I biosculpt using an ented set of tools that let me trol the cells that make up our bodies. I do alchemy by mixing pnts, chemicals, and animal parts that already have existing magical properties. Things that already exist in this world.”

  “Some magical creatures e from pot in the world,” Watson akitention off her carefully searg many.

  “Minor nitpioted, Captain. Some creatures don’t. Generally, they do, however, uhe third type of magic.”

  I gestured at the profanely desecrated body and altar.

  “The Diabolid the Divine,” I said. “Along with other branches of magic associated with specific powerful entities or pces, draw from them instead. All magic of this kind es from an outside source. Diabolism specifically, will have three sources. Firstly, you either e from this pne or cim dest from it, and this gives you an inborn ability for it. For dest, this is mostly Infernals of the types reized by the Empire, and lineage is a factor on how much of it you el.”

  How I gaihe ability to el Diabolism, and since I cimed lineage directly from a Duke of Hell, quite a powerful amount.

  “Sed is making deals with the entities for the ability to el power. You make a deal, pay a cost, a something iurn. Maybe a oime trade, many multiple times, depending on the prid who you make the deal with.”

  This was how most non-Infernals gaihe ability to practice diabolism.

  “Thirdly, and most rare, some non-infernals are born with an innate e, although these are the most dangerous. They aren’t of Infernal dest so their bodies aren’t adapted for it, nor do they have the knowledge or the third-party help of the devils they make deals with. And they tend to get their powers young. They tend to die young.”

  “Doesn’t ahe doctor’s question though,” Waltson said, crossing her arms.

  “Getting to that,” I said. “Divine magic is of a simir nature, although pulling from a god instead. Specifically, in this case, a blessing directly from a god to sanctify his church.”

  No interruptions now as the implications of that hit.

  “Are magi’t-”

  “No. It do a lot of things, but directly undo the effects of a deity’s called upon magic? Of this magnitude? No. Not any known are caster. So either we are dealing with a hitherto unknown caster of high power, or-”

  “-an Infernal caster drawing on a source capable of bating a deity,” Voltar said. “Mind you, not every church’s blessing is made equal, but even the most minor ones are quite powerful by mortal standards. Miss Harrow, for parison's sake, could you do that?”

  “No,” I said, then cocked my head as the Imp provided a corre along with an insult. “Eventually maybe, with enough training. But right now? Definitely not. And it wasn’t even an intended effect, just a side effect of the actual spell, transf the priest.”

  The entire room was silent, evech officers who had halted their work. Everyone except Voltar, who tinued examining the corpse.

  “No defensive wounds,” Voltar said, examining what non-ged fihe priest had on his hands. “Add to that the need for the murderer to touch the priest to begiransformation, and how powerful divine Magic typically is against Diabolic ws.”

  “That’s more Halspus specifically,” I noted. “He’s the one whose magic disrupts aroys Diabolism the best.”

  Activity resumed, probably to help take minds off of what I’d just stated. Voltar put the hand ba pce, frowning.

  “Hands were in this position and eyes were close when the body was found. Indicates a degree of empathy.”

  “Empathy?” I asked. “He chose a very painful method of death to then show empathy.”

  “Yes, but not unheard of,” Voltar said. “Still, too early to tell.”

  He left the body, walking across the floor. Most of the floor was covered in scorch marks, except for one piece that had been reaseembled by Watch Hands. Two sets of bootprints in the form of unscorched fl.

  “What is left of the floor indicates that the two were fag each other when the initial bst of corruption began. From the fact that Father Reginald’s back is less corrupted than his front, we surmise that the attack was from his front. The picture being painted is most iing.”

  I wasn’t slow oake, but Dawes was a little faster in artig what Voltar was suggesting. “He knew his attacker. Trusted him even.”

  “Trust might be a strong word,” I said. “fident in being unharmed perhaps.”

  “N Miss Harrow, but I think if he’d been more prepared we would be dealing with more of a fight. Still a possibility. Dr. Dawes, Ms. Harrow, which of you would like to-”

  Tagashin was baext to me, looking like she had never eve. “Priests are on their way. Captain’s officers are slowing them down but they got a very loud, very shouty one in the front who no one wants to cross.”

  “Ah,” said Voltar, taking her sudden appearan stride. “Yes, I think I know whies these are. Miss Harrow, prepare yourself.”

  I stared at the detective unprehendingly. Prepare myself for riests? I doubt they’d be happy about me being in here, but still no need for a warning.

  Oh wait. Hells no.

  “What would he even be doing here?” I hissed. “What aren’t you telling me Voltar?”

  I could hear voiow, footsteps ing closer. I’d kept the sculpts on my ears, far too useful to ever undo. Many voices. One very familiar voice as they argued with the Watch at the wrecks of the doors.

  Those swung open, an assortment of priests barging their way inside over the protests of the Watch guards. Including Gregory Montague.