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soldiers didn’t know that, and the third one spent valuable seconds trying to free his battle axe.
    Vekal clambered over the tangle of the wounded to land the dagger into the man’s head and through his skull, felling him without the man even swinging a single blow. That left just the entangled, and the crippled.
    “KILL! KILL!” The demon was raging in him, but the dagger wouldn’t free itself from the dead soldier’s forehead. So he turned to the entangled soldier, now hopping up free, Vekal’s bare hands reaching for his throat and eyes.
    When Vekal and the demon were done, he blinked to find his forearms covered in blood, with sweat and bile and spit running down his shirt. There were three dead Menaali soldiers lying around him, and they looked as though they had been butchered.
    “What have I done?” he said, horrified.
    “What did you do?” t he demon hissed with cruel laughter. “You should thank me, Sin Eater! I saved us both from death. Maybe you should be asking yourself why you helped that girl, betraying your own people.”
    “And freeing you in the process, don’t forget,” Vekal thought to add, wiping his arms and then giving up. It was too much blood. Instead he took the least-ruined cloak of all of the Menaali and draped it over his form. With any luck, maybe a passing stranger would mistake him for a particularly young or drunk soldier.
    “Free? You call this free?” The demon laughed. “Stuck with a whelp of a Sin Eater, desperate to do good in the world and help people on their way to heaven. Ha! Spare me your idiocies, please. At least you have some weapons training, and some skills, but I should have been in the father. Think what I could have done with an army!”
    “Enough. Well, we’re both going to the next life if we don’t find a way out of here…” Vekal was saying, as he stooped to pick up one of the axes and a pouch of Menaali coins, and ran down the corridor.
    ***
    He knew the Tower, better than any of those still alive here, but it was still disorienting, and still difficult. The soldiers were everywhere, and twice he had to slump against the doorways, pretending to be drunk or passed out. If the bodies had been discovered, or if the War Chief had called for his capture and return, no sound reached his ears.
    “Dal Grehb will just be happy he has his beloved daughter back, I’m sure.” The demon sighed melodramatically. “It’s a weakness, you know. Family.”
    “No, it’s not. You have no idea what you are talking about, fiend,” Vekal muttered, popping his head from behind a wall to see the gaggle of guards drunken and laughing over more bodies of his fellows in the canteen.
    “Of course I do. Do you not think that the Undying have family? I had shade-brothers and sisters who grew beside me in the long night, spectral family that nurtured me and ate of the same hopes and dreams together. That is why I came here, human. A family only wants to hold you back, just as the bodies of your family are holding you back from what must be done!”
    “And what is that, imp?” Vekal breathed.
    “You must burn the tower down, of course! Revenge yourself against those who attacked your home! Kill all of your enemies at once!” t he demon whispered in his ear, but the boy who had been silent for so long, and now the man who was trained in the arts of silence, only smiled but said nothing.
    “Well? Where are the wine cellars? The barrels of pitch? How can we barricade the doors?” The demon was seething.
    “You have either been a long time without practice at enticing people to do evil, spirit, or else you had not thought of who you are in. I am a Sin Eater. I am used to hearing people’s most terrible thoughts. Of course I am not going to burn the Tower down. There is an innocent child in here—the one that you occupied!”
    “Pfagh! Coward!” t he demon said, disgusted, as Vekal chose the other direction to run in, towards the water cellars and the irrigation