Maricica’s wings carried her through the trees and branches, weaving around the girls, her fingers tracing the patterns on the length of wing that had caught on trees and branches and looped in a loose circle around the clearing. She laughed softly.
“That’s a lot of mays and other weasel words, Maricica!” Verona called up and out. “Innocent of what charges?”
Maricica smiled.
“No, screw this!” Liberty said. “You invited me, you wanted my expertise-”
“I can tell you that I had no part in the Carmine Murder. I know you’ve gone to the Aurum Coil, so he can mediate this dispute and that he is on his way here, and I expect little to come of it, for I am not the culprit you’re looking for, I have no part in this conspiracy. It’s my understanding that by focusing on me you’re allowing the real culprits to escape.”
“Fuck this. Flopsy, get my orange bag,” Liberty said.
A loathsome, dense little lump of a goblin with jowls and two ragged rabbit-like ears hurried off into the woods.
“What’s this ‘my understanding” crap?” Lucy asked.
Maricica’s face peered down through the branches, her narrow eyes moving left and right to note the goblins making their way through the trees. She smiled. “When you live as long as I do, you realize there are few straight answers to be had, and there are very few certainties. Our understanding is the only objective thing we can truly know. Any assertion on other grounds is a weapon to be used against us, and you girls seem ready to use weapons.”
The floppy-eared goblin who seemed to exist as a parody of the nimble rabbit kicked at Maricica’s wing until he’d rumpled it enough to shove his way under, then stomped his way through and past, letting a few more goblins in in the process. The other goblins approached the three girls and scaled the trees.
“That seems like a dangerous-” Lucy started.
“Stop, oh god, if I’d known I was being invited here to be tortured I would’ve gone harder on asking Avery for her brother’s number.”
“You’ve never even seen my brother, have you?” Avery asked, annoyed.
Maricica watched some of the goblins get settled. The goblin Verona had named perched on a branch near ground level, beside Tatty, wheezing with breath rattling at the end of each wheeze. He was covered in scratches, many deep, his singular eye was bloodshot, with a scratch tracing along the side, notching the nearby eyelid. He seemed unwilling to move the eye itself, as a result, and kept his gaze focused down and to the side, most of his attention on breathing properly. Tatty was in similar straits, and appeared dressed in something that wasn’t her own dangling breasts woven together, because she’d swathed much of her body in bandage. Doglick and Bangnut were a bit less battle-damaged.
One problem with goblins was that they stole the show. Liberty was trying to seize the floor and get her point across, and that would be an unwelcome twist. Manageable, but unwelcome.
Maricica circled lazily around them, giving goblins a wide berth, lest she give one a chance to interfere with her on any level. Smaller fairy flew and flitted alongside her, circling above and around, touching her shoulder, her hair.
“You’re so unnecessarily hostile, you’ve come ready for battle. A small army at your disposal. Is it your hope to use violence to make up for your deficiency in words?”
“Not violence, that would violate oaths,” Lucy responded.
“Stop answering her!” Liberty raised her voice.
“Are you an expert, goblin queen?”
“Goblin raider princess or you can call me Liberty, thank you, and no, but I’ve taken a class and I’m not a total idiot. We got some lessons on dealing with you.”
“Me specifically?”
“Are you an idiot?” Liberty retorted. She adopted a baby voice. “Who’s a little idiot, who doesn’t understand I’m talking about Faerie in general? Is it you? Are you the idiot?”
Goblins jeered and joined in.
“Are we ignoring the fact I’ve clearly stated my innocence? Would you call me forsworn?”
“I’m going over the wording in my head,” Verona said.
“Would you like me to rephrase? The only reason you have to accost me is your own misconception over the situation. You’re making a mistake.”
“Now I really think that she did it,” Liberty said. “I wasn’t that invested before but- hey, Flopsy. Good lad.”
The chunky little goblin stomp-ran his way to Liberty, and she bent her knees as he collided with her leg, so he wouldn’t bowl her over He pushed the bag into her hand, and she mussed up the fur on top of his head, and his ears.
“Good lad, good boy.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Lucy said.
“Faerie,” Liberty told her, reaching into her bag. She pulled out a rubber toy resembling a chicken, with a can shoved up its behind. She shoved it up toward Maricica’s face. “That’s a Faerie, see? We came in with a battle plan and now you’re letting her talk and you’re confused. I know this is your turf, but can you let me call the shots?”
“Tempted,” Avery said, wearing the wolf mask.
Verona was quiet. Instead, she put on the snake’s mask, tying it on with ribbons before fixing her hair in place, casually noting the goblins that joined the fray. Maricica watched Verona’s eyes for a moment, and saw that she couldn’t see as easily with the mask on, couldn’t see all the goblins, and didn’t seem to mind that she was missing something else. Her shapechanging occupied her thoughts.
Lucy was waiting to put hers on. Interesting.
“I hope you girls realize that you lose karmic grounding by allowing this Liberty to-”
Liberty thrust the toy chicken into the air. The can elicited a violent, loud noise, like a tuneless horn, and the sound was filtered through the chicken. The result was a blare fit for the trumpets of those Abyssal armies that fought to co-opt and capture sections of other unearthly realms. Maricica covered her ears.
A goblin leaped off a branch to try to catch a stunned fairy of the Fall Below out of the air. It missed and caught another branch.
Maricica retreated upward, toward higher branches, glaring down at Liberty.
“This is crude bullying. Shall we talk again when you’re more-”
Liberty pointed the toy skyward once again.
“It’s okay,” Avery said.
“Amicable. When you’re more amicable.”
Avery put her hand out, and Doglick bounded toward her. He clearly wasn’t what Avery had expected. She caught him with both hands, and he became a crossbow with a bear trap attached to the bow. No, a harpoon, the cord was tongue. Animating, he snapped the bear trap shut three times in quick succession, and the metal teeth closed just barely ahead of the harpoon’s barbed tip.
She heaved him to one side, and he became goblin again, rolling over a few times, before Liberty stopped him with foot on ground, toes raised. Tatty, covered in scratches, followed up. Avery caught the goblin, who became a weapon.
Interwoven chains forming a multi-headed whip.
“If you’re not open to discussion, I have little reason to stay, if this will be my treatment.”
A charade. The little reasons to stay were important ones.
Avery unfurled the whip, aiming not up at Faerie or fairy, but at the wing to the side, that was enveloping the area. Tendrils of whip covered in small barbs grabbed onto the material and nearby branches, every single length of chain finding a different target. Avery planted her feet.
“And now I have small reason. I could force your hand and see if you’re willing to harm me when I’ve stated my innocence. That would go worse for you than for me.”
“Maricica,” Verona said. “Can you elaborate? What’s your understanding of what’s going on?”
“I’m hitting the chicken horn if you start prevaricating or derailing,” Liberty said.
Was there a way to deal with her? If there was, it wasn’t immediate. No, other things first.
Maricica kept her distance from Lis, who wore the guise of a practitioner the girls’ age in a raven mask. The two of them made brief eye contact when the girls weren’t looking.
Maricica smiled.
“Based on my understanding of the current situation, Rook and Miss would see every human in Kennet and every practitioner in the region eliminated. You have been manipulated by them, and the Carmine Murder is a pretext for furthering these plans and manipulations.”
“I don’t even know those people and I’m thinking B.S.,” Liberty said.
“Did you have anything to do with the creation of the Choir?” Lucy asked.
“I did not. I had some small benefit from them being active, but the Choir was something John set in motion.”
Not graceful, that, but-
“That I know is bull,” Lucy stepped up. Lucy, who was so fond of John, now heated. The mention of John did serve to agitate Lucy, and upsetting the easily agitated was as much a part of diplomacy as breathing air was a part of human biology.
“I think you’re saying that because John had to shoot Yalda, but that’s not really-”
Liberty hit the damnable horn once again.
If I must destroy them to protect myself, then I’ll destroy you too, detestable girl, Maricica thought.
She avoided a reaching goblin claw, settling on a branch.
She had this well in hand.
She woke to the droplets falling on her brow. She opened long-lashed eyes. Above her, an apparatus of scales, blades, and chains caught the run-off of a gutter. The midnight rain was channeled into a stream that met a blade, severing the parts of the water that were touched by the moonlight from the parts that weren’t. The sparkling moon-water was captured in one of the bowls of a scale, which grew heavy, dropping, touching another blade, and tilting, emptying into the next set of blades.
Sparkle cut from glow, pale light from prismed multicolored light. Faint droplets of that multicolored light bounced out of the bowl of the scale that it fell into, and soared about twenty feet down to bead her wings, soaking in.
Droplets of darkness traveled similar routes, and settled on a different body. Fae but not human or human-like. Bristle-covered limbs stuck to shadow, found alignment with a pale, slender arm. Of the bristle-limb and the human limb, one was an illusion, the other real. Both were illusions. Both were real.
She had no clear memories, but the rain held some faint memory of the shapes of places it had been, images it had reflected, and that was shared with her. Images in her mind so faint that if they were places they might take a day to travel there. Here, glamour was heavy in the air but areas had been neglected. She had an instinctive sense that someone had once taken care of this place, carefully balancing the scales, keeping the bowls clean and chains oiled, so no droplets would bounce out. Someone had once kept it free of dust.
She wore the dust heavy on her wings, and that dust changed the color, muting them. Droplets of liquid traced the lines of the side of her face, beaded her lashes like stars in the night sky, and traced the line of her body, breast, hips, and legs. Traced the line of jagged limbs and mandibles, of eyes like smooth onyx stones. When she stretched it was for the first time and she made sure it was a stretch to be the envy of all lesser creatures, it was a body of coiled up and folded limbs stretching its parts out to their full length.
Patterns in wood or clouds might get a glance, a pointed finger from a dull child who declared its resemblance to a thing, but in a place like this everything was sharper, more beautiful. Something that formed the suggestion of a shape in another place was a reality of form once clarified enough by this blade-sharp environment. Her form. Her forms. Illusion and illusion, illusion and real, real and real.
She stood, fingers combing damp hair, preening mandibles. Cold water with the light cut from it trickled down onto her, the numbing tracing of icewater without ice informing her of what her shape was by the paths traveled by those droplets. She didn’t look at her arms or legs, for that would be too easy, but instead let this place tell her who she was and who she would be by the way it introduced her to the environment. She rearranged her wings. She sorted out the two forms into one.
One body for the light, and one for herself alone.
She inhaled, and the smells that flooded her mind all rushed to find their homes and places in her understanding. Food smells, unimportant, people smells, perfumes, spices, and intoxicants, still somewhat unimportant.
More important: a heavy scent of fear. A hint of blood, a kiss of sweat, a cornucopia of different tears that chased one step after secure walls and wooden barriers. If that was how the people here lived, she knew that if she had any tears to shed, they would have to happen behind secure cover, so others might not see even if they knew by way of palates like hers.
The fear here had so little to do with blood or sweat. The danger here wasn’t physical. The danger here was perfume.
The light shifted, and she saw the suggestion of a form sharpened to something else. A boy.
She crawled, so she might stay low and out of sight, and crawled until she was above his curled up naked form. Dark haired, long-lashed, long-haired, long-limbed. She brought her face close to his and inhaled as he exhaled, and exhaled as he inhaled. He was made of briars and the light that filtered through them, and it touched the texture of hair and lashes, the smell of him, and the shape of his skin, which caught shadow more easily in the crevices of collarbone and neck.
He moved tongue in mouth and tasted her breath and that slight disturbance woke him from his sleep. His lashes parted, and he looked at her with green-black eyes. Water dropped, trickled, and rustled its way through thorny bushes in this neglected garden in the corner of a great estate. Off in the far distance, music was rampant and discordant, vaguely threatening, as if it pushed at the heart and chest, and crowds talked, but here it was quiet, and all of those things were only framing. Borders on the painting.
He embraced her, touched her, because she was nice to touch, and she responded by wrapping wings around the both of them, even nicer to touch, even softer. Then she bit him, teeth meeting naked shoulder, seizing him fiercely enough his entire body moved in paroxysm. To warn, to let him know there was blood in the air and nothing was to be trusted. She had been awake for longer than him and she already knew.
He didn’t rescind his trust of her, though he was more wary now. He picked up much of his understanding of this world from her, studying her, seeing the world that was reflected in her moist eyes.
Rain fell on her back as she remained there, on hands and knees above him, cold water tracing its way along her body, as if rushing to finish painting the picture. Chill rain found and traveled the indents between ribs, and pooled at the dimples in her back. Soft black earth squished slightly between the blades of untended grass and found the space between fingernail and finger. Between toes, that pressed together to grasp a blade of grass and pull, only to be punished, because this grass had been planted so it would cut instead of be uprooted. The boy in the grass by the briar hedge noticed, smelled it, his forehead grazing her cheek as he looked through the space between their bodies to see her feet, touched black with ungraceful movement across the lawn, marked at two toes with lines of red, beaded with blood, she suspected. She inferred because it would be a mistake to look to check.
They did nothing except meet each other’s eyes, taking in the environment, expressions changing by the smallest measures.
There was a sense, one she suspected he shared, that this might be the last peace they had.
When they rose to their feet, it was out of a rising sense of impatience, a mutual understanding communicated in small eye movements. He stretched in a way very different from how she had, to tease, and she smiled.
It was a certain kind of fortunate that the peace wasn’t entirely disturbed.
Four more, older than them, were in a tower that had also collected its dust. A girl with hair like moonlight and eyes like blood, small, with hints in her feature that suggested she could be very good at being mean. Two boys, one onyx with short black hair and the other pearlescent of skin with the longest hair of them all, wearing the tumbling locks of white gold in a way that protected modesty and teased at the same time. The last was a girl, the oldest of all of them, skin like ivory, nails like stiletto blades, and she didn’t like to go a moment without touching one of them, especially the boys, with the points, never penetrating skin.
Those blades reached out to her to catch a lock of hair, winding around it, then severing it, with an easy grace. A tongue as black as skin ate it. Something to make the pecking order clear. Those blade-like fingernails touched her brother and examined him from forehead to toe as if the ivory-skinned Fae was blind and needed to touch to see. She wasn’t.
It would be some time before they could truly communicate. But bites, gestures, eye contact, and inference made one early rule clear. Keep to dusty places.
Every sense and hint they caught of the places that weren’t dusty was one that the world outside was dangerous, but promised rewards for facing that danger. People out there bled. People out there shed tears. Perfume didn’t mingle with blood as often as the smells and glimpses of the living without perfume. Nor did silk, nor did the other things. The implication was that silk and fashion and perfume marked those that survived and stayed out from those that didn’t. What they didn’t understand, they communicated with one another.
They formed their own language, short on vowel sounds, hissed and whispered, so they could have a better chance of not being overheard. They communicated with touch, taught one another, inferred, and built up confidence. Games between them became a kind of training, catching the light of rainwater and sweat that glittered on skin and picking it up with the edge of a fingernail, then changing its color. Hiding and wrapping shadow around one another, or making themselves small.
Mean games where they hurt each other with words in their whispered language, or in ways that didn’t leave marks. Each of them had a turn at being bullied. Sometimes the reasons were good, like greed or being too vulnerable. Other times, it was senseless, a sudden turn in the mood from everyone, one spurning, the others taking up the cue. Anything too blunt or expected was rebuked. Spurning with the expectation that others would also join in could see the entire group descend, cutting with words and grabbing, twisting, finding more ways to hurt without shedding blood.
Sensual games where they taught each other to kiss, to touch, to flirt, to entwine. They were sibling and not, none blood related, but close in ways that made this more exploration than entreatment. Education, not anything deeper.
The sense pressed in on them that when they entered that greater world, they’d have to do so as adults, not just in body, for they’d come that way, but in all respects.
As confidence grew in their ability to hide and deflect, they moved closer to the boundaries of those places that other Fae didn’t go. They studied from hiding places, returned, whispered of what they’d learned, discussed, debated. Mriscca’s brother from the shadows under the briar hedge was the quietest and most thoughtful of them, the most confident in paring out the real understandings from cryptic scenes and exchanges. He stayed close to her, looked to her first.
Two more joined them. Always, there were others emerging. A girl, skin dappled like the leaves had settled on her and stained brown skin, hair black, eyes blacker and darker than that, despite the fact they were green, for they had that kind of dark intensity. A boy, small, young-seeming, imperious in stance despite his size, he decorated his clothing with thorns and nettles, and when his mouth wasn’t occupied with something else, a thorn of something could often be found between his lips, waiting to become an accessory, or a punishment.
The new ones were eager and fought hard to keep up. Mutually, they decided they didn’t want anyone else to find them, for they would hold them back, and these two new ones were already doing just that. They hid their hiding spots of the dusty ruined tower and nearby garden, weaving light and dark to fold them away. In their struggle to learn and join in, the pair of newcomers started venturing out to spy on neighboring regions and faerie.
They played a game, stupid and shallow, and made themselves a part of two groups of new Fae at once. The other group found their way to the tower, and when they were driven off, they laid the hints and clues so that others could find the location.
It was not new Fae who followed those hints back to the tower and discovered them, but an older one, well dressed and dangerous.
He spoke in a language they’d had to glean through observation. The implicit promise was that if they didn’t understand his meaning, they’d die. “You’ll announce yourselves when the bells toll.”
Their peace had ended.
There was no telling when the bells would toll or how far away they’d be, so they remained prepared, hair and fashion in order, clothes spun from scratch by their own hands, because they knew enough to infer that it was better to sport their own work than to wear the work of the best of them, their thorn-knitter.
Mriscca wrapped herself in her own wings, decorating and shaping them. She was less confident than some in their group, and a small, quiet part of her wanted to avoid putting anything between herself and that moment when she’d first woken up, first met her brother. It was prettier and finer than any fabric she could conjure up.
She had no idea what would become of her, but maybe if there wasn’t cloth in the way, there was a chance some small part of her would go back there, as a mote of dust if she was scattered into dust, a drop of liquid, if her blood was shed.
The bells tolled. Close.
They ventured out into the world, eyes on them, penetrating and calculating stares. There were eyes that weren’t Fae, but closely associated enough to be a part of this, to observe. Elves, ogres, brownies, and the rare human.
The event itself was a parade, and the music embraced them, lifted them up, invited them in, but there was no clear opening to join, and any effort to try was surely a trap.
A great stage was carried by an assembly of slaves, who marched forward in unison, two steps, a turn to bear the weight of the great spike that each of them held on a different shoulder, another step, another lift up and turn. Never, even in the lifting, did they jostle the stage or make anyone atop it feel the stage’s movement. Thirty people were on the head float, and one of them looked like a King, the remainder of them were traders, of standing to have a few moments of audience.
Then dancers, moving together, members of the locality, who flowed into and joined the sequence naturally, a complicated arrangement of more than a thousand unique steps, that brought partner past pair and put each pairing in the spotlight for but enough moments to do one thing, one twirl, one lift, one spin. All vied for attention and consideration, all feared the misstep, the chance that someone else’s mistake in the complicated arrangement might make them look poorer for it.
She studied the dance, because it was fascinating and it demanded that attention, but also in case they would be invited to join in.
She could see the hints that this was a parade that endlessly traveled the perimeter of this great walled garden. As if the people who ruled here never actually stopped being carted this way or that, or they exchanged the seats with others of similar stature.
Music followed after the dancers, playing loudly enough to deafen those too nearby, a hazard for the dancers making the steps that brought them closest to the band, and the music varied, because making the lord of this parade bored would be ruinous. Everything about how this was structured seemed to suggest that people were scrambling behind the scenes to invent new music or decide who could go to the stage to bring things, who got to dance before the parade left the region, and, past the music, the parade bazaar.
There were faerie selling things, the booths mounted on a grid of planks, picking up and moving as the planks shifted, according to signals from a Faerie standing cross-armed at the lip of the platform that carried heavier band equipment. Items, living beings, and contracts for sale. The most successful merchants were being continuously shuffled up, toward the front, where the band was louder and the message had to be clearer or the product more enticing. It seemed possible to graduate further from there, to go to the King’s stage, but many seemed to get blasted down by music and shuffled down.
The least successful were shuffled off, left to grab things they could and hurry off into ignominy.
In dwindling importance, there were more dancers, some sweeping low to pick up anything scattered and unclaimed, but most too gracious for even that. Performers tried to sell their abilities, musicians took their turns.
All masters of their craft, but not quite good enough to move forward.
The parade moved faster than they were permitted to, the crowds in their way, the roads of this great underground space cutting past short stone walls, with little opportunity to slip between the sides of floats and move forward before the next set of walls left only enough room for the parade to move forward.
As they lingered, the parade moved past, and the other venues became clear. Human men, women, and children turned into works of art, sculpted and reshaped, the Fae artists standing austere and proud among their clusters of work, hoisted on platforms when the altered forms were unable to move.
Dancers, given more leeway, more time in the center stage, but at greater cost if they lost. Those that followed after had to tread on blood and walk over limbs that had been shorn off by those judging.
The parade sliding past them was like the eclipses she had heard whispers of. Bright, enticing, and proud at first, then the darkness following, subsuming the rest.
“Here,” her brother noted.
He took her hand. She moved into him, with him, and they spun.
The parade had a space for them and the Fae in this space were not so unlike them. Young.
Hundreds, all drawn from this region. They joined as a group, mingled with other groups, and it was not an intense or demanding dance.
It was a prelude of what was to come. The final stage followed behind them, curtained, with the consort of the king or lord that had been at the main stage peering past the curtain, a slice of moonlight that had wound its way down to this deep underground place shining through to illuminate one narrow portion of her face, as the eye studied them, judging.
There were steps in the dance that took them close to tables, allowing them to collect drinks. Mid-twirl, she tipped a drink into her brother’s mouth, and he into hers.
“That group was cursed, all together, they were told they could announce themselves if they’d give everything up but themselves, their curse, and their lives. Fools,” a Faerie confided, proud of her knowledge. “Do you have a story? It’s dangerous not to.”
“Seems dangerous to be a story already on everyone else’s lips,” Brsne whispered back.
The other Faerie laughed, then twirled away.
“Dangerous to share the stories of others so freely,” Mriscca whispered to him.
He smiled like he’d had the same thought or quip ready.
She wondered if he worried it was true that not having a story ready was dangerous. Or had that been bait, to get them to talk?
A group was invited behind the curtain, off the floor.
In the art and the dance, architecture and clothing, everything was pushed to its limits. In this, their announcement, they were brought to the cusp of terror, and expected to dance with smiles on their faces.
“Have you noticed they go in but none come out?” a dancer asked, as they passed. “Not that we’re afraid.”
They laughed softly enough the sound wouldn’t reach the covered stage that followed behind.
With their passing, the wind direction changed and the taste of the wind was salted with tears.
The laughing Fae and their group should have been afraid. They were the next group in. Seven entered and none left.
The eye settled on them.
They wasted no time, dancing through the crowd where dancing was necessary, striding together, measuring steps so that they were as one as they entered. Eight of them.
The Faerie, through clothing choices and atmosphere, made it clear she wasn’t the equal of the lord at the front of the parade. She was the consort, not the queen to a king or duchess to a duke. It would be hard to say whether she was more powerful, but it was easily clear that she was more dangerous. Fae, ten feet tall and slender, she lounged, propped up by one elbow. She kept a blanket draped over her lower body and though it was opaque, it was more suggestive than mere skin would have been. Her hair was dark and done up, her hair ornament a living individual, transmuted to something between silver and moonlight, body utterly still, eyes roving. She smoked something that smelled like spices, rolled in paper, at the end of a long, multi-segmented thing that might once had been the leg of something living, as long as Mriscca’s arm, black as night.
“Who leads?” the Consort of Dark Fall asked.
Mriwthe swept into a bow, stepping forward, her sleeves and knife-sharp nails grazing the floor. She kept her head down.
“More than half past muster for now,” the Consort said. She moved her hand, and Mriwthe took the gesture as cause to step to one side, head still bowed.
She would be judged as they would?
Legs like a spider’s, but finer and more graceful, were making themselves evident as they lifted themselves out of woodgrain and fabric. Some were hair-thin, many-jointed, and extended along floor to curtain and up the wall to canopy ceiling. All traced back to that lounging couch that the Consort was draped over.
One of those limbs jabbed at Brsne, making him stagger forward. Mriscca’s brother.
They had been betrayed, being unveiled this soon. Mriscca was all too aware of how little they knew, the details they should have come to grips with already. It was only in seeing him stumble, how casually forceful the Consort was, that Mriscca could understand the mistake they’d made in retrospect. That had been the opportunity for the next of them to step forward. That had been the expectation, and the fact they’d made that mistake was more inelegant than the fact the Consort had just jabbed him.
Another mistake or two of that gravity and they wouldn’t leave this tent.
They knew so many little things. That the Courts were not a thing to be properly discussed in high society. All courts in all eras existed at once. For now, the flavor was to speak of light and dark, the courts above and below, a subset wintered over. But they were also the seven courts of the seasons and the twenty courts of flowers and in the right contexts and the right moments all would shuffle, invert, and every Faerie would be expected to adapt on the fly and act as if things had been this way for a long time.
They knew things like that but not when to speak and what to say in a moment like this.
They’d been forced to announce themselves too soon.
“Announce yourself.”
“Briserban, pleased to make your-”
He stopped talking as the limbs pressed against his chin, forcing him to raise it, until he couldn’t lower his jaw anymore to speak.
“Too talkative,” the Consort said.
She let him go, and he dropped to hands and knees. More limbs seized him by the tongue, dragging him until he was right in front of her. Her hand and other limbs fixed a few stray locks of hair, adjusting his clothes.
Mriscca remained where she was, watching without moving.
She watched as her brother had locks of hair adjusted, clothing fixed, skin caressed and brushed back, ever diminished, as if she was stripping away parts of him without ever leaving clear evidence of the recent change.
All while holding his tongue.
Loose clothing was folded onto itself, the head turned, something in his leg was rendered too thin to hold him up and snapped violently, and a moment later the pants leg was swept over by one spidery limb, and it was clear there was nothing inside that fabric.
It took less than twenty seconds to render him into nothing more than a folded set of clothes, handed to Mriwthe, and the tongue, which coiled and then went limp.
She dropped the tongue onto the ashtray by her elbow, and then pressed the end of whatever it was she was smoking down atop it. It thrashed, flopping, contorting, coiling, trying to escape the heat. The enclosure filled with the scent of spices and burning muscle, and the faint sound of Briserban’s tongue slapping against the silver of the ashtray in its struggles.
Mriscca’s smile remained easy on her face. Not frozen, because frozen was worse than anything, but still an unfaltering smile.
That was about all she could do as she felt something in her break at the loss of her brother, and the welling fear of what this announcement entailed. Briserban, Brsne in their whispered, just-for-them language, had been the first Fae she’d met, the only Fae she might ever meet who she could care about wholeheartedly, without this wedged into the middle of it. Her brother, her first choice of dance partner, her first choice when it came to learning anything and everything. He had looked to her so often and he’d been chosen for that reason, or he’d given some subtle cue he wanted to be chosen first if any of them had to be chosen. Because he’d always looked to her and perhaps in this instance, he’d wanted her to look to him.
She considered herself fortunate that someone else stepped forward.
“Paisleth,” said the boy who liked the thorns. “Thorn weaver.”
“I will not have a Fae of my Lord’s court call themselves Paisleth. I could take away your name and deny you the ability to ever have one again, but that doesn’t correct the fact you’re such an ignorant creature that you’d pick the name in the first place. I won’t have you be Fae. Over there, beneath the cloth, there is a glass container. Every thirty seconds, reach in, take a blightcrawler into your mouth, and swallow it as whole as you can imagine. They’ll knit you a new body from the inside out. Once I see the form you take, I’ll give you a name.”
Mriscca didn’t look at the writhing tongue, nor did she track Paislth’s careful walk over to the covered case. The cloth was folded back carefully.
“Siosal, Whispercatch,” the next of them announced herself.
“Is that all? No more to say? It’s the opposite problem of Briserban here. Are you so afraid of having the entirety of you reduced down to a tongue?”
Briserban continued to thrash.
“Come,” the consort told Siosal, one hand extended, fingers spread. “Come now, don’t make me impatient, or I may be less kind.”
Siosal approached, as hesitant as she could afford to be without actually making the Consort wait. As she approached, the hand moved slightly, and she inferred that she was to draw near until her chin rested on the Consort’s fingers.
The consort reached into her mouth and withdrew her tongue, without even needing to tear. “You’ll not call yourself Fae, certainly not of this court. You’ll stay within the walled garden for the rest of your existence. I’ve taken your tongue, but the rest I leave to you. For the rest of your existence, you are not to make a hint of a sound, or my informants will know of it, and the Wild Hunt of the Dark Fall will descend upon you. As miserable as your silent existence may be for you, your glamour slipping away, the fate the Wild Hunt will deliver for your breach will be worse. Understood?”
Siosal nodded, mouth pressed shut. Her back was to Mriscca, her expression unreadable.
“Leave through the back, down the steps next to the driver. Don’t be seen.”
Siosal left.
Still, Briserban twitched and flopped. Ulcers had erupted around the spot the Consort’s brand pressed down.
Mriscca found herself stepping forward.
“Announce yourself.”
She turned, flourishing, her wings unfolding, body tense, taut, and unclothed.
And in the moment of confusion and blindness, stabbed through her own wing to drive her hand, fingers flat and rigid, fingernails pointed and nearly as sharp, between Mriwthe’s ribs.
Mriwthe staggered, and Maricica took her spot, planting a foot on the Faerie’s posterior and thrusting her into the middle of the room.
“Maricica,” Maricica said, with nothing more.
The Consort looked down at Mriwthe. “I do think you’ve been discovered, child. Disappointing.”
Maricica hadn’t known for certain. An inkling of a feeling, that things had been too neat, their sanctuary undiscovered for as long as it had been by canny Fae. That Mriwthe with her blade-like fingernails might have been emulating these spidery legs. Mostly she had wanted to hurt someone because Briserban was being hurt, and she’d wanted to survive. If one spot was available for the leader, then she would usurp the leadership.
“No, stay right there,” the Consort said, as Mriwthe moved to cover the wound with a hand. Spidery legs as thin as hairs pinned hands down against the floor, adjusting the position of her elbows so her position was what it had been when she’d settled there after being kicked. “Contemplate.”
“Rosenau, Eshire,” two more unannounced members of the group announced themselves, taking the opportunity.
“I’m tired,” the Consort said. “You were some of the last in a long day. Don’t bother announcing yourselves. Those of you who remain are to find me and sit down with me in exactly one week’s time. Don’t bore me.”
They bowed, but for Mriwthe, who couldn’t move with the limbs pinning her. She coughed, and blood spurted from the wound. A puddle widened around her.
Each new group of Fae no doubt had a plant, someone who could watch their growth and take credit for it. Each group would be whittled down unless they could prove themselves.
“Take your leave.”
Maricica led her three remaining Fae off of the stage.
There was light applause from Fae around them.
She watched the next group of young Fae ascend to the stage.
She watched as one of the humans bearing the weight of the stage rolled her ankle. The woman stumbled forward, clearly injured, but continued to walk on the ankle and bear her burden, despite the obvious fact her foot would no longer go squarely beneath her leg.
She’d rolled her ankle on the tongue, cast off the stage, badly burned in the center, now squashed under heel, trampled and kicked by the stagebearers.
It lay there, dead and gone. Her Briserban, her brother.
The smile she’d worn up into the stage didn’t falter, even as a significant part of her went very quiet inside her breast.
“Come,” she instructed the others. There would be no more whispered language, just for them. “One week to make ourselves interesting enough to not bore the Consort. Those of you who did not announce yourselves will no doubt be expected to excel.”
“In one year’s time, there will be a trade festival. Those of you who remain should bring something. You may venture beyond the walled garden of the Dark Autumn Court, of course. Don’t disappoint.”
“One decade, eliminate one of your cohorts, among the new Faerie of Dark Fall.”
“I’m measured by your successes and failures, but I can’t keep holding your hands or punishing you for disappointing us forever. When it comes to those of you who spring up from our gardens here in the Dark Fall, expectations are high. If your name doesn’t reach my ear in the next fifty years, from some success or triumph, I’ll have to consider you a failure, understand? Fifty years, one story.”
“Would you like me to handle it?” the Consort asked.
A dangerous question.
“You said you couldn’t handle the punishments forever. If it tires you, I’ll handle it myself,” Maricica said, looking down at her last remaining brother and sister.
She swept her wings over them. A translucent drapery, heavily patterned, with two humps. She released shadows she’d been saving after paring glittering light from darkness to manufacture glamour, then wove shadow into form, stitching and knitting.
On the tiled floor of the Consort’s tea room, Eshire and Ottilia half-embraced, half-struggled, fighting as their shadows became as quicksand. They sank in until they were half submerged, tried to part, and were both pulled down. They floundered, struggling, gasping for air, scratching at one another.
A tweak and… there.
There, the shadows had them firmly, and there would be no escape. Such was the curse and transformation. Only one could surface at a time, at the cost of drowning the other. Neither would ever be so strong or well positioned that they could hold the surface indefinitely, and neither would ever drown or perish of this as long as the other lived.
She withdrew her wings, wrapping them around herself.
“Not many of your ilk make it this far,” the Consort told her. “Born naturally of the Dark Fall. We prune most of you.”
Maricica didn’t take her eyes off the pair. She had made it this far, she didn’t pretend to be noble, and thus she was allowed such minor breaches of ettiquette.
“I’ll have my servants set an appointment for you to see me in a century’s time.”
“Very well,” Maricica replied. Her mind went to every potential signal that would convey what it was she was supposed to do or bring. That was the convention. Every timeframe, each a little further out than the last, “I’ll gladly attend.”
That ‘gladly’ was a play of wording. She would only be glad because the alternative was the Wild Hunt, the most elite and dour of Fae from this court, they would blow their horns and ride in, and they would deliver her to the feet of whatever lord or local power had called on them, or else they would find a fate for her worse than any she’d heard of or seen yet.
Eshire and Ottilia continued their thrashing struggle, and they would for centuries. It might drive them to winter, or they might find some power in the fear and horror of their circumstance, drink of that power, and come for her for revenge. That was more than acceptable as a result from those like the Consort.
“Surprise me,” the Consort said.
Maricica turned.
That was a high bar to set, when the Consort was as old as she was, jaded and tired.
“I’ll need to go to the realm of Man. Perhaps for the majority of that time.”
“It’s the next frontier for you. You’ll be allowed through. You know the rules and expectations.”
“Of course.”
“Most don’t pass this test, Maricica. Many don’t even get it.”
“I had surmised.”
“Don’t try to run or flee. I’ll use the Wild Hunt if I must.”
Maricica bowed her head in acknowledgement.
“Do this and you’re free of me, young Fae.”
“Bound up in many other things, I’m sure,” Maricica said.
“Would you have it any other way?” the Consort asked. “How lonely would it be to have nothing at all, no connection to your fellow Fae, even in struggle?”
Maricica looked down at the two. She bowed. “I’ll take my leave. I have ideas. Shall I take them?”
The consort waved one hand, dismissive. Legs like a thin spider’s lifted up from between tiles and opened the door.
Maricica threw a chain to the two struggling Fae. Eshire grabbed the chain, and Ottilia grabbed Eshire. He was dragged, but struggled to hold on, while she dug furrows into his flesh in her struggle to hold on.
She was supposed to hate the Consort, to seek revenge, to build everything and anything that might win her an advantage and unseat the woman. Countless other Fae were in a similar boat, with others that had tested their mettle as a Fae, with the Consort, with non-Fae, with close loved ones.
If the Consort knew how little Maricica thought of her, she’d destroy her with a curse, for the impertinence of it. She hadn’t cared since long ago.
It would be good to escape. To no longer be Fae.
Wouldn’t that be a surprise? To slip the Consort’s grasp, and the Wild Hunt’s? A free Fae with the tacit support of the Consort who had approved her rise into Fae society, abdicating race, species, and Court entirely.
The pickaxe struck the tree for the second time.
Avery held Tatty’s nine-tails form in one hand and the pickaxe in the other.
“Get down here!”
Avery was finding her strength. That was nice to see.
It wouldn’t matter, but it was nice to see. Amusing.
“That’s more like it,” Liberty said.
“If you’re not up for a discussion, then why am I even here?” Maricica’s voice rang through the trees.
“You know why you’re here! Because you can’t keep your nose out of something that’s right up your alley, like curses, shapechanging, and glamour!”
Guilty as charged.
It was a bit like coming home.
Smelled of goblin and it was noisier and more brutal, but in many ways… home.
Maybe for the last time.
The pickaxe struck the tree for the third time. Maricica’s titter cut through the foliage, and was cut off as the tree altered.
Glamour chased the tree as hard went soft and materials that made the tree strong gave way, transmuting to water. Wood splintered, but the splinters weren’t even sharp. The jagged points bent as they met dirt, instead of piercing. There was no chance they’d impale a goblin on the way down. Small pity. Impalement wouldn’t kill many goblins, but it would slow them down and give the others pause. Or fury. Goblins were annoyingly hard to predict.
The glamour met the tree before it was finished collapsing, helping it on its way. The pickaxe had turned minerals to liquid, and with glamour helping, wood became water. It cascaded out in every direction, turning soil into mud and washing some of the smaller goblins on the ground off their feet.
“You’d benefit from a bath, goblins!”
Verona was trying to hide while she followed up on the initial stages of what she’d done to herself. She whispered an exchange with the spirit she had in a bottle that read to Maricica’s awareness as more paper than plastic, and then tipped it back. Swallowing it. Maricica had a glimpse of a ghastly, drawn-out spirit.
“Pickaxe is broken,” Avery said, as she backed up toward Lucy.
“I know. Watch out for Lis.”
It was a misdirection, and one poor Lis fell for. She turned her attention toward the pair, a seventy-thirty split between them and the goblins who crept nearer.
Verona, using runes, was silent as she darted between the trees. Arms twice as long as her usual stretched out, each holding a marker. She drew lines on Lis’s skin before Lis even realized what was touching her and swatted a hand away, taking cover behind a tree.
One arm bent at a right angle to get past a tree and add to the permanent marker put on Lis’s skin.
Lis changed into a combination of Lucy and Avery, abandoning the form she’d put together by straining to widen her reach. Lucy whipped a paper at her. Lis changed forms, breaking up the connections that were drawing the paper to her, and the paper reversed, nearly striking Lucy or Avery. Lucy drew a line in the dirt to break that connection, and the paper touched ground. A minor curse of addled senses, acting through madness.
In any other circumstance, it would be so fun to help nurture these girls. Dangerous, for her enemies would work against her through them if she took that much of an interest, but fun nonetheless.
This entire event could be called a teaser, a plea, made to Maricica, to bid her to come back into the fold.
If only other promises hadn’t been met.
“I think your pickaxe broke because it’s not meant for wood,” Verona said.
“Probably only one good use in that thing,” Liberty said. “You could pawn it off to a goblin. They don’t care that much if there’s only one more use left in it, they can get blood out of stones, sometimes literally.”
Cherrypop made a sound, dropping some of a fistful of stone chips she was holding in one fist, trying to climb while holding the stuff. The shredded one-eyed goblin from Tatty’s gang was a bit above and ahead of her.
“Couple tweaks and additions and you’ve got yourself a piss-axe,” Liberty said.
“Hate that,” Snowdrop said. “Don’t like that idea.”
“You’re a good one, Snow,” Liberty said.
“She is a good one, which is why I hate to disappoint,” Avery said, shifting to a two-handed grip, as she kept her attention on the sky. Maricica’s face peered down back at her. “Sorry Snow, keeping this one.”
“Not okay.”
“Are we getting this aggressive already, dear girls? Violence?”
Avery threw the pickaxe into the air, two-handed, then clapped her hands together.
The pickaxe flipped, and it didn’t come down, disappearing.
“Appears so. Girls, when I’ve clearly stated my innocence and the imminent danger, why would you persist?”
“Because a Faerie spouting off some clear, insistent message without hints and garbage is spouting off B.S., somehow!” Liberty shouted. “Goblin Princess Liberty, battle transform!”
She threw down a smoke pellet.
Goblins whooped and cheered, converging on her, carrying various objects and pulling bits of cloth out of pockets and from under helmets.
“While we’re at it, Wolf Warrior Princess Avery, go!”
The smoke pellet exploded at Avery’s feet. Behind her mask, her eyes went wide. “No-!”
More goblins pounced onto her and tackled her.
“That pinches, ow, ow! Don’t-”
Stealing the show, changing the narrative.
A stab of Glamour went straight for Lucy. Verona intercepted, using longer limbs to reach herself higher, and then threw herself into the way. The glamour was meant to addle the senses, taking advantage of the fact that Lucy was holding her mask but not wearing it, but Verona’s senses were altered, she was wearing her mask, and the glamour didn’t get enough hooks in.
This wouldn’t do. She would have to find another way, force their hands.
Lis stepped out of the cloud of smoke, wearing a wolf mask muzzle over her lower mouth, with two brass knuckles and a skimpy fishnet top. The goblins let her past, because they didn’t recognize her, and because goblins were by and large idiots. The other two members of the group let their guard down, too trusting in goblin compatriots.
Lis was going for Verona, which was fair, because Verona seemed resistant to pain, and she’d likely heal well after this. She’d suffer after too, but the suffering would be of her own hand.
It was Snowdrop who tackled her at the knees, knocking her over. Goblins followed up.
That was fine. It wouldn’t be fine if she stayed down and out, but it was all something Maricica knew she could resolve.
“I don’t need this!” Avery shouted, stumbling out of the smoke. A goblin was putting a spiked collar around her neck. Avery, now dressed in punk clothes and various sports padding, her wolf mask painted in bold colors, pushed him off her shoulder. “We need to deal with her.”
“But it’s cool!” Liberty called out.
“Ave, hold up,” Lucy said, putting her hand on Avery’s shoulder. “First, let me try talking to her one last time. Maricica!”
Lucy’s shout went to the treetops.
“I think I get what you’re doing! Looming above us, surrounding the grove, making it yours! It doesn’t work if it’s this goblin-identified a space!”
Goblins cheered and jeered, joining in.
“We’ve worked our asses off for Kennet, you know that!? We’ve given our all, we’ve exhausted ourselves, we’ve biked, run, and black roped our way all over this town, for this town! Can you say the same?”
“I cannot.”
“We’ve bled for Kennet, can you say the same?”
“We’ve cried for Kennet, in service of Kennet. Can you say the same?”
“Shouldn’t that be enough?” Lucy asked. “You’re meant to do more here.”
“I’ve kept all my oaths.”
Lucy dropped her hand from Avery’s shoulder. She was holding something.
Cute. Blood, sweat, and tears.
It almost invited interference.
Lis changed bodies, drawing on the stronger residents of Kennet. It had to be exhausting to reach that far.
Lucy and Verona backed away swiftly as Lis fought off goblins and Snowdrop, and then Lucy found her footing. She darted around and slapped a paper to the back of Lis’s head. An enterprising goblin taped it there, encircling Lis’s head with tape.
As she changed form, the curse remained there. And so did Lucy’s working.
Lis was down and out. The working was there, trapped under tape and paper.
So tempting to interfere with. No doubt, the intent was to set something on Lis that Maricica would wnat to deal with and remove, only to get the rock with the removal. But the rock and the effort put into it was almost more tantalizing, especially if she could find a way to pass it back with some modifications, a bit of glamour, a bit of story.
Maricica’s face loomed at the top of the grove, but more subtly, Maricica reached out to Lis with one dark insect limb. Lis saw her. For all that she was being accosted by goblins, the curse rippling behind her eyes, befuddling her senses, she saw Maricica and knew she didn’t have to worry.
That all was fine, that the plan the girls were putting together would be demolished in one or two fell strokes.
It was a stone, cube-shaped, and Maricica felt the curse grappling with her, entwining her limb. She pulled back and cast it off-
It disappeared into darkness, then dropped from the darkness above her, bouncing off of her head. It found a spot to settle between her shoulder and a tree she was resting against.
This wasn’t her usual curse, but she recognized some of the key points of it. By taking the token she’d taken the curse.
She could do something with it later, maybe return it to Lucy once she’d worked out the nuance. For the time being, the movements of her wings were growing tiresome, and it was getting to be impossible to hold herself up.
It was time.
A grazing touch of insectoid limbs to Lis’s fingers, before goblins turned and yelped, shouting and hissing, driving her back.
It got Lis’s attention again. There was a moment of eye contact with Lis and a nod was all that they needed.
The stone was making everything harder, to the point flying and plotting were starting to wear on her fast, but really, it was all set up.
Maricica’s face withdrew from the trees, wings withdrawing, at least in part, from the edges of the clearing.
“Bungee!” Liberty called out.
Goblins jumped down from branches, with rubber band chains and chains of elastic materials that were not rubber bands spooling out behind them. Some made the jump from high tree branch to ground with only the elastic materials to slow their descents, others jumped from branch to branch.
“Oh man, oh god, I don’t even have my usual air shoes,” Avery said.
“Project confidence, hon!” Liberty told her, as goblins attached the elastics to Avery’s belt loops.
“Get angry!” Lucy said. “We’ve got your back!”
Avery turned her mask skyward. She drew a marker out of her pocket, drawing on one hand. Liberty, Snowdrop, and Lucy helped hold her down.
“Is that bungee made of condoms?” Lucy asked, quiet.
“Most of these are,” Liberty said.
Avery jerked her head in a nod. The others released her, falling onto their rear ends and backs as they stopped holding her back.
The bungee cords launched Avery skyward. At the apex of her ascent, she finished the marker movement, and slapped her hands together.
“You don’t leave the Wolf’s presence without negotiating your release first!” Avery shouted. “Arena!”
The arena expanded out. A technique borrowed from Lucy.
An arena just for the two of them.
Avery dropped down, bungees snapping or coming free of where they’d been anchored. Verona reached out with a long hand and caught Avery before she could drop too far. Lucy was already ready with something else, an elemental rune.
Maricica smiled.
From the beginning, getting them to debate and consider the wording was a trap, and many had bought into that, rather than consider the facts as presented and comparing them to the facts as known. When they got clarification, they were still hung up on that, moving things by inches from the truth.
That she was innocent. That she had no part in this. That in pursuing this, they were being overly aggressive and digging themselves in deeper.
The distinction and key point was that she was not Maricica.
Maricica tittered, wearing the form of one small fairy of Dark Fall, halfway between humanoid and insect, one among several in the flitting, flying swarm of moths and other fairy. She had even mocked the girls to their faces, to embolden the glamour. A Faerie wearing her face was high up in the trees.
She had to pause to rest, breathing hard, as she perched on a branch, carrying the stone. Staying away hadn’t been an option, when the girls were doing such interesting things, so she’d come like this. Her young Faerie rival was wearing her appearance and hoping to do more than help her achieve one unexpected turn and victory, here.
Avery had cast off her glamour of Kell, her boy self, and Maricica had that. She would leave this to resolve on its own, put that glamour to use to confound the situation and tie up the girls in other minor things that would occupy them in the weeks to come.
She took flight again, wincing at the exertion. The glamour was suffering for this. She’d need to unravel this minor working, which would be easier when she was in a space where she could claim she’d done some service to Kennet, loosening the stone’s hold on her.
She ascended, as the false Maricica descended.
The Aurum entered the clearing.
Her attention divided, she almost didn’t see the goblins.
Peckersnot sneezed, and with the blood loss he’d suffered, he nearly fell from the high branch he’d climbed to.
But the snot extended out between himself and her, ensnaring her wings, binding her hair, and nearly blinding her. Her arms folded around her head kept that from being a complete and total reality. Between snot and the cursed stone, she couldn’t stay aloft.
“Nyeh!” Cherrypop, of all creatures, threw two fistfuls of sharp rock chips and splinters at her. Some stuck into the snot, making it harder to wipe away.
Inconvenient.
She descended, controlling her flight as much as she was able, and caught a branch. The stone stuck to her with snot.
“Take that, little fairy!” Cherrypop crowed. “I did more! Hey snotty, I did more!”
Peckersnot pushed her off a branch, and Cherrypop grabbed onto the leaves of the same branch that Maricica was on.
Was this how it ended? She thought of lies she could tell, of the trickery, bribes she could make, knowing what these goblins prioritized, wedges that could be driven between Peckersnot and Cherry, between Peckersnot and Verona.
“Shall we begin?” the Aurum asked.
She had little interest in being a Faerie, as much as she enjoyed the trappings.
It was a deep and central part of her, but it was one she was willing to abandon. Getting there would be an involved process.
And that process started with learning to dumb it down when dealing with some of the dumbest creatures in Kennet.
She pulled the rock free of where it was stuck at her shoulder, and held it out.
“Mine! That’s mine!” Cherrypop exclaimed, snatching the rock from her, nearly falling from the branch in her haste.
The curse was passed on, and the curse got lighter. Cherrypop’s struggles to maintain her grip suffered.
Maricica in her guise as a fairy moved her way around the tree, keeping her distance from Peckersnot and the other goblins. Most were distracted by the show. Avery and the false Maricica in the arena. A Maricica coached in the implied and suggested, drawing conclusions from that limited knowledge, using everything she knew as a Faerie.
The Faerie was telling the truth about her understanding of events, but it was a limited understanding, provided at the same time Maricica had coached her in what to say and do.
Shedding the snot meant shedding glamour, rebuilding her form. She found a copse of branches high above the ground, with some nesting material firmly seated in it, and fixed herself. She wanted to see what came next.
A stir of wind and a certain smell in the wind made her turn her head.
Peckersnot, his one eyeball scratched at the side, eye bloodshot, the pupil’s location mostly fixed due to his unwillingness to move his gaze around, was craning his head back and to the side so he could look slightly down and straight-on at her, his mouth pulled to the bottom corner of his face.
She shucked off what she could and took flight, leaving him to scramble down branches.
She risked a lot by staying to watch, but she really wanted to see what would come next. She hovered, watching from above, a smile spreading across her face as she listened.
“You don’t want to be the next Carmine?” Charles asked.
“No,” Maricica said. “Of course not. What a dreary role.”
“Then what do you want?”
To cover my back and build a story with Guilherme. If I upend the courts and reverse positions with the Consort that should count as surprise enough. She’ll have to accept it as such.
That’s an emergency measure.
I want to bid faerie to come and steal my identity, in a layering of acts that confound the trail of the Wild Hunt. I want protections from greater powers, from Carmine, from Alabaster, from Sable and Aurum. All so that one day I may give away the last of my glamour and cease being Maricica, but still have power, still have the freedom to become something that isn’t Fae in the slightest.
“I want to help,” Maricica told them, with a smile. “More to the point, I wish to turn what seems to be a failure in the making into a resounding victory.”
Charles stared at her, expression grim.
“Charles, you’re going to do exactly what I say, when I say it. You have no choice in the matter.”
He looked away.
“And me?” Edith asked.
“I can guarantee you Matthew at the end of this. If you’re patient, if you cooperate.”
“A deal with a Faerie is a frightening thing,” Edith said. “What if I say no?”
“Then I will do as I will do with no mind paid to giving you what you want, Edith, or to your welfare, Charles.”
“So you don’t wish to give us victory after all?” Edith asked.
“I do. But there’s a victory where you don’t have Matthew, Edith, and a victory where Charles is discarded while we work.”
“Then there’s no use arguing, is there?” Edith asked.
There was. Maricica left a great deal out, and if they pressed and asked the right questions, she would still convince them, but it would take some contrivance.
But they didn’t press. Both were desperate. So, for that matter, was Maricica.
“I’ll talk to some others,” Maricica said. “Rest easier. The moment I decided to be involved, a large part of the outcome was decided.”
“You’ve decided?” the Aurum asked. “Practitioners, you challenge this Faerie?”
“Yes,” Avery said.
The Aurum’s voice was smooth. “Faerie, the arena practice does allow some negotiation for the terms of the contest.”
“We have no interest in a duel,” Avery said.
“Nor I,” the Faerie wearing Maricica’s face said.
“A trial,” Avery clarified, pushing up her mask.
“If you win, you get to name her a co-conspirator of the Carmine murder,” the Aurum said. “What does the accused get?”
“A cleared name,” Lucy said.
“I’ve stated my innocence many times over. I have no interest in what I can have without your permission,” the Faerie said. “I and my compatriots go free.”
“Boo!” Goblins jeered. The chorus was picked up by others. It drowned out all other dialogue.
“What compatriots? Free until when?” Lucy asked. “No. That could extend indefinitely into the future, it could spoil everything. It could free Edith and Edith is most definitely responsible for some of the Carmine and Choir crap.”
“Decide on terms,” the Aurum Coil instructed. He wore a loose-fitting gold tunic and shorts, and sat on the head of a centipede that was its own shades of gold. Long hair was tied into a ponytail, low to the neck.
He had to know but he gave nothing away. To do so would be interference on a grave level.
“Let Cig, Lis, and I go free,” the Faerie said.
Lucy shook her head a bit. “On the condition that this contest will occur with a rough matching of years of experience. You with yours, us with a cumulative number, drawn from me, Verona, Avery, Liberty, Snowdrop, and a population of goblins, such that our ages add up to-”
“Too much,” the fake Maricica said.
“I insist,” Lucy said. “A one on one contest with a Faerie is asinine.”
“You invited it when you created the arena,” the fake Maricica said.
“Planned beforehand, negotiated with the local leader in charge and discussed across the board,” Lucy said. “There’s no good way to hold a trial with a Faerie, than with a bunch more eyes and ears.”
“Fair? You think this is fair?” the Faerie asked.
“Yeah,” Lucy said.
The Faerie turned to Avery, then Verona, then Liberty.
Each nodded or grunted their agreement.
“Totally unfair,” Snowdrop muttered.
“Aurum,” the Faerie said. “They refuse to budge, they seem intent on pursuing me.”
“Yes.”
“I challenge this contest. I know for a fact that the three practitioners of Kennet know these challenges can be made, for this knowledge was awarded as a gift to them early in their studies of Faerie practices.”
Goblins jeered and heckled.
Maricica, perched on a high tree branch, only smiled.
“How would you contest it?”
“I would turn the tables. If this is a true contest, I would hold them to trial by their own terms, first, with a gallery of Fae and fairy things, not goblins, with them as the accused. The stage is already set for such.”
Maricica, her wings winding around the clearing, began to paint the audience of fairy and Faerie.
“I’ll leave it to you practitioners, then,” the Aurum purred. “Do you concede your challenge is unfair, or will you stand trial?”
The three girls exchanged glances.
“You as well,” the Aurum told Liberty.
“What the bullcrap?”
“You supported and enabled,” the false Maricica said.
“We have to,” Lucy whispered. “We’d take a hit to karma and lose everything anyway, if we said the contest was unfair. You’ll control the variables?”
“I will control the variables in this contest,” the Aurum said. The gold took on a luminescence, and he took hold of glamour.
Maricica let him have it, so he might set the scene for the trial.
Little Peckersnot, cut up and wheezing, raced across the grass to throw himself against the side of the arena. He screamed, pounding his fists.
“Little guy, what’s wrong?” Verona asked.
The goblin was too late. It was in motion.
She left them behind. There was more to do in the meantime.
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