Verona had absorbed the spirit of Long, and as long as the Sixberry admixture from the halflight practices book was working on her, the spirit would have residence. It was a filter for her thoughts and feelings in the same way the Doom was for Matthew.
Peckersnot’s scream, small and ragged, made worse by the cat-inflicted damage, consumed her attention. As things began to fall away, the protests of Liberty’s goblins getting softer and muted, other images rising up, she managed to extend her awareness to him like she’d extended her arms out.
He gestured, arms moving around, even though his mobility was limited. Apparently thinking he wasn’t getting through, not meeting her eyes or looking at them directly, he stomped through grass and mud as he stalked off, screaming again, at nothing in particular.
Good man, Verona thought.
“That’s not Maricica,” Verona said, as she interpreted the gestures.
Lucy did a double-take, looking at Verona before looking back to Maricica, who was starting to speak again, then back to Verona. “Frig!”
“Oh no,” Avery said.
“See, if we’d blitzed her right from the beginning, we wouldn’t be in this boat,” Liberty pointed out.
“That’s helpful to point out,” Snowdrop said. “Great, good.”
“Yeah,” Liberty replied.
“Ahem,” the Aurum spoke. An older teenager or younger twenty-something with a fresh face, very lively and expressive eyes, and long hair, wearing draping, loose clothing that showed off a V of his hairless upper chest. Shirt and pants of spun gold, with sleeves big enough to fit six of his arms inside. He smiled like he was trying to put an amused face on over annoyance, or if he was smiling through a joke despite trying to look angry. “I’ll shape the glamour provided and frame the contest as we define the rules. The materials are there to build the stage with, so to speak, but you’ll be free to name and negotiate for the terms of the contest. To begin with, would the challenger start us off?”
The Faerie wearing Maricica’s face spoke. She was starting to let Maricica’s body peel away in flakes that picked up in the wind, turning black and withering as they danced around the clearing. There was no point in keeping up the ruse, apparently. “The trial, as set, puts the group against one. I would split them up, hold each to the contest individually. Let it be a best of three, with the welfare of the goblin queen accomplice and the familiar hinging on the balance.”
“This seems fair on the face of things,” the Aurum said. He turned to the five of them. “Response?”
Verona didn’t want to face down the Faerie alone. She decided to take a shot, suggesting, “Would you make me a Fae? Because it was a contest customized to handle a Fae on even grounds. I’d need all the experience of being a Fae.”
“Handle on even grounds? You mean it was twisted and biased to work against a Fae,” the Faerie who wasn’t Maricica said, now half-revealed. Maricica’s dark hair contrasted with pale, wavy locks that had star-shaped briars worked into them like jewelry.
“It’s easier to adjust the contest than to adjust you,” the Aurum told Verona, smirking, like he was in on the joke, on why she wanted to try on being a Faerie. As if he knew her already.
“Damn.” It would have been cool.
“Are we conceding that we’ll adjust the contest in that framing?” the Faerie asked. “Because if so, I wish to adjust it and advance the intensity to fairly bias it against trained and powerful human practitioners.”
“Bullcrap,” Lucy said.
“For now, let us focus on the task of determining if this will be the trials of three individuals, or the collected group,” the Aurum said.
“We’re a unit,” Avery said. “Three of us together, awakened together.”
“I’m not bound to them in any way, especially not any familiar bonds. I’m willing to frig off,” Snowdrop said.
“I’m willing to frig off in actuality,” Liberty said. “I’m here for the flavor and bringing the audience in.”
The Aurum answered, “The argument that the group are bound together is sufficient, that is how they were announced to the world of Others, accepted by a plurality of Others. You may free the goblin queen if you see fit. Her involvement in the challenge is secondary.”
The Faerie looked them over. “She can stay.”
Interesting, and probably bad somehow, Verona thought. She had to focus to reel in thoughts and focus.
“If we interpret this as an attempt to hold a mocked-up false trial-”
“Not what we were doing!” Lucy retorted.
“Explain,” the Aurum said, voice as smooth and movements of both man and centipede as languid as the situation around him wasn’t.
“We were trying to establish a fair contest with Maricica, who has always been framed to us as manipulative and out of our league in a contest like this.”
“You tried and faltered,” the Faerie said. She had abandoned the guise of Maricica. She was pale-haired with purple eyes that were filled with dark specks, like the inverse of a night’s sky, with a dress consisting of a thorny vine spiraling down her body, leaving one leg exposed, with purple fabric stretched between the vine. In moonlight she was pretty, like an actress. In the dark, her cheekbones slanted in at diagonals, her eyes were slashes in her face, and her lips thin, the corners of her mouth a little too extended, like her face could hinge open to swallow something whole.
“The very fact she pulled the rug out from under us and we’re arguing with some Faerie we don’t know only proves it was necessary!” Lucy pressed.
“Assertion substantiated in fancy only,” the Faerie replied.
“If we couldn’t alter the contest to even things out, then Faerie would usually have the clear advantage in any discussions of karma stuff, even if they were in the wrong,” Verona said. “It skews the system.”
The Faerie retorted, “What you’re asking for is akin to asking for an arm wrestling match with a troll and requiring they first have their muscles torn from their arm. The handicap is unnecessary and grotesque.”
“We wanted goblins to chime in,” Liberty said. “You whiny little fuckwit.”
“And this isn’t akin to that at all,” Lucy replied, stubborn. “No, this is about karma, and Right and Wrong. The arm wrestling thing works if you’re testing the troll on conviction or justice, and making things fair helps with that.”
“Liberty and Lucy are right, bringing goblins in to commentate doesn’t really equal tearing out some troll’s muscles,” Avery added.
“It does if you despise goblins enough,” the Faerie told them. “Out of bias you’ve leveraged weaknesses and taken a brutish approach to force a conclusion you want.”
“Not what we were doing,” Lucy said. “You’re ignoring what we’ve said.”
Verona watched as the glittering haze stirred up around them. Maricica’s wings trailed off, sliding away into the background. They weren’t attached to this Maricica. As they passed tree and ground they kicked up leaves and dust, but both leaves and dust disintegrated into glitter.
As if telling a lie that this clearing was all an illusion and the illusion was coming apart to reveal what followed was real.
Verona’s awareness kept telescoping, in line with the spirit occupying her.
“It is in fact what you were doing-”
“Not-!” Lucy retorted.
“In effect, if not in intent. Please don’t interrupt.”
“You haven’t seen the effect, you’re jumping to conclusions!” Avery replied.
“You said attempt, earlier,” Verona spoke up. “In word choice, that’s about what we were trying to do. We’re talking about intent, aren’t we?”
The Faerie responded, “It’s about the unconscious, not only the conscious. Unconsciously, you’re tired, unconsciously, you feel the time pressure, unconsciously, you want resolution to the perceived crisis in Kennet so your lives will be easier.”
“Very consciously aware of those things, actually,” Verona replied. Maybe a bit of gainsaying.
The woman with purple eyes paced as the world changed around her. “Unconsciously, you still allow those factors to further shape your decision making. As girls you know how unconscious bias shapes how you’re treated. Demeaned. That’s small, pervasive, but the things shaping your bias, leading you to laying charges against me, an innocent, in your wasteful haste? Not. So. Small. Turn the tables on them, please, Mr. Aurum, I must insist that this must be made clear in practice.”
“No,” Lucy retorted. “We were careful not to get too biased. We-”
“Invited goblins to target a Faerie,” the Faerie responded.
“-checked in with people. Got permission, we asked that the Aurum be invited in to arbitrate.”
“You came ready for a fight, came prepared to outnumber me-”
“Outnumber Maricica, actually,” Avery said.
“In numbers only, but we wanted to match her in experience,” Lucy added, quickly. “It was an explicit, premeditated goal.”
“In numbers you sought to overwhelm, humiliate, beat, and batter.”
“We didn’t want to outnumber you, we thought you were her,” Avery stressed, repeating herself.
Doing what she’d done with her dad, locking onto ideas. Like saying over and over again that she wanted to get paid for babysitting.
“You failed to do your due diligence,” the Fae replied. “That is not my problem to bear or correct.
“Stop,” the Aurum pronounced. His voice was quiet and cut through the back and forth. The Faerie smiled to herself, like she’d claimed a victory somehow, and Verona narrowed her eyes behind the snake mask.
The centipede was moving, encircling the area. The dust and glamour was being taken and used. In the background, segments of the centipede’s body raced by, and that flat, segmented, swift-moving band started to blur a bit.
He was no longer just a man riding a centipede’s head. The swift-moving body of the centipede itself began to take on the look of a conveyor belt. Other sections moved at other speeds, and became beams, bars, metal. Some extended straight up, then stopped, and they channeled and kicked up the dust in plumes, the power taken from it, segments of chimney now spewing black fumes. Light caught on the edges of his body here and there, white-gold against gold, then white, then bright, and they blurred and they became actual fixed, industrial lights.
Machine blended with forest, and everything else about the world seemed to fall away. There was no night sky, no hiss of the river or the occasional roar of an eighteen wheeler tearing its way along the highway at high speeds. There was only the Aurum in their ears, in rasping hisses, clinks, metal-on-metal sounds, and the periodic thud as one load was set down. Like this area was now something in construction.
Industry, commodity, production. Gold glittered everywhere, hints of a factory in gold or brass, not steel and iron.
“We’ll negotiate the terms for this test of the contest’s fairness,” the Aurum said, voice echoing out.
The conveyor belt body raced horizontally in front of him, forming a set of stairs. He stepped down from the head to a belt that raced to the left, then down to the belt below that raced to the right, legs crossing with each step down, an easy, fluid progression of motion. Loose clothing caught in the wind, billowing. He stepped out onto a beam that was planted in the ground, extending straight up, standing or posing atop it as though he were a statue on a pillar. The centipede curled around the beam and continued to unfurl through the environment. Hundreds of feet above them, black lines marked its passage across the sky. Segments of centipede rasped against other segments, pointed legs clicking and rattling like a bike chain or gears.
Verona’s altered senses could see a bit beyond him, and see how fine golden threads tied him to the environment and tracked the movement of the world at large.
He spoke again, authoritative in his own way, so different from the Sable. “We’ll negotiate in an orderly manner, failing to do so may see you penalized, at my discretion.”
“Can we get your name, Faerie?” Lucy asked.
“I can identify myself as Finnea of the Thistle Tay,” the Faerie answered. “If we’re doing this in order, then for my turn, I wish to define a point of the contest.”
“That wasn’t a turn,” Lucy told her. “It was a thing we have to work out before we can even begin talking. Basic introductions.”
“It’s a thing you spent your turn on because you came ill-prepared and didn’t do your due diligence. I’m content carrying on more productive grounds while you spend the currency of time and turn catching up.”
“We must begin somewhere, we can begin with Finnea’s point of definition,” the Aurum said. “She is the one claiming unfair challenge, she should have room and priority to decide the claim.”
“Bad sign, bad sign,” Liberty groaned. “Fighting a Faerie on words and definitions.”
Finnea launched into her argument, “They wanted to put me off balance, bringing goblins in. Returning the favor by putting them off balance won’t work on its own, because they’ll know what I’m doing and brace for it.”
“Agreed,” the Aurum said. “Practitioners, do you contest any assertions made here?”
Verona’s eyes were wide, her brain going over everything, and she tried to control the telescoping thoughts to wrangle the words and sentences, giving herself more time and room to pull things apart.
It wasn’t working.
Lucy spoke up, “Things were arranged to even the playing field. The numbers, like Avery was saying, were to make up for the gap in experience.”
“For the time being, do you contest the assertion that you wished to put her off balance?”
They couldn’t.
“We had reasons, given she’s Faerie,” Avery said. “If she can’t justify the reasons she needs to be extreme with us, then I don’t think she should be able to use the same against us.”
“Saying I can’t would add further bias to skew the fairness of the contest,” Finnea answered. “The same contest where I was outnumbered, out of my element, and surrounded by a crowd predisposed to hate me, challenged with crimes I have less-than-full knowledge of.”
“Less than full?” Verona answered. “We almost never have full knowledge about stuff. That’s a meaningless thing to say.”
“Are you doubling down on your intent to challenge me over crimes I didn’t participate in?”
“We’re challenging you on the wording of ‘less-than-full knowledge.’ You’re playing games,” Lucy replied.
“I’m a Faerie. Don’t use what I am to condemn me in one breath, then pretend it isn’t a reality in the next.”
“Bullcrap,” Lucy said. “You know what you’re doing.”
“If that is a condemnation, me knowing what I’m doing, then it would explain why you’ve done what you’ve done here,” Finnea replied.
“Enough. In the interest of moving on, Finnea of the Thistle Tay,” the Aurum said. “Expand on the charge of being outnumbered.”
She didn’t even pause for a moment to prepare her argument. “I was outnumbered, harangued, and insulted. That would only get worse if any interrogation or trial was held while I was surrounded by those goblins. In exchange, I must insist on my own gallery and accompaniment.”
“That doesn’t work,” Avery said. “The point was the experience gap.”
“Determined in years, according to Lucille Ellingson’s statement, yes?” Finnea asked.
“Yes,” the Aurum said.
“Years of experience are their own thing. Some live for ninety years and learn next to nothing and others comprehend a great deal about the world before they can even speak in full sentences, your own opossum spirit companion is months old but has nearly fourteen years of knowledge of how the world works,” Finnea declared, pausing in her pacing. “I could theoretically have any number of entities in my audience, adding their input, if they had no experience-by-years at all?”
“By the stated definitions, you could,” the Aurum told her.
It was really feeling like he was on her side, but that wasn’t it, was it? It was that she knew the game, she knew how these things worked. They’d wanted and needed to be more on top of this with Maricica, not this woman, and they’d wanted to be on the offensive.
The Faerie woman was starting to manipulate the environment. The Aurum Coil, standing on a gold beam that stood like a pillar, looked down on everything, and pushed the clearing out, moving conveyor belts back and making more room.
Room for a crowd of hundreds? Hundreds of Faerie, organized into groups.
The Aurum looked at them, eyebrows raised. Waiting.
No, no, frig, she had to play this system, play the game back. “Counterpoint.”
All other eyes went to Verona. The Aurum didn’t waver, his eyes already on her.
“You’re still giving them years of experience, if you’re using your own experience to make them, fill them out, and decide what they might say,” Verona said, her eyes still wide. She pushed the snake mask up to the top of her head.
“What if I don’t?” Finnea asked. “I won’t need to give them years of my experience.”
“Are you using someone else’s? Anything we say or do comes from somewhere, right?”
“Finnea?” the Aurum asked.
Come on, come on. There’s no way-
“I request a sidebar, private dialogue with you, Aurum,” Finnea said.
“Is it relevant?” he asked.
“Relevant and necessary for the points and points of negotiation I wish to raise.”
“Allowed. You know the cost if you’re wrong.”
“I do.”
“What?” Lucy asked.
Verona sagged.
Segments of speeding centipede-body passed by, weaving in, and formed a wall, blocking them off from Finnea and the Aurum.
“What!?” Lucy raised her voice. She tapped her earring a few times. “What the hell!?”
“We got conned?” Avery asked. She was wearing a punk outfit in wild colors, paint on her ear and a spiked collar around her neck, looking very out of her element. “Did Maricica plan this?”
“Don’t ask,” Liberty said. “She’s a Faerie, you only lose if you get thinking like that. Assume yes, she planned it if it’s bad for you, no, this is just really good improvising if it’s bad for you. Get it?”
“I think she wanted us to corner ourselves, somehow. Finnea seems to know what she’s doing.” Lucy frowned at the barrier.
“Now’s a good time to ask,” Verona said. “Are we Cat-Fox-Deer or are we Snake-Goat-Wolf?”
“What?” Lucy asked. “My head is already spinning, I can’t take the Verona weirdness right now. Make more sense.”
“For the debate, coordinating,” Verona said. “Roles.”
The barrier broke apart. The Aurum was perched, crouching, ankles crossed, knees apart, atop the pillar, the head and upper body of the centipede framing him. Finnea smiled that narrow smile of hers.
“Snake-Goat-Wolf,” Avery said, quiet.
Verona glanced quickly at Lucy to make sure she got it, and saw at least partial understanding there.
“What am I?” Liberty asked.
The Aurum raised a hand bidding them to stop and be silent. “The matter has been discussed with Finnea. She will have her audience, the stage for this contest will be flavored to her disposition, rather than yours, and she is cooperating with the sentiment of balancing years of experience.”
“What the heck?” Avery asked. “How?”
“Informing you would betray the intent of the compromise,” Finnea said.
“It would,” the Aurum said. “I assure you, the offered arrangement is fair to both parties.”
“Fair in a way that we, if we knew, would be happy with it?” Lucy asked.
“You would be unhappy with any outcome if its measured against your biased initial approach,” Finnea told them.
“It is fair enough for our purposes,” the Aurum answered, perched awkwardly on the pillar, voice smooth. In his body language, sitting awkwardly, idling with maintaining his balance, he was very much a little boy or a… Verona was put in mind of the tech startup genius type that might not have picked up social skills.
Snake-Wolf-Goat. They had their roles, they were changing up. That still applied, if they assumed that Maricica was working with this Faerie and had told her enough of who they were and how they functioned.
“I don’t agree with the sidebar being allowed, we should be able to argue and negotiate every point,” Verona said.
“It streamlines the process,” Finnea answered. “And some compromises change the game by the simple fact they are offered and known.”
“I value streamlining,” the Aurum replied. “You have the right to call sidebars as well, all I ask is that you not waste my time in doing so. It will count against you if you call a sidebar for unwarranted points.”
Don’t call a sidebar for sidebar’s sake, Verona interpreted. It would’ve been better if they could ban sidebars, but they couldn’t so that was probably not the area to focus on.
If she was the snake then she had to stay calm, stay cool, all cold-blooded. Lucy was heated, butting heads, and Avery waited. Verona was the group’s fangs in the moment, striking out, Avery would be the Wolf, whatever that looked like.
More likely they were super boned because Finnea was in firm control of how this was going.
“My head hurts,” Liberty grumbled. “I want my goblins.”
Lucy shook her head. “If we accept the age-as-experience thing-”
“You pushed it from the beginning,” Finnea retorted.
“-if we accept it,” Lucy pressed. “We should be able to invite goblins into the gallery. Unless Finnea isn’t older than our ages put together.”
“That point has been addressed in sidebar. You will invite no others to this contest,” the Aurum replied.
All around them, the vague silhouettes were gaining focus, as if Verona’s eyes were a camera and the image on the camera was slowly sharpening. Each one gained features, distinct. All, she presumed, dark Fae in demeanor and style. Varying heights, some with monstrous features, but in a beautiful way. The ‘standard’ Fae with grey skin, a brown robe gilded with silver at the edges. A woman, buxom, dressed in a cleavage-magnifying corset of moss, fungus, and some ribs from some animal. Fossils with spiral snail-like life surrounded her ears and had bones sticking out that worked into her hair. There was a Brownie-like Faerie that was a little shorter than even Verona, features pressed in and down, so that the eyes were more indents in smooth flesh, the mouth with lips slightly parted, revealing a multitude of sharp teeth.
They needed other points of attack. To take control over this. There was coup and claim and the little wins the Faerie was scoring was counting.
“I request a time-out,” Verona said.
“I vehemently oppose,” Finnea replied. “I wasn’t offered the same peace of mind, and your approach to capturing me in the arena was clearly intended to pressure and rush me. Why should you be afforded the same grace?”
“You seem to have had time to plot and arrange this whole affair with Maricica.”
“As you had time to plot your strategy and prepare the practices you brought here. Equivalent,” Finnea replied.
“Wait,” Lucy said. “You-”
“Wait, you say? Again, you ask for the affordance of a wait, I refuse to acknowledge or validate that,” Finnea said, voice strident, clear, her purple eyes focused on them. “I would be ceding ground on the question of the time-out.”
“We’re operating as a unit, by the argument on ages and experience, aren’t we? Us as the sum total of years-”
“Already argued and discussed,” the Aurum said.
“By terms we weren’t privy to!” Lucy raised her voice. “I should be allowed to make my case for this.”
The Aurum nodded once, leaving Lucy breathing hard and struggling to find her mental footing.
Finnea cut in, “Again, she pauses, asking implicitly for time, and I refuse to acknowledge or provide that outlet. I move to dismiss the time out on the grounds that they’re attempting to effectively steal it by delaying unnecessarily.”
“Sum total of years,” Avery said, to Lucy.
Lucy picked up on the thought, saying, “We’re operating as a unit, a sum total of years, we’re all together, we should be able to take the time to put those years together in a practical way.”
“You made that argument yourself, early on, but you’re tacking this on now,” Finnea told them. “If you argue the sum total of your beings equals a pie, you shouldn’t be allowed to add a side of whipped frosting now.”
“What?” Lucy asked, heated. “Fuck you, fuck off with that.”
“That’s freaking ridiculous,” Liberty added.
“I’ll rephrase. If the ability to take free recesses and coordinate was something they were meant to be allowed to do, in opposition to me-”
“To Maricica,” Avery said.
“-it would have come up before now. It’s inherent to the role of instigator and attacker, holding the accused to this mock trial and interrogation-”
“Not mock, chaotic but fair trial,” Lucy said.
“-and I thus reserve the right to take the time I need and want when I have them at my mercy during trial and interrogation. It shouldn’t be allowed now, when we’re determining the shape of the trial itself. The time out shouldn’t be allowed.”
“Conceded,” the Aurum said. “No time out will be granted. Move quickly.”
Liberty smacked her hand against her face a few times in rapid succession.
“I move-” Finnea said, at the same time Verona said, “I want to-”
But Finnea had the voice of a singer, of a debater, of a Fae, something she could pitch, modulate, and she could pivot to cut in, butt in, and add strength to her voice, talking over Verona easily. “I maintain the right of priority.”
“What even is that?” Lucy asked.
“I challenge you three on the basis of unfair contest. It is the Aurum’s prerogative first, to set the terms of this debate and discussion, mine second, yours last.”
“So it is,” the Aurum said.
Frig frack, frigging, how were they even supposed to get control over this when the Faerie knew this stuff inside and out?
“We’re losing,” Avery said, to Lucy and Liberty.
“Then I would raise the point,” Finnea said, talking over them.
“Override!” Verona raised her voice.
She was heated more than she wanted to be. She pulled the snake mask off her head and held it in both hands, metal edges of nails biting into her hands.
“On what grounds?” the Aurum asked.
Verona gripped the snake mask. “If you’re top priority, and you arbitrate rules and law… Finnea claimed a lack of involvement in the conspiracy. She’s clearly tied in.”
“That has to be answered before anything else,” Lucy said, eyes lighting up.
“She’s a big fat distraction,” Liberty added. “Helping them to get away.”
“Alright,” the Aurum said. “You have priority. Anything to add before she answers?”
“There’s evidence of coordination between her and Maricica, like her knowing about Maricica ‘gifting’ us the rules for challenge. She appears to have been informed about who we are,” Verona said.
“She’s supporting and enabling Maricica, to use Finnea’s words,” Lucy said.
“Your answer, Finnea of the Thistle Tay?”
“Maricica and I made a deal that I was here to support and enable Lis and Cig, it was implied they would be the target of unfair scrutiny, predation, abuse, and binding from the three local practitioners. My role in any conspiracy is incidental, and all I know of that conspiracy or the Carmine events is what I’ve been able to infer.”
“You’re putting a lot of weight on that infer,” Verona said.
“We Faerie rarely speak plain and Maricia counts herself among our number. A large part of my attention was on what I could gain or lose, and working out the possible traps and dangers in Maricica asking me to come.”
“Did you infer that you were helping out a potential criminal or wrongdoer?” Verona asked.
“I inferred that Maricica might be such, but in practice, I worked against her. In communicating with you, I told you that you were letting the real culprit escape. I am no friend of Maricica, and I suspect she suspects that. In taking this job, it was and is my full and unerring intention to strip power and possession from Maricica, to destroy her and improve my own station as a consequence. That may occur over days, weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries, but in any timescale, I am no ally to her.”
Frigging heck.
Liberty was shaking her head, her hand on her face.
“Any rebuttal? Further assertions?” the Aurum asked.
“She wore Maricica’s face,” Avery said.
“To have claim over Maricica’s identity itself, while leading her to believe I was on her side, my intentions just the opposite. And because I inferred it was the best way to draw attention from Lis and Cig.”
Lis wasn’t inside the radius of this effect. Chances were good she’d made a break for it.
“Anything else?” the Aurum asked.
“To validate what you’re saying,” Verona said-
“I have no need. My statements already are enough.”
“-Would you share information with us about Maricica’s vulnerabilities, actions, or intentions? Dish the dirt,” Verona told Finnea.
“I have no need.”
“It’s telling that you don’t and won’t. Is your unconscious bias affecting things?” Lucy challenged Finnea. “Your intent one thing, your unconscious wants another?”
“No,” Finnea said, firm. She turned to the Aurum. “Let them prove it if my words are a lie, or verify for yourself.”
“The words appear to be true,” the Aurum Coil said, reaching up to stroke the side of the centipede’s great mandible. “If you should prove the contrary, that is to your credit. For the time being, let us move on. Refrain from baseless accusation in the future, it does count against you.”
Finnea smiled, and smiled wider as Verona’s stomach turned.
The Sixberry admixture was souring in her gut. Whatever power or protections she had had just weakened badly.
Oh, man, this was way less of a interesting background thing that required some focus, giving her some added senses and stretchy limbs, now. More like riding a roller coaster she badly wanted to get off, except the roller coaster was her everything.
“Aaugh,” Verona winced. Her stomach turned, and a headache buzzed at the back of her brain.
Avery supported her, wrapping an arm tight around her shoulders. Strong.
“How long?” Verona asked. “I’ll be weak?”
“Several days to a week,” the Aurum reported. “Your standing was good. Now it isn’t, but you’ll recover.”
Verona stared down at the ground, trying to get her equilibrium.
“Can you distribute the penalty across-”
Verona grabbed Avery’s hand, up near her own shoulder, and gave it a tight squeeze, shaking her head.
It was better if two of them were in good fighting shape than if three of them were out of commission for a day or two each.
“Moving back onto the subject of the terms of this contest, Finnea, if you’d outline your next point of definition?” the Aurum asked.
“The arena. They dragged this fight to the forest-”
“Which is closer to neutral ground than anything,” Avery replied. “We could have chosen the town.”
“Nonetheless, you chose the battlefield, I reserve the right-”
“Sidebar,” Verona said, before regretting that she’d opened her mouth. The Sixberry was not sitting well, when she didn’t have as much power as a practitioner to help manage it.
“I object,” Finnea said. “No.”
“We have the right to call sidebars as well,” Lucy said, “stated by the Aurum himself.”
“And he has the discretion to accept or refuse, and I bid him to refuse. To evoke the state of mind you four attempted to create when you mounted your assault, and fitting the fact that we’ve already established that you should be bewildered and grasping for answers to some degree, as you attempted to do to me, sidebars shouldn’t be granted to you.”
“You’ve already negotiated for the terms of that bewilderment in your earlier sidebar,” the Aurum told her.
“I’ll drop my third point to support this one. It streamlines matters,” Finnea said.
“So granted. No sidebar. Moving on to the discussion of setting…”
They’d gotten to keep the forest. She’d wanted to take them deep into the Faerie court. Bullcrap.
Oh man, though, was this not great.
There were eighty Fae gathered around them. Each with their own way of moving, each with their own mannerisms, each with a unique look. That point had been won in the first sidebar. Somehow. Verona could put the entirety of her headache-wracked brain to that particular riddle and she wasn’t sure she’d figure anything out, and even the fact she was trying could be a trap. Part of that whole thing had been that they were supposed to be bewildered.
A group of Faerie in fancier clothing converged on them. A male Fae with a head that came up to Verona’s shoulder pulled out a tape measure, tracking Verona’s height, which provoked a raised eyebrow from Verona. “No manners, no decorum, wearing the wrong things for a visit to court.”
“There’s no dress code for the Dark Fall Court,” Liberty said. “I know that much, at least.”
“Five demerits,” an older Fae woman with onyx skin, red hair, and red eyes said, taking a note in her ledger. “That will cost.”
“Cost what? Are you just trying to mess with us?”
“Girls, girls,” the man with the tape measure said, as he stood on his toes and raised his arm to its full height to measure Lucy. He raised his voice. “Girls!”
Nine young faerie girls that looked like they were the same age as Lucy, Verona, and Avery hurried out of the crowd. Each carried different things. Lengths of cloth, scissors, ribbons, thread, and each was nearly identical, but for a different hairstyle. Each had nine eyes, some large and some small.
Are they like spiders? Verona mused. Maybe they weren’t Faerie after all. Would that account for the ‘years of experience’?
Still didn’t make sense. Finnea was a Faerie and she definitely wasn’t that young, to warrant even seventy five spiders, bugs and other worms with weeks or months or half a year of lifespan each.
“Woah,” Snowdrop said, as one of the Faerie started fussing with her measurements. “I love clothes.”
“I do not consent!” Liberty raised her voice, as two approached, on guard.
“Ten demerits.”
“Fuck your demerits.”
“Twenty demerits.”
This is just a ploy, Verona thought. She raised her arms as two girls measured her arms and torso, her gaze a challenge as she stared them down.
“Fifty demerits, defiant, rude,” the older woman said, as she looked down at Verona.
Her head was a mess and her stomach was definitely starting to feel the Sixberry admixture side effects, and the spirit was not nearly as comfortable in her skin as before. The tailoring nonuplet swept cloth around her, the cloth unfurling in slow motion, and they steered it, to encircle her and provide a curtain.
“We did nothing wrong,” Lucy said.
“You wore that,” one of the tailors told her, with something of a sneer in her voice.
“Just give me the stuff,” Lucy said.
“Ten demerits, speaking out of turn,” the woman said.
“I speak when I damn well please, and I can dress myself, thank you.”
The tailor behind her put a hand on her shoulder and turned her around, giving her a once-over. “Barely, if you even call that dressed.”
“Wow,” Lucy said. “What the hell?”
“Ten demerits, fractious behavior.”
“You’re punishing me but not her?”
“Ten demerits, speaking out of turn.”
Then a curtain was drawn around Lucy.
“Don’t get agitated,” Avery said, quiet.
“We could roll this one down a hill of brambles and the outcome would be better than this travesty,” the tailor by Avery said, plucking at Avery’s punk costume.
“Are you dissing my badass, custom-made-for-Avery battle costume?” Liberty asked. “Want me to shove it down your throat and you can see if it tastes better than it looks?”
“One hundred demerits, fractious behavior with suggestion of violence in an area temporarily claimed as a region of the Dark Fall court.”
“You custom made it?” Avery asked. The curtain swept up around her. Twin tailors ducked inside it, scissors at work.
“Ten demerits, speaking out of turn.”
“Kinda!”
“Ten demerits, again, for speaking out of turn.”
“Rest assured, goblin lover, there is nothing resembling taste here.”
Verona endured the jostling and bumping. She hated haircuts and this was worse than a haircut, a hostile place and hostile Others and a violation of her Self and style. She endured nearly every haircut she had by screwing her eyes closed from start to finish and she treated this much the same way, doing her best to maintain balance as cloth was hauled hard against her hips, then tightened, snipped, a needle whisking in close.
“Do not touch the hair!” Lucy raised her voice. “What is with Faerie and messing with my hair?”
“Twenty demerits, fractious behavior.”
The curtains where cast away, caught by the male Faerie who had called in the tailors, and then folded, one after the other. Verona didn’t feel entirely dressed, but at the urging of the crowd, was made to walk while her dress was turned from the very basic, body-fitting form to something more elaborate. She winced and made a face as her chin was forced up, a high collar set around her neck.
The fact she was being marched forward while being dressed meant she couldn’t close her eyes through the process. She had to see parts, had to stumble as one of the tailors cut across her path, passing scissors to one of her twins to snip something on Lucy’s dress, while taking a pincushion to pin things into position.
“Four instances of two hundred demerits, not properly attired for court,” the older woman said. “Five hundred demerits to the one who hasn’t even accepted our Court-appointed aid.”
“Bite my denim-clad derriere,” Liberty said.
The seventy-five Faerie became more, all gathered in a clearing in the trees. Faerie dug up ground and laid bricks ahead of them, while others raised pillars, accompany the trees, and evoking the image of a cage around them. Where the Aurum had stood, or somewhere roughly equivalent for this particular clearing, if it was a different place, a proper podium had been set up.
It’s all a game, it’s a contest, Verona thought.
Lucy was having trouble keeping her focus and her cool, being jostled, decoration added and a needle flashing at the corner of her vision when one of the tailors sewed frou-frou puffballs around her shoulders. The needle stabbed inward, found its home, then was pulled out and away with the young tailor’s arm almost fully outstretched, hand and needle a foot away from Lucy’s face.
Two tailors giggled as they milled around Avery, doing up a dress jacket with ribbon-decorated epaulets. Avery was at least keeping her cool, not even getting too flustered. Snowdrop became an opossum to try to escape, only for the tailor dealing with her to pick her up and try to dress her up. Liberty was rebuffing any attempt at changing her outfit.
A fairy with a spider for a lower body plucked at Verona’s hair, rearranging strands, and buzzed off as Verona moved her head sharpy, jabbing her chin on a needle in her collar, only to land again, fixing Verona’s intentionally scruffy hair.
The Faerie all found positions, where they stood around the edges of the clearing.
“Didn’t properly announce their arrival at court. Fifty demerits.”
“I don’t think your demerits matter any!” Verona raised her voice.
“On the contrary, demerits determine the outcome,” Finnea said, as she entered the area. She stood opposite the three of them, hair done up, wearing a multi-layered strapless dress that expanded out to something fine and puffy that resembled purple fire as it pooled around her feet Purple fire frozen in time. “If I were you three, I would have clarified the terms by which this contest is won or lost. As it stands, it’s my prerogative to interrogate, question, and judge.”
“Fifteen demerits, failing to show proper deference or decorum for the prosecution,” the older woman said.
They were joined by a Fae with dark robe-like clothing, spaced-apart eyes and antlers that hooked in together and merged to form a spiked crown framed by the rest of the antlers. He approached the podium, gripping the edges of the stone pillar, and stared at them with eyes that were so deeply buried that his eyes were barely more than slits in his inhuman, almost animal face. The fur of his face blended seamlessly into his wavy beard, as did his face-fur and longer hair.
The five of them, Verona, Lucy, Avery, Snowdrop, and Liberty, were gathered against a railing, facing the antlered Fae at the podium. The finishing touches were made to the dress in the last second before the Fae with the antlers took his seat. The tailor nonuplet disappeared into the gathered crowd.
Verona’s dress was fancy, stiff, decorated in what Verona could only assume was a dark Fae style, and combined the cut of the collar and openings in the dress that would have been rude if it weren’t for the lace and frou-frou layer beneath. Green dress, black lace.
“Lay your charges and accusations,” he stated, voice low and rough-edged. An old man voice.
Finnea replied, “That the Kennet practitioners are in violation of Court law. They have violated oaths made to Faerie, they have brought prohibited goblin items to the court, brought Fae goods to the goblin realms, they have stood against the procurement arrangements of eighteen nineteen by standing between an individual who wished to join the Courts and his would-be recruiter, and they’ve collected eighteen hundred demerits for malfeasance and uncooperative behavior since the beginning of this event.”
“Recorder, would you repeat that for us?” the antler-bearing Fae asked.
The court recorder was a narrow Fae with insect limbs reaching out from a dark robe, her hair wild and uncombed, with oval-frame arm-less spectacles situated on her nose. She read from a scroll in a droning voice.
“What even is this garbage?” Lucy whispered, while the woman read. “Can we call Estrella and double check on this?”
“Twenty demerits, whispering and conniving,” the old woman said, making a note.
“Easy,” Verona said, quiet. “We know what they were doing because it’s what we were doing. It’s fair because we were being fair.”
“I think we might’ve gotten off track, losing in the prep phase like we did,” Avery whispered. She was wearing a jacket and slacks, her hair styled, her back too upright, forced that way by the clothing.
“We could argue it isn’t a fair representation of what we were doing, maybe,” Verona whispered.
“I think you missed your chance on that,” Liberty whispered.
“Eighty demerits, aggravated whispering and conniving.”
Verona grimaced.
“…Now nineteen hundred demerits, if my count is right,” the recorder said, pausing to glance at the old woman, who nodded. “For malfeasance and uncooperative behavior since the beginning of this event.”
The antlered Fae nodded, and then stated, “Crimes that, if asserted in full by the prosecuting Fae, would warrant the sale of one and three quarter humans of fifteen years or younger in one of the Dark Fall Markets, by auction. It seems the Ailheim market has vacancies on the docket. That is one individual, to be agreed upon by the defendants, irrevocable and unrefundable, and one individual, to be agreed upon by the defendants, to be sold as three-quarters of one individual. She will be given the option of serving out three-quarters of her remaining lifetime, retaining the ability to buy her freedom at one-third the auctioned price, or forfeiting three quarters of her humanity to be rendered, butchered, and sold before the remainder of her Self is rendered free once again, to find her way in the greater Realms of Other and man.”
It’s all a game, Verona thought. It’s pretend, a test of whether our approach to interrogation and court are right.
She was ninety percent sure they wouldn’t actually be sold.
“Are the penalties understood by all parties?”
Verona, Lucy, and Snowdrop all nodded. Avery didn’t move, and Liberty flipped him the bird.
“Eighty demerits,” the old woman said.
“Should you collect enough demerits, the charges and penalties may escalate. You’re already perilously close to having two of your number auctioned off, irreconcilable and unrefundable,” the Faerie with antlers stated. “Are you ready to proceed?”
“Yes,” Verona said, in near-unison with Lucy and Avery, while Liberty muttered, “Whatever, this is dumb.” Snowdrop uttered a simple, “No.”
“One hundred demerits, obstruction.”
“Snowdrop, registered opossum spirit companion, be aware that if you obstruct the functions of this court by refusing to proceed, you collect demerits or go straight to the auction block.”
“Snowdrop has a special rule of Discourse,” Avery said.
“Ten demerits, speaking out of turn, one hundred demerits, obstruction.”
What the heck was this? First the actual procedure of getting started was taking forever, now this?
Why was this necessary? If she assumed a motivation, what were they doing? Maricica was already gone, Lis was probably in the wind, if the Aurum Coil wasn’t holding her. What else was there?
Lucy raised her hand to speak.
“Raising a hand outside of designated question and answer periods, ten demerits.”
“May I speak?” Lucy asked.
“Speaking out of turn, ten demerits.”
“Snowdrop is ours, collectively, we agree as a trio, bound together, she can be included in those numbers.”
“Aggravated speaking out of turn, fifty demerits.”
“Slouching, that’s five demerits,” a bystander cut in. His buddy congratulated him like he’d won something. The older Faerie wrote something down and ripped off a scrip of paper, handing it over.
“So be it,” the presiding judge stated. “The charges have been outlined, and as a gestalt entity, you may allocate and distribute the charges between your five selves. Punishments may be handed out as appropriate, and where there are not enough charges for the sale of one whole individual, the partial individual options will be offered in the same manner as already stated, understood?”
She nodded, as did the others. Snowdrop became an opossum, and Avery hugged her to her chest, glaring at the assembled Fae.
“What are we doing?” Avery whispered. “We’re supposed to assign the charges? Do we remember the exact charges?”
“Does it matter?” Verona asked. “Is this real?”
“Can we afford to treat it as anything less than serious?” Lucy asked.
“If it’s representative of a baseless challenge against a strange Faerie, yeah, can’t we?” Verona asked. To Verona’s Sight, this was all real.
She was eighty percent this was pretend, a way of making a point.
“I think we get more demerits if we can’t remember the charges. They don’t let us take notes…” Lucy whispered. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas, Liberty?”
“We are so far past the point where my expertise applies, Ellingson, so fucking far.”
Her phone buzzed in a pocket she then had to struggle to find. Buzzing over and over again. Verona had to pat at the dress’s material, searching folds and openings to dig inside.
Lucy was doing the same.
Why was it both their phones? Why not Avery’s?
Lucy found her phone first, in an inside pocket of the sleek dress of crimson leaves and dark gray fabric. She checked, and her expression transformed. She swayed back enough that Liberty had to catch her.
Verona found her phone. She fumbled for the power button.
“One minute remaining.”
Finnea was smiling, her eyes cutting through the shadows. In the gloom of this evening glade, barely lit by moonlight above and the pale birch trees around them, her expression was at its most inhuman.
It was a text message without a sender. The edges of the phone distorted and bled color in time with the pulse of the vibration. As the phone fritzed, the white panel of the text message turned dark gray, and the runework they’d drawn stood out pale and white.
Wardings breached by Other: Front door, Ellingson Household, Jasmine/Mom’s Room, Ellingson Household. 8:55pm.
Avery checked Lucy’s phone, then grabbed Lucy’s arm. “We request a recess.”
“Obviously not,” Finnea said, still smiling. “Do you practitioners think of what we’re kept from when we’re bound or forced into your affairs?”
“Not granted,” the judge stated.
“Speaking out of turn, ten demerits. Failed motion, fifty demerits.”
“Shut up!” Lucy spat out the words to the Faerie. “This isn’t fake, is it? This isn’t them adding pressure by messing with us?”
“I don’t think they have that info unless they’ve been inside,” Verona told her.
Lucy’s eyes flashed genuine fear as Verona said it, to the point Verona regretted opening her mouth.
Verona reached out with a slightly too-long arm, seizing Lucy’s hand, then reached past for Avery. Liberty, leaning into the railing, put a hand out, over theirs, frowning. Snowdrop moved to put both paws over top.
“Tashlit, Tashlit, Tashlit,” Verona whispered, closing her eyes.
“John Stiles, John Stiles, John Stiles,” Lucy whispered.
“Nicolette, Nicolette, Nicolette,” Avery whispered, gripping their hands tight.
“Anyone but Cherrypop, anyone but Cherrypop, anyone but Cherrypop,” Snowdrop whispered.
“House key,” Liberty said.
Lucy nearly tore the necklace from her neck, picking out the house key.
“Unauthorized connection attempt, two hundred demerits.”
“Blood, hurry,” Liberty said. “Has to be one of you.”
Lucy brought her thumb to her mouth, biting at the corner of her fingernail.
“Move to block, entirely unnecessary for the proceedings of this court process,” Finnea said.
“Agreed. So blocked.”
There was a feeling at the end of that short statement from the judge, like all of them had exhaled at the same time, or something had been building up and deflated.
“This is fake, right?” Lucy whispered. She looked over at the Faerie, “This is fake.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s Faerie,” Liberty said, hissing that last word. “Good bet that this is as fake as it needs to be to be the worst thing possible right now, and as real as it needs to be to be the worst thing possible.”
“It is,” Finnea replied. The darkness had deepened a bit, the monstrous edge exaggerating. “But that phone call isn’t of me or the Aurum. I so swear. I have no idea of what it might be, except that I’d bet a meaningful share of my personal power that you’ve agitated Maricica, Clad in Wings, and she’s now responding in kind.”
“This is Maricica?” Lucy asked.
“Directly or indirectly. Oh, the look on your faces.”
Lucy sagged against the railing, eyes wide.
“Can we negotiate?” Avery asked. “End this joke trial, make some deal?”
“Calling the trial a joke, fifty demerits.”
“Why would I, when I stand to gain a share of the proceeds from selling you in the markets, in addition to everything else I’ve arranged to gain tonight?” Finnea asked.
The connections had been blocked, they couldn’t reach out with names. They could hope that they’d pinged the right people, that those people might crash this, but that meant finding them here, getting involved, then going from here to Jasmine and Lucy’s house and that would take too long.
“Can we call the Aurum?” Verona asked. “If we claim an innocent might be harmed, or oaths might be violated-”
“Maybe,” Avery said.
“She’d interfere,” Liberty said. “I’d say fight our way out except it’s this karmic thing with the Judge guy involved. But think crude, think blunt-”
What could they even do? Who would even act? Who could they reach out to? They could call John, but that would almost certainly throw this entire trial and they might save Jasmine but they’d lose everything else.
Verona met Lucy’s eyes, and saw the fear there. The usual strength, anger, and frustration were gone.
She could imagine Jasmine, who resembled Lucy, with that same expression. Her eyes watered, despite the Sixberry effect. The headache roiled and her stomach turned.
She didn’t feel like she had a heartbeat, and she wasn’t sure if that was Sixberry or shock. She pressed a hand to her stomach, where the spirit of Long was, and then reached, not with Limb but with Word.
“Peckersnot!” Verona shrieked, top of her lungs. She had to hope she could reach past this illusion, past this scene. Her voice was ragged from going for volume more than coherence. “Cherrypop! Doglick! Tatty! Protect Lucy’s mom!”
She pulled on the spirit’s power, burning through everything to try to reach out, around, and past. Bile boiled up into her throat and she vomited out the spent remnants of the lesser spirit. It took to the air and faded out.
“Soiling the court. Fifty demerits.”
Lucy almost fell into Verona, hugging her from behind, sheltering her.
Faerie soldiers stepped in close to grab them, to haul them to their feet, and Avery blocked them, growling at the same time Snowdrop hissed, baring teeth. Liberty took up residence at their flanks, as two members of the crowd stepped in close.
“Protect my mom!” Lucy joined her voice to Verona’s, without the power of any spirit inside her, but with just as much heart.
“Speaking out of turn, ten demerits. Let’s carry on.”
Next Chapter