Break 2 | Pale

Hurry up and wait.

John walked into the kitchen and checked below the lower cabinets.  He set one boot against the two inches of boards connecting floor to cabinet, then applied pressure until wood shifted.

He had to almost lie down to reach in, past spiderweb and mouse droppings, to find an old bag, old enough that its flattened, wrinkled form had become set.  Fabric that had once been a military green had turned to mint white on the top, and trying to smooth wrinkles or get the bag closer to its original shape made fabric crack and split.  Half of the zipper detached from the bag altogether as he tugged on the tag.

It was the old bug-out bag.  Sometimes they would settle in a place, they could accumulate things and creature comforts, but they always kept the bag as something they could grab and run with.  The essential for camping were in there, along with some of the guns, the collapsible bow, arrows and spare arrowheads that were better for hunting dinner than they were for dealing with men that were hunting them.  Batteries, mirrors, extra bullets for various guns, a small saw, a whetstone, ropes, straps with buckles for securing belongings and enemies, a firestarting kit, two spare changes of clothes for him.

Two spare changes of clothes for Yalda.

The clothes hadn’t fared much better than the bag, owing to some exposure through the gaps in the exterior wall of the house.  He couldn’t unfold the articles of clothing.  A fisherman’s sweater in a small size had fared better than some of the other things, a wool blend with a tight knit.  It was black and had had a bit of gloss to it once, in a way that reminded him of Yalda’s hair after the rain.  She’d loved it, even though it had been oversized for her small frame.  It had been the first article of warmer clothing she’d pull on when the winter weather came.  Before long she switched dresses, skirts and shorts for pants, before she changed sandals out for boots, before other layers.

He hadn’t expected her to like it that much.  He’d only picked it because he’d thought it would do for escaping into the night.  A black sweater for the darkness that would endure weather.

When it had stained, he’d gone out to get a replacement.  The stained version had gone in the bag.  He couldn’t even see the stain now, with the water damage and crustiness on one edge.  The fabric flexed but didn’t move like fabric.

For twelve years, he’d lived here.  His pattern had shifted away from a constant readiness to flee, and toward preparing the space.  The bug-out bag had remained, placed near the back exit of the house, another one had been made for the front, another for the upstairs.  Then they had faded in importance.  Then Yalda had died at the end of his gun.

He’d maintained the other bags, refreshing their contents now and then.  Not this one. This one held memories and while he didn’t hate the memories, this one also had been with them through a series of losses.  To dig up the old, original bug-out bag, the memories, and refresh himself on the losses had been too much in the years after.

Then, three or four years ago, he’d gone to get it.  He’d kicked away the baseboard that wasn’t securely fixed in position, reached under, and the strap he’d positioned for an easy grab, pull, and run had broken.  He’d started to get down to get the bag, then he’d realized he didn’t want or need to see its damaged and rotted-out components.

The bowstrings were unsalvageable, Yalda’s clothes, sweater excepted, were mouse nest.  So were his.  There were two raincoats and two winter jackets inside.  Thin, but it wasn’t as if the cold would kill them.

He sorted the things out.  Things like batteries that were covered in crystals and ammunition went in the small pile.  The clothes and camping things went in the larger pile.

A tape recorder?

He remembered it, but it wasn’t part of the kit.

He opened it up, but the batteries had been removed.

Good of her to do that.

He had his doubts the tape had survived, but inset into the hard plastic was the word ‘waterproof’.

He found some of the batteries he’d placed in the kitchen drawer, as utility and materials for makeshift bombs and traps, and pressed them into the slot.

He rewound, waiting and listening to hear if it was damaged, if anything snapped or broke.  It didn’t.  He hit the ‘play’ button.

He could hear running footsteps.

“John!  John.  Here.”

His own voice.  “The guitar?”

“Play something, and sing.”

“Now?”

“I’m taping.  I figured it out.”

“Let me play.  You do the singing.”

“I want one song of yours.”

The conversation continued, muffled, the tape player covered up by something.  He could vaguely recall, Yalda throwing herself onto his back, leaning into him, trying to get him to listen.

He wished he’d listened.  He wished he’d spoiled her more.

He could almost feel her weight there, leaning against him.

He didn’t mind the muffled part of it.  There was a part of having someone around and making noise, elsewhere in the house.  He’d missed that, and this resembled it.

The cassette player was meant to be worn, and had a plastic clip on the back.  He attached it to his pocket, then found and plugged in his headphones, that Verona had given him to use with the game console.  He bent down and scooped up a number of the things from the trash.  A bundle of bowstrings, clothes.

He placed some of it in the fireplace.

It caught easily.  He waited until enough of it was burning, then threw more in, along with some wood.  A metal grate covered the fireplace to minimize the fire hazard.

The fire reminded him of various campfires, many covered, to keep the flame from being seen.

“I remember singing with my father.”

“Do you?”

“A piece of me does.  A piece of me comes from a woman from America, and she has a happy memory with her father, one of her earliest.  I have twenty-one in me, John.  Many of them want you singing.  A man’s voice to match mine.”

“Little Songbird. I’m not much of a father figure.”

“You’re a big brother.  A stingy one.”

“What if I hummed instead?”  The guitar started playing as he asked the question.

Then her singing followed.  He could imagine the eye roll.  Her voice was high and sweet, drawn out.  A song in Pashto he’d heard her sing before, but it had been peppy before, despite the lyrics.  A lot of Pashto songs were.

Why do you shoot, young soldier?  Why send those bullets away?

John threw more onto the fire, secured it, moved some trash away from the fireplace, and then did another circuit around the house.  A knife under a chair, a set of bolt cutters in the corner, under some papers.  Things he might use or run to if there was a crisis.  Things he’d started collecting and putting into place over time.

Putting it all away.  Weapons went on the dining room table, which he’d already cleared off.  A knife sliced down the length of a quilted blanket, then cut into the quilted parts, creating pockets.  He pulled out the minimal stuffing.

Spare handgun, one of three taken from a gun-happy goblin.  He checked it was clear and unloaded, slipped it into the pocket, then put spare ammunition in the pockets below it.  He carefully rolled up the cloth, then encircled it with a strap, feeding strap through buckle and cinching it tight.  A dense and surprisingly heavy little roll.

Knives got their own roll.

An Other cleaning up after themselves had its own small karmic gains.  It helped to protect innocence.

The singing stopped.  John went to pull the device from his hip, but the part that helped secure it in position was snagged on the lip of his pocket.  He changed the angle, looking for the rewind button.

He heard the jangling, and he recognized the moment.

Him sitting on the back porch, Yalda leaning against his back, all of her weight, looking over his shoulder.  The dog tags dangled.

John reached around his own neck.  He pulled the tags out.  Tags and a small ring.

Back then, it had been her wearing the tags.  They’d fallen free of her collar.  He’d reached up from his guitar to look through them for the first time in a long while.  She’d just stayed there, looking down.

He found the small ring that had been added to the chain since.

A quiet moment without any words, but he could feel her like she was there, right behind him, leaning on him, playfulness giving way to a moment of melancholy.

Then footsteps, her moving away.  Getting something.  Then singing again.  He’d plucked on the guitar, but her singing didn’t have a point, or a particular meter.  Improvised.

He was still clearing things up and dismantling the traps and other signs of his long stay here when the tape ran out.  He put on the other side of it, but it didn’t seem as if Yalda had figured out how to record on the flip side.  Maybe she hadn’t known it was possible.

He rewound back to the start of the first song, the four or five minutes of singing, endured the silence that bridged the gap, then listened to the second song for a second time, the improvised lyrics and pattern.

By the time the second song was done, so was he.  He’d found a dozen weapons and tools he’d secreted around and forgotten about, and they went to the dining room table.  Things that were usable were packed up.  He dropped a heavy coat, military green with a fur lining, onto the packed stuff.  It was actually intact, he actually wore it in the winter months, and it had been something Yalda had cherished.  She’d use it as a crude throw blanket, putting it over her feet in colder months, or she’d wear it as a ludicrously oversized coat for simple errands.  He didn’t want to burn it.

The fire burned through the available fuel, then became embers.  He threw rainwater from a container outside over it.  Virtually everything he had and every memento was reduced down to embers and three bags.  One was about fifty pounds; a ‘bug-out’ bag of a different flavor than the usual.  Another was twenty or thirty pounds of spare hand-tools, weapons, and other trash that wouldn’t burn.  The last was almost a hundred pounds, long enough to fit a broomstick handle inside, along with the rolled-up weapons and other combat essentials.  The strap helped him bear it, and after adjustment, the heavy bag sat along hip.

Silence followed the ending of the tape.

“Bye,” he said to the silence, before venturing out into the evening.

John unzipped the bag, then dropped it to the floor.  Knives, hatchets, razors, wire, a coil of barbed wire in a cookie tin, batteries, and other things crashed violently on meeting the ground.

“Dear boy, is it Christmas?” Toadswallow asked.

“Do you have a use for it?”

Goblins had stirred awake and were showing interest in the bag, gathering around.

“Certainly do, sir.  Will you sit?  A drink?”

“No drink.  I need to stay clear-headed.  I’m not going to stay for long, I think.  I’m going to try to stay clear-headed.”

“One beer,” Toadswallow said.  “In true goblin specialty, it’s warm and almost past expiry.”

“Can I take it on the road with me?  I’m not one for goodbyes, Toad.  I’m stopping in to check everything’s fine, say a few words to a few goblins I got to know, look into the subject of Bluntmunch…”

“Not one for goodbyes, are you, John?”

“I’ve had too many.  They stop being bittersweet and end up bitter.  I’d rather keep them minimal.”

“Tatty,” Toadswallow ordered, “get the beer I put aside in the cooler.  And the mystery bottle for the rest of us.  And if one of you little tumors drank the stuff despite my orders, I might wring you out into John’s mouth to get him his beer.”

“I’ll pass on that if it comes to it,” John said.

Tatty hurried off.

“Get glasses, all of you, come on, hurry, we don’t want to waste the man’s time,” Toadswallow ordered.

Goblins hurried to obey.

There was a sound of breaking glass as Kittycough decided to break a bottle that had been on the floor, holding the bottom end as a cup with very dangerous edges.

The only goblin who didn’t budge was Doglick.  He looked up at John, tongue lolling.

John bent down, and rubbed Doglick’s head with a roughness that would have made a dog yelp and back off.  “Hey you, you’re not a dog, no you aren’t.  You’re not a dog at all, you seem to think you’ve got everyone here fooled, but you don’t.  No you don’t.”

Doglick grunted happy sounds as John rubbed hands violently over his head.

“Good patrolling, D.L.,” John said, finishing with a pat.  “Glad to have you with.”

Tatty came, dragging both bottles along the floor.  John bent down to grab them, and lifted her up to the counter at the same time.  He saw Cherrypop with a shot glass, and stuck out one foot.  She climbed aboard and he lifted her up onto the stool next to her, before lifting her up to the counter.  She panted from the exertion, setting down glass and rock.

Toadswallow got things sorted, opening the bottles one by one.  John reached into the one bag he’d set on the stool to his left, and cut away a strap and buckle.  He spotted a marker across the room, near obscenity and anatomically incorrect graffiti written at the base of the wall, and got it.

He wrote ‘K-9′ on the strap, bent down, and put the loop of strap and buckle around Doglick’s neck.

Biscuit, Bangnut, and Ramjam immediately went after Doglick to try to get the tail end of the strap and cinch it tight around Doglick’s throat, to strangle him.  He fought them off, yipping and barking.

That qualified for having fun, among goblins.

Toadswallow passed him the beer.

“Alright, you lot!” Toadswallow raised his voice.  “Get your tiny patoots over here!”

He held the brown bottle of mystery alcohol, label worn off.  It was large and he held it on one corner of the bottom, slightly tilted.  As goblins got close, holding up cups, he tilted it, sloshing out contents into dirty cups, broken bottle ends -some had followed Kittycough’s suit-, and in Doglick’s case, an open mouth turned toward the ceiling.

Pretty good aim.  Only about a quarter of it ended up on the floor, with moving targets, distance, and an unwieldy bottle.  John smiled.

Toadswallow gave some to Cherrypop, some to Tatty, and some to himself.  Cherrypop thrust her face into the shot glass.

“Clink,” Toadswallow said.

John clinked his glass against Toadswallow’s.

“Cheers,” Toadswallow said.  Various other goblins picked up the cry.

“Cheers,” John said, standing from his seat, hefting the two remaining bags and then holding the beer bottle in the other.  “Thanks for seeing me on my way.”

“Of course, dear John.  Of course.”

“Some good laughs.”

“Some incredible violence.”

“Where necessary.”

John put the bottle down, reached into his pocket and pulled out an old analog watch with a metal link band.  It had been on a younger soldier but it dated back to the 40s.  He put it on the counter.

“I don’t know if you remember this, Toad.”

“I do.”

“I offered it to you once upon a time.  Bit scuffed, but fancy.  Thought it suited you.”

“And I told you that you should hold onto it.  You need to fancy yourself up a bit.  Might make the difference.”

“I don’t know if it did,” John said.  He slid it closer to Toadswallow.

Toadswallow picked it up.

“Clasp is broken, glass is scratched, but-”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Toadswallow said.  He nodded.  He slipped it into a pocket.

He looked at Cherrypop, dug deeper into his pocket, and worried for a moment he’d lost it.  He found it in the very corner, amid lint.

He had to rescue Cherrypop from the shot glass.  She seemed intent in pushing herself in deeper, drinking it all before taking a breath again.  He tugged her out, index finger and thumb looping around her middle, and seated her on the counter.  She sat there, stunned from the drinking, alcohol dripping down from hair to face and body.  She’d drunk half her body weight in alcohol, it looked like.

“Found this in one of my bags,” he told her.  He placed a sandy yellow rock in front of her.  Even in her daze she showed some interest.  “I figured… sure, it’s just a little rock, but it’s a rock from a battlefield, you might like that, and it’s a sneaky rock that stowed away from the middle east to get all the way here.  And you’re sneaky.”

She reached for the rock and missed, hand groping about an inch to the left of where the rock was.

John nudged it closer to her, until it rested against her hip.  She tried twice and then put a small hand on top of it.

“I can help you make that special,” Toadswallow told her.

She looked vaguely in his direction.

“You’ve got no idea what I’m saying, do you?” Toadswallow asked.

Cherrypop smiled uncertainly.

“Gash?” he asked.

Gashwad was under one of the bar’s bench seats, near a corner, glaring out from under.

John picked up his stuff, bringing the beer, and got a knife from the bag.  “Had this one the longest, Gash.  Probably used it to kill more animals and people than I did with any of the other knives.”

He switched his grip on it, holding the blade by the flat, and extended the handle to Gashwad.

Gashwad took it.

“We didn’t spend as much time together as some, but… we were around for a while, and I like goblins.”

Gashwad nodded.  Being more antisocial than usual.

John turned to Toadswallow.  “Show me to Bluntmunch?”

Toadswallow pointed, then walked along the counter.

Goblins cheered and made noises as John followed to the door just beside where the bar opened up.  Leading to the thoroughly raided back room, a back exit, and stairs going up.  They went up the stairs.  Toadswallow used a rope he’d strung up along the railing to help himself get over the individual stairs.  John followed patiently.

“I figured the weapons could be useful for your market, if you get around to that.”

“Gonna have to postpone.”

“Are you?”

“Lost my Sage.”

“Could pick another.”

“I’ll-” Toad grunted as he got over another stair.  “-wait.  Get it right.”

“For Bubbleyum?  For your girl?”

Toadswallow grunted in the affirmative.

“Don’t try so hard for perfect that you postpone it forever.  If she likes you like it sounds she does, she’ll just want to be by your side, even if you don’t have your number one choice of Sage.”

“Set a standard, dear John.  Right from the start.  She’s trying so hard to catch up, strut her stuff, kicking ass and smartening up… can’t let her.  She worships the ground I walk on, gotta live up to that, for her and for me.  I’ll wait the two or so years.”

John sighed.

“Careful.  I trapped it.”

“Okay.”

Bluntmunch was in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  Chains bound him around the arms and chest, and looped down to the groin, over the shoulders, and groin again.  A loop of chain sat on the ground, in what might’ve been oil.  Goblin traps were arranged around the room.

“Blunt,” John said.

Bluntmunch turned his head aside, facing the wall.

“Give us some privacy?” he asked Toadswallow.

“As you wish.”

John waited.  After a bit, when Toadswallow was gone, Bluntmunch faced John again.

“Want shitty beer?” John offered.

Blunt paused, then nodded.

John crossed the distance, held out the beer across the circle- he felt the resistance from the chain.  It wasn’t meant for him, but there was something in that that worked on him too.  Breaking past the line of the makeshift barrier, it tested it.  If Bluntmunch had chosen, he might’ve been able to throw himself against it.  Shift or break the chain, or disconnect it from whatever that sheen on the floor was.

Bluntmunch didn’t.  Instead, he drank with chin jutted forward and mouth open, as John tipped the beer into his mouth without letting bottle touch lips.

“Were you going to fight me, Bluntmunch?” John asked.  He took a seat by the barrier.  “Or the three girls?”

Bluntmunch swallowed, cleared his throat, then looked down at the floor.  “Neither.  Jus’ kickin’ up a fuss, brought that Dog Meat I told ya about into town.  It’s not my fault that me bein’ caught means it’s aimless, wanderin’, maybe gettin’ someone hurt.”

“For money?  A bit of an edge?  Get away from Gerhild?”

“Edith has some cash.  Not like she’s gotta save for retirement.  She was gonna buy one of the kids a spot a land.  For a brute like me, I can stretch some cash a good way.”

“Get yourself a barney to do your shopping?  Something like that?”

Bluntmunch shrugged the larger of his two shoulders.

John sat there, holding the bottle.  He took a swallow.

“Doesn’t make sense to me,” John said.  He looked over at the goblin, made it a penetrating, serious look.

He took another swallow, then gave Bluntmunch enough for a gulp.  The goblin licked his lips.

“They don’t let ya stand still,” Bluntmunch grunted.

“Who’s they?”

“Them.  Everyone, but it’s worse in places.  Worse here.  Yeh can’t settle down, yeh can’t stop, yeh can’t say hey, yer done.  There’s always stuff yeh want getting further away, stuff yeh don’t want inchin’ closer.  It’s all set up so yeh can’t take what yeh got and leave it at that.  Eh, John?  The kid?  Yalda.  S’what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Yeah.”

“Got too strong,” Bluntmunch said.  “Yeh know, there’s places in the world, they would’ve left her alone.  Would’ve left ya alone.  Yeh could’ve done it all so there were no innocents survivin’ to tell the tale.  Move out to the deep wilderness, let a few people die erry once in a while.  Yeah?”

“Maybe.  She was done with killing.”

“Then yeh move further into the deep wilds, keep an eye out.  Make her stay put when yeh go get things.  All the kid wanted was to be with ya, John.  There were ways.”

“There were always going to be risks.  Someone sees her, gets scared, wrong thought crosses their mind?  Especially if we’re in the deep wilderness, there’s no way they get to a hospital before they’re crumpled up, immobile.  They die in the woods, food for animals.”

“You and Yalda deserved something.  You got out, you fought hard.  Who cares abou some random schlub in the woods?”

“Nah,” John sighed the word.  “She was done with killing.  I think she was done in general.”

“Who brought it up?  Who asked for the sacrifice in the first place?”

“I don’t know.  Miss brought it up after talking to a Judge.  I think they approached her.  They approached me after.”

“Yeh, I thought so,” Bluntmunch said.  “Most other places, they would’ve let it be.  Other kills some randoms, innocence tested but not broken?  That’s fine.  Happens.  Jus’ clean up after yerselves.  But Miss was pushin’ for something.  I don’t know either, if she went to them to talk about it, or if they went to her, but I think if they went to her, it was still because… they know.  They know she’s pulling something.  And if you’re going to strike for change then they’re going to make sure you’ve crossed yer titties and diddled your ‘i’s, yeah?”

John nodded.

“I think, in a world where Miss wasn’t trying something, where Toadswallow wasn’t gettin’ all fancy and makin’ plans… she’d still be here.  Your girl.”

“Maybe.  I think it was inevitable, Blunt.  She would’ve kept getting stronger, little by little.  I have to ask, what does that have to do with you?”

“World’s movin’.  Keeps spinnin’, keeps changin’.  Toad and Miss, they spin with it, they move with it.  Other things, they move with it, yeah?”

The redcap queen?

“Can’t jus’ hold position and make your little steps forward, Dog Meat here, pull a job there, gather some lackeys down that-aways.  Way things are goin’, it’s all speedin’ up.”

“So I thought it was a chance, jus’ one last fuck you to the both of them and whatever they’re doing.  One shot at me gettin’ movin’, puttin’ my own spin on shit.  What am I sticking around here for?  Huh?  Buncha goblins playing nice-nice?  New Others I don’t give a shit about?  I hear whispers about Toads settin’ somethin’ up and why the fuck would I want to stick around for that?  And I’ve got all that goin’ on, annoying the wrigglin’ shits outta me, and then yer going to up and go?  Yer movin’ on?  Or yer gonna die tryin’?  Fuck yer face, John Stiles.”

John sat back, taking another drink, finishing the bottle.

He set it down on the floor, far from where it could roll into Bluntmunch’s circle.

“I didn’t think we got along that well, Bluntmunch.  That you’d miss me.”

“Yeah?  Well, ya were better than a lot of ’em.  You stayed put.  Before.”

“You sound like an old man, Blunt.”

“Fuck you.”

John got to his feet, and grunted as he picked up his bag.

“I hope you lose,” Bluntmunch said.

“I think I’m going to pretend that’s said in the heat of the moment.  It was good to fight at your side those thirty-ish times over the years, Blunt.  Good luck, whatever comes next.”

“Get yer face fucked, John.”

John collected his things.  Two bags, everything in order.  He double checked nothing had disturbed the binding then he headed downstairs.

Toadswallow sat at the edge of the bar, while goblins celebrated or lapsed from drinking to unconsciousness, returning to their slumber, so they’d be rested for later.  Goblins were supposed to sleep twenty or more hours a day, but with everything going on, and the bloody influence over the town, they were keeping hours on par with a human.

He met Toadswallow’s eyes as the goblin looked back, nodded once, and then used the back door to exit.

Guilherme joined him on the way through the woods.

“Tiring yourself out, lugging that around?” Guilherme asked.  “It’s not necessary.”

“I don’t get tired, I recover fast.”

“I didn’t mean your physical body,” Guilherme said.  “You stink of goblins and alcohol.”

“Maybe that’ll give me an edge against an Other with a sensitive nose.”

“Is that truly how you wish to win?  What a way to start your reign as a power over this region, a knife’s edge victory decided by the malingering odor of cigarette butts, buttocks, and stale blood.  In a sense, you’ll have failed at everything you intended to do before you’ve even begun.”

John snorted.

“What do you intend to do, John?”

“I suppose we’ll see.  If I can do better than my predecessor, then that’s a good start.”

“Perhaps a secondary goal of not dying in such a messy, complicated way?”

“Am I hearing you right?  This from a Faerie?”

“A very tired Faerie.  For my heartbreak to matter, I think it should cap everything off.  I’m done, much as I suspect you are, fellow warrior.”

“In a sense.  I’m not done looking for things I’m not done with.  Found a few.”

“That’s good.  Hold onto that.  The children were one of those things, I suspect.”

“I can watch over them from a throne that quietly overlooks this entire region.  Another goal, you think?”

“It is.  I’ll watch them tonight.  I can do that much.  I’m not sure what else.”

“You alright Guilherme?” John asked.  “I’ve heard people talking about you, but I thought I should hear it straight from you.”

“My head goes in circles.  I’ve walked some paths for so long that the grooves have become ruts and the ruts hold the wheels so firm I have to travel a ways to find a spot to get them free.  Every time it gets harder.”

John wasn’t sure how to answer.  A lengthy acquaintance with Guilherme suggested silence was often a right answer.

“I don’t mean to dwell on it when you have other things to focus on.  I wanted to talk to you only to let you know I’ll try tonight.  I can’t make promises or oaths, not this close to the end of this particular story, or that promise or oath might become the rut I get stuck in.”

“Do what you have to do, Guilherme, I’ll do the same.  I won’t think the less of our friendship over these years if we’re both making our awkward way to different destinations by different directions, with this as our crossroads.”

“You sound faintly poetic.  I’m glad if I’ve rubbed off on you.  I wish I could be more confident about my ability to help.  She’s so inexperienced, but nimble.  I’m too experienced, the nimbleness gone.”

“Do what you can and what you have to.  I’ll do the same.”

“I recall you wanted to avoid a direct goodbye, so I’ll go now, saying it as much as I can without saying it directly.”

“I gave gifts to some of the goblins, but I found myself stuck for ideas with you.  I had one or two in mind, if you’re open to-”

“You gave me a good experience.  That’s more valuable than any bauble.”

“Point me in the right direction?” John asked.

“The left.  It’s a hard path to miss.”

John nodded, and he carried on, bringing the bags with him.

Guilherme wasn’t walking alongside him as he took the left path.  Down a slight slope, to grass speckled with gravel, from before the little road had had dirt poured over it and packed down.

He spotted the station wagon.

“Friendly!” John called out.

He stepped out, hands out to the side, eyeing Zed, who stood up, a tool in hand, and Brie, who crouched by a little kerosene stove, similar to ones John had used with Yalda.  Neither he nor she needed to eat, but it soothed and it softened the edges of the days.  A bit of humanity.

“John Stiles,” Zed said.  “Can you confirm?”

“I am he.”

“I’m Zed.  This is Brie.  Have to be careful with glamours around.  I wondered if we’d see you before everything happened.”

“I’ll set off soon after midnight.  I don’t need to sleep, some of the competitors do.  It’ll help.”

“So I’ve heard.  Did you want to pass on a message to the girls?  Ask… anything?”

John shook his head.

He looked at Brie.

She stood, looked down at the little kerosene stove, and stooped down to turn it off.

“I’ll leave you be,” Zed told them.

Zed walked the little ways down toward the river.  Visible in the late evening gloom, but not out of sight.

“I feel like I’m intruding, every time you and I share a space,” John confessed.

“I feel like I occupy a bigger space than I should, if that makes sense.  What’s inside me is so big.”

John nodded.

“I wish I could tell you I’ve figured it out enough that I could bring her out, let you see her again.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.  It would be dangerous, when she’s at the center of that big thing.”

Brie nodded.  She fixed her hair, smoothing out clothing.  Nervous.

He supposed he struck an intimidating figure.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

He put one bag down, then reached inside.

The cassette player.

“It has singing on it.  Hers.  Moments with me and her.  I imagine you don’t want to hear it.  Everything you’ve been through, the Choir.  She was your enemy.”

Brie shook her head.  She took the cassette player.

“I’d rather it’s with you than me.  With me it might get broken.  At least with you it’s closer to her.”

“Maybe Zed can do something with it.”

“I trust you.  I know tokens can help with dealing with these forces, or binding them,” John said.  He thought of fellow soldiers who’d been bound just that way.  “Maybe it helps.”

“Thank you.  I don’t hate her, you know.  I know the story, I know she was twisted into this.  I- I just feel bad.”

“You stopped her from being something I don’t think she wanted to be.  You saved her in a way.  I don’t know what to say or do to convey what it means that you went to that effort, except that there’s a chance I take the throne and perhaps you’d have a guide of things karmic smiling down on you.”

Brie nodded.  After a delay, she said, “Good luck.”

He started to reach down to get the bag, then felt the shift at his chest.

He straightened, then pulled the tags out from beneath the shirt.  He pulled the chains over his head, then sorted out the contents.

One small ring.  He removed it from the chain.  He reached out, Brie reached over, and he pressed the ring into her palm.

For four, five, six seconds, he couldn’t move or make himself let go.  It was only with the realization he was imposing on this poor girl.  A stranger to him.

He released it, drawing his hand back.  “It was hers.”

“I thought so.”

“I’d rather it’s close to her.  If you don’t mind.”

“Not a problem.”

“Maybe it’ll help secure the bindings further.  Or whatever you end up doing.  I’ll pretend there’s a chance you can extricate her and unravel that creation, and you can pass that ring to her with my good wishes.”

“I think we’ll try.  We have resources.  I think you can even hope, instead of just pretending.”

“Thank you,” he said, meaning it.  “Do you have the time?  I gave Toadswallow my old watch.”

“Eleven thirty-five.”

He picked up his things.

“I’m a bad judge of distances and how far it might take to walk, but… you’re going?”

He nodded.

He could see the clock over the town center.  He was a few minutes late.

He carried the bags, with the winter jacket laid across the larger of the two, trapped there by the straps, a weapon at his hip and ankle, sweating but not sweating profusely, his white t-shirt decorated by the passage through the woods, stripes of sap and traces of bark, tiny bits of leaves.  His footsteps were heavy.

Space distorted as he approached the Arena.  The world viewed through a fishbowl, it looked ordinary from a distance, but as he approached, the surfaces expanded, buildings would dip low at the metaphorical fishbowl’s edge, then rise higher, splitting in two.  The parking lot was wet and it wasn’t wet with water.  Light shone down and illuminated the exterior in faint red.

There was no traffic.  There weren’t many lights.  No glow of the city or even the town intruded on the night sky.  The sky had distorted as well, splitting, multiplying, shrinking certain spaces down.

Black as anything, speckled with red stars.

The moon got redder as he drew closer, crossing the street.

“John.”

He turned.

Her eyes were moist.  She looked very like how she’d looked after he’d put a bullet in Alexander.  Small.  Young.

She had Verona and Avery behind her.  Avery had Snowdrop on her shoulder.

“I’m not so good with farewells,” he told them.  “I’d rather go remembering the good moments, leave you to do the same.”

“Don’t go,” Lucy said.

Not a goodbye, then.

When it had come to shooting Yalda, he’d been so dreadfully afraid, and he wasn’t a man who scared easily.  He’d never technically been a child, so he didn’t even really remember moments in childhood where he’d been truly afraid.  No bed-wetting nightmares.  Just fragments of a memory.  One seventh of one, perhaps.  It wasn’t something War had given him when she’d raised him from a pile of bodies.  It wasn’t something he’d picked up in all his various kills, absorbing bits of the slain into himself, rounding himself out.

He’d been so afraid that something like this would mark their parting.

“Maricica has my mom hostage,” Lucy said.  “I’m more scared than I think I’ve ever been.”

He was scared too.  For her, now, and for the other reasons.  That he’d have to go when she was telling him not to.

“Almost right from the beginning we were warned Faerie are bad news.  They scheme so well,” Lucy said.  “And right now it feels like we’re caught in the pincers of a Faerie scheme, everything’s going the way she wants it to.  I thought it was bad when she got Charles, but then she has my mom?”

“There’s a lot of other shoes left to drop,” Verona added.  “Stuff we only have hints on.”

“We prepared but we can’t- we don’t think it’s possible to cover every base.  Maybe we blocked off her options, but it still feels like she has too many.”

“What if the shoes drop just the way she wants them to?” Lucy asked.  “John… don’t go.”

“I would love to go to your mother’s rescue.  I’d worry it was a Faerie scheme to get me to go, but I’d go if circumstances were different.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Lucy said.  “I’m asking you not to go to the Arena.  Don’t participate, don’t compete.  They want you there, we think.  It’s one more step in a big plan and it’s one of the worst steps, because you might die.”

“My existence is defined by moments a man might die in.”

“Then fight it,” Avery said.

“I wish you girls the best.  I trust you to handle this tonight, but I don’t blame you if the outcome isn’t what we’d hope.  You exceeded expectations as Kennet’s practitioners.  You arrived at my home and found me paranoid and lonely.  I think you helped me become more of a man than a soldier.”

“Fuck off and fuck you,” Lucy said.  “Don’t talk like that.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “This is why I hate goodbyes.”

He turned, walking toward the Arena.

Running footsteps made his head turn.

Avery’s.  Running off down the street, away from him.  She passed a pole and disappeared from sight.  He spotted her atop a telephone pole, looking back, then she leaped, slipping out of sight again.

Verona bent down, touching papers to road.  She glanced back at him, held up papers, and then became a bird, wrapping glamour around herself and fluttering as she took flight.  The city in the distance shifted, and her course seemed aimed for a shift.

Lucy remained where she was.

“Is your mother going to be okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, and the know made her voice slip into more of a child’s register.  She seemed to find her verbal footing in the next sentence, as she asked, “Do I have to fight you to stop you?”

“Can you?” he asked.  “Because I couldn’t easily fight back.  I’d worry what would happen if I was cornered or if instincts took over.  I remember you saying that was one way that the oaths I swore at your awakening would be subverted.”

“Do I have to fight you, John?” she asked, more stress in her voice.

“Would you bind me?” he asked.  “Because that is one of the very few things I think you could do that would turn us from… whatever we are, to bitter enemies.”

“I recently argued with Verona about that.  Binding Ken or Jabber, to secure things we know Maricica can use.”

“Which side did you argue for?”

“Come on, John,” Lucy said, voice soft.  She wiped at one eye with the heel of one hand.  “Seriously?”

“Sorry.”

“Can you- can you convince me you’re going to win?  Convince me this isn’t some stupid sacrifice for the greater good or something?  Don’t be some self-sacrificing jerk, who’d throw away everything out of some bull-”

Her voice hitched.

“-some bullshit expectation,” she finished.  She paused.  “I forgot the rest of what I meant to say in that sentence.  I’m usually better at this.”

“Maybe it’s better if I go.”

He turned, heading toward the Arena.

Lucy scrambled, running in a half circle around him, stopping in his way.  “Stop.  Just… tell me?  Tell me you’ve got something up your sleeve, or there’s a motive that isn’t you probably throwing your life away.  And I’ll call them off.”

“Them?”

“Avery and Verona.”

“What are they doing?”

Lucy set her jaw.

“What are they doing, Lucy?”

“Tell me and I’ll tell you.  What’s your plan?  What’s the point?”

“It’s some stupid sacrifice for the greater good, as you phrased it.”

“Fuck you!” she shouted.  “Fuck off!  No!  You’re spouting all this bullcrap about you becoming more human, but that’s the first thing I think you should have ditched, you butthole!”

Being called a butthole by you stings more than the foulest insult from a goblin’s mouth.  He gave her a half-smile.  “I’d put the callous murder higher on the list, personally.”

“Don’t try to be funny!  You don’t get to be funny!  You need to stop, or you’ll play right into her hands!  You’ll play us into her hands!”

The faintest drizzle of rain touched his skin.  One touch every few seconds.  Putting them on a threshold where it felt like the rain could stop falling any second, or it could turn into a downpour.

He walked on, walking past her.  She stepped into his way, moved where she might trip him up, and he gently pushed her aside.  She grabbed onto his arm, his shirt, onto the bag, even.  Unbalancing him.  He broke her grip, turned to put the bag more out of her reach, and put his hand out, walking backward and pushing hands away as she drew closer.

He reached the door, setting hand on handle.

The look in her eye changed from wounded to a deeper glare.

“Lucy-”

“If you can be stubborn and make bad decisions about something like this, something that impacts all of us… I think we can do the same,” she said.

She reached for a pocket.  He instinctively reached for a gun.

He stopped short, looked at her eyes as she glanced at his hand.

She pulled out her phone.

“Lucy,” he said, shaking his head.

“Verona,” she spoke into the phone.

He felt the dog tag hit road.  The location didn’t promise much violence, but-

He went, Ruins flickering in his peripheral vision for the moment it took him to travel.  He drew his weapon and pointed it low.

Verona scrambled back, witch hat stirring with the wind, cloak lifting up with how fast the movement was.  She avoided being caught in the way of the weapon as she circled around him, scrambling to get off the road.  Not that there was any danger he’d point it at her.

His next thought was that she’d summoned him into traffic, but she hadn’t gone that far.  No, that would’ve been hard.

He got his bearings.

There wasn’t much danger.  She must’ve stepped toward Kennet.  He was on a road, mountainous…

And Kennet was in the distance, fairly close to the horizon, the moon hanging above it.

He was better at judging how long it took to walk places.  He’d come about this far out on some patrols around the perimeter.  A forty-five minute walk back.  Maybe longer.  He didn’t recognize this particular road, and there could be bends or other obstacles.

He bent down and picked up the dog tag.  “I’ll be keeping this.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Sorta figured.”

“You want to make me miss the competition altogether?”

“Help us stop Maricica and Charles.  Don’t compete,” Verona said.  She kept a good distance from him, the breadth of the road between them.  As he took a step, she backed up a bit, then fixed the strap of her bag that she wore over the cloak.

“They won’t start until I’m there.  This is pointless.”

“I can be real annoying,” Verona said.  “You think I could annoy you into quitting?”

He shook his head.

“I think I might try.”

He turned and started walking.  She moved alongside him, keeping a roughly equal distance, the road between them.

“Hey, John?”

He looked at her, still walking.

When she didn’t reply, he turned his attention forward again.

“John?”

He ignored her.

“Lucy deserves better.  Like it or not, you kinda slotted in pretty neatly into a big fat gap in her life.  She’s had like two guys she could ever depend on, one’s her big brother, and he kinda still left.  Then there’s you.”

“I can’t be responsible for her life circumstances.  I’m sorry.  I’m glad if I gave her something but I didn’t ask to be that.”

“Kinda sucks but when you become part of some kid’s life, whether it’s because you’re a parent or a teacher or because you signed on for an awakening ritual, knowing you’re bringing three kids into this crazy fucked up world, you’re responsible.  You didn’t say no.  You helped make that call to make us the town’s practitioners.  Why?”

He didn’t reply.

“Why, John?  Why?  Hey!”

He sighed.

“Hey, John?  Did you think it’d be easier?  Picking kids for Kennet?”

“I did.”

“Did you think we’d be less threatening than a big grown up practitioner?  Less greedy?  Because we’re young teens, we’ve got crap judgment.  My skull?  This brain ain’t fully developed.”

“You’ve done okay.”

“John, hey, we’re super greedy.  We’re more idealistic than a lot of the human adults I know.  We’ve got dreams and goals, visions for the future that haven’t been rubbed all the way out just yet.  Lucy’s got this idea in her head that you’d be the backup she really needs in her life.  Someone rock solid, someone cool.  And I gotta say, she’s not super wrong.  I’d love her to have that.  Every step you take toward the Arena, you’re stomping on that dream of hers.  Maybe it’s the last big one she gets.”

“Are you going to talk like this the entire way?”

“I’m prepared to.  Hey John?”

He sighed.

“John, hey.  You already ended one kid’s childhood.  You really going to do the same to Lucy?  Gotta do what you gotta do?”

He ignored her.  One kid?  Did she mean-?

“Stupid ideas of responsibility and crap?  Doing what you did with Yalda with-”

He turned, looking at her.  He stopped in his tracks.

“-with my best friend,” she finished.  She went quiet for a second.  “Yeah, I went there.  I might have a compassion deficiency, and you’d better believe I’ll pull out all the stops for Lucy’s sake.”

He looked back toward Kennet.  It was going to be a long forty five minutes.

“Do you not like her?  Are you that heartless an asshole?” Verona asked.  “Should I tell her that?  I don’t want to hurt her, but maybe it’d help it go down easier?”

“No.  I’m fond of her.  In another set of circumstances, I’d be happy to be her familiar.”

He hadn’t resumed walking.

“John, hey.”

He ignored her.  He looked down at where the road dipped into trees.

He’d walked the perimeter many times.  He tried to get his bearings, knowing he was south of Kennet.  The river disappeared into the hills and mountains to his right.

This hill didn’t exist.

He drew his gun.

“John, hey.  Hey!”

He aimed at the moon, and he shot.  The force of the shot jolted down his arm into his chest.

The moon shattered.  So did that segment of sky, and so did the view of Kennet on the horizon.  The shards landed about a hundred feet in front of him, and turned to wisps of smoke on hitting the road.

He turned the opposite direction, judged, and shot.  The mountain was real, and he’d rather hit mountainside, given the choice.

The bullet punched through the image at one edge, the crack lancing along it.  He could see through to Kennet.

When he took a step toward it, it tried to adjust, relevant to his perspective, broken pieces sawed against one another, and the entire construction crumbled.

Kennet was in the direction opposite to the one he’d been walking, about ten minutes of walking away.  Twenty minutes of walking, ten minutes of a fast march to get from the edge of Kennet to the Arena.  Verona had only come just beyond the town’s perimeters, up the hill a bit, and then she’d set up this construction on a little-known road.

If he hadn’t realized, he could’ve walked indefinitely before realizing the town wasn’t getting much closer.

He started marching toward the real Kennet.

Verona threw a spell card.  It erupted into flame, barring his path.  He stopped.

Now she seemed intent on fighting him every step of the way, instead of distracting him from the glamour with her words and jabs.  It had been a little odd that she hadn’t been getting in his way more.

Verona looked down at her phone.  “Lucy just texted me.  She says if you give a good reason, or if you can at least convince us you’ll win, we’ll back off.”

“I can’t, I can’t, and I believe you, respectively, doesn’t matter.”

“She thinks you’re being stupid.  She’s upset.  She never makes this many typos.”

“It’s not stupid, and I’m sorry.  Please don’t waste your efforts and resources trying to stop me.”

He started to move around the burning fire in the middle of the road.  She threw another card, and a bonfire-sized eruption of flame leaped to life.

“This reminds me of certain events I’d rather not be reminded of.  Being cornered by practitioners just before I lost friends.”

“Oh does it?  Because this is a certain event I’d rather not be part of.  Cornering you so you won’t tear my friend’s heart out.  Metaphorically.  Easy to fix.  Just call it quits.”

“I thought I should warn you, because I have my vulnerabilities.  If I’m provoked, if I lean on instinct in a moment, I could do something we both regret.  I think that would tear her heart out on two fronts.”

“Yeah, uh, don’t do that.”

He dropped the bags he was carrying and lunged, over and between the two fires, letting the licking tongues of flame burn his skin and clothing.  He didn’t have the benefit of Ribs or Black’s ability to keep the fire from getting a firm grip on him, but he touched a hand to tags, as if they could maybe sense him and impart just a bit of it into him.

Verona wasn’t quick on her feet.  She didn’t even seem to realize he was coming straight for her.  She was quicker with hands than her feet, though, reaching for a back pocket-

He reached- arm out like a weapon, flat of his hand catching her at the forearm as he reached past her body.  The back of his hand and arm grazed the side of hers, and her fingers missed the pocket with the spell components in it.

She stumbled back, twisting, reaching- and he didn’t let her do what she wanted to.  He caught her arms near the armpits, lifting, then pushed her a bit downhill.

It would have been smart of her to take a rough fall, because the alternative was being on her feet, stumbling back a short distance, off balance and out of position.  He grabbed her arms from behind, lightly twisting.

“Ow, frig!”

Adjusting his grip, he got both of her wrists in his hands, walking her forward.  Around the fire.  He stepped over his bag, hooking one foot through straps, then made a slow, trudging progress across the woods to the treeline.

“Ow, ow.”

Switching his grip to hold both her skinny wrists with one hand, he stooped down, unzipped the bag, and pulled out straps.

“Aw, no, don’t-”

He took off her bag, hat, and cloak, used the straps to bind her to the tree.  He fished in her pockets, pulled out the notecards and glamour, a rasp that smelled like blood, a sheathed knife that felt elemental, a goblin key, pens, and markers.

He placed everything in her cloak, bundling it around the various odds and ends.

“John, dude, no,” Verona said.

“I’m betting you can get free in half an hour or so.  Or Avery and Lucy can find you.”

“Or Maricica could.”

“Her intention is to get you out of the picture so she can pull her plan together.  Leaving you tied up does that.”

“So does murdering me somehow.  There’s a Dog Meat running around.  And Witch Hunters.”

“The risk of that is low.”

“What if I swore?” she asked.  “We can call it a noninterference pact.  You let me go, I swear an oath and say hey, I tried, made a genuine effort for my best friend, then I can at least go out and keep an eye out for Charles and stuff.”

“Swearing that oath would require the part where you say you won’t get in my way again.  You left that out.”

Verona smirked.

“Yeah,” he said.

The smirk fell away.  “You’re being dumb.”

“Never claimed to be smart.”

“Aw, don’t do that.  That’s a defense that assholes throw out, not something from the self-aware dumb person.  It’s cowardly.  Chickenshit.”

He turned away from her.

“If it gets me out of this, I’ll swear,” she called out, behind his back.  “Let me go and I won’t get between you and the arena, you and Lucy, or any of that.  You have to deal with them, but I won’t stop you, I won’t play a further part in this, tonight, except to tell Lucy I lost.  I don’t want to be left tied up.  Please.”

He studied her, thinking about the words.

“Mosquitoes like me, I’ll suffer,” she said.

“Swear and I’ll let you go.”

“I swear, in spirit and rule, I’m ducking out of this attempt to dissuade you.  I won’t get involved again, except to message my friends, and maybe if I get in the way of any outside trouble, like Musser or Witch Hunters, I’ll deal with them while my friends are otherwise distracted.  That’s it.”

He pulled on the metal buckle, undoing the strap.  He watched her carefully as she stepped free, rubbing where the straps had been tight against arms.

“Okay,” she said.  “I’d wish you luck but I really hope you don’t make it to that arena.”

He nodded.

He got his bags and let her get hers.  She left by air, and he walked.

Lucy was sitting with her back to one of the trees that helped separate the main road from the Kennet Arena parking lot, hugging her knees.  She got to her feet as he approached the arena again.

It didn’t feel like they’d started.

“I’ve had to be the responsible one through most of this, you know?” Lucy asked, as he got close enough to hear her.  “Besides stuff like my thing with my ex-stepfather.  Looking after Verona, who can be a real wingding sometimes, and Avery, who, like, she’s got a big heart, but it’s a huge weak point.  The bad guys don’t need very good aim if their target’s the size of a barn door.”

“I don’t think your heart is small either,” he said, not slowing down.  “I can apparently trample on it without meaning to, here.”

“Stop?” she asked.  “John?  Stop.  Talk with me a few minutes?  Talk strategy with me?  We can talk about what Maricica might be planning, why they need you to go first.  Maybe we can see a way through.”

“I’m already almost an hour later than I intended to arrive, and I know Avery will try something.  I expect you will too.”

He reached for the door, paused, and looked back at Lucy.

She was putting the phone to her ear.

“Ave?  Yeah.”

He felt the dog tag clink.

He did as he was obligated to, by the deal he’d made when he gave them the tags as a gift.  He went to Avery’s defense.

He had a suspicion.  Before anything, he shifted his feet, scuffing them, one hand on his pistol, ready to draw it in case the threat was real.  Not that the tag had rang like there was a real danger at the location.

Avery was quicker, eye on the prize.  Before he could move his foot and step on the dog tag, Avery grabbed it, slipping a few feet away.

He got his bearings, taking in the surroundings.

Cars parked outside little shops.  Restaurants, patios closed with furniture stacked and locked to railings.

He spotted Avery, who had retreated to the corner of a rooftop, wearing her deer mask, hat, and fencer’s cape.  Snowdrop was behind her.

“I told Verona, this shouldn’t change anything.  They’ll wait.  Maybe they’ll start if this takes until dawn, but they’ll wait otherwise.  Do you really want to drag this out?”

“I want you to not go,” Avery called down.  “But I don’t want to drag it out, no.”

“What if I say I have to go?  That the outcome is uncertain, but… leaving things as they are now isn’t- I can’t, Avery.”

“I hear you.”

“I need to do this.”

“I get you.  I really, really do.”

His eyes dropped from her to the shops nearby.  He took them in, then noted that there were more shops open than he was used to.

He turned, looking, and his eye fell on one store’s sign.

Swanson Smokes & Post

“You dragged me all the way out to Swanson?”

“Yeah.”

“Two hours driving away.”

“For Lucy.  Have to make an honest effort, even if-”

“If?” he asked.

She fell silent.

He turned around, studying the environment.

Crossing the street, he approached an old car, drawing a knife from his waistband, opposite the pistol.  Placing the tip at the corner of one car window, he hip-checked the blunt base of the handle.  The window shattered.

The car was too old to have an alarm, or to have other security features.  He threw the bags and coat through to the passenger seat climbed in, adjusted the seat a bit, and glanced at Avery.

Another trick?  Glamour?  Or was bringing him this far out her only move, when she seemed reluctant to go further?

He knew how to hotwire a car, and this car was old enough that the wiring wasn’t very protected.  He had to turn on the light and peek under to see what he was doing, and when he straightened up, he expected Avery to have disappeared, relocating to a better position.  She didn’t.

He stripped and crossed wires, and the engine rumbled to life.

Avery moved.  She hopped out, onto a streetlight, and used the extended horizontal bar that held the light out over the street as her route to run forward and leap across to the streetlight opposite, where she was out of sight.

He adjusted clutch, shifted gears, and hit the gas.

Her feet stomped on the car’s roof.  A moment later, the vehicle rocked, the tires on the left side loudly and violently venting their air.

John grabbed the bags and coat, stepped out of the vehicle, and faced Avery.

“How much do new tires cost?” she asked.

“I have no earthly idea.”

“A thousand bucks for two tires?  Including the window?” she asked.  She hopped down to street level, walking up to the passenger side door.

“Are you trying to guilt me?”

“No, but that’s an angle,” Avery said.  She tugged on the handle but the passenger side was locked.  “Can you pop the lock from your side?”

“The car is thirty years old.  No.”

“Oh.  That’s a thing, huh?”

“Will you be good?”

“Trying,” Avery said, quiet.

He got back in the car, reached across, and got the passenger side door.

She opened the glove compartment, found the registration and put some cash inside.

“What are you doing, Avery?  What’s your angle in this?”

“I want to back Lucy up.  I know we haven’t interacted all that much, but I don’t want you to die either.”

“What happens here?  You harass me the entire way back?  No driving, I’ve got to walk, they might start without me if the sun comes up?”

Avery shrugged.

“The goblins won’t miss you,” Snowdrop said.

“I already gave away parting gifts.  Had a drink with them.”

“I’m not an honorary goblin or anything, so I guess I don’t get included.”

“Sorry.  But I figured if you were there, it’d mean Avery was there.  Changes the entire dynamic.”

“Maybe,” Avery said.

“Maybe,” John agreed.  “Avery, I already decided.  I’ve taken steps, gave gifts away, cleaned up all traces.”

She nodded.  “Okay.  For what it’s worth, I think I get it, I forgive you.  I think.  I wish I could sound as confident and okay as I mean to, but I sorta have to weasel-word it.  I thinks and maybes.  I’ve got my own bags packed.  I’m pretty sure I’m leaving Kennet after this whole… thing.  So I get it, in a way.  It hurts, it sucks, but it’s what I have to do.”

“I have to ask you,” he said.  “What next?  Will you damage every car, guilt me by paying for the damage each time, when I can’t imagine you have much money.”

“I have some.  But yeah, I dunno.  I really don’t.”

“Do you think you can change my mind?  Do you think someone can change yours?”

“No.  But I don’t know if the situations are the same.  I’ve thought my situation through-”

“So have I,” he interrupted.

They stopped.

“I had to tie Verona to a tree before she said the words, agreeing to step down.”

“She texted me to say.”

He nodded.  “What do I do with you, then?  What do I do with Lucy?”

Avery looked away.

“Tell me.  Will you hold me hostage and keep me from leaving?  Even if you agree?”

“I’ve got to do right by Lucy.  Especially since I’m leaving.”

His eyes dropped.

“She’s super scared about her mom, you know.”

“That isn’t resolved?”

“I don’t know.  We sent Miss.  It’s not like Miss uses a cell phone.  I hope she’d tell us, though.  Or maybe it went wrong and she didn’t want to distract us by telling us something happened.  I really don’t want to think that way.”

“Me either.”

“This sucks, I’m sorry,” Avery said.

He nodded.

“John, we really do think this is part of Maricica’s plan.  It’s dangerous.  If you take the throne, we think Charles shows up and he’s prepared specifically for you somehow.”

“You got him, easy,” Snowdrop said.  “It’s not like he’s fueled by vengeance and capable of escaping one of the best technomancers on the planet.”

“Mostly Maricica, we think,” Avery said.

“Meh,” Snowdrop replied.

“John,” Avery said.

“Yes?”

“If I let you go, no more interference… I still need something.  I need you to think seriously about what you’re doing.  Think seriously about Maricica, about Charles, about what you can do to foil them.  When you get back to the Arena, or wherever Lucy is, at least make double, triple certain you’re doing this.”

“I already did.”

“Please.”

He paused.  Then he nodded.

“Swear it.”

“If you’ll give me the tag.  To keep.”

“I will if you swear.”

“I swear, Avery.  I will use the time it takes me to get there to reflect.  To think about it.”

Avery met his eyes, then nodded.  She took a step back, then tossed the tag his way, with two hands.  “I’m gonna do a connection block to make sure that envelope with cash gets to the owner, and so nobody steals the radio.”

He found the next car that looked like a likely target, and Avery remained where she was, watching him as he broke in, hotwired it, and got it moving.

He drove to Kennet.

He expected a trap to be waiting for him.  A piece of paper on the door that would react to his presence, so Lucy could be at some other distant location.  Maybe the Ruins.  Something else.

But she was there, near the Kennet Arena.  Near that same tree.  The fox mask was tied to her cloak strap, hanging off her shoulder.  She watched him without moving as he pulled into the parking lot.

This was harder, now.  He’d steeled himself before, but in keeping to his oath to Avery… he’d reflected.  He’d thought back.  He’d thought about what Lucy was offering, and about what he was doing.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

She didn’t reply.

He walked to the front doors of the Kennet Arena for the third time tonight.

For the third time, a dog tag clinked against the ground.

This time, the threat was something real.  He recognized how dangerous it was.  He stepped through.

It was a bit of paradox, because the threat she’d stepped toward was him.

The moment he arrived, she clapped hands together.  Activating a diagram on her left hand.  The circle swept outward, and glamour picked up, sweeping outward in its own separate ripple.  Colors erupted, pinks and magentas, white like bone, and flecks of teal.  Lucy’s hair turned colors, her clothing changed, her cape expanding, and her hair erupted, until it was a wild tangle of spirit-stuff nearly as big as she was.

She touched her heart, eyes closed, and then eyes snapped open into a different shape than they’d been before.  Blades fell, puncturing the ground to fill the circular arena she’d painted for the two of them.

A magenta spirit sword met the gun at his hip, buzzing violently when he reached for it.  Sealing it.

Hand to hand weapons only.

The weapon ring Miss had given her let her draw out an oversized rapier that she held in one hand.

His own body had changed in this arena, reflecting the spiritual nature of his body.  Greens a lime green, skin white, scars now paint-like slashes of black.

He bent down to pick up the fallen dog tag.

“I have to go through you to get to the other fights I have to do tonight, do I?” he asked.

She adopted a fighting stance, crisp.  It looked vaguely like Guilherme’s style.

“Will you waive the part of my oath, where I swore not to harm you?”

She didn’t respond.

“It wouldn’t matter.  I don’t think I’d hurt you.  Even minimally.  This is as good as a binding.”

Her eyes were wet with tears as she stared him down.  Some escaped down her cheeks.

He watched her, watched the unwavering blade.

“Can you even see me well enough past those tears to use that rapier?” he asked.

She closed her eyes, and tears were squeezed out.  These ones came with the color of spiritstuff.  The blade’s point drooped.

He waited.

Droplets hit her chest, and disrupted the colors there.  Her head dipped further, and the tears hit ground.  Ripples expanded out, erasing what had been painted.

It took nearly a minute for the arena to be erased.  The rapier became a pen.

“Please don’t go,” she whispered.  She dropped the pen.  “Please.  Please don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My mom’s in trouble, I’m pretty sure, and I- I couldn’t go.  I came here instead.  And I’m asking you… don’t.  Don’t do this, we think you’ll die.”

“Let’s hope not.”

“Don’t, John.  Come with me, be my familiar- I… I wish I hadn’t said stuff before.  Be my familiar.  Be a dog when it’s cozy to be a dog, enjoy a house that’s not lonely and filled with trash.  Sleep on the end of my bed.  Be a human when you want to be a human.  It’s a better humanity, you’d get to draw on me.  You’d enjoy food more, you’d- you’d be even more of a man and less of a soldier, when you want.  You’d sleep, John.  Didn’t you say you were always waiting so tensely, that you were always hurry up and wait or fighting mode?”

“I did.”

“You could sleep,” she whispered.

He looked back at the door.

“I don’t think that’s a rest, John.  I lived a bit of it.  I dove into her past and her experiences.  I don’t want that for you.  It’s awful and lonely.  I think it’d eat away at the best parts of you and you’d just… you’d end up hating yourself, like you hate yourself for other things.  Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“What I want for you is- you could be a German Shepherd, maybe.  You could sleep in the sun, and you’d- you take in this big, deep breath, and you get- you get peace.  You get as many years of that, best of both worlds, as I get to live.”

He felt a faint vertigo.  The feeling of standing on a cliff’s edge, when the body told him to jump, by some primal instinct.  Except here, the urge was to take that peace he was being offered.  Almost the opposite of the step from the cliff’s edge.

“Don’t you want that?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Then take it.  Take a rest from all the worst parts of being what you are.  A rest from guilt.  A rest from stupid self sacrifice.  A rest from fighting as much as you want it.  I wouldn’t ask for anything, really.  You’d be free, unbound.  I’d want you to back me up but it’d be your choice.  I trust you.  People- people would be kind to you.  You wouldn’t be invisible anymore.  You wouldn’t be a person with half an existence, living in derelict houses.  Full appetite, full… whatever bits of a human heart you need to copy from me to shore yourself up, fully able to rest.”

He shook his head slightly.

“Don’t think about it, don’t think your way out of it, just say yes.  Say yes, back me up tonight, foil their plans, choose to exist!”

He shifted, unconsciously ready to put the bag down.

As he did, the weight of obligation settled at his neck.

He straightened.

Lucy shook her head.  “No.  No, no no, don’t.  Don’t think about it, don’t-”

“Lucy,” he said, voice firm.

“Yes.  I’m sorry.”

“I’m just a kid, John.  My mom’s in trouble, I don’t know what to do.  I’m scared.”

He crossed the distance to her.  He hugged her, one arm around her shoulders, the other at the back of her head.

“Your friends care.  They’re amazing.  More than you might realize.  You have it in you to get past all this.”

“I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” she whispered.  “The arena I drew wasn’t for fighting you.  It was to test our strength of will, and I gave up first.  The moment you mentioned I couldn’t see because I was crying.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her fingers clutched at his shirt, fingernails dragging against cloth for purchase.  Pulling him closer, trying to get him to stay.

“I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if Yalda had begged, or asked like you’re asking.  What would I have done?  If you took away my memories, I would’ve thought she’d maybe be strong enough to ask outright, to show her heart.  But she decided to fake being tough.  Too much time around soldiers.  Made it easier in the short run.  Harder in the long.”

“The doubts.  The questions.  The things you think you know but individually, you can’t be one hundred percent,” Lucy whispered.

“Yeah.”

“But when you look at the big picture-”

“Years later,” he said.

She nodded, face rubbing against his chest.

“Years later you realize what’s happened and it hits you all at once,” he followed the line of thought.  “And nobody really gets it when you try to put it to words.  When they haven’t seen the moments, aside from the one or two most extreme.”

She nodded again.

“Too many things sit too heavily with me, Lucy.  Please understand, that’s why I have to go.  I need to start tying things up, resolving them.  Dealing with those moments where I wondered if I could have done something differently.”

She let go of his shirt.  Her face remained pressed against his chest.

He let go of her, arms at his own side, and when he stepped back, she swayed a bit, where she’d been leaning into him.

She remained like that, head bowed, arms at her sides.

He adjusted his grip on his bags.

He tried to think of what else to say, but he worried about a possible rebuttal.

So he went.  He walked to the door, and he hauled it open.

Inside, the space was vast, the interior of the arena shattered.

Giant concrete stairs that had served as staggered levels for the chairs to be mounted on were upended.  boards that had ringed the arena had been moved, forming inconsistent and varied walls.  Plexiglass was scraped up and stained, more barriers.

A mess of cover, of barriers, of rearranged concrete that formed a loose bowl shape around the center of the Arena.  Various lights and floodlights now sat around the arena, casting long shadows.  Around the rink, which was now a shallow pool of blood.  The throne sat askew near the center.

The Sable and Alabaster stood near the throne.  The Aurum Coil’s centipede draped down from the ceiling, giving the man a seat relatively equal to his two peers.

Breastbiter was a caricature of a bodybuilder, top heavy to an extreme, legs thinner, nose and lips cut off and seared with something, scarred over, so his face was flat, teeth exposed.  No hair, no ears, no cheeks- he’d carved those away.  His body was oiled, some of the oil dyed, to paint a rough shape of a monstrous fanged maw on his chest in dark grey or brown dye.  It was hard to tell with the lights reflecting mostly off of the pool of blood in the center of the arena, giving the entire space a red tint.

Reid Musser had bandages around his face, some bloodstained, some blackened.  More bandages covered his body, which had stains like watercolor or smoke that shifted slightly over time.  He carried a lot of tools, and had a book with a strap to keep it closed, spine attached to his waist by a chain.

A giant face with uneven teeth smiled awkwardly past the uneven boards and barriers.  John wasn’t sure what to make of it, but the eyes watched him.

There was a distorted skeleton with metal welded to bones that still had tatters of raw flesh on them, with a layered corrosion on the bones like bogeymen John had encountered from the deeper parts of the Abyss.  Some of that corruption leaked into the wood beneath its feet.  Bone and metal formed a cage and within the cage was a man, thin and too long-limbed for the cage he occupied.  Stooped, head bent low, long black curls falling into his lap, he held onto horizontal bars as best as he could.  His eyes were sweet.  He looked as pure as the cage was corrupt.

The ephemeral alpha was there, pacing, keeping a distance from others.

And there, on a section of concrete stair that jutted out of the wall, was the small, naked, gangly Other with an ear for a face, dangling from a high point.  It spat blood from the ear canal.

“Is this who we waited for?” the face asked, and the voice was loud.  John suspected that if it started screaming, it would be debilitating.  “I thought it would be another judge.”

John walked from the front door to where the others were.

“No,” the Alabaster said.  Her voice carried.  “There are meant to be four, you’ll fight for the fourth spot.”

John reached the Others who weren’t hiding in the flanks, dangling from the ceiling, or peering through the broken walls.

“Others may join when we are in progress, but they run the risk that if this ends abruptly, they’ll have missed their chance,” the Aurum Coil declared.

John kept walking.  Past the Others, onto the bloody rink.

“Breastbiter the Chonk calls shenanigans!  Where do you think you’re going, little man?”

John walked to the throne.  He dropped his bags.

Then he seated himself.

He could see past the gathered Others at the rinkside, to where the front door was open.  Lucy watched.

Reid’s breath wheezed.

“What’s going on?” the giant face asked.

“I’m the presumptive candidate,” John declared.  “I was asked.  I’ve come.  I made my request.”

“You did,” the Sable said.

“The Leonard family bound several of mine.  Many of them are dead. Many of those individuals died by my hands.  I challenge the binding.”

“Bindings are meant for the long term,” the Sable said.  “Precedent is that they are allowed to exceed the bounds of death.”

John looked up at the Sable.

“You must justify it,” the Sable said.

“I can leave.  I will, if you renege.”

“Justify it.”

John paused.  “The bindings were made selfishly.  For personal power and personal gain.  The person is dead.”

“What is this hairy bullshit?” Breastbiter asked.

“The person is dead, the bindings were selfish.  I have no more complaint.”

“Bindings are meant to be for the greater good, so the most dangerous Others may be secured,” the Alabaster told him.  “There is little doubt that the dogs of war, of flame, and of famine are dangerous.”

“I would have them as peacekeepers, or lieutenants.  Bring them back for that purpose,” John said.  He looked up at the Sable.  “But if I do not make it today, they go free, regardless.  They’re unbound, they leave with my express wishes to have them be protectors and keepers of the peace against more malevolent Others.”

“This instruction may be worked into the fabric of the most bloodthirsty of them,” the Alabaster said.

John nodded.

“So granted,” she declared.

“What relevance does this have to the throne?” the Aurum Coil asked.

Breastbiter jabbed a finger at the man on the centipede.  “Huh!?”

“Let that be the shape of this contest,” John said.  “If we must manage and coordinate Others, let us show that management and skill here.”

“Let it be the shape of this contest,” the Aurum Coil declared.  “You may have what you desire.  Call on your Dogs of War, Dogs of Flame, and Dogs of Famine, John Stiles.”

John pulled the tags from his neck, drawing them into his lap.  He pulled the chain free of the tags.

He read the names off the tags, though he knew them my feel and by the state of them.

“Horseman.”

He flicked the tag out onto the rink.

The blood bulged, swelling like a bubble.  A man rose from beneath.

Horseman looked so young.  Once upon a time, he’d felt like a mentor, a figure to look up to.  A supersoldier.  A leader.

He looked at John, hands wiping traces of the blood from the rink away from his face.  It wicked off of him, but left the makeshift uniform faintly stained.

“What’s this, John?” the man asked, voice hushed.

“Grandfather.”

The soldier rose from the ice.  Older than the others, but not truly grey haired.  Just… older.  More tactically minded.

Horseman’s eye widened.  He smiled.

“Miles.”  John flicked out the tag.

Richard Miles stood, the tag connecting to a loop of chain that emerged with him.  Young, like Horseman, but in a different way.  Horseman represented some sort of young man that had been thrust into war and had found himself very good at it.  Miles smirked in the face of it.  A joker with a laugh and pranking nature that hid a dangerous nature.

“Angel.”

The fourth was Angel.  A woman, brown skinned but blue eyed, similar to Yalda.  She had a mouth with a faint scar at one side but pulled up a kerchief around her lower face.  Agile, fast.  A bit like Avery Kelly.

“Black.”

Black was one of the Blast Dogs.  Dog of Flame.  A firestarter.  She wore something between a hazmat suit and a fire kit, a gas mask over her face, tube plugged into oxygen.

“Ribs.”

Ribs with the lower face melted, one side sealed too closed, scar tissue connecting the lips, the other side too open, showing the teeth though a hole in the cheek, as far back as teeth went.  No shirt, just a large, heavy jacket, and a canister at his back, connected to a makeshift flamethrower.

The other Blast Dog.  The last of them he had tags for.

“Elvis.”

Nicknamed for the man who was seen everywhere, but never when they wanted him or when it was convenient.  At the same time, he was never in the position enemy wanted him either, in place or time.  Elvis had a way of slipping out to the flanks, catching people by surprise.  He dressed more like a civilian than the rest.

“Pipes.”

Nicknamed for his voice.  Big, boisterous, strong.  He looked bigger with all the gear he wore.  Extra layers and protective vest.

“Mark.”

Sharpshooter.  One of the ones who hadn’t matured well.  One of the last ones they’d lost, but Mark had never really had the opportunity to get kills and develop himself.  Mark had eyes and little else.

“Joe.”

Another of the undevelopeds.  No face, no figure, no gender, even.  Only two kills.  Just a uniform and war paint.  Joe followed orders, at least.

“Fubar.”

Fubar was supposed to be the engineer, but he’d absorbed some pretty out-there stuff.  He’d absorbed too much from people who’d seen too much.  Prone to flying off the handle, prone to being dangerous when flying off the handle, mostly to the enemy.

Leaving the last tag.

“Doe.”

Long-haired, with a wicked and jagged head -scar that scarred her face from eyebrow to the back of her head.  Doe had been one of the first ones they’d lost to the Leonards.  She wore mostly black, with a white scarf around her neck.  Like the local militia of overseas.

“Look at you,” Horseman said, as John rose to his feet.  He hugged John, clapping a hand on John’s back.  John was struck by how the man was so much smaller than him.  “Went and grew up when we were napping.”

“I guess I did.”

“That it?” Angel asked, quiet.  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but…”

“All I could get,” John said, quiet.  “I have other tags, but they’re still solidly bound.”

“Songbird?” Grandfather asked, quiet.

“Yalda’s… no.”

“Damn it, John,” Grandfather said.

“Save the anger,” John said.  “You might need it for when I tell you how.”

“How?” Ribs asked.

“I shot her.”

Ribs’ hairless eyebrows went up.

Grandfather fixed John with a level stare.  John met the stare.

The man nodded, running fingers through black hair shot-through with silver.

“Brought your jacket,” John said.  He pointed.  “And weapons.”

Grandfather bent down to pick up the jacket.  But one sleeve had fallen, and it touched the blood.  The green had become red.  The tan color of the fur ruff had become black.

Grandfather threw it to John.  “Color suits you better, I think.”

John looked down.  His breath fogged in the cooled space of the rink.  It was a temperature change that had even the Abyss-touched Reid Musser looking uncomfortable, especially after the long wait.

He pulled it on.

“Each of you will have time to summon or call on whatever allies you may have,” the Alabaster addressed the other competitors.  “Don’t dally.  We will know the difference between you delaying and you being delayed.”

She glanced at John as she said that part.  “Other contestants may arrive, they will be given a shorter grace period.”

The big bag was unzipped.  John’s old friends and companions pulled out the bundled up weapons, unrolling them, collecting guns and corresponding ammunition.  A makeshift bandoleer of knives was unrolled and the knives passed around.

Grandfather’s shoulder bumped John’s, and John could see a faint smile on the man’s face.  It seemed he’d been forgiven for Songbird.  Even without getting the explanation.  But Grandfather was like that.

Horseman was excited, smiling, kept stretching.

They kept touching him, bumping into him.  He nodded at some, grunted at others.  Taking it all in, and letting it wash over him.  Angel put a hand at his shoulder and leaned into him, watching the others with him, as if she could drink in some of what he drank in.

“Good man,” Fubar whispered.

He’d had to.

“Can we fight alone?” the giant face asked.

“If you must,” the Sable said.  “Nothing prevents it.”

Already, some candidates were being put in an awkward position.  Already, the scales were tipping in his favor.  His sort of environment.  His sort of dynamic.  His sort of rules.

He’d promised to dwell on the subject of Charles.  Who could Charles call on?  Would Maricica be pulled into a brutal fight, to help the man?

“Child,” the Alabaster said.  John looked up and saw her crossing the bloody ice.

Lucy was at the door.

John hurried after, weaving through his companions.  Breastbiter stepped into his way, and he stepped around the goblin, not caring about the chest-thumping part of this.  He would put lead into the goblin later.

“Lucy, go,” he said.

“Do you intend to compete for the Carmine throne?” the Alabaster asked.

“Go,” he said.

He saw Lucy’s expression.

“Don’t,” he told her, quiet.

“You put your life on the line to free theirs?” Lucy asked.

“Essentially,” John said.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not accustomed to being ignored.  Practitioner Ellingson, if you won’t step back and let the door close, I’ll bring you in as a competitor.”

Lucy hesitated.

He could see the hurt in her eyes.

That he’d chosen this, this bloodiness, over what she’d offered.

Would that hurt feed self-destructive spite?

“Would they have wanted that?  Do they know?”

“Don’t know much,” Grandfather said, behind John.  John hadn’t realized the man had followed him.  “What would we have wanted, John?”

John’s eyes went to the floor.

“Lucy Ellingson,” the Alabaster said.

“I’m gone,” Lucy said.  Quieter, she said, “Good luck.”

John stood where he stood, as the door banged shut.

The Ephemeral wolf howled, calling out.  Reid Musser was paging through a book, reading it with only one eye, for the other was covered in bloody bandage.

The Alabaster walked away from the front door, back toward the rink.

John met Grandfather’s eyes.  The man looked a little less forgiving than before.

Grandfather had been one of the last to get bound and the last one to get bound that had a discernible personality and skillset beyond the solid gunmanship of Mark or Joe’s ability to follow orders.  He’d made it to Canada with John.  He’d joined them on the initial searches for hiding places.  He, more than the others, knew John best.

“A practitioner?” Grandfather asked.

“A lot has happened in a decade.”

“Trustworthy?  Good?”

“Yes.”

“Why the fuck are you breaking some good and trustworthy kid’s heart, John?  Shooting Yalda wasn’t enough?”

John didn’t answer, walking down to join the others.  Grandfather got in Breastbiter’s way so John’s path wouldn’t be obstructed.

They all moved to the corner of the rink.  Joe carried the bags.

“I made a deal, to take a place of power,” John said.  “If we make it through today, though them, and any other challengers, I take that seat.  I watch over the region, I make choices, I steer things.  Conflicts.  You’re my hands, my agents, you help keep the peace.  Keep me sane.  This should be cushy, if we can do it.  We’ve got a mix of bogeymen, tainted practitioners, goblin, probably more goblins showing up.  Some I-don’t-know-whats.”

He looked in the direction of the giant face.  Opposite the giant face, the small ear-faced Other was writhing, fingers clawing at its bleeding ear canal.

“What if we don’t make it through?” Horseman asked.  “You know me.  Think of the worst case scenario, deliver unto your enemy something even worse before it can unfold.”

“What happens?” Angel asked.

“I die.  One of them, or someone showing up later should take the seat.  They get to steer things, shape conflict, decide what Others appear.  I cease to be, I don’t get back up.  And you all- unless something happens here, you should go free.  Be good, keep the peace, respect and protect the innocents, save your bullets for the nastier things out there.”

“Nastier practitioners?” Fubar asked.

“I won’t say no,” John said.

“What are the odds, John?” Grandfather asked.  “What are the odds you don’t make it, here?”

“I don’t know for sure,” John replied.

The older man stared John in the eyes.

It felt so strange to look at someone who looked back at him and knew him.  Knew what he lived, how he thought, and what he experienced.  More than Matthew, Guilherme, or Toadswallow could after a decade.

The stare was meant to condemn and it did condemn, but it eased a deep-seated loneliness at the same time.

Maybe if he’d become a dog, sleeping in a sunbeam in Lucy’s room, that loneliness would have healed from a different direction, from the edges inward.  Maybe.

“Tell us what you know about the odds,” Grandfather said.  “How hard is this going to be?”

“A lot of people seem convinced I’m going to lose.”

“That little girl at the door?”

“Teenager,” John said.  He second guessed himself, thinking of her begging him not to go.  “Child.  Lucy.  Yeah.  Prospects aren’t good.”

“The whole idea was we’d get as far as we could,” Grandfather said.  “Whoever made it made it.  No guilt, no second guessing.  No perpetuating some shit cycle where some of us go to extreme measures to save the others, maybe some gets saved, others get bound, and we’re fighting our way through some shitty downward spiral.”

“I hear you,” John said.  “I didn’t forget.”

“We’re meant to survive.  That was the plan.  Survive and save Songbird.”

“Yeah,” John whispered his reply.  “Yeah.  Harder than it sounds.”

Grandfather sighed his dissatisfaction.

Everyone checked guns, adjusted belts and knife sheaths, gathered tools.  Ribs tested his homemade flamethrower with a gout of flame.

“Everyone equipped?” John asked.

“Are you?” Horseman asked.

John wasn’t.  there were more things he could carry.  He bent down, shaking his head as Joe offered him a weapon.

The second bag- others had opened it to check the contents, then left it alone.

The bug-out bag.  The camping stuff.  The extra change of clothing.

Why had he packed it, except for the reason he always packed something when it came to the big things?

His hand rested on the bag.

Maybe, a small part of him had hoped.  Had wanted to take Lucy’s offer.  Maybe a small part of him had been thinking of escaping what he was doing here.  Doing as Grandfather had said.

“Call on your subordinates, partners, allies, summons,” the Sable Prince declared.  “Waste no time, we begin shortly.”

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