Fall Out – 14.6
Author: Wildbow

Fall Out – 14.6 | Pale

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Lucy watched as Verona’s fetch wandered off.  A bundle of sticks and glamour wearing Verona’s clothes, doing a reasonable job of playing at being Verona.  Only a reasonable one.  It was no substitute for the real thing.

Two and a half days now.  Lucy would text, Verona would assure her she was fine, say she was tired and was going to bed soon, say she’d give Lucy a status update when she had something substantial to report.  Then the next morning, she’d tell Lucy to keep an eye out for the fetch.

Last night, Lucy had gone to find Verona while Verona managed the shrines.  The fact she hadn’t been able to find Verona suggested Verona had either changed up her schedule or she’d done something to the anti-spy bracelet so it would tick over when Lucy was around.  Normally it screened out the three of them to avoid false positives.

“Verona’s weird right now.”

Lucy turned.  Jeremy had stepped out of the school amid the influx of other students.  Wallace hung back, talking to Mrs. Morehouse about something.

“Verona’s always weird.”

“You know what I mean, though, right?” Jeremy asked her.

Lucy nodded.

“Was it something I said or did when we went to Melissa’s?”

“No.  It’s not you, she’s doing it to me too.”

“Is it about her, um…?” Jeremy asked, pausing.  He looked around at the students who were leaving the school and getting picked up by parents.  He motioned and Lucy nodded.

They waited for a gap and then crossed the road to the bit of grass that separated the pick-up lane from the main road.  There weren’t nearly as many students around, and none in earshot.

“About her dad?” Jeremy asked.  “Is that okay to ask?  I really worry but I don’t have the full picture, and she doesn’t really fill you in, y’know?  She explained some, but… I don’t want to betray confidence.”

“I don’t either.  I- I kinda screwed up earlier this summer.  I didn’t get what you and her were doing,” Lucy told him.  She sighed.  “I pushed her when she really didn’t need to be pushed, with everything going on.  What you and Ronnie were doing reminded me a lot of what happened with my mom and stepdad, it kinda made it hard.  I screwed up.”

“But you made up?”

“I thought we did but…”

Lucy gestured in the direction the Verona fetch had walked off.

“I asked some guys and girls I know online about what I could do.  And a lot of them were saying confront her, confront her, make your feelings clear, give her an ultimatum.  If she won’t listen to you, it’s not worth doing.”

“Are these friends relationship experts?” Lucy asked.

Jeremy snorted.

“Or expert at being friends with Verona’s type?” she asked him.

“Nah.  Is there a type?” Jeremy asked.

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Lucy told him.

Jeremy sighed.  “Dunno.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this stuff, there’s a part of me that’s all, grrr, do this, do that, I deserve this.  But that’s a bad part, right?  Shitty guys do that.”

Lucy shook her head.  “I… don’t know.  I think it’s good to voice your feelings and set your own boundaries, but in this situation-”

“She’s obviously going through something and what you said, uh, you pushed her and it was the wrong time?”

“Yeah.”

“It’d be like that, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I- I- really, really wish I had a perfect answer for you.”

“Back in sixth grade, remember when we did portraits?”

“Yeah.”

“And they all got hung up around the walls of the classroom?  Up near the ceiling?”

“Yeah, I remember.  I still have the one I did in the back of my closet.”

“It was this one dumb classroom exercise-” Jeremy paused as Wallace joined them.  “Wallace has heard some of this.  Don’t make fun of me as I get into it, okay?”

“No promises,” Wallace said.

“Some of the girls, I think it was Emerson and Hayley, they were looking at all the portraits and one of them said, don’t think she knew I was nearby, Jeremy’s super good.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “It actually looked like a face.  Shading.”

“And the other one was like, Verona’s is crazy good though.  What the fuck?  God, I was so annoyed.”

Lucy chuckled a little.

“I like that you have two of the most popular girls in class praising your art, but you don’t remember which one was which,” Wallace said.

“It was forever ago.  Anyway, I was watching all these shows- Wallace was watching them too.  Rivalries and stuff.  Kids in sports and board games and I got super into the idea of a rivalry with Verona, y’know?  Every time there was an art project, or we did presentations and we had to do a bristol board with pictures and information glued to it?”

“Yeah.”

“I tried so hard.  She didn’t even get it or notice.  But it got me noticing her.  She’d be the first girl I noticed in the room.  I’d even look for her.  Just to see.”

“My man’s first crush,” Wallace said.

“It wasn’t even- it was more than a crush, it was, it got me thinking, it-”

“Our buddy here is short circuiting,” Wallace said, chuckling.

Lucy smiled but didn’t laugh.  Wallace saw and sobered up a bit.

“By the end of sixth grade I was looking at her and she was picking clothes on purpose, with purpose, and I looked at myself in this class photo on the door the day I was noticing that about her and I was like, what the heck am I doing?  Sweat pants and a plain tee?  My mom was buying these generic clothes and that’s about as much thought as I gave to it.  So I started buying nicer clothes.  There was a bunch of stuff like that.  She got me thinking girls are people, not just this big blob of girlishness.  She’d read a book and I’d think, I should read that book.  Or what are my tastes in books?  Oh my god I sound like a stalker.”

“Nah,” Lucy said.  “It’s not like you followed her home?”

Jeremy glanced at Wallace.

“You didn’t follow her, right?” Lucy pressed.

“I- I tried to time leaving so there’d be a chance we could talk on the way, we live near each other.  And Wallace lives down the street from her.  And there were a few times I followed because I got the timing wrong.  It wasn’t sinister.”

Wallace chuckled.  Jeremy gave Wallace a light push on the chest.

“I was a stupid kid, okay?  But the point is- what I’m saying, is she was a big part of me feeling like an adult.  That crush, yeah, but also-”

“An awakening?” Lucy asked.

“Perfect,” Jeremy said.  “I saw she was in our class on the first day of high school and it was like… this is going to be a good semester.  And then we met up during the party and we became friends over the summer and- I shouldn’t ask for more, right?”

“I think this might be something you have to talk to her about,” Lucy said.

“Should I?  Can I?  Would that scare her away?”

“I dunno,” Lucy said.  “I do know she thinks you’re super.  She- there’ve been times it’s been super important to her that she had you as a friend.”

“So I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t know.  I really don’t.  I meant to say you probably won’t scare her away, because she’d want to keep in touch.”

“She’s so pretty, so cute,” Jeremy said.  “And she’s weird and cool and interesting, and we like the same things-”

“Sounds like you should try asking her to be your girlfriend,” Wallace said.

“-and she’s strongly hinted I shouldn’t.”

“Oh.  I know she hinted, but I thought maybe she was playing hard to get?”

“No,” Jeremy told Wallace.

“No,” Lucy added her voice to Jeremy’s.

“A lot of guys would kill to be in a situation like this with a girl they like, right?” Jeremy asked Lucy.

“I’m not a guy so I don’t know but there’s probably a lot, yeah.”

“I just- I hate being ignored,” he said.  “And I hate doing this thing where I get ignored and then I’m second guessing every sentence I said after hanging out with her, wondering if that’s why she’s-”

“No, no,” Lucy told him.  “I’m pretty positive it’s not you.”

“Okay,” Jeremy said.  He didn’t look like he believed her.  He ran long fingers through long-ish black hair.

“You’re cool.  I was there, I think she might’ve said something to me if you’d pushed the wrong button or said something dumb.  I really truly don’t think that’s it, okay?” Lucy told him.  “So take all those doubts, all those worries, dumpster them.”

Jeremy sighed.

“And she’s not ignoring you, alright?  She’s ignoring…” Lucy extended her hand out at Kennet in general.  “…this.  She’s pulling back from this.  It’s really truly not you, it’s her, okay?  And I don’t mean that in a way that’s supposed to make her look or feel bad.  She’s dealing with stuff.”

“I know the ‘it’s not you it’s me’ or ‘it’s not you it’s her’ type thing always lands super flat in the movies and stuff but it actually does make me feel a bit better,” Jeremy admitted.  “What stuff?”

“All of this?  Kennet?  Other stuff I can’t tell you?  Her dad.”

“After I brought Sir to her place and she uh-” Jeremy paused, his ears turning faintly red, “-gave me a vet book about cats.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, nodding, knowing it was more than that.

“Ran into her dad.  You know how there’s that thing in media where a dad catches a guy with his daughter and it doesn’t matter the context, it’s always the shotgun threat, and it sounds so lame and weak?”

“So lame,” Wallace echoed.

“Sure,” Lucy said.  “Gross, too.”

“Huh?” Wallace asked.  “How?”

“Because it’s possessive?  Because it suggests a girl can’t defend herself?  Or a guy can’t control himself without the threat of fear hanging over him?”

“Augh,” Wallace said, light, hand going to his hair.  “You keep mentioning these things and I never thought about them like that.”

“The awakening,” Jeremy said, putting a hand on Wallace’s chest and one on his back, shaking him lightly.  “It’s the awakening.  This is how you go from child to man.”

Jeremy was being super gentle with Wallace, going out of his way not to push or shove Wallace by the arms or shake him by his shoulders.  It was nice to see.

“You were saying?” Lucy asked Jeremy.

“Oh.  Verona’s dad.  He didn’t even say anything, really.  No shotgun or shotgun threat.  Ran into him in the driveway.  And he gave me the heebie jeebies.”

“Yeah.”

“What do I do?”

“I don’t know,” she told him.

“Fuck a fuck,” Jeremy said, under his breath.

“Wish I did.  If I had to guess, Verona would really like it if you were still there, still her friend, patient, when she came through the other side of whatever it is she’s working out or whatever she’s doing.  Uhhhh… if you can’t, or if you need something, talk to her.  Tell her.  Just…”

She trailed off.

Don’t give any heartfelt speech or whatever to the Fetch.

“…Let her come to you before you do.  If she’s doing this, it’s probably a bad day for it.”

“Okay.”

“A lot of bad days recently,” Wallace said.

“Yep,” Lucy responded.

There was a pause.  Some littler kids squealed as they went running down the sidewalk, a tired parent following behind at a half-speed jog.

“Want to come over, hang out?” Wallace asked.  “Jeremy’s coming.”

“Can I get a rain check on that?  I want to get some time together before you leave for your surgery-”

“Five days.”

“Yeah.  But I’ve made plans for today.”

“It’s fine, I’ve got plans with my mom.  You’d think she was getting the surgery, with how anxious she is.  Nah, it’s cool.  I’ll look forward to… hanging out?”

“Date,” Lucy said.  “Hanging out is cool too but let’s go on a date.”

“Cool,” Wallace said, almost ‘coo’ with a near-silent ‘l’ at the end.  “I like it when you say you want time together or you want a date, specifically.”

“Heck yeah,” Lucy said, smiling.  “As long as you want to.”

“Definitely.”

“I’ll talk to Ronnie, Jeremy,” Lucy said.  “Hang in there.”

“Thanks.”

They parted ways.  Jeremy and Wallace headed to Wallace’s, which meant going across the bridge and home.  Lucy headed toward downtown.

The weather had cooled off, and it was currently in that middle phase that Lucy was fond of, between the sweat-dripping period of summer and the darkness of winter.  It felt like this window of time was too short, which made her feel vaguely resentful of everything that was ruining this otherwise nice patch of time.

This could have been such a nice start of school, with Avery around and Ronnie and Wallace and Jeremy.  Feeling like she was more accepted by Mia and the other girls in class.  Like Paul was… not hanging over her.

Mia had been talking about dance like that.  How they trained, practiced, saved up and made sacrifices all so they could pass the initial stages of the qualifiers, so they could be where they wanted to be, in that big building in New York.  All leading up to a two minute performance that just might be their one and only shot to make it as dancers, to be seen, to have it all matter.  Two minutes.

They’d given up time to surveil the locals, uncover what happened, they’d trained, they’d studied, they’d taken risks, fought, gone to the Blue Heron, fought more, they’d risked everything, they’d piled on a ton of crap they could never tell their parents about onto real life stuff they were dealing with, tested their friendship.  They’d worked, devoting hours to the shrines and to cleaning up after they’d beat Edith.  So much of it came down to just being there.  Knowing what was happening, being able to stand in front of Charles and Maricica.  All to get that shot.  Thirty seconds that mattered.  Thirty seconds where everything was decided.

Mia and the Wavy Tree dance studio had done pretty well.  They won an award, did an interview, got a sidebar in a dance magazine.  Their viewer counts for some dance stuff they did on social media jumped by nearly a thousand.  Mia had confessed she’d hoped for a bit more but she was satisfied.  Mia had done everything on her end that she could, and if this was what she got then this was what she got.

Kennet was broken.  Cracks were spreading, so to speak, and people were leaking through to the other side.  Things were going wrong, lives were being upended, friendships ended, people were moving, businesses closing.  People didn’t have an inkling about the real reasons why it was happening.  The general feeling seemed to be that Kennet had been a struggling town and all it had taken was a dip in the number of people coming off the highway for the dominoes to start falling.  Less money injected into things meant less business, more closures, less people willing to hold out and wait.

Her ties to Verona and Avery were strained.  She was in more contact with Avery than with Verona right now and Avery was hours away, or a day and some hours away, maybe, depending on the direction.

The damage extended to others.  To Ray, who’d left the Blue Heron, leaving it solely in Musser’s hands.  To Zed and Brie, who’d been affected by Ray leaving.  To younger students, to Others… across the board.

They had had their thirty seconds and Lucy wasn’t happy with the outcome.  She’d done just about everything she could on her end that she could and if this was what they got then she was not okay with that being what they got.

She held one bag strap as she jogged across the road, and dipped further into downtown.  The images and sheer ominous, dangerous energy that had surrounded the other downtown lingered, like the afterimage of the Sight after she turned it off.  But this was the downtown she knew, the one she recognized, with regular people and regular families, no ominously empty streets, no graffiti that seemed to almost glow, no shadow hanging over everything, with the smoke from the factories.

It felt like glamour.  Bright and light and fragile.

It took about ten minutes to walk into the part of downtown she needed to hit.  The real-world version of the gas station was in view.

She paused to send Verona a message.

Jeremy’s feeling ignored.  Do what you gotta do but that friendship needs tending, k?

The text was sent and immediately came back with a little notification circle, that a text was incoming.

Your text was sent but the recipient may be out of service or may have their phone off.  They will receive it at the next available opportunity.

She used her Sight, and she could see the red tint hanging over everything, the watercolor staining spreading, leaking from certain places more than others.

And with her Sight, she could see the way she needed to go.

She headed further into the area with the smaller businesses and a few houses that had been modified into restaurants, the exteriors essentially houses with display windows and some accessibility features.

She spotted a fire escape by one of the restaurants, black paint peeling a bit, rusting where the paint didn’t protect it.  On a pole that looked like it was meant to hang a clothesline, a birdcage dangled.

Lucy headed up the fire escape.  With her Sight, she could see the shift in space that would have tricked her eyes.  As if she was walking into an optical illusion, the roof not a roof, but a shingled surface at an angle, hiding a rooftop garden.

Reggie sat on the lip of the roof where the fire escape terminated, standing guard.  Or sitting guard.  The Composite Kid.  The amalgamation of all the different losers of the Hungry Choir ritual, bound together into the shape of one person.  One person who lived a kind of shadow existence, mourned when he was gone and treated like the missing people had never left when he was around.  He looked a bit different.  A little more drawn out, like there was less fat on his bones.

“Hey,” Lucy greeted him.

“Hey.”

He turned ninety degrees, so his legs weren’t in the entryway, and she climbed the last few steps to approach the top.

Rook was there, standing by a kettle that was silently spouting steam, amid a similar arrangement to the other rooftop garden they’d visited late in the summer.  The table at the center was about as long as a door, bound in a black, wrought iron cage, and Grandfather, Matthew, and Miss were sitting around that table.  The addition of masks dangling from draping chains meant Miss’s face was covered.  A human woman’s face was painted onto a mask, with black slashes for makeup and black lipstick, framed with more calligraphy-style slashes around the edges for the hair.  It blended neatly with Miss’s dark hair.  There were no eyeholes.

Lucy’s eyes looked for and found the cage, back corner of the roof, draped in a cloth.  The Dog Meat was within it.  Off to the side, framed by tall plants, a birdcage dangled, a watch perched on the roost, unmoving.  Bridge.

“More people than I expected,” Lucy said, taking a step to the side so she wasn’t standing in the entryway.  She put her bag on the edge of a box that had some plants, and dug past books and things to the tupperware containers she’d put in the bottom.  “I brought something but it might be stretched a little thin with everyone.”

“I was just heading out,” Matthew said.

“As will I,” Miss said.

“I have tea to serve,” Crooked Rook told them.  She wasn’t decked out in her war attire, the rack of trophies and dangling cages and scrollwork set aside, only the things at her waist and down really showing.  Her top was black silk, wrapped in an ornate way around the sunset-purple flesh.  “Let’s have that at least.”

“I brought bread.  I thought that was symbolic,” Lucy said.  “I know you turn up your nose at stuff with preservatives and sugar added, so I made it myself.  Then I thought it was boring to have just bread, so I got started with some side stuff.”

“Homemade bread on its own is quite nice,” Rook said.

“Yeahhh,” Lucy said.  “That said, I tried some of my test loaf and I agree, but by the time it was out of the oven I had started on garlic butter.  I hope it’s okay.”

“Reggie,” Rook said.  “Would you take the bread and pop it in the cast iron oven for a minute?  If that’s alright?”

“That’s super,” Lucy said.  She showed Rook the other tupperware containers.  “Garlic butter with a bit of olive oil, and bruschetta.  The butter isn’t homemade but I mean, get frigging real if you want me to go churn butter.”

“That’s alright, Lucy,” Miss said.  “The effort is noted and appreciated.”

Rook nodded, taking the tupperware from Lucy and emptying the containers into black stone bowls.  She set them on the table, then laid utensils across the tops- a brush and a spoon, each with crooked handles.

“I might stay a minute longer,” Matthew said.  “Even if it’s stretched thin.  You don’t have to give me much.”

“I can’t taste, so I’ll take a token amount,” Miss told him.  “Matthew can have my share.”

“How are you eating, Matthew?” Lucy asked him.  “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m eating out more than I should.  I haven’t had anything homemade since…” he paused, trailing off.

“I’ve got you beat, Moss,” Grandfather said.  “Unless you count John’s, Yalda’s, and my attempts at cooking over a campfire as ‘homemade’, I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper homemade meal.”

“This is more of an appetizer than a meal, and I hope it’s an okay one,” Lucy said.

“Sit,” Rook said, touching a chair as she passed behind Lucy.

Lucy set her bag down on a waist-high cabinet between two plants and sat in the chair, at one end of the table.  The mask between her and Miss was of a sleeping face, eyes closed, lips pressed together, a star on the brow.  The crescent-shaped slits of the closed eyes weren’t wide enough to see anything through.  “Where are you going after, Matthew?”

“The Undercity.  I’ll take some of the goblins.  One of you was telling me yesterday, the murder rate and natural death rates might be flipped?”

“That was me.”

“Things are still uneven there.  Only a few of the areas have settled into what should be a mostly stable arrangement for the next while.  The School, Bitter Street.  The Factory.  Feels important to try and make sure that however a neighborhood or whatever settles down, it settles in a way we can live with.  So I’m putting in the hours.  Keeps me busy when I’m not working, making that a focus.”

“You and Verona both.”

“Yeah,” he replied, voice a bit softer than usual, eyes on the table for a second.  He looked up.  “The goblins like it too.  Alpeana doesn’t mind it much, she can show herself, but I think it complicates things for her.  Delivering nightmares to people a little closer to the nightmarish.”

“Any word on Verona?  She’s spent a while down there,” Lucy said.

Matthew sighed.

Lucy’s heart sank.

After a moment’s consideration, post-sigh, he answered, “I don’t know exactly what to say.  I think she might be avoiding me.  We’ll cross paths, compare notes, and she’ll go back to doing her own thing.  I’ve asked her if she’d join me and she doesn’t accept.  If there’s an upside, she’s making a name for herself.  For you three.  For us.”

“Hm.  Good, I guess?”

“Catches me off guard sometimes.  She seems alright in general, uninjured, coherent, focused, but I might not be the best person to tell you how someone’s doing.”

“The bread, Reggie,” Rook said, while she handed him a board.

He lifted away the cover and got the bread, putting it onto the board and blowing on his fingers.  He set it on the table and then cut it.

The bread was served, the butter and a brush provided for the garlic butter, a spoon for the bruschetta, which was diced onion, tomato, basil, a bit of olive oil, salt, and a few drops of balsamic vinegar.

“Doesn’t necessarily go with tea,” Lucy observed.  “Feels really random in the here and now.  There was a logic in my head when I started out.  I wanted to bring bread, then I worried it was boring, I love bruschetta-”

“Really don’t care if it’s not perfect,” Grandfather said, biting in and closing his eyes.  “It’s damn good.”

I care, Lucy thought.  Being bulletproof wasn’t just about clothes, but it applied to gifts, too.  There were people at this table she wanted to impress.

While they ate and had tea, Lucy looked at Reggie.  “How are you doing?  Been a bit.”

“I’m alright.  My existence fills a void that doesn’t need as much filling now.  The Choir got put away.  I gather the most essential parts of it are being kept up.  The fog of innocence, the rules.”

Lucy nodded.  “Brie’s still got some of the benefits of winning the contest.  Charles isn’t as much of an asshole as he could’ve been.”

The atmosphere around the table shifted at the mention of Charles.

“What’s the plan?” she asked him, hoping to press past that.

“Survive.  Sorry I wasn’t there that night.  I’m a survivor, but I’m not much of a fighter.”

“Beat a bunch of animals.  Bulls and stuff, right?”

“Stuff,” Reggie said.  He rubbed his arm, uncomfortable.

“Didn’t mean to-” she said.

“No, it’s okay.  They’re just not happy memories.  Or complete ones.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Reggie’s coming with me tonight, we’ll visit the shrines,” Grandfather said.  “Hopefully with the two of us on the job, we won’t do too crap a job of it.”

“If you want me to come with, just to watch-”

“Nah,” the Dog of War told her.  He looked a little shaggier than before, his hair a bit longer, facial hair growing in, beard and the sides of his head shot through with gray.  “Whole point is you don’t have to do as much.  Do what you need to do.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She ate her portion of bruschetta, then sipped the tea.  “Is it impolite to get straight to business?  While Matthew’s still here?  Or is there a rule about finishing eating first?”

“If you want to talk business, feel free,” Miss told her.

“Okay,” Lucy said, quiet.

She felt very alone at her end of the table.  Knowing Avery was far away, and Verona was even more distant.

She gathered her thoughts, and then looked across the table, at Rook, at Reggie, Miss, Matthew, and Grandfather.

“Is he listening?” she asked.

“You flirted with wearing the furs,” Miss said.  “You might have a better sense of that than us.”

“No, I mean, Verona did, but-”

“But you entered the Alcazar?” Miss asked.  “What I meant.”

Lucy nodded.

“Then you came closer to understanding what it is to be Carmine than I ever could.  I could answer with confidence, but I’ll give you the opportunity,” Miss told her.

“He’s listening.”  Charles.

“He’s listening,” Rook said, taking a moment to sip her tea.  “That fact turns what might have been a deeper conversation into something we must now infer.  Everything we might have said out loud we now imagine, perhaps imply, but at least for now, we won’t say it outright.”

Lucy wrapped her hands around the handle-less tea cup.  Out on the rooftop in the beginnings of fall, it was pleasantly warm.  Reassuring, when very little else was.

“We could say it outright,” Lucy said, looking up and meeting Rook’s eyes.  “If he’s aware, if he knows us, if we could also infer, also imagine… us being silent is only pretend?”

“Theater,” Miss said.

“This world we’re embroiled in is fond of its theater,” Matthew said, sounding tired.

Like a wife who should be an ex-wife staying around, pretending that there’s a way back to normal?

“What’s the plan?” she asked.  “I asked Reggie his, but… what’s our plan?”

“For the time being, survival,” Matthew said.

“Are we, though?  Are we surviving?  Are we doing the right things to stop things from going down the tubes, stop Kennet from dying?”

“We’re doing the things we need to do to keep Kennet and ourselves healthy in the moment,” Rook answered.

“And what about the day after?  What about weeks or months from now?” Lucy asked.  “Are we doing anything to stop Kennet’s decline?  Is there anything we can do?”

“There are things we can do, taking care of what needs immediate attention right now is the first step in stopping Kennet’s eventual decline, and yes, there is almost always something that can be done, but saying such a thing is always easier than bringing it to pass.”

“That sounds like the kind of careful wordplay that goes into a riddle, more than an answer,” Lucy said, bewildered.  “Can you tell me there’s a plan?  If you can tell me there’s a plan, I think I can make peace with all this.”

“There is a plan,” Rook said.

Lucy leaned back into her seat, leaned forward to move her tea into reach, and then leaned back again, before letting herself relax a fraction.  “Okay.”

“Stick around after, Lucy Ellingson.  Let’s talk,” Rook said.  “You and me.”

“May I join you?” Grandfather asked.

“You may be too young for our conversation, soldier,” Rook told him, and she showed him a rare, small smile.

“That’s not an answer I expected,” he told her.  “I’m a lot of things but I don’t think I’ve ever been young.  War dragged me free of her bloody loins with a battle-weariness already set deep in my bones.”

“You can stay,” Rook told him, the smile still there.  “Anyone can, but I suspect you all have places you need to be.”

“Edith won’t follow me to that end of Kennet,” Matthew said.  “I know there are other answers, but this is an easy one and for right now I need easy, and I think we need someone adult over there.”

“Please,” Lucy said.

“I’m not saying I don’t trust Verona,” Matthew said.  “But can’t hurt, right?”

“Can’t hurt,” Lucy agreed.

“Have you talked to Guilherme?” Miss asked Lucy.

Lucy winced a bit.

“Find the time.”

“I’m afraid of what he’ll be like.”

“I know.  Find the time.”

Lucy nodded.

“A lot of this is hard,” Miss said, moving her head.  As she did, the mask that dangled from a chain swayed in the wind.  “Even facing one another, sometimes.”

“What are you doing, Miss?” Lucy asked.

“Watching out.  Eyes on the horizon.”

Lucy gripped the cup a little tighter.  “A lot of the stuff that’s going on isn’t on the horizon, you know.”

“I know.  I’ll continue to let you know when word reaches my ear about trouble boiling up from beneath Kennet, or when innocents trickle down into that space beneath.  Rook?  I think I’ll go.  I worry, the goblins make poor lookouts.”

Rook stood from her seat, and lifted the black iron chain that drooped from one end of the roof to the other.  As she did, she lifted up the mask in front of Miss, allowing Miss to stand.  “Keep us apprised.”

“I’ll speak to Toadswallow.  I know he wanted to be here,” Miss said.  To Lucy, she said, “He’s overtired, coordinating.”

“Send the goblins my way?” Matthew asked.  “I think there’s a good chance they forgot.  I’ll be at the Arena.”

“I will.  Thank you for the chance to break bread, Lucy.  It was a good thought,” Miss said, hands clasped behind her back, the mask dangling in between her and Lucy.

“Bye,” Lucy said, her eyebrows knitting together in concern.

I wanted to talk about plans and you’re bailing?

“This meant more than you might realize,” Matthew said, brushing crumbs and a bit of tomato from the table into a cupped hand, then dumping the crumbs onto the soil of a box plant behind him.  He apparently didn’t see Rook’s frown at that.  “I’ll keep an eye out for Verona.  As much as that’s possible.”

“Tell her she’s loved, okay?” Lucy asked.

Matthew nodded, scraped his chair as he stood, and then nodded again.

“Good luck down there, Moss,” Grandfather told him.

“You’re welcome to come.”

“We’ve been told it’s bad for us,” Grandfather said.  Rook nodded beside him.

“Well then,” Matthew said.  He pushed his chair into place beside the table.  “Fuck off, don’t come, I guess?”

Grandfather chuckled like he was taking the reply in the attitude it was meant.

Lucy swallowed hard as Matthew grabbed a canvas shopping bag that apparently had some supplies in it, sorted himself out, and then gave her a single pat on the shoulder as he walked by.

“Reggie?” Rook said.  “Put out the cast iron stove before you go.  We’ll be warm enough and the kettle will keep if we want more tea.”

“Do you want anything the next time I come?” Reggie asked.

“Bring yourself.  Wash in the river first.  Wear loose clothing.  I know you don’t like going barefoot, but if you were willing, it would be preferable.”

“Is it that big a deal?” Reggie asked.

“No.  I’ll set out a basin to wash your feet before you come,” Rook told him.  Still standing from when she’d adjusted the chain.  She unhitched one end of the chain from the wrought-iron fencing at one end of the roof and collected the chain as she walked across the roof, tucking the mask under one arm and managing to keep the chain relatively taut by pulling on it, even as she looped it up.  She unhitched the other end and laid the coil, two masks at the center, at the top of a cabinet.  She picked up a puzzle box and her usual full-face ‘crone’ mask, holding the mask in front of her mouth as she used one hand to adjust the puzzle box.

Like one of those cubes with a picture on each face, rotated this way and that.  Except it was all the same color.  She set it on the table.  “An underground hall.”

Reggie extinguished the fire with a hissing sound.  “I just go to the usual locations and I don’t act surprised about whatever is there when I arrive.”

“That works most times, but for right now there’s a risk you might take a wrong turn and end up in the Undercity.  If you don’t find yourself going underground or if you don’t find yourself in an arching hallway, reconsider the route.”

“Okay,” Reggie said.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Grandfather said.  “Shrines.”

“I’ll find you.”

Grandfather nodded.

Lucy frowned, leaning sideways in her seat to be able to look back and watch Reggie go.

“Reggie’s existence is more fragile than it was,” Rook said.  “Like a Dog of War without their war.  I’ll take some measurements, see if there’s anything immediate that can be done.  There’s a small chance the things I already have on hand will serve, and we’ll accelerate plans.”

“Plans?” Lucy asked.

“Adjust how the composite is configured, perhaps add something to the configuration.  It’s dangerous, difficult, and harder than it might sound, especially since he is one or two centuries off from being ready.  But if it’s a question of us taking the risk and possibly saving him or not taking the risk and us certainly losing him… we’ll chance it.”

“Making him an Oni?” Lucy asked.

“We’ll see,” Rook said.  “It really is a title that should be earned.  But in that direction?  Yes.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.

“If there’s no obvious answer, it will have to wait.  I’m leaving.”

“You’re-” Lucy startled.  “Leaving?”

“For a short time.  A few days, maybe a week.  I’m not an augur, and I’m not so clever that I can intuit the exact timing.  But the time feels more or less right, knowing what I know.  I’m more useful elsewhere.”

“What the heck?” Lucy whispered.  She was tense enough now that her back didn’t touch the backrest of the chair, and the only reason she didn’t squeeze her cup harder was that she was pretty certain it would squeeze its way free of her grip and spill if she did.  “People are leaving, you say there’s a plan…”

“Easy does it,” Grandfather said, voice soft.  He scooted his chair closer.

Rook seated herself beside Lucy.

“What the heck?” Lucy asked, quiet.  She looked into Rook’s amber eyes.  She glanced at Grandfather.  “We lost John.  We lost Ken, but we lost John.  How can they-?”

She stopped as Grandfather looked away, leaning back in his seat and looking skyward.

“If it helps, what you’re asking is an entirely different question than what I’m answering by leaving,” Rook said.

“What?” Lucy asked, soft, not really exhaling as she asked it, so much as she used the air presently in her mouth.

“I didn’t want to say it outright in front of the others.  I don’t want to say it in front of Grandfather, but he stayed.  The wound is fresh, child.”

“Ah,” Grandfather grunted.

“Kennet was perhaps the closest thing Miss will ever have to a child of her own.  Kennet-with-Others originated with her, more or less.  It had Others before and it will have Others after all is said and done, I think, but the Kennet you know is one she nurtured, one she had high hopes for.  It had its sustenance, it had layers of protection she negotiated to provide it, as a child might have its crib.”

Lucy shook her head a bit.

“If you’ll excuse analogy employed to barbaric effect, that same child now lies broken, limbs shattered, vivisected, the entrails pulled out to suit the purposes of a shortsighted man.”

“It doesn’t feel like she cares at all,” Lucy said.  “It doesn’t feel like she even tried that much.  Where was she that night?  What did she do?  If this is her child, what was she even freaking doing?”

“Ah,” Rook said.  “Excuse me.”

She stood.  Lucy found herself tensing again.

Only the fact Grandfather was there stopped her from saying something.  He looked fairly at ease, in every place or every way except the eyes.  Those eyes watched as Rook walked around the table, getting her cup from the head of the table.

“Such conversations call for tea, I think,” Rook said.  “Let me top myself off.”

Lucy watched, bewildered, a little out of sorts.

“May I refill your cup?” Rook asked.  “If so, don’t empty the remnants into the potted plants as Matthew insists on doing.”

“I’m okay.”

“Grandfather?”

“No thanks, Rook,” Grandfather said.  “I don’t really get tea.”

“You’re still young,” she said.

“Keep that up and I’ll come up with a witty retort for it,” Grandfather told her.  “One of these days.”

“Am I young?” Lucy asked.  She felt young.

“You’re just old enough,” Rook said, settling into her seat.  “You’re unfortunately very human.”

“Sorry, I guess?” Lucy asked.  She wasn’t sure what face she was making, but she hoped it captured bewilderment, vague offense, and how weirded out she was by the turns of conversation.

“You’re human, with a wide and varied set of tools before you.  Tell me, what do you do with your eyes?”

“What?”

“Your eyes, Lucy.  What use do you have for them?”

“To see?”

“And?”

“I- where is this going?”

“Perhaps it’s better to ask… if your eyes were pulled from your skull, what would you be unable to do?  List the things for me.”

“Read?” Lucy asked.

“Good.”

“Um, appreciate art?  See a sunset?”

“That goes back to seeing.  But appreciate, yes.  Study, watch, admire, be blinded?  See red?”

“Sure?”

“Miss has no eyes, Lucy.  She has no nose, no mouth.  She has no hands.  Other parts of her are missing as well.  She cannot cry, she cannot wail.  I think she might want to.  She can’t push, she can’t pull, she has trouble holding onto things.  It’s why she uses the people around her in the same manner you and I might use pockets.  Lesser agents hold onto things until she needs them.  Visual stimulus, scents and tastes flow into her in the same way a clay pot submerged in water with a crack made in the side might have water rush in.  Things flow from within in the same way air would escape that pot.”

Lucy frowned.

“If we were to take all the things you’re capable of doing, Lucy, and group them into a mess of words, piled in together, then closest to the center, there might be words like give, take, use, open, see, push, talk.  Words like argue might sit closer to your center than they do for Avery, but the arrangements are similar.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, mostly so she was saying something.

“You might be surprised to realize how some things near your center aren’t available to Miss.  Something like talking isn’t at the center of her configuration, though she tries to bring it there.  For someone like Grandfather, if I might use you as an example, soldier?”

“I’m interested to hear what you think of me,” he said, smiling a bit.  “To warn you, if you say ‘young’ I might flip this table into your lap.”

“Those qualities are something else altogether,” Rook said.  “For someone like Grandfather, ‘fight’ sits close to the center.  The vigilant stillness.  The assessment of his environment.  The measure of an enemy.”

Grandfather nodded slowly.

“Child,” Rook addressed Lucy.  “Miss deflects.  She sees past the surface in ways that we don’t have easy words for.  She can’t fight, so she baits, she confounds, and if the situation allows, she can let the enemy destroy themselves.  You being there was her fight, as close as she can manage it.  She has no fists to swing, so she set you in motion.”

“Seems to me that wasn’t necessarily right to do,” Grandfather murmured.

“This is the closest thing she has to a child, Grandfather,” Rook said, holding the mask sideways over her mouth, her eyes sad.  “I don’t know that I can fault her for doing what she could to try and avoid this kind of fate.”

“If there’s one thing I’m not sure I’m keen on about this place, it’s how many actual children seem to end up on the wrong side of things, for the sake of this town,” Grandfather murmured, the murmur starting to edge into a growl.  “Yalda, this Choir thing, three kids got offed because they came across the furs, right?  Now these three?”

“I’m a teenager,” Lucy told him.  “Not a child.”

“Hmmm,” he growled out the sound.  Soft, his eyes refocused on some place that wasn’t here.  “Oh yeah.  I remember something like that.”

“You say all this, Rook, but we didn’t, did we?” Lucy asked.  “We didn’t avoid this fate for Kennet.”

“I assure you, Miss doesn’t hold an iota of blame for you three.  She blames herself, and, as I said earlier, the wound is still fresh.  This thing she nurtured lies maimed and wounded before us all and it will probably never heal or become exactly what she wished it to be.”

“This is the part of this conversation I expected,” Grandfather said.  “Give it time.”

“Give it time,” Rook echoed.

“Can we afford to?” Lucy asked.

“I think we must.  Matthew needs to find his footing, Miss needs to grieve, even if grieving may not be a word that’s part of her exact configuration.  Toadswallow needs to figure out how to salvage things from the midst of this wreckage.  The Dogs of War must learn they are dogs, not wolves.”

Grandfather snorted.  “I’d take offense to that if Pipes didn’t get drunk off his ass and shit on the floor that one time.”

“And you?” Lucy asked Rook.

“I bear the lessons of too many events like this one, too many eves of battle, where I saw people who needed to lick their wounds miss the chance to do so, too many people jumped back into the fray before the dust had settled.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “What’s your… word salad, your center, Rook?”

“My configuration?”

“Sure.”

“I hope I’ve managed to reorient myself so that figuring out the configuration of others is close to the center of how I function.”

“The configuration of Others?”

“Of others.”

Lucy wasn’t sure she had a perfect sense of the inflection there, but she suspected she gathered the meaning.

“The plan, Lucy Ellingson, is we lick our wounds and let the dust settle.  That will take a little longer.  This isn’t a loss we spring back from and score an immediate retaliatory victory in.  If it was that easy, they would have planned for it and made it impossible.  That is what we are up against in this fight.”

Lucy nodded a bit.  “This fight?”

“Whatever happens, there will be another, with other sides.  You know this deep down inside, I think.  If you didn’t, I wouldn’t think you were ready for this conversation.”

Lucy frowned, staring down into her tea.  She could see the traces of tea leaves, even with the cup being dark, the light of the afternoon sun coming down at an angle that filled it with shadow.

“The meeting might have felt fleeting, and it might have felt as if people abandoned you instead of helping you resolve the unease deep in your heart.  Not so.  Not exactly.”

Lucy looked up.

“You asked a question, if he was listening.  And each one of us answered it, without voicing that answer.  We played out scenarios in our heads and I think we’ll each continue to imagine how that conversation will have went, we’ll settle on a private answer, one we’ll be quietly confident the others might agree with or understand.  Maybe we’ll act on that, slowly and privately, over time.  But because nothing overt was said, the theater maintained, he will have no cause to act just yet.”

“And that’s the plan?”

“We can’t win or save Kennet today, tonight, or tomorrow.  So drink herbal tea meant to relax you and relax.  Being ready to carry on the fight only exhausts those muscles you’re keeping tensed.”

Lucy frowned.  She glanced at Grandfather, and saw a very similar look on his face.

“And Kennet?  The way we’re losing it?”

“If there was a ready answer someone would have voiced it.  Everyone here this afternoon wants to rescue this town, for individual reasons.  All of us are putting thought and energy to the task.  If what we want isn’t in easy reach today, then our time is best put to use conserving energy for the future and elevating ourselves to a position where we can meet the challenge if an opportunity presents itself later.”

“Reminds me of advice Avery got from Guilherme.  That if she couldn’t find a relationship today, she should make herself someone the person she dreams of would want to date.”

“There you go.”

“On that note,” Grandfather said.  “The lapse into girl talk reminds me I should check on Doe.”

“Thank you for taking Reggie to look at the shrines.”

“Before I forget, I know John had stuff he wasn’t equipped to handle, left it to you.”

“Yes.  I’ll meet that particular task later today.”

“It’s not… none of us are very good at handling that crap.  I recently realized I have more, I hope that’s not-”

“It’s fine.  Better to do it all at once.”

“Maybe your configuration suits that particular challenge better.”

“It doesn’t, really.  Not much better than you.  But I’ll see to it.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows looking between them.  Rook raised a hand, as if to indicate for Lucy to stand down and stay seated.

“Thanks for caring about John,” Grandfather said, patting the table.  “Teenager Lucy.”

“Same to you,” she told him, eyebrows raised and drawn together.  “Young Grandfather.”

He smiled.  “See you around.”

“For sure.”

He left, pausing only to put his foot up on the corner of a box of plantings and tie his laces, prompting a sigh from Rook, before he sorted himself out and headed down the fire escape, boots clomping on metal stairs.

“Where are you going?” Lucy asked Rook.  “You said you’re leaving?”

“To answer a challenge that hasn’t been made yet.”

“The world won’t end while I’m gone.  I know Miss leans on me.  I don’t know if she’ll collapse without me here, or if she’ll find the strength to stand on her own as she has for the last decade, but if she does collapse, I hope it’ll be a step in a process that helps her get where she needs to be.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Everyone here is reeling.  Quietly or overtly.  You included.”

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“I assure you it is.”

“I feel like I let so many people down.”

“No.  This is the kind of end result that brings everything down.  Well past you and what you were asked to do,” Rook told her.  “They got everything they wanted, but it’s a cursed result.  Edith has Matthew but it’s a twisted sort of having.  Lis has Kennet but it’s a difficult existence.”

“Edith told Charles that they’d get rid of us.  They didn’t get that, yet.”

“Perhaps they have?” Rook asked.

Lucy frowned.

“There’s only one practitioner in Kennet proper now.  One self-consigned to Kennet below, one away.  The practitioners of Kennet, plural, are gone.  The ‘them’ or ‘us’ is gone.  I admit I don’t know the exact phrasing.”

Lucy shook her head a bit.

“It’s a twisted result.  Not having you three as a collective makes things more difficult for all of them except perhaps Charles and Maricica.  Perhaps even them.  I think Charles worried about you, and he’s gone out of his way to not target you, specifically.  Perhaps he feels guilty.  I wonder if there’ll be small cracks, at least from Edith and Lis.”

Lucy raised her hands, like she wanted to gesture something, or use hand motions to frame her thoughts, then decided she didn’t know what she thought about that.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted.

“You deal with today, and if you can find it in you to get stronger or improve your position, do that too.”

“I’m really worried Verona’s working to get stronger or improve her position to avoid dealing with today.”

“Perhaps-”

“But-” Lucy interrupted, or she carried on with the sentence she’d just said, maybe.

Rook fell silent.

“But maybe that’s how she’s configured,” Lucy said.

“It seems so.”

“Have you dealt with that before?  In the… is it okay to ask about the other times that were like this?”

“It is.  It’s why I’m here.  And yes.  I can tell you it’s not easy.  That you’re right to worry.”

“Okay.  Because she needs help, I think, but she also needs to feel like she’s… strong enough to not need help?  So if I help her I also hurt her, but if I don’t help her then I’m… pretty certain she’ll end up hurting herself, and at the end of it she’ll just be hurt and alone and wondering why she didn’t have my support.”

“Yes.”

“What do I do, then?”

“You help without helping her.  You support without supporting her.  If you’re working to similar ends she’ll see you.”

“And I don’t get to have one of my best friends in the meantime?” Lucy asked, quiet.

“I’m sorry.  For now… I’m going to give you a refill on your tea.  It’s meant to relax you, but it can only work if you give it the chance.  This time, give it the chance.”

Lucy nodded.

The conversation had covered most of the bases it needed to cover.  Lucy asked about some plants and about the structure of the space, and Rook explained the various purposes different plants had, the origins, and told Lucy how this space was one of several she could fold up to put in a box and keep with her.

Lucy finished her tea, picked up the tupperware, and stood, stretching.  “I’d better go home, or I’ll end up peeing in your plants, all this tea I’ve been drinking.”

“Best if you go home then,” Rook said.

Lucy smiled a bit.

She got herself sorted, and then she walked over to her bag.

She stopped in her tracks.

The open-topped box with plants growing out of black soil was on one end of the roof, the dirt from Grandfather’s boot left on the lip of it, in the shape of a boot tread.

Lucy’s bag was a short distance away.  Lying across the top of the bag was a beaded chain necklace.  Strung on it was a ring and a lone dog tag.

Lucy blinked hard, moisture collecting on eyelashes, picked it up, and pulled it on before checking.  On the inside of the ring, a single word, ‘Songbird’.

And on the dog tag, the sole dog tag that John had held onto, even while giving them various ones to carry with them.  ‘John Stiles’.  Etched into the flat back of it was the nickname he’d had before he had a name, the letters all straight lines- two angled lines for the ‘C’, two for the ‘A’, four for the ‘R’, and so on.  ‘Carnivore’.  It didn’t suit him at all.

She closed her eyes, thumb pressed to the raised letters of his name.

Rook approached.  She touched Lucy’s shoulder.  “He didn’t intend to give that to you until just before he left.”

Lucy nodded, eyes squeezed shut tight, back to Rook.

There was a light knocking sound.  Then Rook walked away.

It took about a minute before Lucy was ready to open her eyes, taking in a quiet, shuddering breath.  Then she looked down to see what Rook had brought over.  Moisture dripped from eyelashes to the stone tile of the rooftop.

She collected the gift Grandfather and the other Dogs of War apparently had intended to leave her, lifting it with both hands before pulling the strap over her shoulder.

Rook did her thing at her end of the roof, her back to Lucy.  She hadn’t been lying about not being much better than Grandfather was at handling this stuff.

Lucy headed down the fire escape, wiping at her eyes before venturing out onto the street.  Going home, a battered old guitar with new strings slung around her back, a dog tag she’d never throw to the ground at her neck, in the company of his Songbird.

“There you are.”

With her Sight, she could distinguish them.  Four youths, a couple years younger than she was, three boys and a girl, and a fifth who wasn’t part of their group.  They weren’t human, and didn’t have many special qualities, but to her Sight, she could see that they’d hurt and been hurt and in contrast to the girl with shards of metal around her mouth and throat, they were darker overall.

The biggest of the boys was holding an eleven year old girl from behind, bear-hugging her arms to her side.  The skinniest, smallest of the boys had a plastic bucket in one hand and a live, wriggling tadpole in the other, and was trying to get their victim’s mouth open.

The fourth was a girl, the only one who didn’t look spooked by Lucy’s appearance.  The ringleader of this little gang.

“Let her go.”

The ringleader moved her hand.  The big guy let the girl go, and she broke free, fighting, pushing, getting about ten feet before she fell to hands and knees, coughing, gagging, and retching.

“How many of those did you feed her?”

The skinny one looked down at the bucket, dropping the one tadpole in.  He looked up.  “Half.”

“Don’t answer her,” the ringleader said, her jaw set.  Her eyes narrowed.  “You numbnuts know the drill.”

“It’s important.  Decides how much trouble you guys are going to be in,” Lucy told them.  “Being honest helps.”

“Yeah,” the ringleader said, her expression unchanging.  “By the drill.  Go.”

They scattered in a very practiced way.  Each in a separate direction.  The ringleader and big guy were fastest, the skinny guy slowest.

Lucy hurried forward.  “Are you okay?  Do you need help?”

The girl retched.

“I can help you or I can go after them.”

The girl, with eyes closed and coughing, pointed in the direction the undercity kids had run off.

Lucy broke into a sprint.

The smallest one was slowest.  If she could get one, maybe she could get them to give up the others.  They were tough, hardened in many ways, but they had weaknesses.

She found him, running toward the shore of the river.  A little set of concrete steps led down to the spot that was, given there was no real sand, the closest thing the little river in Kennet had to a beach.  The older teenagers liked to sit down there in the summer.

She was considerably faster than him.  It helped that he wasn’t fast, and it helped that she’d spent the summer running around.

This was all complicated by the fact that there were some civilians around.  A bridge about fifty feet to the north, leading from downtown to the upper end of residential Kennet, with people standing by the railing.

She had witnesses, which tied her hands.

As she got close enough to grab for the back of his shirt, he twisted.  Sloshing her with the water of the bucket, and about a dozen tadpoles, snails, and small frogs.  She was momentarily blinded, a disorientation that lasted about a half second longer because it wasn’t just cold water, it was water that a collection of amphibians and gross things had been stewing in, with all the associated smells.

She blinked her way free, went for the stairs he’d descended, and she stopped short, grabbing on the railing to keep from going over the first stair.

Strings had been tied across the top stair, railing to railing, at about ankle level.

Glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, Lucy reached for her collar, slipped on the weapon ring, John’s dog tag and Yalda’s ring dangling, and turned a pen into a blade, keeping it parallel to her left leg, so the people to her right wouldn’t see.  She severed the thread.

They’d had to have set that up earlier.  That wasn’t the only bit of potentially lethal ‘mischief’.  She’d been put on their trail by Miss, but she’d really only found them by first discovering the bricks set above a partially open door, poised to drop onto the head of the next person to push their way through.

The tripping hazard severed, she headed down the stairs, and ran along the rocky shore.

He threw a flat bit of slate at her.  She fended it off with a swipe of her arm.

He threw the bucket.

She shoved him into the water.

“Can’t-” he gulped, as he landed on his hands and knees in the water.

She kicked him in the butt, shoving him face-first into water.

And he went straight into panic mode.

Can’t swim, she thought.  That was what he’d been about to say.

She hauled him out.  He fought, more slappy than punchy, and she got him under control.  A firm motion like she intended to hurl him into the water made him quit it.

Mean, over the top, maybe, to threaten someone on that level, but these guys were assholes, and if she wasted time or let some get away, they would absolutely hurt people.  More traps, more tricks.

Once he stopped fighting, he mostly stopped altogether.  When she dragged him along, he obeyed.

She spotted the big guy, standing up the slope, further down the river.  He’d picked up a stick between the time he’d run off and the time he’d gotten there.

The wooden bead anklet she wore ticked over.  Telling her he was looking at her.  Considering his options.

Ticked, because of the people behind her, on the bridge.

She considered her options, wondered if she could bait him into a fight.

She gave herself an eight out of ten chance she could beat him.  He was bigger and stronger than her, despite looking younger in the face, and she hadn’t really fought recently, she didn’t have the benefit of her practice.

Big questions were if he had anything special going for him, because apparently some of these guys did, or if the combination of her being tired and him being stronger would make the difference.

Before she could decide, the anklet adjusted.

It still told her he was watching her, but the people behind weren’t observing anymore.

She glanced a bit over her shoulder.

“Snatchragged, Snatchragged, Snatchragged,” she said.

The bushes behind her and to her left stirred.

Then Snatchragged tore her way forward.  The bushes between the slope and shore weren’t consistent, but Snatchragged was taking a goblin sort of route, marked with the trash the bushes picked up from weather and wind.

The three-foot-tall goblin lunged from the bushes, leaped up at the five-foot-six eleven year old, and seized him around the shirt collar, legs bent, toes digging into stomach.

He stumbled back, and the goblin hurled herself back and to the side, still holding on, tipping him and her both off balance.

They crashed down the slope, separating in the fall.

Lucy checked there were no observers.  All clear.

In the time it took her to check, Snatchragged charged him.  As he got to his feet, the goblin hit him like a cannonball, piercing-studded arm punching.

In his fighting retreat, trying to pry her off, he went into the water, footing slipping in wet rocks.

Lucy dragged the skinny kid with her, walking over.

At the halfway mark she had to start jogging, tugging fiercely on the skinny kid to get him to keep up, because Snatchragged was holding the big guy’s face underwater.

“All good!” Lucy called out.  “Nice work.”

Nat ‘Snatchragged’ the goblin raised a hand for a high-five.  The oversized limb had so many makeshift piercings, paperclips, bent needles, bent rings, keychains, and bits of glass shoved through the skin that there was literally more piercing visible than skin.

I’d do more damage to my hand than the piece of glass did to Verona’s if I accepted that high five.

Lucy gave Nat a single pat on the head instead.  “Go see if you can find the others, ambush the other two if they go somewhere innocents can’t see.”

Nat disappeared into the bushes.

“And you,” Lucy said to the big guy.  She picked up the stick he’d dropped.  He heaved for breath, coughing.  “Are we going to have a problem?”

“Are you going to give me a kiss?” he asked, smacking his lips.

The skinny kid snickered.

She brought the stick down into the water, just by his crotch.

“No problem,” he said, smirking.

“Where did you guys set up your hideout?  You’ve been around for an afternoon, you stole stuff, but you don’t have that stuff with you.  Where’d you stash it?  Where’s the ringleader at?”

“I’ll show you,” he told her.  He got to his feet.

And he immediately lunged for her.

It was rough on her wrist, with the stick being big and a one-handed grip, but she used it like she’d been trained, poking it at one of his knees as he brought it forward.  The knee didn’t go all the way forward, the toe slipped on wet rock in the search for traction, and he fell.

She jabbed him in the shoulder, and he flopped over onto his back, half in the water and half out.

She brought the stick down hard onto the rock near his ear.  His eyes screwed shut, face scrunched up like he’d expected the hit to strike him across the nose or mouth.  He kept it like that, like he still anticipated the hit coming down.

“You get that one freebie.”

“Empty building next to the liquor store.”

Of course.

“Lead the way.”

He did, dripping with water.

Lucy was aware what it looked like.  She was holding a stick and marching one guy forward, while dragging one kid with her.  But it helped that the girl she’d rescued appeared, walking with them with arms folded, looking about as pissed off as Lucy did, when Lucy was very practiced at looking pissed off, given it was a regular look on her face.  The boys looked suitably hangdog.

“Hang back?” she told the girl.

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

“Okay.”

Lucy walked around to the side entrance, and then she whistled.

The goblins found her.

She had the big guy lead the way in, and he disabled one trap near the door as he entered.  She poked him from behind as she entered, followed and flanked by goblins, who immediately fanned out around her.

The ringleader and the mean looking boy who’d been prying the girl’s mouth open were there, surrounded by their stolen finds.

“Oh shiiit,” the ringleader whispered.

“Good start,” Lucy said.

“You’re one of the three witches?”

Lucy frowned.

“Shiiiit, didn’t know.  You got me.  I surrender.”

Matthew said it caught him off guard sometimes.  What Verona was doing.

“Back to that end of Kennet.  You’re in trouble.”

“Shit.  Okay,” the ringleader said.  “You can have this stuff.”

Lucy looked at the stolen candy, magazines, and clothes.  “No.  We’ll… I guess we’ll try to give it back to the people you took it from.”

“Sure.  Don’t remember exactly where and who.  Sorry,” the ringleader told her.

“Up.  Let’s go.  Goblins?  Can you get this stuff back where it belongs, do you think?”

Biscuit was perched on Butty’s head, and gave Lucy a weirded out look.  “Or…”

“Swear you’ll try to find the obvious candidates.  Clothing store is a good bet.  Magazines too.  Swear you’ll give it back in as good a condition as you can manage, swear you’ll try to find the traps they set and disable them, and you can take the stuff that’s small and ambiguous.”

“Swear!” Biscuit chirped, touching forehead, crotch, nipple, nipple.  A few goblins mimed the action.

“And you four jerks, come on,” Lucy said.

She walked them out of the building, leaving the stick behind.

The girl they’d been tormenting looked surprised but pleased.  “They’re in trouble?”

“Big trouble.”

“Telling on their parents?”

“I’m not sure they have parents, but… big trouble.  We’ll figure it out.  You okay?”

“Threw up all of it,” the girl said.  “I think.”

“Okay.  Sorry.  These guys shouldn’t be exposed to civilized society.”

“We really shouldn’t,” the ringleader said.  “But you gotta try if you get the chance, right?”

“You really don’t gotta,” Lucy told her.  “Go.  March.”

They walked until they reached the Arena.  Lucy checked the coast was clear, then made them turn around while she drew the diagram.

The world flipped around them.

“And we’re home,” the ringleader said.  “Can we go?”

“We’re not done.  You’re in trouble.  So let’s see… Verona.  Verona.  Verona.”

“Oh.  Her,” the ringleader muttered.  “Damn.”

“Damn is right,” Lucy told her, frowning a bit.

It took Verona about five minutes to show up.  She appeared at a distance, less like a person and more like a wild animal, skittish, checking.  She was wearing the cat mask, eyes glowing purple, a pair of cracks running in parallel vertically up the mask, one intersecting the inner corner of one eye, the other running through the other eye.  She was wearing her favorite fuzzy sweater, elbows patched.

Lucy raised a hand in a wave.

Verona approached, and she approached carefully.  “What’d you bring me?”

“They slipped into Kennet Above.  They are, as I told them, in big trouble.”

“How big?”

“Fed a girl about a dozen frogs and tadpoles.”

“Plus some snails,” the skinny kid said.

“Sounds like a level two detention at the school,” Verona said.

“And set traps.  Tripwire on some stairs.  Could’ve killed someone.  Bricks above a door.  Maybe some other stuff I didn’t see.”

“Level four, then.”

“Can I hand them off to you?”

Verona looked at each of the four.  “Yeah.”

“You want me to come with, or-”

Verona was already shaking her head.

“You keep looking after stuff up there,” Verona told her.

“Okay.  You got my message about Jeremy?  He’s really a good friend, but he chews himself up if you go silent on him.”

“I got it.  I’ll figure it out.”

“And there’s a test tomorrow.  Do what you need to do, but maybe show up for that, at least?  Just a suggestion.”

Verona nodded.

“They got pretty damn obedient when they realized I was one of the Kennet Witches,” Lucy noted.  The ringleader nodded in an exaggerated fashion.

“Cool,” Verona said.  “Come on you guys.  To school.  If you hadn’t done that, it’d be a level five detention.  Let’s keep it at four, don’t waste my time.”

Lucy watched them walk away.

“May I enter?” Lucy asked.

“Of course.”

It was hard to say what had changed, exactly.  Was there more dust in the air, catching the light as it drifted down, in faintly glowing white motes that settled on the floor in a faint carpet?  How much of the change in temperature was because it was the start of fall now, instead of the end of summer?

There were blades stuck into the floor and the blades caught the light and the light seemed more stark.  Less warm.

In any other circumstance, she might have called it a trick of her eyes.

Guilherme sat with his back to the wall, almost motionless, both legs bent, with one on the floor and the other propped up, his wrist resting across it.  His hair seemed more black than brown, but that could have been a play of light and shadow.  His skin seemed more pale, his eyes more piercing.  Some of the motes of dust had caught on his hair, white in contrast to the darkness of it.  A white scar marked where Daniel the Glamour Drowned had cut him.

“I brought you bread,” she told him.  “I’m not sure how good it is, but I went out of my way to keep it more organic.  I’m of the understanding that bread is almost never a bad gift for an Other.”

“If you wanted to improve your abilities on that front, I could teach you things,” he told her.  “Trade secrets from bakers that, but for things overheard by Fae, went to the grave with them.  I’ve known witches who made bread that was almost magical on its own.”

“I might take you up on that.”

“It would be a hard series of lessons.  Harsh, in a way that made you look at bread in a bittersweet way thereafter.”

“Mmm,” she replied.  She wasn’t sure how to respond.  “Want?”

“Full sentences, Lucille.  Don’t debase yourself.”

She remained motionless, holding up the loaf.

He took it.  It was about the size of his fist.

“I don’t suppose you give guitar lessons?” she asked.

“I could.  But I wouldn’t teach you the guitar.  I’d teach you an assortment of instruments, each with purpose, to give you a deeper understanding and appreciation of music, a profound sort of understanding that would leave you loving and hating music in equal measure, using all of your heart.”

“Yeah?” she asked.  “Let me keep fumbling my way along for a bit and… honestly, probably wouldn’t take you up on that.  Feels more right that I do it the hard way.  Figure it out myself.”

“It’s John’s?” Guilherme asked.

She nodded.

“Best if you do,” he said, voice soft.  “Be gentle about it.  Don’t tear up those fingertips.”

“No.  I’ll try not to.”

“Tell me,” he said.  “What do you need from me?”

“I don’t need anything from you just yet.  I thought I’d say hi while I was nearby.”

“It might be better if you come with a specific reason in mind.  For your safety.  For my peace of mind.”

“I can’t come to say hi?  Bring you something?  See if you’re okay?  Show you how far things are coming with the guitar?”

“Best if you don’t.”

“Well, if you don’t give me a good reason, I think I will anyway.”

“The Wild Hunt exists to punish, and there is no transgression they view as deserving of punishment as a failure of dignity.  Each court maintains its own hunting party, and the court of Winter is the harshest of them.  If I should say or do something that lowers myself in others’ eyes, and lowers the perception of the Winter Court or Fae as a whole, they will come.  I don’t want that, and you shouldn’t either.”

“I think I’ll come.  So you hold your head up.  Put in the effort.  Or give me a better reason than that, okay?”

“You came to see Alpeana, I gather?”

Lucy nodded.  “But seeing you was a good reason to swing by too.”

“She sleeps.  She’s exhausted, all the more so for how much she misses her friend.”

Lucy looked in the direction of Alpeana’s sleeping area.  The cave wasn’t a perfect arc and it sloped down into a narrowing angle.  Alpeana slept in an impossible crevice in the darkest corner.

I know that exhaustion, I think, Lucy thought.

“Leave a note along with the gift you brought.  She’ll find you when the dark comes.”

Lucy nodded.

“Thank you for the bread,” Guilherme told her, and he didn’t take a bite of it.

Lucy crept into the darkness, until she could see a bit of shadow that was deeper than the rest.  Alpeana’s hair moved constantly while the pale shadow of her face, arms, and legs were still.

Lucy scribbled out a note, stating her request, then deposited candy beside it.  Alpeana had taken molasses at the awakening, so Lucy hoped actual sugar was a fitting substitute.

She had to crawl backward without turning around to get out.  She straightened, dusted herself off, and turned to face Guilherme.

He held the fresh bread, which faintly steamed in the cool cave.

“If ever you come and I’m gone, and none of Kennet’s Others know what became of me, it’s safe to assume Winter’s Hunt found me, or I left for the courts, so I wouldn’t bring them to your doorstep.”

“I hope that isn’t for a long while, Guilherme.”

He nodded, eyes dropping to the floor.  “Then don’t say goodbye.  That would bring it to pass all the sooner.”

“Okay,” she said.

She left him behind in the cave, and waited until she was clear of the bend and the trees that were part of the way in before she let out a heavy, heartfelt sigh.

She’d asked Alpeana to go easy, or if Alpeana couldn’t, Lucy had written, to go harder on Lucy than anyone else.

She didn’t know how things stood, exactly, but if Alpeana delivered anything in line with some of her greatest hits, Lucy was pretty sure that with this timing, the damage would be irreparable.

She walked past bodies skewered in swords.  Past shadows of things past, hands in her pockets, shivering slightly.

To reach the crossroads.

“We’re doing this, huh?” Verona asked.  She wore her cat mask, and she walked down an alleyway, dark and misty, with the mist illuminated from some distant light source that the mist hid from view.  A glowing cat mark was painted on the wall behind her.  People stood in the mist.  Melissa seemed to be one.

“Don’t we have to?” Lucy asked.

“It’s so nice to see you guys, oh my god,” Avery whispered.

Behind Avery was a strange city, and behind that city was water, tilted at a forty-five degree angle, like it promised to slosh down and onto the city itself.  People stood in a half circle behind Avery, faces obscured by shadow.

“Let’s be careful not to use the wrong words or say certain names,” Lucy said.  “And probably we can only do this once in a while, to be sure.  But I’ve got to assume, based on what we saw in the Alcazar, the last one to hold the throne didn’t have much to do with dreams.  So I have to assume we’re probably safe to meet like this.”

“Probably,” Verona confirmed, nodding.

“You guys good?” Lucy asked.

“Tired,” Verona told her.  “Of everything.  Of people.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “You know you’ve always got a sleepover at my house if you want it, you know?  I’m not sick of you yet.”

Verona nodded.

After a moment, Verona pulled her mask off.

She looked tired.  Circles under eyes with a bit of red around them.

Lucy smiled.  “Hi.”

“Hi,” Verona said.

“Avery?” Lucy asked.

“It’s lonely out here.  But the guilt is worse.”

“Don’t feel guilty,” Lucy said.

“Not allowed,” Verona told Avery.  “Anything good?”

“I met a girl I like,” Avery said, rubbing the back of her head.  She smiled uneasily.

“You did tell me that in about ten different texts,” Lucy noted.

“Thought it was worth mentioning again.  She’s cool.”

“Definitely worth mentioning again,” Verona said.

Behind Verona, another, darker version of Melissa had taken a seat, and was lighting a glass pipe.  The smoke intensified, pouring from the end of the pipe.

Lucy startled a little when she saw Avery.  The figures who stood about twenty feet behind her were reaching forward.  One had inserted a fishhook through the corner of her mouth, out the cheek.

“How bad are they out there?” Lucy asked.

“I think-” Avery said, and she paused as she noticed the fishhook.  “-They’re pretty normal as practitioners go.  Which means they’re not super great on average, y’know?”

Lucy nodded.  “You going to be okay?”

More of the hands had reached for Avery.  One held her by the back of the neck.

“Can any of us answer that question with any certainty?” Avery asked.

“I think we’re on pretty unsteady ground here,” Verona said, looking around.  Looking at what was behind Lucy, then at Melissa.

And the tall, overweight figure who stood in the mist, casting a long shadow.

Lucy looked at her own nightmare.

Verona’s nightmare was a dreaded future.  Dark and foul and plagued with regrettable decisions, maybe.  One where worlds blurred in the worst way.

Avery’s was an uncertain present.  One that might stop her from getting back to them.  Fishhooks set into flesh, hands grasping her.

And Lucy’s-

John, skewered by a red sword.  Guilherme by a silver one.  Paul had skewered himself and tattered, bloodstained cloth from clothing that wasn’t his indicated the secondary target he’d caught in the act.

Her dad, by a syringe loaded with piss-yellow fluid.  Her grandfather before him, Ran, insubstantial, distant.  And more besides. The shadows they cast were her only footing, reaching hands casting long, finger-width shadows to stand on, when there was no other path.  When the last one fell away, she would plummet.

“Let’s talk plans.  They killed the red beast,” Lucy said.  “Took the throne.  Took Kennet.  Maybe we can’t do it today, or tomorrow, but let’s at least get on the same page.  We’re stronger together.  Let’s talk removing the current holder of the throne, finding another, retaking Kennet.  Fixing what’s broke.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Yeah.  You aren’t going to nag me to quit what I’m doing?”

“Do you want me to nag you to quit what you’re doing?” Lucy asked.  “I’d be happy to if you did.”

“Nah,” Verona said.

“Okay then,” Lucy said.  “Then I won’t.”

“Like I said, end of that night,” Avery said.  “We trust.”

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