Author: Wildbow

Gone and Done It – 17.13 | Pale

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“Someone once told me that most practitioners never get into a serious fight in their entire careers, or something like that.  I’m paraphrasing,” Lucy explained.  “And the seriousness of the situations me, Avery, and Verona have been dealing with are pretty unusual.”

She held a hand out to block out the sun from her eyes, and watched as an old woman hobbled her way into the mob that was gathered on the short street and in the surrounding trees.  People would periodically step backward into her, or not quite see her, but as they noticed her, they moved away a bit.  Mostly.  There were some Stuck Arounds fighting for Kennet who weren’t so good at keeping track of the various rules and expectations.

“We figure around eighty practitioners have come into Kennet.  Thirty of those, I’m just guessing, by the way, but thirty or so seem to be tied into the various combat practices.  War magic and all that.  You’ve got Musser’s family and the people tightly connected to them, the Hennigars, they’re a big one, I think they’re like lieutenants for the rest, the Tedds, which would be Braxton Hart, America Tedd, and Anthem Tedd, uhhhh… the Songetays, and the others.”

When one Stuck-Around didn’t get out of the old woman’s way fast enough, the old woman stabbed him with a sharpened knitting needle.  He moved, and in the heat of the moment, the teenage girl that had been fending him off was more focused on the fit guy with the baseball bat and the raised voice than she was on the hunched old woman.  The teenager didn’t see the old woman as the woman licked the blood off the knitting needle with her very long tongue.  Slicing her tongue open from root to tip, as it happened.

“Anthem, Grayson Hennigar, and a few others are up north for a leadership claim.  Musser did one right next door, so they have a corridor they can travel that lets them avoid Charles.  When they come, they’ll bump the number up some.  We’ll be pretty close to an invading force that’s about halfway made up of those combat practitioners,” Lucy went on.

The old woman with the bleeding tongue reached out, faster than her stooped age would suggest, and grabbed the girl by the hair, while her head was turned.  She pulled, knobby-fingered hand grabbing the girl at the neck, and put a dirt-stained, bare foot on the girl’s leg, stepping up.

Even though the old woman was small and probably weighed less than Lucy, the fact she was climbing onto the girl and pulling her off balance made her stumble.  She licked the young practitioner’s face with a bloody tongue, and the girl, repulsed, pulled back and finally fell.

They landed hard, but the old woman was tough and dangerous.  The old woman shoved two fingers into her own throat, then vomited onto the girl’s face.  While the girl recoiled, trying to reach for her face with the old woman’s leg and knee in the way, she licked- cutting through the slime with a streak of blood that went from chin to scalp.

“Gotta consider there’s another fifteen or so who are capable.  Some are Blue Heron trained, with that wide specialty, the sparring matches, at least,” Lucy explained, watching without passion, conserving her energy.  “Mercenaries and things.”

With fingernail, the old woman scratched a mark into the girl’s forehead, while the girl grappled with her and tried to wrestle her off.  Some people rushed in to intervene, and they were blocked by the mob- the same mob that was mostly staying away from the old woman.

“Leaves about thirty five people who are still in Kennet, who can practice.  People who’ve been enlisted into a serious situation, who have less experience after however many years than I got in my first three weeks.”

The vomit and the blood disappeared from the girl’s face like a wave receding from the beach- or gross water in the sink going down the drain.  Either way, it all flowed toward that central point where the mark had been drawn on her forehead, where it disappeared, leaving only a scratch on the center of the forehead.  The older teenage girl, after about two seconds of being able to breathe again, taking a second to realize what had happened, shrieked at the top of her lungs, clawing at her head.

The old woman got to her feet, accepting a helping hand from one of the Bitter Street Witch’s brothers.  She didn’t even glance down at the girl.

“Practitioners who don’t have answers to scary, violent situations.  Practitioners who are leaning more heavily on the others, who are scared, less invested…”

The old woman walked with the bleeding tongue still hanging out of her mouth, soaked crimson with her own blood.  She pulled it into her mouth as she met another old woman.  The two of them murmured at one another.

“Where is Grantham?  My joints can’t endure much more of this.”

“He went back to his garden.  He’ll be back.”

“Bah.  If you see him, have him know I’m looking for him.”

Lucy ran her fingers along her earring, motioning, to cut off that dialogue.  The Oldbodies of Pitch Row were five people who lived above a row of shops downtown, in the Bitter Street Witch’s territory.  They’d started out scattered, then they’d started collaborating, and they’d apparently made one play for leadership of downtown.  All behind the scenes.  They hadn’t wanted to broadcast they existed to Kennet above, and the Bitter Street Witch hadn’t wanted to let on she had enemies from within before she had it handled.

The youngest of them was ninety, all of them had one specific practice-like talent, like the Bitter Street Witch did, which put them at a weird intersection between Other and practitioner where they could conceivably go either way.  One made charms that attracted and repelled, another grew alchemical herbs in his garden, a third could invade dreams, a fourth could reach inside people, and then there was the tongue lady.  She could apply curses, old school and raw.

Each of them, as far as Lucy could tell, was as mean as chewed glass.

Either way, they’d made deals Lucy wasn’t aware of, or they’d made an attempt, failed, and agreed to something, and now they worked for the Bitter Street Witch in a very mercenary capacity.  They asked a steep price to intervene or act, but they stuck to their rules.  When they weren’t busy with that stuff, they kept each other company, all living in apartments in the same hallway, and they took turns with stalls in the fledgling market.  One weekday specific to each of them, while weekends were a crapshoot- sometimes none showed, sometimes three or four did.

Every time Lucy listened to them for more than a few seconds at a time, they had a way of unintentionally making her regret it.  If it wasn’t for Grantham making herbs for virility, they’d probably be a bigger ongoing threat to the Bitter Street Witch or Kennet.

“They’re scared.  We’re tough to go up against, we’re applying constant pressure,” Lucy resumed her explanation.  “What they have is numbers, people who do know what they’re doing.  So that keeps them confident enough.  Until something breaks.”

Lucy turned her head.

Stew Mullen looked down at her, frowning.  The Foreman’s replacement, more scar tissue than anything else.

She turned her head the other way.

Sockgnash stood there, twice as tall as she was, one massive arm grasping a high branch, the other dangling.  He watched the violence and gave no sign he was listening.  He still had a chainsaw embedded in his shoulder, flesh grown together around it.

She went on, “Theoretically, they have two weak points.  They’ve got a few practitioners and devices that are working to stop the Turtle Queen, who’s just floating around Kennet, and they’ve got the leaders who are keeping their people organized, reassuring.  Knock out the anti-Turtle stuff, that’s potentially a whole group we can wipe out.  Knock out the leadership, they potentially crumble, scatter, flee.  As much as they can when they need to lean on the others for the anti-Turtle stuff.”

“Um,” Stew Mullen said, voice thick in his mouth.

“What’s up?” Lucy asked.

“Going back to the start.  Para- para somethin’,” he said.  “Pair of phrases.  What phrases?”

“Don’t worry about it.  Fancy word.  Means I’m not saying it exactly as it was said, before, I think.”

“Okay,” Stew replied.  “I was holding the words in my head so I didn’t hear the rest of what you said.”

“Don’t worry about it.  I’m mostly thinking aloud.”

He started forward, then hesitated.  He looked back at Lucy.

“I’m not the boss of you.  Just keep to the rules, and be ready to retreat on my signal.  Don’t get too dug in.”

“Just go,” Sockgnash said.

Stew Mullen ducked his head down, then charged, bellowing.  The shout was enough warning for the various denizens of Kennet below to scramble out of the way.

Stew was barely slowed down by the three practices that met him, bounced off a magic circle that floated in the air, acting like a floating bit of wall, and then moved around it, charging into the left side of the group of practitioners.

“He won’t last long, doing that,” Sockgnash observed.

“I’ll help in a short bit, if he needs it.”

People had been bowled over, and others scrambled to fend off thrown bricks and bottles.  The old woman with the tongue crept forward on her belly, toward the people who’d fallen over, past two others, one of whom grabbed the back of her sweater.  She licked his face, tongue turning to reverse-squeegee the blood from chin to forehead, then she reached a hand for his forehead.  He caught her hand in his, crushing fingers in his grip.

She reached for her mouth, pulling out a tooth, and pushed it toward his forehead with her free hand, only to get interrupted by a swift kick from another practitioner.  She dropped the tooth.

“The stuff you were talking about sounds right, but people are dumb,” Sockgnash rumbled.

“Dumb?  Like, they’ll be more disorganized than I thought?”

“No.  Too dumb to know they should be scared.  So dumb they don’t know to worry about the Turtle Queen, while she’s back there, thinking they won’t be around because that’d be too dumb of them, so they get away without any toilet paper on their arse.”

“That’s not how Bugges work, I don’t think.”

Sockgnash shrugged.

The chaos of the fight blocked Lucy’s view of things.  She took a few steps to the side, keeping an eye on everything, and watched as five different practitioners kept a wary eye on her.

She turned on her Sight, just in time to see the first practice one was using, extending toward her as a tattered ribbon.  She stepped out of their view, drawing a line in the dirt with her foot.

The old woman had been knocked out, but her friend had come to her rescue, reaching in to grab the man who was holding her.  Her hand moved in a precise, mechanical way, and each movement let her push her fingers in deeper, past flesh, to belly.  She pulled out what looked like a small flame.

“She’s gone.  Summon it fast.  I’ll secure us.”

“Alright.  Saghir Urzail, engravers, power to the third, blessed be, I call on you.”

“Power to the third, blessed be?” Lucy asked.

“Hm?” Sockgnash grunted.

“It’s what they said, at the back there.  Something Urzail?”

“Sounds like angels.”

“Angels are serious,” Lucy replied.

“Yeah.  Could say that,” the big goblin said.

The man at the back was chanting now, in what might have been Latin.

“Verona would know more of the weird little details about practices we haven’t seen yet, but Verona is…”

“Yeah.  I’d say the trick is to stop that guy from singing the things into existence…”

“Chanting, not singing.”

“Punch to the face stops both, but getting that far… want to try?  I could hurl you through the air…”

Lucy peeked.  Immediately, the practitioners started trying to bind her from afar.  More of those ribbons were visible with the Sight.

Lucy whistled, instead.  “Retreat!  Regroup!”

“Too bad,” Sockgnash said, voice low.  “Was about to get interesting.”

“Still might.”

The gathered group of forces from Kennet below began to retreat.  Lucy moved against that current, weaving between people while using them as cover to break up reaching connections.

Some were still fighting at the one side.

Lucy pressed through, keeping an eye on the summoning that was happening.  It was a figure, glowing, mostly ribs, arms, and head, surrounded by ribbons with script on them.  Bright geometry backed it, forming a kind of fractal halo.

Angels, from what very little she knew, were fundamental to the universe.  When a deity was in position to alter Creation and actually bring something into being, angels were the tools they employed, like a hammer in the hands of a carpenter.  Anything else, even for a god creating life, it was just conservation of energy.

Even the things Avery had talked about last night, in the hospital, it would probably be tied into conservation of energy.

The man who was accompanying the chanter gave the order.

“Wall them in.”

It started to move forward, the ribbons and banners around it with the script on them feeding into that geometric halo.  The open segments of the halo that formed squares and rectangles began to extrude blocks of white, black, and gray stone.  Its hands caught some as they fell, and tossed them in certain directions.  That seemed to influence how the stones were laid down, the curvature of the wall it was putting down.

Lucy ran alongside the cathedral-style wall, that was being laid down faster than she could run, twenty feet high, while trying to get to that distant group.  The thing turned its hooded head her way.

Sockgnash came with her.  The hulking goblin climbed the wall, grabbing ledges and decorative extrusions to scale the wall, getting to the top, and catching a ribbon in one hand and the angel’s hood in the other.

They didn’t move like cloth should.  The ribbon continued to feed into the halo, and sliced Sockgnash’s hand as it rubbed past, while the pull on the hood didn’t pull it back or away.  Sockgnash letting feet skid on the upper edge of the wall, leaping when there was a gap, pulling, it didn’t slow the angelic power, didn’t even seem to draw any attention.

It moved a triangular bit of stone that looked like a decorative extrusion, ramming it right into Sockgnash, before sliding it down into the wall’s configuration, where it fit perfectly.  Sockgnash hit the ground, about fifteen feet ahead of Lucy.

She ran by, grabbed a spell card, and flung it.  An earth alteration practice.  She hit the wall directly.

Nothing.  She saw faint lines of geometry break with that moment of contact.

She aimed another at the ground beneath the wall.  Softening it.  The entire wall shifted, blocks and carvings scraping against one another.

The hooded head turned, and the orientation of the wall in progress began to curve out in front of her, barring her path.

Glamour.  She used it with feathers, ascending while in bird form.

And the angelic power ascended too, laying down a cylinder of wall, a tower.  It moved up faster than she could easily fly, narrowing the tower as it rose.

She could hear a chainsaw rev.

If this closes above me, I’ll have to go through the ground.  How fast can I do that?

She wasn’t sure she had the spell cards.

The angelic power stopped building, moving away.  Lucy kept going up, flapping madly, tiny heart pounding in her bird chest, rightmost wing tip scraping the wall as she spiraled up, because it was the most effective way she could think of to climb in a sustained way.

She escaped.

Sockgnash was there, by the wall, the chainsaw that was embedded in his shoulder had been turned on, and veins stood out all over his body, inconsistent amounts of blood churning through them, so they bulged and went flat, in time with the chainsaw roar.

He kicked a small block free of the wall, creating a little square hole in the construction.

The angelic power returned to its origin point, then restarted the build, creating complimentary walls on either side.

“Go!” Sockgnash hollered.

Lucy did.  She flew a bit further, found the group, and swooped down, becoming human again, running awkwardly in the transition.

The group that was still fighting was a band of drunkards.  Stuck-arounds and some older people who might’ve been from the residential area.  They’d come as a group before, clustering together.

They were just another one of the types of people who appeared in inverted cities.  All ages, men and women, reflecting a subpopulation who drank too much, and who did drugs.  Like most people from the undercity, they operated by different rules and motivations, even in subtle ways.  Lucy had seen people with higher pain tolerances, like Stew, and those who had practice-like abilities, like the oldbodies of Pitch Row.

These guys, all on their lonesome, would just regularly get drunk and tear things up.  But as a larger group, they were trying to outdo each other.

“Out!” Lucy called out.  “Back off!”

“But we’re having fun!” Biscuit shouted.

Lucy had to turn around twice before she saw Biscuit in a tree, holding a bottle as large as she was by the neck.

A guy ran by, jumping a bit, and got the bottle, pulling off the wax that sealed the top.  Lucy reached for the bottle, trying to get in his way, and he pushed past her, drinking.

“Oh, did you want some?” Biscuit asked, as she hurried to reach into a hole in the trunk.  “Too bad!  I gave you chances!  These guys like it!  They don’t care about the side effects!”

“Get out of here, Biscuit!  There’s a minor angel out there!”

“Who’s gunna win?  A pissed off, piss-drunk, piss-mean fighting force, or some baby angel?”

“The angel!” Lucy insisted.  “I guarantee you, the angel!”

“Wanna bet!?”

“No!  I want you to get going, you can do this elsewhere!  But if you stay, you’ll get walled in, or you’ll find yourself up against a dozen practitioners.”

“We can do it!  And it’s market testing!  Gotta get in early, give out samples!”

“Biscuit, when you signed onto the council, you agreed to serve Kennet-”

Biscuit covered her ears and shouted, “Blahalalalalaa!”

A kid younger than Lucy hurried by, reaching his hands up.  Biscuit held out two travel-size bottles, like what might get sold on an airplane, doing her best to hold them as low as possible while not falling off the branch.  She continued to yell, “lalalalalalablahlalablah!”

Lucy grabbed the bottles before the little drunkard could.

“Hey!  When you drink those, drink them together!”

The angelic power was getting to the tower, the last place it had been building.  If it kept going, it would start cutting them off.  Lucy pointed.

“We can do it!” Biscuit shouted.

“You will lose!”

“But we’ll win a moral victory!  Am I right, team!?”

The ‘team’ was either fighting or suffering, so she didn’t get much of a response.

The kid who’d wanted the drinks snatched one of the bottles out of Lucy’s hand, then ran forward, toward danger.

“What moral victory?”

“A victory for the real fuzzy, questionable morals!  The ones you regret the next day!  Yay!”

“If the angel won’t stop you, how about that?” Lucy asked, pointing behind Biscuit.

Biscuit turned, and Lucy lunged, putting one foot on the tree for traction to help her get the height needed to snatch Biscuit off the branch.

God, she was so lumpy beneath her skin.  Like skin stretched around hardboiled eggs of varying size, roped together into a loose Biscuit shape and filled with syrup.

Biscuit shrieked, kicking and pounding little fists against Lucy’s arm.

“Got your supplier!” Lucy called out.

That got enough people’s attention that they started to pull away.  When their buddies who were brawling alongside them began to retreat, others moved back.

Mostly.  There were some Lucy probably couldn’t extricate without actively getting inside the ongoing skirmish, and she couldn’t.  The wall that had been drawn partway across the battlefield meant the practitioners weren’t trying to defend on three flanks anymore.  They were concentrating their efforts on one.

Lucy led the others away, Biscuit tucked under one arm.  “Sockgnash!  We’re going!  Good work!”

Sockgnash roared, and the roar vibrated with the ongoing chainsaw rumble.  Lucy wasn’t even sure he’d heard.

And she saw the rest of the group she’d called out to for the earlier retreat.  Stew Mullen led that group, and Stew Mullen was fighting Angie Demarest.

He punched her, hard.

The practice surrounding Angie rippled out, to take that pain and give it to people around her.  Lucy’s Sight let her see the swords embedded in Angie, and how a dozen ribbons tied to the end of that sword all extended out, caught Stew and a handful of others, and then the identical swords emerged from the original blade, chasing those ribbons, leaving only a watercolor shadow behind.

Angie easily healed, dismissing that stain.

Stew didn’t seem to care about being bashed, but a few of the others who’d gotten caught in the effect did, and they pulled back.

Which left open ground for two familiars in the company of the practitioners to join Angie in going up against Stew.  A scarecrow and a man in a hooded jacket with stitches on his face.

Lucy got her spell cards out of her pocket, but had one hand full.  She pushed the cards into Biscuit’s mouth.  “Bite and hold!”

Biscuit bit and held on.  With her hand freed, she was able to flip through and find another card with runes written on it.  Pulling it free of the elastic with the ‘no spirits’ mark on it, it lit up.  She threw it.

The little explosion got the scarecrow, and it got Angie.  Again, Lucy saw that effect.  Her Sight let her see the stains, where negativity brewed, it let her see the swords, and the ribbons tied to swords suggested connections or sources for that harm.

“Go!  Run!” she told Stew.

Stew pushed Angie back, hard, and she went about eight feet by air, two feet by stumble, before the group behind her caught her and kept her from a harder fall.  Stew ran one way, Lucy ran the other.

“Send something after the black one.  We shouldn’t try fighting her ourselves.  Not after what she apparently did to Milo.”

“I’ll do what I want.  War, anoint me…”

Three times, Lucy had seen how that effect worked.  Whether the swords -that practice effect where any harm to Angie was duplicated out to anyone around her- went out to others seemed partially up to Angie, partially up to some other factor.

Less okay?  That practitioners were coming around the one end of the wall, further up the road, and then there was the group of five or so reinforcements.

Lucy ducked into the woods on the one side of the street, moving between trees.

“That’s a battle practice.  Very simple, beginner level,” Biscuit said.

“What?”

“The blondie Stew was hitting.  Go hard, go fast, not nearly as good as what I have on tap.”

Go hard, go fast?

Lucy grabbed a tree to help herself swing in a half-circle around it, and glanced behind herself as she did.

Angie.  Running faster than a human normally could.

Smoke.  Lucy pulled her mask down, then threw a spell card.  It produced choking, blinding smoke.  Lucy ran into the cloud, and her mask protected her.  Angie, following, chased her- coughed once.

Angie’s effect reached out.  It cut right past the protections, blinding Lucy and leaving her breath dry and abrasive in her throat.

“Want help?” Biscuit asked.

“‘Cause I got more stuff.”

“No,” Lucy repeated, before coughing.

What did she have?  What options?

Another spell card?  If it cut through protections, that’d be a disaster.

Fox glamour?  She’d have to abandon Biscuit, and there was no guarantee she’d get away.

“Knife!” Biscuit called out.  “She has a knife!”

Had to think of everything she had-

“Aaah!” Biscuit shouted, wriggling.

The pitch of the shout was cause for Lucy to turn around.  She twisted- then stepped back, behind a tree.

Angie Demarest had a combat knife, and slashed out twice.  She was still faster than normal.

Having Biscuit under one arm made this harder.  If she had both hands free, she could use the weapon ring, but as it was, she’d have to drop Biscuit, even briefly.

And Angie would gut her.

Lucy stepped back out of the way of a knife swing, backing up into a tree branch that almost kept her from moving back far enough.  She forced herself back another step, and the branch rebounded forward, swatting Angie.  The effect rippled out, and Lucy winced as she was momentarily blinded again, a stinging sensation crossing her face and forearms.

Angie made an amused sound and thrust at Lucy.

The training with Guilherme paid off.  She managed to avoid that thrust enough to get her bearings again.  “Biscuit, become a weapon!”

“I bind myself!” Biscuit shouted.  “Biscuit blitz-disc!”

Leaving Lucy with a misshapen, heavy plastic frisbee that was melted at parts.  The label on the front had Biscuit’s smiling face on it, two thumbs raised.

“Seriously!?” Lucy asked.  She used the edge of the frisbee to stop a knife swing.  It notched the plastic.

Lucy engaged in a fighting retreat, against someone who could move nearly twice as fast as she could.  But that effect was tapering off.  After a few frantic parries and dodges, it wasn’t twice as fast anymore.  Just a lot faster, still.

Then slowing.  Angie huffed for breath.

“Hey,” Lucy said.  “Long shot, but you want to fuck off?  You go back, say you tried, I go, I have stuff to do.”

“I’m going to cut you down and then, just for a little while, people are going to love me for doing it,” Angie said.  “They want you dead, they want you gone.  It’ll simplify everything.”

“You know what simplifies things more?  Not doing any of this.”

Angie shrugged.  Then she shifted her posture, holding her knife out in front of her.  “War, anoint me in the same oil you use to temper your blades.  Temper me…”

That would be the thing that sped her up.

Lucy chucked the frisbee.

“Really?” Angie asked.  She moved out of the way of the thrown toy.  “You’re using a goblin weapon.  Against me.”

The frisbee bonked with an exaggerated hollow plastic sound as it hit a tree, then another, then another.

“I heard you say what it’s called.  I know what it probably does.”

Bonk, bonk- then straight for Angie’s head.

“Unbind!” Lucy shouted.

The frisbee became a hurtling Biscuit, who latched onto Angie Demarest’s face.  Angie went to cut her free, and Biscuit dropped, caught her shirt collar, and squirmed into Angie’s shirt, tugging her foot free of Angie’s grip as Angie went to stop her.

“Aaaaugh!” Biscuit shrieked.

Lucy had only a moment to finish the thought from earlier.  Angie would turn things back on Lucy.

She had something in her glamour packets.  She’d set up her Fetch at home, made anew with fresh instructions.  But from the old one, she’d kept-

She hurled it.  Dousing Angie.

There was a pause, and the effect rebounded.  It coated Lucy, dressing her up in the altered form, and it caught Biscuit too.

Biscuit, Angie, and Lucy had all been made to look like, well, Lucy.  Biscuit, caught upside-down in Angie’s shirt, had a leg sticking up out of her collar, and hugged Angie around the upper thighs.  “Aaa, get it off, get it off!”

Angie, wearing Lucy’s face, met Lucy’s eyes in a level glare.  Then she stabbed Biscuit, slicing after.  Butt to thigh to the back of the knee, opened up.

The glamour shattered, and an intact Biscuit dropped to the ground.

“One thing I was wondering,” Lucy said.  “Is why you don’t hurt yourself, then send out that harm.”

“You know what I’m wondering?” Angie asked.  “Why do you think this stops me from cutting you down?”

Lucy didn’t answer.  “Biscuit, get to me when you can.  Use that blitz-disc form or whatever if you need to.  Or escape into the Warrens.”

“Is bad for me to do that too much.  Makes me easier to bind.”

“You know what’s bad?  Getting stabbed.”

“Good point.”

Angie lunged.  Lucy stepped back, eyes moving this way and that as she assessed the environment, making sure she wasn’t cornering herself.

One misstep or missed judgment about tree branches or cover and she’d get sliced open.  There were other protections she could have called on, like spirits, but they needed the spirits elsewhere, and they needed the spirits strong.  They needed the Dogs of War elsewhere, the bulk of goblins elsewhere.

Guilherme’s training, at least, meant that while Angie wasn’t using combat practice to speed herself up, dodging knife swings wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

The reinforcements came.  A summoned Other, followed by the partially burned scarecrow from earlier.  Both were fast.

Lucy, while watching the environment, had made sure to keep herself out of their easy view.

She knew from the instructions they’d given earlier, that they were summoning something to go after ‘the black one’.  They probably weren’t doing anything fancy.

And with Angie wearing Lucy’s appearance, Angie was the target.

Lucy made sure to run for it.

Angie’s practice didn’t allow her to harm herself, probably out of fear of a feedback loop, so she couldn’t easily remove the glamour.

Her practice had a way of tagging people on her own side.  Lucy had glimpsed that when she’d first seen Angie go all out, hurting Nibble and Chloe.  When Stew had bashed her, she’d hit some of the others in the group.  But not all.

It probably used connections.  Hostile ones.  So if people were mad at Angie, they’d get hurt if they were around when the practice worked.  Which would be a lot of people, from what Lucy had overheard when the woman had come into town with Liz and Eloise.

So Lucy didn’t give her anything.  No weapon, running away, leaving Angie to her own fate, with a spell card brushed against her earring before she threw it out.

Angie noticed the Others coming for her.  Her voice didn’t reach them.

Both scarecrow and the summoned Other were cut up, brutalized, as they savaged Angie and got hurt in turn.  It happened a few times, but they were not especially intelligent as Others went.  They were meant to hurt.  To hurt Lucy.

There was a justice in this.  The larger group of reinforcements that had come with Angie came running in after.  They saw her, and with the blood, they maybe didn’t notice the tatters of injured pink-toned skin, and saw only the parts that were meant to be Lucy, that still hadn’t been dashed away completely.  Maybe.  Lucy was far enough away she couldn’t see it.

But with her Sight, she could see Angie retaliate, and transmit along that same hostility.  The group came to verify that one of Kennet’s practitioners had been savagely mauled by the two hostile Others, and got a faceful of that same mauling instead, as Angie shared it out.  Lucy could See and hear the swords as they plunged in, the rush of dark staining.

There was a justice in this.  It didn’t feel good.

She doubled back, toward the wall, and the site of the initial fight.

Biscuit came out of the air, in disc form.  Lucy hopped up a bit to catch her out of the air, then tapped her to her shoulder.  “Sit.”

Biscuit turned back to goblin form, just a little too heavy to be comfortable on Lucy’s shoulder, with the full backpack pulling down on it.

As she left the area of the silence rune, Lucy could hear the screaming.  She moved Biscuit to a branch, peeked, then emerged, hands raised.

Some of the practitioners from earlier were holding the teenager down.  The one that had been vomit-licked.  Others were around, but they were mostly organizing around the opening in the wall.

“You.”

“I can remove the curse,” Lucy told them.

“Get away!” the teenager shrieked, unhinged struggling against two people who might have been family members.

“We’re going to remove it soon anyway, when we get back to the main group elsewhere.  We don’t want to owe you shit.”

“I don’t see why you’re angry.  You invaded my town, you’re attacking our people, unprovoked, interfering with our rituals.  You don’t know who we are or what we’re doing.  We’re using the tools we have to defend ourselves.  Let me help her.  She’ll get better sooner, and I get the impression-”

“Get away!  Don’t touch me!” the teenager shrieked.  “You’re gross, you’re gross, no!  Don’t touch me!”

“-she wants to spend as little time like this as possible.”

“And you’re going to get all preachy at us?” a woman asked.

“Small price to pay if it gets her better, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.

“Scrogginses!” a practitioner from the opening of the angel-built wall called out.  “You coming?”

Lucy put a finger to her lips and moved to the side so anyone peeking around the wall couldn’t see her.

“Taking care of my niece,” the girl’s apparent uncle replied.  “Give me a minute.”

“Keep an eye on those trees.  They might come for another push.”

“Yeah,” the uncle answered, staring at Lucy.

The girl struggled, arms held behind her back, toes scraping in dirt as she tried to find traction to pull away.  She ended up in a kind of down-facing fetal position, arms behind her back, chest against her knees, face against knees with forehead on the ground.

“Let me?”

The man hesitated.

“Yeah,” he replied.

Lucy bent down, then dropped her bag, pulling out one of Verona’s eco-friendly drink containers she’d spent a fortune on a while ago, and uncapped it, rinsing her hand with water.  She lifted up the girl’s head.

“No.  Don’t touch me.  Can’t see you,” the girl replied.  She whispered the next words, “Don’t know who you are.”

“Easy,” Lucy urged her.

“Can’t hear what you’re saying.  There’s nothing but filth and blood.  Hear it, see it, smell it, taste it.  It’s in my thoughts, I can’t think past it,” the girl whispered.

“Easy,” Lucy repeated.  Then Lucy pricked the girl’s forehead with a knife, and the girl pulled back.  Lucy held her head, and eased it back down, until it rested on the opening of the upright container.  She motioned, and the woman that was helping hold the girl down helped hold the girl in position.

She drew a quick curse marking on the outside of the container.

It came out, pulpy, dark, and clotted.  Filling the container.  The rest overflowed onto the ground.

“You work with some nasty Others.”

“Not an Other, exactly.  Knotted person.  Other-ish person.”

“Doesn’t change things.”

“Sure, but you work with some nasty practitioners, and you guys made the first move.  I was actually thinking I wasn’t going to preach.  But now I feel like I have to say it…” Lucy said, her voice low, “…I’m at least willing to do something to mitigate and clean up after the bad stuff here.  What have you done with Musser?  Or any of the monsters he’s recruited?”

“You seem to be doing a fine job handling that.  We heard what you did to Milo Songetay.”

The girl let out a sob as the last droplets oozed out, filling the container.

“Milo came at me three different times with murder in mind.  He got what he came for.”

Lucy straightened, being careful with the container, as she got the lid-

A tug at her foot made her stop.  Biscuit?

No goblin.  but there was a glimmer of light there.

Another tug-

She looked.  At the back of this group was a woman with black hair, wearing light blue.  She was holding glass.  Light from the midday sun was shining onto the glass, and refracted out.

The shards of light that stuck out were embedded in the corners of Lucy’s sneakers, pinning them to the ground.

Lucy looked at her.

“Stay put.  You did a good thing.  We’ll use that to argue for leniency.”

“That’s bad karma, you know.  Karma’s about fairness, you know.  Hospitality, the basic rules of balance…”

“I’ll manage.  I’m running a positive balance.  What you did right here?  That was dumb.  you shouldn’t cross the lines you cross and kill another practitioner, do this to someone, and expect to walk away.”

Lucy turned her head, glancing at the others.  The Scroggins family, she presumed.  “You’re okay with this?”

Well, they didn’t say yes, but they didn’t say no.  The woman hugged the girl, who looked recovered enough to be aware of the world again.

“Hold her.  Don’t let her do anything,” the woman said, before turning.  “Cavendar!  We-”

Nobody else in the group held Lucy, but they didn’t help her either.  Still, she thought it gracious that when she moved, she did so with only the woman in light blue as a target.  Sloshing the contents of the thermos onto her and only her.

The woman paused, then shrieked.  The curse and a bit of extra karma.  The mix had caught some of the glass she held, with the rest moving, cutting up Lucy’s sneaker as the little blade of light moved in reaction.  Lucy stumbled back.

“I’d call that a bad handling of curse removal,” Lucy murmured.  “You know, if you want to be halfway decent about me trying to help out, say she got overconfident, brought- it on herself.  Pretend I was never here.”

She had to start running at ‘brought’, before she was done the sentence, because people were reacting to the renewed shrieks.

The number of people who were gathered here, the annoying position of the angel-built wall and the fact there were some reinforcements down the road and in the woods who might be picking themselves up and coming from behind her-

She had to abandon her target.

Lucy glanced at the House on Half Street, thoroughly guarded, and then ran the other way, away from all these practitioners, and all this ugliness.

She kept running, air flowing in to brush her foot through the cut in her sneaker and sock, until she reached the shrines.

“Get me Borrador,” she told the shrine spirit.

Musser’s group had serious forces standing guard at Verona’s Demesne, above and below, at Matthew’s claim ritual, the Arena, and at the row of cabins where they were all sleeping.

She couldn’t get past that, even with a concerted attack.

So she waited for Borrador to show up.  A spirit of doorways left ajar, something peeking through.  A doorway for her to enter.

She entered the Spirit World, paid Borrador with crackers, and then reversed course, back toward the House on Half Street.

Another angle, another realm by which she could get closer to the House on Half Street.  The Spirit World unfolded around her, cloudy, every detail slightly detached, littered with little living representations of concepts that would be left to labels and ideas otherwise.  Writing appeared on many trees, and figures stood here and there that were, much like Snowdrop, representative of the local wildlife.  A chubby kid with a cartoon squirrel on his shirt watched from a high branch.

And, Lucy saw, there were representations of Lis’s influence, a maze-like crawl across the sky, reflecting the city and the pressures Lis was exerting on it, Charles’ influence was still there, a spire out of reach, and now the moon had been added to it.  It was white, large, and backed by a ferris wheel, that slowly mutated into a flower, then a wagon wheel, then a gear, then a dinner plate.  The moon at the center and forefront remained fixed, the blood at its edges leaking out and spreading across the sky like water in zero gravity.

There was only one guard.  The guy looked malnourished, which only exaggerated the effect of the bulky parka he wore.  He was scruffy, with dark eyes and sparse, long hairs sticking out of his lower face.  The parka made her think elementalist?  Except he was comfortable lurking in the Spirit World.

“Ah,” he said, as he noticed her.

“Lucy Ellingson.”

“Scott Martin.”

She couldn’t remember if she’d met any Martins yet.

“You killed Milo,” he said.

“You think so?” she asked.  She kept a distance from him, put on the weapon ring, and then drew out a rapier.  “I didn’t kill him.”

She put the emphasis on ‘kill’, which very much changed the sentence’s meaning, while keeping it technically true.  The more accurate way to emphasize it would be to put the emphasis on ‘I’.

“You didn’t?”

“Did you investigate his head?”

“No.  He’s- he’s not dead?  Beheaded but not dead?”

“Either way, be gainsaid.  And take that tidbit of knowledge back to the group.  I won’t hurt you if you walk away now.”

“Fuck,” Scott muttered.

“Just you here, huh?  I worried Cyn would be around.”

“She’s elsewhere.”

“Guarding all the adjacent realms, huh?”

“Yeah.  Warrens, here, lots in the Ruins, we had notes saying you’d traveled that way a few times, from the Blue Heron.”

“Feels like you drew the short straw.  Understaffed, ignored.”

“Unprepared.  I thought I’d have to worry about the fire woman, not much else.”

“Mmm.”

She circled around him, weapon still drawn.

“It’s fine,” he said.  “You were good to my boy.  He smiled when he talked about you three, and how strong you were.”

She had no idea who his boy was.

“I’m glad.  You’re more level headed than most.”

“I’d like to keep this head on my shoulders, whether it’s alive or dead.  He’s a little character, but I don’t want him shedding tears if I end up the same as Milo.  Not if it’s part of someone else’s fight.”

She nodded, dropping her weapon.

“I’m going to get out of here.  Your shrine spirits keep harassing me.  Don’t broadcast that I helped?”

“Sure,” she told him.  “Not unless I have to, or I think it’ll help us both more than it hurts.”

He nodded.

She went on to Verona’s Demesne.  Finally.  After sneaking around the Demesne in Kennet above, realizing there was no easy way in, going to Kennet Below, and seeing the fight unfolding, taking her part in it, then Angie and the reinforcements, juggling Biscuit, and now here.

She knocked on the door.

“Here!” Verona called out.

Lucy’s assumption, her worry, had been that Verona was pinned down.  That she’d come in for supplies, maybe taking the offer McCauleigh Hennigar had talked about, and then something had changed or McCauleigh had been caught, and she’d ended up trapped, surrounded on all sides.

Walking into the living room, Lucy saw Verona, McCauleigh, and Mal all sitting around in pyjama pants.

“Heyyy!” Verona greeted her.

I’m going to strangle her.

“I thought you were in danger.”

Verona looked around, bewildered.  “Demesne.  Pretty hard to crack.  If someone did come in, they’d be fighting me on my turf.”

Lucy folded her arms, leaned against the doorway, and gave Verona her most unimpressed look.

“We’re having a long sleepover,” McCauleigh said.  “You should’ve come.”

I wasn’t invited, and-

“Are those my pyjama pants?” Lucy asked her, pointing at the red and black plaid flannel pants.

“Uh, those were your pyjama pants,” Verona pointed out.  “You outgrew them, then gave them to me, and I loaned them to McCauleigh.”

“We’re in the middle of a war, Ronnie.  What are you doing?”

“Conserving energy, preparing.”

“Talking about boys,” Mal threw in.

Lucy bit the sides of her tongue.

“Oh are you now?”

“That too,” Verona said.  “It feels like you’re mad.”

“I fought a mob, had to deal with a top three annoying Biscuit mood, dodged Angie Demarest, cleaned up after one of the Oldbodies.”

“No shit, the BSW called them out?”

“Yeahhhh.  Again, Verona, this is a war.  We’re defending Kennet.  All hands are very much on deck.  Dogs of War, goblins, Kennet below.  Because I thought you were in trouble.”

“You know what’s funny?” McCauleigh asked.

“I don’t, actually.”

“If you’d waited thirty or forty-five minutes, we’d have left, I’d have cleared the way so they could sneak out.”

“Still not seeing the funny.”

McCauleigh snorted.

“I have a Fetch made for Avery, pretty sure it won’t try to usurp her, and I was going to free you.  Speaking of, your mom isn’t watching you like a hawk?”

“My mom’s at work, making up for the shift her coworker covered last night.  She asked me not to do anything unless it was an emergency, but if you haven’t noticed, which it really seems you haven’t, we’re in the middle of an emergency.”

“I know we are.  But like, we talked about this last night!”

“We what?”

“That we had certain plans?  Things we needed to do.  Rescuing Matthew is a big one, and so is securing the ‘catch’.”

Lucy gave McCauleigh a wary look.

“I’m not pulling anything over your eyes, no deception, no traps, nothing left out, none of that.  I’m in this to screw things up for people who’d ruin my life.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Thanks.  I’m super not happy that you’re lazing around-”

“I’m getting stuff done!” Verona exclaimed.  “Seriously.  This is me in serious mode.”

“-but I’ve told some people I’m glad they’re not being shitty about this whole invasion.  And you’re being way better than some people I’ve said that to.  Thanks for being cool,” Lucy told McCauleigh.

“Yeah, sure.  Who else have you been saying that to?”

Lucy frowned.

“I won’t pass the information on to Musser or my dad or anyone related to them, before things are so over it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Some Mr. Martin in a parka out there, in the spirit world?  They were covering a lot of the possible avenues for getting here, but they left only one guard there.  It was weird.  I figured Cyn would be there.  The woman with the shrine hallows over her head and shoulders, y’know?”

“Mr. Martin?” McCauleigh asked.

“Yeah.  He said we knew his son?  I can’t remember.  Was it the Blue Heron?  One of the Oni guys?”

“Salvador,” Verona said.  “Vaguely creepy?  Looked at our chests when he thought we weren’t looking?  Pressured Zach about the hot girl totem thing?”

“Wait,” Lucy said.  “The spider breather.”

“The what what?” Mal asked.

“Oh man!” McCaleigh exclaimed.  “I know him!”

“Spider breather?”

“He went easy on you, huh?” McCauleigh asked.

“He let me walk by.  Seemed spooked about the Milo thing.”

“He’s way stronger than Cyn if he’s in the spirit world, you know,” McCauleigh said.  “Makes sense they’d have only one guard, except, you know, shaky allegiances, I guess.  But he’s strong enough to stand guard against most things if he wants to.”

Lucy glanced at Verona, then back to McCauleigh.  “Does he do the spider thing?”

“He makes an art of the spider thing.”

Lucy’s skin crawled.

“At least we know we have an exit that’s tidier than McCauleigh creating an opening in the perimeter for us.”

“Yyyyeah,” Lucy drew out the word.

“Who’s breathing spiders now?” Mal asked.

“Kid from summer school,” Verona told her.  “And Lucy just ran into his dad.  He’s a spider breather.”

“How do you breathe spiders?”

“You turn the air spirits in your lungs into spider spirits and blow.  Or do other stuff,” McCauleigh explained.

“Oh,” Mal said.  “Why?”

“Never really cared enough to ask,” McCauleigh replied, leaning back.  “Second or third thing he ever said to me was about my chest, then a year after that- last year, he asked, if I’m a gore-streaked dancer, could I give him a dance?”

“What’d you do?” Mal asked.

“Nothing.  Rules at the school, not much you can do, and if I showed it bothered me, my family would get on my case.”

“Can’t imagine the people in charge would be super great at that,” Verona mused aloud.

“Yep.  Only regular staff aren’t people who’d care.  Alexander was the same, just hid it way better, Ray doesn’t always get that stuff, so it’s a crapshoot if you’d get help from him or just a really stressful time trying to explain it, and Durocher doesn’t like weakness.  Which is fine, because I don’t either.”

“So he gets away with it?” Mal asked.  “No kicks to the balls?”

“He said the wrong thing to Fernanda Whitt a few months before she had her big style upgrade and started playing the diplomacy game.  She got most of the girls and some of the guys to refuse to give him the time of day, some of that went as far as people giving similar treatment to his dad.  Pretty sure he got a big talking to, or he got scared it would keep going that way, he turned things around.  Mostly.”

“Hm,” Lucy mused.

“System works sometimes,” McCauleigh said.

“Probably, but that might not be a great case of it.  How many people did he upset and act crude to, before he did it to someone with the power to do something about it?”

“Guess you’re right,” McCauleigh said, shrugging.

It nettled Lucy that they were here, lounging, that McCauleigh was wearing her pyjama pants while she did it.  Collecting friends, while Lucy was fighting, bleeding, narrowly escaping…

“You could’ve sent Peckersnot with a message to keep me informed,” Lucy said.

“He got busy.  We were going to reach out to you in thirty to forty five minutes from when you showed up, more or less.”

“We need way better, Ronnie.  Our advantage is that this is our home turf, we’ve been defending it a while, and we’re more coordinated.  A lot of these guys don’t even know each other.”

“True,” McCauleigh said.

“Come on.  War room,” Verona said, motioning toward the dining room, with the fancy table.  “Let’s chat, you and me.”

Lucy walked over, setting her bag down.  The table had a map of Kennet inset into it, and certain locations had been circled.

“Don’t listen in, you guys,” Verona called over.  “Why don’t you go shower and get ready?”

“Don’t care enough to listen in, going with things,” McCauleigh said, lounging.  “Can I stay behind?  I won’t do anything.  It’s just quiet.”

“Maybe,” Verona said.  “Let me get back to you on that.  There’s some claim stuff I might worry about.”

“Okay!” McCauleigh called out, dropping into a position where she was lying on the couch.  That ‘okay’ had more intonation and cheer in it than Lucy had heard out of McCauleigh ever.  Which wasn’t a super high bar, considering they’d barely interacted, but… yeah.

McCauleigh poked at Mal, who sat at the other end of the couch, and Mal moved her arm in reaction.  McCauleigh used a pen to draw on Mal’s skin.

“She needed this,” Verona said.

“Hm?  McCauleigh?” Lucy asked.

“Hard not to listen in if you’re pinging me by saying my name!” McCauleigh called out.

“Yeah.  Her,” Verona replied.  “Me too.  A bit of a break, a bit of time to get centered.  I’m a night owl, and most of the big stuff happens this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow morning.  So why not recharge?  I’m way worse in a fight than you or Avery.”

“She might have needed this, but we sort of needed you.”

“Okay.  I’m sorry.  I figured we’d hashed out the big things we needed to do, securing Matthew’s win and preparing for the big catch, then the side stuff on top of that.  Parent awareness, whatever.  So I ducked my head down and focused on all that.”

“But you didn’t communicate.”

“I thought we did!”

“Also hard not to overhear if you’re raising your voices!” Mal called out.

“Ignore them.  Look, the way I figure it, you need to go with the shitty tattoo aesthetic, but in an artistic way.  Full coverage.  Whole sleeves of these guys holding hands and interacting…”

“They’re not that shitty, are they?”

“They’re bad.”

Lucy studied Verona.

“Sorry,” Verona said, again.  “How’s your mom?”

“Worried.  How are you?”

“My dad was shitty last night.  McCauleigh followed me, wanted to pass on some info about Edith.”

“I heard.”

“Yeah.  Anyway, she saw.  I figured she needed an escape from things.  I did too.  Just… tuning it out.  I made sure to get stuff done.  Avery’s thing.  This is one top notch Fetch, just so you know.  Even if her dad’s Aware, I think it’ll pass.”

“It’s a Fetch based on how you see her, though.”

“Yeah.”

“That tweaks it some.  It won’t be as good as a Fetch of her she makes herself, with deep introspection-”

“-and technique,” Verona finished for Lucy.  “Equal technique.  An equivalent Fetch is going to be better if it’s made by the person it’s about, but Ave hasn’t done this stuff.  This will be better than what she could pull off, I’m pretty sure.  It’s good.”

“Okay.”

“Gets us Avery back.  Before and after her big Thanksgiving dinner.  If she attends.”

“That’s good,” Lucy replied.

“Did some research on the diagram, so I know what to ask Zed.  I’m glad you’re here, because I was hoping your implement would help boost the signal.  McCauleigh says that since we’re using the Bugges to mess up communication in and out, they’re doing the same back to us.  But since you can communicate…”

“Verona,” Lucy said, quiet.  “I know you, you know?”

“Hm?” Verona asked.

Her expression became a little too calm and normal.

“I know you,” Lucy said.  She had to lean over the table to put her hand over Verona’s.  “I know how when things get serious, you get… improper?  Irreverent?”

“Am I that irreverent?”

“You didn’t communicate.  You’re goofing off.  You’re pretending really hard like it’s all easygoing.  But you know, like, you do that, and then like, an hour after you’re joking about Bristow being dead you’re puking by the side of the road.  Or you go from your place to mine, a year and a half ago, and your teeth are chattering and you get a headache and you’re in bed from five in the afternoon until dawn.  Because you’re so tired and everything’s so pent up.”

Verona shrugged.

“I don’t want you to pull away.  I want you to share this stuff with me.”

“What if I’m never ever able to do that?  What if it’s just how I’ve been molded by my life so far?  Are you going to get sick of me?  Frustrated?”

“Depends.  How serious is this?”

“I told you, right?  That the judges tied my Demesne claim to the success of this ritual.  If we lose it, I lose my Demesne.”

Lucy nodded.

“If I lose it, I lose everything.”

Verona’s voice dropped to a whisper with that last word.

Lucy stared hard into her eyes.  Verona did her best to make her expression unreadable.  It worked pretty well.

“I don’t have much going for me right now.  I think I’m not doing super great in school.  Jeremy’s out.  Tashlit’s a friend but when it comes down to it, I really wanted her to be more.  I think she’d be there for me if I ever needed someone to go to the beach with me, keep me sane.  But she wouldn’t be my familiar, she won’t move into my Demesne.  She has her own life.  And I’ve got what feels like half of a life.”

“You’d have me,” Lucy told her.

Verona looked like she wanted to protest, but couldn’t find the words.

“You’d have me, and Avery” Lucy insisted.  “We swore you oaths.”

“I sorta wondered if you forgot.  Figured it’d be bad form if you did.”

Lucy shook her head.  “Seriously, I wouldn’t have faced down an entire mob of practitioners, a freaking angel… you have a giant angel-built wall about a half-block out from your Demesne in Kennet below, now, just so you know.”

“Was that what that tickle in my practitioner-Demesne bond was?  Man, you’re making it all sound so badass.”

“I had some pretty badass moments there,” Lucy said, dead serious.  “For you.  Because I was fucking worried.  You fucking numbskull.”

“Feeling the love.”

“Good,” Lucy said, serious.  She studied Verona.  “Everything on the line, huh?”

“Except you and Avery, I guess.  Maybe even you too.  Same deal for Matthew.  If this doesn’t work…”

Lucy sighed.

“Matthew didn’t mean to put it all on the line, either, but I think the Judges came to him, said if he wanted what he was doing to count, he’d have to sign on.  So he did.  Don’t be mad.”

“I guess we can’t afford to lose, then, can we?”

Verona shook her head.

Lucy nodded.  She tapped the table, studying the little map.  “Let’s call Zed.”

Verona nodded.

The two of them quickly did a diagram, Lucy focusing on the signal, Verona on general warding and protection.  Verona finished dialing while Lucy finished the outline.  The chalk settled into sharper position in response to her earring.

The phone rang.

“Zed and Brie, responding on V-O-I-P,” Zed’s voice came through.

“Zed,” Lucy said.  “Hi.  Really hate to bother you…”

“No.  It’s no bother.  I’ve been wondering how you’ve been coping.”

“Not super great, as it happens,” Verona said.  “Give me a second, I should call Avery, see if I can connect her into a three-way call here…”

“Got you.”

“Giving you permission,” Verona added.

“Oh, the Demesne.  I heard.  Congratulations.”

Avery came onto the call.  “What’s this?”

“Zed,” Lucy informed her.

“Heyyyyy!  It’s been a hot minute.  Let me get out of the house, there’s so many people, I can’t have a conversation.  Not now, Kerry!  Can’t even go in the backyard.  I’m just going to go stand in the middle of the street.  No, Kerry, after!  Hope you’re okay.  How’s Brie?”

“Brie is good.  Hollow.  We’ll need to find something to settle in that hollow the Hungry Choir was in, or things will make the choice for her, but that’s a problem for next week or next month.  You called for a reason, didn’t you?  Let’s get to it.”

“I really hate doing this,” Lucy admitted.  “Only calling when we need help.  I wanted to look for the opportunity to help you out more, do you a favor, be cool for you.”

“Like me helping Nicolette with boring paperwork while I was gainsaid.”

“Dudettes,” Zed said, interrupting, voice insistent.  “I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound weird, but me getting to be the guy that rides in to the rescue, show I know my stuff?  It’s pretty killer.  Don’t hold back out of some sense of balance, that’s not how friendships work.”

“I don’t want to take advantage of the macho guy euphoria though,” Avery said.

“You’re thirteen?  Fourteen?  I know you’re big on saying you’re teenagers not little kids, you’ve definitely proven that, but you’re not fully adults, you know?  So lean on the people you can lean on.  Please.”

“Avery checked with you about what we’re doing?”

“I’m sworn to secrecy but I have the gist of it.”

Verona leaned over the table, head over the phone, feet not touching the ground.  “Well, that’s tomorrow morning.  And with everything going on, we had to blow up the ritual site.  Now we’re looking at setting up another.  Three possible places.  We wanted to check with you, see what you think.”

“We’re expecting to get interfered with,” Lucy added.

“I think, not having seen anything yet-”

“Taking a picture,” Verona said, as she picked up the phone.

“-that you should do all three.  Then if you can blow up these ritual sites, you blow up the two you like least.  If they interfere, you keep the second best.  Or the third.”

“The problem is the diagram is big,” Avery told him.  “We were wondering if technomancy would work.”

“Technomancy is very good at fast, big diagrams.  You pre-load it, take a practice-ridden computer, ideally with a nonstandard power source, have it do the drawing for you.  Let’s look at where we’re setting up, first.”

“Sending,” Verona told him.  “You too, Ave.”

“What am I looking at, with this map?” Zed asked.  “What are these locations?”

“These,” Verona said, pushing her phone with the photo of the map on it across the table, “are our options for where we set up for the ritual.”

Louise reached for the phone.  She looked down at it with eyes that bled.  There were a few murmurs and quiet guesses from those who had gathered.  That included all of the Dog Tags that had showed up, most of the goblins, key members of Kennet Below, the local Others, and some less-Local Others that included a girl with numbers in her eyes, Sootsleeves, the Turtle Queen, and Toadswallow’s crew.  Melissa, Bracken, Mallory, Reggie, and a few scattered others that were lieutenants or contacts of Kennet Below were gathered at the edges.

For the benefit of those who couldn’t crowd in to look at the phone, Louise told them, “The hospital, the school, and the valley south of Bowdler.”

“Hospital and school have nice big rooftops, and are areas we can defend,” Lucy explained.  “The valley is more symbolic.  It’s where we rescued the Carmine Furs.”

“Rescued,” Edith said, from the other end of the table.  “What a way to put it.”

Avery leaned forward, “It’s also where we secured the spirits and echoes of Kennet.  Spirits and echoes we turned to our advantage in setting up the shrines.”

“Again, this feels very pointed against me,” Edith noted.

“You crossed us and we won, and now that we’re looking for events with connotations of victory, we’re looking at those spots, I don’t think that’s unfair,” Lucy pointed out.

“Except I’m one of you, you forget.  And that means it’s not a victory, it’s a memento of infighting and weakness in our community.”

“You poisoning one of us and betraying us, you mean?” Verona replied.  “For weakness?”

“No, I do not mean that.”

“Let’s not dwell,” Rook said.  “The time we spend here is valuable, but only if we extract value from it.  Let’s stay focused.  Any time wasted is time we lose ground and have less eyes on the invading force.”

“Matthew finishes in an hour.  He’ll be vulnerable right after,” Verona explained.  “That’s when the Demesne is technically a Demesne but doesn’t have power put into it, Matthew will be tired and vulnerable, and the place will be surrounded.”

Avery nodded.  “And then we basically have overnight, and Miss’s claim in the morning.  To be safe, we want to have the circle up and ready with all the supporting pieces tied into it, by dawn.  Mundane items, shrine work, and we need to make sure the key locations are secure.  That’s Rook’s rooftop, Matthew’s Demesne, and Verona’s Demesne.”

“How could they be un-secured?” Louise asked.

Lucy explained, “For the Demesnes, if Verona or Matthew is unconscious or if they break in somehow and their numbers overwhelm, or if they get gainsaid, that’d weaken the value of holding that spot.  We’ll need Rook’s rooftop kept out of the box and deployed somewhere, with a share of the council within.”

“Does having McCauleigh inside your place constitute a vulnerability?” Rook asked.

“I legitimately think she’s on our side.  So unless there’s some ritual her dad can do to trigger some implanted berserk mode from a distance, through the Demesne protections… I think it’s pretty symbolic of what we want Kennet to be.  A refuge.”

“Is that what we want Kennet to be?” Edith asked.

“Oh my god,” Verona sighed the words, leaning back in her chair.  “Are you going to be petty with us every step of the way, here?”

“Might be better to kick her out,” Lucy said.  She saw Edith tense.  “McCauleigh, I mean.”

“I think… probably couldn’t hurt,” Verona answered.  “Yeah.  I think she’d be fine with it.”

“So Matthew, soon,” Louise recited, “then you defend Kennet until dawn, at which point you have to have the ritual ready.  How long then?”

“We don’t know,” Avery confessed.  “It’s not exact.  Miss will try, in which case it’ll be mid-late morning.  But to be safe, we’re giving ourselves time before, and time after.”

“We’re splitting into three,” Lucy said.  “So we should decide what our top choice is, what the second best choice is, and the third choice.  Last minute, we figure out which one is best and most secure, cancel out the others.”

“We’ll use technomancy for two,” Verona said.  “Avery will be out in the valley for the third, with things done more in advance.

“This is it, then,” Rook said.  “Musser is our final opponent, most likely, but Miss’s arrival will be the crux on which all of this rests.”

“I suppose I should be the one to ask,” Louise said.  “Is there anything we don’t yet know?  Something critical?  Observations?”

“I sure liked what Lucy said about paying attention to who’s holding it all together for them,” Sockgnash said.  “They’ve got people who know how to fight, people who don’t, and people who are keeping the Turtle Queen at bay from the rest of them.  If we’re going to hit them, we should pay constant attention to that.”

“On that note, Anthem Tedd, Grayson Hennigar, and a few key others will be arriving shortly,” Rook announced.  “They’ll want to see Matthew.  We might stall, but that’s a dangerous proposition.  They are very good at what they do and they are very focused.  Every second we can buy while Matthew asserts control over his Demesne after the ritual will be critical.  If they’re going to breach it, it will be right after.”

“Can I ask?” Lucy spoke up.  “Rook?  You made a deal with Edith.”

“I did.  I shouldn’t be surprised you found out, but I am.”

“What were the terms?”

“I simply told her.  If Matthew is to win, she’ll have to feed the Doom.  That is a difficult line to ride.  I assisted her in striking the balance.  In exchange, I made a nonbinding agreement with her, that I will choose to bind myself to for the indefinite future, until she betrays Kennet again.”

“Bind how?” Lucy asked.

“She has my vote, should she require it, and I’ll work to allow her to have a voice on the council.  I already did so earlier in this conversation.”

“Even knowing what she’s done?” Toadswallow asked.

“Even knowing that.  If we cease to be as a group as a town, then there’s little point in quibbling over niceties.”

“Poisoning and betrayal,” Lucy said.

“I cannot tell you how many war councils I’ve been on, how many meetings, how many groups I’ve sat in on, where stresses mounted and people started fighting over things unrelated to the conflict.  I’m tired of it, Lucy.  Everyone.  I understand where you’re coming from.  But if you’ll insist on fighting this, when Edith is putting everything on the line to fight for mutual ends, I will simply see this as a foregone conclusion, I will leave, and that will likely be the last you see of me.”

“That’s unfair,” Lucy said.

“Who else did you deal with?” Avery asked.  “Because the Page of Suns phrased things in a certain way…”

“Charles as well.  I dealt with Edith, I dealt with Charles, I know Maricica’s part in this.”

“Without consulting us?” Louise asked, quiet.  “That seems against the idea of this council in the first place.”

“If you wish to eject me from the council for this, I understand.  I’ll continue to help from outside Kennet’s borders,” Rook told the table.  “But whatever happens, it’s a chance for a bittersweet victory, a chance at mitigating losses, or I’ll have allies in those three as I move on from a pure defeat here.  It is unfortunate, but succeed or fail, my dear friend Miss will remain here.  I must look elsewhere if I’m forced to move on.”

“If I may?” Guilherme rumbled.  He was so quiet, sitting on the corner of the roof, in the dark, it was easy to forget him, even though he was large.

“Of course, sir,” Rook said.

“You have fought a hundred of these battles.  The pattern is nearly set.  I know of this sort of thing quite well.  Longevity hardens, and it draws things to a razor point, and the sharpest points are the easiest to break.  But your pattern, it includes another option.  You’ve told us of two wars you won, where those realms and groups fell to pieces soon after the so-called victory.”

“I have.”

“This road you’ve set us on, it would be the third.”

“A third path, to pure victory, or a third incidence of those two wars that led to defeat soon after?” Rook asked.

“Yes,” Guilherme replied.  Then he amended it, “The latter, I fear.  I do hope it does not take you a hundred such incidents to find a way to the next set of options, as it took you a hundred lost wars to get this far.”

“I do hope so too,” Rook said, but her voice had taken on a vaguely offended quality.  “I think our prospects are fair.  Not good, but they never are.”

“Because you pick losing wars.”

“Enough, let’s not make this entire meeting about my history.  As I said, this time we have to prepare is precious, and every second is a second we give to them, to explore, rest, and think clearly.”

“What are the deals you made with Maricica and Charles?” Verona asked.

“I will not disclose that.”

Lucy shook her head.

“Anything else?” Louise asked.

Lucy glanced at Verona.

“Then we expect to fight for Matthew at his Demesne,” Toadswallow declared.  “And for the confrontation to carry on through the night.  Three ritual circles to be drawn, one to be kept.”

“And one last preparation to be done,” Rook said, as she stood.  Edith, Reggie, and the Turtle Queen stood by her.  “I do think I know what rules Miss would impose for her Lost realm here on Earth, as she founds a third Kennet.  Some of us already have a head start on it.  It’s only a guess, but it’s best to be prepared in case I’m right.”

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