“Be good,” Lucy said.
“He’s the one from Kennet below.”
“And Guilherme’s been around since the days there were actual barbarians and people did their killings with spears. I think despite everything, there are parts of Kennet below that are sort of… nostalgic?”
“I’m a barbarian?” Bracken asked, raising his eyebrows.
“You’re… maybe in that direction?” Lucy offered. “Attitude-wise? I don’t figure a lot of them were ragh ragh, smash, smash like in some cartoons, but more like… stoic, willing and able to fight, very intense when they do?”
Bracken sighed.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to insult you or anything.”
“I’m not insulted.”
“But you sighed.”
“Let a man sigh, Lucy,” Melissa told her.
“Teenager.”
“Looking after his brother like he does? Man.”
Bracken sighed again.
“I’m just going to say, Bracken-” Lucy cut in, trying to ignore Melissa.
“Man. Maaaaan.” Melissa dug her elbow into Lucy’s side, until Lucy grabbed her arm and twisted it a bit behind her back.
“-If you communicate why you’re sighing, I could adjust. I don’t want to hurt your feelings-”
“My feelings are fine.”
“-or bother you or anything. But I don’t know what to change until you tell me.”
“Man, teenager, brother, acting parent, barbarian, student, survivor, disciple, none of it’s wrong but what the fuck is all that?” Bracken asked.
“What do you want to be called, then?” Melissa asked.
“Bracken. My name’s Bracken.”
“Got it,” Lucy said. “But what I was saying? Melissa?”
“What?” Melissa asked.
“No snark? No crankiness?”
“Mmm.”
They trudged through the snow that layered over ice, over the slate shore that could be treacherous on their own, to the trees, then cut left toward the cave that appeared.
Guilherme sat facing the cave entrance, layered with faint white dust, as if the snow had fallen on him too. The black slate inside the cave had turned white, and light shone down through cracks in the ceiling, illuminating the dust, while highlighting Guilherme’s hunched back, muscles, and one quarter of his face. He sat with an elbow on one knee, hand curled toward but not touching his cheek.
Verona was already inside, sketching.
“Good afternoon, Guilherme,” Lucy greeted him. “Hey Ronnie.”
“I’ve warned this day would come,” Guilherme said, instead of saying ‘good morning’ back.
Lucy nodded, pulling off her bag, dropping it to the left of the cave entrance, before jamming her hands in her pockets.
“Ominous,” Melissa said.
Lucy gave her a sideways look, and Melissa pressed her lips together.
“Coats off. Heavy clothing off,” Guilherme addressed them.
“Can you shut the door to the cave?” Melissa asked. “Because you know… it’s winter.”
“I’m aware, and no, the wind and cold should blow in.”
Lucy unbuttoned her coat, then folded it, laying it across her bag to avoid it getting too dusty. She unzipped her hoodie, then placed it over her coat.
“Next time you come, if you decide to come, wear something under your long pants,” Guilherme told them. “Something short-legged and close to the skin.”
“Okay,” Lucy agreed, knowing she’d need to buy something then. She gave Melissa a look, anticipating more snark.
“I hope I fit into my old dance shorts,” Melissa muttered.
“Is a skirt okay?” Verona asked. “Denim miniskirt? This length?”
“That’s fine.”
Lucy was left wearing a t-shirt, leggings, and socks. She approached-
“Bare foot.”
She paused, then pulled off her socks.
The cold of the floor felt like it went straight to the bones in her feet. Zero hesitation.
“Bracken, you can remove your shirt.”
Bracken did. “I’ve got boxer briefs on, if the girls aren’t shy.”
“Not shy,” Melissa said, without hesitation.
“There’s no need to disrobe to that extent,” Guilherme said. “Have something for next time. This will be fine for a first attempt.”
Bracken rubbed at his bare arms.
“I fucking love Faerie magic,” Melissa whispered, even as she picked her feet up off the ground, standing one-legged to rub at one foot, then starting to do it on the other, before wincing.
She backtracked to get her cane before trying that again.
Verona was wearing a camisole top and jeans, Bracken just jeans, and Melissa wore leggings and a long-sleeved top.
Which got a look from Guilherme- until she started rolling up her sleeves.
“Is this where we die of cold?” Melissa asked.
“Only if you’re weak. I’m sure the others will save you if you come close,” Guilherme told her. “Today, we begin with an exercise of mind over body. Can you present yourself in a way that makes even the spirits of cold hold back? Verona, Lucy, this is a critical exercise before we begin our true lesson for today. If you can’t manage it today, I won’t teach you. If we have three days in a row where you can’t manage it, I won’t teach you ever.”
Lucy nodded. Her skin prickled, and her bones ached- hands, feet, and ankles, now. The air felt cold enough it hurt a bit to breathe. It didn’t help that she was standing still, waiting.
Verona exhaled, cheeks puffed out.
“Avery couldn’t come?”
“No,” Verona said.
“It’s my understanding you lent or gave her the high summer rose?”
“Yeah,” Verona said. “We’re a trio, though, so… what’s mine is hers, kinda.”
“It was a gift from me to you. It was meant to be a lesson in moderation.”
“Giving it away so I can’t keep using it is a kind of moderation, isn’t it?”
Guilherme stood.
Lucy found herself a bit tense. It wasn’t just that he felt a bit more intense today. He’d had a few outbursts and episodes, and she could see one happening now.
He stood before them, facing Verona. Verona looked up.
“No insult was intended,” Verona said.
“It’s best if one of you doesn’t embrace Winter. Just in case. Will that be her?”
“Kind of makes sense,” Lucy said.
Guilherme nodded.
He paced. His footsteps were heavy, but not in a way that made noise or shook the rock floor. They did stir up the glamour on the floor.
“The air, the cave floor, your clothes, they are paying attention to you, ready and presently bringing the cold to you. I want you to lie. Convince them it’s unnecessary. Not with words, but with position, form, breathing, habit.”
Lucy took in a breath, and her teeth felt sensitive in the cold, which made her jaw jitter a bit. All down her arms, her skin tightened, prickling with goosebumps.
“It will be easier here than it will be elsewhere. Easier when you can tell your clothes to hold the heat in, and you’ll be wearing less for your next lesson. Find the moments you’re not shivering, and prolong them. Breathe past them. Adjust the alignment of your body, to let them past.”
Lucy tried. She rolled her shoulders, and turned her body to a right angle. She had Verona to her left and Melissa to her right, and the cave entrance behind her. She visualized the broader front and back of her body catching the radiating warmth from those two, the cold from the entrance passing along the side of her body, arms at her sides.
“Verona, good mentality, but remember this is about movement and presentation. Lucille, good adjustment, but you need the mentality. Bracken, it’s not about being stubborn. Melissa, perhaps you should go home before you succumb to the cold.”
“Fuck.”
Mentality. How?
“Used right, this technique can be applied in other ways. You could pose in the rain and let raindrops past without getting wet… at least for a short while. You could, as an advanced technique, stand amid a hail of arrows that were fired indiscriminately, or gunfire.”
“Why is that one advanced?” Bracken asked. Lucy peeked. He was shivering pretty badly now. So was Lucy.
“Why is it advanced? Verona? Lucille?” Guilherme asked. He was pacing around them.
“Because arrows have more intent at their source.”
Lucy didn’t need to look to know Guilherme was nodding. He didn’t reply. Why waste the words, after all?
“Let the raindrops past without getting wet,” Lucy murmured, adjusting. It was easier to visualize.
Melissa snorted.
“Melissa, get your things, go home.”
“What? Hey, wait, what? Seriously?”
Lucy concentrated, trying to ignore the distraction. She opened her hand, visualizing the dust blowing past that sunlight that filtered in through cracks above. Guilherme had said it would be easier here.
“I was actually going to wait for Bracken-”
“Go. Home.”
“Fuck.”
The white of the stone, the whiteness of Guilherme’s hair and body, the fact it was meant to evoke winter, but that it was illusion, for effect…
She rolled and tilted her head, eyes closed shut, and found the angle where light shone against her eyelids, painting things pink. She turned her left hand upward, like a flower toward that light, rotating it while fingers curled slightly, as the start of that gesture toward white, lightening, broadly.
That dust didn’t have to be snow. It could be dust flakes in a barn on a warm summer day. It was a matter of perspective.
“Form, position, breath, and habit. This gets harder by the moment. The next time we do this, you’ll find it harder, wearing clothes better suited for summer, the cold will set in faster, but if you adopt this mentality from the beginning, other aspects will be easier.”
Was that a hint? Repeating the steps without explicitly calling out what she hadn’t done? Probably. Probably a hint for Verona and Bracken too, who maybe had one or two things down already.
Form, she was pretty sure she was on the right track. Position too, maybe?
Breath? She moved her tongue slightly in her mouth, breathing in through one nostril first. Trying to create a bit of that turn she’d used with her hand. She exhaled, doing the same thing. Inhaled-
Too cold. Her jaw jittered.
She shook her head, like she could shake off everything she was doing wrong, including any glamour that had learned the wrong lesson.
Her feet were going numb, pressed against cold stone. She shifted them too. A slight turn, pressing them in with friction, as if she could dig in deeper, digging for the warmth that radiated from the center of the earth, getting glamour between the soles of her feet and the rock.
Breathing.
Habit. While she was doing that, could she figure out habit?
She rubbed her hand across her forehead, into her hair.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a dust dappled sunbeam, and it was mildly warm.
She exhaled, and her breath didn’t fog up.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Toadswallow said.
Lucy looked around the bar. Broken glass had been swept into the corners, where it glittered menacingly along with all the rolls and piles of dust that had been swept up with it. Nails had been added haphazardly to surfaces below waist height, and images ranging from child’s drawings to more elaborate drawings that looked like Verona’s were drawn on the walls and floor, or plastered there with plenty of glue.
“I feel like if I sit down, I’m going to get poked by a needle or some broken glass.”
“Is it that much worse than the cold outdoors?”
“I could get sick.”
“Ah, but the cold can give you frostbite. You’re protected by your attire. You’re protected from the little cuts and scrapes by the charm Bubbleyum taught you.”
“They still cut and poke me, they just heal fast. I don’t know if it protects me against, I dunno, tetanus,” Lucy said. “It’s not exactly comprehensive.”
“Neither is your protection against the cold. Sit. Don’t worry, I won’t let you come to real harm.”
“And get comfortable.”
“Why am I here, Toad? I thought maybe you had intel, something about people coming in, goblins coming in…”
“No. Instruction. I’d like to keep up. Miss continues to give gifts and conveniences to you three. Guilherme is teaching you and will be teaching you winter glamour. The good Mr. Moss shares what he knows, and provides assistance when and where he can, even if you’ve outpaced his childhood instruction. Even Bubbleyum is instructing you. But there are subjects only I can teach you.”
Toadswallow hopped down behind the bar, and then stood up, straightening as he came around the end of the bar, wearing his human glamour. Mr. Toad.
“This?” Lucy asked.
“Glamour has its weaknesses. And you, dear Lucy, do not like being weak,” Toadswallow said, smiling.
“True that.”
“There are many ways to deal with apparent weakness. Guilherme would have you rise above it. You could train with him until you can dodge most blows, seem untouchable, strike unerringly, lopping off the heads of your enemies. You’ve been training in earnest ever since you fought Anthem. I think you and I both know that one day you might find yourself in another situation that hard, a situation that matters, with everything on the line, and the Anthem of that situation might be more ruthless. Cutting your throat instead of choking it.”
Lucy nodded. “If Guilherme would have me rise above it, you’d have me be below it?”
“It’s an option. One I’ve counseled you in before. The best outcome to a fight is to never have to have the fight in the first place. That can be because you’re seen as insignificant, worthless, too much trouble. But no, that isn’t what I wanted to teach you.”
Lucy leaned forward. “Okay.”
“It’s not you, anyway, is it, Lucy?” he asked. “Hiding? Being diminished?”
She shook her head.
“Not so much me, either,” he told her. “At least, I’m working on getting past that, because I know I’ll have my own Anthems to wrestle someday, and I have things I want to protect.”
“Your market.”
“My market and my lady. Dear Bubbleyum.”
“You’ve said my name three times,” Bubbleyum told him, as she came in from the back. She yawned, and the chasm of her throat was revealed past the lipstick-painted lips and fangs. It was lined with a variety of tongues and tools. She popped some gum into her mouth. “Need something?”
“No. But dress the part. Join us. You may be able to convey what I need to convey better than I can. Because I had to teach it to you too.”
Bubbleyum nodded.
“Where she can see.”
Bubbleyum walked over to the corner, running fingers through broken glass, dust, and collected dirt, where it had been swept together. She found and popped open a compact.
“Show her?”
Bubbleyum turned it around. Regular makeup compact, though old.
Dirt and glass was rubbed into that. Then it was applied to the hairline. Skin bled where glass was rubbed into it, and streaked brown-gray with dirt or pink-white with concealer where it wasn’t.
“She’s slower at it than I am. That helps make it easier to watch.”
Peering into the mirror, Bubbleyum mixed the red of fresh blood with dirt, pushed dirt together for shadow, and started on her way, creating shape and depth.
“Am I going to have to rub broken glass into my face? Because my mom might yell at you if I admit I’m doing that. And that’s just one issue we’d run into.”
“Not necessarily,” Toadswallow told her. “We all put on a face for the world to see. Even goblins. Guilherme would have you rise above by being untouchable. But that only goes so far. If you trained for a hundred years at swordfighting, gunfighting, dodging, you could still lose against someone who trained for a hundred and two years. Guilherme himself knows that. He’s lost, and he lost against people far younger than him. However tall you build your tower, someone can build a better means of climbing it. Have you handled winter glamour yet?”
“Traces.”
“But not properly?”
“No. Soon.”
“It’s similar. All or nothing. But if you’ll put your hand out?”
Toadswallow put some regular old house dust there, and makeup stuff, dirt, paint flecks, and other things Lucy didn’t recognize.
“I prefer layers. A jumbled assortment. Ten very different, capable goblins over one exceptionally strong Fae. Ten tricks, each with a small chance of working, over one with a high but imperfect chance of success.”
Lucy nodded. “This is your extension of the idea that goblins are the eighth court?”
“It’s my best attempt so far. I had to cheat. I borrowed from Guilherme. I acquired glamour from markets that don’t ask questions. I’m not all the way there yet. There are still parts I don’t understand. Maybe you could teach me as much as I can teach you now. Winter glamour is strong in its way. I won’t deny that. But let me teach you my way, before you get out of reach. Watch Bubbleyum. Then we’ll try.”
He held her hand firmly, palm turned upward, various kinds of grit and powder mingling but not fully mixed.
Guilherme reached out. Lucy put her hand out, and he put the glamour there in her palm.
All put together like that, it felt heavier than she would’ve thought. Heavier than an amount of steel twice as large as the pile.
It was cold in a different way than the weather was. She adjusted her hold on it, in much the same way she’d dealt with that cold, without manipulating the glamour itself.
Guilherme nodded.
“Bracken, go home,” Guilherme intoned, without taking his eyes off Lucy or that powder.
“Thought I did okay.”
“You didn’t do poorly. Unlike these two, you lack certain knowledge, and that’s not your fault. We’ll continue later. Come in the morning, we’ll talk more about presentation.”
Bracken went to pick his things up.
“If you hurry, you can catch up to Melissa,” Lucy said.
“You don’t need to hurry to catch up to Melissa,” Verona added.
“I don’t want to bother her.”
“She wants to be bothered,” Verona said. She looked quickly between Bracken and Guilherme as Guilherme put powder in her palm.
“Mention the cookies she gave you guys that Bag liked. I bet she’ll make more,” Lucy said.
“I don’t think I’ll do that.”
“Makes her happy, makes Bag happy, might even make you happy,” Lucy told him.
“It’d bother her. Nah. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye,” Lucy said, giving up.
“Bracken,” Guilherme said.
“What?”
“Don’t take a hot bath or go out of your way to warm up quickly.”
“Alright.”
Bracken pulled on his stuff, got his bag, then trudged out.
“Be safe!” Lucy called after him. “Especially when you’re already cold!”
He waved a hand on his way out, without turning around to look at her.
“Must be nice to have a student who’ll just do all that without complaining,” Verona told Guilherme.
“Let’s focus on what we’re doing now. It’s not to be trifled with. For now, don’t manipulate anything with that glamour. Feel the weight of it. Get acclimated to holding it.”
“It’s permanent or something? Is it?” Lucy asked.
“You’ve studied practice from various angles. Core principles?” Guilherme asked. He pointed at Lucy.
“Your word matters.”
“It does. It’s not the answer I’m looking for. What else?” He pointed at Verona.
“Pattern. Repeated action gets the spirits used to things, it sets out grooves for different forces to follow. Doing things in threes is a pretty big one.”
“And?” he asked, glancing at Lucy.
This was Winter glamour. Winter was the highest court.
“Power?” Lucy guessed. “Power sources, drawing and exchanging power, things have weight. Power has a price. Winter is a powerful court.”
“It is, and this has its price, just as it has its own power. What else?”
“Establishment,” Verona said. “Structures, laws, the things we build. A pattern repeated enough becomes a standing force.”
“Winter glamour doesn’t ask for many repetitions,” Guilherme said. “Often one use will do. Maricica taught you animal transformations, with traces of the animals you wish to copy. The Fall courts like change, and they lend themselves to transformation. But Winter can transform too.”
“Once?” Lucy asked.
“Once is enough to establish something. The question is, what will you establish? If Verona decided to become a cat with what she’s holding, she could. What does she establish, doing that?”
“That she’s a cat?” Lucy asked, looking at her friend. “Forever?”
“I don’t want to be a cat forever,” Verona said. “I did once, but not now. I’ve got stuff to do. My bookstore.”
“It’s possible you could make a permanent transformation,” Guilherme told them. “If it’s mishandled. You should feel in your hands how difficult it is to manage Winter, and how easily it might be mishandled. There are ways past that transformation, but in the aftermath, you might never be able to transform again, without finding yourself slipping back into that cat body, left to find another way back to humanity.”
“I’m guessing it would be harder the second time?” Lucy asked. “And the third time would be the last?”
“Yes. For better or worse,” Guilherme agreed. “The establishment we’d be vying for would be one where Verona became someone who turns into a cat… and back.”
“And then that would be it?” Lucy asked. “For transformations?”
“It would make it far harder to become other things.”
“What would that do with any halflight practices I wanted to get into? Say, if I wanted to experiment with being a werewolf, or create a more established Hyde?”
“It might impact anything animal related, twisting it to more appropriate ends.”
“Cat ends?” Verona asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. That’s bad to neutral-ish. What’s the advantage?” Verona asked.
“That it’s established. The transformation would become something easy to do. The glamour becomes something hard to break, with its own qualities, as the establishment builds. If you’re someone who becomes a cat, and that cat earns its own accolades as a spy and sneak, a fast runner, a huntress, those too become established, stronger, more meaningful. Maricica’s trick teaches you to become an animal for fragile, fleeting moments, yet it’s a typical animal of its breed, informed by whatever components you give the practice. None of you three are typical or mediocre. This would let you become an animal that is also and quintessentially you.”
“So I’d be an awesome cat.”
“You’d be as exceptional or unexceptional as an animal as you are as person. There are other advantages, like being able to practice more freely while changed.”
“But it closes doors?” Lucy asked.
“Everything closes doors, yet the path through Winter closes them faster than most. Yes.”
“In the interest of keeping your options open, this patchwork application has its advantages,” Toadswallow explained, still wearing the guise of Mr. Toad. “My appearance may be ratty, but if you’d oblige me, and take hold of the sparse hair on top of my head?”
Lucy reached up to Toadswallow’s head, made a face, and gripped the stringy hair that extended over his balding scalp.
Toadswallow pulled back, and the hair came away, revealing itself to be a threadbare toupee.
And bugs, thick between toupee and scalp.
“Okay!” Lucy exclaimed, leaping out of the bench seat she’d been sitting in, moving quickly away from the area of floor where the bugs were landing. “Okay. Okay.”
The pillbugs and other nits scattered off to the shadows. Lucy shook her hand.
“See? If we were foes, I could have taken advantage in that moment. All this empty space-” Toadswallow patted his gut. “Why not put something inside it? Something smelly in the belly, junk in the trunk.”
Bubbleyum flourished a blade, then tucked it into her cleavage, hilt standing up. A bit of a shimmy and adjustment, to bring her top up, cleavage moving with the tight-fitting garment, and when she let go and her chest finished settling, it was bigger, blade lost somewhere inside.
“Weapons, tricks, protection,” Toadswallow said. He knocked on a part of his chest, then adjusted, pulling out a book with a stained cover. “Patches may be ugly, but they can hide a lot of things.”
“It’s a new face you can present to the world, gleaming, proud, and whole in a way other glamour can’t accomplish.”
“Sounds pretty good to me,” Verona said. She looked at Lucy. “This seems like the kind of thing that brings us all the way back to, uh, you know, us needing to discuss every transformation? Before we sorta settled on doing it normally? In emergencies only, at first, then every situation was an emergency.”
Lucy nodded. “Thanks for remembering.”
“I want to be a cat.”
“Through winter?” Lucy asked.
“Even I won’t insist you come to a decision in the here and now,” Guilherme said.
Verona shook her head, eyes wide. “The moment turning into animals was mentioned, I knew I wanted to try being a cat. When I thought about becoming an animal for the rest of my life, I thought about being a cat. Now? I’m thinking about what I want to be when I’m fully grown up… and I want to be a sexy sorceress with a bookstore who turns into a cat a lot. I’m not saying, like, now now now. But I’m pretty sure I’m into this.”
“Consider that step something similar to a ritual,” Guilherme said. “Preparations must be made, you will want to be very exacting in how you build the form, to make it beautiful, as is fitting, and to ensure you leave yourself the ability to return back after. You can use the time it takes to prepare to consider.”
“Maybe days or weeks to consider,” Lucy added. “And we ask Avery… and the parents. And we do research.”
Verona sighed. “Okay. Fair.”
“Deserves some thought,” Lucy said.
“Like, um, why would I go this route?” she asked Toadswallow. “Besides patches and hidden things.”
“It’s not patches and hidden things, dear Lucy. It’s layers. Winter glamour can be shattered in one fell stroke, if the one delivering the strike is fierce enough. But this? It demands a scrap. The incoming blows don’t have to be strong, but they need to be numerous.”
“I’ll give you numerous blows, Toadsy,” Bubbleyum said, now wearing her human guise, lightly punching Toadswallow.
“Uh, ew. I’m grown up enough to get that,” Lucy said.
“Then you’re grown up enough to not need me to censor myself.”
“Good for you guys and all, but… sure.”
“While we’re on the subject of disapproval, you should know, the use of…” Toadswallow reached into his vest and pulled out more grit. “This?”
“Goblin glamour?” Lucy asked.
Toadswallow winced in a pretty dramatic way for his human guise. “Exactly the problem.”
“Visceral glamour?” Lucy suggested.
“Better. There are some who would take issue, even if we can look to a great many goblin practices and see them doing the same.”
“So you’re not the first?”
“I might be the first to take this direction with this much enthusiasm and focus. In summoning other goblins, we dig deep into the earth, tree rot, or trash, enough we can get to the guts of it. Bluntmunch does it. I’ve done it. I’ve taught you to do it. Mixed earth, if you will, visceral particles. I know many goblin practices that use stolen glamour as a component to cheat their way along, made palatable to goblins by polluting it, mixing it with dirt, lead paint chips, bodily fluids, and other things.”
“Like you’ve done here.”
Toadswallow nodded. “A recipe I- we may look to perfect.”
“It should be obvious it’s a responsibility,” Guilherme said. “To use it well, to represent it well. If you choose to represent it. If you don’t, I won’t be upset.”
“But?” Lucy asked. Verona looked at Lucy, then looked at Guilherme, eyebrow arched.
“But?” Guilherme asked.
“Usually there’s a rider. Or something.”
“No but.”
“We’d carry on, then? Same as before?”
“No. No, that would be the last of our lessons.”
“There’s the but,” Lucy told Verona.
Verona nodded.
“I’d keep teaching the other two until they reached their own limits, then leave them. And that would be the end of our interactions. It would be a relief to be done with this.”
“Would it?” Lucy asked.
“It very much would. I could enter a convalescence, until Kennet called on me, or you called on me through Kennet, I could continue to offer assistance, imperfect as it may be, then enter convalescence again.”
Hearing that stung. It hurt. A part of her had hoped that engaging him like she had with the training was waking him up. But then he’d say something this blunt and heartless. Like nothing mattered.
This was probably what the others, like the lady at the Fae market, had been referring to. That he’d be him, but not.
“And if I- or we- if we continue?” Lucy asked.
“Then I’d continue to guide and safeguard. To protect you, to protect myself, and to protect Kennet. There are forces out there who would disapprove, if it was badly used or badly handled.”
Verona rubbed at her chin. “If I did the cat thing with Winter glamour, but I was a real a-hole of a cat, would that bring trouble down on our heads?”
“So what’s the danger, or what concern, exactly, are we dealing with?” Lucy asked.
“Pride,” Guilherme responded. “Earned pride, but pride nonetheless. This power, carelessly wielded, can do much damage, and is sought after. Winter glamour is used by various other courts, mixed into their own workings, to make them stronger and more permanent. A court noble might mix a bit of bartered-for Winter into her workings to curse another Fae. It’s a deception, something to use so that someone who expects to crash through a quickly wrought glamour does so… but into a web of silver strands, wrought inside it by Winter. A web that does not shatter, but seizes. A sudden and undeniable punctuation mark on spiraling works.”
“It’s powerful,” Lucy said.
“Yes, yet as you told me in your answer earlier, Lucille, power has its price. Winter establishes. That trick is bought with establishment. Done once, it might forever curtail a Fae’s workings. The fae cursewright who laces their curse with Winter finds their hands subtly tied to wreak more curses. The glamour aesthete who uses Winter to create a silver spiderweb inside another glamour may find themselves less able to create things that aren’t webs, while the webs come easier.”
“Sounds like that’s a fast track to Winter,” Lucy noted.
“Which in itself is why the use of Winter’s glamour can be so emphatic and bold,” Guilherme told them. “Powerful, but costly. A perception endures that humans, across their short lives, pay less of that cost, so humans may disrespect glamour’s use. Some would try to enforce that respect through certain agents. Most of the people who use Winter’s glamour do so sparingly, and are tracked from the moment they make the purchase until the glamour is spent. There are no eyes on us yet, but there could be, and you’d have more than a sparing amount, as you have access to me.”
“Got it,” Lucy said. “I’m a bit worried it’s not the clearest thing in the world, yet, just what would tick off those agents and what wouldn’t.”
“We’ll discuss it as I teach you. Part of the reason I gave you that to handle today is to see to it that you respect its heft and how pervasive the cold of it is.”
He put out his hand. Lucy was careful to transfer it over. She expected traces to stick to her, but none did. She rubbed her arm, tired from holding it out and holding it as still as long as she hand.
Verona gave hers back as well.
“Verona, Lucille? Would you each create a practice? Something ongoing but simple?”
“Can do,” Verona said. “Permission to go to our bags?”
“Granted.”
Lucy wasn’t sure that was necessary, but it wasn’t unnecessary either. She went to her coat and got her spell cards and a marker.
“We’ll begin with two simple lessons. For this first one, I know it’s something you’ve seen before, in a slightly different fashion. Lucy told me about one experience you’ve had with power of the Winter court.”
Lucy nodded. She created a silvery light source.
Verona created a flame at the end of a spell card- a continuous, six-inch lick of flame, like something from a large and enthusiastic lighter.
Cheater, Lucy thought. But she adjusted position slightly to face the generated warmth
Guilherme, with glamour seeping out from between his fingers, reached for the card. He took it from Verona, who pulled her fingers away from the Winter dust.
Paper froze stiff, then broke. It fell away in flecks that froze further as they fell, until they looked like little meteors. The arcs they traced below Guilherme’s hand were lazy at first, like any paper, but as they picked up more ice and particles around them, they changed trajectory to veer straight down, faint white trails following behind them.
And the paper came away, leaving only the lines that had been drawn there by marker, white and frozen, extending between Guilherme’s finger and thumb, and the flame.
“An offensive tool against unprotected practice. It will falter if that practice is properly protected, or will require great investment. If this diagram were drawn inside or as part of a circle, it would take time to penetrate or leak into. You ran into Silas Vanderwerf, brother of Estrella Vanderwerf, at the Blue Heron Institute. Both of them Fae practitioners with a focus on Winter. Silas froze connections, and connections are a continual interplay of and exchange by spirits between related parties. Not so different from this. In our first lesson, we’ll have you do the same. We’ll later extend that lesson into something more pointed.”
He flicked his hand. The winter glamour came like a dart, striking the paper that was shedding light out of Lucy’s hand, spearing it to the wall.
Lucy watched as the paper disintegrated, but the diagram remained. It even spread, the lines extending out, the symbols repeating, the light creeping out-
Guilherme snuffed it out with a gesture.
“After, we’ll extend the same idea to beneficial ends. You could think of it as a halfway mark between that last demonstration and the decided transformation. If there is a practice you wish to establish, it can be solidified, made rigid, and then built on.”
Lucy nodded.
She had ideas already. She wasn’t sure she wanted to lock into any transformation, even the fox one, not like Verona wanted to be a cat. She did have ideas for practices she could consider hers.
“The enduring questions become this,” Guilherme told them. “Who are you, and what do you want? What are you after, and are you certain you want it?”
“What do you fear?” Toadswallow asked. “What are you anticipating? If we’re going to decide the angles we take for these layers, so each can put up its own fight, hold up against what’s coming, we have to think forward.”
What are we doing?
Lucy hunched over within her coat, waving as Verona headed over toward the House on Half Street. The cold had seeped into her bones, despite her best efforts with Guilherme’s practice, and the position and effect she’d managed to achieve hadn’t really reached that deep when it came to absorbing the warmth from the light.
Charles knew about the dreams, so they couldn’t use dreams now. He could hear anything they said. They’d been postponing the dream meetings for a long while out of concern that he’d catch on, and then he’d caught on, just like that.
It got even more complicated, because they’d had a plan, one that had seemed to be going nowhere, and then Verona dropped her statement about having some plan, one that would change up Lucy’s role in this, and… Lucy didn’t know anything more than that.
Avery was supposed to be making connections. She was doing okay at that. She’d found the Lost, and she was working with Thunder Bay now, coordinating with Zed, Nicolette, the Garricks, Fernanda, Raquel, and others, sometimes turning up stuff that had her saying, yeah, there’s a weekend project here, or an emergency there.
Then they’d get together briefly, tackle that, or try to tackle that… diverting the Placement Test ritual incarnate, trying to find the Dropped Call, say hi, hang out briefly, then part ways again.
But okay. Avery was doing okay. And she was planning on stepping it up.
Verona? Verona was meant to be going after Charles. Finding a way to deal with him, disarm him, take him down. Verona had an idea, and that idea meant doing something in Lucy’s ballpark. She didn’t know much more than that.
Lucy’s job had been to find a replacement. To think about the future.
What good did it do to remove Charles if someone similar moved in?
And she’d been stumped on that for a long while. She’d been working with Grandfather some, but that was a pretty weak option.
Except Verona apparently had an idea for that?
The sidewalk had been cleared, but it had snowed since, and the snow squeaked under Lucy’s boots as she headed downtown.
She knew the others would keep going, knowing Charles was watching them.
But what did that leave Lucy to do?
If she stuck to their old ways of doing things, it might be to watch over the others, be their backup, be their conscience if they needed one.
It couldn’t be ‘field the immediate stuff’, because they could talk about the immediate stuff. Musser was coming. Sure. They still needed to figure out what to do.
For these past couple months, they’d been trying to catch up, put their lives together, and prepare, going in their own directions. Finding an equilibrium. For Lucy, that had been training.
What do you want? What are you after?
What do you fear? What are we anticipating?
What the hell am I going to do?
She picked up the pace, breathing past the cold, hands in her pockets. It had at least been a good lesson this morning. It would be damn badass to be able to step out into the rain and not get wet.
She reached the south end of downtown, where tourists were already up and getting ready for the day on the slopes. Something about them seemed brighter, cheery, in a way most of Kennet wasn’t. The jackets were part of that- the standard ski and snowboarding gear trended toward the bold blues, reds, and yellows, where it felt like a lot of Kennet defaulted to black, or plaid, or mixed colors. Maybe that was all in her head.
A crow on the corner of one building cawed as she looked at it.
She passed between that building and the bakery, finding the elaborate fire escape in the alley. She ascended it, trudging on the snow and ice that had collected on the black-painted slats.
“Coming up!” she called up.
“So the crow told me,” Rook said.
Lucy rounded the top of the fire escape and stepped onto the rooftop garden, now covered in snow. A table had been set up, with what looked like an Other steam engine erected in the middle, fire blazing within its black iron chamber, pumping out heat across and under the table. Grandfather sat there, wearing a military green winter coat, a weary look in his eyes, feet extended forward under the table, hands extended forward above, toward that machine that rocked slightly as it worked, the air shimmering around it.
Further down, one foot extended, hands wrapped around a clay teacup, was Hollow Yen. Reggie. He had a square panel at his chest, gold-tinted, and otherwise wore black, his jacket open at the front. A mask sat beside his place at the table.
“How was your training session?” Grandfather asked.
“Fine. Good, even. Lots of food for thought. Decisions to make.”
“Grandfather stopped in to ask for my help, but I’ve committed to helping Miss today. I told Grandfather to wait, people come by often enough he’d have assistance shortly. If nobody came, I was going to go by Matthew’s on my way through.”
“Help with what?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know what. But we were visiting the shrines, the spirits were trying to alert us. We only saw trails. Angel is out tracking it right now.”
“Want me to come?”
“Sure. Do we think it’s related to the influx of new people?”
“It came from the outside and stopped around the perimeter. Most I know is it paced around.”
“Yen?” Rook asked. “Go with. Contribute what you can.”
Yen nodded.
Grandfather was ready to go in about three seconds, while Yen scrambled a bit. The three of them headed down the fire escape. Yen zipped up his jacket, covering the panel. Aside from the fact he was very pale, nothing seemed too weird.
“Are you keeping up with the guitar?” Grandfather asked.
“Regular practice. Quit the lessons, though. It was too much, with school, shrine visits, lessons with Guilherme, lessons with Toadswallow. Whenever I don’t know what to do, I try to work at it some. Check my fingertips.”
“Calluses?”
“Yeah.”
“Disciplined. Remember to rest.”
“Guilherme was teaching us about winter glamour. I could do the trick where I shrink an item down and make that permanent with glamour, so I can shrink it and change it back… and probably not do much else with glamour. But I don’t need to, do I?” she asked. “It’s not like I’m enchanting my guitar all the time.”
“I wouldn’t know, but if you like the idea, that’s good,” Grandfather told her.
“It’d be nice to be able to break it out more often. I think I kind of get where Verona was at, before she dropped out of school and started doing the distance learning. Because sometimes Wallace will go hang with Jeremy, and Mia’s busy and it feels like I’m intruding. And I think Ronnie had a lot of those moments. Because I couldn’t give all my time to her, you know? As shitty as that is, for a best friend?”
“It’s not shitty, I don’t think,” Grandfather said.
“I just don’t want her to feel bad, you know? I should’ve paid more attention, noticed how uncomfortable she was, or why she wanted to skip school as much as she was doing. I thought it was that she wanted to do other things, like… distraction, positive, wanting something. But there was a negative aspect to it too. Pushing instead of pulling, you know?”
“Yeah.”
Lucy flushed slightly. It felt like she was rambling, just a little aimless, but she’d done it before, too.
She liked Grandfather. He reminded her of John, but he was his own person, and she was pretty sure she would’ve still liked his vibe if she’d met him instead of John, or at the same time as John, so it wasn’t just that he was some replacement.
The fact John had come before, and loomed over them like a shadow, it complicated things. It made her feel like she was trying too hard when she was trying, or being too aloof when she was being aloof, and being nice felt like it was transparent and weird, but she didn’t want to be mean either.
She didn’t know how to navigate this, even after months.
In a little while, she’d have known Grandfather for as long as she’d known John.
She changed targets. “Hey, Reg- sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. I’m still Reggie. I’m… slightly altered. Tweaked. Unofficial Oni.”
Lucy nodded.
“This way,” Grandfather said.
“I’ve noticed, uh, you guys started out with a plan,” Lucy said. “And you’d rotate out, rotate some in, and each Dog Tag would get some time in Kennet-”
“If they were willing,” Grandfather said.
Some had gone and hadn’t been back. Which was fine.
“Yeah. But you weren’t gone for very long when you left.”
“I visited spots. Places I stayed with Yalda and John. Refreshed memories. But there wasn’t much else to do.”
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed. Grandfather hadn’t elaborated in the direction she’d been hinting, and she didn’t want to push.
“A lot of those places are the same places I’d visit,” Reggie said.
Grandfather nodded.
Because a lot of those places were places the Choir had been, and the Choir had been there because Yalda had.
“Would you go somewhere else?” she asked Reggie. “To other areas that the Choir affected? Places where there are other… complex hollows, I guess? Where lives used to be? Before they got plucked away by the Choir and turned into waifs.”
“Rook suggested it. I said I wasn’t excited to do that, she didn’t push any harder.”
“Why did she suggest it?”
“Because I’d get stronger. She thinks I could take away something from each visit. I could even resolve stuff.”
“Huh. But you don’t want to?”
“I dunno,” Reggie said. “I don’t think there’s anything about how I’m Other that makes me especially vulnerable. But the idea makes me feel like I am? Like what Miss described, about how she could’ve easily been pulled into a ritual or position. Or Edith outside her body. Or the ghouls, with light and life.”
“I hear you,” Lucy said, not sure exactly how to respond to that. “I don’t think it’s wrong to trust your gut.”
“Yeah. Rook would tell me if I was being an idiot, right?”
“Probably.”
Reggie sniffed hard through his nose, then wiped at it with the back of his glove. It was a very human thing, when Lucy was used to seeing him as unofficially Oni.
She was pretty sure she knew what he was saying, though.
She glanced up and over at Grandfather, who met her eyes momentarily, and she suspected he knew too. It had nothing to do with being Other. Humans felt that way too, going back to places where bad things had happened.
Angel met them at the edge of town. Grandfather greeted her with a clap of the hand to the shoulder.
“Update us,” Grandfather said.
“It found a way in. Couldn’t trail it past there.”
“Okay. Do we know who or what it was?”
Angel shook her head.
“Any clues, any ideas?” Lucy asked.
“Some burn marks. It had trouble navigating the woods in a straight line. Broken branches hint that it was big. Big enough it shouldn’t blend in easily in town,” Angel said. “But it’s in town.”
“Okay,” Lucy said. She used her Sight, glancing around. No blades stuck up out of any part of the town. Burn marks made her think of elementals.
She hadn’t dealt with a lot of straight-up elementals.
They walked faster, heading back the way Angel had come.
The path took them to the woods near the ski hill. Angel brought them to an opening in the trees, where branches lay in snow. Snow had melted in crack-like formations, and the melted snow had frozen again into icy edges around the cracks.
Sure enough, there were burn marks on the trees, about a foot above Grandfather’s head, vaguely handprint shaped.
If that was hand-level, it was big.
What am I doing, Avery, Ronnie? Do you want me to protect Kennet and keep things clear, so you can work?
She wished she was more in tune with the both of them.
People had walked past where the Other had trekked on their way between the cabins and ski hills. Disrupting what was left.
Her Sight didn’t turn up anything, but when she listened, using her earring, she could hear a faint buzz in the air.
She motioned, and the others walked with her.
The crowd was thick as they got toward northeastern downtown, between the fast food places, regular shops, and the ski hills.
Between the liquor store, which had a line out the door, and the gas station, which had a line out onto the street, their Other was in the middle of the road. A few goblins stood by, peeking out of the shadows, keeping tabs on it.
It looked like an alien. Eyeless, which made Lucy think of the wildlife of the Ruins, but little else jibed with that. Its head was misshapen, like purple-black skin had been pulled over a bicycle seat, the pointed end stretching down to a gumline of a set of teeth with fangs, hollow indents at the sides like eyes might go there, if it had eyes. Its neck was long, and it had a golden halo studded with leaf-shaped bits of metal at the top, left, right, and bottom-most points. It wore a robe like some alien priest, body large, but open at the front, and none of the way it was put together made a lot of sense, with legs like chicken wings covered in that purple-black skin, draped with more black cloth at the lengthy points…
Just a heap of alien parts stacked atop one another and draped in a robe, weird head sticking out, lipless mouth leering in a perpetual fanged smile.
It smelled like the air had burned around it, but it gave off little or nothing of that sort. The buzzing was more intense, now that she was close, and she felt like she could make out differentiation in that buzz, like a slowed-down voice was talking in a language she didn’t know, pitch-shifted to some dull staticky drone at a decibel level humans couldn’t normally monitor. Its mouth didn’t move in the slightest as it ‘talked’.
Cars veered slightly off course to circle around it, but nobody reacted. Lots of people were crossing the street wherever was convenient, traffic moving at a crawl, and nobody gave it a glance.
It was the same for the Turtle Queen, who was standing a few feet away from it, on the yellow lines between lanes in the road, wearing elegant black, green, and gold winter clothing.
“Can you identify it?” Grandfather asked.
Lucy gave him her best ‘are you kidding?’ look.
Lucy paused, then approached.
They carried on like there was no issue until Lucy was about ten paces away. Both the Turtle Queen and the strange Other turned their heads.
“Can I-”
The Other flickered and disappeared.
“-help?” she finished.
The Turtle Queen’s expression changed, to something like annoyance, and then she was gone too.
A car honked at Lucy, and she got off the road as fast as she could without running into incoming traffic. Grandfather crossed the street further down, then came up the sidewalk.
“That’s a thing,” he said.
“It is. I don’t know what thing it is, but… it’s a thing.”
Was the Turtle Queen helping here? Or was she a problem? It didn’t help that she was sworn into the town council but hadn’t really participated. She wasn’t being good so much as she wasn’t being bad. Lucy didn’t know her.
Lucy listened for the buzz, then headed that way. Angel and Reggie caught up as she and Grandfather crossed at the next intersection. More traffic moving at a crawl. Weekend traffic, incoming visitors. There were times it might be busier, but not by much.
Lucy knew the location. By some secret means of communicating, the Turtle Queen and the new Other had agreed to reunite at the train station, standing on the platform.
This time, it didn’t take Lucy until she was ten feet away before the Other reacted. The moment Lucy was in sight, it turned. The Turtle Queen stood a short distance away, turning as well- but not even turning all the way to fully recognize Lucy before the Other acted, reaching out with a long praying mantis limb that unfurled from its voluminous sleeve. The Turtle Queen slapped the limb aside.
Lucy crossed the tracks that hadn’t been used in the last forever, approaching the platform. The Other pressed the attack, and the train station changed, adopting new colors. Graffiti changed in the moments the new Other passed by it, then retreated, then changed again as the Turtle Queen walked by. The paint color of the building changed.
The Other flickered again, as if it existed at the whim of a light switch, and someone had jittered it on-off a few times in the span of a second. It disappeared.
Lucy felt the change in the air, and heard the whoosh before she even saw the change in lighting, and stepped to one side, half-turning. The Other loomed above and beside her, blocking out some of the light from the overcast sky.
Its praying mantis limb had snapped out, touched the wooden slat of a train track, and black lines now spread out, snapping and popping as snow melted and then the water sizzled away. A red glow surrounded the cracks-
Not cracks, but the forks of a current.
There weren’t many people around, but there were some. Lucy danced back out of the way of the lunging strikes, bringing her bag around, and pulled out her hat.
Connection blockers established. Lucy could see out of the corner of her eye as onlookers turned, going about with their day. People who hadn’t seen the Other but saw a girl moving out of the way of something, like she was doing some very strange dance.
The Other was pressing forward, almost changing in how it was put together as it revealed more limbs inside those sleeves, shorter, but still capable of jabbing out, still burning the air it passed, leaving an almost acid smell behind.
She pulled on her cloak, bag tucked into the crook of her elbow. Posture and pose helped with the cold air, and there was probably something she could have done to move more easily on the ice, but that something would require practice.
“Want me to shoot it?” Grandfather asked.
“People would hear.”
“Yeah.”
She had silence runes, but in the moment, the Other was focused on her. It didn’t move fast, as far as its legs and overall body movements, but the limbs snapped out like whip-cracks, and its body now moved close to the ground, configuration adjusted to let it move forward with more and more momentum. As long as it kept going straight, it would build up momentum, close the gaps, those shorter limbs would get close.
She could force it to shift to an upright position by not retreating in a straight line, making it turn, adjust, use more chicken-wing limbs beneath that robe.
She would have used her weapon ring, but she wasn’t sure even a wooden pole would work, and she couldn’t think of anything really well insulated. Rubber pole? Was that even a weapon?
She didn’t have any rubber on her. Even her boot soles probably weren’t rubber enough to be insulating.
It managed to separate her from the others, then flickered.
A full one-hundred and eighty degree turn in a quarter-second, fifty feet of gap closed, before it came at Grandfather.
The Turtle Queen was there, slapping the whipcrack strike away.
The Other pulled back.
The Turtle Queen put one arm back, pushing Grandfather into Angel, and kept the two of them immediately behind her. The look on her face was intense.
“Did I do something wrong, interrupting?” Lucy asked.
“No. I thought I could convince it to leave. It has an agenda.”
“What is it?”
The Turtle Queen made that buzzing pitch noise again, outside the range of hearing.
“That’s not very helpful. What kind of Other?”
“I don’t know many kinds of Other.”
“We gotta get you books, somehow.”
“Books I read become books about me.”
The Other flickered. Lucy heard it coming and moved out of the way again.
“Why are you protecting Grandfather and Angel?” Lucy asked. The Other almost had a rhythm, but adjusting to that rhythm was hard, and it kept forcing her to readjust, as its body moved closer to the ground.
“Because it will kill them.”
“They come back.”
“Not if that thing gets them.”
Lucy backed off, trying to find the space to act. The Other put her on the defensive enough that she could barely reach into a pocket.
She flicked a spell card at it, and it speared it out of the air with one of the shorter mantis limbs.
She had done her lesson with Guilherme.
She threw down a spell card to make smoke, instead.
To buy herself a moment where it wasn’t on her, and to buy herself cover.
A bit of winter glamour to lay out and glamour up a technique, one she’d gotten used to using.
Six foxes, with three to dash out of the smoke.
Two died almost immediately, pincered.
Three more to stay close. To be prepared.
One, she gave a trace of winter glamour- half of what she’d been left with, in case of emergencies.
The second… the reason for the smoke cover. A bit of visceral glamour, painting the broad strokes of a larger fox, rougher at the edges, angry, stubborn. Some tricks placed in the midst of that shape.
And the third- she embraced it as the smoke cleared, wrapping the chain with weapon ring, dog tag, and Yalda’s ring on it around its neck.
Three very different foxes to press the attack, as the first died.
A claw raked along a silvery body, and the fur was like armor.
A claw struck at the more brutal, glaring fox, that stayed far enough away that only the longest claws could get it.
One pierced through flesh, but came back away with a small doll clinging to it, a curse wrapped around the doll. To make the limb heavier. It hit the ground like a pickaxe on the downswing.
And the last, the armed fox, leaped.
Lucy separated from it, like she was emerging from hiding, hat almost coming off her head, cape fluttering.
She tossed spell cards out while high enough up the arms couldn’t reach up to easily stab them out of the air.
Water, mostly, to freeze. That water sizzled and popped like the moisture around the railroad track had.
Three different styles of attack. The Winter fox bit at one leg and tore away flesh and cloth. The goblin fox was more tenacious, getting struck again and again. Sometimes more curses were exposed.
And Lucy had slipped away while the Other was gone. That armed fox, paced the periphery, dog tags around its neck, ring and weapon ring on.
The same method of attack as before, but given a little more backing. This was her technique, something she’d done before.
The Other loomed high, stretching tall, this time, then squashed down, low to the ground.
It sprung out with all of its limbs supporting one another, forming a spike, its body the whipcrack this time.
Killing the armed fox. The goblin fox caught the tags before they could hit the ground, and Lucy emerged from the midst of it.
The Winter fox bit into the Other’s back, electricity arcing through it. The Other wheeled around- exposing its injured back.
Lucy, emerging from the tatters of the goblin fox, caught one of the goblin firecrackers she’d placed inside it out of the air. She threw it into the hole in the Other’s back.
It detonated, a muffled ‘whump’ sound, with sparks flying out. The Other fell forward onto its belly, limbs scrabbling to find purchase, push it back up to a ‘standing’ position.
And Lucy could See the practice inside the Other. With the remaining Winter glamour, she did her best to form a spike, tossing it out.
Her aim needed work. She grazed it.
And the Other flickered and disappeared. It went out toward the northeast of town, into wilderness, then moved away again.
The dart of glamour hit ground, and pinned the fragment of magic it had frozen to the ground there. Lucy banished the foxes and pulled her hat off, walking over, ear out for any more buzzing.
Celestial practice. Lines, geometry, references to places and points. There seemed to be a lot of numbers and data that looked like code.
Technomancy. That figured.
With Sight, she looked over that frozen bit of code, and she saw the fragments of metal at the edges, marking where it had been torn free. Ribbons spilled out, tied to the ends of some of the longer fragments… many of them pointing in the loose direction of the Other.
“We can track it,” she said.
Not all of them pointed that way.
“And we can track the creators… who are currently in town, it seems.”
Next Chapter