Author: Wildbow

Let Slip – 20.8 | Pale

Lucy ducked her head as a flock of pigeons, songbirds, and crows flapped madly through the castle foyer, beaks gripping twine, threads, and improvised cords like power cables and barbed wire.  Dangling from those cords, held by multiple birds, were various mannequin parts, an old walkie-talkie, speakers, pieces of a child’s ‘make your own shitty robot’ toy set, and clothes.

The castle interior looked like someone had gone into the universe’s great big bargain bin, to find things from amusement parks, actual castles of very different styles, and other buildings, and tried to cobble together a complete set of castle features… and had come just a bit short of filling out the inside.  Just about everything in the castle had something about it that, if she looked at it standalone, didn’t work.  There was a gallery of paintings in the hallway- one with water damage in the corner, one with a teal frame that made her think it belonged in a motel in Miami in the 80s, one was some old dark medieval style where it looked like someone had taken a photo with the flash off, putting emphasis on some bald guy in the crowd.  Railings hung askew or had chipped paint, floorboards were uneven or had plants growing up between them- all of it vainly tended to by the Queen’s subjects.

And because of how empty it was, and because maybe the same mentality went into the design -the cost savings, the spacious design, the framing, and the unused spaces that seemed to assume more people would be moving through- it felt a lot like an old shopping mall.  Just instead of stores, there was a sitting room or a room with art, or a barracks where the urchins were pulling on roughly matching green shifts and smocks, brown aprons, gloves, boots, and winter coats to go out and tend the property.

Rook hadn’t been around to give access to the roof, so they’d had to meet elsewhere.  It had also been a chance to catch up with others who couldn’t navigate downtown as easily.

A thread broke, a piece swinging, and a child that was chasing after the flock caught the mannequin thigh before it could swing into an organized sub-division of the flock.  She had straight black hair that stuck up in places, a black dress, and a crow mask that was hanging loose, bouncing between her shoulder blades, with about as much expression on her face as the actual crows did.  Which was to say there was pretty much none.

A mess of kids, rats, squirrels, and bunnies came through, carrying furniture.  There wasn’t a lot of logic to who was carrying what.  The table was upended with legs in the air, a crowd of the animals working in concert beneath the flat surface to distribute its weight, while a few birds pulled on strings tied to the legs to help alleviate the pressure.  Small animals struggled to haul chairs, while there were children aged eight to twelve who carried nothing more than a teacup or handful of silverware each.

In that chaos, they were pretty coordinated, with only a few kids or animals lingering a step behind, trying to get in at an angle, then stepping around.  A chair was set down, mannequin places set in place, avians moving in coordinated fashion to get things mostly in the right place, while the small animals clambered up the chair to help guide parts in.  Kids reached in, slapping hands out, to knock things into place, and pulled to help tilt the table onto its edge.

Ropes were untied from the mannequin parts by small animals, who gripped the ropes as the birds changed direction.  Squirrels and rats held cords in one paw while gripping the table with another, or held cords with forelimbs while lower limbs braced against the table.

Righting it.  Table successfully flipped.  Chairs set down around it.  The mannequin had a head that had the radio wedged inside it slapped down into place on the torso and pelvic region, that were already situated in the chair, with arms and legs being connected.  A kid reached in to wipe the table down with a cloth.

Verona did the polite clap that golfers did, except with enthusiasm, fingers of her left hand slapping the palm of her right hand.  Julette skipped forward, watching how the mannequin was being put together.

“Don’t get in the way,” Lucy told her.

Julette responded to that by shifting position, leaning hard against the table’s edge, upper body leaning backward over the table.  It seemed to Lucy that that put her more in the way as the table was set, piece by piece, with raw organized chaos.

“Pretty interested in that, huh?” Verona asked.

Julette nodded, fascinated.  She might’ve spent too much time as a cat, because she looked as fascinated as a cat standing in front of an aquarium.

Lucy felt the mounting time pressure.

“We sort of have to be ready to run and help anyone who gets attacked, we’re really not planning on staying,” Lucy said, as she realized the extent of what was being set up.  Banners were unfurled from railings with chipped paint on either side.

There was a small fanfare.  More children in improvised maid and servant outfits, small animals and birds came in through the sides of the door, while Sootsleeves appeared at the center, sitting askew on her steed, who was currently in the form of an ornate wheelchair, one foot on the seat, knee over the armrest, almost leaning over the other armrest.  The wheelchair had incense burners where the handles should be, a tarnished tin arrangement of odds and ends that had been apparently stacked up in an arrangement that evoked the silhouette of the very castle they were in, and given a light coating of tin or tin paint.  She had spinners in a similar style on the wheelchair rims.

She carried a long overdecorated cigarette holder, her ‘torch’, and wore what looked like a loose, densely patterned silk bathrobe over an old fashioned shift, both things that would have been almost immodest on their own, along with her loose, draping hair that threatened to get caught in the wheels, but the combination managed to be a very crafted sort of messy that hinted instead of revealing.

The wheelchair rolled under its own power on the slanted floor.  All the birds and children parted out of her way like water, bowing as they did so.

“Seriously, we kind of were checking in while waiting to figure out where we might need to go,” Lucy said.

“For information?” Sootsleeves asked.  “The people of my kingdom have been keeping their eyes out.”

“That’s great.  Just what we need.”

Servants came in with tea, a seat of mismatched antique teacups, a charcuterie board, and other odds and ends, like toasted bread.

“That not so much.  I appreciate the thought and fanfare, but…”

“It’s fine, it’s no trouble,” Sootsleeves assured her.

To you, maybe, but to us?

“Hey, Ronnie,” Julette said.  “Check it.”

Verona approached, watching as the mannequin was set up.  There were drawings on the walkie-talkie and other pieces of the setup, and they were apparently paired to drawings on other parts of the mannequin.

There was an aspect to how they’d set up the three Kennets that meant that each of the three of them had two Kennets they were more comfortable in.  The flip side of that was that each of them had a Kennet that maybe they didn’t ‘get’ in the same way.

For Verona, that was Kennet above, the world she’d been born to.  ‘Normal’.  The institutions, the structures.  It chafed at her, it didn’t interest her.  Lucy had come to think of it as Verona approaching reality like Lucy and Avery approached the various other worlds of the practice.  Reality for Verona was something to be dipped into, the cool parts picked out.

Avery hadn’t been a part of their setup for Kennet below.  She might get involved in the future, but Lucy fully expected that it would never quite ‘jibe’ for Avery.  In a lot of ways, it wasn’t pretty, and it could be brutal, and that went against Avery’s inherent kindness.  Avery was a traveler, but that extended to problems, too, and maybe Kennet below distilled some of the sort of problems she was trying to get away from.  The fact it was a copy of home, too, maybe?

And then Lucy, here… she was proud of Kennet found, glad for the allies, she appreciated the courtesy being shown, but- but what?  It felt unpinned from everything that she reached for to make sense of the world.  It felt arbitrary.

She jumped as she heard a sound through her earring.  A clicky patter.  Her skin crawled, and she involuntarily backed away a bit, almost bumping into an airborne tray of crackers, carried aloft by pigeons.

They set the tray down, a stray bit of plumage falling onto the table, and Sootsleeves, coming to a natural halt at the table, reached out with her cigarette on its overlong stick, touching the burning end to the feather- it stuck, curling around the end of the cigarette, and it burned.

She located the sound- a dark doorway, and she saw a spider leg peek out, along with a nebulous head shape with a single bloodshot eye taking up way too much real estate.  All of it, eye excepted, was the texture of coagulated blood, lightly burned around the edges.

The spider leg lost its angular joints and became a flailing, floppy tentacle.  Montague lost most of his solidity, transitioning to an uneven, chunky liquid that still had limbs at the edges, using those limbs to drag the mess forward.

Crawling into the mannequin.  Grabbing the clothes that hadn’t yet been pulled into place by the team of small animals.  She winced at the appearance of more coagulated blood spider legs, which he seemed to at least be trying to keep out of sight.

There was a static-ish belch sound as his head jerked, and then he spoke with remarkable clarity, a gap opening in his lower face where the drawing of the symbol had been, “Beg pardon, Lucy.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I’ll work on the creepier parts of my manifestation.  Bear with me.”

“Thanks,” Lucy said.

“You were reacting before you saw me.  Was it smell?”

“Sound.  The legs on the tile.”

“Aha.  I’ll watch for that.”

“Thanks again.  You been okay?  Had a good Christmas?”

“A quiet one.  I ate, that was nice.”

“You eat?” Verona asked.

“Once in a long while.  I usually keep my diet to sickly animals.  I-”

Montague stopped as Julette leaned in, peering through his mouth.  His head cracked, split, and then he formed a second head, to continue talking while keeping the other head still for Julette to examine.

“Hey, don’t be rude,” Verona said, pulling on the back of Julette’s collar.

“It’s alright,” Montague said, with one mouth, while the other resumed talking.  “-feel better after, but I do worry that I grow larger every time I consume.  If I assume I’m immortal, and I add eight hundred pounds of weight to my mass every time I eat a sickly bear, how many meals do I get in before I’m something noticeable that must be hunted?”

“In an ideal world,” Miss said, as she came in the front doors.  Birds flying this way and that, carrying serving trays and things, blocked the view of her face.  She was wearing a long navy blue coat, gray sweater, and ankle-length skirt, belt and boots with pointed toes matching.  Her black hair still had snowflakes in it. “Kennet remains a haven for you.  Good afternoon, Montague.”

Montague dipped his heads in a bow, his mouth remaining fixed in place as everything else moved, flesh crashing into flesh and smouldering.  “Afternoon, Miss.  I think I would prefer to assume that nothing, even with everyone’s efforts here, will last forever, so I must plan accordingly.  If I am immortal, I must think to the long term.”

“You’re not sure?” Julette asked.

“If I’m immortal?  I don’t know.”

“You might be,” Verona said.  “I read up on horrors, and the nature of a horror’s lifespan is pretty wonky.  Most of the time it’s immortality, or… getting off the mortality train.  Sometimes a horror is, I guess to warn you, perfectly fine as an existence and then they explode into a mess of limbs that break under their own weight and die, or they implode into nothingness with next to no warning.  Can be spontaneous, can be specific triggers.”

“That’s good,” Montague said.

“Is it?” Lucy asked.

The clotted-blood-and-acid-melted-flesh spider-squid in a suit nodded.  “Better to have some surprise involved.  What use is a life, without the possibility of life’s end?”

“Any plans?” Verona asked.  “For that presumably-but-not-guaranteed long life?”

Lucy fidgeted.  She smiled at Miss as Miss came to one end of the table, taking a seat.

“I have none.  It’s only recently I’ve found any civilization, or people.  I’ve been content to help, but I don’t know what the future holds.”

“It’d be cool if, I dunno, you carried forward some of the good stuff we’ve been working on,” Verona said, sitting across from Miss.  Julette became a cat and found her way to Verona’s lap.

“Miss’s goal?” he asked.  “A sanctuary?”

“Sure.  Or… whatever we were becoming,” Verona said.

“Were?” Lucy asked.

“I-” Verona cut herself off.  “I don’t know why I used past tense there.”

“Do you think our chances are that bad?” Montague asked Verona, leaning forward, elbows on the table.  His two heads were becoming one through a process Lucy would have to term ‘burned plastic unbirth’.

“I… I may be in a bad mood,” Verona said.  “Other stuff going on.  Making me pessimistic.”

“Trouble at home,” Miss said.  She knew.

“I- yeah.  Not, not home, exactly.  I’d rather think of the House on Half Street as my home.”

“That’s your domain.  But home?  For many, it’s where we first set our hearts at ease.  Kennet is my home, because it is the first place I found peace after coming down from the Paths.”

“It’s the same for me,” Montague said, his voice crackling with walkie-talkie static, where it hadn’t before.  “I don’t remember civilization before Kennet.”

“And you will always have an attachment to that house, Verona,” Miss said.  “You grew up there.”

“Uggggh.”

“And it was invaded.”

“I guess we’re kind of on the same page, then?” Verona asked.

“We are.  Lucy and I are.  Avery and I are.”

“We’re on the same page?” Lucy asked.

“In different ways.  I think we’re both keenly aware of the bigger picture in front of us.  What fighting means in the long run.  Am I wrong?”

Lucy nodded.  “No.  I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but… what does it mean if we’re here, and not fighting?  For the long run or even the short run?  I appreciate the hospitality and other stuff, but…”

“Anxious,” Verona said.

“Yeah.  I’m worried.  Anxious.  Starting to feel that crunch.  We told Avery we’d handle this while she’s-”

“Handling Nora?” Verona suggested.

“-With her important people,” Lucy corrected.

“I was hoping Rook and the Turtle Queen would be here to share what they know,” Miss said.  “They said they intended to be here.”

Lucy listened out, and in the storm of kids, small animals, and birds moving around, seeing to things around the Sootsleeves’ Hold, she couldn’t make out anything as distinctive as Rook’s movement.

But Rook was tricky.  It wasn’t just that she walked with that walking stick normally and could put it away.  Lucy couldn’t rule out that Rook might be able to move without making a sound even the earring could detect.

And Rook occupied a weird place in regard to everything to do with the council, Kennet, and the various sides.

Sootsleeves puffed on her cigarette, blowing a smoke ring over the table.  “I can tell you what my people have found.  The children of St. Victor’s leave town to meet their mentors, in the earliest hours of the day, after school, and on weekends.  They use connection blockers to keep their families unaware and unconcerned.”

“Right, sounds vaguely familiar,” Lucy said.  “Except we didn’t have to leave town.”

Sootsleeves went on, “We thought the group was Musser defectors, but after following some students, with Miss joining me and my followers to help corroborate, we’ve decided that some, most, or all of the teachers of the St. Victor’s practitioners are ex-Forsworn.”

“He’s gone ahead and done it,” Lucy said, sitting back in her chair.  “Wow.  That’s… less evil than his usual.”

“We can’t track all of them, as some are hiding and meeting the students in places I won’t send my subjects,” Sootsleeves said.

“And I’m limited in how much I can get away,” Miss added.  “Normally I would take it on myself to explore, see who is where, who can be deflected or managed.  But the further I go and the longer I stay out, the more Kennet found pulls at me.”

“Is that a problem?” Lucy asked.

“Only in the sense it forces me to change how I approach all of this.  I have to trust and enable others.  As I once did you.”

“Kind of like a curse,” Verona said, glancing at Lucy.  “Making someone keep doing something until it gets painful?  Greedy child has to keep eating until he explodes, obsessed dancer keeps dancing?”

“I don’t see the founding as a curse,” Miss replied.  “I’d rather frame that as a blessing, not a curse.”

“Rich man gets more fortunes after being generous to a beggar?” Verona suggested.

“Better,” Miss replied.

That’s worse, though, Lucy thought, annoyed.

“We know one group is a grouping of people who were awakened and then intentionally Forsworn,” Miss said.  “And we know one of the men is Lenard Lily.  I was aware of him once.  He investigated Kennet a long time ago, closer to the time you were born, under the belief that it was a place the Abyss had absorbed that had been warded off.”

“He’s an Abyssal practitioner?”

“He is.  He calls himself a Bedlamite.  He works with madness.”

“Fernanda said something about that.  That people really weren’t okay.”

“Yes.  He has other talents.  He’s teaching his student, Joshua.  We have suspicions about others, we’ve heard rumors, and the rumors line up with the talents on display in the attack on the Whitts,” Miss explained.  “We don’t have full details or descriptions.  Helen Kim, Horrors.”

“Cool,” Verona said.

Lucy elbowed her.

“Yiyun Jen, necromancer, specifically works with high-end crafted undead.”

“Noted,” Lucy said.  “Explains the corpse in the school.”

“Josef Miller, alchemist.  Homunculi crafted to emulate other Others.”

“If they’re raiding the Whitts for stuff, can I mug that guy for everything he knows and has?” Verona asked.  Julette, standing up from Verona’s lap with front paws on the table, nodded her agreement.

“I’ll sign off on that,” Sootsleeves said.

Lucy drew her eyebrows together.  “I’ll remind you of the snarly ethical situation you’re dealing with right now, standing in your lap, when you created life and it got a little too aware for comfort.  Are you going to let them all become living breathing lives?”

“How cool would that be?” Verona asked.

Lucy sighed.

“He’s talented,” Miss said.  “Many are.  People like Alexander who treat forswearing as a way to get a prize like to go after threats, or people who’ve accumulated more to forfeit.”

“Griffin Lyttle, the spirit surgeon Edith is going to.”

“Inserting and removing spirits, like Alcazar editing without the deep dive, a bit more finesse required?” Verona asked.

“That is my understanding.  And Joel Richardson is the last likely.  Retired dragonslayer.”

“A what now?” Verona asked.

“He never hunted any dragons, and the title is a holdover from the days when dragons were the choice prey of practitioners of this style.  They hunt major Others and take pieces of them as trophies, for what could be described as crude and ‘natural’ magic items.  He has no direct student, but several of the others go to him to learn.”

“Meaning they might know of better ways to hurt and kill some of our local Others?” Lucy asked.

“They might.  And they’ll have the benefit of a trained Augur.”

“Seth,” Lucy said, arms folded.

“Seth is both a Musser defector, in a sense, and ex-Forsworn.  Freeman Boyd, technomancer, one of the invaders of Kennet, is another Musser defector.  They were the ones we were first aware of, which led us down the wrong track at first.  The Turtle Queen was our lead into Freeman.”

Lucy could hear what could best be described as a turn in the wind.  Birds were flying this way and that through the worn down old castle, and then their flight paths altered, taking on a heavier, less busy sound.

“I think the Turtle Queen is here, actually,” Lucy said, twisting in her seat.

The Turtle Queen entered through the dark hallway to the side of the building.  The Turtle Queen was black, hair braided, decorated with jade and gold, jewelry extending down her right arm to her hand, where there was enough accumulated jewelry and chains connecting jewelry to basically be a gauntlet.  Her outfit was tight to the middle at the center of her body, wide enough at the collar to almost be shoulderless, and her dress parted at the mid-thigh, letting her show off the crocodile skin boots.  Gold and jade jewelry, crocodile skin, and black velvet.  Sootsleeves’ birds had become large ravens, and some swirled around her, others landed on the ground to either side of the Turtle Queen.

“No Rook?” Miss asked.

The Turtle Queen shook her head.

“Busy with making Lordships difficult to capitalize on and transfer,” Sootsleeves said.

Busy playing sketchy games with affiliation, Lucy thought.  She didn’t want to say it in front of Miss, though.  Rook was a friend to Miss, and as much as they were on the same page about a lot of stuff, the things Rook wanted were very different.

Rook seemed to think the market stuff and expansion of Kennet were misuses of energy and resources.  She wanted to prepare for an eventual attack.  Which… was fair.  But the market had its own role in things.

“I must say, you’re looking dashing,” Montague told the Turtle Queen, as she approached the table.

“I don’t decide what I look like.”

“Nor do I, not really.”

The Turtle Queen took a seat beside Montague.

Sootsleeves, sitting with her back partially resting against the arm of her decorated wheelchair steed, held her ‘torch’ out, cigarette holder pointed at a bird.

The bird began to burn at the edges.  Smoke poured off it, similar to the smoke from the incense burners.  It flapped a few times, looking between Sootsleeves and the Turtle Queen, feathers growing in and keeping it the size of a large raven, smoke burning it down to the shape of a crow.  Smoke turned black, with flecks of green leaves and gold glitter in it.

“Turtle Queen,” Miss said, quiet.

“Take it,” the Turtle Queen said.  “I don’t care.”

“It’s my subject to begin with.  It, along with castle, possessions, and afterbirth, followed me out of the womb.”

“I said I don’t care.”

“We were discussing a certain technomancer,” Montague said.

“I know.  That’s why I’m here.  I’m tracking that connection.”  She sounded so impatient.

“And?” Verona asked, leaning forward.

“He keeps me at arm’s length.  Sets traps, sacrifices computers, botnets.”

“He’s giving you botnets?” Verona asked.

“Ones I cannot use more than once.  They’re monitored.  Some by multiple authorities, innocent and practitioner both,” the Turtle Queen explained.

“Hmmm.”

“What are they talking about?” Lucy asked.  “Can you listen in?”

The Turtle Queen shrugged.  “For now, they’re happy with what they stole from the Whitts.  They’re identifying items, to see what’s cursed and what isn’t.  Seth Belanger has been mentioning the tools available in Belanger custody, and how they would speed things up.  Conversations right this very moment are about what they could take.”

“Seth wants to attack the Belangers next?” Lucy asked.

“That is the idea.  He’s the most active and motivated right now.”

“Do you mean he’s acting now?  Soon?”

“Soon.  Before the new year.  Before people in the group are pulled away for other responsibilities and plans.  Edith’s surgery among those things.”

Lucy looked around the table.  “What’s their plan?  Because the last I remember, the Belangers were set up at the Blue Heron and that place is such a minefield that even Charles’ lords haven’t really been up to cracking it.  Durocher, Ray, Alexander, Bristow, bunch of other contributions… that’s a lot to attack.”

“Plus you’d piss off Durocher and we just saw how that goes, right?” Verona asked.  “School might not be in session or in any position to start up again any time soon, but if you attack the building?  Steal stuff?  I think one of the books I read there was donated to the library by Durocher.  Imagine how well that would go over.”

“Seth did subvert the school to free Charles at the end of summer,” Miss said.

“True,” Lucy said.  “Do we think he has back ways in?  Or does he know the security system?”

“Doesn’t solve the issue of how many enemies he’d make,” Verona said.

“If I may interject?” Miss interjected.

“Of course,” Verona said.  “Go for it.”

“Is it at all possible that he doesn’t care about the enemies he’d make?  Or that he even wants them?”

“Durocher, though,” Verona replied.  “Would probably be an enemy.”

“Even so.  This is Seth Belanger we’re talking about.  He may not have thought this through enough, in his greed or desire for revenge.”

“Fair ’nuff,” Verona said.

Revenge.  The others were moving on to talking about location- how spread out the St. Victor’s practitioners and mentors were.  Lucy thought back on Seth, and the little she knew about him through Nicolette and their run-ins with him.  He’d been useless in helping Snowdrop, he’d been creepy, he’d been unwilling to defend himself in the forswearing challenge – Nicolette had told Lucy about that when Lucy had been asking about law, claim, challenges, and other stuff.  Then he’d turned around and gone against the entire Blue Heron in an act of… what?  Spite?  Desperation?  Freeing Charles.

Then to turn around and conflate it?  Expand that into revenge?

Montague cleared his throat.  It was a… very interesting sound, with how his voice and form distorted things.  He sat up straighter, fixing his suit jacket, and the fabric curled, turned in on itself, and changed color like burning wood in a fire.

“Turtle Queen?” Montague asked, once there was a pause.  “Thoughts?”

“I’m waiting for them to finish.”

“Oh.  We’re theorizing, putting ideas out there,” Verona told her.  “If you have info, maybe it’ll help with those theories and ideas?”

“He’s not attacking the Blue Heron.  He’s attacking the main family.”

“Oh, well, that’s useful to know,” Verona said.  “Eh Luce?”

“Yeah.  I’m- I’m stuck on the idea of Seth’s motivations here.  Is it still revenge?  Going against his family?”

“What else would it be?” Sootsleeves asked.

“I glimpsed Seth several times when Alexander Belanger would pass through,” Miss said.  “As a child, he seemed halfway between someone lost and someone in the midst of being punished.  As if he was angry and disappointed at the world’s treatment of him, whatever was happening.”

“Hm.  Lines up, I guess,” Lucy said.

“He was listed as a troublemaker in the student guide,” Verona pointed out.

“Did he expand on the plan?  Is it another snatch and run?”

“He said they may stay overnight.  They talked about the quality of some of the buildings.  Magically made by Alexander as a way of giving back to the greater family, he said.”

“I just… were his words vicious?  In the calls?” Lucy asked the Turtle Queen.  “Trying to get a sense of his motives.  If he’s attacking to… I dunno, torture, or steal something bigger, or…?”

“No,” the Turtle Queen replied.

“How did he seem?”

“I- don’t know how to answer that question,” the Turtle Queen replied.  “It’s not something I pay attention to.”

“Okay, fair, but, um.” Lucy frowned a bit.  “Is he happy?  Sad?  Angry?”

“Do you process emotion?” Verona asked.

“Some.  But I don’t have much reason to care about it,” the Turtle Queen said.  She touched a plate and dragged it closer to her.  It became green with gold at the rim, meats and cheeses becoming meat that looked a lot more like fish, with golden scales at the edge.  She used her fingers to eat some.

Verona leaned over the table.  “What do you pay attention to?”

“Configuration.  Connection.  Affiliation.”

“How’s Seth configured, connected, affiliated?”

The Turtle Queen ate more fish, thinking.  “Broken and put back together.  He’s emulating someone.  If I could know that other someone I could get Seth five and a half seconds faster.  He’s teaching a student, close, one-on-one.  The world, they both feel, betrayed them both.  It drew them close to one another very quickly.  If I could get one of them, I could get to the other very easily.”

“Right,” Lucy said, “Okay.  Close in what sense?  Teamwork?”

“Teamwork, romance, proximity.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “…How old is she?”

“There’s a two year difference.”

“That makes me think she’s not one of the ones I saw or heard about when I spied on them,” Lucy said.  “Hm.”

“He’s not a member of the family, he doesn’t oppose them.  But he wants to… consume them?”

“So not revenge, probably,” Lucy said.  “Or not overtly?”

“Consume in what sense, Queen?” Montague asked.

“To have, to draw in, to pull inside his… artless oeuvre.”

“He didn’t seem super ambitious before,” Lucy said.

“He is now,” the Turtle Queen replied.

“And… so we can assume he’s not just raiding the family for stuff, then.  That might be too petty,” Lucy said.

“For Seth?” Verona asked.  “Is anything too petty?  He was going to let Avery’s boon companion die to the brownies.”

“He says he wants things.  Maybe as a pretext then?  Building to something?”

Verona huffed out a sigh, shifting position, which made Julette shift position in her lap.

“Thanks, by the way,” Lucy told the Turtle Queen.  “Some insight.”

The Turtle Queen stared her down.

“What are you thinking?” Lucy asked Verona.

“Trying to get into Seth’s head.”

“Gross.”

“Gross, yeah.  And I can’t help but think of how I was in a lame place before, I was okayish at school before everything started happening, but then I fell apart, people dropped away or backed off, didn’t have a place to go, then the whole thing with my dad…”

“Sure.”

“And now?  Getting past that?  Getting out of that hole?  There’s times I feel freaking euphoric.  So that gets me thinking about Seth, and how deep a hole he got out of.  And if he’s euphoric, maybe, he had so little going for him-”

“Besides being from a reasonably wealthy family, magical education, work, reasonable good looks…” Lucy started.

“Sure.  But he couldn’t do a lot, he didn’t have direction, again, student guide-”

“You still remember that thing to that level of detail,” Lucy remarked.

“Sure!  And so he’s on the rise, he’s escaping this old Seth, maybe, and who is there that’s really telling him to slow down, chill out, take what he’s got and get centered?”

“Seems to run against what Edith said Charles is about,” Lucy mused.

“Yeah, what, like, if Charles is saying pull yourself out of the bad situation or die, find your strength, he’s not about to say but hold up there, Setholomew, or whatever Seth is short for, don’t find that much strength, don’t be too ambitious now, right?”

“Right.  So we’re thinking… what does he really want?  He’s emulating someone?” Lucy extended a hand toward the Turtle Queen.

“Yes, I said that,” the Turtle Queen replied.

“And he’s got a lady, sounds like, seems like he’s helped steal stuff from the Whitts, who were staying at a Musser house, and that’s going to be worth money.  He wants to keep the trajectory going…”

“Scary, when you’re doing what he’s done, pulling yourself out of a bad situation, to stop.  To risk falling back down to where you were,” Verona said.  “It’s part of what drives me to do my work, a lot of the time.”

“What’s left to go after?  He goes after the Belangers.”

“To take over?”

“Or blackmail.  Or something.  Okay,” Lucy said.  She looked at the Others at the table.  “We’re talking a lot between ourselves, sorry.”

“I am very used to it,” Montague replied, waving a hand around airily.  “It’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m spitting something vile in people’s faces when I add my two cents.”

“You’re good company, don’t put yourself down,” Verona told him.

“I picked you three for your ability to do just this,” Miss said.  “It’s good to see.”

Lucy nodded.  “Did you ever cross paths with these kids?  I gave you the list of names.”

“I’ve glanced past them, I’m sure.  But I do believe that in picking them, the Carmine Exile or one of his partners was looking for something very different.”

Lucy looked over at Verona.  “So what do we do?  Because like, on the one hand, do we tell Wye?  He’s the one who’d be most affected.”

“Tell Nicolette?” Verona suggested.

Lucy looked over at Miss and Sootsleeves.

“She’s been an ally,” Miss said.

Lucy got her phone out, then put it on the table, dialing.  She hit the button to turn on speakerphone.

“Nicolette Belanger, independent augur.  Hi Lucy.”

“Hi.  You’re on speaker, we’re at Sootsleeves’ castle in Kennet found, few of us Kennet practitioners and Others at the table.  We’ve got a situation.”

“Is one of those Others the Turtle Queen?  Because I’ve got sensitive instruments here that are reacting.”

“It is.  She is.  Is it a problem?”

“No.  Just wanted to make sure.  What situation?  How can I help?”

“It’s actually a Belanger situation, we think.  Seth.”

“Seth disappeared on me.”

“You heard about the Whitts?”

“He’s involved.”

“He is,” Lucy said.  “And… they’re attacking another target.  The Belanger main family.”

“We think it’s a show of strength and a push for more respect,” Verona said.  “Seth has clout now.”

“What clout?”

“The Carmine Lords back him.  He has students.  He has help from other ex-Forsworn,” Lucy said.

“Have the Lords been getting in the regular Belanger’s way?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.”

“He might offer to get them free and clear.  No more being pressured, no more being attacked, no more restricted travel, restricted business…”

“Some would accept that.  I don’t think half would.  This is Seth?”

“As far as we know,” Lucy said.

“So he’s storming in, to attack, pressure them, I don’t think a majority will agree with him.  Especially knowing how stubborn some are, and the place Seth holds in the family.  He could kill the Carmine, take its place, and there are people who’d be gainsaid before they took him seriously, because he’s Seth.  The fuckup, the failure.”

“You sound sympathetic.”

“I looked after him,” Nicolette said.  “You don’t do that to the degree I did for half a year and not empathize at least a little.  Have you talked to Wye?”

“We thought we’d talk to you about whether we should.”

“There’s a schism in the Belanger family right now.  There’s the circle, that’s Wye, Tanner, Chase, sort of Gillian.”

“Gillian?”

“New.  Young.  Possible future wife of Tanner…”

“Ick.”

“It’s being handled… not horribly.  I like Gillian, I wouldn’t stand by if this felt problematic to any massive degree.  I’ll get into that later.  The rest of the family is feeling a bit shut out.  Gillian’s mom included.”

“That’s moving my mental needle of the chance the family sides with Seth a bit forward.”

“It would be a disaster,” Nicolette said.  “At best, the family fights and tears itself apart in debate and argument over whether to side with Seth.  At worst?  I don’t like the direction the Belangers could go.”

“You think they could side with Seth and the Carmine Lords?”

“I think the family is… heartsick, I’d put it.  I get the sense you guys can at least breathe there in your town, but out here, it’s hard to move around, the Lords are shifting positions now and then, we can predict that, we can plan, but there’s always a tension.  Work’s hard to come by, the family invested heavily into people that can’t work as easily.  Seth comes in, offering relief and a solution?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not strong enough to change that around.  I can warn them, but I’m willing to bet they’ve already got some advance warnings.”

“Makes sense,” Verona said.

“My guess?  They know there’s trouble coming, but they’re not in a position to do anything about it.”

“So Seth gets his win?”

“Probably.  I’ve got cards laid out in front of me… yeah.  Probably.”

“Can we help?” Verona asked.

“Can we?” Lucy asked.  “Truce, remember?”

“A little shakier with this group that the Carmine Exile hasn’t officially claimed are his.”

“Shaky isn’t nothing, and I’m not sure about starting our whole confrontation with Charles on the grounding of some bad karma from questionable truce handling.  Right?  I’m not off in left field?” Lucy asked the table, and Nicolette, who was on the other side of the phone that lay in the table’s center.

“You’re not,” Sootsleeves said.  “That would hurt.”

“Sootsleeves, who was speaking a moment ago, Nicolette,” Miss cut in, “is in a prime position to know, as she had to handle the weights and balances of things when dealing with finders who completed her Path.”

“There are always nuances.  Shouldn’t give too good a prize to someone with poor karma,” Sootsleeves replied.  “Nor too bad a prize to someone with good karma.”

Your prizes were cursed apples, a forever baby, and a mess of wounds and horrible things that gave you protections if you survived them.  Are you really in a position to talk about good and bad prizes?

“I can at least tell them what’s coming.  If I prep Jen, she might be able to skew the discussion.  She hasn’t been a fan of Seth since he bullied Gillian.”

“Right,” Verona said.  “That’s something, at least?”

“Something,” Lucy agreed, absently.  “I was hoping when we started planning here that we might be able to figure out if they’ll go after Hennigars, and you’re friends with McCauleigh, or, I dunno, Yadira Kennedy, we… didn’t totally screw up that friendship, back at the Blue Heron.”

“Avery met with Kass Knox,” Verona supplied.

“But the Belangers aren’t fighters.”

“I can fend for myself against most small to medium things,” Nicolette said.  “Powerful things?  Questionable.”

“Right.”

“A well timed distraction from the Turtle Queen, maybe?” Verona asked.  “Attacking Freeman?”

The Turtle Queen paid a bit more attention at that.

“That asshole’s involved?” Nicolette asked.

“Yeah.  Could we help the Turtle Queen without violating the truce?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know.  Your Queen Sootsleeves might be able to help give you an answer better than I can.”

“Two questions,” Lucy said, “first, should we do something?”

“The Belangers had me over for Christmas earlier this week.  I think we’re a necessity.  I- I have issues with Wye, Tanner, Chase, but should they die?  Or lose everything?  I don’t think so.  Should Seth be the next family head, because he made deals with the Carmine?” Nicolette asked.

“No,” Lucy, Verona, and Nicolette said, at the same time.

“Okay.  So… ideal world, we do something, maybe slow down their momentum, keep others from getting attacked” Lucy said.  “If we do something, can you help cover us so the Belangers aren’t attacking us while we’re helping?  And make sure they know this help…?  We need allies.  Or favors, or something.”

“I can push for something.  Jen’s pretty reasonable.  Very different from Alexander.”

“I like her already,” Lucy said.

“As long as you’re filling them in, you should tell them who they’re dealing with so they can respond accordingly, inform their augury.  We know some of the people who may be involved…” Miss explained.

While that rundown happened again, Lucy thought through the options- what it might look like to help the Turtle Queen.  Guilherme had taught her that the things that went into a fight could translate to other things.  That the same lessons that went into a clash of spears could be used in a negotiation – parry, thrust, sidestep.  It could be the same of a battle, if she found herself in a surprise situation where she was commanding a legion against another legion.  Feint, posture, lunge.

She turned her head, looking at the Turtle Queen.  What did that look like to her?  This was an Other who barely seemed to register or pay attention to emotion.  She had to have a different concept of how to approach conflict, because she ate, she spread, she conquered…

“…Lenard Lily was the one who got the Whitts,” Verona was explaining.

Sootsleeves?  Was there any way she could fight or defend herself that wouldn’t automatically be a queen astride her horse, an army around her?  She had her kingdom too, and Lucy wasn’t sure how that factored in.  Was it a siege?

If she turned her head around, thinking about how to approach this as a war, what did they need?

“I have an idea.  If you guys are willing to help?”

They hadn’t wanted to bother Avery, but there was a benefit to the truce being in effect, with Charles’ enforcers having control.

Charles and his underlings had put guards in charge of areas.  They worked for him, he was connected to them, and they selectively targeted his enemies.  He had a great goblin in the Warrens, a deep Ruins creature near the surface, like a sea monster in a fishpond, and a corrupt umbral spirit in the spirit world.

The tradeoff was that the truce being in effect meant that obstacle was cleared away.  Take the Warrens, introduce a great goblin that scares away the riffraff, then remove the great goblin as a consideration?  The way was mostly clear.  Earring and some connection blockers helped with the rest.

They emerged in deep woods, outside a settlement.  Lucy saw as watercolor exploded out around them, from wards buried in snow and camouflaged on trees.

By the time they reached the edge of the treeline, there were ten augurs standing outside, guns in hand, waiting for them, and a crowd of thirty more people behind them.

Lucy raised her hands.  So did Verona.

She was pretty sure the protection she was wearing on her skin would ward off the worst of the harm, but she couldn’t know for sure.

It was a settlement, and not a huge one, a small town of the sort that anyone could drive through, but the buildings were mostly blue with white trim, there was no town sign, and with the exception of the armed presence, it was sleepy, even for a small town in the middle of winter.

And nobody seemed to bat an eye at there being civilians carrying and wielding weapons of this caliber.  Everyone here was in on it, it seemed.

“Lucy Ellingson!” Lucy called out.  “Witch guardian of Kennet!”

“Verona Hayward!  Third witch of Kennet, hatcher of the moon, dabbler in halflight and shape, enforcer of the undercity of Kennet, peddler of odd books!”

“They say the longer your title the more you’re compensating for something,” a woman commented.

“What do you think I have to compensate for?” Verona asked.  “I’m good, happy being me.”

“Height?” a man asked.

“Again, happy being me.  Sometimes you have a lot of titles because you’re doing a lot of cool stuff that should get recognized.”

A woman glanced over her shoulder at an older man.

There were strong resemblances to Alexander or other known Belangers in maybe a third of the people present, and maybe another third had traits that she could draw a line to, like the red hair, slender builds, or mannerisms.  Of the remaining third, Lucy was willing to peg half as being husbands or wives of the others that were in the wider group.

She’d looked for and was reasonably sure she’d successfully identified the dour looking Jen, helped by the description of Jen’s daughter- stick thin, with ethereal white-blonde hair and she dressed like she was wearing a student uniform when there was no school anywhere nearby and she wasn’t a student.

“We’re here to help,” Lucy told them.  “Nicolette should’ve reached out.”

“She did.  But she should’ve also reached out to you shortly after to say we discussed and we’re not interested in help.  Except you were out of reach of cell phone towers.”

“Not interested?” Lucy asked.

“The loose consensus was that we don’t want to owe anyone anything,” Jen said.

“We’re not asking for much.  Your enemy here is our enemy, why not work together on this?”

“Your enemy is our friend,” an older man cut in.  “Musser?”

“Wasn’t Alexander’s friend.  He backed Bristow in the fight over the school.”

“Times change,” the old man said.

“Then let them change again.”

“Go home, witches of Kennet,” he replied, curt.

“They’re incoming,” the Turtle Queen said.

“Seth is on his way, he’s not looking to play nice,” Lucy told the Belangers.  “With you or with us.”

She could See it, using her Sight.  The watercolor staining that spread across and around people.

The different groups, with different mentalities around this.

Some were loyalists, or strict, or they seemed to have a flare of negativity around them every time Seth was mentioned.  Contempt.  Derision.  They didn’t seem to understand the stakes, or that other people didn’t feel the same way.

Some weren’t even buying into the situation.  The watercolors around them were muted.  Their focus was elsewhere.

Others wanted Seth, and the colors were deeper, a wine-ish purple-red, reaching out, in the directions Seth’s group might come from.  They wouldn’t fight.  They’d even help Seth’s side.

Gods and spirits, what a mess.

We need to stop them.  We need to slow them down.

She hadn’t expected the degree of fear and weariness here.

Or… the looks.  Not at her, but in people’s eyes, the way they studied the situation.

This was the place that had birthed Alexander.  Had presumably birthed Wye.  Had birthed Seth, presumably.

Hands still raised, Lucy turned to the woman she figured was Jen.  “Jen?  Nicolette wanted us to talk.”

“Nicolette has only been part of the Belangers for a little while,” an old man said, before Jen could say anything.

Others remained on guard, a gathering that kept a respectful distance away, and several looked like they might jump in with comments of their own before they gave Jen a voice.

“You’re really going to let this happen?  You guys have to have read the cards, rolled the knucklebones, whatever.” Lucy said.

Jen finally spoke up without being interrupted.  “We know some of what happens.  That there’s violent conflict.  That there’s blood.  That people get hurt.  We don’t look too deep and ask the spirits to make determinations when augur meets augur.  It tends to go against the person who pushes for the clearest answers.”

“It always does,” the old man added.  “If you want clarity, you pay for it.  Fate makes you pay for it.”

Verona looked at Lucy.  “Makes me think of the painting that was mentioned once.  In our earliest notes.  The mural in the cave.”

“Yeah.  Specific picture, had to recreate it.”

“We’re not on Alexander’s level of ability to strategize, plot, and scheme, but we’re not stupid,” the old man said.  “And Seth isn’t that bright.”

“But he’s strong,” Verona said.

“We know.  We’ll manage it.  It’s family business.”

“He’s liable to come, the people who are with him aren’t your family.  Don’t underestimate the power he has,” Lucy said.

Again, she could see that dripping derision with her Sight.  She could see some people who were standing close enough to be almost in earshot, who seemed to have blades in them that was linked to that derision and resentment.

Jen motioned.  “I want to talk to them.  Let me talk to them.  Nicolette asked, she’s in a position to track a lot of factors, let’s make sure we’re on the right track.  I’ll take responsibility for anything that comes of this.”

“Dangerous business, when loyalties are being questioned and tested,” the old man told her.

“Technically, you don’t have the authority to say no.  The way we meet, the way the council works…”

“I know.  But I’m not lying either,” the old man said.

“Technically, you should only be exerting privilege when it comes to your area of the family, Jen.”

“By what the cards say, what’s happening tonight affects every corner and area of the family, including my area of purview,” Jen said.  “You want me to argue it?”

“Sure,” the old man replied.

“My area of focus is the organization of the family.  Business backend, family branches, and marriages.  Tanner Gilpin is part of the circle, the business frontend, he has a candidate for marriage-”

Gillian looked wounded.  Lucy could practically see the blade skewer her.

She didn’t know the engagement was potentially to her.

“One of them?” the old man asked.

He didn’t know either.

Cast the whole deal of Jen, her relationship with the circle- Wye’s subgroup, Nicolette, and the wider family into a different light.

“No.  Not one of them  But depending on how tonight goes, the marriage may be in jeopardy.  Nicolette’s goodwill matters here.  Too many people involved care about what she thinks and has to say.”

“You’re not marrying Tanner to Nicolette?  To get an independent into the circle?”

“She’d leave the family before agreeing to that.  No.  This is my business, Maxwell.  I gather the information, I work with all involved parties and branches of the family, I organize it, I’ll run it by the council for a final pass when it’s time.”

“Contrived, and worrying in a time of tested loyalties.”

“Noted.  May I?”

“Take bodyguards.”

“They stay out of earshot.”

“They stay in earshot and agree to not share what they know unless it’s overt betrayal.”

Jen nodded.

Maxwell motioned.  Belanger men and women with guns put the guns away.

Jen motioned, drawing them further away from the treeline, and closer to the middle of town.  Gillian followed.

“What’s up?” Verona asked.

“Nicolette vouched for you.  Most here have met her, but few know her.  I barely do.  Between Alexander and Wye, enough people respect her and her natural abilities that people here will tolerate her, but few listen to her.”

“We’re willing and maybe able to help,” Lucy stressed.  “If Seth storms in here- I don’t think many in this crowd seem to like Seth.  Maybe a few of the guys do.  Maybe a girl or two.”

“Yeah, sounds right,” Jen said.

“He always seemed sad to me,” Gillian said.

Jen put her hand on Gillian’s shoulder in a way that, to Lucy, seemed to be a subtle cue to be quiet.

Jen led the way as they continued to walk down the organization of Belanger houses.  Some of it reminded Lucy of what she’d seen out front of the Blue Heron.  The haphazard, large buildlings that didn’t seem to be for living in – or the people residing in them did so as an afterthought, like the workshops.  “The cards have been read, but the sweet point an augur often likes to aim for is one that’s vague.  Too narrow and you only see the future, often made unkind by spirits, and you can’t easily avoid what comes.  Too open and you spend power to learn next to nothing.”

“Right,” Lucy replied.

“We landed on a sweet spot where all sides involved seem to interpret what’s coming in different ways.  Nobody seems to want to think that when people start dying, they’re one of the people who were targeted in an initial attack.  Different sides interpret the same clues in different ways.  If a more skilled augur says something with enough confidence, it affects the reads of others,” Jen explained.

The little Belanger hamlet was falling under shadow as the sun was setting.  It was winter, so the sunset marked mid-afternoon, two or three hours before dinner.  But it was still ominous.

“This makes a good vantage point,” Jen said, as they reached the highest point of the hamlet.

“Vantage point?” Verona asked.

“For seeing the attack.”

“Then you know it’s going to happen?” Lucy asked.

“You were right.  They’re going to attack,” Jen said.  “And it will be bloody, and the casual confidence of some of the people here, or the idea that they’ll be included with open arms the moment they show a willingness to cooperate… it’ll be punished by violence.”

“Then… we’re letting it?”

“You can’t change their minds.  It’s as good as True.  Give that word the weight it deserves.  I can only hope the orders aren’t to kill, that Seth hasn’t been twisted or damaged enough he’d do that.”

“He’s… not great, but he’s not deranged either.  Not visibly, from what I’ve heard,” Lucy replied.

“We let the first wave happen.  We hope they won’t do too much damage to us or the buildings.  If Seth wants something from us- loyalty, resources, he has to leave enough people standing.”

“They have a Bedlamite,” Verona said.

“Refresh me.  It came up with the notes we got from Nicolette.”

“He drives people insane.  Some of that’s temporary.  A small portion of it lasts.  Hallucinations for the rest of their lives, potentially.  Or mood swings.  Or depression.  Or worse.”

“There are cures for that sort of thing.”

“It’s Abyssal,” Verona replied.  “It sticks, doesn’t it?”

“If it’s Abyssal, it would,” Jen said.  “That’s… very unfortunate.”

“That’s the kind of recklessness and disregard for you all they’re coming with, apparently,” Lucy told the woman, her eyes scanning the hamlet.  There was a loose defensive line, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

“We let them do the initial damage,” Jen said.  “People will run, retreat.  But they’ll also listen.”

“If they’re not too busy running,” Lucy said, quiet.  She jammed her hands into her pockets.  “There’s a chance that if they have too much momentum, they steamroll us, it doesn’t matter what we do.”

Jen didn’t reply.  She kept a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

Blue houses in a blue-black winter gloom turned on orange-yellow interior lights as people moved inside.  Old men walked and talked together, and litle boys followed, as if they had nothing else to do except to track this sort of thing, learning on the run, almost skipping in their hurry to match the paces of the adults and stay in earshot.

Like they were absorbing all of this from the start.

It felt cultlike.  Maybe it was.

“Where’s Wye?” Verona asked.

“Safe at the Blue Heron.  Too dangerous a place for most to attack.  Divorced from… all of this.  Separate and detached.  As is his usual.”

Sore spot?

The dour Belanger woman looked over the tiny town, her eyes glowing with Sight.  Her breath fogged.

Lucy wasn’t sure what to say.

“When time comes to help, what support do you need?” Jen asked.

“We’ll need permission.  Access.”

“How important?”

“Very.”

“How sure are you that you can stop them?”

“Sixty percent?”

“Tell me you won’t cause us trouble.”

“For the time being, unless someone causes us trouble first, we won’t.  We really do just want to make sure these guys aren’t taking out allies and our allies’ allies, while building their own strength.”

“Gillian?  Watch them.  Stay put.”

Lucy settled into place, wearing her coat from the dog tags, hands in her pockets, aware the tags were around her neck if she needed them.  Montague wasn’t as verbal as before as he degraded, the Turtle Queen didn’t talk much and was even less talkative as she avoided consuming anything major nearby.

Gillian looked pretty dejected, which was balanced by her discomfort being the only Belanger in this group.  People kept looking at them as they walked by, getting ready for a possible attack.

“We aren’t strong,” Gillian said.

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.

“The idea was we’d never have to be strong.  We’d see trouble coming a mile away, handle it, divert, call in favors, retreat.”

“Yeah.”

“And now the way things are… there’s danger in every direction.  No way to handle it, no way to divert it, nobody really left to call in favors with.  Not the people we want, anyway.”

Lucy didn’t reply.

There was a distant rumble, then two cracks in short succession, one overlapping and drowning out the other.

Wind blew in their faces.  A stray lock of hair from in front of Lucy’s ear batted against her cheekbone.

“That them?” Verona asked.

None of the Augurs seemed especially surprised.

The wind was followed by something else.  It came at them like a bat out of hell, invisible, dark, and by channels they couldn’t see.

“The power lines,” Verona said, her eyes glowing lavender.  Julette lifted her head up from Verona’s shoulder.

Lucy looked.  Power lines stretched between buildings and power poles, and the poles shuddered, the lines themselves shaking, shedding icicles and snow that had piled up on top.

Where power line met pole, flesh boiled out, loose, spongey, and tumorous.  It snaked along the lines themselves, inconsistent, while the lights began to go out throughout the settlement.

Every bit of insulated wire was now strung-out, uneven, and ugly flesh.  The bigger lumps near the transformers on the power poles began to billow in size.

The limited light from the sun that had sunken below the horizon but hadn’t stopped giving a trace of light from one end of the sky was the only illumination.  Lucy reached for her mask, tied to her bag, and pulled it on.  Runework gave her night vision.  Verona had her Sight.

It started as a distant howl, discordant, making the air shudder.  Making the flesh on power poles recoil.

If anyone here has any illusions that these attackers are going to pause and offer to bring them onboard before the initial wave of hurt, they’re about to get over it real fast, Lucy thought.

Jen hadn’t returned.

The howl didn’t stop- its source didn’t pause for breath.  Here and there, glass cracked, wood creaked and popped, and the tension built in the air and in everything around them.  Like everything from soft snow to hard foundation wanted to break in the same way that Lucy, when younger and in the midst of the flu, could feel like such absolute shit that she’d want to throw up, just for the reprieve.

Montague stepped between their group and the source of the sound, stretching out, briefly forming spider legs before remembering or finding the control not to.  He grew, extending into ground, snow, and other things, to try to make himself into a wall.

It wasn’t the most necessary thing.  Runework on Lucy’s neck got hotter, and lines going up the sides of her neck to her ears glowed faintly.  Same for Verona.

She reached out to put a hand at the side of Gillian’s head, covering an ear.  Trying to pass on some of that same protection.

The howling continued.  The shuddering of things got worse, the tension extending.  But this quaint little hamlet was well kept, well built, and that seemed to get in the way, which made the tension mount, made that feeling of imminent breakage feel like a broken promise, a frustration.

Lucy’s heart hammered.

“From what we heard about the Whitts,” Verona murmured- barely audible past the mounting scream.  “They weren’t this organized.”

“They probably fucking debriefed.  I’m imagining those stupid kids all giddy over refining strategies, improving, coordinating better.  Who does what in what order.”

“Like us?” Verona asked.

“How can you talk!?” Gillian raised her voice.  She was cringing, bending over.

Lucy covered her other ear.  The runes were getting hotter.

She really hoped that this scream, starting out from what seemed like a mile away, wasn’t going to overheat and break the protections she’d drawn on her skin.

Jen was out- Lucy spotted her, half-crawling, half-running.  Off balance as the scream continued.

Lucy could tell as the screamer drew closer.  It was hard not to be sensitive to the sound, even with the runework, and it felt like she was hyperaware of every step the screamer took.

The second scream hit.  The first had come from the south, and the second came from the east.  Weaker.

The teachers are participating.

And it was the prelude for the real attack.  A fracturing of reality, a tangle of limbs extended out and came in like an artillery blast, arcing through the sky, smashing into a house.

A blinking light, two blinks, and then a blast of flame.

They’re insane, Lucy thought.

“Jen!” Lucy called out.

Was that the pre-emptive answer to her question?  It couldn’t be.  “Did we get permission?”

“No!” was the shouted response.

“Then… let’s do this without permission.  They’re taking over the power lines and whatever else-”

“Phone lines, internet, signals.  There’s a technomancy setup for augurs in one building,” the Turtle Queen said.

“Same plan as before, then, but… help Montague?”

Montague, still stretched out, no longer even resembling a person, still managed to bow, extending a rigid bug limb that lost its joints and became a floppy tentacle as the Turtle Queen took it in her hand.

Lucy used spell cards and glamour, adopting her fox forms.  They overlapped, braiding in together, breaking apart.

She knew without asking that Verona would have her back, and would secure things back here.  Verona could protect Gillian and Jen- their only real allies.

The attack was all-out.  The kids and teachers, or at least the ones participating in this specific attack, they weren’t holding back, or they were giddy at the chance to go all out with power they’d probably never had before.

Lucy went looking for them.  On either side of her, the Turtle Queen took over the flesh, turning it into snakes draped in gold jewelry.  It seemed easy.  It framed Lucy as she dashed forward, fox leaping up onto high ground, onto truck, onto roof of a one-story building.  Down.  Moving to the side, anticipating attacks that might come that didn’t.

Which wasn’t to say they weren’t attacking.  Another blast of flame from the distance.

One of the foxes twisted, rolled, and became Lucy.  She turned to the nearest group.  “Where is the library?  Or the storehouse!?”

A man didn’t respond.

“Get people there!  They’ll want to preserve those places!  They won’t want to blast them!  It’s the safest place to be!”

The screams were beginning again.  And she was close enough she felt vulnerable.  She started moving again, reclaiming the glamour she’d partially pulled off.

The Turtle Queen had extended ahead, reaching out, finding the easy stuff.  Power had been used on wards, and that was an in to some of the wardings.  Which, as Montague also carried himself forward, moving from object to object, a short distance behind Lucy, gave him his opening.

She saw them.  The group, at the edge of town, approaching.

“Now!” Lucy shouted.

Montague reached out.  Across wards.  Across the magic that protected the nameless hamlet from scrutiny, maybe.

Extending himself out, so thin he was translucent.  Corrupting signals that the Turtle Queen took and handed over.

“Stop!” Lucy called out, shrugging out of her fox form to be able to address the St. Victor’s kids and the two practitioners with them, who were in the middle of the road, dark and snow-dusted trees on either side of them, just outside of town.  A bug-eyed man.  The woman had covered her face.  Helen, Lucy guessed, from the multi-armed display.

“The first witch of Kennet,” the bug-eyed man said.  He wiped spittle off the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

“The truce is in effect,” Lucy told them.  “Between Charles and us.”

“How good for you,” the man said.  His voice was rough.

“Montague is with us…” Extended into the wards around this hamlet.  “…if you attack him, you’re attacking us, violating the truce.”

“And so you think you’ve protected this town?” the man asked.

Lucy swallowed.  “You can bypass it.  By saying you’re not Charles’s.  The Carmine’s.  That you don’t accept his authority.”

“Ah,” the man said, to Helen.  “There’s the trap.”

“It’s annoying.”

“It’s… someone ambiguously associated with one side, some of us ambiguously associated with another.”

It matters, according to Sootsleeves, Lucy thought.

His head snapped around.  And, her lessons with Guilherme guiding her movements, even though what she was doing wasn’t fighting, Lucy reacted, evading, her arms moving like she was parrying.  But what she was doing wasn’t sweeping a weapon aside.  She swept one of her three glamoured selves aside.  Her body was glamour, her voice carried by an earring that made her good with sound.  She dispersed as he reached out, hand gesture evoking something abyssal and violent.

She didn’t stick around to see.  The practice tore through a piece of Montague on its way toward her, and she was gone before it got that far.  He’d violated the truce here.

And now the karma was on the side of Lucy, Verona, Montague, the Turtle Queen, and any Belangers that wanted to help them.

That would have to be good enough.