Author: Wildbow

In Absentia – 21.10 | Pale

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Verona waited as the phone rang, spinning around once in her seat.  Jude had come downstairs, and left with Avery.  There was some activity around the otherwise barren offices, but it felt like some of the Garricks were just hanging around to hang around.  Cliff, Jude’s dad, was getting some of them to help him with setting up, carrying away rolls of gross carpet.

“Hello?  Clementine here.”

“Hi Clem, it’s Verona.  Verona Hayward.  How-”

“Really don’t need to clarify,” Sheridan said, from the doorway.  “How many Veronas are there?”

Verona made a face at Sheridan.  “-How are you doing?  Hope it’s okay I called.”

“Oh, hello.  I’m fine, mostly.  We were debating making brownies, but we need confectioners’ sugar.  Problem is, I’m pretty sure if either of us poke our heads out the door, someone’s going to rope us into a building problem.”

“Oh no.”

Clem’s partner was in the background, commenting on that.  Saying it wouldn’t be that bad, or maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

“Corey really wants brownies, huh?”

“Yeah.  Being the fixer for the residents’ problems has its issues.  It’s important to do, though.  How are you?”

“Um, a lot going on.”

“Seems like there always is with you.  Need something?”

Verona rubbed the back of her neck.  “Can we pay for a grocery delivery?  We’re trying not to get so much help from others without paying them back or being fair.”

“You’re kids.  Take help if it’s offered.  But if you wanted to- you know what I want.”

“Yeah.  Sorry, can’t really.”

“Yeah,” Clementine replied.

“It’s more important we don’t overstay our welcome or scare off friends.  We can’t go home.  It’s kind of a thing.”

“Oh no.  Serious?  A lot going on, you said.  I’d offer you a place to stay, but I’m not sure how that would work.”

“Thanks,” Verona replied.  “Serious.  Grocery delivery?”

“It’s too late at night, they’d only deliver in the morning, and barely anyone still delivers to this building anymore.”

“No kidding?  Damn.  I wonder if Avery could swing by.”

“It’s really fine.  Corey will live.  Avery’s in the area?”

“She’s traveling right now, with Lucy.  I’m not exactly sure where she is.  Sorry, I don’t mean to keep you from your brownies.  I wanted to say I have some books you might be interested in.  Graphic novel about street kids climbing up to ride on top of elevators, riding on subway cars.  Book by the so-called queen of quilting, trying to remember the others…”

She could hear Clementine typing.

“What’s it called?” Clementine asked.

“Don’t remember.  Anyway, you like hobby stuff, right?”

“I’m interested.  I just wish I could look for reviews.”

“The books in my bookstore don’t show up online.”

“They- what?”

“They didn’t make it to press, for one reason or another.  Oh, I remember there being one about art restoration, and uncovering a conspiracy of forgeries.”

“I’m very interested.  All three.”

“I can’t go home for a little while, but hopefully I can send those your way.  I’d try and make sure they’re legit, so they don’t make your life harder.”

“How much?”

“Free.  You’ve been good to us.”

“Speaking as someone who earns a living with this sort of thing, you should ask for money.”

“These are free, let’s say.  Plus maybe one or two extra I include in that batch.  Then if you like ’em, I’ll ask for money, how’s that?”

“Thank you.  I feel like you’re buttering me up for something bad.”

“It’s more that I know I’m taking up your time, and I don’t want to ask for help without paying you back some.  But also I might ask about something in the past, and I know I’m risking touching on bad memories.”

Clementine sighed.  “Just get to it?”

“2014.”

“So ominous,” Sheridan commented.

“What about it?  Why?”

“I’m trying to figure some stuff out.  Having some record of where stuff went would be good.  Before you were sent to our town, an enemy of Bristow gave us some info on you guys.  Including some mention of items.”

Trying to figure some stuff out and having some record of things being good were disconnected thoughts.  Verona wasn’t intending to be good.

“2014?”

“Do you have items from then?”

“It becomes a blur.  I was fourteen then.  Red dress?  From my grandmother.  I think she felt sorry for me.  That was late, that was a late present.  There was something before it.  Did I go on my first… hm.”

Verona sat back, a bit impatient, but she didn’t want to rush Clementine.

“I was a bit younger when I hung out with Doug and Elle.  That was… ambiguously romantic.  But my first dates were around the start of that year.  Game console.  Crossed Hearts, beat up old thing, like an advance gear ninety-eight, but played only one game.  Slice of life sim.  My character got money, I got a birthday card with no return address or signature, filled with cash.  My character got a new TV, I walk home from school, there’s one across the street, still in the box, with a note on it saying it was a Black Friday sale, it didn’t fit and they couldn’t return it.  Free.  My character got a cute boyfriend that liked borrowing her clothes, I got a boyfriend that liked borrowing my clothes.  My character got a girlfriend who put hot sauce on everything, so did I.”

“Yeah?” Verona asked.  She was kind of interested, even with the limited time.

“I caught myself starting to think of them like they were disposable, getting more excited about who I could date next than… any of that.  Bit of a wake up call.  It felt like mind control, I got skeeved out, so I locked it away.  About two years later, twenty-sixteen, a bunch of items got away from me.  I caught up with the person who had the handheld.  They’d played a bit further on than I did.  Their character got a degenerative brain disease.”

“Shit.  Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  The red dress… 2014 was a bad year, as I think on it.  There were a lot of bad years, but… I sold the red dress, to someone twenty who looked twelve.  I don’t know if that was a disorder, but hopefully it helped her.  The rest of it?  If you’re trying to track it down to have or use it, too bad.  Not for sale, not for borrowing.”

“Even if it’s for a good cause?”

“Even if.  Too dangerous to others, too essential for me, too dangerous to you.”

Verona considered for a second.

Too sensitive a territory to venture into or push on.

“So long as it’s all secure?”

“As secure as I can get it.  I’m a little concerned you’re asking about it.  While you can’t go home?”

“I’m-” Verona tried to find a good explanation.  “I have spent some time looking into your stuff and where it originates.  There’s a certain type of item, it looks like you got at least two in a really short span of time.”

“Class?”

“Type, category.  I have asked around a bit and tried to research, because, like, maybe there’s a world where we can stop what’s going on with you.”

“Tell me more about this category of items, or tell me you’ve found headway.  Don’t tell me you can’t, don’t stonewall me.  I’m a little spooked.”

“I didn’t mean to spook you.”

“Don’t delay, don’t bend words.  Tell me.”

“Certain, I don’t know what to call them.  Heavy items.  Items with these huge effects.  I think they, especially, maintain a balance.”

“Balance?”

“Like, if by some coincidence, or by something else interfering, barely anyone got sick all year, maybe someone would throw an item out there to make a lot of people sick.”

“Like a bioweapon?” Sheridan asked.

Verona ignored her.

“And if not enough people die, a knife gets made or appears or something, and it kills my dad?”

Verona paused.  She’d been so hyperfocused on another item, and treading carefully around that, she hadn’t considered that part of it.

“Yeah.”

“Why me?”

“It’s… I’m still working on that.  But I think, like, someone has to use the item.  And just like people are creatures of habit, if they have the choice of having someone out there use it, they’ll use the person who they already know and understand, just as one theory.”

“Who’s they?”

“I don’t know.  Theoretical they.”

“Spooky,” Sheridan threw in.

“And it’s because they’re lazy?”  Clementine put emphasis on ‘lazy’.

“Theoretically.”

“I hate that.”

“Sorry,” Verona said.  “I really didn’t call wanting to ruin your night or anything.”

“You gave me answers.  I won’t say my mood is better.  It’s really not-“

“Sorry.”

“-but it’s- I appreciate you’re looking into things.  Is it the same for others at Sargent Hall?”

“Depends.  I think every situation is different.  A lot of it seems… reactive.”

“Back in high school, I wrote my situation up as a story.  I didn’t use all items.  Just a couple.  I gave it to a group in class, seeing what they think.  Three people in my group seemed to think it was a simulation.  That my character, me, was someone in a glitching game or virtual reality.”

“Are you asking me to confirm or deny?”

“I’m not sure I want the answer you’d give.  It doesn’t feel right, really, but it feels a little bit more possible if you’re right and, what, there’s not enough pregnancies, give me a fake flower that makes life spring up?  Ruin my brother’s life?  To keep the code straight?”

“I don’t think we’re living in a virtual reality simulation.”

“Okay.”

Verona looked across the room at the whiteboard.

“Are you going to be okay?  Being where you are?” Clementine asked.

“Avery’s mom and family are here.  We’re around friends, I think.  Or business partners.”

“Good.”

I don’t know if we’re going to be okay though, Verona mentally added.  She said, “I should go.  Trying to riddle some stuff out, needed some small details.”

“Thanks for looking into the situation.”

“Sure.  I’ve got those books earmarked to get mailed out to you, might have some extras.  I’ve just got to get some other stuff out of the way before I can.”

“But…” Clementine trailed off.  “If you’re right, and someone has to handle this stuff, is it better if I keep doing it?”

“I’d say you’ve done more than enough.”

“But if I stop, does some little kid get picked to be next in line?  Do they lose their family, health, multiple homes, do they get tortured?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think it’s that neat and tidy.”

“Okay.  But it’s possible?  More likely?  If you’re right about balances and this ‘they’ having habits?”

“I don’t know.  We’ll look into it.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.  Take care.”

“Bye.”

Verona hung up.

Fuck.  She could’ve handled that better.

She rubbed at her palm.

She got up from the office chair, circled the long conference table, and walked over to the whiteboard.  It looked like the part on the conference table where the overhead projector had come down now had a non-slip pad on it, covering the scuffs.

On the whiteboard, she reviewed what she had:

Create a Combat Bugge?  |  Too hard, can’t clean up after
Extend KF’s anti-violence paradigm | Can’t talk to Miss
Abyss-‘Found’ a competitor to Maricia | Can’t clean up mess after

And she added:

White Mask of Agony – turn clean-up tool into mess maker? |  No go with Clem

Then she crossed it out.

“What,” Sheridan said.

“Trying to puzzle out a way to go after Charles.”

“You keep writing words and I don’t know what they mean.”

“Well, to start from the end, ‘go’ means to move, make something happen.  ‘No go’ means I can’t make that happen.  With means you include something.  Clem is the person I just called.  So no go with Clem means this isn’t happening as long as Clem is tied into it.”

“Har har.  The other part.”

“Magic mask, protects you, but then you get a huge, long time with pure agony, repeatedly dying in your dreams, or whatever.  It’s not important, figured if someone made that and put it out there to balance out the cosmic scales, bring enough pain into the world, smooth out the wrinkles in the pain-focused parts of the universe, maybe it could be broken, or reversed, or used in a certain way that did the opposite.”

“You just made me more confused than I was before you opened your mouth.”

“Grim reaper style dudes, dudettes and gender-neutral dandies are out there, handling stuff like birth, fate, rivalry, luck, inspiration, and all that jazz.  They’ve got quotas to meet.  Keep it all in balance.  Sometimes they cheat, I guess, and make something that does the work for them.  I wanted to break one of those somethings, make a mess.”

Sheridan sighed.  “I’m going to go see if they have more snacks.”

“You should know this stuff if you’re going to be a good Loser.  Send big problems to the Paths?  Gotta know what those problems are before you engage with ’em.”

“I figure I’m going to figure out one good catch-all way to Loser-ify things, and go from there.”

“Want anything?”

“Pretzels or salty nuts if they have any.”

“Hehe, salty nuts.”

Verona smirked.  “Also any non-soda, non-milk drink.  Lemonade or lemon iced tea if they have it.”

“I’ll get it if you tell me how you shattered the moon.”

“Later.  I’m working on something big, I need to focus, and I’m bad at focusing to start with.”

“Eh, sure.  But only because you guessed my future practice right.”

Sheridan dodged a group of people carrying a broken set of cubicle-pieces out on her way into the hall.

Verona flipped through her notes, found the list of practices and practice categories in the Blue Heron, and considered the options.  What was messy but fell in the Carmine’s domain?

Student list.  Who did they know?

She’d spent the last hour getting four crossed-out ideas.  No closer to a solution.

Picking through the notes and opening up the list of books available on the Atheneum Arrangement took up another ten or so minutes.  Sheridan came by with some nuts in a bowl and a canned lemonade.  Verona used one of her notebooks as a coaster.  They’d already brought an old tech god and his pet urban legends down on the Garricks, the least she could do was not also put a water ring on their conference table.

She saw Snowdrop running down the hall, and lifted her head.

Verona got up, stretching, grabbed some nuts, and chewed them as she walked to the hallway.

Lucy and Avery were soaking wet, and carried their shoes in a bag, while both wearing big rain boots.

“The Missinaibi fairies and Bronte Creek fairy market are on board, Guilherme is waiting for deliberations on some other stuff and then he’ll catch up with us,” Lucy said.  “Squirrels weren’t an option, had to bribe their leadership to get them to not give away what we’re doing.  Little bastards.”

“Liberty’s out recruiting goblins and hyping them up,” Avery added.

Verona walked over to the whiteboard, and flipped it around to the reverse side, where Avery’s stuff was being tracked.  She wrote down ‘Bronte Creek’.

“I don’t know how to spell the other thing.”

Lucy took the whiteboard marker and wrote it down.  Verona wrinkled her nose at the smell of the stuff, and retreated.

“How’s your progress?” Lucy asked.  “I’m still waiting for you to assign me a task.”

“Still figuring out what our night looks like,” Verona said.

Lucy flipped the board around, looking at the crossed-out entries.  “You did some other stuff.  You only had two last time we swung by.”

“A tiny bit stumped.”

“Hold on,” Avery said, from the doorway.  “Hold on, wait a second.  Did you seriously ask Clementine about the white mask?”

“Not directly.  Just about items, what might be around.”

“As far as the dossiers go, that mask traumatized her,” Avery said.

“I didn’t directly ask!  I was good, I think.  I even tried to smooth things over with offering books and giving her some safe-ish info.”

Avery ran fingers through her hair.

“I did kind of accidentally lead the conversation into the knife.”

“Oh my god.  You can’t- Verona!”

“What?  I- I don’t think I ruined anything.  We’re on good terms.”

“But is she on good terms?  Is she happy?”

“She was fussing about brownies when I called, I don’t think she’s happy, exactly, but she said she was okay with the exchange, I think.”

“Brownies?” Lucy asked.  “Like the-”

“Baked.  I don’t suppose you could swing by?  Take them some powdered sugar?”

“I’m trying to raise an army!  Tonight!”

“Just asking.”

“I’m going to go ask the Garricks if they have any.  Maybe I’ll swing by.  But only to make peace.  I can’t believe you brought that stuff up.”

“You okay, Ave?  Not to say I didn’t screw up- I know I could’ve done better, but-”

“I’m- I’ll get back to you on that.”

Verona sat back down in the chair, with enough force she rolled back a foot, while Avery went out to the hallway, looking for someone to ask.  Snowdrop caught up to her, running down the hallway from the other direction, now carrying snacks the Garricks had set up for everyone contributing here tonight.

“Doing okay?” Lucy asked.

“I feel like I’m thinking about this wrong.  I’m trying to think about how to make a big enough mess to screw with them and give us the chance to go for the Aurum.”

“That is the idea.”

“Nothing I’ve come up with pans out that well.  Stuff’s hard to get ahold of, and when you’re trying to fudge things, the entire setup, spirits, higher powers, people, they push back against you.  The system self-balances.  I’m not sure where I’d have to go or what I’d have to do to find something the system won’t touch, that Chuck has to.”

Verona tapped the capped whiteboard marker against her chin.

Snowdrop came in, putting her stuff on the table.  “They didn’t have any strawberry milk for me.  I had to steal some.”

Avery, moving fast, stopped in the doorway.  She had a bag of powdered sugar.  “Snow?  Going to swing by Sargent Hall, then see how Liberty’s doing.  You don’t want to come, do you?”

“No.  Not in the slightest.  Had my fill of Liberty and her goblins.  Always happens.”

“Luce?” Avery asked.  “I’m going to do what we talked about.  Sending our guys in to talk to the key groups and people.  Just gotta find the right messengers.”

“Sounds good,” Lucy said.  “Want help?”

“If Guilherme signals, Peter says he’ll take you to meet him.  Be my extra set of hands for now?”

Lucy nodded.

“Thanks.  Good luck, Ronnie.”

“Sorry about Clem,” Verona told her.

“She said it’s fine, you say it’s mostly fine, I believe it.  But I still want to make nice, and if I stop moving I’ll lose momentum, so I’ll drop off the sugar.  If I’m not back in twenty minutes, assume Liberty’s forcing me to try on costumes.”

“Got it,” Lucy said.

“Sheridan and my family aren’t driving you crazy?”

“Sheridan’s cool.  Like having McCauleigh around again, a bit.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s cool,” Avery said.  “But I’m glad.  Back soon, I hope!”

Avery was already moving down the hall.  The glass separator between the conference room and the hallway let them see Avery go, and let them raise hands in waves.  Snowdrop had to run hard to catch up enough to grab Avery, then became a small opossum, gripping Avery’s arm, the strawberry milk and packet of candy falling.  Avery awkwardly caught both.  Then she was out of sight.

McCauleigh.

“All good?  Need anything?” Jude asked, as he ventured inside.  He pointed at the whiteboard.  “That’s spooky.”

“Which one?” Verona asked.

“Number two, number four, mainly.  All of it.”

“Yeah,” Verona said, absently.  She looked up at Lucy.  “You know, tips I got for studying?”

“Hmm?”

“Taking breaks.  Haven’t taken one yet.  Same time, place, and routine.  New place, I don’t even really know what time it is, I’d have to check my phone, and it’s a screwy routine.”

“Yeah.  Not ideal, huh?”

“Giving myself more time.  Didn’t do that.”

“True.  What do you need?”

“Not… this,” Verona said.

“If you need help collaborating…”

“I will.  But I need something different.  At least until I’m underway.”

“What are your requirements?” Jude asked.

Verona could hear carpet being pulled up.  Deeper voices talking.  There was constant motion in her peripheral vision.

“Someplace a little out of the way.  Dark or dimly lit.  A place to plug in my laptop.  More quiet.  And a whiteboard.  I’ll leave this one here for Ave and Luce.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Jude headed down the hall.

“He’s a good guy,” Lucy said.

“He is.  Dating material?”

“Don’t even.  I dunno.  Let me officially break up with Wallace and process stuff before I even think about that.”

Verona sniffed, then smiled and nodded.

She felt like she had half a thought in her head, and needed to finish it to pull things together.

Jude returned, faster than expected, a two-foot by four-foot whiteboard tucked under one arm.  “Come on.”

Verona quickly gathered her stuff, took a photo of her side of the whiteboard, for posterity more than anything practical, and then followed.  Lucy trailed behind.

I know.  You need a job.

Jude led her diagonally across the lobby, from the Garrick’s office entrance at the back left to the convenience store that was built into the ground floor, front right, visible from the street.  As an employee, he apparently had a key.  He opened the door, then led her inside, flicking on lights.

Verona looked around.  The doors and front display window were glass, but it was late and the most activity there was outside was the occasional car in the parking lot.

“Garrick owned.  If you eat or take anything, write it down, pay us back,” Jude said.  “Use the counter, or use the office.  I do my homework there sometimes, listening for the bell at the door.  There’s a bunch of pens, papers, markers, notebooks, on that one shelf at the end there.  We are a quick supply shop for Finders.  Internet works fine here.”

Verona nodded.

“Thanks,” Lucy said.

“Not a problem.  Don’t do any major practice?  No creating violence-linked Bugges in here.”

“No violence linked Bugges,” Verona agreed.  She set the little bowl of nuts and her lemonade down, then put her bag down on a flat surface.  “Thanks.  Thanks to whoever gave permission, too.”

“I’ll pass it on.  Should I leave you to it?”

Verona nodded.  “Please.”

“Got it.”

He and Lucy left, talking in low voices.  The bell jangled faintly as the door clicked closed.

Verona wrote on the whiteboard.

How to make a mess for the Carmine?
Bugge / Abyss-founding / KF Expansion / Mask

She went and got a pack of whiteboard pens, instead of markers, to make better use of the space, and scribbled out some keywords, giving each a star rating.  Spirit was three stars.  Abyss was four.  Elemental was three.

She didn’t know enough about elementals or the Abyss to really dig into those.

She erased all that.

If things aren’t working, change the paradigm, she told herself.  She’d done it with home, with school, with various relationships.

She needed to reassess the whole scenario she was trying to tackle.

She looked at the question on top.  How to make a mess for the Carmine?

She paused, then erased the words ‘the’ and ‘Carmine’.

Replacing them with ‘Chuck’.

Quickly, she scribbled out more things.  Nightmare.  They’d seen his nightmare, they’d seen what had trapped him.  Resentments.  He still had old resentments, old enemies.

But she couldn’t go for the surgical strike.  She was supposed to go for big.

If I could do anything I wanted, what would I do, here?  Best case scenario.

Charles tearfully admitting how wrong he was, abdicating his throne, all his old alliances in shambles.  Kennet strong, everyone okay.

What would get them there?  What would make Charles crumble like that?

Something big plus drugs?  That led her thoughts to Tymon and Talos.  Big drug spirit summons.  No.

Thinking about the kids from the Blue Heron made McCauleigh pass through her head again.

Best case scenario gave her McCauleigh back, made sure McCauleigh was okay.

She penned it down with the narrow-tip whiteboard pen.

She didn’t stop until the whiteboard was full, then moved to her laptop, pulling it out of her bag and typing there.

Lucy was sitting on the stairs at the back, right-hand-side of the lobby, where she had a view of the entire lobby, including a straight-shot view of the first hallway of the Garrick office.  Where she could see Verona or Avery.

Verona motioned, and Lucy came over to the empty reception desk.  Verona put her bag, whiteboard, and laptop down on the counter that ringed the desk.

“A grand debate,” Lucy read, off the whiteboard.

“Moot,” Verona said.  “A moot that Chuck can’t and won’t ignore.  We make this a lose-lose proposition for Chuck.”

“This is a very different kind of big than your usual,” Lucy said.

Verona, laptop now set up and booted up after closing the lid had put it to sleep, turned it around so Lucy could read her more in-depth notes.

“You realize that an awful lot of these people have tried to hurt, maim, conquer, or kill us?  More than three quarters.”

“Yep.”

“What makes you think they won’t hang up on us?”

“We show up in person.”

“What makes you think they won’t hurt, maim, kill, or do worse to us, when we show up on their doorsteps out of nowhere?”

Verona put a fist out, punching Lucy lightly in the arm.  She winked and clicked her tongue.

“So this is my task?  Being the enforcer and bodyguard?”

“No.  Your task comes later.  But having backup sure would be nice.”

Lucy didn’t groan, but everything about her posture and expression looked like the groan of all groans wanted to come out.  She took a second or two to do that, before reaching for the laptop, finger moving across the trackpad to scroll through the text.

“Where would we even start?” Lucy asked.

“Small practitioners first.  Then someone major.”

“Major practitioners who raided us?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.  Let’s run it by Avery, then we go?”

“I’ll take you when you’re ready,” Jude said, from the sidelines.  “Wherever you’re going.  Free Avery up to do what she needs to.”

“You’ve done the Promenade?”

“Team of four, yeah.  I get less doors, but I get enough.  Further down the road, when the boon’s more spent, picked up by more people, it might be one door at random, with the right cue.  I got pretty lucky.”

Verona nodded slowly.

“We’ve got about ten minutes, by my best guess, before Avery swings back around,” Lucy said.

“Avery swung back around already, while I was working?”

“Twice.  Dropped off the stuff for the brownies, then went to rendezvous with Killwagon.  Came back, left again, meeting a representative from the estates.”

“The estates, that’s the heroic market?  Where Gilkey the poison elemental was?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.  Branching out.  Good.”

“Let’s talk strategy, tidy up this… contract?”

“Proposal.”

“Proposal.  And figure out how we’re approaching this.  We’re starting small?  That gives us a chance to refine our approach as we go.  Who are we starting with?”

“Well, on the topic of refinement?  With these guys, apparently, our best negotiation tactic might be a low-cut top.”  Verona said, before laughing at Lucy’s expression.

With every footstep they took, a distant bell clanged.  It reminded Verona of the convenience store with the bell on the door.  Just more intense.  And a bit annoying.  Verona took a few rapid steps forward just to hear it change.

Verona clicked her tongue as she indicated the wooden carving, life-size, of a young woman with a single devil horn.  Cut out of a log that had been stripped of bark and carved with care, stained with a fluid that settled in the crevices to give them more depth, she had her generous chest thrust out, like she was in the process of tearing her way free of the wood.  What looked like intricate belt buckles had been hammered in so they were flush with the wood, like some kind of reinforcement.  Lines and things added to the effect.

There were two others in the… bunker?  Verona wasn’t sure what to call the space.  Underground and concrete, broad, reminiscent of an old shopping mall.  Pillars were spaced far apart, but the wooden totems were arranged so that they formed a kind of wide gate- one on the left, facing right, one above, hung horizontally, chains suspending it, and this one on the right, facing left.

The rest of it was dark, maybe intentionally dark.  Fires further down cast an orange light to the surroundings, but that mostly just emphasized the pillars and everything else.

To Verona’s Sight, there were some serious flows around the thing.

“Oh Zach,” Lucy muttered.

“Want one?” Verona asked Jude.

“I… don’t know where I’d put it.  If I said I appreciate the artistic talent involved, more than I really care about the… obvious parts, would you believe me?”

“Sure,” Verona replied.

“I’d believe you a little more if you phrased it as a statement instead of a question,” Lucy told him.  She turned her head.  “They’re flanking us.”

Jude backed up a step.

“We mean you no harm!” Verona called out, thumb hooked around a backpack strap.  She turned around, Sight on, to look for them in the shadows.

Mike Storey.  Davion Reese.  Damarion Steyn and something he’d summoned.

“We’ll defend ourselves if we have to, though,” Lucy said.  “Seriously, guys, I fought Anthem and I’m still here.  Think twice?”

The guys stopped in their tracks, then converged on the same spot.  Having a huddle in the shadows.

Verona looked up at the totem that hung over the ‘arch’.  A swordswoman carved out of wood, with a katana and a loose-fitting kimono, emphasis on the loose.

“They’re talking about the totems,” Lucy said, with a note of weariness.  “Girls on their doorstep.  Should I tell them I technically have a boyfriend?”

“They’ll seize on the use of ‘technically’,” Verona pointed out.

“They’re trying to decide in advance, who gets who.  Mike is negotiating for first play rights of some game they’re getting, if he takes the bullet and goes for the tall one.”

Verona looked between Lucy and Jude, then said to Jude, “I think that’s you.”

“I’m a guy.”

“I think they haven’t noticed that.”

“You guys need to work on this thing that happens, where whenever I’m helping you, I end up feeling emotionally battered with a bruised ego.  Right from the get-go, attractive, clearly capable new path runner, I take my shot, she’s gay.  Then it’s really not getting better, is it?” Jude asked.

“Want us to puff up your ego?” Verona asked, injecting a note of mischief into her voice.

“Sure would be nice.”

The three novice Oni practitioners stepped out of the shadows, timing and staggering their approaches so they all emerged simultaneously, despite coming from different angles.

They were mall ninjas.  Their clothing was a mix of the standard department store fare, with occasional accessories and clothing that made them stand out.

Mike carried a Katana, hair a bit greasy from not showering, and had armor he might’ve bought at a renaissance faire strapped to his arms.

Steyn had an overwrought ‘tacticool’ hoodie and a long coat, with two summons behind him- a dog that looked like white smoke, with black smoke rolling off it, and a dog that looked like black smoke with white smoke rolling off it, both with red glowing eyes.

Davion looked most normal, like a regular teenage guy, except for the various belts.  It looked like he’d bought an eight-pack of belts that could have throwing knives stuck through them, and then attached some end-to-end to make bandoleers.

“It’s been a while, I don’t think we ever properly talked,” Verona greeted them.

“Pleased to have the company,” Steyn told her, smiling.  “So long as this is nonviolent, or the opposite of violence.”

“It’s negotiation,” Lucy replied.  She reached into her inside coat pocket, then pulled out a folded up printout.  She held it out.

Mike was the one who approached to take it.  He glanced up at Jude.

“Hi,” Jude said.

Verona smiled as she saw Mike die inside.

Mike retreated to the others, passed the paper to Davion, almost slapping it into his chest, clearly dejected.

Davion unfolded it.

“What’s this?” Steyn asked.

“Opportunity,” Verona told him.  “The Carmine has scared just about every valid practitioner out of the area, every practitioner or family that wasn’t set up by the Carmine.”

“Yeah,” Steyn replied, not looking happy.  “My family moved.”

Of the three, Steyn came from a practitioner family.  A very, very small one, without much impact.  Evicted from the Carmine’s domain.  He’d grouped up with the other two, who’d stumbled on an Oni, way back when.  They’d set up camp here, apparently, well before the whole Carmine thing had happened.  They’d been invited to the Blue Heron, probably because Alexander figured whatever tidbits of information they could give or leak on the Oni they interacted with were worth the trouble and free tuition.

As far as Verona knew, they kind of mostly hung out here.

“But we don’t serve the Carmine.  The Carmine is meant to serve and represent us.  So I want to organize something.  A debate.  With specific, Carmine-related practitioners.”

“A sword moot,” Lucy said.

“And you’re coming to us?”

“You’re combat practitioners, you qualify.  We’re going around to just about everyone.  And I’m going to let you know now, this is part of a plan to take down the Carmine.  To do that, we need him tied up in this.”

“It’s the holidays.”

“We already removed the Alabaster, we put a regional spirit in place, I don’t think many would complain about a representative of the area being a representative of the area, as that area was, when we created her,” Lucy said.  “He should be in the hole, as far as his power reserves go, but that probably ends soon.”

“Offer us something,” Steyn said.

“If we start giving gifts and bribes to get people on board, we’ll be in a pinch when it comes to working with anything bigger,” Verona told Lucy.

Lucy nodded.

“Then I don’t see why we should,” Steyn replied.

Verona shrugged.  “Because we’re going to ask others.  Some will say yes.  Because they’ll know that if they get involved, they get a chance to rewrite the rules.  The more who are involved, the more they can add their clout together and do some rewriting.  If no practitioners showed, hypothetically, then it’d be Others who meet for the sword moot.”

“But practitioners are involved, we already have some confirmation,” Lucy told them.

“What does the paper say?” Davion asked.

“Set time, tomorrow at ten in the morning, we enter the Carmine’s domain.  It’s listing a bunch of topics.  Limiting the age of awakening?”

“Formally, for combat practitioners,” Verona said.  “It’s an arms race.  Kids get awakened earlier so they can get set up earlier, but it becomes this bloody churn.  More importantly, by setting the terms for that stuff, it screws up the Carmine, who is preparing to have a lot of combat-ready practitioners, with funky rules around their ability to bail out.  And it’s a bit of a pet issue for the Carmine.  Kids awakening, the potential for kids to be forsworn.”

“There’s other stuff,” Lucy said.  “Lots of other points.”

“Ones we expect to be hotly debated,” Verona said.  “Finer points to be settled or contested with nonlethal duels, which are overseen and managed by the Carmine.”

“The more the better,” Lucy said.  “Make them overlap, make duels contingent on the outcomes of other duels, make him keep track and clarify wherever possible.”

“All combat practitioners with an interest in the area pulled in together, hashing out some rules of play, establishing contact, making truces, arguing details.  If he wants to change the dynamic and how things run, we change it back,” Verona explained.  “And make it a point of Law that we can force others to obey.  If he turns his attention elsewhere, we get to run away with it.  If he gets involved, we screw him somewhere else.  Already got that partially sorted.”

“Which is why we need the specific time,” Lucy threw in.

“I don’t think I care about anything that major,” Mike said.

“I’ve got a practitioner family, I don’t think I care,” Steyn said.

“Say, example new rule, sworn to by all the major combat practitioner families.  It’d be like, you break this rule, bad karma like hell, and the people who made the rules are in agreement to turn your ass inside out.  Advance warning must be given to attack a family on their estates, and preference must be given to duels as opposed to outright attacks.  Now your family can’t be evicted by threat of force in the same way.  You attend the meeting, put that out there, argue your case.  Best case scenario, your family protects their place, you might get to go home.  Worst case, you’re back where you started but at least you showed up, at least you got your name out there.”

“There’s still the Carmine’s Lords.”

“Working on that.  Removing his help.  Removing his power supplies,” Lucy said.  “Seriously, guys.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Steyn said, in a way that suggested the answer was no.

“Do these work?” Verona asked, indicating the totems.

“Want to go on a date?”

“I don’t date.  She has a boyfriend.  He isn’t into guys, as far as I’m aware.”

“Not into guys,” Jude said.

“We got robbed by an oni practitioner.  Took my self-replenishing knife belt,” Davion said.  “Gave me a kiss on the cheek.  Thought it was a dream, then I woke up, saw my stuff was gone, she left an origami snake behind.”

“Don’t talk to strangers about us getting robbed,” Steyn groaned.

“I woke up, smelled fancy oils and perfumes.  Feminine,” Mike added.  “She took my katana.”

“You’re still talking about it.  Stop,” Steyn told them.

“So I guess it worked in a bad way?  I’d have gone to yell at Zachariah but then the shit started up with Musser,” Davion said.

“Do you go out, put yourselves out there?  Do you even go to school?” Lucy asked.

“Went to the Blue Heron,” Steyn said.

“The whole point of the totems is they come to us,” Davion said.

“Or girls come over if we invite ’em over.”

“Ominous darkness, weird layout, and fires might not be the most welcoming situation,” Jude said.

“Almost naked wood carvings, one of which is chained to the ceiling…” Verona commented, trailing off, looking up.

“Just saying, if I was a girl?” Jude asked.  Mike looked pained.  “Nah?”

“Totems override that some,” Steyn said.

“We’re getting sidetracked,” Lucy said.  “Guys.  Seriously, whether we’re talking about girls or this sword moot, or if we’re talking about life in general… you gotta show up, first.  That’s the first requirement for something good to happen.  You want to be oni-style fighters?  Summoners?  You want to do more than this, ever?  You want to be on the map, for mercenary work, for whatever?  You want to know and have a say in who’s who?  Go to this thing.”

Steyn nodded slowly.

More on the fence than before.

“We’ve got other places to be and people to talk to.”

Max Palaisy stood by, arms folded.  When they’d first showed up, he was wearing pyjama pants, no shirt, and then he’d stepped away and come back with jeans and a t-shirt.  And a weapon- a hand axe with, to Verona’s Sight, throbbing meat things fighting each other inside it.  Periodically one of the meat things would throw another against the ‘wall’ and the axe would bounce slightly against his leg.

Watching them.

A maid stood by as well.  Old fashioned maid dress, but with black gloves that disappeared up her sleeves, and black hair framing a face in such a way that it was hard to tell if she was wearing a mask that looked a lot like a human skull or if that was her actual face.  She had a scythe beside her.  Verona wasn’t a fighter, but it seemed like a very impractical weapon, even with the hallways being wider than she was used to seeing in houses.

“Good Christmas?” Verona asked.  She sat between Lucy and Jude on a bench with a velvety cushion on it, in a hallway with a lot of very dark, fancy wood.  The painted part of the hallway, mostly above the doors and on the ceiling, was done up like a stormy sky, with shades of gray.  In the day, it might’ve taken on other hues.

“Not very.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Not getting a very good night’s sleep either.  Who shows up at midnight?”

“Special circumstances.”

“There’s no need to be rude, Max.”

Mr. Palaisy had showed up at the Blue Heron to teach a lesson on Self and Soul.  Verona had attended.  She, Lucy, and Jude all stood up as he returned to the hallway, wearing a black silk bathrobe over old fashioned sleep clothes, with reading glasses still perched on his nose.

He went to hand them the papers.  Lucy motioned for him to stop.  “You can keep those.”

“Then I will.”

“They’re a bit rushed, but it’s, like I said, special circumstances,” Verona said.

“They are rushed.  The sentiment and intent comes through.  What happens if this isn’t enough to stall the Carmine?”

“We have some other stuff.  Goblins and other forces ready to have their own moots and contests, calling for him.  The idea is we stack it up, so he has a queue of people all suddenly wanting his attention, deliberation, that sort of thing.  It’s his responsibility to handle it.”

“He can defer to subordinates.”

“He can, but I don’t think Chuck has subordinates of that type.  He’s got Maricica the blood goddess, he’s got a city spirit, he’s got Edith, complex spirit, whatever happened to her.  But they don’t- it’s not like the Alabaster, who prepped people to say the right things.  This stuff is important to Charles, it overrides everything he’s trying to do, so he’s going to have to stick his nose in it.”

“Even the goblin stuff?”

“Maybe even that.  I think if he starts whipping up subordinates to get through the queue, goblins chew through some of that.”

“As Valkalla, male Valkyries, Max and I are combat practitioners, we’d belong in the moot.  We transport spirits, manage and harvest Soul and Self, we can act as psychopomps to get credit with the universe, we’re already halfway there, we might as well do that.”

“Got the gist from your class,” Verona replied.

“I remember.  You asked good questions.  I can do a bit more.  There are things I can ask of the Carmine, putting a revenant to rest, asking for resolution and clarification for spirits who died violently.  More things for the queue.”

“That’d be great,” Lucy told him.

“But if I do that, I’m not at the sword moot, I lose out politically.”

As he said that, he turned toward Max.

“What?” Max asked, defensive.

“I go to the moot, you stay home, handle the call to higher powers, Carmine included, work with him to put the tattooed woman and the red-tinted wraiths to rest?  There are a few others I can put on your plate too.  But you should know, you’d be facing down what’s likely to be a very irritated, rushed Carmine.  Doing this right means holding your ground.”

“That’s a lot.”

“I told you to keep studying, stay sharp, in case something happened.”

Max tensed.  “Something did happen.  Musser lost, we kind of lost too, despite the fact we hate Musser and Bristow, the local situation changed.  One thing about losing, we get to relax.”

Mr. Palaisy motioned to Max, who winced, then followed him back into his office.  “A moment.”

“Of course.  We can’t stay for very long though,” Lucy said.

“If we’re able to help you with more for the queue, I think it’s worth the time.”

Verona nodded.

The door closed, heavy.

“Relaxation is short-lived.  Defeat comes at a steep price.  A lack of control,” Lucy recited, under her breath.

The Palaisy family unit, which was rather small but talented, had been one of the Blue Heron’s better people for lessons on the Ruins, before Jessica had turned up.  Maybe even after- she hadn’t ever been a teacher.  They lived east of the Carmine region, not that far from Ottawa and Gatineau.

“He wants to hang out with his friends tomorrow.  While everyone’s still on holiday,” Lucy murmured.  “Dad replies, this is the future of the family.  Max can inherit a serious family name, everything here, all the books, all the resources, all allies, a few enemies, and a seven figure inheritance, or he can take a step back, gets a lesser but still respected family name, same books, some resources, less allies, possibly more enemies, and a five or six figure inheritance instead, depending.  This is the sort of situation that determines which he gets.  What the family becomes.”

Verona nodded.

“Makes sense,” Jude said.  “I got so many of those talks around the Promenade stuff.

“Worked out,” Verona said.

“Yeah, I mean… yeah.”

The door opened.  Mr. Palaisy stepped out, followed by Max.

He nodded.

“Are the Graubards showing up?” the practitioner asked.  A Mr. Eric Mele.

“Uh, not quite,” Verona said.  “This is explicitly about the Carmine, his domain, practitioners working at least partially in his department.  You guys, I read you were competitors with the Graubards-”

“We are.”

“But the reason we’re inviting you isn’t political,” Verona said.  She motioned at a puppet that was hanging from the wall.  The strings that dangled from it glinted in the moonlight whenever Verona moved her head.  “It’s that you’re a fighter.  It’s about establishing the pecking order, and figuring out who’s even pecking in that whole region.”

Mr. Mele was from a dollmaking family that also did battle puppets, fighting alongside puppets they controlled.  Not one that had come up at the Blue Heron, possibly due to politics and conflict with the Graubards, relatively minor, but they counted.

“We’ll attend if you can gather twelve.”

“Twelve individuals, we might-”

“Twelve families or organized groups.”

“Avery’s raising an army,” Verona said, to Lucy, “I think we can do twelve?”

“An army you say?” Mr. Mele asked.

Lucy nodded.  “We’re trying to bring down the Carmine and restore order.  This is part of it.  What we need for you guys is to create a tangle of contests and other stuff with stakes he can’t ignore.”

“I’m something of an expert in tangles,” Mr. Melee said, smiling.  He moved his hand, and wires flashed, horizontal, across the room, between Lucy and Verona.  A puppet’s head smacked into his hand, its limp body dangling beneath.

A single tuft of hair floated down where the wire had gone taut to Verona’s right, a bit of her hair landing on her shoulder.

“That’s what we need,” Lucy said.  She hadn’t flinched.

“You could put forward a representative,” Lucy said.

The heavyset man yawned.  He and the narrow woman standing to his right were two of seven members of the council.

“Ottawa’s a buffer,” he said.

“If Ottawa falls?”

“Then Ottawa stops being a buffer,” he replied.

“Doesn’t hurt you any.

“Gets politically messy, us stepping over Ottawa.”

“Even if it’s to just be a canker on the Carmine’s ass?” Verona asked.

“If we’re going that far, we want to get more out of it than that.  I think the best thing to do is say no.”

“Do you speak for the others, Mr. Croteau?” Lucy asked.  “For Dod?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at the woman to his right.  Mrs. Green, an Augur.  She nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Thank you for your time,” Lucy said.  “It’s not something we’re doing for everyone, we didn’t want to establish that precedent, but we recognize we’re venturing into more complicated politics, just coming this far.  A gift.”

She handed over a bottle of whiskey, bought off the Garricks.

“Accepted with goodwill by the Gore council office of Montreal, subordinate to the greater council.  We may not be willing to help you on this, but I’ll wish you luck.”

“If we cross paths again, I hope we can work together in a polite way,” Verona said.

They got up.  So did Croteau.

“Tell Ricks the Garricks say hello?”

“If I remember,” Croteau said.

The door was closed behind them, and they walked out into the street of Montreal.

“Damn,” Lucy muttered.  “Getting a bit harder.”

Verona nodded.

“Swing by, visit some others in Montreal, see if they agree?  Neumann family isn’t far.”

“Feels a bit like asking mom after dad says no.”

“Well… sometimes that gets you a cookie,” Lucy said.

“Talked to Ann,” Avery said.  “She, Deb, and the Scobies are in.  I have to admit, I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“Carmine on their doorstep, attacked Ottawa, Thunder Bay could be attacked at any time,” Lucy said.

Jude was taking a break, Avery was waiting for feedback from some people, so here they were.  Next practitioner family.

Avery took the stairs two at a time, which Verona supposed she could do, even with snow and ice, because Avery couldn’t get hurt by falls.  The doorbell lit up as she got close and looked for the doorbell.

Lights were already on in the house.

The door opened.  Mrs. Ferguson smiled at them, before opening the door.

“I heard you were making rounds.  You’ve made your way to me.  Come in.  I’ll give you Christmas cookies and your choice of drink.  Cider?”

“Please.  We won’t stay long,” Lucy said.  “We recognize it’s the middle of the night.”

But taking food and drink was a good way of establishing hospitality.

“Solarisse Blaze Ferguson, I know you’re tired, but there are three attractive young women here, and rules of hospitality are a thing, get your butt out of that chair and get the tray.  There you go,” Mrs. Ferguson said.

“Hi,” Sol said, as he stepped into view.

Verona kicked snow off her boots.  “Heya.”

“What if one of these pretty young ladies was your future wife?  Do you want that story told at your wedding?  The first day they came to the house you sat in the chair like a bump on a log?”

Verona glanced at Avery and Lucy, then, while Mrs. Ferguson’s head was turned, quickly put her finger on her nose.

Avery and Snowdrop did the same.

Lucy gave Verona the finger, then quickly put it down before Mrs. Ferguson saw.

The house was pretty ordinary, in an area that reminded her more of Kennet than not- at least as far as how spaced out the properties were.  Avery’s side of Kennet had more houses close to one another, but for Lucy and Verona, and for the Fergusons, it was like the houses on the block had room for an extra house between them.  Instead, they just had big, annoying-to-mow yards and unnecessarily large driveways.

The difference was that here, with the Fergusons, the house was way nicer.

“If you were staying longer, I’d take you around, show you what we’ve set up.  Excuse the boxes.  We had to move after the whole debacle.  We’ve already got the blast room, for training.  Which Sol does need to focus on, don’t you, baby?”

She pitched her voice and raised her chin as she directed that last bit at Sol.

“Guess so,” Sol said, as he came back through with a tray.  The front hall and living room were separated by a wall with a five-foot by five-foot square cut-out in it.  Some of that square was occupied with mail, keys, and a brass sculpture, but there was enough space for him to put the tray down.

Verona held the tray to keep it steady as she took some cookies and a glass of cider, before stepping back out of the way.  Snowdrop took some cider and cookies before doing the same.

Sol’s mom ran her hand up and down the back of his head until he ducked low and escaped that whole deal, retreating to the living room, where he was visible through that cutout.

“Why are you doing it in this way?” Mrs. Ferguson asked.

“What way?”

“This order.  Starting small, working your way up?  You’re in the midrange now, working your way toward inviting in the larger families.”

“If we get enough of the smaller groups on our side, the bigger ones can’t ignore us,” Lucy said.  “They risk a gathering of smaller groups defining the rules for them.”

“It’s a unique situation, isn’t it?” Mrs. Ferguson asked.  “Not many remain behind.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Thoughts?  Are you on board?”

“They have an army,” Mrs. Ferguson replied.  She got a cookie, taking a bite.  “Your cookies are so good, Sol honey.”

“The denizens of undercities?” Verona asked.

“Yep.  Abyssal entities too.  You have a certain bar to meet.  The gathering needs to be strong enough that the Carmine can’t mount his army against it without provoking retaliation.  And he doesn’t want to unite the most combat-ready practitioners in the wider region against him, does he?”

“There are rules and points of Law, if we come with intent to establish that sort of thing and he interferes with it, that’s screwy, karma-wise,” Verona said.

Mrs. Ferguson nodded.  “There are ways around these things.  I think that’s why he’s kept the blood goddess in his back pocket.  She isn’t his, not explicitly.  She acts as she sees fit.  If he can’t act, hands tied by Law, she likely will.”

“We can situate the gathering at the edge of his domain,” Lucy said.  “We can ask him to secure it against outside interference.  That pits him against Maricica if she tries that.  Then we leave when we’re done.  Possibly a fighting retreat.  Costs him more than he probably gains.”

“You need the bigger families.”

“They’d be helpful for the big picture of what we’re doing, but I don’t think they’re essential,” Lucy said.

“I’m saying they’re essential.  The Mussers are less than what they once were-”

“A lot less,” Verona added.

“-but still pivotal.  Still holding precedent and power.  They are still foremost in people’s minds when people wonder how the political landscape might move.  If your sword moot makes it a point of Law that something or other is true, and then the Mussers say different, your moot may be overruled.  Even now.”

“And they’d do that, knowing what an existential threat Charles is?” Verona asked.

“Existential,” Mrs. Ferguson said.  “Sol, you should use bigger words like that.  It would let the world see how clever you are.”

“Indubitably,” Sol said, drily, from the armchair.

“Anthem Tedd is on board,” Avery said, quiet.  “We sent goblins in.  They talked to him, reported back, first thing, before we even started meeting people.  The Moot happens in Kennet.”

“On the Carmine’s doorstep.”

Verona nodded.

“Then perhaps the Mussers won’t drown your moot out after all.  I’ll attend.  So will Sol.  I still think it would behoove you to bring the other families in.  Even ones you’re not friendly with.”

“That’s the idea,” Verona replied.

“If we’ve got confirmation, we’ll head on our way,” Avery said.

“Take some extra cookies.  I’ll get you a sandwich bag.”

They impatiently waited while Mrs. Ferguson rummaged around, not finding sandwich bags, and instead looking for a plastic container.

Sol got up and walked closer, getting a cookie.

“All good?” Avery asked him.

“Yeah.  You guys look different.”

“Been a long six or seven months,” Lucy said.

He nodded, biting the head off a cookie snowman.

“Hold on, I shouldn’t be much longer!  I could swear I had something!” Mrs. Ferguson said, from the kitchen.

“You’re overdue to rebel, guy,” Verona told him, voice low.  “She’s a lot.”

“I could make explosions with my hands before middle school.  Where do you go from there?”

Verona snorted.

“Hey,” he said.  He shot a quick glance at his mom.  “I heard Raquel disappeared.”

“Apparently,” Verona said.

“I know I’m risking being laughed at, even asking, but do you know anything?”

“You won’t tell?” Verona asked.

He shook his head.  “So sworn, I won’t tell.”

“She’s okay, last we heard,” Avery said.

“But Kennet’s in a pinch, and she’s in Kennet,” Lucy added, more serious.

“So I go to this thing, give my all, that helps some?”

Verona nodded.

“I know, again, risking being laughed at, I know I don’t have a real shot-”

“Dude,” Avery cut him off.  “We’re not going to laugh.  You’re fine.”

He looked back over his shoulder at his mom, who was squatting in front of a low cabinet, moving plastic resealable containers around.

Avery touched his shoulder.  He turned back around, a little startled.

“You’re fine,” Avery stressed.  “You’ve been cool to us, you haven’t done anything wrong that I can see.  We’re cool.”

“Sorry my mom Stormed Thunder Bay.”

“I almost whacked her with a piece of construction equipment.”

“That was you.  Oh.  Huh.”

Mrs. Ferguson approached, container popping as she sealed the lid.  She paused, pressing one hand against her cheek, head tilted.  “Look at you four-”

“Five,” Avery, Verona, and Lucy said together, while Snowdrop threw in a, “Yep.”

“You should spend more time together.”

“Maybe after the moot.  A lot depends on how this goes.”

“You girls remind me of me when I was young.  Following in my footsteps, hm?”

Kill me with fire first, Verona thought.

“I don’t really get what you mean,” Avery said.

“Going big, shooting for the moon, being hard to ignore.”

Shooting for the moon.

Hatching the damn moon.

“You have no idea,” Verona replied.

“Who’s next?” Mrs. Ferguson asked.

Easton Songetay speared the ground with a row of four iron skewers, each as long as Verona was tall.

Hot breath fogged around his lower face.  His head was still nearly-shaved, his hair was still short, and he wore the same coat he had to Kennet.  Big.  A gauntlet with pointed tips at the end of each finger and brassy rings at the base of the fingers on one hand.

“That’s not very hospitable,” Lucy said.  “Tell us to leave, we’ll leave.  Then you have to answer to your family about why they aren’t part of this.”

Jude was with them, Avery back on the recruitment thing.  And Guilherme had come along this time.

Which, considering what had happened to the adopted member of the Songetay clan, might not have been the most diplomatic thing, but Easton Songetay, at least, was about as capable of diplomacy as he was of self reflection, Milo Songetay had been a serial killer who got power from the ritual patterns in his kills.  Verona didn’t have the highest estimation of what these guys were bringing to the table.

Verona still had the occasional late-night, mind-wandering giggling fit, recalling Easton’s self-coup during her Demesne ritual.

If I could drink a potion, become a woman, something something, I would suck Musser’s dick with fanatical zeal…

Something like that.

Yeahhh… if he couldn’t understand how that sounded, she didn’t figure he’d connect to Guilherme beheading Milo.

Runes on Lucy helped deflect a follow-up volley.

The Songetays weren’t major.  They were less major than the Fergusons, or the sub-council members of Montreal.  But they were hostile, and the idea had been to get enough people on board with the plan that they could get past this.

Except, again, Easton couldn’t get the fuck over himself.

Easton did something to call for summons.  Two swirls of smoke came tearing out of the trees, and solidified as they progressed, gathering into the form of smoke-covered knights.

A quick glance with Sight- she could see how well made they were.  That they had more to them than just the outer shell.

Lucy was considering using dog tags to match him.  Then reconsidered.  She met one knight in close combat, stabbing into a gap in the armor before switching directions, intercepting the other knight.

Verona tossed out a spell card to interrupt the rolling wave of broken earth that came from Easton.  The two practices collided and a hole appeared in the ground.

Easton wasn’t talentless.  The spirits, the elemental practices.

Heroic spirits would be a mess.  Hard to bind on their own- they were a bit vestige, a bit echo, a bit spirit, and other stuff besides, and you needed the right recipe to counter them.

“Someone’s watching,” Lucy said.

“Put on a good show then,” Verona said.

Lucy used her practice, becoming three interwoven strings of smoke.

No faerie fox this time.  Three goblin foxes, instead.

Attacking Easton’s pride.  He cut down one fox, or used a practice, it exploded, and there were things in the explosion that littered down.  Spatters of slime that sizzled on contact with the snow.  Meat gobbets that moved on their own.  Bent nails twisted together, so that one point always stood up.

Easton periodically tried to use a spare moment in the fight against Lucy to fling stuff at Verona, but a lot of the time, those were feints on Lucy’s part, and she dogged him.  Uneven goblin-fox teeth grabbed his gauntlet, he dialed something into the rings on the gauntlet, then blasted it, only to get a faceful of noxious smoke as the fox came to pieces.

He backed out, spare arm raised to shield his lower face in the crook of his elbow, saw more foxes coming from two different directions, and shot one before it could get close.

He was quick enough to notice Lucy coming from behind, backhanding in her direction, and her weapon caught the backhand.  Lucy stumbled back.

“There was a better way to do that,” Guilherme observed.

“I don’t want to kill him.”

“Thank you for that,” a voice said.

The patriarch of the Songetays, it seemed.  He hadn’t gone to Kennet, he hadn’t taught at the school, but Verona thought she might’ve seen the man as the kids were dropped off on day one of the summer at the Blue Heron.

“Easton.”

“Sir,” Easton replied, looking a little sullen.

“The roadway.  If you can’t respect our property, how do you expect our enemies to?”

“I can fix it.”

“Later.  For now… pick up the biggest stone you see.”

Easton hesitated, then walked over to the cracks in the ground.  He bent down.

“I see bigger.”

“Yes sir.  Sorry sir.”

Easton picked his way over the cracks, giving dark looks to Lucy and Verona, bent down, and picked up a rock that had to be about twenty pounds, oblong, smooth, and unevenly weighted.

“Carry that and keep it with you until I say otherwise.  It doesn’t touch the ground, table, or any other solid surface, it doesn’t touch your bed if you sleep.  Nothing except you.  If you drop it or put it down at any time, I’ll know, and I’ll have you find a bigger stone.  Go back inside.”

“We didn’t come here to cause trouble,” Avery said.

“I know why you came.  My apologies for the boy.  He’s brash.”

He’s a lot of things, Verona thought.

“So?” Lucy asked.  “If you know why we came…?”

“Paper?”

She got a printout out of her jacket, then walked over, handing it to him.

“It’s a rough outline,” Verona admitted.  “We have a short time window before we figure the Carmine recovers from where we’ve got him.”

“You came to us late.  Given the order, there’s a kind of respect in that.  It’s noted and acknowledged.  We’ll attend.  We have our own points to raise.”

We came to you late because you were almost certain to be a pain in our taints, Verona thought.  But she’d take what she could get.

“We’ll be moving on, then.  You’ll want to approach by water if you don’t have a means of getting there otherwise.”

“So noted,” Mr. Songetay replied.

And we’ll have the issue of probably not agreeing with a lot of what you put forward.  But that’s a problem for later.

The sun was starting to rise.

It meant that when they had this more touchy meeting, they at least had the grace of not showing up in the middle of the night.

Servants opened the doors.  Verona, Avery, and Lucy came through.

“The Faerie waits outside,” the servant said.  “And keep your familiar in animal form.”

“If they do not return, you should know what happens,” Guilherme said.

The servant nodded.

“The study is this way,” another servant said, stepping to the side, against the wall, indicating with one hand that was the black of obsidian, darker than the suit he wore.

I know the way.

Verona had seen the interior once before.  She’d visited this same place when she’d visited a nightmare.  It had been full of people in nice clothes.  Now it was more empty.  Some of the same Others were still around, tending to things.

Bound, according to McCauleigh.  Powerful Others turned into handmaids and handservants.

She’d seen this place when she’d seen McCauleigh struggling to find her foothold.  Nobody to teach her about shaving legs or armits, nobody to buy her a bra.  What little help she could get was stolen away- servants borrowed by higher-ranking and older members of the family.

Some Christmas stuff, but with the serial numbers filed off.  No tree, no santa stuff.  But it did look like gifts had been exchanged.

Verona wondered if McCauleigh had gotten anything.

Grayson Hennigar sat at his desk in the study.  A servant was carrying away his breakfast, as if to imply that everything was scheduled so tightly that he’d finished breakfast just in time for them to arrive.  Grayson wore a nice, loose-fitting shirt with relaxed slacks, and had black hair with some gray in it tied back into a ponytail.  He looked like a duelist in some movie or other, and not one of the good ones.  Someone the three musketeers would fight, with the way his eyebrows swooped at the corners, and the way his eyes had no warmth in them.  Something about him just kind of stayed timeless, fashionwise, like he could time travel any direction and sort of pass.

“And here we are,” Grayson said.  “Second to last, are we?”

“McCauleigh,” Verona said.

“Hm?” he asked.

“Before this goes any further… McCauleigh.”

“She’s away.”

“I know she’s away.  Give us the info, give us the go-ahead to go pick her up.  Do that, we’ll give you permission to come to the moot.”

He smiled, leaning back, putting hands behind his head.  “Do we need it?”

“If Charles rejects you, and we reject you, if Anthem says so, that’s a lot of resistance to you coming.  That adds up to bad karma, for intruding on Lawful matters.  If we assume the Carmine is going to fuck with things any, then… you should know the joke about two people outrunning a bear.”

“We fall in the crosshairs.”

“Path of least resistance for karma.”

“You risk upsetting everything you’ve tried to set up tonight.  For McCauleigh?  Was that your plan from the start?”

“Two birds, you know?”

“Why should this half-baked plan of yours take precedence over the integrity of my family?”

“If you stopped being an asshole, you could have both.  A plan and your family.”

“If this is the kind of diplomacy you’ve used tonight, I don’t think your plan will be worth the air it takes to explain it.”

“Just you, Grayson,” Verona told him.  “This non-diplomacy is reserved for you.  You can stay out of this, you lose big, I figure.  Get involved without our okay, it’s a fight every step of the way, and you’d better believe we’ll play dirty, we’ll make it hard.”

He smiled.

“Or give us McCauleigh, agree to play by the rules-”

Lucy pulled paper out of her pocket, and held it up, but didn’t hand it over.

“-and you can come.”

Grayson Hennigar kept that infuriating smile on his face as he seemed to consider.

“If we don’t come, the Mussers won’t either.”

Verona didn’t reply, staring him down.  His smile got more smirk-y.

“You know, I asked the Belanger circle to do a reading for me?  Expedite this whole affair?” Grayson asked.

“With McCauleigh?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Costs about ten thousand dollars a month to keep her where she is, costs me ten thousand with the Augurs to get an answer, if this is going anywhere.  She’ll concede, you know?  According to them, soft reading, situation stands, two more months, and she agrees to come home.  She fights who I say to fight- I know you found out about that.”

Verona clenched her teeth.  Her stomach ached vaguely.

“She does it,” Grayson said, shrugging.  “She sticks with family, she listens, she kills, and if I point a finger or give her a job, she kills who I point at, or does the job.  If I say to marry someone, she marries them.  If I say to dress nice, focus on her appearance, she’ll do that.”

“Is it her, though?” Avery asked, from the background.

“No,” Grayson said, matter of fact.  “It makes her useless for everything else.  Stops taking initiative on her own, stops researching, stops pursuing hobbies, unless told to pursue a hobby.  Won’t make friends, unless told to make a friend, and even then, hmmm.”

Verona clenched her teeth.

“Even with some of the brainless idiots you run into in certain circles, people notice when something essential is missing.  Disturbs them.”

“So she’s a soldier and nothing else?” Lucy asked.

“Bringing us to the question, is a soldier who’ll be with the family for the rest of her life worth one night of extra hassle?”

“She’s a friend,” Verona said.  “If you fuck with my friends, you’d better believe the extra hassle doesn’t stop tonight.  Look at what we’re doing against the Carmine, look at what we did with Musser.  Do you really want to be next in line, after we’re done?”

He leaned forward, eyes afire.  “I love challenges.”

Verona was tempted to whip out her abyssal wand thing she’d gotten off Kira-Lynn.

Obviously that would be a disaster.  Karma, hospitality, shit, fuck.

Her hand twanged.

“Can you afford challenges, though?” Lucy asked.  “Your family has had setbacks.  Most families in the region have.  You hitched your wagon to the Mussers, you lost out.  Can you afford to miss out here?”

He smiled at Lucy.

Then he turned to Verona.  “Viterbo.  Central Italy.  It’s on the outskirts, a place called L’incudine.”

Verona nodded, memorizing that.

“She goes with you, she doesn’t come home.  Tell her that.”

“It doesn’t sound like she comes home anyway,” Avery said.

“Unfortunately true,” he said.  He leaned back again.  Lucy walked closer and put the paper on his desk.  He slid it to his part of the desk, so it remained folded up, right in front of where he sat.  “We coddled her too much.”

The weather was nice-ish.  Maybe five degrees out.  The wind kept blowing Verona’s bangs into her eyes.  She brushed them aside.

The town nearby was very old-fashioned, keeping to a medieval aesthetic, walled on all sides, with shrubby vegetation on sloped ground all around it.  The cars in parking lots made for a weird contrast.

Her destination was a bit outside the city.  A path had statues near it, all in bad shape.

She looked with Sight, for more cues, and saw statues with power.  Statues that, to her Sight, were whole.

The spirits tied to those fixtures moved, barring her way with spears made of spiritstuff.

“Careful,” Jude warned, from behind her.

Verona nodded.

Avery and Lucy had shit to do.  Getting more people on board, talking to the Mussers.  This was Verona’s ‘break’ before things kicked off.

She looked at the spearpoints, and decided that even if they were spirit, visible only to Sight, she didn’t want to test it.

“Hennigar,” she tried.

The spears went back, spirit-people standing tall, spears upright at their sides, resting against shoulders.

She nodded, then ventured onward.

It was like the Faerie cave.  Tucked away, reachable only by certain paths and courses.

Tan-gray stone walls ringed the place.  A squarish four-story building sat in the center, with some smaller one-story buildings adjunct to it.

Verona ventured inside the gates, and paused, taking stock.

There was a building by the entrance gate, with a practitioner and an Other inside, eyeing Verona as she passed through, and behind that building, set against the wall, were what looked like cages, maybe three paces across, same height as a typical room indoors.  The stone of the exterior wall on one side, then separators between cages and cage doors that were densely-knit wire reinforced by steel frames and bracings.  The roofs were more steel, slanted, so rain would run down off them.

Teenagers in sweatclothes with beanie-style hats were digging holes in gravelly dirt, while others filled in holes.  Others were in cages, on hands and knees, using soapy water to scrub away at bloodstains that had soaked into the concrete.  In places, some of those stains overlapped, forming venn-diagrams and tree-rings of harm that had once been done.

There were hooks inside the cages where sweatshirts and towels hung.

Voices in various languages commented on her as she and Jude walked by.  Italian seemed predominant.

Verona found McCauleigh, sitting with her feet in a hole while she drank water from a metal container.  She had a bandage on her face, covering cheekbone, most of one eyebrow, and temple, cut to leave a very black eye with a badly bloodshot white of the eye visible.

“Hang back?” Verona asked.

“Sure,” Jude replied.  “Just don’t let me get murdered or anything.”

Verona nodded.

“Hennigar!” someone shouted in accented English.

McCauleigh turned, saw Verona, and immediately glanced down.

“New kid?  Might be a stay of your execution in the ring, huh!?”

The fact nobody had stopped Verona suggested that they’d been told she was coming.

She hopped down into the hole, which was about three feet deep, then sat beside McCauleigh, reaching for McCauleigh’s water bottle.

“Don’t,” McCauleigh said.

Verona stopped, bottle halfway to mouth.

“Bloody backwash,” McCauleigh said.  She spat, and the spittle was red.

“I guess that’s pretty gross, huh?” Verona asked.

McCauleigh nodded, eyes fixed on the ground.

A fight erupted at the end of the yard.  A boy and a girl, who had to be closer to eighteen.

Staff watched without intervening.

Someone, shovel in hands, moved their direction.

“Mattia!” one of the staff called out.  Mattia looked, and the staff member shook his head.

Mattia walked away.

Jude moved a little closer.

McCauleigh was tense, from the moment the fight started.

Verona waited until it had died down.

Two teenagers in sweatpants were ordered to drag the beaten-up girl into one of the cages.  One of them pulled a clipboard down that was hung up by the door, writing something down.  The other got a hose and sprayed her down with water.  Bloody water washed off, staining the concrete.  More venn-diagrams and tree rings, Verona supposed.

“Do they give you heat?  If you’re in the cages?” Jude asked.

Verona motioned for Jude to quit it.  Jude was probably thinking about how cold the water from the hose was, and the fact it was only five degrees out.  Not so cold that breath fogged, but it was weather for a t-shirt if they were being especially active.  Otherwise… sweater, shirt, jeans, boots.

Baggy, formless, identity-less sweatshirt for McCauleigh.

“You’re always in the cages if you’re not a champion,” McCauleigh said.  “You get fire if you’re winning.  Otherwise you use practice, dig deep into Self to fuel a heat source, stay warm in the colder nights.”

“Hey,” Verona said.

“Hey,” McCauleigh said, voice a little worn out, eyes still focused on their feet in the hole.

“Want to hang out?  Your dad can fuck off.”

“If I go… that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Like I said, he can fuck off.”

McCauleigh’s thousand-yard stare extended into that hole, drilling a spot between her feet.  She took a swig of her water with the bloody backwash.

She’d once told Verona she hated being pitied, so Verona held off.

“Warm bed, heating, snacks aplenty- can’t go back to my Demesne just yet.  Stuff’s complicated, but our current hosts are nice enough.  Avery’s acquaintances.  I’ll be busy, but if you just want to chill out, that’s cool.  Some of Avery’s family is there.  I think you’d like her older sister Sheridan.  Christmas cookies and treats, if you like those.”

“It’s Christmas?” McCauleigh asked.

“Yeah,” Verona replied, nodding.  “A good few days ago, actually.  We’re close to the New Year.”

“Merry Christmas,” McCauleigh said, still sitting at the edge of the hole, eyes on the gravel-thick dirt.  “Didn’t get you anything.”

“Yeah, well.  Company would be nice.  I’ve missed-”

“Bloody backwash?” McCauleigh asked, jerking the bottle in Verona’s direction, sending a spurt of the liquid in Verona’s direction.

“That is actually super gross, wow.  That is an awful Christmas present.  Late too.”

But McCauleigh was smiling now.

“Check it,” Verona pulled out her phone.  “New dude, after Jeremy.”

“Fuck that guy Jeremy.”

“Yeah, wish I could, but he’s off with horse girl, I assume.  Here.  I think we have the same type.”

McCauleigh rested her cheek on Verona’s shoulder, looking at the phone now.  “Yeah.”

“Gotta get stuff sorted before I can hang out with him again, but you’re free to hang with him too if we get that far.”

“What’d you do?  What’d you give my family?”

“A shot at being relevant.  I’ve actually got a shit-ton to do, related to that.  Gotta leave by nine my time, to make this happen.  It’d sure be nice to know you’re okay, when I go.”

McCauleigh stared at the phone.

“This place doesn’t seem that okay,” Verona added.

“You have no idea.”

Verona flicked her thumb a few times.  There were a few images of Page-on posing, a few of Peckersnot’s drawings.  Then Anselm, shirtless, same image Verona had used for the front of her sketchbook.

McCauleigh made a very small approving sound.  Not even an “mmm” or “mm” but an “m.”

“Yeah?” Verona asked.

“Good motivator,” McCauleigh said.  She groaned as she got to her feet, hand pressing down hard on Verona’s shoulder for support.  She stepped out of the hole, then extended a hand, helping Verona step out.

“Got some clothes from Liberty, bet they fit you better than they fit me.”

“Enh,” McCauleigh grunted.  “You don’t know what a goblin did to those clothes.”

“Freshly packaged?  Limited goblin access to the house.”

“I stand by what I said.”

“Better than what you’ve got, at least.  Or I guess you can get something from the Garricks.”

“Okay,” McCauleigh said.

“Need to get anything?  Say anything to anyone?” Verona asked.

“They didn’t let us have anything.  There’s no one.”

“Okay.  Get us out of here?” Verona asked Jude.

“Alright.”

He undid the watch he’d had on, which apparently acted like Avery’s bracelet.  The doors of cages switched out.

“Something low intensity,” Verona told Jude.

“I can take it,” McCauleigh responded.

“You can, but I’m going to be busy for the next bit.  This is me conserving my energy.”

“Alright,” McCauleigh said.

They found a door, and Jude opened it.  The Path itself was quiet, a walk over what looked like the pile-up to end all pile-ups, cars crunched into cars crunched into cars, forming an uneven plain of car trunks, rooftops, and hoods.  Traffic lights stood out, and they were careful to obey those, going on green, stopping on red.

Back to the Garricks’.

Avery’s mom was there, as they got in.

“Oh honey, your face,” she said.  “What happened?”

She doesn’t like pity, Verona thought.

But McCauleigh didn’t complain.

“We should get you looked after.  Shower, clothes-?”

“I want to sit,” McCauleigh replied, turning her head.

“Christmas treats.  Something nice to drink,” Verona said.

“Cola.”

“Cola,” Verona said.  “Did they feed you okay?”

“Yeah.  Not good food, but a lot of it.  Need it to build muscle.”

“Maybe something like a breakfast sandwich?  A greasy, five-layer thing, maybe?  From a fast food place, if not from one of the Garricks?” Verona asked.

McCauleigh nodded, small and tight.

“I think that sounds very doable,” Avery’s mom said.

“And…” Verona started, then trailed off.  Avery’s mom was already ushering McCauleigh down the hall, around the bend.  Being a mom.

McCauleigh looked back at Verona, and Verona gave her an ‘ok’ sign.

McCauleigh nodded, then turned away.

She stopped where she was, letting that carry on.  Then she changed course, and went into the conference room where Lucy and Avery were.

“Whoof,” Jude said.

“Yeah,” Verona agreed.

“Everything good?” Lucy asked.

“Better, I think.  I didn’t take too long?”

“I think we’re okay.  But we’re getting tight on time for that deadline.”

“We’re getting tight on time for that deadline,” Verona corrected Lucy, emphasis on ‘we’re’.  She indicated herself and Avery.

Lucy shifted her sitting position.

“Lucy Ellingson, first witch of Kennet, trifold duelist, bearer of fang and smoke-”

Lucy motioned for Verona to hurry it up.

“I set a task before you.  We challenge the Aurum, with the sword moot coinciding.  We’ve got a lot of hard heads and utter assholes, bloodthirsty killers and worse out there, putting as much contest and bullshit on the Carmine’s plate as we can get away with.  Goblins, Valkalla, faerie and others will add their own business to the queue.  Hopefully that ties Chuck up enough he can’t stop us from dealing with the Aurum.”

“That’s the plan,” Lucy said.

“Then your challenge is this.  Get us an outcome in the moot that we’re okay with.”

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