Author: Wildbow

Go for the Throat – 23.4 | Pale

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Lucy closed her laptop.  Avery checked in with.  Verona… Lucy checked her phone.  She’d sent some texts, Verona hadn’t gotten back to her.  But Avery figured Verona was okay.

There was laughter around the fire.  Lucy couldn’t help but worry she was intruding on a dynamic if she approached.  She was a teenager, she knew some of them liked to tell jokes that her mom wouldn’t be okay with.

She made herself get up anyway.  Laptop tucked under one arm, cola in hand, she walked over toward the group.  Fallen trees formed a loose pentagon around a fire, and were being used as benches.  Lucy had done up a diagram to keep the cold out, so a lot of coats had been removed and were being used as cushions.  She took off her own coat and followed suit.

Pipes was loud enough Lucy had done up a quick sound-altering ritual as part of that diagram, to make it so the loudest voices and laughter wouldn’t intrude on her call.  He boomed, “…and there are the guys with wives and kids at home?”

He indicated Midas.  One of the newly released ones, with the gold tooth and ‘golden hand’ with a gun.

“You want to die?” Midas asked.  “Or wake up being dropped headfirst into a hole we dug to shit in?”

“We don’t need to eat, sleep, or shit, so we don’t have much in the way of a latrine hole, and I’m too big for you to pick up,” Pipes told Midas, grinning, patting his belly.  He was built like a barrel.

“I can bribe the others for help,” Midas said.  “Foggy?”

“I’ll help,” Foggy said.

“I didn’t even tell you what the bribe was.”

Foggy wasn’t too bright.

“Let me continue before you decide if you get pissy.  ‘Sides, I didn’t say it was you, you’re the one drawing attention to yourself.”

“I know the story you’re going to tell.”

“With edits.  And you’re trying to get me off track so I won’t tell it, so-”

Midas began to talk to interrupt, and Pipes was able to be loud and persistent enough to be easily followed despite Midas’ voice overlapping.  “There are the guys, the kids, who enlist, they know there are benefits if they’re married, money, special housing to share with the ball and chain-”

“Maybe they’re the ball and chain,” Lucy interjected.

“Uh huh.  Either way, they marry early.  Have kids early.  So a certain Dog Tag got a good bit of that in them.  Enough soldiers who had wives and kids-”

“This is an asshole move, the sort of thing you take to the grave.  That is a threat,” Midas said.

“-and he’s unpacking stuff, Dog Tag stuff, came with the kit he was given, gifted by War herself-”

The sound of a gunshot made Lucy jump out of her skin.

Pipes wheezed.  Blood pumped out of a hole in his chest.  Lucy tensed, watching carefully.

“Midas,” Horseman said.  “Pipes is still healing, damn it.”

Midas got to his feet.

“-and I see what-” Pipes groaned out the words.

Midas aimed and shot three more times.  Pipes fell off the log.  Mark, sitting next to Pipes, jumped to his feet, hand on his gun.

Horseman was silent as he got to his feet.  Deft, as he grabbed Midas’ gun, managing to take it away from someone who wanted to keep it while also not pointing it at anyone in the process of taking it away.

Seeing Horseman without a coat on, hair a little longer than it had been at the start of fall, Lucy was struck by how he was a teenager.  Muscular, athletic, geared up, with a dark look in his eyes.  He looked younger than Booker.  Some shadow of various kids who were sent off into a warzone.  Recruited out of high school.  Or, on the other side of the conflict, maybe even younger, thrown into things for a cause.

Trick was similar.  He looked more Middle Eastern.  Where Horseman’s look ranged from quietly confident to cocky, Trick ranged from sad to serious.

“That’s enough,” Horseman said.

“Won’t kill him.”

“He’s healing from being messed up by the horror lady, Helen.  And it still hurts him.  We hurt enough, we don’t need to hurt each other.”

“What if he’s hurting me?”

“Is he?”

Midas shrugged one shoulder, gaze cold as he stared Horseman down.

Pipes started wheezing again, lying back on snow with no coat on.

Lucy heard Whistle moving through the trees, dog at her side.  “It’s okay, Whistle!”

Whistle took another few seconds to pick her way through the woods and snow.  She emerged, moving quietly.  The unnamed dog was by her, eyes lit up by the fire.  “Gunshots?”

“Midas getting cranky,” Horseman said.  “You were pretty far out.”

“Yeah.  Keeping close enough I can see the fire.  The mutt keeps close enough he can see me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Whistle replied.

As if they’d come to some agreement, she reversed direction, going back to her patrol.  The ‘mutt’ ran on ahead.

“That’s enough,” Horseman said.  “We don’t shoot our own.”

Midas stared at him.

“Yeah?” Horseman asked.

“Yeah,” Midas said.  He sat.

Lucy glanced at Grandfather, who was stirring a pot of soup that hung from a wire and rod setup at the edge of the fire.  He watched, quiet.  She’d kind of pegged Grandfather as more of a leader, but in situations like this, or in direct combat, Horseman seemed to step up more.

“Pipes?”

Pipes let out a long wheezing sound.

“Sounds like your lung collapsed.  You get a choice, Pipes.  Let this go, and we hope Midas eases up a bit in the future, or you tell your story and it’s a bit of a punishment for Midas, here.”

Midas sighed.

“Can I… tell it… because it’s… funny?” Pipes asked, grunting out the words.

“Do what you want.  But if he’s cranky about it, that’s for you to deal with.  So long as there’s no bullets,” Horseman said.  He sat back down beside Trick.  “We need more wood for the fire.”

Angel was using a knife to cut away branches from the trees, making the benches more comfortable to sit on.  She threw a pile onto the fire.  Grandfather put his stirring stick out to keep the pot of soup from toppling as some branches tumbled down the other side.  Pine needles turned shades of orange as they caught fire.

“Who’s next for fetching firewood?” Grandfather asked.

Angel spoke up, “I was last so…”

She looked at the space next to her.  Lucy smiled as everyone chuckled.

“Seat still warm?” Grandfather asked, unsurprised.

“He took it with him, but…” Angel touched the log.  “Yes.”

“I can,” Lucy offered.

“No,” Grandfather said.  “From the way this was described to me, you’re meant to be going to the Sable.  They might be aiming to interrupt it so let’s avoid giving them the chance.”

Lucy frowned.

“Mark?” Grandfather asked.

Mark, sitting at the next available space, got to his feet, pulling on his coat.  He headed out into the dark woods.

Pipes worked his way back onto the bench, coughing and wheezing.  “Back to my little story.”

“If that’s what you’ve decided,” Horseman said.

“…He’s packing his kit up, getting ready to leave.  What’s that thing, I asked him.  Funny little device, I thought it was a breathing apparatus or drug dispenser.  Put it over your mouth, press a button, get some funny gas, maybe.”

His voice gained strength as he talked.

“So this dog tag, who shall remain nameless-”

“We know it’s Midas,” Angel said.

“-who shall remain nameless, throws the thing away.  So naturally I dig it out of the trash to look at what it is.  And what do we have?  We’ve got a hardcore living spirit, an animus, out in snowy Quetta, assigned by War herself to this conflict, outfitted, armed, and given grit.  And part of that outfitting from War, for whatever reason, she saw fit to have him accidentally pack a breast pump from his nonexistent wife back home.”

There were some light chuckles, Pipes’ laugh was loudest of all.

“That’s sweet though,” Grandfather said, eyes on the fire.  “We carry things from people.  Killed in war, killing themselves, getting killed.  Some get killed by us.  And I think it’s a good thing, that you’re carrying something like that inside you.  Preserving it.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “It’s human.”

“Doesn’t suit you though, Midas,” Angel remarked.  “You as a husband and father of a baby?”

“Because it’s not me.  It’s a bit of some dead guy that got stuck in me.”

Lucy dug into her bag and got out a plastic container, putting it on the bench beside her.  With her biggest notebook set across her knees as a flat surface, she got out some foil she’d folded up and put in the lid of the plastic case, then laid some bread across it.  Once it was arranged, she put it on the stones by the fire.  More to warm up than to toast.  She put the little containers for the toppings near the fire, but not so near that the plastic would burn or anything.  Just to get it spreadable and not almost frozen.

“How was your call?” Grandfather asked.  “Love advice?”

“Do I need to throw more balled up paper?” Pipes asked.

“More about Awareness, Innocence.  Bringing someone into this world.”

“Ahh.”

“But that’s heavy stuff, I don’t want to be a downer or anything.”

“If you let us carry on like we usually do, we’ll start bickering again, until you lose all respect for us,” Grandfather said.

“Nah, I have a hard time imagining that happening,” Lucy said.  “The loss of respect part.”

“Because you don’t respect us to begin with?” Pipes asked.

“Did I give that impression?” she asked, a little hurt.

“Nah, joking.  Joking.”

“Okay.  Good,” she said, smiling.  She wished she could play more into the ‘joking’ stuff, but she was here, sitting with six Dog Tags, with three more in the woods, Whistle doing a patrol, Elvis MIA, and Mark out getting firewood.  Nine other people who were years older than her, professional, with their own group dynamics.  What if she made a joke, like, just you, Pipes, only you I don’t respect, and it didn’t land?  What if she joked and it made her seem like a kid?  Or created more distance between her and them?

She used two sticks to rotate the foil with the bread on it ninety degrees, controlling which pieces sat closest to the flame.

“You were saying?” Grandfather asked.  “Bringing someone into this world?”

“Kinda.  That ties into stuff that’s more the business of my friends.  But I think what it really breaks down to is team dynamics,” Lucy said, feeling a slight pang at the pivot, because she knew romance was a touchy subject for Dog Tags, and she’d made this precise pivot with John, before.  “Contributions.”

It felt like there was a little more willingness from the others to engage with that.  Yeah.

She went on, “And I guess broader… Kennet-side dynamics.  I don’t want to get too much into what Avery was saying, that’s her business, but it does kind of suck that you guys don’t want to push this further than the-”

She paused, searching for a way to phrase it that straddled both the actual plan and the plan that had them doing a follow-up attack.  She looked up, and the feel of the group had changed slightly, enough that the one pause became two.

The silence felt a little too pointed.

She dropped her eyes to the bread.  “-the one big attempt, I guess?”

“You guys talk, keep yourselves occupied,” Grandfather told the others.  He used a stick to pick up the wire fixture that the soup pot dangled from, and walked over to plunk himself down on the same log Lucy sat on.  Horseman scooched over.

The others moved further away.

“The agreement was made by people with more say than us,” Grandfather said, poking at the legs of the contraption where they dug into the embers and soot, to get it more level.  The soup was steaming.

“But you agree too.  You swore an oath to keep this to one more big attempt?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“There’s a limit to how much war anyone should see,” Horseman said.  “Especially the young.  It gets too ugly.  Changes you.”

He said that while looking a lot like a sixteen year old.  As close to being her age as he was to being Booker’s.

“What if it should change you?” Lucy asked.  “What if… what if there’s a lot that’s wrong in the world, and if the really fucked up thing is how blind and complacent and distracted they all are?  Your average person.  I’m not talking about practice stuff only, either.  It’s people not caring about politics, or not even respecting attempts at trying for change, or recognizing what a lot of people are dealing with on a day to day basis?  How many people out there don’t get it?  Don’t even try to get it?  Understanding the other sides?”

“You did say this might get heavy,” Grandfather mused.

“Sorry.”

“No, no,” he said.  “I said to share.  I wish I had a good answer for you.  We might not be good people to ask, here.”

“Not really asking,” Lucy said.  “I’m… frustrated.  Sorry.”

“Difference between us Dogs and most others?  We can’t put it away,” Grandfather said, voice low.  “Other soldiers, they have homes they’ll go back to.  Families.  Wives and babies.  For us, we might feel like there are shadows of things like that, but only shadows.  A quiet restlessness, an ache that won’t quit.”

“Wanting home but not ever leaving the battlefield behind for good,” Horseman added.

“John found peace, kind of.”

“In a way.”

Lucy reached into her shirt and pulled out the necklace with the dog tag and ring, along with the Dog Tags she’d been given, that were really redundant right now, since she had most of the Dog Tags with her anyway.  “He came to Kennet, because he wanted- Yalda wanted to come to a place with snow.  John came because he remembered something about town like Kennet, that felt familiar.”

“Yeah.  That’s right.”

“So you can chase the shadows and get somewhere good, right?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Grandfather replied.  “Not to…”

He trailed off.

“Not to what?” Lucy asked.

Grandfather shifted his position, then stirred the soup, metal spoon scraping against metal as he got the bits that were sticking to the bottom.  “I wonder if he got there in the end.  Or got close.  You’re saying people are complacent, and, what, it’s better that people like you are being sent off to war, fighting for a cause, than to be complacent, no fight in you at all?”

“Considering what’s going on in the world?  Not just Others being bound, or racism, but… fuck.  Poverty, class divides, gender divides- the fact that me and all my female friends have gotten looks and gross comments from men old enough to be our dads.  Yeah.  And then guys don’t get that?  Every boy I tell it to acts surprised or gives a vibe like they don’t believe me.  It’s all like that, all a fight to get people to even accept there is a different side to understand, let alone get them over onto your side.  Or it’s a fight to stop the problem at its source.  Then if you don’t fight it, what are you condoning?”

“Let me turn that around on you,” Grandfather said.  “If you’re always fighting it, when do you enjoy the good parts?  What are you fighting for, if there’s always going to be another fight?”

“Getting a bit too real there,” Horseman murmured.

“Hmm?” Grandfather grunted.

“You and me and them,” Horseman kept murmuring.  HIs eyes roved over the others, who were talking among themselves.  “There’s always going to be another fight for us.”

“But that’s not the end of the world, right?” Lucy asked.  “I’m not saying there won’t be moments, but I guess- you find them between fights.  I do okayish.  I liked dating Wallace.  I hang with Verona and have sleepovers, where we mix being doofuses with strategy.”

“Then let’s say- let’s pretend,” Grandfather mused.  “Let’s pretend that you win.  You win, Charles is defeated, you use the Sword Moot to get the violent practitioners of the area and the area around our area to calm the fuck down, play nice, work together against the really bad stuff, if it comes up.”

“Like maybe the redcap queen in eastern Ontario that had Bluntmunch scared.”

“Sure.  Let’s say you do that.  Let’s say the market becomes a thing, Kennet found prospers.  Let’s say you stop the bad guys, stop the child-kidnapping old thing whose name I can never remember.”

“Beorgmann.  Okay.  I stop them…”

“And you dedicate your life to tying a nice neat bow on it that ensures it’ll last.  Fight for the causes, make a serious and noticeable dent in creeps being creepy, racists being racist, all that.  And let’s say you get everyone on your side and they make dents too.”

“With you so far.  Objectively good, right?  I’m guessing you’re taking this to a place where it’s not.”

“Next generation springs up.  They look at the world and they say it’s fucked.  They say it’s still got stuff wrong.  New wrongs sprout up, the local war mages and war types and the next-to-local war mages and war-types are being good, but the ones next to those ones, a little further away, they’re still assholes.  The good and safe places need to be protected extra because of the sacrifices of your generation.  So the next generation, your kids, they carry on the fight.  And they keep the good moments squeezed in between the fights, while you and all the immortals who’ve been watching the trends see them wearing down, wearing out, getting bloody.”

“And the next generation takes the same approach I’m suggesting?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  And maybe there’s a big, multi-generational setback.  One big fight gets lost, something else.  If that happens every few generations, that’s a good recipe for a forever-war.  Hell of a way to be, if nobody gets to be fat and happy and ignorant, if nobody gets to be complacent.  If everyone’s wedging in the narrow good moments between the exhausting hell of fighting forces and realities as big as the whole damn planet.”

“Could even go beyond Earth,” Horseman said.  “Other realms.  You fixing the Fae?  The goblins?”

“We kind of are?” Lucy ventured.

“Well there you are,” Horseman said.

Grandfather went on, “Isn’t it a bit frustrating, if you give your all in this and the next generation gets a life squeezed in between a lot of fighting?  Like soldiers going to war halfway across the world and coming home to realize nobody cared, nobody even recognizes what they were doing?”

“Might be a mercy,” Horseman murmured.

“-Sure.  And there’s going to be a new, fresh war, and that’s the way it is?” Grandfather asked.

All the Dog Tags except Grandfather, in Lucy’s experience, had this ability to show a look in their eyes that reminded her of that one she’d seen in John and her mom.  All in slightly different ways, slightly different meanings.

For Horseman, it was a bit of that bone-deep weariness.  Grandfather was harder to pin down.  Maybe because it had gone bone-deep or soul-deep and then permeated through the rest of him.

“So, what, it’s insulting to Rook, who’s been fighting practitioners-”

“Rook’s… complicated,” Grandfather said.

“Sure.  Bad example.  Rook is weird.”

“Not sure what she’s up to.”

“I wonder if she’s sure what she’s up to, and I’m not sure I want to ask,” Lucy mused.  “What’s a better example?  My mom and the change she’s seen across her generation?  Miss, depending on how you look at Miss?  Toadswallow and his attempts to change goblins, depending?”

“Yeah,” Grandfather said.

“I’m not saying I’m one hundred percent in this until I’m old.  But I’d like to finish what I started with Charles and win some minor victories on the way.”

“You can finish what you started.  The deal we struck was that you get the one shot before you’re eighteen.  Once you’re eighteen, you’re old enough to decide for yourself.  It’d be a shame if you spend the entirety of your teenage years on this, or close to.  Miss out on vital shit, find yourself older and… irrationally upset at a breast pump, maybe.”

“Hunh?” Midas raised his voice, from the far side of the bonfire.  “What’re you on about?”

“Eavesdropping?” Horseman asked.

“No, but I heard certain words and I’ve been told not to shoot people, but nobody ruled out throwing knuckles.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Grandfather said.  To Lucy, he said, “The things you’d only ever have a shadow of.”

“Verona would say that with the practice, anything’s possible.”

“Mmm.  Maybe.  I think it’s hard to recreate… the Wallace thing you talked about.  Being a kid, fumbling your way through the romance stuff with another kid.  First… hand holds, I don’t know.”

Lucy nodded.  She rotated the bread ninety degrees again.

“Goes the other way too,” Horseman said.  “There are things that are hard to undo.  What happens if you end up thirty years old, you realize you’ve been fighting all this time, and the fighting’s all you have?  Can’t walk that back.  Can’t walk back the scares, the anger, the hurt you’ve given and received.  There’s no peace.”

“Talking about yourself?” Lucy asked.

Horseman shrugged.

“You know…” Lucy again had to thread a certain needle.  She couldn’t gainsay him.  In this situation, it was polite to validate, finding a ‘yeah but’ answer.  “You’re probably right, no peace like that as things stand.  But there’s a way.  I offered it to John, once.  Becoming a familiar.  Offered it to him before, offered it to him the night he was going to the Arena.  He said he almost considered it.”

“He should’ve accepted,” Grandfather said.

“I’m not complaining,” Horseman said.  “But I wouldn’t have said anything bad about him, if you woke me up from my binding and said it’s what he did, before returning me to servitude.  He made the decision he made.”

Lucy sighed.

“Peace, huh?” Grandfather asked.

“You know, you guys gave me this coat.  You gave me John’s tag, Yalda’s ring.”

“Mm hmm,” Grandfather grunted.

“You guys have been welcoming, cool.”

Horseman shrugged.  “You’ve been cool back.  Midas is a bit of a canker sore, but we’re glad to have him.  Foggy too.  Whistle’s a treat, and useful to have around.  You freed ’em for us.”

Lucy nodded.  “But-”

“But?” Horseman asked.

“It’s a hard group to get into.  I feel like I’m guessing Avery felt, coming to school.  Trying to be part of this group that’s known each other and been through everything together.”

“Sorta together,” Grandfather amended.  “We lost some along the way, gained some.”

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.  “I think, like, hearing you guys talk, hearing how Horseman frames things?  It’s like, especially after hearing this ultimatum about letting us have one more fight before we’re eighteen, hearing what you’re saying about me taking the opportunity to enjoy the… the fruits of past victories?”

“There’s a saying, I know I’m opening myself up to jokes saying it, but the world is great when old men plant trees they know they won’t sit in the shade of?  It’s sad if you’re spending all your time planting trees, then the next generation does the same, and that’s the dynamic forever.”

“That’s not the plan,” Lucy murmured.  “Even before that, the others and I were talking about when we quit, what it takes.  There’s a middle ground, where we’re not letting evil win- not letting the asshole who killed John and desecrated Yalda win, but still leaving room for life.”

“Sure,” Grandfather said.  “Speaking of.  Food, you need food to live, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Soup?”

“Sure.  Let me finish saying what I was saying, though?”

“Oh, sure.”

She tried to gather her thoughts.  She felt less articulate around this group, and a big part of what she was trying to articulate was why that was the case.

“You guys… it’s like, on the one hand, you’re saying hey, you’re included.  Offering me soup, coming with me.  On the other, though, you’re saying stop fighting, take the chance to go back, relax, go on dates… am I off base so far?”

“I think it’d be a shame if you couldn’t relax and go on dates, sure,” Horseman said.

“But you’re also saying you can’t.  I’m not saying I want to be a Dog Tag, one of you in every way, but it’s a bit of a mixed message when it’s like, you’re an honorary member of the group, part of what defines our group is we’re going to keep fighting forever, that’s what we are, and you, you stop fighting and go home.”  Lucy feigned a deeper voice for that last part.

“Hmm.  Sorry, not what I was going for,” Grandfather said.

“Nah, I know.  But it’s like…” Lucy searched for the phrasing.  “I’m not saying hey, let me in.  I’m saying hey, ease up a bit and let yourselves come the other direction.  You guys don’t have to fight forever either.  John got close to a peace and if he…”

She remembered the dog tags shifting as he bent down, his hands touching them.  The look in his eyes.  If he hadn’t, just then…

“…if things were slightly different, I think he could’ve had peace.  And without making too big a deal of it, I’m pretty sure I’d like a Dog Tag as a familiar.  So… I might not be equipped for a forever war, but you guys don’t have to be either.  I don’t think you need to be a familiar to find peace, but it sure would help.  That’s what I wanted to say.”

She glanced at Grandfather, then looked away, turning her focus back to the bread.  She moved the bread onto napkins, quickly daubing on some oily garlic butter and spooning on the bruschetta.

Neither Grandfather or Horseman were saying anything.  She’d brought up the familiar thing, then said something else, and now she wondered if they’d gotten the message.  She really didn’t want to make it a big deal, even if it was a big deal for her.

She kept her focus down on preparing the bruschetta.  She answered the silence.  “I’m not looking for a replacement John.  But I like you guys and what you’re about.  I’m thinking my mom would probably feel better if I had a permanent bodyguard, and I dunno, faster healing.  If I can give you guys a break, a chance to eat in a way that matters, a chance to rest, that’s a bonus in my books.”

She kept some for herself, moving it over onto the lid of one of the containers.  “No pressure, I’m not even thinking I want to do this before handling Charles.  I’m not looking for a Snowdrop, just someone to watch my back, a sometimes-dog, a friend.  But it’s what I’m thinking, just to give you a bit of a clue.”

“Don’t see myself doing that, sorry,” Horseman said.  “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

“Sure,” she said.  “Like I said, I don’t want to make a big deal of it.”

Horseman nodded.

I didn’t figure you were up for it, she thought.  I’d really only take Horseman as a familiar if I was gearing up for that forever war, instead of nudging one of you in the other direction, off the battlefield.

She tried to stay casual as she passed the rest of the bruschetta to Grandfather.  She met his eyes briefly.  “You don’t need food to live, but you can enjoy it.”

“True.  Part of why I made soup.  That stuff you made is probably better than canned soup.  I remember you making it before.”

She nodded.  “Pass this on?”

He did, and the bruschetta was passed around the circle, everyone taking one or two pieces.

“You like this stuff, huh?” Grandfather asked.

“There aren’t a lot of things I know how to make that I’m also okay sharing with others.  Cookies and brownies, I guess, but that feels… weird.  Plus this counts as breaking bread.”

“Sure.”

She took her own bruschetta, and used one of the topping containers for her portion of the soup.  “Do you guys get some Self out of this?”

“I don’t even know,” Grandfather said.  “Maybe.  Reminds me, we wanted to ask some stuff, about Dog Tags.  John picked up some know-how about practice.”

“Yeah.  From killing practitioners?” Lucy asked.

“We’ve got some odds and ends.  We had a talk before, about whether we should funnel certain kills to certain members of our group, or spread it out.  Needs to be human or human-like.  Not that we’ve been killing that many people.”

“Sure.”

“We got distracted by events.  Didn’t return to that talk.  But it’s been in the back of my mind.”

“I can look into some books and stuff.”

“Sure.”

“How do you eat this without making an ass of yourself?” Pipes asked, voice loud, using two hands to try to keep the toppings from tumbling off.  One of his hands wasn’t working that well.

“Step one, don’t be an ass,” Lucy said, at the same time a few Dog Tags around the campfire said more or less the same thing.

There was some light laughter.  Pipes rolled his eyes, licking some fingers mostly clean of butter and oil.

Lucy eased up on the heavier topics, trying to find a few opportunities to joke around a bit.  It was easier, with the familiar topic raised and dropped without incident, and with her talking about how the dynamic was a bit hard to break into.  If Grandfather or Horseman were doing anything different, it was subtle enough she couldn’t tell if things improving was a her thing or a them thing.

Soup and bruschetta eaten.  She wished she could shower, especially with trace smoke in her eyes, but they were camping.  Mark, Elvis, and Whistle came back in, Whistle only staying long enough to get a bit of soup and bread without toppings.  Mark took a bit more.  Horseman and Angel went on patrol, and Whistle went after them as soon as she was done.

Lucy yawned.

“It’s eleven forty five.  If you’re waiting for this crew to pass out or give some signal it’s okay to go to sleep, you won’t sleep tonight,” Grandfather murmured.

Lucy nodded.

“I was thinking, if you’d be more comfortable in the truck…”

“Might be colder than the tent.”

“Could run the heater, you could do your thing…”

“The hard geometry of the vehicle breaks up the spiritual flows.  So you end up insulating the space between the truck and edges of the diagram, but not the inside of the vehicle, weird as it sounds.  It could get colder again, while the space between stays the same temperature.”

“Hmmm.  Okay.”

“I already set up the tent.  I’ll be okay.”

Grandfather nodded.

She got to her feet.

“I’ll think about it,” Grandfather said.

It took Lucy a second to realize what he meant.

Right.  She nodded.

She picked up her stuff, including bag, notebook, food containers, some leftover bread, laptop, and phone, and Grandfather clapped a hand on her shoulder as she passed by.

She stowed stuff in her tent, then got out some bundles of sticks and pre-prepared papers, full size notebook pages, not just notecards.  “I know you’re coming a long way, guys, but Kennet’s reach has been improving…”

She put the paper on the tree and fixed it there with a few tacks, before hanging the bundle of sticks and twine.  “Footspur.”

Some Dog Tags twisted around and looked.

“I put in exceptions for Dog Tags.  If you guys want to bring someone else through, some goblin in the woods, someone needing a fire and rest, gotta hold their hands or stay in contact with them.  Then wake me up so I can add to the exceptions.”

“Got it,” Grandfather said.

Lucy tore off the corner of the page with the rune-block, allowing the rune to come to life.

The spirit stirred.  Snow blew, and when it did, it outlined the spirit, who faded into existence, a girl crouched low, long hair trailing on the snow, hands and feet on the ground, broken tree branches sticking up through each hand and foot.

Lucy did another.

“Boughbreak.  For the shelter against outside effects, with added emergency measure if the shelter fails.”

The spirit stirred in the same way.  A figure in the thickest branches, carrying a branch, hair wild with foliage and moss running through it.  Branches bent, ready to snap back.

The branch it carried had an angry looking growth in it, pulsating.  Something dark and elemental in there.  From the way the spirit carried it, it looked like it weighed more than it should’ve, for its size.

“Nyeh, for the alarm.”

Nyeh was a scowling, grumpy-looking spirit.  All the traits of a humorless old man, hunched, big nose, permanent scowl, but without being old.  He had a light to him like he was standing in lighting more like daylight than the darkness around them, slightly out of sync.

“With a curse to hold.  You’re a tough one, Nyeh, so I’m giving you this responsibility.”

The conjured sliver of Nyeh looked unhappy at the added responsibility, but Lucy gave a bit of a food offering, and he took it and stomped off into the woods.

Lucy used the Sight to check she’d set up the arrangement okay.  Placed around the campsite, it radiated outward.  The spirits would protect the surrounding area.

She went into the tent.  It was big enough for her, Avery, and Verona to share, and it was just her.  She drew a little circle for heat management, and then, because she’d promised her mom, she warded the tent itself.

She liked the Dog Tags.  She trusted most of them.  But she was still a teenage girl camping with adults and there were some Dogs with darker edges to them.

She sorted herself out, changing into flannel pants and a lighter top, not so much because she wanted to, but because she felt a bit sweaty and clammy from a day of travel and then sitting by a fire.  She unfurled her sleeping bag, freshly washed, and set up bag, coat, old clothes and stuff to prop her up into a sitting position to browse for books on Dog Tags.  She’d already checked at the Blue Heron when looking up how to bind John and other Kennet Others, so she had a sense there wasn’t a lot.  Maybe the Tedds had something.

She found some book names to ask about, in appendices, and bookmarked them.  Then, because she wasn’t really up for more, she left it at that.

No reply from Verona, but if Verona was deep into a project, then Lucy guessed she’d be up until two to four in the morning, and she’d send a middle-of-the-night text then.

She left her setup up as a kind of bedside table, rolled over, bringing pillow with, and plunked her head down.  After consideration, she left her earring on.

She was tired.  It didn’t take much to fall asleep.

It didn’t take much to wake her.  An un-Dog Tag sort of rustling that her earring picked up woke her.

Lucy didn’t turn on the light.  She pushed her sleeping bag down instead of unzipping it, rolled over, and, on hands and knees, ground alternately lumpy and mushy beneath the tent’s floor, she crawled across.  Sleep clothes still on, she stepped into her boots, and quickly laced them up.  She got her coat on.  Then her mask and cape.  She pulled her backpack on.

Silence rune for the tent flap.  The zipper made no noise.

The fire had died down to a dull orange glow.  The moon didn’t do a very good job of penetrating the leafless foliage.

Horseman was partway to her.

“I was coming to you to wake you up,” he whispered, barely audible.  Trusting her earring to work.  “Seems you’re on it.”

She nodded.

“Don’t know what it is,” Horseman whispered.

Lucy could hear it move.  Its footsteps through snow were as quiet as footsteps through snow could be.  Here and there, a piece of fabric scraped bark or branch- not even scraped, a tenth of a scrape, a whisking past.

Lucy pointed, identifying the direction.

“Alone?”

Lucy walked past Horseman, arm still out.  Some Dog Tags who were up and alert took notice and nodded.

“Seems so,” she murmured to Horseman, as she passed him.

“Good.”

Lucy saw movement, but it didn’t fit the sound.  She used Sight, and saw Footspur, moving, agitated.

Crossing the campsite to that end of things, Lucy kept eyes open.

“Blood in the snow,” Grandfather whispered, as she got closer to him.

She could see now.  Footspur’s work.  Every few steps the intruder took, they got gouged.  She could almost hear the sucking sound, as a foot was impaled, pulled away from the spike of bone, wood, glass, or metal, blood suctioning between wound and material.

Corresponding with another rustle, faint.  A hand going out to brush against bark, maybe.  For balance, but with a scary quietness.

Step.  Step step step, fast, running silently.

Branches rustled.  Lucy could see the corresponding movement of branches, pushed by Boughbreak to bar the way-

And the figure.  Skinny, hair messy, mostly dressed in black, forced to stop, pause.

The figure turned, looking directly at Lucy.

Eyelids had been removed and the places eyelids had been cut were scabby.  It made the orbs of the eyes seem overlarge.  Black cracks or veins ran across their body, mostly starting at their left hand, running up the arm, across the body, up neck and face.  She let her eyes adjust a bit more.  It was a man, maybe a bit older than Booker.  Black stuff was sticking out of the veins or cracks in the man’s hand and arm.

“Hold up!” Grandfather shouted.

The figure darted to one side.

Disappearing from view like Avery did, passing behind a tree at a full-tilt run, blood gouting from the multiple wounds in foot and ankle as feet were picked up off snow and moved forward.  Except this Other, like Avery, didn’t emerge from the far side, like the eye and physics seemed to suggest they should.

But she could hear noise.  Hand rustling on bark.

“Still there,” she pointed.

Her hand moved, tracking the ascent.  Climbing the tree, silently, fast.

“It wants us,” she observed.  “It’s not some Other passing through.  It came, there was pushback, it’s still coming.”

“What is it?”

“Black cracks and veins makes me think Abyssal.”

“Maricica’s?” Horseman asked.

Lucy shrugged.  “We’re outside the Carmine realm, but…”

“Yeah.”

Boughbreak tried to bar further ascent.  Lucy could see branches fall.  Meanwhile, Footspur was preparing spikes below, in case the Other plummeted.

“Where’s Nyeh?”

“Alerted us, got cut down, we think.”

Nyeh was the type to take that personally.  Extra offerings for the next month or two, probably, to make nice.

Verona had done some repair work on Lucy’s weapon ring.  It wasn’t a full job, her blades might not be as sharp as it could be, but her weapon wouldn’t fall apart and the ring wouldn’t break if she tried to use it in too harsh a situation.  She drew a blade.

Then, tracking the threat, the sound, and everything else, Lucy adopted a stance, one hand folded behind her back, blade pointing, tracking the target.  Hold the blade light-

The branches barred the Other again.  It tore its way past them.

Light enough your heartbeat can move the tip.  Then aim it at your target’s center.  That’s usually the heart.

She used her ears to track the target, forcing herself to be calm, centered, and firm in her own power.

The enemy was fast enough that it was hard to get a bead on their heart.  She had to feel for it.

They got past Boughbreak, then paused.

She found that wavelength.  Herself and the target.  Her blade’s point was pushed aside with every competing heartbeat.  Like there was a hand on it.

Her eyes flicked open.

“That thing is stronger than Guilherme.”

“Hm?” Grandfather grunted.

“And me.  And all of you.”

“Whistle was out in the woods.  She hasn’t come back.”

“That’s a pretty bad sign.”

“Dog didn’t even bark or whimper, that we heard.”

Lucy nodded.

“Maybe your earring counters it?”

“Guilherme taught me a practice, for measuring strength.  That thing is strong in a fight.”

She pointed, tracking its movements across the upper branches of trees.

“What are our options?”

“We can’t leave Whistle behind.  Assuming she’s out there in the woods, recovering from whatever that thing did to her.  It’s Abyssal, so its wounds will take longer to heal.”

“Right.”

“Let’s keep retreating to the trucks as a plan B.”

“My instincts say over-the-top violence,” Horseman said.

“Guns don’t work so well against Bogeymen, especially.  They’re a coup thing, not a ‘make it stop’ thing.”

“Not sure what that means.”

“Buys you a chance to turn the tables, but won’t put it down for good.  Slasher movie monster logic.”

“Okay.”

Angel, a healing Pipes, Grandfather, Horseman, Midas, Mark, and Foggy.

Whistle had been out in the woods.  Elvis, like usual, was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Trick?”

“Woods,” Grandfather said.  “On patrol with Whistle.”

“Wish we had Ribs or Black,” Horseman muttered.

With the fires in Kennet, they’d wanted to keep Ribs back.  Black was worse off than Pipes, after Helen’s work.  They’d had to cut off parts of her and Pipes and break them so they’d heal back to a regular shape, set of angles, and number of limbs.

“I’m not sure explosions would do it,” Lucy admitted.

“If it’s about counting coup, we’ve gotta count a lot of coup, right?” Horseman asked.

“I’m worried you won’t get the chance.”

“Right.  But not taking any action at all gives us zero chance.”

Lucy nodded.

She pulled out spell cards.

“Who has a shot?” Horseman murmured.

Mark whistled, short and faint.

Horseman gestured.

Mark still had a silence rune on his gun that Lucy had given him a couple of days ago.  The gun flashed.

Angel followed up, aiming at the same target, as the flash of the gun illuminated general shapes.  A dark shape fell.

Lucy tossed a spell card.  A blast of ice, to encrust, slow down, hopefully.

Except it was a heavy branch with Whistle’s dog speared on a part of it.  Now speared and covered in a thick layer of ice.

In the aftermath of the gunfire, it took Lucy’s ears a second to readjust.

A second was too slow.  The figure moved across treetops, flinging themselves forward, caught a branch, and swung like a monkey.

On landing, spiked branches thrust up out of the snow, spearing both feet from below.  The wide-eyed man didn’t seem to care.  He bolted, right for Angel.  More branches thrust up out of the snow, stabbing his feet.  Angel leveled her rifle at him, firing, and it pinged off something on his arm.

The way he moved- it was like his body wasn’t a body.  He held something in front of him, and it was like a chicken being held in the air, head at a fixed point, while the rest of him moved independently and in service of that.  A weapon, held out at a specific level and angle, moving here and there, as Angel shifted her footing, firing again.  One grazing hit, one hit blocked by the blackened arm again.

There were other gunshots.  Horseman, not far from Lucy, opened fire.  Trees in the way blocked most of the shots.  Others missed.  The Other paused once, as a tree blocked him from their sight, throwing off aim and tempo, before lunging for Angel, low to the ground.

Lucy strained to see.  In that one hand, reaching out ahead, was a black stick.

A black scalpel.

“Fuck.  That’s a-”

He jumped Angel.  Arm hooked around her neck, scalpel cutting chin, cheek, temple, forehead.  She fought him, grabbing, and he deftly fended her off.  Other temple, other cheek.  She drew a combat knife and stabbed, and he blocked it with the elbow of that black-encrusted arm, holding scalpel near the palm as he hooked fingers in nostrils.

He ripped off Angel’s face, using the fistful of skin to grab the combat knife out of her hand.  His other hand gripped her hair to hold her up as as a shield against incoming gunfire.

Horseman just opened fire, shooting through Angel to get the guy.  Lucy couldn’t tell if any connected, but it seemed he didn’t love being shot.  He moved behind a tree.

“Fuuuck!” Angel shrieked, falling to her knees.

A hand and arm reached out from behind the tree, deftly stabbing Angel three times in the back of the neck.

Her eyes widened, and she fell, limp.

Three little cuts between vertebrae.

“Black Scalpel!” Lucy raised her voice.  “Carmine Lord, it used to be bound because people couldn’t get rid of it, it kept coming back, they sealed it inside an area and Charles fucking let it free!  It’s an Abyssal tool!  A really strong one!  Try not to kill the host!”

“What do we do?” Grandfather asked.

“Who has the keys?”

“You want us to run?”

“Something like that.”

“Mark was driving.  So was Whistle.”

Whistle was probably out, except, maybe…

No, if she thought a few steps ahead-

A gunshot from the trees dropped Pipes.  Right in the forehead.

With Angel’s rifle.

“Fucker,” Grandfather whispered.

Lucy saw the figure move between trees, throwing the rifle aside.  Maybe because he didn’t want to bother reloading.  Maybe because one hand was occupied with the scalpel.

Elvis was there, stepping out of the darkness, combat knife in hand-

And lost the ensuing tangle.  The moment the struggle turned against him, Horseman began unloading bullets into him, not caring he was being used as a human shield.

Holes in the feet, every other step seemed to be a prompt for Footspur to stab the guy from below.  Bullets meant holes in the legs, one arm.  It was slowing the wielder of the Black Scalpel down.

Abyssal, bogeyman-style energy kept them upright.

“I need your tags,” Lucy said.  “And I need the keys.”

“Mark!” Horseman shouted.  “Do you have-”

The Scalpel threw something out of the upper branches of the trees.  At Mark.  Mark swatted it out of the air, aiming and shooting at the source of it.

Angel’s face-skin.

Mark glanced at it, grimacing.

Which was a mistake.  A momentary distraction, emotional attachment-

And another projectile came flying.  Angel’s knife, taken from her.  It impaled Mark in the forearm.

He aimed to shoot again, as the bogeyman came running, low to the ground.  But something about the placement of the knife meant his trigger finger didn’t work.

From where he was positioned, there was no clear shot at him that didn’t go through Mark.

“Go down!” Horseman shouted.

Mark threw himself sideways, into snow, simultaneously dropping his gun into his left hand.  He aimed-

And the Scalpel leaped over fire.  Kicking the burning embers and stray bits of wood outward.  Burning wood slapped Mark’s upper chest, sparks flying off it.  Other things went toward Midas, who flinched, and Foggy, who mostly ignored it, aiming and firing a shotgun.

The force of the pellets hitting the Scalpel knocked it over.  But it wasn’t enough.

Lucy moved, darting toward Mark.

“Say yes!” Lucy told Mark.

He was struggling to turn over and get a good angle on this fast-moving Scalpel.  A target that would be hard to hit without murdering the host.  He looked at her.

The Scalpel had reached Foggy and cut his face off.  Thick glasses fell to snow.  The body fell on top of a wounded Midas.

She used a dueling paper, pulling it free of the rubber band with the rune-block on it.  Her arena unfurled around her, catching Mark in it.  “Fight me.”

“The fuck?” Mark asked.  “Sure.”

The dueling circle solidified.

An arena for herself and Mark.  The snow became a pink-white, the trees black.  She and Mark were illuminated in brilliant colors, her hair white.  Mark’s scars stood out, including the ones framing his eyes- a ‘plus sign’ of scars around one eye that hadn’t been there at the start of fall.  The faint patterns of his military jacket shifted like clouds on the sky.

The Scalpel approached, staring at them with lidless eyes.  As Horseman fired, shattering the Scalpel’s shoulder, the Scalpel moved around, behind the two parked vehicles, then behind the barrier of the dueling arena.  Using it to block Horseman’s gunshots.

“Fucker,” Mark muttered.  He pulled the knife out of his forearm.  “I have to fight you?”

“It’s kind of a rule.  I’d appreciate it if you lost.  I want the keys to the van.  Really hoping you have them.”

Mark nodded.  He fished them out.

Horseman threw two homemade bombs.  Probably parting gifts from Black when they’d left.  One thrown to each side of the dueling arena.

Trusting that the arena’s boundaries would hold.

Nails and other makeshift shrapnel flew out.  It wouldn’t do much to an Abyssal thing.  The Scalpel stumbled, then darted into the trees.  Boughbreak blocked the way, and the Other pushed through.

Between the damage and the force of the push, Boughbreak’s other side came through.  It was a complex spirit, one with a bit of an elemental tumor in it.  So when the Bough broke-

The wood shattered, splinters exploding out with a lot more force than the bombs had had.  The Scalpel fell.

Only to pick itself up again.

“Okay.  Should I lose now?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s… hold on.”

“Here.  Since you’ll probably win,” Mark said.  He threw the keys at Lucy.  She caught them, not taking her eyes off the Scalpel.

Horseman went for it.  He drew a combat knife, then rushed the Scalpel, who was wounded by the splinters, countless chunks of wood embedded in flesh, wounded by multiple gunshots, and countless stabs to the undersides of his feet.  The Scalpel was pretty much moving on the stumps of footless legs, at this point, maintaining balance and speed.

Horseman took two steps, ducked left- with Grandfather directly behind him, ready to fire in that moment.  A pre-arranged signal Lucy hadn’t caught with the arena’s barrier up.

Three more steps, duck left again.  Grandfather fired.  One more step, duck right- the Scalpel dodged that one.

And Horseman clashed with it, knife against scalpel.

Lucy wasn’t in a position to measure power, but the Scalpel had taken a fierce beating and Horseman was good.  Maybe not as tricky as John, not as ready to answer stuff like glamour, dunking Lucy in water.  But… good.

Good enough to win.  Fending off surgical swipes with the scalpel, stabbing less surgically with the combat knife.

The Scalpel, losing, stumbled back, and then casually threw the scalpel aside.

It rolled, skidding over snow packed by multiple footsteps, bounced, and fell into the paralyzed, faceless Angel’s hand.

Her fingers closed around it.  The Scalpel-wielding Angel wasted no time in lunging to her feet, darting to the side, taking trees as cover.

“Fucking-” Mark muttered.

“Mark,” Lucy said.  “First blood okay?”

“Whatever you say.”

She used her rapier, and she watched the Scalpel.  Tracking movements, listening.

Angel was quieter.

Faster to ascend the trees.  That was her whole thing.  She was agile, fast.  Parkour stuff.

She leaped from high treetop to Horseman.  He moved to one side, shooting- the Scalpel barely cared.  She landed, and Lucy swore under her breath.

The provisions to exclude the Dog Tags from the spiritual defenses counted against them here.  Her feet didn’t get stabbed when she landed.  She was faster, stronger, and she met Horseman as the Scalpel without injuries, this time.

A stab of the knife was deflected with a forearm meeting forearm, scalpel in hand burying itself in wrist.  Horseman lost the use of his fingers.  The scalpel was pulled free, slashing Horseman across the throat in the same motion.

Lucy poked Mark in the chest, drawing blood.  The arena barrier quietly broke, and she put a hand on Mark’s arm, pushing him lightly in the direction of the attacker.

“Yeah,” he whispered.  “Fuck me.”

Lucy went for the van, as Grandfather, a bleeding-out Horseman, and Mark all engaged with the Scalpel.

She put keys to ignition, basically having to sit on the very edge of the seat to get foot onto the pedals, because Mark’s legs were longer than hers, and fumbled, trying to get the van to start.

Swearing, pulling her bag off, she got the twigs out, spilling two onto the floor of the passenger seat.

Enginehead.

She pressed the arrangement of twigs and metal bits against the dash.  “Come out!  Drive!”

The spirit emerged, flowing into the vehicle.  The key turned, it turned on- probably a necessary component, because ownership mattered for this.

Then Enginehead kicked them into roaring motion, gearshift clicking madly as it adjusted, wheels skidding.

They narrowly avoided trees on their way out.  Leaving the Dog Tags behind.

She looked back as they reached the road, and she saw the Scalpel in Angel’s body, stepping out onto the road, standing there, looking.

“Keep driving.  Have fun, go fast,” she told the spirit.  “Don’t get us killed in the meantime.”

She buckled up, then got her phone.

She dialed.  Conference call.  It’s three in the morning.  I hope I can reach them.

Avery was first to pick up.

“What’s wrong?” Avery asked.

“Dog Tags.  You have some.”

“Yeah.”

“Use them.  Now.  Fuck, I can’t get Verona awake.”

“She sleeps heavy.  Call-”

“McCauleigh,” Lucy said, already switching to the contact list.  Click, hold, select ‘add to call’.

The phone rang.

“Is Verona there with you?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Emergency.”

It took a second.

“Lucy?” Verona asked.

“Dog Tags.  Use them ASAP.  Gotta get the Dogs out of a bad situation.”

“On it.”

“They’re nearly dead,” Avery said, over the same call.

“You got them out?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, also, be careful none of them is wielding a scalpel.  I don’t think it works that way, but-”

“Yeah.”

Lucy patted the dash.

“Oh man, oh man,” Verona said.

“You got ’em?  You got yours?”

“I’m not getting a reply from Midas.”

“Midas is a pain in the ass.  Fuck,” Lucy muttered.  “Fuck.  I’ve got- Enginehead!”  Lucy slapped the dashboard a few times.

The engine roared in response to the name and signal.

“Stop.  Let me do this, then I think you can drive for a while.”

The van reluctantly slowed.  It fishtailed a bit as it hit a slower speed, like Enginehead got to be a worse or less effective driver when not going full blast.

Lucy pushed the door open.

She couldn’t really rush this.

“Tell us what happened?” Avery asked.

“Carmine Lord outside the Carmine borders,” Lucy said.  “Black Scalpel.”

“Haven’t heard about that one in a while.  I thought Musser stopped it.”

“Comes back,” Lucy said.

She put the phone on the top of the wheel so it was close enough, and drew in chalk on the road.  It was dark, it was a rural road.  Nothing came by, or looked like it was coming by.

She explained what had happened to the others.

Was this strong enough?  She didn’t know.  The Scalpel was a nasty one.

She pulled off the tags.  Facing the direction they’d come from, she stepped forward, throwing all of them down into that barrier circle.  All of them except the ones who hadn’t come with her today.

From the tags she carried with her, that meant Angel, Grandfather, Pipes, and Foggy.

She remained tense, ready for Angel to be wielding the Black Scalpel, to come tearing through that barrier.

She wasn’t.  No Scalpel in evidence.

But none of them were in good enough shape to pick themselves up or help her get them into the van.

So she remained there, sitting with her butt against the wheel hub, bloody and mutilated soldiers at her feet, taking a painfully long time to rouse.

A scalpel wound takes longer for them to heal than a weapon of war.  She remembered that from working with John.  Musser had the one scalpel-wielding Other.

There was no sound out there, except for the hum of the engine, and the raspy breathing of the Dog Tags slowly pulling themselves together.

Grandfather recovered enough to sit up.  A moment later, he was on his feet.  With Lucy’s help, he lifted Pipes up and roughly pushed him onto the floor of the back of the van.  A faceless, slashed-up Angel followed soon after.  It helped Angel was half of Pipes’ weight.  Then Foggy, who was heaviest, but Grandfather had healed enough to manage that, and Foggy was coherent enough to help himself a bit.

Lucy got her phone and shut the door.

She let Grandfather sit in the driver’s seat, with instructions to let Enginehead have the wheel for a while.  She took the passenger seat, in the van that smelled like blood.

It was early afternoon by the time they arrived.  One scare with the Scalpel showing up somewhere ahead of them on the road.  They’d let him slash a tire and had driven on the rim to the next town, where Lucy had used Marlen’s machine-repairing egg beater to fix things up and get them going again.  One tease of a sighting of the tea party bogeymen, who the Lord of that local area had helped avert.

When she gave her report to her mom and Verona, she’d said that last bit was less eventful than it sounded.  It had been.  But she was worried that Charles was this willing to push beyond the boundaries of his realm, sending powerful Others into adjacent spaces.  Worried it was Seth aiming these Others at her, Lucy put some anti-Augury measures into place and that did seem to help cut down on how much these threats showed up.

The sky got darker in the mid-afternoon, and things got far darker as they went down the road.

The Dog Tags were taking a while to heal up.  Angel especially.  With the others in Thunder Bay and Kennet, the group had shrunk a lot.  Even if they’d been in fighting shape, it would’ve been rough to have another encounter.

“It’s hard to not put you in the same box we put Yalda,” Grandfather said, quiet.

“Hmm?  That’s fair, though,” Lucy said.  “I can see where it’d happen.”

“You’re not at all like her, though.”

“She’s probably better at singing than I was at guitar.”

“Let us listen sometime.”

“I’m still pretty bad.”

“John was bad too.”

“He got okay,” Lucy said.  “Only thing was he insisted on singing along, and he didn’t have the voice for the singing he liked doing.”

Grandfather nodded.

Shadows between the trees deepened.  The trees and light-posts that the van drove past swept past them, becoming more and more evenly spaced, trees becoming more like fixtures.  Light-posts becoming more natural.

Until they were on a road lit only by headlights, passing through a series of black-painted arches, with a sea of misty darkness on either side, behind, and ahead of them.

Then there was no road.  No sound of wheel on roadtop, snow, or ice.  They passed through a series of arches, hypnotic in how they punctuated every few seconds of travel, silently sweeping past.

The van coasted, maintaining trajectory.  Grandfather, driving, turned the ignition off.  It didn’t change anything, except to make the car interior a bit darker.

The shadow of one archway swept past, and then the Sable was there, sitting on the stubby hood of the vehicle, wearing a black suit with a midnight blue dress shirt, black tie.  His hair was long and thick, his beard narrow and scraggly, his eyes black.

“Are you here to unseat me?  Destroy me?” the Sable asked.

There was no windshield to block the sound.

“No.  Even if we were, the idea would be we’d approach you, trying to sound you out.”

“I heard from the Aurum.  I looked into the Alabaster situation.  If you were, I’d say that your journey began from a place and time of violence, you met violence on the way, you had violence as traveling companions, you had violence in mind.  That’s cause enough for me to send you to the Carmine Exile.”

“I have capital-L Law in mind,” Lucy said.  “There’s more to my friends here than violence.  There’s more to Kennet and what Kennet is doing right now than violence, too.  I met Charles’ fuckery on the way, I think sending right into the way of more fuckery would be…”

She wasn’t sure how to phrase it, and puffed out her cheeks slightly.

“…Fucked?”

“If you’re truly here to see me, and if there’s no cogent argument to make that you’re truly seeking the Carmine, then you’re entitled to an audience with me by Law.”

They passed through an archway like all of the others and it was like coming out of a tunnel.

Lucy had seen the spirit kingdoms in books.  Places, especially out east, where there was more establishment of spiritual identities and cultures.  Where Animus mingled with spirit and Others often had a place to go to, passing through some threshold into a misty, majestic place.  A big part of the Oni wars had been an effort to segregate the world of humans and the world of Others by forced relocation of Others into the spirit world.

The van had stopped.  So they got out.

A shifting, ghostly landscape of majestic buildings in a sea of mist.  It was so still it looked like a painting, except little details would bleed out or shift.  It was more Western than Eastern in style, but there were faint influences.  Like some artist who’d drawn in a different style all their life was drawing manors or ivy league university buildings on rolling hills in black mist.  There were no birds, no sounds.  The silence was so heavy it felt like it sucked something out of Lucy.

And, here, with one distinct detail.  It was cold, dark, and done up in black stone.  The gardens were more black stone, in splinters and slivers.  There was no sky, but some vast cavern ceiling of more black stone.  Firefly-like white lights drifted with the mists, illuminating traces of the water’s surface, and giving some fleeting sense of what would otherwise be black architecture and landscape against a black background.

“It is customary to ask for a favor, to make a statement of intent,” the Sable said.

“Is this discreet?  Does the Carmine listen in?”

“If you ask for him to be left out, then he cannot hear.”

“I’m asking.”

“Then he cannot hear.  Your favor, your intent?”

“A conversation,” Lucy told him.  “I want to know where you’re at, the role you play in this.”

“I oversee the Pale.”

“An older term for boundaries.  Borders.”

“Very much that.  Between realms.  Between life and death.  Your intent?”

“Oh, you wanted both,” Lucy replied.  “You think the conversation is the favor, and not the intent?”

“That was my interpretation,” the Sable said.  “The intent.  What reason for the conversation?  What do you want, here?”

“To know your stance.”

“Why?  Behind that intent?”

“To stop Charles.  Because he’s ruining everything we’re doing, he’s ruining what you’re doing, I think.  He’s ruining everything.  I don’t think his reasons are good enough.  I think in terms of Law, he’s skirted rules.”

“Many of the rules he flouts are ones that haven’t been set in stone.  With your sword moot, you tried setting some things in stone.”

“Maricica seemed to get away with flouting those things.”

“And weakened your position somewhat.  But she is being punished in a way.”

“I want to stop him.  I want to figure out where you stand in relation to that.  We’ve got one judge I think we can trust to be reasonable, one that’s compromised, and one that’s a real problem.  Depending on where you stand, it becomes fifty-fifty or it’s one against three.”

“It’s rarely that simple in pure numbers.  However, I do follow your sentiment.”

“Sure.”

“I must see to some business while you’re here.  Bear with me.  I’ve taken on the Alabaster’s responsibilities, now that I’m the oldest Judge.”

“Sure.”

“You can observe or potentially participate.  Perhaps the light that shines on my actions and roles will help compensate for the fact I’m distracted.”

“So long as it doesn’t involve me getting into trouble, or any traps, feeding any information to the Carmine Exile…”

“Nothing of the sort.”

“Okay, sure.”

“If I say I’ll continue to support the Carmine Exile’s endeavors, what will you do?”

“Big question.  Feels like I’m tipping my hand if I say,” Lucy replied.

“If you provide no information to give me context on how to answer, my answers may lack nuance.  It’s up to you.”

“Putting it in simple terms?  I think we’d treat you as part of the problem to be solved.”

“And how will you deal with the problem?”

“Charles?”

“If that’s how you frame it.”

“Charles… his side shot my best friend.  Burned my other best friend’s home down.  He cut up my friends.  He’s terrorized Kennet.  Killed Ken.  Killed John Stiles.”

Lucy glanced back at Grandfather, Pipes, Angel, and Foggy.

“In that last point, at least, he was acting in alignment with Law,” the Sable replied.  “The contest was announced, he answered it, as is the right of every being, and he won.”

“We said this to the Alabaster, but you guys telling John to try for the role, giving him these guys as incentives, and then turning around and fucking him over, giving Charles the ability to go in wearing the furs, letting that bird slip out to steal the ring?”

“The bird was the Alabaster’s failing.  The rest was Lawful.”

“But Charles also desecrated Yalda’s remains.  Everything that happened with Yalda… you guys asked John to remove her?  Because she was complicating things?”

“We did.”

“You didn’t clean up after.  Charles noticed, didn’t he?  That you didn’t clean up that mess.  You might’ve disposed of her body, but… there’s a lot more to an animus.  Spirit.  Influences.  You guys got lazy, and you left a mess behind, and a forsworn asshole took that mess, made a weapon.  And you guys, again, the Judges at the time, you twisted that weapon around to become something nastier, as a ‘fuck you’ to the forsworn guy.”

“That was the Carmine Beast’s prerogative.  Her right, as Judge, to dictate how those violent forces might align.”

“You guys didn’t clean up the mess, you could have stepped in to limit the mess the Carmine caused.  Call it mercy.  Call it an afterthought.  Call it a question of transformation and transition.  Argue for it to be another Judge’s business, then stop it from becoming the Hungry Choir.  Find another way to tell the forsworn guy to go fuck himself.  You could’ve.  You didn’t.  Let’s get that out of the way.”

“As you wish.”

“And, in the long run, it was why Charles was able to triumph in the Carmine Contest.  It’s why he’s in power now.”

“A large part of it.  Arguments could be made that he or his Fae ally would have found another way, but I will not make those arguments.”

“And it’s messy.  The stuff happening because of him, the way things are leaking out into neighboring territories.  The way the region is being gutted.  Bound forces being released…”

“Mess is not inherently bad, and it is ultimately-”

“The province of the Carmine?” Lucy asked.

“Yes.  This type of mess, in any event.”

“You guys didn’t clean up enough after you got rid of Yalda.  You didn’t stop the Carmine Beast from twisting Charles’ ritual into being the Hungry Choir.  You didn’t stop him from misusing Yalda.  You didn’t stop him after he took power.”

“Nobody asked us to.  It was the Carmine Beast’s prerogative to make the Choir.  It was Charles’ prerogative to use the resources at his disposal.  It was his prerogative to set his own mandate and change things as he saw fit, when his changes didn’t override existing establishment.”

“He overrode a lot,” Lucy said.

“If you wish to discuss the terms and Law of it, that is your right.”

“It’s my prerogative to tell him to go fuck himself, right?” Lucy asked.  “To stop him?”

“Customarily, that is done with the Carmine contest.  If you do not like how that domain is being managed, you find another manager.”

“It’s a real bitch to find a Carmine that I’d trust with the job, who I’m okay with basically sacrificing, giving up to the role.  And at the same time, that’s too easy, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.

“Is it?” the Sable asked.

“Charles, what, winks out like a light switch goes out?  Ceases to be, erased from everything?”

“In many senses.  Not erased from memory, for example.”

“He gets to leave his shitty legacy, it takes us generations to clean up?” Lucy asked.  She looked back at Grandfather.  “A multi-generation setback?”

“Perhaps,” the Sable replied.

“I want to stop him, I want to stop the people who helped him.  He did everything he did with- with viciousness.  Edith, the way he betrayed friends, us.  I want to stop him in a way that hurts him.  Hurts his allies.  That’s my right, right?  To try?  Prerogative?”

“It’s an avenue open to you.”

“Eye for an eye, right?  That’s old Law.  A lot of practice, like rebounds, it’s got eye for an eye baked into it.  Right?”

“It is.”

“I’ve been nice, giving people outs?  Chances to ask for mercy, to change sides, to drop the fight?”

“You have.”

“And that’s Law, too.  Gives a karmic advantage, every time we’re doing it?”

“Yes.”

“And we’ve done it a lot.  Almost as a rule.  When we don’t have to.”

“Yes.”

“It matters I’m saying this to you now, right?  That you’re saying ‘yes’ a lot.  When I’m bringing the receipts to a judge?  That’s a whole thing in Law practices.  Statements of intent, statements of claim, statements of ‘I deserve better karma than I’ve been getting because of reasons’, all that matters?”

“Yes.  It does.  Within my realm, as far as my ability to act applies.”

Lucy paused.  “That feels like a weird thing to highlight.  Why does it matter?”

“Other forces are acting.  Beyond my reach.”

“What forces?” Lucy asked.

“I would not say, except you’re certain to find out shortly after our meeting.  The Carmine has been, as you note, expanding borders and testing limits.  The region, in a global perspective, is a footnote, a five minute conversation between the Lords of China, for Japan, for Paris, for other major Lordships, in the midst of greater business.  They made an offer to the Carmine Exile, Alabaster Assembly, Aurum Coil, and myself.”

“They could just remove him.  He’s weaker right now.”

“He’s weak, but that is precisely why they timed it as they did.  He’s likely to accept now.”

“What’s the offer?”

“Legitimacy.  Security.  Power.  From multiple corners of the world and other realms.”

“Why?”

“Because it means the matter that was a five minute conversation between world powers remains a five minute conversation.  They deal with worldly concerns, they don’t like distractions or recurring nuisances like this.”

“And he’s accepting?  That’s hypocritical to everything he’s doing.”

“He’s entertaining the idea.  But it falls to all of us Judges, and we’re likely to vote three to one in favor of the deal.  Faced with a fight against us three, the Kennet side of this conflict organizing against him… he may tell himself he can say yes to the deal, making it unanimous, or work in some details, and find a way to keep pushing his agenda.  It may even be possible to.”

Lucy shook her head.

“Come.  Inside.  We can discuss there.”

“You know, his whole method?” Lucy asked.  “The brutality, the viciousness, going after everyone that wronged him?”

“Eye for an eye?” Grandfather asked.

“Statement of intent?  I don’t want to take Charles’ approach.  I want to do better.  I want him to learn a lesson, I want it to hurt, to sting, to destroy him, even, but because there was a better way, when he took the awful road he took.”

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