Author: Wildbow

Go for the Throat – 23.z | Pale

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Avery could see through the glass door as Castleberry tore into a bogeyman.  Literally into- the bogeyman turned around in a complete three-sixty arms reaching to try to get at it, and she could see the hole it had burrowed, with only spine intact and pushed to one side.  Torn flesh around the edges waved like fronds underwater, except it wasn’t underwater.  Frond snaked around wrist, and the bogeyman pulled to tear free of it.

The ‘frond’ didn’t tear.  Instead, he pulled a connected string of white nodules out of the side of his lower back.

Avery waited, leg bouncing, phone at her ear, keeping one eye on Castleberry and one on the papers they’d put against glass.  They’d secured the glass with ‘quality of earth’ runes so a swung hammer bounced off instead of punching through.

It was the scuffling sounds that got to Avery.  Scraping of that makeshift concrete hammer against the surface of the parking lot, when it rested on the ground.  The muffled sounds.

The Family Man had been muffled, because the air had been warded off.  He’d scuffled.

The others were all inside.

“You really weren’t kidding,” George said.  “That this was dangerous.”

“Upstairs hatch secure,” Lucy said, stepping past Melissa and her mom as she came down the stairs.  “Windows seem okay, I papered them.”

Avery nodded.  The bogeyman kept pulling on the frond and there kept being more length to it, more nodules.  Like a clown pulling on an endless scarf.

“What in the actual seven-sided fuck?” Lucy asked.

“Well said,” Avery murmured.

Lucy turned.  “Looks like Verona got the front, but she’s not looking like there’s an emergency.”

Avery looked.  Verona stood by the front doors, looking out the window, her back to them.  Julette was in cat form in her arms.

“Is she okay?” Mia asked.

“Friends of hers died tonight,” Lucy murmured, her arms folded.

“Of ours,” Melissa said.  She was sitting sideways on the stairs that went up to the second floor, one foot propped up on a stair higher than her rear end was.  Lucy’s mom had been looking after her since they’d all slipped through the chaos to get inside.

“Should she be alone like that?” Lucy’s mom asked.  “My gut says no, but…”

“She’s not alone, she has Julette,” Avery said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Avery said.  She felt anxious, the dial tone in her ear.  She redialed.

“Give her a few minutes,” Lucy said.  “She does better if she has time to process and digest.  If that’s even what she’s doing.  Fifty-fifty odds on her coming back acting more normal or not more normal, but with some crazy magic in mind.”

“Speaking of a few minutes, how is your hand?” Lucy’s mom asked.

Lucy opened and closed it.  “Hurts.”

“Getting slashed open should hurt.”

Lucy’s mom had bandaged the back of Lucy’s hand, wrist, and forearm, which was the worst wound she’d told her mom about.  Lucy also had a gouge in her neck, but she’d had Avery handle that, and pulled her coat up to hide it from her mom.  A little scarier.

If a moment away from people was what Verona needed, Avery was glad to give it.

Avery hadn’t really had a lot of time to bond with the people, but they were people Kennet had responsibility over.  That she had responsibility over.  People who’d lived here, with families and other things.

“Are you okay?” Avery asked Lucy.  Lucy had had some involvement.

“I lost less friends than she did,” Lucy replied.  “Bracken made it out okay.  I don’t know about people from the Arcade, but I guess it’s not good.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s fucked,” Lucy said.

It felt weird, having this discussion with people nearby.  Jasmine could hear, Avery guessed.  Especially if she had even half of Lucy’s ability to overhear stuff, pre-earring.

A goblin speared Castleberry, and pulled the cat free of the wound.  Stray bones and chunks of dead flesh came out- far in excess of what there should have been.  Strings of what could’ve been tendons, veins, or something else that was inside the body and stretchy came out with the cat.  Like a piece of gooey pizza, except way grosser.

The white nodules were breaking apart, revealing lashing centipede-shaped things, with spikes at the edges and stingers at the ends.  They flailed around like ribbons in a hurricane, each about four feet long- until one hit near the end of another, joined to it, and pulled the other free, almost doubling its length.  It slapped the goblin across the face, bored in, and pulled it toward the fallen bogeyman.

The cat made a gurgling yowl sound as it fought to claw itself free of the spear and gradually cut itself in half more than it did anything else.

The quote-unquote ‘cat’, anyway.  Avery had more and more doubts every second she watched.

“Just a regular Tuesday, huh?” Wallace asked.

“No, that’s uh, closer to a once-every-four months thing, as far as the casually horrifying stuff goes,” Lucy said.  She had a dark glower on her face.

“Maybe literally casually horrifying?” Avery asked.  “I feel like there are books that talk about the lines between, like, oddfolk and horrors, or horrors and-”

“And Castleberry?” Lucy finished the question.

“Yeah.”

The bogeyman’s wounds were festering in fast-forward, swelling with pockets that burst and had stuff inside.

“Hey, Lucy, uh, about the way things went,” Wallace said.  “Uh.”

“It barely matters right now.”

“Okay.”

“No hard feelings,” Lucy said, her arms still folded, a scary glower on her face as she watched out the back.  “You seemed preoccupied, I was busy, it’s okay.”

“Okay,” he said, again.

“Where are we on the phone, Ave?” Lucy asked.

“Busy signal,” Avery replied.

The bogeyman who’d been clawed at by Castleberry was now being dragged around by the wound on his back, which went after anything that moved, which made it go back and forth between the thrashing second victim and the bogeyman with a concrete cone bolted to a pipe, that was smashing at the papered glass.  Castleberry was on its third victim.

Goblins were, with the exception of the one that had torn most of its face off to get away from the centipede things, staying the heck away.

“You had that in your house?” Jeremy asked Mrs. Schaff.

“I was nursing it back to health, I thought.”

“Reminds me of a fleshmongler,” Avery admitted.

“Goblin grotesquerie, whatever you want to call it,” Blankshanks commented, airy.

Lucy turned and looked until she found the white cat.  “Blankshanks… please tell me that after suggesting we call Castleberry, you know how to deal with it.”

“If there’s a problem you can handle today, but you face two more down the road, what is it you should say?” Blankshanks asked.

“Given a choice?  I’d want to say no,” Lucy replied.

“Exactly,” Blankshanks said.  “Exactly, if you have an option that solves an immediate problem, but asks you to deal with two tomorrow, you say no, that’s a coward’s way out.  Don’t settle for any less than three problems on the ‘morrow.”

“I want it known,” Spades commented from the sidelines, “I didn’t want to do this.”

“Three problems on the ‘morrow means your adventure continues, and if you have no adventure in your heart, then truly, haven’t you already died before you have solved your original problem?” Blankshanks asked.

“So you don’t have a plan for bringing Castleberry back in line?” Lucy asked.

“Not in the slightest.”

“I think fire works okay for Fleshmonglers,” Avery said.

“Corpsemongler, I think,” Verona said, as she walked over.  She winked a bit, but the wink and lighter attitude didn’t really hide what was in her eyes.  Hurt.  Anger.  Not anger at anyone here, but anger, still.  “Slightly different.”

Avery paused a second to take stock.  Verona wasn’t coming out the gates with a practice idea, which meant she’d done the side of the fifty-fifty Lucy had talked about where she’d pulled herself together, instead.

Avery preferred that.

“Corpsemongler.  Alright.  So… not fire?”

“No, definitely fire.  More fire.  Did you call the people?”

“Busy.”

“Lucy?” Verona whapped Lucy’s upper arm with the back of her hand.  “You and me?  We leave Ave on the phone?”

“Are you up for it?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“I’m managing.  Come on.  I get the feeling this is better to handle sooner than later.  We’re going to set one of your cats on fire, Mrs. Schaff.”

“Please do, this once.  Looks like it’s for the best.”

Castleberry had been smacked with the hammer, crushing the main body, but it didn’t do a lot to actually kill it.  The strings of flesh still connected it to a past victim, the bogeyman with the wound burrowed into his back had merged with victim number two, and a lot of the aggressors were getting scared off.

There were no issues at other windows.  Snowdrop was keeping an eye out front, now that Verona had left, and Avery could sense her awareness as she noticed everything that moved, and every little sound.  The coast being that clear might’ve been a trap.

Jasmine had left Melissa alone to go watch what Lucy and Verona were doing out front.  Avery wandered over.

“Hey,” Melissa said.  “Others are pretty anxious.  Wondering what the point of them being here is.”

“They helped us stabilize.”

“Is that it?  That’s all?”

“Not entirely.”

“Fuck.  Okay.”

Avery hung up and redialed, shaking her head.

“Mallory was a friend, you know?” Melissa said.

“I know.”

“Anselm was okay too.  But Mal was on a wavelength with me.  I feel like I’ve been wanting that forever.  More than I wanted a boy, even.  And I really wanted Bracken.”

“We noticed.”

“When I invited Verona onto the team over and over again, I felt like she could be that.  Like, square peg into a round hole.  You on the hockey and soccer teams, Mia, Hailey and all of them on the Dancers, you fit in.  I thought Verona could be a fellow misfit who’d find a way forward.  So I nagged her.”

“Makes sense.  And Mal?”

“I found a misfit.  And now she’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So, um,” Melissa dropped her voice.  “I saw you kill a guy.  Lucy beat him down over and over, Verona did some magic, you kicked him around to keep him from getting away from the magic, he folded, and then he died.”

Avery met Melissa’s eyes.

“Holy shit, right?”

“Right,” Avery replied.  “I’m trying not to think about it.”

“He was on the side of people who did that to Mal.”  Statement, not question.

Avery nodded.

“If you say so, I take it to the grave.  What you did.  If you need something here, I’ll try.  No stubbornness.”

“I’ll probably tell my parents,” Avery told Melissa.  “If we get that far, anyway.  After-action report.  Might phrase it all in a way so Luce and Ronnie can decide what responsibility they want to admit.”

“Heavy,” Melissa said.

“Look after these guys?” Avery asked, indicating the newly Aware.

“Okay.  But can I have my moment to be disgruntled and bitchy about the fact you guys hung me out to dry for so long on the details, and now you’re telling everyone?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.  “I’m not sure what that moment looks or sounds like.”

“Dunno.  I’d say five seconds of silence, but silent time feels like it should be saved for Mal, Anselm, and the other cool people who got snuffed out.”

Avery sighed.

“Me bringing it up is the moment.  So long as it’s recognized.  Good luck, eh?”

“Eh,” Avery grunted.  She dialed the phone again.

The fact there wasn’t a dial tone startled her.

“Hello?”

“Wye,” she said.

“Family’s a mess, people all over the place are panicking, please tell me you’re offering something and not asking for something.”

“I want to call in the favor,” Avery told him.

There was a pause.

“Another time?”

“Now.  You asked us to help Raquel and Reid.  Three times, I’ve advocated and gone out of my way for Raquel’s sake.  We tried to spare her and Reid when Montague turned the Musser minions against the family.  I went to save her from an arranged marriage and we sheltered her.  We have, on three separate occasions, discussed finding a good place for Raquel in the greater political landscape of all of this- I discussed her being a Lord of Thunder Bay with Florian Pesch, Lucy discussed her being a point of contact for the Sable, and Verona talked about her being a liaison-”

“-with the greater practitioner community.  She’s currently in a role like that with the Belangers.  Yeah.”

“You asked in good faith, I think.  We acted in good faith.”

“I’ll note that Pesch brought up Raquel unprovoked.”

“Because he knew we were keeping her in mind, we were invested in a good outcome for her.”

“Conceded.  Is this favor something I can ask another Belanger to handle?  I’d, with a lot depending on what the favor is, put in a good faith effort to keep them on task and secure a good outcome.”

“You, Wye,” Avery replied.  “I called you first because I need the best Augur on this, to make sure I’m calling the right people, and because I need your status.”

“Alright.  If it’s not a doable favor, might throw a wrench in this, but I’m listening.”

The wounds on Maricica’s body glowed from within.  She’d twisted in the air, every cut found its specific angle.  The injuries shifted, divorcing themselves from her body, and fell into alignment.  Three diagonal slashes, running in parallel.

Her symbol, simple as it was.

The pool of blood beneath her expanded.

Other injuries did the same.  The pool expanded further, and the air took on a red tint.  She was smiling, as though the injuries up to this point had been intentional.

Marks she’d made in the ground began to glow too.  The light had a dark touch of divinity to it, and they moved.  None of the Wild Hunt tried to block them, where they could have done so with a lesser diagram or power.

Three slashes in alignment.

The pool tried to grow, but one of the Hunters was crouched beside it, blade planted in the snow.  It and its wielder wouldn’t be budged.  With a pool unable to expand, its contents instead surged and overflowed, a wave of blood washing out in every direction beneath her, past the Hunter crouched beside it, who didn’t flinch.  None of the Wild Hunt on the ground moved, even as blood sloshed around their feet and knees, or past the shoulders, even, for those crouching.  Maricica swelled on a scale that had nothing to do with height, weight, width, or mass.  She would act-

She had the blood form a wave.  The wave congealed into spikes as it found its momentum.

Parries became openings, enemy weapons became footholds and leverage.  Blades skimmed the surface of the tide of blood, and Maricica barely defended herself, only raising a hand to protect the eyes that were beneath the covering of blood that masked most of her head and face.

That was a reveal for later.

She knew what she was fighting.  She knew there was no wrong move.  That if she shifted the footing as they leaped from the spikes of blood, or changed the viscosity of the blood tide as blades traced it to let warriors do their subtle adjustments to their mid-air acrobatics, that wouldn’t advantage her much.  It would take her focus away from something, it would let one spear-wielding acrobat move a different way that would prove to be worse.

Besides, she could turn her wounds to a kind of advantage.  Making a blood goddess bleed?

As foolish as waging war against a Carmine Judge.

The blue windows of the Blue Heron turned red.  The stars in the sky took on a red tint that was fierce enough it began to change the tint of everything here.

She gestured, hand turning a sharp half circle as it closed into a fist, and most of the invisible blades of the Wild Hunt shattered.  Any one that had even a speck of her blood on its length.

Another gesture, hand still closed, but now in a shape halfway between a ‘stop’ and a closed fist, fingers curled down and thumb tucked in, with palm forward, she pushed it toward the main forces of the Wild Hunt.

Those who had even a speck of her blood on them had bone shattered, flesh cleaved away, eyeballs popped, clothing tore.  Not a one flinched, but two novice members of the Hunt died.  A boy had chest caved in, the points of ribs pushed out through his back, and a heroic figure had a droplet of blood settled in the outer part of his ear had that droplet fling itself down the ear canal and through eardrum before expanding out into needle-like spokes with bladed edges sharp enough that they cut as his head moved and the droplet resettled.

Both of the freshly dead had their blood claimed by the goddess as falling within her domain.  Their bodies shuddered, moving as if alive, and then exploded into blood spatters that were thirty feet across, tissue shredded, bone fragments flying.  A few of the Hunters moved or drew blades to let splinters of bone and one buried curse bounce or reflect off steel, instead of catching a vital or seizing them.  A third of four new members of the Hunt died.

In the wake of that damage, a blood mist settling around them, snow kicked up, the fog of mixed red and white revealed the remainder of the Hunters were untouched, clothes immaculate.

“How long must this charade go on?” she asked them all.

“You can end it at any moment by dropping the act,” Idonea told Maricica.

“If we stall out, I do believe it’s to my advantage.  Will you tell me I’m wrong?”

“You’re not wrong, in abstract,” Lefwald said.  “But stasis is our medium.”

“Let’s do away with stasis, then.”

The blood below her feet, which were suspended in air, began to slosh, like a wine cup held in one hand, moved in a circular motion.  Blood lapped against walls that weren’t there, and the glow that was continuing to emanate from wounds and from blood began to play off of surfaces.

Nicsiege raised his chin, looking up.  He was loosely assigned to the job of keeping a eye on the flanks.

The stars.  They had their own interplay with all of this.

A goddess had power, and power had reach.  She was reaching out to the extremes of her boundaries and drawing up walls.  The stars were the intended ceiling on this box she was painting in blood and divine power.  The tide of blood was the floor.

The Hunters took turns talking.  Ionysia told Maricica, “It would be foolish to close yourself in a box with your hunters.  The only avenues available to you are forfeit and an escape that prolongs your time until the forfeit.”

“If I bring things to a draw-”

“This isn’t one,” Ulftheof stated, simply.

“Even a temporary one?” Maricica asked, pausing, to leave them room to answer.  The silence was answer enough.  She smiled.  “In this closed box, I have enough power to dictate the rules.  I can dictate that a goddess cannot die in such a realm.  I can deceive myself.  We know I cannot die of fleshly wounds, my power remains mine in such a closed system, everything else sealed out.  You can torture me and attempt to break me, but how many centuries may that take?  Without something substantial to cut past the lies I may tell myself, it could be three or four hundred years.  We would emerge to find I have set things in motion on the outside, and you would be diminished in the eyes of many, being caught for centuries.  Even one contingent of the Hunt.”

None of the Hunters budged.

“You cannot retreat.  You are too proud.  I have remade and redesigned myself and this move has been part of the plan for a long time, so the lies I tell myself will hold, if it comes to it.  There are only a handful of moves you can make.”

“Maricica,” Guilherme said, his voice carrying.  She smiled as she faced him, because she knew the fact that he was speaking was a form of punctuation.  It was his turn to speak only when the words mattered, and the words mattered because of the moves she’d made to get this far.  “Throwing yourself upon a spear may limit your pursuer’s moves, but that does not mean it’s a good idea.”

“I’ve seen the damage your spears do.  I stand here unscathed, any bleeding I have done, I say it is for the benefit of expanding my power.  Shall we let this box close around us, and see the outcome that awaits us on the other side, a few centuries from now?  Or will you move to stop the box from closing?  Bring something into the box?  Or will you… oh, I see you’re bringing something into the box.  The number of possible outcomes dwindles further.”

The Hunter Maggebeth took a few steps to the side.

She was tall enough she could hide things behind her, and one of those things was the Consort.  The Fae Maricica’s mistress, sitting on a cushioned seat, held by a group of sixteen human slaves that had been partially transformed by Dark Fall glamour to be beasts of burden enough to carry a slice of palace with them.

The cushioned seat had stairs beneath it, and the Consort was long-limbed enough that her legs extended down several stairs.  She sat askew, legs crossed, one elbow on the arm of the seat, smoking spices from pipe that was made from a long, segmented leg of a primeval spider-thing, as long as the arm of some Fae that were present.  Beneath her, no less than thirty scantily-clad glamour-drowned humans and Fae were draped on the stairs, each one given a small diamond-shaped patch of the Consort’s leg to care for and tend to with kisses and caresses ranging from the gentle to the sensual.  The effect was a tumbling dress made of of fawning, beautiful, writhing humans, each straining to give enough attention without distracting her or giving too little attention, each focused on every movement they made, to not be jarring, to move as a part of the whole.  Each knew that if they strayed from their designated territory, they could be punished in the worst ways, by either the slave who had been designated the territory they’d encroached on, who could tug on their clothing or step on hair and spell their doom days or weeks down the line, if they so desired, or by the consort herself, if she noticed their error.

At her feet sat her grace, one Fae -always always a Fae- who had been part of that organized system of competing, overlapping personal attendants and had come out on top.  He was assigned the space between the Consort’s legs, but that a thing for the hours she rested.  To get to where he was, staying interesting and surviving the writhing mass took keen instinct and untold skill.  It made him an attack dog that used touch, not teeth.

By the right of her seat stood a Fae who was her whisperer.  A Fae of the Dark Fall court who, at any moment, could be called on to say something interesting to her.  Maricica had been given increasing amounts of time to impress the Consort more and more, and perhaps, down the line, if she’d proven her ability to regularly bring something interesting to a Consort of the court, she might have found such a position.  Some days, the Consort could be bored, and the whisperer would have to know a hundred things to amuse her and take up her interest.  Sometimes it would be three months, and the thing revealed when the Consort remembered the whisperer existed would have to be as singularly interesting as ninety days worth of valuable whispers.

A tricky role to hold when the whisperer was beside the Consort for every waking hour.  Getting, receiving, and managing the information required a mastery of scheming that was, in essence, building a house of cards that could hold up to an attack by one’s enemies in one’s absence.

To her left was her hand.  A similar role, and one that had remained unchanged for centuries.  The Hand was her knight, her bodyguard, her enforcer, and her representative.  Where the whisperer was her control and eyes over the court’s workings, the Hand was her ability to reach anywhere else.  He’d been cursed a thousand times, and then had been cursed an untold number of times more.  Countless curses that made a Fae ugly or distorted meshed together and made him beautiful.  He wore armor in copper and black, and his hair was white, his eyes perpetually downcast and seemingly closed- his gaze disconcerted even Lords of modest stature from other courts.

Were the Consort a lesser Fae, any of the three of grace, whisperer, or hand could have supplanted her.  But she remained, sitting idly in the chair, smoking that pipe of spices, looking bored, a dress of lithe and beautiful people sliding against and around one another as she shifted the position of her legs, anticipating her movements, each striving to avoid becoming boring.

“This is your reveal, is it, Maricica?” the Consort asked.  “You’ve become grotesque.”

“Grotesquerie is not outside of Dark Fall’s bounds, but I care very little for what you think, now.  I am not here to prove myself to you.  Just the opposite.”

The whisperer leaned in to say something in the Consort’s ear.  The Consort’s expression didn’t betray a thing.

“You’re reduced to being a pawn for the Wild Hunt of Winter.  You bored, boring thing,” Maricica said.

“Our paths align.  I would not be here if I didn’t wish to.  You’ve drawn attention, been dogged by a servant of a human, plunged yourself into Abyss for power and then lost that power.”

Rook sat where the kitchen that had been managed by the brownies had been.  That entire part of the Blue Heron had been replaced by Sootsleeves’ hold, but the room had been allowed to remain a part of the kitchen, because it had to conform to the presence of brownies just as the footing of the hold had to conform to the rise and fall of the landscape here.  So the kitchen remained where it was.  Rook sat in the window, across a small table from Hollow Yen, her would-be Oni in training, the two of them taking tea while watching proceedings.

Neither would do anything tonight.  They had already done everything they would do.

“You’re here because I forced them to bring you out.  They believe you are what can break me, if I close the gaps between wall and wall, wall and ceiling, and wall and floor, of my divine space, here.  What we have is a solved game,” Maricica said.  “There are two branching paths that remain, two things you could reveal to me now, that would carry the necessary weight.  Both converge on the same point.  You are the Hunt’s pawn and you are mine, Consort.”

“Do you think so?  The-” the Consort paused as the whisperer leaned in to say something in her ear.  The Consort nodded.

Maricica smiled.

“To close so many other avenues and paths that I or the Wild Hunt could take from where you stand and have stood all this while… that necessitates a leap of faith.  That is not skill or cunning, Maricica, child, that is reckless stupidity.  The Courts cannot reward such.”

“I don’t need to leap when I am buoyed by worship.”

“False worship.”

“So is that,” Maricica retorted, indicating the dress of writhing people.

Some of that mass spared glances for the Goddess.

“You’ve shed your Fae-ness and you’ve become something gross and stupid.”

“And you’ve become boring, overdue for Winter to take you and sequester you away, Consort.  As is the case with too many Lords and Ladies of the seven courts.  Two outcomes remain.  There are two moves you can make.”

“The first would be to reveal that I have, in fact, already destroyed you, and you don’t know it yet.”

“The Carmine Judge stands ready to reverse most destruction,” the Hunter Elyas said.

“And the look in your eyes suggests it is not the sort of destruction that can circle around the Carmine.  One outcome remains,” Maricica whispered, closing her eyes.

The Consort moved her black pipe to another hand, shifting her position to sit more upright.  The writhing dress of people adjusted accordingly.

As the smoke from the pipe cleared, a figure was revealed in shadow.

Maricica opened her eyes to see, then nodded.

“Brsne,” Maricica let the composure slip, emotion in her voice.  “Briserban.  My brother.”

“The alternative to having already destroyed you, is to have you held firmly hostage by a vulnerability you did not even know you had.”

“But I knew well enough,” Maricica said.  “Countering your last available move.”

The phone rang.

No busy signal this time.

There was a debate going on in the background, Lucy arguing with her mom, that the ‘one more fight’ that they’d had imposed on them didn’t, couldn’t be the fight she’d had with the Family Man, and the fight going on outside, starting and ending there.  Because Charles had overheard about the rule, he’d picked this fight knowing about it, and so on.

Avery missed the response.

Avery walked away from that, hand over one ear.  “Sorry?”

“Doe calls King?” Pesch answered.

“Hi Florian.  Doe calls King.”

“Sounds lively.  Not that I mean to eavesdrop- I can’t make out the words, only the sentiment.”

“Lively’s one way of putting it.”

“Word gets around, people have remarked on what’s going on out there.  And you’ve called.  This should be interesting.”

“You went after the Lord of Thunder Bay.  I spared you.  Because of that, or because you wanted to remain in my good graces after, you said-”

“That I would grant a favor.”

“I’m calling it in.”

“You could not know.  I made sure of it.  You made a reckless guess,” the Consort told Maricica.

“On the day the Carmine Beast died, a messenger visited Guilherme to update him on minor matters.  It did not ultimately matter to Guilherme, who was close to Winter, and I was left to infer what it could mean to me.  As I’ve poked, prodded, and explored the boundaries of this messy situation here, with Carmine Lords and the shifting powers in this patch of the human world, I’ve paid constant mind to the voids.  When powers move or talk, where haven’t they stepped, what isn’t being said or given enough attention?  Space enough for Briserban or others of my brothers and sisters to be in.  I’m asked to visit your court every once in a long while, and the spaces between?  A simple schedule where they each have their turns, each of them thinking they’re among the dwindling number of survivors.  Well, the numbers did dwindle that year you had each of us kill one of the others.  you knew who each of us would kill.”

“You could not know.”

“A Fae holds few securities,” Maricica said.  “You spied on us and watched us closely, to know us and our vulnerabilities before we even came to you.  But even the closest watcher will rarely catch the way someone can communicate as two who grew up together could communicate.  We learn to watch expressions as Fae, we learn to read the smallest of details, we must learn.  We learn our kith as twins learn other twins, we learned from each other, exposing each other to layers that would later be covered up by experience and defenses.  We know each other best.  Few spies are good enough to know those subtleties.  That was one of the sole arrows in our quiver.”

“To know one another well enough that you can imagine your brother’s movements in spaces and places nobody sees.  For if you made even a moment of eye contact, I’d know.  But it was only imagining.”

“An act of faith, but make no mistake,” Maricica murmured, “I am a goddess, now.  As I said, I knew well enough.”

“Now, here he stands.  I shouldn’t need to spell it out, but you’ve become something bloated.  You came as a group to announce yourselves to the Dark Fall Court, as Fae who had come of age.  Each of you saw your kith destroyed in the ugliest, pettiest ways.”

“Trickery.”

“Effective enough.  My entire subdivision of the Court is built on it.  Not one complicated story, but twenty-one, each completely ignorant to the fact the other narratives exist.”

“Except that the spaces between the metaphorical lines are wide enough to fit words made invisible to us.  Some of us sent away when we got too canny, to train ourselves elsewhere.  Others kept too close.”

Maricica eyed the drapery of writhing, caressing, kissing people, worshiping the Consort’s legs.

“They cannot and will not hear.  The Hunt will not speak of it, they do not care enough.  They only care that I have your heart hostage.  You were destroyed once, when he died, and you can be destroyed again by the same measure.”

“Except I knew well enough, as I said,” Maricica replied, smiling.  The divinity around her glowed.  “The messenger sent to the High Summer Lord Guilherme was a message for me.  Nothing stated, nothing signaled.  Shadows between things in motion, spaces between the lines left for me to infer meaning from.  You sent messengers to many places, didn’t you, Briserban?  To many places at the cusp of turmoil, with Fae exiles, Fae on task, and Fae enmeshed into humanity all at the ready?  To see who would get the signal?”

“Yes,” Briserban replied.  “Not me, but a subordinate of a subordinate.”

“If you don’t mind-?”

“Not at all,” he said.

The Consort arched an eyebrow.

“The messenger arrived on a night we made our first move in subverting natural order.  To put a Forsworn on the Carmine Throne.  That was the signal.  That the move we were making was important enough to be a part of something bigger.”

“I can follow your thought to its natural conclusion,” the Consort said.  “Really, now?  How impetuous.”

“I sought a private letter from Guilherme for much the same reason I brought things to this point tonight,” Maricica said.  “A Fae on the verge of winter has few options remaining to him.  With so few options, it is possible to solve for an answer.  For Guilherme, few things remained to him.  Four for that year, swiftly dwindling to two: a letter tying him to the deep court intrigue, with secrets held within, and the Carmine mystery as it unfolded.”

“The letter was spoiled,” Guilherme said.

“It was.  I hoped to follow that thread.  You were wrong, by the by.”

“Was I?” Guilherme asked.

“The boy asked you how many hundreds of hours the letter’s story was to play out over.  You said several.”

“It will be.”

“The courts revolve.  We were flowers not so long ago, but a wilted flower, viewed from an upside-down angle may be a flower of spring, yet to bloom.  The seasonal courts were set in motion and treated as if they were always what we were rooted in.  As things revolve, too much remains the same.  The Consort remains seated.”

“And you seek another change in the nature of courts, not even a decade later?” the Consort asked.

Maricica bowed slightly.  “You did ask for something interesting.”

“A child’s scrawl is wild but not interesting.  I’d call this abject failure.  You’ll protest, saying it’s about something greater, tying back to what you said earlier…”

“The event that was marked by the messenger’s timely arrival.  I anticipated the change in the courts and went looking for what might provoke it.  I kept close to a Fae nearing Winter so I could follow the threads he traveled, for if I could solve one piece of the game, I could position myself on the far side.   Great and terrible things happening in the human world have Fae at the edges.  A Fae exile pretending to be a human, working in a common store, a Fae disseminating cursed items, finding themselves close to a shift in the idea of what a Lord is.  Another pretending to be a girl, dancing the edge of darkest dark and bloodiest ends.  The last revolving of courts was a disappointment.  The courts will be reinvented, we’ll pretend it was always that way, but this time it will be different.”

“Unseating me as part of it, for your revenge?  Many have tried.”

“There will be no seat, Consort,” Maricica told her, and her voice became a snarl as she said it.  “There will be no courts, as you understand them.  You’ve become boring, constrained in your way of thinking, and that is your undoing.  What is the difference between a court of red flowers and a court of early fall, besides the ways we dress ourselves up?”

The Hand of the consort was standing a little straighter.

“It’s not quite time yet, but I don’t think you’ll be too sorely missed, especially if others perpetuate a deception that you’re still around,” Maricica told the consort.  “As a Forsworn became Carmine Exile in the midst of bloodshed and fire, let Fae exiles and those who’ve seemed to abandon the Courts to mingle with humanity become the real Lords and Ladies.  Fae will not dwell in courts of Faerie.  They will dwell in and among man and mankind.  Am I right, Brsne?”

“Exactly so.”

“Far more interesting and dynamic, isn’t it?” Maricica asked.

The Consort turned to look at Briserban.  He didn’t flinch or cower.

The Consort shifted position, and as the crowd of people moved to adjust accordingly, she kicked a leg, and some tumbled down stairs, others bumped into others near them.  Noses were bloodied.  The tip of one Fae’s ear tore off.  The scant spider-silk shifts and briefs some wore tore with the roughness.

Maricica smiled, and she let down the walls she had put up, that box she’d placed around them all.

The Allaire Forsworn were there.  People who’d been introduced to practice and promptly Forsworn, to be kept under the thumb of the Allaire family.  Eighteen ex-forsworn tied into Maricica’s plan.

The Kims stood by as well, dangerous in their own right.

“You realize, of course-”

“Does being a goddess mean you must belabor the obvious?  There’s no grace in spelling it out.”

The consort’s hand shifted position, looking at Briserban, at the grace, and then the whisperer.

“You remain doomed,” the Consort told Maricica, a moment before the Hand used a blade to take her head from her shoulders.

The consort’s head tumbled down the stairs.  The Hand followed after it, a single lunging step forward, past the tumble of bodies, the long blade that had removed head from neck was sheathed before the Hand’s boot touched the base of the platform.

One well placed swing, made in the process, killed the entirety of the Fae and glamour-drowned who had formed the Consort’s ‘dress’, the swing so exact it severed something vital from each of them.

“Was that necessary?  She tuned her words,” Briserban said.

“She did, but they could infer,” the Hand replied, eyes downcast.

“Fair.”

“I’ll whisper in your ear at a later date,” the whisperer said.  “For now, we perpetuate the deception that the consort lives.”

The grace stood, stretching languidly, and gestured, and the glamour that made up the slave-borne platform began to disintegrate.  “Do you want sixteen slaves with high end transformations worked into their souls?”

“That will be fine.”

With a sword unsheathed and sheathed, a gift, and a helpful deception, the three bought their place in a new Courtless order.

They were gone in moments.

“It could be interpreted that the Wild Hunt of Winter has stayed its blades because they knew this would happen, playing along because that was the way events were flowing.”

“It could.”

“You knew this was in the works.”

“We did.”

“It will happen.  We’ll have a new courtless system.”

“We will.”

“Your reputation remains untarnished.  I am not a threat to a court system that will not exist soon enough.”

“I remain at your disposal should you require me,” Maricica said, dipping her head and bowing, one arm out to the side.

The Wild Hunt of Winter departed, one by one.

She smiled at Briserban.

“I won’t state the obvious,” he said.

“And say that I’ve changed?”

“She was right that you’ve become more blunt.  Crass,” Briserban said.  “It’s not the worst thing.”

“We’ll change further.  There will be much to do.”

“You have people.”

“And so much territory made fertile by bloodshed.  Many will find themselves with no home, as we do away with the Faerie as a realm and move en masse into the realm of man.  They’ll need a place to go, more than one place, but… this will do for a good share of them.  And, of course, they’ll need people to help them find their ways around humanity.”

The Allaire Forsworn stood by.

“So where do I rank?” Liberty asked.

“Rank?” Avery asked.

“You’re calling a bunch of people.  I’m wondering if I’m the last person you’re calling, the third, the fifth.  I hope I’m not the first.  That would be a fucking disaster, don’t do that to your cute drummer girlfriend.”

“You’re number three.”

“Number three’s a good number!  Wow!  You flatter me.  Why the fuck do I rate number three?  Shit.  Wait, is my dad okay?  Because-”

“I don’t know.”

“Because okay.  Okay.  No bad news.”

“Not really, no.”

“So why the fuck do I rate number three, freckles?”

“Because I wanted a friendly voice before some unfriendly ones.”

“Well, I can definitely be that.  It’s a bit like introducing someone as funny, isn’t it?”

Avery remembered Booker introducing Verona as the funny one, a ways back, when they’d met his girlfriend.  “Yeah, a bit.  Don’t feel pressured.”

“I do, though.  Now everything I say is going to feel artificial, and I’m already trying hard not to sound flirty, which is kind of my default.  You’re tying my hands.”

“I…” Avery checked nobody was in earshot.  She settled into a corner, sitting on a table that had been stacked upside-down on another table.  Snowdrop settled in beside her, in human form.  “I helped murder a man today.”

“Did he deserve it?”

“Didn’t see another way of settling things.”

“How are you doing with that?”

“I don’t know.”

Snowdrop settled her head against Avery’s shoulder.

“Not your vibe, is it?  Doesn’t suit you.  It’s heavy and you’re… light.”

“Yeah.”

“When I don’t know what to do, I sorta say fuck it, go with my instincts, and I don’t know what to do here, and my instincts are saying like, fuck, shit happens, sometimes you gotta murder, and then remind you there’s a future past all that.”

“Future, huh?”

“Like… we should make plans to hang out.  Spring break.  And we’ve got to get your sugar deprived drummer girlfriend a cake.  Something to look forward to, that helps you get through the rough patches.”

“You do that a lot?”

“Fuck yeah.  For sure.  Babe, when ‘Meri was in the dumps after Alexander and dad was caught up in the whole Musser takeover thing?  You were that for me.  I looked forward to your calls, I looked forward to seeing your freckled ass…”

“I really hope you didn’t actually see my ass, because that implies-”

“Nah.  Metaphorical… discourse-y ass.  You were my light on the horizon, reminding me the sun was due to come up the next day.  You were kind when everything else was cold.  And that’s getting flirty and weird but in my defense, it’s the middle of the night, I’m sleepy.”

“Fair.”

“Spring break?  You, me, your girlfriend, baking a cake.  Let that get you past the, I don’t even know, the trauma?  The-”

“Being weirdly fine with it?” Avery interrupted.

There was a pause.

“That too.”

“Is it okay to move on from murder?” Avery asked.  “Is it okay to be eerily fine with it?”

“I sure as fuck don’t know, but I know you, I know you’re good, you’re a good person, and you wouldn’t do it without a reason.  Maybe it catches up with you later tonight, maybe in a few days, when things have settled, maybe in a year, you’ll see someone who resembles the victim…”

“I sure hope not.”

“Maybe it catches you off guard, maybe it catches you on guard.  Maybe you’re fine with it because you’re going up against the Carmine and you’ve known for a while that stopping him means killing him.”

Avery looked over at Verona.

Verona was the one they’d assigned that task to.  Figuring out a way.  And things hadn’t gone quite that way, but… had Verona had that in mind?

“I dunno.  I’m rambling.”

“It’s a good ramble.  Getting everything organized in my head, around all this, maybe,” Avery said.

“Good.  On that note, you called for a reason, and I don’t think it was to hear me blather.”

“Can we get the goblins moving?  Goblin enclaves, pockets, key groups?”

“Separate from the Redcap Queen stuff, or do you need to bring that mess in?  Or, better way of phrasing it, how deep do you want to risk dipping into those waters?  Because there are goblins who are borderline involved.”

Avery thought of Blankshanks talking about fixing a problem now, by taking on three for the future.

“Let’s keep it simple and easy.”

“Alright.”

“Gotta get some to Toadswallow.  Gotta put more of it forward.”

“And the angle?  What can I promise ’em?”

“It’ll be interesting.”

“Got it.  Who’s number four?”

“Number four on the list.”

“I was thinking Musser.”

“Old Man Musser is a goner.  Abraham’s dad?”

“Yeah, no, Lucy mentioned that.”

“And Abe Musser, the one you went up against?  He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Didn’t make an appointment.  Gainsaid as a result.  Maybe in a position to be Forsworn.”

“That complicates things.  Okay, that… frig.  It’s not that I expected him to cooperate, but…”

“Yeah.  Call Raquel?”

“You think she has clout?”

“I doubt she has clout in her family right now, but I don’t know who does and I don’t think the Mussers know who does.  While things are mixed up…”

“I can maybe offer some sense?”

“I was going to say mix it up more, throw them for a loop, but whatever pickles your nipples.  I hope you have a good pitch.”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll get goblins mobilized.  You figure out if you have an idea.  I’m going to guess that if you haven’t told me the details of what you’re doing, you don’t want to tell the Carmine.”

“We’ve got a countermeasure that helps, but-”

But she hadn’t brought Alexanderp over here before making the call, like a dumbass, and he was injured from being tossed around.

“-But yeah.  Get the goblins over to us, so we can time giving them marching orders to things kicking off?”

“On it.”

“Thanks Libs.”

“Give that cute girlfriend of yours a kiss for my vicarious pleasure.”

“I will if I remember and if this all goes okay.  Hanging up.  Thank you.”

“Bye, frecks.”

Avery started to respond, but Liberty had hung up.

She looked at Snowdrop, who nodded.

They walked over to the main group.

“My mom’s calling Matthew.  We might lose magic, depending on what he decides.”

“Fuck,” Avery muttered.

“I’m equipped if we need to be,” Verona said, quiet.  “But it makes life harder.”

Others were inching closer.  Their friends.  Some parents were hovering near Jasmine, trying to pick up what they could.

Mrs. Schaff had a scorched Castleberry in her arms, swaddled in a stinky towel that had been left lying around the Arena.  Nobody was standing near Mrs. Schaff as a result.

“Wye and Florian are on the job of talking to key people.  Wye’s in touch with people associated with the Blue Heron, Florian’s on the job with people who aren’t part of that.  Those on the fringes, Ottawa included.  He didn’t sound optimistic about Ottawa being on board.  That might be our hard border to the East.”

“It’s not just about them being on board.  If they take hard offense to the fact we’re making a bunch of people Aware…”

“Yeah,” Avery agreed.

“Is it that much of a problem you told us about this stuff?” Mia asked.

“It’s a problem that we’re telling others.”

“Matthew made the same argument Lucy did,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I don’t agree, I’m not happy-”

“But that’s between them and us, right?” Lucy asked.

Verona shifted position.

“I don’t want you fighting any more than necessary.”

“It’s all really necessary though,” Lucy replied.  “There’s a lot on the line.”

“There is, but it seems like your response to problems is to put more on the line.”

“More ends up on the line whether we try or not.  Better to do it on our terms, right?” Verona asked.

Lucy’s mom sighed.

“Abe Musser’s apparently missing and gainsaid,” Avery said, mostly to herself, getting things organized in her head.  “His dad’s dead, as Lucy heard.  Liberty thinks we could call Raquel, the family’s in a weird place, maybe they’re up for a weird idea.”

There were some questions, but Lucy held out a hand, motioning for them to stop and be quiet.

“I’ll explain who’s who as best as I can later,” Lucy’s mom told the group.

There were some nods.

“Thanks, Mom.  Um, Ave, if you’re thinking of calling Raquel and trying to get them going, I think it’s going to be a lot like it was with the war council thing.”

“I mean, a big part of what we’re doing is going to be using the war council.  That’s why I want to call the Mussers.”

“Yeah.  Anyway, best way to do that would be with momentum.  Go to the Mussers saying others are listening and on board, offer them something to rally around.”

“Dangerous, though.  They’re still Mussers,” Verona said.

“Are they human or something else?” Caroline murmured to Lucy’s mom.

“I’m going to go visit Mr. Knox, I think,” Avery said.

“Mr. Knox?”

“He was tied into Bristow’s group, kind of a mini-Bristow, he has connections, he has money, he knows the scene, but he craves feeling important and big and he doesn’t get that a lot.  That might be part of our in.”

“Can I come?” Melissa asked.  Then to the other kids, she said, “This is the part they say no.”

“Sure.”

“Yeah?”

“Your ankle okay?”

“Potioned and cared for by Lucy’s very cool mom.  I’ll hobble.”

George and Mia decided to come as well.

Avery pulled off her bracelet, approaching the area where there were doors to the bathrooms and some closets.  George yelped as a door slammed into place.

Up in Smoke, a little dangerous.  One unknown.  One that- she checked.  Draw Near.  Way too dangerous.

And the Skinny Dip.

She opened the last one.  “Stay close, don’t touch anything, do everything I say, don’t question.  Snowdrop?”

“I’m the vanguard.”

“Yeah.”

The brightness of a town with houses and shops that were all about as wide as a person was a stark contrast to the Arena, Kennet, and the parking lot with burned bits of corpse and piles of barbecued, corpsemongled flesh, with goblins and dangerous things prowling out there.

“This is wild,” Mia whispered.

“Dangerous?” Melissa asked.

“More of a hassle than a danger.  But… it’s hard to know for sure on Paths,” Avery said.  “This?  This is my thing, of us three.”

“What’s the thing the others do?” George asked.

“I can guess Lucy’s,” Melissa said.

“What’s Lucy’s?” George asked.

“Can I say?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw her cut, smash, and magic her way past like, a hundred people, with one scary mutant dude at the end.”

Avery nodded.

“I took on seven.  Grown adults, too,” Melissa said.  “I’m proud.  And freaked out.”

“And Verona?” George asked.

“No idea,” Melissa said.  “Chemistry?  Alchemy?  I saw some of that at her place.  Plus there’s the little googly eyed thing with red hair that talks funny.”

“A bit of everything and a handful of scary-huge magics,” Avery said.

“Cool,” George said.

Avery was worried about Verona, but the best way she figured she could help was to get them moving forward on all of this.

“Why are you asking like that?” Mia asked George.

“I mean… I want to know what’s out there.  Can we learn?  Can we get into this stuff?”

“Let’s get through this, then talk about it.  But yeah, the plan is to leave that door open for you guys.”

“Okay.  Nice.”

“But we have to get through this,” Avery said, tone insistent.  “And that’s not a certainty.  So…”

“What can we do?” Mia asked.

“For this guy?  Respect.  Hang back, don’t scuttle this by, I dunno, making fun of his appearance.  If we show up and he’s half naked?  Be polite.”

“Is he the kind of guy who’s half naked a lot?” Melissa asked.

“No, I don’t know, but we’re showing up in the middle of the night.”

They had to pass through another Path, from the Skinny Dip to the Dipped Wick.

From the Dipped Wick to Mr. Knox’s driveway.  Their arrival necessitated them showing up in a patch of light, and blinded them on arrival so they appeared in the brightness of the security light, which flared and then shattered as they stepped through.

Avery felt alarm from Snowdrop, something sensed–

She shoved Melissa, George, and Mia as she scrambled to get out of the way, trusting Snowdrop’s senses to get a vague impression of what was coming at them.

She used a spell card.  Air.  To blow the assailant away.  He landed and immediately came running again.

Her eyes adjusted slowly.  An axe wielding maniac, teeth bared, eyes wild, swinging.

He didn’t see much better than her in the gloom.  Maybe worse.  Avery threw herself right, behind Snowdrop, using Snowdrop to block line of sight and buy herself the chance to use the black rope.  Snowdrop, at the same time, turned opossum-sized, to better evade the horizontal swing of the axe.

Avery went high, then jumped down, pulling out her lacrosse stick.  She shouted, “Mr. Knox!”

Snowdrop, having gone small, turned regular kid-size again, using the size change to rise up with shoulder driven into the guy’s crotch.

It didn’t bother him much.  He checked Snowdrop with the bit of shaft between his hands, then lined up another swing.

Avery used the lacrosse stick to smash the axe out of his hands.  A very decorated, fancy looking axe, wielded by a shabby looking guy.

She remembered Kass Knox, from the Blue Heron, had been a Collector, focusing on trinkets.  It seemed Collector families had a way of giving shitty secondary roles to the girls, much like how Raquel had a bunch of ‘soft’ implements.

Magic item, which meant the disarmed axe… Avery tracked its movements more than she tracked the guy.

Good thing, because the guy de-materialized.  The axe always had a wielder.  It being knocked out of his hands meant it was at a weird angle, already lined up for a swing.  She blocked the axe-haft with her stick, the head of the axe coming a few inches from her forehead.

Her stick was enchanted, buying her a burst of power, but he was stronger.

“Just this one guy to deal with!” Snowdrop called out.

“Mr. Knox, Mr. Knox, Mr. Knox!” Avery called out.

“The girl who showed up with the two dragons.  Now with a handful of kids.  It’s a step down,” Mr. Knox said.  He was tying on a bathrobe as he came outside, wearing rubber boots, breath fogging in the winter air.  He whistled, gesturing, and the axe-wielder backed off, throwing the axe to him.

Mr. Knox caught it out of the air, then heaved out a sigh.  “You have a twenty seconds before I reactivate my security systems.  Decide what you’re going to do with that time.”

“Abe Musser’s gainsaid and gone, you were our next person to talk to.”

With this guy, going straight for ego was the key.

“Keep going.”

“Step through the door here?” Avery asked.  She checked.  It was a decently safe Path, as long as they stayed near the entrance.  “We don’t want Charles to get the details.”

He hesitated.

“You were my fourth person to reach out to.  After two big favors, getting Wye and Pesch to start organizing people, and one friend, to sort other parts of this out.”

He nodded.  Two of his items came with him as he followed Avery, George, Mia, and Melissa through.

“You fucked my ankle, pushing me,” Melissa muttered.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  Better a fucked ankle than an axe to the head, I guess.”

“Time’s ticking,” Mr. Knox said.  “We’re out of earshot?”

“Hoping so.  We aim to make people Aware en-masse.  A lot of people.  We talked about how, and it’s going to be a system… we or the existing Aware like these guys, they can decide who to bring in.  Maybe eventually we bring in everyone.”

“Two problems with that.”

“Seal isn’t so cool with that much broken Innocence, and that’s a lot of responsibility to take,” Avery replied.

“Yeah.  So?”

“Responsibility gets shared out.  Between Aware, between everyone signing on to be part of this or peripheral to it.  A bit proximity based, a bit based on the people who agreed to bring them in.  Anyone Aware gets hurt by the supernatural?  We all suffer, people closest to it suffer a bit more, but generally, it pushes each of us to want and need to protect things, enforce things, keep it all safe and sane.  Keep the ugliness out.”

“And the Seal?”

“It’ll be weaker.  Practice dependent on the Seal will be weaker.  But we can get past that.  On the one end, the way things were pre-Seal, magic still existed.  Power existed.  We’d be reverting to that some.  On the other end?  Given practice, everyone signing on…”

“Everyone’s a lot of people.”

“A lot of people tied into everything that’s been going on haven’t exactly been getting the best end results.  Evicted from the region, families and old power structures in turmoil.”

“And you’re saying this fixes that?”

“I’m saying this is one possible replacement.  We make people Aware, we diminish the worst parts of the Seal in the process, we, as part of this big organization, say we need a better approach to gainsaying and forswearing.  We elevate the people who were on the bottom of this power structure and we elevate all of us as a part of that.”

“You’ve answered my question about who takes responsibility.  That’s a complicated one I’m too tired to get into right now.  But the other question, the power…”

“We’ll be collectively more powerful.  More Aware means it’s a minefield for dangerous Others and predatory practitioners.”

He looked George up and down.  “I have a new question.”

“For me?” George asked.

“No.  You do know that the Carmine just decided the entire region should be a hornets nest and he’s got goblins, wraiths, and other dangerous Others crawling up out of the woodwork.  He decides what Others emerge and-”

“And he’s saying ‘yes’ to just about all of them, seems like.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Avery agreed.  “I know.  We’ve bumped into that already.”

“It’s part of why I’ve got extra security out right now.  So here’s the thing.  You want to make a lot of people Aware?”

“We do.”

“We can debate the merits on that, but you’re going to lose that debate in about five seconds if someone like one of the Mussers starts asking why we should take responsibility for ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand Aware, if there’s ten thousand new low-level, dangerous Others out there who’d tear them to shreds.”

“Are there ten thousand?”

Mr. Knox shrugged.  “I don’t know, but if they ask, you’re going to want to have an answer.  You’ve got your friends attacking him?”

“Basically.”

“You think they’re going to be able to get him to shift priorities and stop doing that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want my advice?  You’d better know, before you talk to the Mussers or anyone else you want on board.”

Maricica turned.  The Wild Hunt had left, but one remained.

She adjusted her position in the air, facing him square-on.

One of the Allaire Forsworn took a small step forward.  Maricica smiled at the courage.

This was her concern.  Anyone dumb enough to interfere wasn’t any use, and anyone smart enough to be of any use wouldn’t get involved.

“The Wild Hunt moved on.”

“I remain.”

“You diminish them and you diminish yourself, standing against me.  They stepped away.  By lingering, you act against them.”

“I am of the Winter court.  I do not diminish, I simply am.  What I am, standing before you, should be taken as a reminder.”

“I have gone out of my way to leave Faerie nature and matters of Faerie Court behind me, and as I’ve noted tonight, I intend to move forward, the Faerie as a realm and the Faerie as a system left as burned ruin behind me.”

“You have gone out of your way to leave things Faerie behind, but I believe there is a kernel of you that is cowardly enough that you held onto it.  Shall we test that?” he asked.

“I don’t see the point,” she replied, drifting in the air.  Briserban looked up at her, casual.

“Don’t you?” Guilherme asked, and he created a spear out of ice.  He judged the weight of it.  “Remember in the cave?  I threw spears at you until I’d trained you to move certain ways.”

“And you failed.  I did end up dodging things.”

“The issue we run into, Maricica, is that you’re insistent on a short-term view.  Something that must be cured if we’re to move forward.  I know you’ve talked to Miss and heard Miss talk about how humanity gained its foothold, using the Seal.  That we misjudged what time and eternity mean in reflection of humanity and its ability to sprawl.  If you’re to help build a courtless system with heavy involvement in human matters, we must train you out of that.”

“And you’ve taken that on yourself?”

“The issue is that you, in talking to the Hunt, talked about the dwindling options, how matters become a solved game.  That if you can track a Fae doomed to fall to winter, you can reach that point where the options dwindle to so few you can predict and shape an outcome.  You talk about your defeat of the consort as a similar dwindling number.  As if everything draws to a singular point.”

He adjusted his grip on the spear.

“You’ll tell me it doesn’t?”

“It does.  But you must be aware, things do not end.  We are Faerie, and things carry on.  Turned to Winter, we remain perpetual.  Past a confrontation with a lifelong enemy, things will carry on, life must be lived.  If you look for a singular outcome when dealing with humans, you may well get it.  You’re capable enough.  But you may not like what waits on the other side.”

“Will you talk me to death?” she asked.  “Or will you make your move?  Throw your spear at me as you did?”

“You made a deal with Gilkey, the poison elemental, the alchemical distillation.”

“I plan to see it through.”

“But you treated it as a means to an end.  The end was reached, and now we must impress that there’s something past that end.  I visited Gilkey, traveling with the Hunt on cold winds to his side.  I had him blow a kiss, caught it in the air, and I kept the air flowing around me, so it would not land.  A trace of saliva, of chemical, of intent.  If you’d done something to mollify his situation, the poison will be weaker, perhaps so weak it doesn’t bind to the spear.”

Guilherme held out the spear.  The blown kiss landed on the end.

“And the stakes have been set?” Maricica asked.  “You’d poison me.”

“The Wild Hunt likes its invisible blades.  For this moment…”

He adjusted his grip.

Light fell on the ice and then fell through it.  It became invisible.  Not even that blown kiss, faint green-black, lingered.

“You made a deal with Edith James, and with the Girl by Candlelight.”

“A deal I intended to keep, I granted her power and the ability.”

“She is not here.  The invisible spear here is viewable with the right lights from spirit.  If those bowls of candles were still around, you’d be able to see a glint along its length.”

“I am not forsworn, you could not even gainsay me if you tried, on these things.”

“It isn’t about the lies, but the underlying idea.  We hold ourselves and each other to standards.  One standard is that the Wild Hunt is not to be trifled with.  Winter is not to be looked down upon.  You think you would dismiss us, your victory scored against an old nemesis?”

“I would phrase it as a change in the paradigm.”

“The paradigmn,” Guilherme said.  He raised a hand.

Maricica turned her head.

The walls she’d erected, the floor, the ceiling, they had that gleam he’d talked about.  Light from spirits catching momentarily.

Four members of the Wild Hunt were still there.  At four corners of the box.  They’d used winter glamour to keep up the walls of the space she’d forged around herself and the Wild Hunt.  Just her and Guilherme inside, now.

“You built your box and brought things to a close with your nemesis and superior.”

“I talked about things beyond it.  If you’re trying to make a point…”

“The point is about means to ends,” he told her.  “And what happens past the end.  Now you and I are in a box.  I hold an invisible skewer, tipped with virulent poison, made with your outstanding obligations in mind.  If you have divorced yourself from being Faerie and exist as something else, then the Winter Court -for as long as a court remains- and the Wild Hunt have no firm grip on you.  I would throw this skewer, and it would miss- you would be different enough my anticipation of your movements, remembering last time, would count against me.  Absolution.  The past matters insofar as you’ve grown past it.”

She stared at his hand.

“But if, in cowardice, you’ve only acted by half measure, and in your transformation you’ve clung to some part of Faerie, your old self, for the familiarity of it, if a part of you believes you should have already met your obligations, and if you’re not truly reaching forward as you claim, that may be the difference by measure of hairs-widths.”

“I feel compelled to offer my objection.”

The Carmine Exile had appeared.  He paced outside the bounds of the box.

“On what grounds?”

“Matters came to a close.  She’s right that no word has been broken.”

“She contrived for the Wild Hunt to summon up her enemy, so she could square off against them here, where she is stronger.  But when you call on the Wild Hunt, you must be prepared for it to come calling in turn.  We are allowed to test her measure, lest she do it again.  We will not be pawns.”

Maricica looked at Guilherme.  She dripped with blood.

“You know it true, Carmine,” Guilherme said.

“Maricica.  I can grant you a position as my agent,” Charles said.

“They would be waiting for the moment I was no longer that.  That very moment, the skewer would be thrown at me.  No box, I assume, but that barely matters.”

“The box is a stand-in for the cave.  A return to our moment many years ago,” Guilherme said.  “The dimensions aren’t even dissimilar.”

“You throw, I dodge, I’ve proven I’ve cut myself off?”

“I throw, this makes contact, and you’re poisoned.  As you said, you can define the rules in your space.  We define the same.  You will not die.  You will suffer and be boxed inside, and perhaps three hundred years will pass before the poison runs its course.  You’ll emerge soon after.  Twisted by the pain, everything you clung to will be twisted in your mind, by equal measure.  Including your brother.  You’ll destroy what you needed most to hold onto.”

“You contrived to let me have my victory, to threaten to take it all away?”

“No contrivance was required.  The threat is for you, by you.  That is why I am not truly acting against the Wild Hunt or Winter.  This is your own doing, the past catching up with the present, with the speed of a thrown javelin.”

Charles Abrams sighed.  “I have an imminent phone call.  I hope to see you inside.”

Maricica was silent, every last part of her trained on the spear.

Charles left.

“I’ll take your silence as acceptance,” Guilherme said.  He raised the spear into a throwing position.

Maricica moved, blood crashing upward, congealing and hardening into scabrous crust.  She moved when he couldn’t clearly see her, much as she’d moved before.  She played tricks with light on the most translucent parts of ice.  He wasn’t tricked.  She moved in different ways, because she was something different.

Guilherme watched with trained eyes, finding alignment between past and present, anticipating where she would be in future.

He knew how she’d moved, before.

He threw, hurling it, and let wind stir snow around himself, glamour shattering.

Spear punctured the blood wall, and poison scraped away from ice.

Spear passed her arm, her shoulder, cutting through long, blood-soaked hair, and the tip of the spear grazed the back of the arm that came backward as she turned in the air.  Just above the elbow, back of the arm.

With just enough poison, honed by stewing in the primeval that had chased her, that Gilkey had inhabited, to inflict three hundred years of suffering.

Guilherme closed the box before she could speak or respond, and plunged it into the snow at the back of the school.  It disappeared beneath, dropping through, where fairies would carry it to a repository deep in the Winter Court, that would not be a Court for much longer.

She had her legacy, that would stay.  Briserban was saved, the upheaval in courts was subtly in motion.  Perhaps in the chaos of an upended court system she had helped orchestrate, someone would forget where she was kept, or those that knew would be removed, trapped themselves, or destroyed.

It didn’t matter.  That would happen, but she wouldn’t be a part of it- not for three centuries, at the very least.

Briserban dropped to his knees, ready to begin his mourning.

Guilherme, brought to earth by his own mourning, put all other considerations to rest.  He was done with this Earthly side of reality for now.  Until the courts upended Fae all over it.

It would be best to plan for that.  Perhaps it was best if they kept one slice of Faerie going, redefining what was currently known as the Winter court as an anchor and preservation of the old ways.

Charles picked up the phone.

There was no voice on the other end, but he could feel the weight of the call.

“The Lord of Paris, I take it.”

“It is.”  The voice had a French accent.

Charles paced in the inner sanctum of Alexander’s old Demesne.  One of the only parts of the building that still stood.  Wood creaked with his every footstep.  Alexander had destroyed his, so it felt cruelly ironic.  Charles traced a table with his fingers.

Alexander, who’d put so much emphasis on forging connections, tying the community together.  He’d done many things wrong, but he’d had some good ideas.

“Yes,” he said.  “The Judges are three to four in agreement.”

“Then it is done.”

The call ended there.

Charles disposed of the phone, throwing it aside.  The building was in such dire shape, held up by a faint expression of his power, that that was all it took for the dominoes to start tipping, and the cascading collapse to begin.

The Blue Heron was gone, and then so was Charles, skipping a short distance to where the others were.  He joined his bloody Lords, Abyss-touched students, Forswearing-scarred teachers, the Allaires, who were so broken, the Kims who broke others so easily, a tide of violent Others who he’d invoked into being, who didn’t know what war they’d fought in, and the growing number of undercity denizens who’d agreed to be loyal.

The Aurum made an appearance, weaving past, giving Charles a wry look.  He’d felt a change.  The change.

It is done.

He could feel it.  The territory was his, borders secured.  Power flowed in easily.

He wouldn’t forswear the Lord of Paris.  It wasn’t done.  Not quite yet.

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