Author: Wildbow

Finish Off – 24.1 | Pale

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Lucy was tempted to remove her earring, to tune out the voices from the others, but she didn’t want to let her guard down.

Her entire body hurt, in ways healing potions couldn’t reach.  Bones felt bruised, and every step brought up that bone-deep hurt.  Joints felt uncooperative, swollen or locking up and then making every grinding fraction of adjustment known when she pushed past that lock-up.

George, Wallace, and Brayden said something, guffawing, and she closed her hand, and it hurt in three different ways as it closed into a fist.

Them being happy and easygoing is a good thing.  We just have to find a balance.

It didn’t help that the ground swayed, as if everything in this town was part of a massive rope bridge.  The Common’s Thread looked like it was all made of driftwood, lashed together with salty rope, overcast sky above and below them.  Clouds sometimes drifted by, and they tasted like saltwater.

Gashwad swore as he knocked some stacked wood off the edge of a rooftop.  It spooked some of their Aware.  A Lost called him out, and he swore at them, intently and loudly, to avoid giving them the chance to give him any orders.

“Oh, look, look!” Mia gushed.

A flock of birds that were tied together or something, some gripping parts of a sweater and a pair of pants, were flying, some in opposing directions.  The effect created a herky-jerky shape of a walking woman.  The loose end of ribbons, otherwise pulled taut by the birds, were some facsimile of hair, made to snap and flutter by beating wings.

“That’s so cool,” Wallace said.

“Oh, hmm, shoot,” Avery said.  “Give her space?  Avoid eye contact-”

“She doesn’t have eyes that aren’t bird eyes, I don’t think, I’m not sure how you avoid bird eye contact without looking at her altogether,” Verona murmured, but she turned away, looking aside, and walked elbow first into Mia, who was still looking.  “But yeah.  Mia, that means stop looking at her altogether, I guess.”

Avery had reached for her charm bracelet.  Lacrosse stick.

Lucy reached for her weapon ring, and moved to block Mia’s view.

Verona grabbed past Mia’s open coat, got a fistful of the side of Mia’s stomach, and squeezed.

“Ow!  What the fuck?” Mia asked.

“Is there a problem?” Connor called ahead from the back of the group.

“Not sure yet,” Avery said, before walking into the side of their friend group, pushing them.

“I’m sure.  What the fuck?” Mia asked.

Lucy helped herd.  “Listen to Avery, seriously.  She knows how this place works.  Don’t touch stuff without asking first, don’t wander, and listen to Avery, to the letter.”

“Ribbons symbolize trouble here, and she had a lot,” Avery pointed out.  “It’s like… imagine a tourist was in Canada and didn’t know that a big yellow ‘electrified fence’ sign meant that you shouldn’t touch the fence, or that certain colors and symbols signified gang affiliation.”

“So she’s a gang member?” Brayden asked, glancing at Lucy.

“Why are you looking at me?  I don’t know much about gangs,” Lucy replied.  “Grew up in the same place you did, crumbnuts.”

Mia perked up.  “You knew about the creeps in white that came into the school, right?  That Bracken knew?”

“I- yeah.  That was magic stuff more than anything.”

“Damn.  More background magic stuff, that’s wild,” Mia said.

Lucy felt bad for Mrs. Schaff, who was back in Kennet, coming to terms with the fact she’d be herding supernatural cats.  But they had fellow teenagers, and Lucy didn’t like fellow teenagers much.  Even Mia, who was okay.

“With the warning sign, some stuff’s universal,” Jeremy said.  “Isn’t it?  You could go to just about any country in the world and a yellow triangle would mean a warning, right?”

“This is universal, in that it’s part of the universe,” Avery replied.  “The Paths might be as big as Earth, I don’t know.  They’ve got their own cultures, their own way of doing things, but the Lost are still people, whether they’re flocks of birds or have yellow signs for heads, so don’t gawk or be weird, and know, hmm… just like people, they can suck, be dangerous, be good, be-”

“Aaa!” Brayden exclaimed.

A family of husband, wife, and two kids with nooses around their necks were moving down the road at a good clip, and they’d just come past Brayden’s right.  The toes of their feet dragged on the ground, ropes extended from their necks into the overcast sky above.  The kids were joking around, while the parents were acting normal, saying hi to some of the Lost at the head of the group.

Ignoring the humans, which rankled, but it wasn’t anywhere near Lucy’s top one hundred priorities right now.

Connor whistled.  Heads turned.  Including the group of Lost.

“Sorry!” he called out, raising an arm in a wave.  “Wrangling this group!”

The dad of the noose family raised a hand in response, before carrying on.

“Rest of you, whose attention I was trying to get?  Pay attention to what Lucy, Verona, and Avery are saying.”

“Especially Avery, when it comes to this stuff,” Verona said.

“Yep,” Connor said.

Mollified, the group carried on.

The way things were arranged, a bunch of the new Aware that were their age were with them, a loose herd.  A few Lost were with them, leading the group, Snowdrop among them.  The parents and other Aware trailed behind, with Avery periodically walking backwards to keep an eye on things.  Avery’s mom and dad had been to Paths, more her mom than her dad, and were able to manage things a bit.

They all moved to the other side of the street, giving a wide berth to bird woman, who’d started walking their direction when attention had been drawn to her.

Miss had rubberbanded back to Kennet, bringing a lot of the Lost and Foundling residents.  On her recommendation, the three of them were heading out.  Miss and her Lost and foundlings had taken over protecting Kennet, joined by the Aware who’d been Aware before all this, like Mrs. Schaff.

Making this trip didn’t feel super great, knowing that things weren’t great at the destination, and with the slight delay imposed by Avery needing to find an acceptable Path to travel by.

“No!” a Lost at the head of the group called out.

The birds making up the flock-of-birds woman chirped and sang and the sounds came in bursts, like coordinated birdsong.  Lucy tried to use her earring, and thought she maybe caught something, but only got the last sound of the last word of the response.

“We haven’t done any of that,” Snowdrop replied.  “We could use the help.”

The birds-woman paused, then the birds took off, and in the taking off, sweater and pants disintegrated into more birds, flying out over nearby buildings.  A stray ribbon fluttered to ground.

“We good?” Lucy asked.

“Nah,” Snowdrop said, warily watching as some of the birds flew in a lazy circle above them.  Avery’s eyes were on the ribbon.

Apparently the rule for this Path was that Lost could request things or give orders and you had to obey.  But they’d come with Snowdrop and some other Lost and pre-empted that with some orders for each of them, to insulate them.  The way was supposed to be clear- or as clear as any of this stuff got.

Verona wasn’t talking to her mom, who was back at the rear of the group.  Her mom wasn’t reaching out, and was instead taking it all in, chatting lightly with Lucy’s mom and Avery’s parents.

“She doesn’t seem happy.”

“Her friends just died.”

“More than that.  Before she even knew that.”

“All the girls got pulled into a scary situation.  They’re fighting against something I still don’t entirely understand, for the sake of people they’ve befriended-“

“Love.  With some it’s love.  Platonic love, mentors, people they take care of.”

“-yeah.”

“Do we really want our kids wrapped up in this?  The other kids, George, Wallace, Jeremy, the girls?”

Brayden’s dad was the one asking.

“I don’t know.  Probably not.  Maybe.  I think a lot depends on how things went tonight.”

“Should-“

“Still going!” Lucy raised her voice, turning to look back at her mom, interrupting Brayden’s dad.  “Not went.  Still going.”

Her mom didn’t look happy.

“She heard that?” Brayden’s dad asked, not whispering any more.

“My life has been punctuated by me realizing Lucy’s overheard things, and me not realizing she’s overheard things and really wishing I had.  Now she has magic to help with that,” Lucy’s mom said.  “We’ll talk about it with the Others, okay?”

Lucy shook her head and turned away.

“It’s still going?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s always going,” Oakham replied.  “There’s always something, seems like.”

“I thought we fought off the guys back at the Arena, and now that was it,” Jeremy said.

“What fighting did you do?” Wallace asked, before adding, “I said that wrong, it’s not like I did anything either.”

Still, it looked like maybe Mia, Wallace and the others had picked up that impression somehow.  It kind of explained how easygoing and goofy they’d become.

“No,” Lucy replied.  “So listen and be safe, okay?”

“Hey Lucy?” Mia asked.  “When we were all hanging out before the movie and you said you knew swordfighting, that was for real?”

Lucy slipped her weapon ring on, reached for a pen that was in her pocket, and flicked it out into an epee-style sword.

“Holy shit.”

“Where we’re going is where we went for summer, actually,” Lucy pointed out.

“With the swordfighting?”

“Some.  A lot of other stuff.”

“Verona?” Verona’s mom asked.

Verona looked back at her.

“If Avery’s thing is this sort of stuff- exploring this sky place?  And if Lucy’s good at swordfighting, what’s your thing?”

“Can we put a hold on the questions and stuff?  Ask them?” Verona asked, indicating Lucy’s mom and Avery’s parents.  “I’m a bit occupied by other stuff.”

“We are,” Lucy said, indicating herself and Verona, before she glanced at Avery, who did a little hand motion.  Lucy re-did the indicator, pointing at herself, Verona, and Avery.

“Okay.”

It was hard to read Verona’s mom’s tone.

Lucy made a point of navigating over to where Verona was.  Verona had settled into position walking between the group and nearby buildings, Julette and Alexanderp riding in her hood, hands in her pockets.

Lucy didn’t say anything, but fell into step beside Verona, putting pen away, dropping weapon ring, Yalda’s ring, and John’s tag beneath her collar.

“What?” Verona asked.

Lucy shrugged.

“Want something?”

“To be beside you.  If you want to talk, I’ll listen, if you don’t…”

“No talk for right now.  Keep people off my case?  I’m wiped, I’m not looking forward to this.”

Lucy nodded.

They walked for another five minutes.  Lucy didn’t have to do much fending-off, besides a small head-shake when Jeremy and Caroline sidled over.  Finally, Snowdrop ran ahead, and Avery perked up.

“Here.  The way out.”

The ‘way out’ was a rope off the side of things, that went straight down, so far down it disappeared from view.

“Are you for real?” George asked.

“It’s our dismount,” Avery said, glancing over the edge again.  “Gets us to the highest point there, which should be convenient, if I remember the geography.”

“Not everyone has the boon that protects them from long falls, Ave,” Lucy said.

“Hmm.  It’s what we’ve got, unless you want to backtrack,” Avery said.  “It’s not as bad as it looks.  Connections should kind of pull you to the rope, so even if you let go, you should be mostly okay, just make sure you grab on again toward the bottom.”

“You’re sure about that?” George asked.  “You don’t sound sure about that.”

“Mostly sure,” Avery said.  She got out a spell card and pulled an elastic off her wrist.  She put a hole through the card, and scribbled down ‘Blue Heron Institute’.

While she was at it, the stragglers of their group caught up- the parents, basically, and a lot of them took a moment to look over the edge, seeming way less than thrilled at the thousands-of-feet of descent ahead of them.

“That works?” Lucy asked, as Avery threaded the elastic through the hole to attach it around the rope.  Tagging it.

“Should.”

“I’ll go?” Verona asked.

Lucy was a bit surprised.

“I recommend gloves, coat sleeve if you don’t have any, and use your legs to control your speed,” Avery said.

Verona nodded, reached out, and then slid down, very hesitant at first, then faster.  Julette rode in her hood.

“Damn,” George whispered.

Lucy watched Verona’s mom with a careful eye, studying every expression.  The concern, the puzzlement, the- Sylvia was watching Verona as much as Lucy was watching her.

Hard to read.

“I’ll go next, do I get cred for that?” Oakham asked.

“So much cred,” Mia replied.

“You know I’m still sort of mad at you over how the stuff went with the Dancers?”

“Oh my god, I tried, Oakham.”

“But then that feeling is conflicting with-”

“With me -us- trying?”

“-with the cred.  Wooh, belly did a thing, looking down.  Anyone else get thoughts like, ‘what if I let go’ or ‘what if I stepped over the edge’?”

“I’ll have more now, because you said that,” Mia told her.

“Intrusive thoughts,” Avery’s mom said.  “Sometimes I wonder if I have more intrusive thoughts than real thoughts.  Patches, here and there, especially when driving long distances.”

“You’re all alone in that, sister,” Snowdrop circled around Avery, becoming opossum, then becoming human again, to change her outfit.  Her t-shirt had an opossum with head and butt sticking up, with text that read ‘Ass protrusive, panicked thoughts intrusive’.  She stuck out a fist.

Avery’s mom paused before responding to the fist-bump.  Avery mussed up Snowdrop’s hair.

Oakham slid down the rope, kind of hugging it with arms while also using her hands, squeezing rope between thighs.

“I’ll go ahead?  To make sure the coast is clear?  You stay for last, Ave?” Lucy asked.  “Make sure there’s no issues, no sudden Lost appearing, or weird Path shenanigans?”

“Sure.”

Lucy straddled the railing and waited until Oakham was further down- she wouldn’t be able to look down that easily, and she didn’t want to go so fast that she bumped into Oakham’s hands and messed up her grip.

“Is there a boon for this?”

“Yeah.  More for me than for you, because I ran the Forest Ribbon Trail, but we technically ran the middle segment of this path.  Old dark brown rope… If I remember right, pretty sure I do, if you’re taken somewhere against your will or by accident, you’ll stop at a well traveled place, like a crossroads.  That means if you’re kidnapped, the kidnappers might get stalled for a bit there.  If you were whisked away to the Faerie courts by a magic item or something, you’d go somewhere more like a marketplace or center of a city.”

“What’s this?” Jeremy asked.

“I’ll explain more after,” Avery said.  “But we shouldn’t dally too much.”

“Was that why you wanted to do this?” Lucy asked.  “That boon for all these people?”

“Not sure how well it works for them, but no.  I chose this Path because there aren’t many that are anchored well enough I could bring more than ten people through in good conscience.”

“Got it,” Lucy said.  She took a deep breath, and felt her stomach flip-flop as she adjusted her grip, getting a hold of the rope.

She slid down, testing momentum and speed before zipping down at a better clip.  It felt like her gut had disconnected from her body, and if she went down too fast, she left it behind, but if she went too slow, it went down ahead of her, wobbly in the wind.

She passed through salty mist, then thicker clouds, some of which were darker than others.

She could look up and see the Commons Thread disappear, the mists closing in.  Each pass through a dark cloud made the sky darker.

And then the darkness of the thickest part of a cloud in the overcast sky turned out to be night.  And she slid the rest of the way down, from just about the point where the air was thin enough to make her dizzy, gradually making her way to the ground.

No friction burns either, as it happened.  They’d been spared that, at least.  The rope was old and salty, but it didn’t chew up her gloves or prick her palms with stray strands of coarse, rigid fiber.

Her biggest issue was the fact she’d unzipped her coat on the Commons Thread, where the temperature was more neutral, and now she had a ten minute descent down a rope into deep winter, with her coat open and ears uncovered.

She settled, boots meeting the tower of a castle that loomed over the battlefield.  When she touched a bit of snow there, it slid from its perch, falling from the tower to hit the castle’s peaked, patchwork roof, creating a mini-avalanche.

There was barely any spot below where the snow hadn’t been trampled down, and it had originally piled up ass high, by the looks of it.

In fact, as she looked around, there were more places with bloodstains than places beyond the trees where the snow hadn’t been trampled.

The school was there, in a manner of speaking.  Leveled.  Only parts of the original stone building stood, off to the side of Sootsleeves’ castle, which had relocated from the southwestern end of Kennet found to here.  Some parts were still on fire.

People wandered, with Sootsleeves’ hold being a common stopping point or meeting place- a place to get warm.

Debris was collected and sorted through.  Some Foundlings had remained behind and were gathering books from the demolished library.  Verona was standing on a balcony closer to there, watching from above.

Lucy went to Verona’s side.  Verona looked up and over at her.

“I’d go collect some books, distract myself, but there’s claims to the ownership, most were on loan, it’s not worth the hassle,” Verona said.  “End up with some Graubard tracking it down or something, maybe.”

“Makes sense.”

“Not really in the mood to distract myself either.  Feels wrong.”

Lucy nodded.

Oakham had made her way down to the ground level, and was with Bracken.  Bracken looked grim.  Well, he always looked grim, but the way he moved now, head down?  More so.

Lucy wanted to know but she didn’t want to ask, so she watched as people got sorted, taking a moment in the quiet she hadn’t had, fighting the mob and Family Man, or dealing with the new Aware.

Some of the Hosts around Matthew would periodically turn on spirit mode and start floating some, their bodies illuminated by lights that didn’t match the lighting here.  It was cool to see.  Objectively.  The ‘coolness’ of it felt at odds with this whole fucking mess.  Blood in snow, a field turned into a battlefield.

Bodies, laid in row and column on snow out toward the workshops, which were in better shape.

She didn’t want to know, but she had to know.  The gap between the two sentiments left her feeling uneasy.

“I asked one of the pigeons,” Verona said.  It sounded like half of a sentence, but the second half didn’t come.

“You asked-?”

“There’s no bodies.  For Mal, for the other denizens who didn’t make it.  It’s almost as if they never existed at all.”

“Fuck.”

So those rows and columns – thirty plus people, they didn’t include the denizens.

Verona’s expression was hard, little microexpressions popping up around mouth, chin, and eyebrows, like she was fighting back against saying something, or crying, or screaming.

“Woaah, shit!” George exclaimed, as he came down the rope.

More clashing sentiments, more unease.

“I’m gonna-” Verona mumbled.  She reached up as Julette headbutted her ear, and scratched around the cat’s face.  “We’re gonna-”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

Verona circled around to where there was a ladder and began going down the side of the tower to where there were some balconies that went inside.

“That’s something I never want to do again,” George said.  “Whoo!”

“Ease back?” Lucy asked.

“Ease what?” he asked, peering over the railing near the tower top to figure out how to get down.

“The whooping, the cheering.  People-”

“Oh my god, holy fucking wow,” George said, as he came down to stand next to Lucy, gloved hands on the railing.  He looked down at everything.  “Is that dude a wagon?”

“-died here,” Lucy finished, after a pause.

Killwagon was dead.  Or appeared to be.  Not one of the rows or columns either.  He lay by the westernmost entrance to the building that no longer stood.

Not the worst loss – that sounded bad in Lucy’s head, and she hoped to have her thoughts more centered before she opened her mouth around anyone, down there.  It wasn’t the worst because bogeymen bounced back.  She would wait before being upset over that.

She didn’t want to see more.

“Coming down!” Mia shouted.  “I can’t see where my feet are going!”

“You’re fine!” Lucy called up, after checking.  “Feet on track, keep sliding down!”

“Is there solid ground?  Holy fuck, oh man, I thought it might be a trick and I’d get past a cloud and the ground would be right here.  I’m so glad I do gymnastics.”

Maybe they shouldn’t have brought the new Aware, but bringing them and involving them was supposed to be part of the bigger picture – fuller involvement, showing they were standing by what they were putting forward.

It sucked that it was so hard.

Fuck Charles.

Lucy waited until the rest arrived.  It took a while.

She could see Verona on the ground, talking to people.  Far enough away that Lucy’s earring didn’t pick things up.  She would have used practice to augment the earring and try catching it, but it wasn’t worth it, not when the others had small questions, about the Blue Heron, about the school.

She could feel her patience wearing thin, but… this was what they’d agreed to.

Their parents came last.  Avery followed after, but she, like a lunatic, had just jumped, and touched the rope in the spaces between where the parents were before reorienting.

Avery landed on the rooftop with a bang, the ground rippling beneath her.

“Holy fuck,” Brayden said.

“What was that?” George asked, from a lower balcony.  “I didn’t see.  Did someone fall?”

“Avery,” Lucy said.  “That was Avery coming down.  She’s fine.”

The parents were still making their way down.  Avery’s dad was talking to her mom a lot, walking her through the motions, being reassuring.

Lucy felt bad for her mom, that she didn’t have that.  She deserved that, but it was all so hard.

Felt bad about the ‘gotta climb down a stupidly long rope hanging in the sky’ thing too.  Avery could be such a ditz sometimes.

Lucy also noticed Gashwad, the last one to come down.  He was a small shape clinging to the rope, as high up as he could be while seeing what was going on, and not quite revealing himself.  A black lump hanging off a black rope against a night sky.  Waiting for enough people to move and turn their attention in other directions so that he could climb the rest of the way down.

“How are we doing?”

“Dunno,” Lucy replied.  “Mostly I’ve been guarding the rope.”

Avery nodded.  She looked around.  “Here, they’ve got that.  I need to know.  Come on.”

Lucy took Avery’s hand, Snowdrop took the other.  Avery had them jump down to a nearby balcony, move around the tower, and, when their bracelets of wooden cubes stopped reacting to people watching them, they black roped to ground, before circling around Sootsleeves’ hold.

The bodies.  Dog Tags stood by.  But not all of them.

Horseman… who else?  Lucy trudged over bloody snow and snow that had been painted gray by the dust from the collapsed parts of the building.  Fragments of blue glass were scattered across parts of it, bright in the gloom.

She was stopped by Grandfather, who put a hand at her shoulder.  Stopped from doing an easy assessment of the group.  She did one anyway.

Black.  Midas, it looked like – or maybe he’d bailed, he hadn’t been a cohesive part of the unit.  Mark.  Foggy.

Grandfather put a hand at Lucy’s other shoulder, steering her until he could put an arm around her, squeezing, keeping her put.

“I hate that.  Hate this.”

Lucy turned her head to look.

Her mom, standing on the tower.  Lucy hadn’t been able to hear conversations down here while she was up there, but she’d heard her mom’s murmur to Kelsey, when the distance was the same.  Because sound traveled down, or because connections were stronger?

“I don’t want this for you.”

“It’s what I’ve got,” Lucy replied, knowing her mom couldn’t hear.

“Hm?” Grandfather grunted, before looking where Lucy looked, making eye contact with Lucy’s mom.

“Oh no,” Avery said.

Snowdrop leaped off of Avery while becoming human, forceful enough that Avery’s forward momentum stopped.  Avery was standing in place for a moment while Snowdrop ran forward.

A number of pillowcases had been brought out from inside and one was laid over a body, but the horn that curled out was telling enough.  Another bulge- too round, too big.  Smaller than Toadswallow, and Lucy could see Toadswallow besides, but…

Snowdrop moved the first pillowcase.  Ramjam, curled up, wearing a kids winter coat and snowpants, lying there with a hole in his forehead, eyes open.  Magic runes were laid against the skin of his narrow neck like a collar.

The other was Butty McButtbutt, lying face down on a pillowcase that was now bloodstained, another laid over him.  He was wearing furry bikini bottoms.  Same deal with the runes.

Six or seven other goblins had also died, not part of the main Kennet contingent, she couldn’t see all of their faces, either, but still… Kennet goblins.  Mostly.  One was one of Liberty’s crew who’d showed up to fight.  She’d come by Lucy’s house at one point.  What had her name been?  Nude-

Lewdtube.  Ferret shaped but hairless, with ear tufts in ponytails.

Damn.  Fuck this.

Goblins had gathered, and more were gathering closer to Snowdrop.

Snowdrop reached into her inside coat pocket, and pulled out some snowdrop flowers.

One flower was placed across Ramjam’s forehead hole, where the bullet had apparently gone in.  One planted in Butty’s buttcrack, which was visible above the line of his bikini bottoms.  Some goblins chuckled lightly.

When she got to Lewdtube, Snowdrop put it at the goblin’s chest, and moved hands to hold it there.

There were nuances for each.  Something gentle for Ramjam, a joke for Butty, a bit of the sentimental for Lewdtube.

Lucy found herself moving forward, pulling away from Grandfather’s warm arm, wanting to do something to pay respects.  She got to Ramjam, knelt in snow, and wiped his forehead free of snow and specks of blood before kissing him there beside the wound and the little white flower that stuck up out of it.

She looked down at him, then, reaching into a pocket, found some chalk.

A little ‘x’ on his neck broke the binding.  The runes fell away.  Lucy smudged the ‘x’ away to make it so there were no marks.

She considered giving Butty a kiss too, but his pear-shaped proportions meant his head was awkwardly close to the ground, his butt stuck up, and-

Easier to kiss her fingers and touch them to ass cheek.  Butty would have liked that, and it felt more appropriate.  Ramjam was enough of a romantic in the broader sense that the kiss she’d done felt right.

She drew an ‘x’ on the back of his neck, breaking the binding.

Purely performative, it wasn’t like he could be compelled to do anything, but it felt right.

One of the other goblins had the same binding.  She broke that as well, before straightening, feeling the aches and pains from her long fight.

“We won’t make him a weapon,” Snowdrop said.  “He doesn’t deserve that.”

“For those who don’t know, that’s a thing we do,” Tatty said.  “I’m gonna tell you, because I’m the one ‘sides Toads who’s most procedural and semantical.  We make ’em into weapons.  A lot of the magic’s gone, the good stuff, but he worked hard at being a good hammer.  Some will still be there.”

“Fits,” Avery said.

“Same for the others.  We’ll do the rest-”

“Except Liberty’s,” Avery said.  “She’ll have her own process, she’ll say her own goodbyes.”

“Uh- right!  We’ll do the same for Butty and his McButtbuckler, Clambeard’s clamshears, Gapwhap’s clapslapper, Bitchhiker’s bitchstriker, Nubchub’s Grubclub, and Bald Bishop’s Massturbator,” Tatty said.

Some goblins did the forehead-groin, nip, nip, lips salute, in varying patterns.

“All wrong,” Snowdrop said.

“Not going to give ’em to you.  Doesn’t feel right,” Tatty said.  “Not angry or nothin’, but…”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“If the market’s around, we can take Ramjam and the rest and put them in a place nobody will know him or see anything,” Snowdrop said.  “Find someone who doesn’t know jack all about ’em, someone who’ll fuck it all up, use the weapons and stuff for something stupid, and sell ’em for pennies.”

Goblins nodded.

Toadswallow and Bubbleyum had come over and were observing.

Verona kissed Ramjam’s forehead, and gave Butty a light pat on the butt, making it jiggle.  Jiggle some, anyway.  The cold was setting in.  The jiggle was getting more rigid.

“Should maybe do it soon,” Lucy said.  She saw Matthew too, now, walking over to Toadswallow.

Fuck all of this.

“Ramjam, you were great,” Avery said.  “You were the best at saying it, I don’t think I can give it that nuance.  You were genuinely great.  Everything a goblin should be.  Butty, you kept surprising us, grosser, funnier, slipperier, more offputting, putting out better results than we expected, time and again, and you did it without words.  Good showing.”

“Clambeard,” Lucy said.  “You ran a good market stall, you came here to fight.  That’s goblin class.”

“Bald Bishop, didn’t know you, but you have- had a cool schtick,” Verona said.

“Given a chance, Snow and I will take Lewdtube to Liberty after,” Avery murmured, once they’d done the rounds, recognizing each.

A miserable looking Biscuit offered them alcohol, maybe for libations, but Lucy shook her head.

They left the goblins to it.  They walked over to where Matthew was talking to Toadswallow and Bubbleyum.  Grandfather followed Lucy.

“Here you are,” Toadswallow said.  “Where to even begin, my dears?”

“Who else?” Lucy asked.  “Who did we lose?”

“Horseman and some of the other Dog Tags were bound, and were taken away.  They’re bound, doing whatever the St. Victor’s practitioners say,” Matthew said.

Grandfather nodded.

Lucy had guessed.  She touched her chest, feeling the rings and dog tag there, against her sternum.  “We got Midas, Foggy, Whistle, and Trick from the clutches of combat practitioners.  I want to believe we can get those guys away from Charles.”

“I’ll back you up in that,” Verona said, voice soft.

“The Vice Principal.  Lost her,” Matthew said.

Lucy looked across that arrangement of bodies.  The Vice Principal’s massive ‘steed’ was sitting at the far end, back to the wall of a workshop, sobbing.  Some denizens milled around him.

“She was unmade?  With the rest of the denizens of Kennet below?”

“No.  She was too tied up in other things for him to lay any claim to that.”

“Mal was a part of our council,” Verona said.

“I don’t know,” Matthew said.  “All I know is what I was told and what I Saw.”

“Fuck this,” Verona muttered.  “Not you- not mad at you.  But fuck this.”

“Yeah,” Lucy echoed.

Matthew went on explaining, “when the Vice Principal’s people started getting unraveled, she got mad.  Pushed in too far, too hard, a bogeyman got her.  Piece of metal through the spine.  Freak and Squeak dragged her back to us, but her heart and breathing had already stopped for too long.”

“She was tough,” Verona said.

“She was, but it’s hard to out-tough that kind of injury,” Matthew said.

“Is that it?” Lucy asked.  “Or are you working your way up to the bad?  You’ve done that before.”

“No.  Just… not always sure.  Stew Mullen’s in rough shape.  I don’t know how that’ll go.  Is Kennet below still there?”

“Yeah,” Avery replied, elbowing Lucy.

“We got the Family Man,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded, somber.

Lucy could see the image of that twisted caricature of a man lying there.  It jumbled together with the image of Milo Songetay, with denizens she had stabbed with enough lack of grace that she didn’t know the outcome of those injuries.  With Alexander Belanger, lying in the forest with his head looking like a cracked egg.  That same image of Alexander Belanger lying there, viewed with the Sight, the practice active in and around his head, to the point he looked alive when he had no right to.  Diagrams had floated around him, with eyes in them, each eye roving, with increasing agitation, as if the reality was settling in.

Her dad, lying in the hallway of her home.  She hadn’t seen, Booker had, but the false memory lingered in her head, and by some twist of mental fuckery, it was the only memory of her dad where his face wasn’t an ever-shifting blur.

“When you say you got him,” Matthew was saying.  “Is he imprisoned, bound, or…”

“Dead,” Avery said.

Lucy banished the mental image and the storm of thoughts that followed.

Matthew raised his eyebrows.  “And Kennet below is okay?  Okay, it sounded bad from what Nicolette said on the phone, but okay.  Good, except I have no idea what our leadership situation’s going to be, over there.  Even if Stew pulls through, it’d be only the Bitter Street Witch left to steer him.”

“Is that it?” Lucy asked, feeling anxious, frustrated.

“Guilherme left.  His story here is done, as I understand it.”

No surprise there.  She’d only have been less surprised if he hadn’t shown at all, if he’d found it more efficient to turn his focus elsewhere.

“Rook’s gone.  She said she’s done with all this.”

“I have no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Avery said.

“Hollow Yen?” Lucy asked.

“Here.  Stayed back.  It sounded like Rook thought that was the wrong move, but who even knows?” Matthew asked.  He sounded tired- the kind of tiredness that came with heartsickness.

“No idea,” Avery replied.

“Dog Tags were talking about splitting up,” Matthew said, looking over at Grandfather.

“I don’t know,” Grandfather replied.  “I convinced them to hold off until we know how this falls out.  If there’s a hub to come back to, Kennet still there, maybe we do like we originally planned.  Some Dogs stay to hold the fort, others go.  If there’s no hub…”

If there’s no Kennet in twenty-four hours? Lucy thought.

“…maybe we go after Horseman, Midas, Mark, and Black, see if we can get ’em back.”

“That might be a suicide mission,” Lucy said.

“It’s a mission, which is better than the alternative, way things are right now.”

She frowned.

“We’d be careful.  John sacrificed something to bring us back, we won’t go easy, if we can help it.”

Lucy felt worries stir.

“Alpeana’s not great, neither is Monty, though that’s a mixed thing,” Matthew said.  “Nibble’s… it’s better if you visit them, judge for yourself.  You’ll be better at assessing the damage than I am.”

“That sounds bad,” Avery said.

“Of course it sounds bad,” Verona added.  “It’s bad.  Is there any good?”

“Depends on your angle, what you think of as good or bad.  The Girl by Candlelight is dead.  Slapped by the Turtle Queen.  Maricica beat Musser at some point, last few days.”

“We heard,” Lucy pointed out.  “It came up.”

“Right.  She had him, held him in that wound in her chest.  Had his minions.  The Wild Hunt got her, I don’t know the specifics.”

“I do.”

Lucy turned her head.  She hadn’t heard the man approach.  If it was a man.  He was dark and looked like a man dressed in black raingear with a wide-brimmed hat, soaking wet.  The light turned a yellow-green where it caught the edges of the wet material.

“Gilkey,” Avery said.

“The Wild Hunt approached me.  They took ownership of her deal with me, where she’d promised a fix, gave me the fix, asked for a bit of poison.  They suggested I come, I think as part of a bigger plan that ended up being unnecessary.”

“You’re fixed, you’re cured?” Avery asked.

“No.  But I’m… it’s better.  Better than I was before I met Maricica.  They said more of a change would make me stop being… this,” he said, indicating himself.  “Being Gilkey, and I needed to think about that.  They offered a bigger fix, if I could decide how I wanted all that to go, what I wanted to give up, all of that.”

“You have to be careful with deals with Fae,” Toadswallow murmured.

“I know.  The way it was presented to me, the way they took ownership of her deal with me, the games, the schemes, the stuff that would normally come with a Fae deal, they were aimed at her.  Winter’s apparently too rigid to corner me or pull something on me?”

“Something like that,” Lucy said.

“Not that I cared.  It was a way out of my situation.”

“That’s the trap, right?” Verona asked.  “Thinking it can’t get worse?”

“Believe me, I know.  I made that mistake and I ended up standing in a blighted field for months, unable to die, unable to kill myself, knowing if I moved, I’d kill people, kill wildlife, trees.”

“We can talk, organize, maybe, if you want to figure out a way forward.  I know a bit about Winter,” Lucy offered.

“I might stay like this for a while, before I decide anything.  So don’t worry about it.  It’s not a priority.  But that’s not why I spoke up.  It’s not that important.”

“It’s maybe the one clearly good thing that happened tonight,” Avery said.  “It’s important.”

“Maricica,” Gilkey said.  “They poisoned her, they sealed her away.  Musser’s buried inside her, so he’s part of that, I guess.  She’ll suffer and stay imprisoned for a while.  The longer she was willing to let me suffer like I was, or let others suffer, the longer she’d be imprisoned like that.  Because of the karmic backlash.”

“It’s very Winter,” Lucy said.  “Not necessarily right, but it’s the extreme, unjust sort of justice you get when you talk about immortals the karmic weights they throw around.”

“Musser had familiars.  They were freed when he was imprisoned with Maricica.  Some left.  Some went with Charles.”

“He just left, then?” Verona asked.  “Charles, his contingent?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “We’ll have to figure out where, if we want to keep going after him.  Which is a whole conversation.”

“I overheard a bit of it, between you and my mom, when you were on the phone with her,” Lucy said.  “A whole conversation, yeah.”

“It wasn’t what we hoped for,” Toadswallow said.  “We wanted to find a weakness in the old red bastard.  We got some of his allies, Edith’s spirit, Maricica, the Black Scalpel, the neighborhood, plicate wraith.  We forced him to relocate, but he’s recruiting more help.  I don’t know how much of a weakness there is.  And he signed that deal.”

“With the Lord of London overseas?” Lucy asked.

“The same.”

“Fuuuck,” Avery whispered.  She ran fingers through her hair.  “Fuck.  That… I’m not sure even what that means, one hundred percent.”

“It means he got enough power he doesn’t need to worry about spending it for a while,” Toadswallow said, eyes narrowing, one magnified by his monocle.  “His borders are secure- nobody’s penetrating them or trying to unfuck any geographical wedgies-”

Knotted spaces, Lucy guessed.  She wasn’t in the mood to play twenty questions.

“-and they’re backing him for any future Carmine Contests, extra power, weapons, and recognition from world powers to make his ruddy derriere very hard to budge from that throne.  Just in fuckin’ time, after the Wild Hunt dealt with Maricica, who he’d planned as the replacement for whoever replaced him.”

Avery, fingers still in her hair, paced.  Snowdrop reached out, as if to stop the pacing, or hug, but Avery was too agitated to notice, seemingly.

Verona had a dark look on her face, hands jammed into pockets, Julette in her hood, chin on Verona’s shoulder.  Alexanderp awkwardly did the same at the other shoulder.

This was so fucked.

“He summoned a lot of Others,” Avery said.  “We figure he’s just doing a blanket ‘yes’ to every conflict based Other that the universe considers putting into existence, and then points them at his enemies.”

“Which raises the general, somewhat rhetorical question – can he do that?”  Lucy asked.  “It doesn’t seem like he should be able to get involved on that level.”

“I do believe, my dear, he has ceased giving a fuck about ‘should’,” Toadswallow replied.  “I see your parents on their way down from the towertop.  Shall we give them a minute?”

“I can get them, speed things up,” Avery said.  “I’m so glad things worked out for you, Gilkey.  I’d hug you if-”

“Do not,” he said.  “You’d still die.”

“Yeah.  Okay, still cool,” Avery said.  Then she jogged off, tying the black rope around her hand.

“What’s the situation with Alpy, Monty, and Nibble?” Lucy asked.

“Come.  It’ll take Avery a minute for all the adults, especially if she has to walk them through the process,” Toadswallow said.  He walked off, and Bubbleyum joined him, rubbing his mostly hairless head.

Lucy followed him around to the side of the ruined building, where Killwagon’s wagon lay, with yellow tape surrounding it.  Gilkey and Grandfather followed after.  Their route took them a bit of the way into the trees, away from everything.

Nibble was with Chloe, the two of them sitting by a stump- it looked like Chloe had tried to sit down with him on it, but he was thrashing, and Chloe had arms and legs wrapped around him, holding him in a headlock while keeping him from getting his feet under him.  If they’d been sitting on the stump, they’d fallen and now sat with Chloe’s back to it.

Nibble was in a worse state than Chloe had been, back when they’d first met the pair.  A black wound at his shoulder had spikes of bone around it, and flesh had gone grey and necrotic around the spikes.  He struggled, hissed, and snapped, and Chloe patiently held on, stopping to rest with her face between his shoulderblades when he was still, pulling back when he wasn’t.  There was a weary look in her eyes.

He noticed Lucy and Verona, and got more agitated, to the point he and Chloe were on their sides on the ground.

“I’m glad you thre- There’s two of you.  Is Avery okay?”

“More or less.  She’s fetching family and friends.”

“I’m glad you’re okay, then,” Chloe said, over Nibble’s small breathy screeches.  She leaned into Nibble’s back.  “They’re okay.  It’s okay.”

He hissed.

“We’re okay,” Chloe said, forehead against Nibble’s back.  “Didn’t hurt anyone too badly when you flipped, Nibs.  So that’s okay.  It’s all okay.  Got to wait this out, give it a few days or weeks to get it so things are quiet again.  Maybe a few months.  Could be months.  But it might be easier to be okay if nobody fleshy and edible was nearby.”

Meaning Lucy and Verona.

Verona reached for a stack of spell cards, and flipped through it.

“That’s um,” Chloe said, with uncharacteristic tension in her voice.  “Meant to be a hint, fleshy and edible friends.  Not that we’d eat you if we had our heads straight, but if you haven’t noticed-”

More tense, saying that.

“-Nibble’s head isn’t straight.”

“Might be better if you didn’t use those specific words,” Gilkey said.  He walked around, snow melting and picking up a rainbow-ish sheen beneath him, if rainbows were limited to greens and yellows.  When he settled between the group of them and Nibble, Nibble seemed to lose their scent.  “I forget the specifics, but I know if someone’s ravenously hungry, it’s best not to talk about food.”

Verona dropped a card onto snow.

The darkness welled out, cutting off light.

Good that Verona had the spell cards, since Lucy had used all of hers against the mob.

“Better,” Chloe murmured.  “But smell, the sounds of you, heartbeats…”

“Working on it,” Verona said.

“I got sound,” Lucy said.  She reached for and pulled on her mask, and tapped it to turn on the lights she’d worked in around the eyes.  It made them glow red and gave her some illumination that pushed back against the ambient darkness.

“Makes sense,” Verona said.  “I got smell, maybe.  Not our usual.”

Lucy finished her spell card first, which was a first, but she had her implement to help with the sound diagram and getting her intent into the specifics.  She made it complex, screening out things for Nibble.

“Nibble?” Lucy asked.

He didn’t react.

“Chloe?  You can hear me?”

“Yeah.  This is better.  Darkness and quiet.”

“Insulating air against connections, not sure how that affects sound,” Verona said.

“You sound like you’re underwater,” Chloe replied, sounding similarly like she was talking from beneath shallow water.  It looked like Nibble was easing up a lot.  “I can still make out most words.  This works.”

“We’ll find a way to get you back to Kennet,” Toadswallow said.  “Bluntmunch is around.  Rook asked what we wanted to do with him, then let him go before she left.  He said he’ll be good.  He’s strong enough and tough enough to drag your boy where we need him.”

“Okay,” Chloe said.  “Nibble- Nibble, stop.”

He kept fighting, trying to pull away.  Even with everything quieter, their presence not triggering him, he wasn’t in good shape.

Chloe sounded tired.

Lucy got her phone, and flipped through it.  She had no idea what to put on, so she picked a playlist of Mr. Lai’s videos.  Their old biology teacher, who did lumberjack and sustainable gardening stuff on the side.

Nibble was a ghoul who liked videos and TV.  She navigated carefully past him and Chloe, picking up Verona’s papers and carrying them with her, for the added sensory deprivation.  She placed her phone on the stump, resting against a point where one part of the stump was higher than the other, screen roughly facing Nibble and Chloe.

Then she backed off, bringing the sound, smell and light blocking effects with her.  Revealing the stump and the phone with the video playing on it.

Nibble kept struggling, but it was with a different aim, and Chloe let him win, still careful to keep a grip on him and limit his movements.

He settled, cheek on stump, clawed fingertips digging into wood to help him maintain that posture, eyes on the glow of the screen.  Chloe adjusted her grip, and he was relaxed enough she could do it without freeing him.  She got settled, elbow on stump, hand on the top of her head, propped up a bit, legs wrapped around his body, one arm under his armpit, claw gripping his sweatshirt and coat.

Lucy backed off, leaving them alone, like that.

She was giving up her phone, but whatever.  Nibble needed it more.

She helped lead Grandfather and Bubbleyum past the patch of sensory deprivation she left there as additional security.  Bubbleyum steered Toadswallow.  Verona followed.

So did Alpeana.

“You okay, Alpy?” Verona asked.

“Aye, ah’m better than some ‘ere.  Bit spent, somethin’ took a bite oot o’ me, bit i’l abide.”

“That’s good.”

“But th’ nigh’mare merkat?”

“The market?” Lucy asked.  “I don’t know.  Things are a mess.”

“Ye lassies heard aboot Maricica, ah’m sure?”

“We did,” Lucy said.

“Tis a’ sae bitter ‘n black.  Did we win anythin’?  Did we git anythin’?”

“I don’t know.  I think we’re making headway.  But… hard to talk about, when Charles could be listening.”

“We lost some,” Alpeana said.

“So many,” Verona replied.

“Cuid dae wi’ a win.”

“Same,” Verona said.

“Yin that’s nae mah auld chum meetin’ a tairible end.”

Alpeana hopped down from the trees, an amorphous mass of drain-guck hair and pale limbs and face.

There was a pause, a long moment where Alpeana had hit snow and crouched there, not taking any form, that made Lucy empathize more with the nightmare than she had maybe ever.  The way Lucy’s own bones and joints hurt…

Alpeana didn’t have a strict body, but something in her had been hurt and that made shape and movement hard in a way that was noticeable in the pauses and little things.

Avery showed up, waving an arm, beckoning them.

“And Montague?”

“Gone, with the Turtle Queen.  They’ll head back to Kennet.  Mixed bag there.  Something tore him in half.  He’s weaker, smaller, and he’s not upset about being smaller, like that,” Matthew said.  “Except maybe in the guy machismo sense, guy being a bit shorter and smaller than his girlfriend.  Or bringing less to the partnership.  If that’s possible for a plicate horror.”

“Is that a confirmed thing?  That she’s a girlfriend?” Avery asked.  “Or partner?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew said.  “Everyone’s here?”

“Basically,” Avery said.

“You really made people Aware, huh?”

“Checked with Miss and checked with Louise,” Avery said.  “But there wasn’t a good way to do things without tipping off Charles, which we might’ve done anyways…”

Lucy tuned out a lot of it, as they walked over.  Alpeana moved on all fours, hair swirling madly.

With the exception of the Lost and foundlings that had gone back with Miss to protect Kennet, and with the exception of the fallen, some of which were arranged in rows and columns in snow, everyone gathered.

The group seemed a lot smaller.  A big part of that owed to the fact that the denizens of Kennet below had been vaporized, apparently.  A few remained, like the Bitter Street Witch, some of the Vice Principal’s staff, and a couple of enforcers, but it was bad.

It looked like the seriousness of it all had settled in for the new Aware.  Lucy took a minute before joining the group, remembering to take her mask off, with the glowing red eyes.  She walked down the length of the rows and columns.

She’d spent a lot of time with Dog Tags, who had sprung forth from the uncountable and unacknowledged dead, from rounding errors when people had done too much averaging and abstracting, or lost all sense of who was who in heated armed conflict.  She didn’t want to take those who’d died in conflict for granted.

This guy worked in the market and Arcade, liked the Kennet below video games.  Talked about wanting to mess around with Kennet above games.  Wallace would’ve liked him, I bet.

Enforcer keeping the peace in the refugee house that burned down the other night, hung out with Bracken.  Never took off their helmet.  A gentle giant, seemed to get a lot out of looking after those refugees and being a rock of protection and stability.

One of Stew Mullen’s factory workers, wanted to grow up to be one of Stew’s armored juggernauts.  Doyle, Bracken’s pseudo-dad, had mentored the kid for a bit, after the Foreman had left.  The kid had had something knot in his heart, making his blood roar through veins more than it pumped, and had thereafter done hard labor, eaten protein, and exercised pretty much twenty-four seven.

Foundling.  The Auteur was a very annoying foundling woman who filmed and narrated herself incessantly, usually denigrating others -particularly other women- in the process.  She had failed to get on the Kennet found television network, which had such a low bar that a kid folding origami and leaving the camera pointed at a paper-littered desk and running unattended for twenty or thirty minutes at a time had a channel.

Not everyone was cool.

There were a few foundlings she didn’t know.  She at least made sure she recognized them, giving each a moment.

“They are?”

“Heed.  If they could hear anything anyone had to say, they didn’t show it.  Ignored anything anyone had to say, but had a way of helping out when people were in need.”

“Baldface.  Said something that sounded fishy, always had another seeming lie in the back pocket to explain it.  Piled up until it seemed impossible it was all true. Then coincidence would strike.  Usually in a way that was cool, or helpful to the community, or, tonight, saved a lot of lives.  Got a bad rap.”

She knew she was delaying things, and everything was chaotic, but this was important.

She circled around, walking down the last column.  She paused, then moved a sheet.  The guy was shorter than average, with short blond hair, an expression that looked scrunched up, reminding her of an angry pug, not relaxing even in death.  Someone from Kennet – she’d seen his face.

“One of the parents of the St. Victor’s kids,” Matthew said.

“Dony’s dad,” Avery said.

“We cleared a path when he showed, called for a temporary ceasefire,” Matthew explalined.  “Some listened.  The Ordinary Family let him through.  But not everyone let him pass, obviously.”

“I don’t want to sound callous,” Avery said, “but does that fall on us?  Responsibility-wise?  I know the dead don’t threaten Innocence, but… feels shitty.”

“We said not to go,” Verona pointed out.

“Between that and the people inside the building ignoring the call for ceasefire, I’d say it falls on Dony.  He had something dark in him, like the bogeymen,” Matthew said.

“Like the night they killed Edith,” Lucy said.

“I guess, yeah.  I don’t know why he came or why he came alone.  Other parents apparently came too, according to Louise?  I’ve seen him talk to her, to Louise.  Seemed pretty short tempered.”

“So he decided he couldn’t wait for his son to come to him, and came here?”

“Or his son called.  Unless we talk to the kid, I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”

Lucy put the sheet back and made her way to the assembled group.

“You awakened a lot of people.”

“Talked about it with Louise, I know it’s shitty in timing.  Talked about it with Miss when she came back.  I think it fits with what we want to do, big picture, and what we’ve been doing already.  We were already easing into things,” Avery said.  “Market, nightmares bringing people in, our parents, the Arcade…”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.

“There’s more to it, but I don’t want to dive into it with Charles potentially listening,” Avery said, glancing at Alexanderp.  “I can say it changes things.  Partial Innocence trades away the natural shield for tools and the ability to know there’s even a threat you’d need to protect yourself against.  I think of it like the perimeter around Kennet.  Where there’s pushback, resistance, but if it breaches or goes down-”

“It sucks,” Verona said.

Matthew sighed heavily.  He was no doubt remembering what had to be one of the worst nights of his life.  When Edith had turned out to be a co-conspirator.  The parts of the perimeter she’d been supporting went down the moment she was in her cell, and they’d been flooded with wraiths and spirits.

“Sorry to more or less do that unilaterally,” Avery said.  “It felt right.”

“We agreed the council would be able to set terms and build what it needed to build,” Toadswallow croaked.  “Just so happens that tonight the council was one Aware woman and three witches, hm?  Our fault for that little loophole.”

“I don’t think it’s exactly like that,” Matthew said.  “But- I’m willing to keep an open mind.  You girls have had workable plans so far.”

“The benefits of having Aware pile up over time.  Again, there’s some I won’t spell out, but diversity and a variety of people with a variety of types of innocence… it’s not a smooth road for enemies.  It becomes a thing where every potential victim for a dangerous Other becomes a potential snarl.”

“I’ve said before, I could see one in twenty people having a glimmer of Awareness,” Toadswallow said.  “A bit of a belief or willingness to believe in ghosts and goblins.  That becomes a bump in the road for any goblin wanting to steal food or prank them.  You expect them to be unaware and they turn their head.  That’s the basic, smallest sort of Awareness.”

“More bumps in this road, then,” Lucy said.  “Less basic, less small.”

“Mm hmm.”

Avery went on, with a bit more enthusiasm.  “And after everything, I think it makes for a bigger, better, more interesting Kennet.  One like things were out East, pre-Oni war.  I’m- I know I’m saying a bunch of stuff that my friends from school and Brayden’s dad don’t get.  I’m talking about a reality where kids can learn magic if they want to.  Or meet friendly goblins, or foundlings, or whatever.  Where there’s video games and books in Kennet that nobody else in the world gets.”

“We have to get there, first,” Toadswallow said.  “Get past Charles.”

“We’ve got friends outside Charles’ reach working on this.  Nicolette is outside the territory now, we’re hoping, and has the Belangers on the task.  Finding the optimal people to reach out to, to build what we need.  Liberty’s goblins and the network of fairy markets we were working with are reaching out to communities of Other all over, making the pitch.  They’re supposed to arrange meetings and then wait until a certain time before pitching it, so the Carmine Exile has less time to fuck with it.”

The sharing out of responsibility.  If we make it so we all share equal responsibility, we all have equal reason to root out problems and ensure people are protected.

“How far does this go?” Toadswallow asked.

“Kennet for now.  But the way I’ve presented it, they’d agree to recognize what we’re doing, agree to extend our protections over anyone passing through the wider region.  So if I dunno, Jeremy wanted to go to a fairy market or travel through any area we’ve got a working relationship with, the people there would know he’s one of ours, he’s protected in a sense.  Mess with him, mess with us.”

“The more we sign on, the more weight that carries, then,” Sootsleeves said, from the back.  She was riding a horse, torch in hand.  Classic look.

“More clout, yeah,” Lucy said.  And again, there’s more to it.  “Might get harder to use our clout against some people or places.  Like, say, if an Aware wanted to visit Russia.  But Avery can go just about anywhere in the world in a matter of an hour, so…”

“Oh, is that what I’m doing now?” Avery asked.

“Or deliver someone who can remind them our Aware are protected, anyway,” Lucy said.  “It’s not perfect.  It does close doors, we warned them.  We warned you.”

She directed that last bit at the group.

There were some nods.

Some looked spooked.  Maybe because Lucy stood there with a backdrop of corpses covered in sheets, some sheets with blood soaking through them.  The school was in ruins.  Blood stained snow.

“We’ve figured things out so far.  We’ll figure out more,” Lucy said.  “Maybe escorts.  If you want to go to Russia, or wherever, maybe we send a Foundling or someone to protect you with.  Could disguise them as a service dog or something.”

“Or temporarily revoke your Awareness, like Matthew did with Louise,” Verona said, eyes on the ground, hands in pockets.

“I’ve always been about arrivals and departures, I wanted to travel since I was little,” Avery said.  She glanced at her parents.  Her mom nodded.  “Maybe I’ve never one hundred percent been someone who loved Kennet as a place I’d be happy to stay in.  But if we can build something, if we can do this, maybe Kennet becomes cool enough it outweighs the hassle.”

“Again, we have to get past Charles,” Toadswallow said.

There was something in his tone, that made Lucy think that maybe the reason he was stressing that was because he was stressed over it – that he’d seen this fight, how hard it was, and what it had cost, and he wasn’t sure victory was possible anymore.

“One question?” a Foundling asked.  She had a duck mask.

Some other Foundlings groaned.  One shouted, “No!”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Avery asked.

“First off, is it possible there’s a way to share out consequences if the Aware get hurt?  If you’re already spreading out responsibility?”

“That’s your foundling schtick, isn’t it?” Lucy asked.

“Ruins things!” someone shouted.

“No, no!” the Foundling protested.  “I think this works!  This could be really cool, this time!  Because if we’re fighting someone based in conflict and war and blood, and we set up a broad protective effort, if we restructure things to discourage conflict across a wide area, then isn’t there a way to use this to diminish his role?  Oh!  Or even take it over?  You’ve got that war council.  The more you diminish him, the more you’re able to have a bunch of people formally say hey, anything the Carmine does, we’ll take over that job.  Leave him with nothing!”

Giving away the whole fucking plan.

They could only hope that Charles wasn’t listening, and that Charles didn’t have someone who could pass him that information.

“It’s so great!” the foundling in the duck mask exclaimed.  “What’s the hole?”

Lucy met Avery’s eyes, then Verona’s.

She could see Matthew taking that in.  And Toadswallow.

“There are problems,” Avery said.  “The Lords are a big one.  I think we need to knock out a few key ones.”

“We already got some.  Others are weaker.”

“The Parity Lord is out of the picture because Chuck agreed not to use it against us,” Verona said.  “That’s one more.”

“And the sheer amount of lesser Others, goblins, ghosts, and things, that’s… we need to stem that tide.  We might need to go after Chuck, force him-”

“Oh!” the foundling in the duck mask called out.

“No, don’t,” Lucy said.  “Don’t- hold onto whatever you’re saying.”

“Cover her mouth?” Verona asked.

Someone tried, but the duck mask was really strapped on and there wasn’t a mouth-hole to cover.

“We can argue he takes responsibility for what his creations do!  Maybe pass on some other costs-”

The deal we made with the Alabaster, that Charles owes her and she owes us, so in a roundabout way, he owes us.

“Weaken him at a crucial juncture?”

“Leaving the problem, do I need to say it a third time?” Toadswallow asked.

“That we have to address Charles himself, sooner or later,” Lucy said.  “Which is where you guys claimed you wanted us to only fight one more fight.  My mom interprets that as what we did to protect Kennet, but I’d argue that’s a part of this ongoing fight.”

“It’s complicated,” Matthew said.

“I’ll uncomplicate it,” Verona said.  “Charles is likely to try to gainsay us at a crucial moment anyway.  So we move forward with the idea we won’t have practice then.  Items and alchemy, other stuff.  So if we say nah, we’re going forward even if you guys revoke magic, then it’s really up to you.  Do you want us disarmed pre-emptively, or disarmed later, when Charles forces the issue?”

Matthew sighed.

“Sorry again, guys,” Avery told the Aware.  “Someone can explain later, hopefully.  Appreciate you being here.”

Lucy looked at her mom, reading her mom’s expression.  She could see Sylvia, off to the side, taking it all in.  Very much like Verona was hanging back, not saying much, no doubt with a lot of ideas working through her brain.  Lucy had no idea what happened when Sylvia spoke up.  Or what Verona would have to say if those ideas came to fruition.

Didn’t matter.  This was a stupid hurdle, and she understood her mom’s concern, but what they needed to do here was too important.

It wasn’t about vengeance or anything like that.  Yes, John mattered, but that wasn’t it.  It was about the landscape of the world they’d live in.  The rolling consequences.  Charles made a world where a son killed his dad.  Where Dog Tags got bound.  Where Kennet below and the denizens all got drained – thousands of people who had feelings, opinions, desires, hopes, personalities.  Some shitty, some bad.  Gone.

Gone because they’d picked a fight with Charles, yes, but eventually someone would have.  Eventually he would’ve needed the power.  Eventually, a power hungry man willing to do something like that would’ve found a reason.

“You guys swore to lock us out of one fight.  I know my mom’s arguing that we already fought it, but is there an interpretation where we didn’t?”

Matthew hemmed and hawed a second.

“Yes,” Bubbelyum said.

“Then I’ll make it even simpler than Verona did, I’m done with debate, I’m done with questioning this,” Lucy said.  “Too much is too important.  I swear I’m taking up this fight.  You’ve got to give us this last shot, at least.  So if you’re going to try to hold me back from it?  You’re not temporarily taking magic away.  You’re going to have to forswear me.”

She focused on the Others as she said it.  But her mom was there in the corner of her vision.

She met her mom’s eyes, and she watched her mom turn away, walking away from her.  From this.

“Are you going to?” she asked.

Nobody was going to.

“Then let’s start planning.  We’ve got the books about the St. Victor’s practitioners…”

Next Chapter