Pale: 7.8 - Verona

Gone Ahead – 7.8 | Pale
“Stay!” Gashwad hollered.  A hundred ‘x’ shaped eyes narrowed or moved.

Verona crouched, trying to watch Bristow, Musser, Ted -why did she keep wanting to call him Tedward in her head?- and the countless Brownies.  At the same time, she tried to make sure she didn’t miss what Avery and Lucy were doing.

Because Avery and Lucy were good at doing.  Verona was good at the practice but not so good at the hairy situations.

They looked so determined, Lucy with her mask and cape and hat on, eyes burning red behind the eyeholes.  Avery with her mask pushed up, game face on, hat on a string around her neck, cape flapping.

She’d promised Lucy that she would back her up, and the best way she could do that would be to solve this whole damn mess.  Which was looking less and less likely as Ted and Musser and Mr. Bristow all got closer.

To watch for that precise use of language.  In any conversation, she was always tensed, poised to catch that extra loophole, that stray word.

God, this noseplug made it hard to think.  Like a soggy dead cat’s matted armpit lint, filling her nostrils.

Avery broke into a run, cape following behind her.  Verona turned to look back and figure out why Avery was running, and saw Laila running for it.

Verona hadn’t been thinking much about the other group.

Verona’s Sight flashed on, and she could see meaty things doing a wacky arm-flailing thing, all frantic and overworked, like a cartoon mom running around with wobbly noodle arms while children waited for a fire rescue team to get them out of that second floor window.  Except without running around.  Or the funny.

Avery stumbled badly, scraping her leg.

Verona couldn’t go.  That was- it wasn’t going to work on five different levels.  She wouldn’t be any faster than Avery, for one thing.  She couldn’t run, either, both because she just wasn’t a fast runner, and because she had to be here, by the Ruins circle, dealing with Bristow.

Avery dipped out of sight.

But if not Verona herself, then maybe… Verona raised her voice, shouting with a volume that felt like it could rupture her lungs or push the noseplugs out of her nose.  “Tashlit!”

She held her phone in one hand and her arm in the other hand, and fingernails bit into her forearm as she willed power and connection to Tashlit.

“No tricks!” Musser shouted.

Verona twisted around, facing him.

“This brownie thing is about us, not them.  Let the other students go,” Lucy raised her voice.

“This is about so much more than you,” Bristow said.

John hung back, side pressed to a tree, gun held in both hands.  Behind them, lurking in cover, Toadswallow was holding an egg that looked like it had barnacles or tumors on it.  The entire thing practically throbbed, and to Verona’s sight, had something meaty and diseased to the point of being black writhing beneath a translucent, already cracked surface.

Toadswallow gestured, and the others broke into a run, heading into the deeper woods.  Which immediately got the brownies in the trees moving.

Musser started forward, and Toadswallow dropped the- The bad egg?  About as fast as it took Verona to turn from looking at Toadswallow to looking at Musser, Musser drew a gouge into the dirt between himself and Toadswallow.  A straight line.  As part of the same motion, he pivoted, ducking behind a tree.

Ted followed Musser’s lead, a beat late, but didn’t draw the line.  It wouldn’t do anything for him anyway.

And Bristow stepped back, indicating the brownies should move in.

Verona didn’t smell what they smelled.  Brownies bent and crumpled, hands to their faces.  Even Musser sagged.  Ted didn’t.

Musser had a handkerchief.  He pressed it to his lower face.

“Walk away, Bristow!” Lucy called out.

“Why should I do that?” Mr. Bristow called back.  “You’re doing harm to students and faculty, I have to act my part!”

“You brought some metaphorical mad dogs to campus!” Verona called out.  “And-”

She coughed.  Just opening her mouth had let the smell in.  It coated the inside of her mouth, sucked out the moisture, and turned that moisture into something gross.  Like a homeless person with bad teeth had vomited into her open mouth.  She shielded her mouth against more, folding her arms around her face and shouting into the crooks of two elbows.  “You haven’t kept them in line.  Funny how they’re mostly or totally going after people you don’t like!”

Had to get him talking.  It was something she’d already establsihed as a weakness.

“You-” Bristow started to respond, waving with his hand.

Musser started forward, one hand holding the handkerchief to his lower face, other outstretched.

Bristow didn’t continue.  Musser didn’t continue.

Brownies stopped in their tracks.  Meaty wobble-arm things that danced inside trees and from the foliage above went still.

The smell cloyed inside Verona’s mouth, punishing her for talking.  For speaking.  And she’d gotten nothing out of it, because Bristow had fallen as silent as anyone.  She hadn’t gotten him talking.

Something had just happened.

“What a pity,” Bristow said.  “She had promise as a student.”

Avery?  Verona felt her blood run cold.

No.  She would have felt something.  They were tied together.  Laila.

“I suppose this lends a degree of justice to what I do here,” Bristow called out.

“Fuck you!” Lucy shouted, before coughing.

Bristow was far enough away to not be caught in the worst of the stink-cloud, and he was, shitty as he was about so many things, really good at projecting.

If Verona were a little more mentally agile in this moment, she’d have a quip ready about that.

“I suppose I’ll quell the rebellious students, you, and that will be a recent victory to remind the spirits that I’m not to be trifled with.  Alexander is coming, and I’ll meet him, fresh off the back of several recent wins and one gainsaying.  It should be a good result, borne of good instinct.  You probably didn’t even realize you were helping me more than hurting me with this brownie ploy.”

Musser twisted around, looking back at Bristow, holding the handkerchief in place.  His eyes alone communicated more than most full expressions.

“Yes, let’s end this,” Bristow said.  He waved his hand.

Musser stepped forward, head ducked low, face covered, and fast-walked forward.  John immediately opened fire, one shot, that Musser caught out of the air.  Or the bullet went to his hand, as all the ones prior had.

John charged in.  Playing defense, buying time.  He had a combat knife, and Musser caught that too.  But stabbing wasn’t the intention on John’s part.  He gave up the knife and punched Musser in the neck.

It was a weird exchange.  Like neither cared nearly enough about what the other was doing.  Musser’s automatic catch, the trade of giving away/taking the knife with the punch.  Then the next exchange of moves; Musser stabbed John in the upper arm, as John snatched the handkerchief.

The wind tore the handkerchief from John’s hand.  He backed away, hand going to the knife that was embedded in his arm, while Musser staggered and coughed.

Verona made sure her phone was set, switching over to the automatic translation of Jessica’s ruins-chant.

The brownies were recovering.  The second wave was coming, and they’d wrapped cloth around their faces for the smell.

John went after Musser again, and Musser did the line-draw.  Verona reached for her back pocket, pulled out a paper, and threw it, letting the spirits carry it true.

If anything, it only few in a mostly straight line because Musser had used that glove, because it flew straight there and Musser caught the paper out of the air.

John stopped short of crossing the line, as Musser tore the paper, doing his best to cover his lower face.

“You can’t cross a line in the dirt?” Lucy asked.

“Not if the line is from someone strong,” John said.

“Then go after Bristow!”

John ducked off to the side, where his bag was stowed, and reached inside.  He paused for a second, then retrieved a spare gun.  Gun in one hand, bag in the other, he made it about one step before Ted was there.

Musser, again, didn’t seem to give three rat craps about John, and came after them.

The man held one arm to his face, and he went after Lucy.  Lucy pulled out a pen-sword, using her ring.

A cracking sound made Verona jump.

John and Ted fell to the ground.  The bag John had been carrying was damaged, and it smoked from a hole in the side.  John and Ted were bleeding.

“John!” Lucy shouted, sputtering and coughing.  “If you don’t stop it with the sacrificial plays, I may have to kick your ass!”

“The man doesn’t die,” Toadswallow said, from the bushes behind them.  “Miss Hayward!”

He reached up out of the bush.  A bit of roadkill dangled from his hand.  It looked like about twenty large ticks were stuck to its hind-end.  “You can still use trinkets and items.”

“Smack things with the butt-end, dear girl.”

She gripped the roadkill by the head.

“Musser,” Bristow said.  “You’re adept in War Magic, aren’t you?  You know how to bind a vicious dog such as this?”

“Busy!” Musser growled the words.  He coughed.

He was better at fighting than Lucy was, but Lucy wasn’t suffering from the smell.  Not as much.

Verona, meanwhile, did what she could to guard the Ruins diagram against the brownies.  She had the ugly stick, but she didn’t want to destroy them.  That was… she’d use it on Musser or Bristow.

So she smacked a few brownies with the gross, limp, and unidentifiable animal carcass.  Flies and fleas and all kinds of other things erupted out around them, leaving them flailing and running.

They were being surrounded.  It had been the sides, front, and back, but now the bushes between them were seeing those eyes appear.  They seemed to be avoiding Ted’s attention, but he was down and taking a bit to recover.

A brownie grabbed Verona, and she had to throw it off her.

John, on the other hand, was already on his feet.  He headed after Bristow, who jumped a little as he realized.

Bristow ducked behind a tree, as John opened fire.  Wood splintered.

Bristow drew a line in the dirt, as Musser had.  John opened fire, tearing up the ground where the line was.

“If the staff would please-!” Bristow shouted.

Brownies threw themselves at John from above and the sides.

They’re strong and Ted’s getting up and we need a win.  I can’t use the tricks I was going to use to fight back against the Brownies, not yet.  If we waste it, that’s it, there’s nothing, Verona thought, her mind racing.

Lucy fended off Musser with sword swings.  He caught and let go of the blade three times in quick succession.

Avery threw herself out of the trees, going after Musser with her mask in her hand.

He caught the mask, then bodily threw her back and behind him, so he could focus on Lucy.

Avery landed in front of Ted, who had just risen to his feet.

Verona wanted so badly to communicate something, to encourage, to steer this or strategize, but her throat was caught up with gas.

Toadswallow was in the bushes, protecting some of the Ruins diagram, fending off the encroaching brownies.  They were supposed to have Laila as part of a multi-stage defense.  To hit them with stink, then curse them while they were down, because curses would work better if they could get a bit of coup in first.  If they could be standing while their enemies were coughing and sputtering.  Then they’d make their dashing escape, after having bought time for the others and making the necessary time to talk to Bristow and surrender the gainsaying.

Snowdrop and Avery fought to escape Ted.  Avery scratched with fingernails to break his grip on her shoulder, and he deflected her groping hand with the back of his, then a push at her wrist, then a smack, to drive her hand down closer to her hip, so it took time to raise it again, and he could use that time to deal with Snowdrop, pushing her back.

Verona hit the button on her phone.

To start the ritual.  The sound file started to play, but it wasn’t immediate.

“Get Avery out,” Verona whispered, her voice strained with the way she wasn’t breathing much.

Lucy made the same kind of play John had.  Turning her pen-sword into a cane, then using the cane to hook Avery, pulling her back.  A sacrificial play, because Musser was then able to grab her arms.

It wasn’t the right trajectory, so Lucy gave Avery the boot, a light kick-push to send Avery into the diagram as the chant began.

Avery looked so wounded, somehow.  Because of Laila?

Lucy caught Snowdrop’s hand and swung her into the same area.  Snowdrop knew what she was doing, and she belonged with Avery, so that maybe helped get her where she was going.

The circle erupted.  Water splashed out in every direction, like a bucket had been upended on the circle from high above and now it had to go somewhere.  It washed over and past them, soaking Verona through clothes and seemingly to the very bone, and with it came that startling, too-bright, too-caring emotion, direct from Avery.

Pain, loss, confusion, and a bit of shock.  But shock for Avery wasn’t a numbness that bought time, it was a shake around the collar, that told her body move and really failed to do the same thing with her brain.

Maybe if she had better instincts in a pinch, like Avery, she’d be able to deal with it, but for right now, she fought uselessly past the brownies that had managed to get a grip on her.

The feelings rolled over Verona and she wasn’t really equipped for it.  She thought of her dad and how she’d left him.

She was running and she was far enough away from things that the brownies weren’t drenched from the splash or choking from the smoke, which may have been mostly cleared up by the water, because they weren’t choking or suffering.

Brownies were grabbing her and hooking fingers into soaking wet clothes and she wasn’t a fast runner and-

She grabbed the dog tag from her neck and instead of pulling it over her head, which might have been impossible with the brownies clinging there, she tore it from her neck until the chain snapped.  She threw it down.

If she could get John away from there and over here, deal with the brownies, reassess, flank…

A brownie caught it before it could hit dirt.

Verona slipped, too top-heavy with something like seven brownies clinging to her arms and hair, her shoes wet and the ground still muddy in places from last weekend’s heavy rain.

She landed on roots that were sticking up out of the ground, and felt more hands on her.  They climbed onto her and pinned her, leaving her lying on uncomfortable ground, knobby and bulging, her face half in mud and half in grass.

Was it really karma?  Was this the punishment she deserved, for abandoning her father?  The spirits held to old ways and one of the ten commandments was to honor thy father and thy mother, and that sure seemed like old ways.  They probably hadn’t even invented awful dads way back then.

Her dad had been sick and suffering and he’d asked for help.  And she’d said no.

She’d left to attend classes and learn more cool magic stuff and in the end she hadn’t gotten much of that.  She’d put her dad out of mind and passed the job on to Lucy’s already busy mom, and that didn’t feel right.

Brownies picked her up as a group, with broomstick-narrow limbs and knobby joints, heads shaggy with manes, sideburns, braids, and beards.  Her head hung until brownies gripped it and held it up.

If she’d taken another path- if she’d stayed home, bit her tongue, got her dad that frigging flat ginger ale, changed the sheets, and let her friends go back, maybe let them go back without her, she could have helped out more at the perimeter.  Maybe when things went bad, she could be the true backup.  Let Lucy and Avery be the doers, Verona as the backline type.  Getting things set up in Kennet, so they could send more Others here when things got bad.  Do an actual rescue, instead of sending a shocked and disoriented Avery into another realm with hopes she could help later.

Lucy wasn’t loving this and Avery wasn’t happy and they’d been having chats and Verona was stuck doing what?  Putting on a brave face?

“Can we make a deal?” Toadswallow asked from the shadows of bushes.

“Brownies are of summer and fall.  I believe I could scrounge up some royal mead if you gave me the time.  Having some of that on your shelf is a veritiable status symbol.”

They ignored him, except to hiss when he got too close.

Toadswallow emerged from the bushes to pick up the weapon, the animal carcass, that she’d dropped when she’d gotten hit with the watery explosion.

“If you’re of Fall, you might want to buy or trade.  If you’re planning on selling her at auction in markets, let me jump the queue.”

Brownies standing between Verona and Toadswallow shook their heads.

“Thought not.  It was worth a try, considering you could be low on funds, maybe I’d hit the mark.  A good trade at a good moment of need,” Toadswallow told them.  He tightened his grip on the animal carcass he held.

He was going to fight them.

There were maybe fifty holding Verona and thirty or forty more that Verona could see.  She was being held with her nose or chin a couple of inches above the dirt, and the hair that wasn’t being held against the sides of her head by tiny hands that needed something to grip was a curtain on either side of her face.  And she could still see thirty or forty around Toadswallow.

He was going to fight them and it would be disastrous.

“You’re faerie-related, right?” Verona asked.

“You’re faerie-related, and you like a good show.  Let me put on a good show.”

They continued to carry her.

“You want to score a win?  I’m a reckless practitioner with barely over a month of practice under my belt.  He’s a big kahuna.  He’s Lawrence Bristow, with people he’s in charge of and power and all that good stuff.  He’s got magic items and fancy clothes and Others he can summon, I’m betting.  He’s got some dude that’s lived for hundreds and-or thousands of years serving him like a slave.  Some students follow him and he’s got worldwide connections.  I knew going in that I was the underdog.  And don’t dramatic types love an underdog?”

Toadswallow followed alongside, giving them some space as they carried her.

“If you want the karmic motherload, he’s your guy.  If you want a trade in the markets, I’m betting a guy of his power and background would sell.  If you want a laugh or you want to be sadistic?  He’ll be way more fun to go after than I will.  I just shut down, guys.  He’ll probably puff and rage and shout and try to deal and you can mess with him for years, I bet.  I don’t think you’ll get that much out of me.”

She watched the ground slowly move beneath her nose.

“All you have to do is give me a shot.  Give me until- until when?  Ten o’clock tonight?  I don’t need long.  Or wait, midnight!  Midnight’s a classy time, it-”

“No,” Toadswallow said.

“No?” Verona asked.  She struggled to get a look at him, but the angle of trees, path, and the fact she couldn’t turn her head with small hands gripping her hair made it hard.

“You conceded ten as a time.  You can’t negotiate up from there.”

“Ten,” Verona said.  “Until ten.”

She could smell the kitchens.  She could see glimmers of light, like the ones that had shone through trapdoors.

Their kitchens.  Their places.  Like various parts of this forest were secret trapdoors leading there.

She snorted and the whiff of dead cat armpit flooded her brain.  She gagged, then snorted again, this time to push the wad of lint out of her nose.

A moment later, Brownies crowded her face, and the progress of how they carried her slowed.

One with one eye and a thick braided beard held a very shiny apple.  Others jabbed at her cheeks, pushing them between her teeth, until her mouth opened, and the one with the beard pushed the apple into her mouth.  She twisted her head to the side.

“Don’t friggin’ fight it,” Toadswallow said.  “And don’t swallow any of the thing, either.  Let it be.”

She took the advice, twisting her head around, this time more to make it less uncomfortable.  The apple felt like it would tear her lips from the stickiness or break a tooth from the hardness.

Her teeth sank in as the apple was pushed into place, and she had to fight to keep it from dragging in the dirt, which was so close to her face, twisting her head to the side and lifting her head up.  It was a honeyed apple, so sweet she saw stars behind her eyes.  The contortion included keeping her tongue from touching it.

“It’s good,” Toadswallow said, quiet.  “You got your deal.  Now they want you to shut up and put up.”

She would have nodded, but she wasn’t able.

They carried her down the path.  There wasn’t a perceptible change of direction.  Toadswallow disappeared into shadows.

“And here she is,” Bristow said.  “Would you deal with her hands?”

Brownies dropped her, then, after a moment, slid bags over her hands, tying them there.  It felt like they were filled with sand.

“You’re essentially gainsaid, by our deal.  As this rebellion on Alexander’s behalf wraps up, I’ll finalize it.  Still, let’s keep you from practicing.”

“I’ve got a cut lip or something,” Lucy spoke up.  “It hurts like heck, can we skip the gag?”

“Let’s be safe,” Bristow said.  “Lips can heal, pain will pass.  Your rebellion and games will end soon after Alexander’s arrival, and I can bring things back into order.”

“What if I swore to not do anything in that department while I’m in your custody?” Lucy asked.

“I intend to be headmaster for some time, Lucille.  All of my students are technically in my custody for as long as they are here.”

“I don’t want to be a student under you anyway.  You’re not a very good teacher and you’re an even worse headmaster.  If you end up in charge in any capacity I want to be far away from that.”

Lucy, my best friend.  So good at making friends.

It was nice she could be sarcastic in her thoughts, at least.

The brownies brought the apple, smaller than a normal one, golden, with a kind of candied-but-honey-ish exterior.  From the way a hole in the apple’s exterior leaked a blob of the coating, it looked like it was either filled or it came naturally that way.

“You’re such a pretender!” Lucy raised her voice.  “You talk about civilization and pretend to be civilized but you’re a brute, doing this!  You’re crude, you’re blind!  You pretend to be a leader but you barely lead, you just insinuate and hint and you don’t own up to a single thing you’re doing!  If this is the practice then I can’t imagine much worse than it becoming more widespread!  Your entire end goal is-”

She fought a lot harder than Verona had, as the apple was pushed into place.

“Of course you’re unhappy,” Bristow told Lucy.  “You’re losing.  But this is the way things trend.”

“Don’t bite through or eat any part of the apple,” Musser said, from the sidelines.

John.  Had John escaped?  Or-

She had to flop over a bit, and Ted’s foot went out to stop her from flopping over the entire way.  The bottom of his boot was gritty against her elbow and side.

John was sitting inside a circle drawn in the dirt by Musser, disarmed, looking very casual, one wrist resting on his knee, other knee touching the ground.

“I thought the brownies would carry you off, Miss Hayward,” Bristow said, as a brownie crawled up to his shoulder.  It hissed.  “And you made a challenge.”

“With a deadline no less.  I would have pushed for midnight.  It’s a classic, but that’s just me.  Your generation is so rushed.”

Damn it.  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

“Things are in order,” Bristow said.  “Would each of you bring one of the girls?  We need only to wait.”

Ted stooped down.  He looked Verona in the eye.  “May I carry you?”

Bristow loomed over Verona.  She twisted her head around.

He took her mask off, then threw it into the woods.  He did the same with her hat, then her scarf.

“Magic trinkets.  Always a good bit of amusement” Bristow said.  “When the dust has settled, I may see about getting these.”

I’m a student, it’s my property, you can’t!

He took her stuff.  Her backpack was on, so he took the strap apart so he could simply pull it away without sliding it down her arms to her bound wrists and bagged hands.  The ugly stick, the hot lead, two bags of glamour, the rat-skull lockpick, her quill, and the big red button they’d confiscated from Brie.

He took her phone, the spell cards, the glamour cards, the pen she kept in her right pocket, and the twenty bucks and crumpled receipt from her left.

She couldn’t speak to challenge him.

He turned to Lucy, took her hat, and dumped the stuff he’d gathered so far into it.  “Do you like earrings, Musser?”

“Not particularly.  Nothing that low quality.”

“She’s not a real member of the family, she’s not privy to our methods, and, funnily enough, I wouldn’t make her wear that thing.”

Bristow walked over to John, leaving it to Musser to divest Lucy of all her stuff.  He reached through the circle and John seemed to let him.  Bristow touched the tags, sorting through those that remained.

“Which is yours?  Norman Nescio?  Noakes?  Roe?  Stiles?”

Bristow’s eyes turned to burnished gold as he stared John down.

“Your choice.  Be bound temporarily to this tag for twenty minutes, stay with the two girls, and if we are somehow waylaid around the time the binding ends, you can be free again and in our midst.  Or stay here, and Musser uses what he knows to grind you down.  There aren’t enough hands who can carry a young teenager, so the brownies will have to bring one.”

“Bind me temporarily, then.  I follow the accords of Solomon.  I would forfeit too if I lied about such and that would hurt them and me more than any lie could benefit, if I could lie.”

“Sometimes his kind emerge naturally,” Musser said, his arms folded, “and they won’t know what’s happening, they’re too aggressive, many don’t even have faces.  Just… blurs, dirt smudges.  They won’t even know what the accords are, they just grandfather into them.”

“Mm hmm,” Bristow said.

“This kind of knowledge doesn’t come with the package, or with the clarification as they refine their Self, as if they were taking progressively smaller chunks of clay out of their raw Self, to create more detail,” Musser said.  “He’s either killed practitioners, or he’s seen others of his kind get bound.”

“The other tags,” Bristow said, pulling them over John’s head, wrapping them around his hand.  “One or both of the girls had them too.”

“I’ve already agreed,” John said.  “Do you intend to draw this out?”

“Mr. Musser is shedding some light on you as a being, Stiles,” Bristow said.  “You’re fascinating.  Very interesting.  Be bound, then, twenty minutes and then freedom if you aren’t inside my property and secure in a prepared diagram.  Starting now.”

Dirt, leaves, and dust picked up around John and filled the circle.

Only John’s eyes, dark and sad, remained, staring out of the storm.  Metal glinted here and there in the midst of the dust.  Clothes, skin, and hair took on a camouflaged pattern to fabric and paint, respectively, and then the camouflage got lost in the shuffle.

The dust dissipated, the tag Bristow held out swayed as if pulled by a magnet, then swung back, catching the light and losing all tarnish as it dropped limp again.

Bullets, flecks of metal, bits of chain and bits of dog tag littered the bottom of the circle.

Bristow gave the little tag a swing.  He spun it in a circle, tossed it into the air, then caught it.

“Careful.  There’s a lot of power driving that one forward,” Musser said.

Lucy twisted around, kicking while the man was distracted.  Musser caught the foot one-handed, grabbed her by the shoulder, and lifted her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“May I carry you?” Ted asked Verona.  “If it’s not me, it will be whoever or whatever carried you from wherever you ran to, to here.  They’re much slower, I don’t think it would be as comfortable.”

This way, at least, she’d have more time at the destination to try to make things happen.

He picked her up, then practically threw her into the air.

Positioning her so she sat on one shoulder.  He reached up to hold her elbow with one hand and stooped low to clear her head of branches.

“This is for the best,” Ted told her.

She stuck her shoes out, then kicked down at his chest with as much force as she could manage.

“And that, if you do it again, will lead to you being carried in a much less comfortable way,” he told her.

She didn’t do it again.  It was still satisfying.

“I’ve seen things, out there.  Evil, wrong, destructive.  When the next big evil comes, we’ll need to be ready.  Lawrence Bristow’s methodology gets the world ready,” Ted told her.  “I looked around, I got a lay of the land, tried to figure out what there was out there that could help me, or help with the next big evil.  If we don’t address this now, then we won’t be ready.”

He pulled a dead branch from a tree and used it to push another branch out of the way for Verona.

“I know what he’s doing and most of how he’s doing it.  It’s necessary.  Everyone else is too complacent, too selfish, too wrapped up in what they’re doing.  Even you.  I have to ask, if you knew to the point of certainty that the well being of the world hinged on working with a man like him, would you?  He’s good at heart, but he’s also equipped with the tools and motivations necessary to organize the infrastructure, and those often conflict and override the goodness.  It will take time and education and meeting the right people to get him to a better balance.  Losing the right people, even.”

Bristow turned his head to glance at Ted.

“We’ve talked about this, Lawrence,” Ted told him, placid.  “This shouldn’t be a surprise.”

“We have.  And it isn’t.  But I’d rather you not prophecise that.”

“I’m only a man who’s been around for too long,” Ted told Bristow.  “I can’t see the future.  I see only a great deal of one piece of history.  Some of those who cannot learn from the past and apply that learning are doomed to repeat it, you know.”

“I learned from past encounters with Alexander, and you’d better believe I’m applying it,” Bristow said.

“We’ll get there.  So please understand,” Ted said, to Verona.  Or to Lucy, who was slung over Musser’s shoulder, lifting up her head to glare at Ted.  “We need a tyrant for a moment, and he has it in him to be a true hero.  I know this in a way I couldn’t possibly convey to you.”

The glare softened as Lucy turned to look up at Verona.  It was less of a glare now and more… accusatory?  Or whatever sentiment went along with ‘you better know what you’re doing’.

But she could look down at the top of Tedward’s head and then look at Lucy and shake her head slowly.

“What a shame,” Ted intoned.  He’d seen or felt the motion.  He sounded so sad.

A music box played a full concert in plonky, artificial instrument sounds.  America hummed tunelessly along.

Verona had seen the clock on the wall before they’d been brought in here, into a building in construction with tarps on parts of the outside and plastic sheets on the inside.  Windows and walls were open and a breeze blew through, but they were on the second floor, and wards protected against intrusion.

Dolls the size of people moved in degrees appropriate to the length of each bit of music, percussion for the feet, string instruments for the arms, a bit of wind for the heads.  Each stop brought the respective doll to a halt.

Patrolling the space to the sound of the music box.

Estrella sat facing them, studying them, a wand laid across her knees.  Hadley had put three chairs together and lay across them, picking at dirt and blood from under her nails with a toothpick.

America, Lucy, and Verona sat in chairs with no ropes to bind them, no more apple-gags, no bags of sand over their hands.

Only music that kept them from moving until the performance was done.

John was off to the side, sitting in another circle.  Olive branches were laid out in a circle, and a magic circle surrounded that.

Verona couldn’t see the time, but she could see it was getting dark.  She’d seen a clock on the way in, telling her it had been six thirty, and she’d counted while the music box played to get the measure of the song.

Each song was nine minutes, thirteen seconds long, more or less.  The same song every time.  It always skipped for a second or two at the end, which made the dolls fall to the floor.

The nine-ish minute intervals allowed her to keep track of the passage of time.

They’d been here for sixteen plays of the song.

Bristow’s every intention was to keep them here, under constant watch and secure guard, until such a time as they ran out of time or were rescued.  But this place was a fortress and there had been no rescue attempts that Verona was aware of.

Not that anyone on the outside knew the exact deadline.

Ten o’clock.  It fast approached.

Hadley stuck a foot out, and one doll collapsed violently and prematurely.  The rest followed suit a few seconds later.

“Don’t be mean!” Talia said, from the doorway.  She stormed her way into the room, going to help the one fallen doll.  Even though all the others had fallen too.  Her canopy jar doll familiar helped.

It reanimated as the song started anew, and Talia stood back, huffing a breath, then started smoothing out hair and clothes, apparently satisfied.

“My mom used to use this box on me if I threw tantrums, or if I crossed a line.  My familiar hated it because she’d have to dance along, back before she was a familiar,” Talia said.  “If I got two hours to watch TV, it meant two hours, and if I went a second over, then I’d have the same two hours with the music box, which usually meant a cold dinner, after.”

“I think we’re well aware of how horrible your mom is,” Hadley said.  “Poor you.  Come, sit.”

“I don’t think I will,” Talia said.  “And my mom is not horrible.  I have a roof over my head, food, education, practice, and opportunities, thank you,” Talia said.  The reply sounded automatic.

Hadley stomped her foot in time as the music played.  Wooden doll feet clacked against the floor.

“I hate this song,” Talia said.  “So, so much.  It makes me want to cry and I don’t know why.”

“Your bell, my dear Pavlovian dog, has been thoroughly rung,” Hadley said, stretching on her makeshift bench of chairs, feet on the ground, head on the verge of hanging off the other side.

“I’m not a dog,” Talia told Hadley.

“You’re absolutely not.  You’re right,” Hadley said.  “My siblings are dog-like.  They bite a lot.  Do you want a hug?”

“Not from you,” Talia said.  “I barely know you.”

“You know Mccauleigh.  A little older than you.  About the same age as them,” Hadley said, pointing at Lucy.  “Mccauleigh is cool.”

Verona moved her focus to the very corner of her gaze, looking in Lucy’s direction, and saw Lucy doing the same.

Not that they could do anything about Mccauleigh and what they knew there.  Alpeana had seen Mccauleigh in dreams, having nightmares and doubts about the family, apparently.

“I’ve got someone to hug,” Talia said, hugging her familiar.

Her familiar hugged her back, then gave her two perfunctory pats on the back and two on the head.  Talia nodded and straightened up again, again checking no hairs were out of place and that her clothes weren’t wrinkled.

Estrella remained where she was, with near-white hair, hands on her lap, fingertips at her wand, feet and knees together.  She’d moved less, probably, than America, Lucy, or Verona.

America’s humming changed, going out of tune.

Hadley reached over her head, sticking out a finger, and poked Estrella in the side.

Estrella swung her hand down, lightning-fast, for a full-faced slap on Hadley’s face.

Hadley shifted feet around and sat up, looking at Estrella, bewildered.

“None of that,” Estrella said.

“I guess I found a vulnerability.  Don’t like tickles?”

“You shouldn’t touch someone without asking,” Talia said, prim.  “The bodies of the living belong to them and you should respect that.”

“I like how you specify ‘the living’,” Hadley said, rubbing her cheek.

“The dead can be touched as necessary.  But it should be respectful and mindful, not just of the quality of any materials, but of the sentiment for the dead.  One day we shall be dead and we should be so lucky as to be made useful after, and treated with respect in the process.”

“Geez, kid.  I don’t think this music box is good for you.  You don’t usually sound like this.”

“Then why are you here?  I refuse to believe you’re our relief shift-”

“Which isn’t for another twenty minutes,” Estrella said.  “Timed to fall in the middle of a song.  One just ended around the time Talia arrived.”

“We’re being harassed and bothered by the other group of students.  They’ve been breaking in and making messes, and people are worried they might have Jorja talk to me and try to sway me.  But I think it’s more likely I could get Jorja to change sides.  Especially since they’re losing.  Then we could be friends again.”

“What’s the status on the siege, then, Talia?” Hadley asked.

“I don’t want to start another argument, but the last time I heard from those downstairs, the majority seemed to think that this didn’t qualify as a siege.  Sawyer was arguing it was.”

“Not a siege,” John said, from the binding circle.

“It’s a siege, man,” Hadley said, sitting up.  Estrella tensed, one hand going up, wand at the ready.  Hadley held both hands up in plain view. “Supply lines were cut off, delivery guy came and we could fucking smell that shitty pizza.  And he wouldn’t let us have it because he thought our money was no good.  Now they’re out there, they’re forcing us to watch-”

“Hadley,” Estrella said.

“Don’t volunteer information.”

“It doesn’t matter.  I’m not going anywhere until I was freed, and if I was freed, it would probably be because the situation is over, your win, or my side has broken into or taken over the building.  In either case, doesn’t matter.” John said.  “It’s not really a siege.  Sieges are primarily military.”

“You want to play games, soldier boy?” Hadley asked.  “Siege gets used for hostage situations and other stuff that isn’t military.”

“You should look at where those police forces are getting their equipment from if you think so.  Some is from the military.  The police are militarized and they’re trending more in that direction over time.”

“Bull.  It’s a siege.”

Verona kept track of the song as the debate continued.  The seventeenth play of the song finished, and the dolls clattered to the floor.

“God!” Hadley said.  “Hate that.”

Only Talia and Estrella hadn’t reacted.

“There’s people in the hall,” Hadley observed.

“They came up with me.  We were told to stick together.”

“You’re a bit suspicious.  Estrella, is there any chance of glamour-?”

“Or trickery, or disguise, or-”

“No.  Stop, Hadley.  Accept a no.”

The wind blew strong through the room.  John looked down at the olive branches and sighed.

Yeah John.  It’s pretty ironic, Verona sympathized.  Olive branches.

“Hey Estrella?  While I’m accepting that no, can you accept something from me?”

“No.  As a matter of principle, I don’t accept questionable gifts, verbal barbs and insults, middle fingers, or weak comebacks, Hadley.”

“Okay, fair enough.  All I’m saying is my family knows people.  Some great doctors especially, who can put kids together after they’ve taken a battle axe to the face, no questions asked.  And if you needed help from a certified proctologist, to haul the twisty, blunted icicle I’m imagining wedged up your asshole and small intestine…”

Estrella shook her head.  “No.”

“Or your hoo-ha.  The health of hoo-has is so important, Estrella.  You can’t have icicles up there.  It’s so important.”

“And sexual harassment is so not funny,” Estrella said.  ”

Verona looked to the window.  She could see beyond, into the gloom, and with her Sight, she could make out the people crossing the field.

Avery, Snowdrop, Zed, and Jessica.

The others were there too.  Some of the Oni kids.

Verona jumped a bit despite herself as something slammed into an invisible wall.

A knife, black as night, almost invisible against the dark blue sky, except for the fact it was glossy.

“Jesus,” Tanner said, as he stepped into the room.  He put a hand on Talia’s shoulder, moving her closer to the door.  “That-”

There was a second knife.  It slammed into an invisible barrier instead of flying between the struts of the building where there was no tarp, plastic, or material.  It hung there in mid-air.

A firework or very sparkly flare went off.  Small with a long-lasting light as it drifted.  Verona only watched, unable to even smile.

“Watch out!” Tanner called out.

Hadley was running across the floor.  She looked to Tanner, down to the floor-

Too slow, for how fast she was moving forward.  Her foot intersected the shadow of the knife that was cast by the light.  She didn’t step onto the shadow.  She kicked a three dimensional object made of shadow.  It split the toe of her boot and shed a mess of blood across the floor.

“Music box,” Tanner said.  His eyes were blank from corner to corner.

“Got it,” Estrella said, hurrying over.

There were two knives and two shadows.  One shadow moved through the room, not high enough to touch the chair legs or, fortunately, their feet.  Not low enough to hit the music box or the table there.  They left a furrow in the floor as the shadows traveled.

Very cool, Verona observed.  A little trick to get past barriers, since the shadow could extend through.  Kind of played off of ideas like how if a superhero on TV had a forcefield that let light and sound through, it shouldn’t protect against sonic or light based attacks.

Shouldn’t, but it often did.  Stupid.

Estrella made a swirly gesture with her fingers.

The music box sped up, taking on sharper beats, and doubled in volume.  The dolls got a lot more aggressive.

Hadley, with one ruined foot, had both hands and one foot planted on the floor.  She sprung forward, hop-running to minimize how much she walked on her damaged foot.

She hurled herself into the open, glass-less window in construction, bracing herself in the windowframe for a second before throwing herself to the right.

Verona blinked as the third knife slammed into Hadley’s head.  She and the knife dropped.

“She could have caught it but she wanted to show off,” Estrella said.  She cupped her hands and created a floating light that shed flakes of white.  It erased the shadows from the two knives that were still up there.

Hadley, on the ground four stories below, screamed her declaration of war.

Oh.  The knife hadn’t hit her.  She’d thrown herself into the incoming knife, to remove it from play.

Two more knives hit the barrier.

“Stop at three like a self respecting practitioner,” Estrella declared.  She sounded legitimately annoyed.  She lifted up the light and walked closer.  The knives disappeared as the light swept over them.

She swept her arm to one side, and the open spaces in the wall, which were really deceptive with the barrier there, all disappeared.  It became a white lace against a black surface instead.

If Avery had thought about using Lucy’s trick and trying to become the wind, she could have slipped into here.

But at the same time doing a Faerie trick while a master Faerie practitioner was present was probably a bad idea.

There were noises in the wall.  Scampering, clattering, dropping things.

Estrella paced, her eyes half lidded, head turning this way and that as she identified the sources of the sound.

As she’d done with the exterior wall, she remodeled the interior one.  It was the same surface as the other, white lace on black, but flowers appeared here and there.

She gestured, and two more flowers appeared.

America didn’t seem to care, tunelessly humming.

Small noises were coming from the wall.  Estrella closed her eyes and exhaled fogged breath.  She reached up to touch it, controlling its movement through the air, until there were only three horizontal lines of concentrated, fogging breath.  In summertime.

“Mmmfph!” Verona grunted.

Estrella looked at her, and Verona gave her best eye roll.

“Good winter magic isn’t easily disbelieved.  If you’re lucky, it may pass you over without paying any mind to whether you exist or not,” Estrella said.

She flicked all five fingers out at once, and the three lines impaled the wall as icicles.

Two of the impaled bits of wall bled, blood traveling down the length of the fine icicle and freezing there.

“Talia, would you go somewhere safe?  And send some help my way.  This may be a rescue attempt.”

Another firework went off, and shone through the wall as if it were paper thin.  Estrella’s head snapped around, looking at the wall, and it immediately went solid, thick, no sign of the flare-firework visible.  Like a chastened child straightening up.

“Ah!” Talia retreated back into the room.

Two small goblins had crawled forward.  They’d been out there in the forest.  One immediately headed for the music box, the other climbed the doorframe.

Estrella waited until there was a gap, then sent Talia back through.  She went to defend the music box, one eye on the goblin at the wall.

A sharp stomp of one high-heeled shoe crippled the goblin on the floor.

“Again!” it cried out, voice high.  “Again, please!”

The one on the wall, female, just spat a gobbet of something.

It landed at the back of Estrella’s head.  She touched it and pulled a string of gum back away from her styled, bleached-white hair.

“Gum?  You made your way past the barriers that were supposed to be on the field, past the building’s temporary outside barrier, past the building’s security system, past soldiers…”

The little goblin nodded with enthusiasm.

“Made your way, I presume, up four flights of stairs, when you’re barely the size of a milk carton.”

“To spit gum in my hair.  Is that your sole contribution?”

The goblin shrugged and nodded.

“Is it at least magic?”

The goblin shook its head.

She cast out a handful of glamour.  The goblin froze in place there.

One of the Legendre boys, covered with dime-sized injuries from last night, came to the door, followed by Austin, Songetay and Sutton.

The Legendre boy was Milly Legendre’s brother.  Mid-teens, not all that impressive to look at, with a curly mop that had been buzzed to near baldness at the sides and back.  The Legendres were the binder and goblin exterminator.  Good skill to have.

Austin was a necromancer, Songetay a war mage and summoner, and Sutton an alchemist.  Sutton was shaking a thermos.

The three came through just after the Legendre guy.

“Where the heck is the window?” Songetay asked.

Estrella gestured, and part of the changed wall reverted.

Legendre was the first one there.  He took up the entire window, hands on the sill, elbows out, said, “Crap,” and fled the room.

“Nice trick, windows and walls where you want ’em,” Songetay said, as the boys headed to the window to get a view of the outside.

“I suppose if you ignore that it was earned with centuries of work and alliances,” Estrella said.  “It’s a ‘trick’, sure.”

Estrella glanced at Tanner, who stood off to the side, and the two of them nodded.  She crossed over to where the music box was, then touched her ear, touched the box, and then the table.  Tanner took up guard at the door.

She carried the box over to the boys, leaving the music playing where the box had been.  It was a surprise attack, as she created a blade of silver and pressed it to Songetay’s neck.  Once he realized what was happening, he backed up, hands in the air, and retreated, blade to his throat in what looked like a very careful placement, like Estrella knew exactly where the blade should be to do the most damage.

“What the hell?” Austin asked.

“Stand down,” Tanner told him.

“Your discipline sucks,” Estrella addressed the three boys who had just come in, as she pushed Songetay back.  He landed hard in Verona’s lap, sprawling into Lucy’s as well, and nearly fell to the floor.

She held the music box there, just over his face, and adjusted the position of the small silver blade so it wasn’t against his throat with tip at his jugular, so much as it was directly above his jugular, like a sword about to drop point-first.

She held the music box so the little dancing man turned right before Songetay’s face.  Then she lifted him by the collar, off Verona’s lap, and forced him into a sit.  He remained frozen, entrapped by the music, which kept skipping back to the beginning instead of going to the final stanza.

She slapped him, and Songetay became Corbin.

“Shit!  Where’s Songetay, then?” Sutton asked, no longer shaking his thermos.

“Don’t know, don’t care.  If you three failed badly enough to miss that he was abducted and replaced to infiltrate our group, I do hope it’s painful, to drive the lesson home,” Estrella said.  “Zed was out there with Jessica.  Both travel.  Expect gates.  Do we have any barriers, any summonings that guard ways?”

“Who does?  I’ve been busy with special projects, I don’t pay attention to the incomings.”

“I don’t- Palaisy?  Gardener, he-”

“Go find the man, you tit!” Estrella told him, giving the boy a push. “And make sure it’s actually him.”

The separation of music box and music had let Estrella sneak up on Corbin in his Songetay disguise, but it had weakened the effect.  Estrella immediately set to fixing it up again.

But the weaker effect let Verona turn her head.  She looked at the others.

America’s discordant humming rose in volume, her eyes widening as she made eye contact, head moving in a slight nod.

Verona began to match, trying to follow along.

Lucy switched.  Not adding strength to what America was doing, but being more discordant.

Verona picked up, doing her own tune, trying to drown out the music.

“Stop,” Estrella said.  “Or this blade is getting plunged into the thigh of the next girl to hum.”

She moved like she was going to stab, and Verona and Lucy stopped.

Estrella stuck a narrow silver blade into the middle of America’s thigh.

“And here we are.  Please tell me that concoction is useful, Sutton.”

Estrella remained where she was, looming over Verona, Lucy, and America, watching their every move, so still it barely looked like she was breathing.

The commotion outside continued.

“They hit the main building, broke into the brownie kitchen.  I think they just wanted food.  Or to limit our access to food if the brownies started cooperating.  That was an hour ago.  We scared them off into the woods, but they kept circling around, taking weird routes,” Sutton said.

“I was there, remember?” Estrella asked.  “Before my shift here, babysitting three people while this inane music plays on loop?”

“Yeah.  Yeah.  Just… filling silence, I guess.”

“Don’t.  Silence is useful,” Estrella said.

As if to insult or prove the worth of that statement, goblin giggles could be heard in the hall.

“How many of you got in here?” she asked, toeing the crushed goblin on the floor.  It tried to kiss her shoe.  “How many of you goblins?”

Two goblins entered the room through the doorway.  They had what looked to be Bristow’s tighty whiteys on their heads, the two goblins standing three feet apart, one with no nose and big blunt teeth smiling while the elastic from the pair of underwear pulled on the left side of his head, the other skinny and tall with a droopy nose standing with the elastic pulling on the right side of his head.

Estrella turned and saw them.  She immediately began doing something with glamour.

Verona motioned with her eyes.

“I hate goblins so much,” Estrella said.

The goblins charged the table.  Dolls intervened, the goblins bowled through the first dolls, started to pick themselves up, and headed for the table again.  Estrella had to tackle them to protect the music box, and in the process, they wrapped Bristow’s underwear around her face.

She hit one with glamour, and it froze where it was.  She threw the half-frozen underwear to the ground, and part of it shattered.  The other goblin was free and sprawled, scrambling to get the door, where another goblin ran down the hallway with a fire.

Liberty’s shouts could be heard.

Estrella took up a position at the door.  “Sutton!  Guard them!  How is this so out of control?”

“It’s easier to attack than defend,” Sutton said.  “We’re trying to find their ways in.  Every time we set up a defense, they poison it or infiltrate it.  And Bristow is more focused on preparing for Alexander than on managing this.”

America took up the humming again.

“Stop them from doing that,” she ordered.  She cast out some glamour into the hallway.

Verona picked up the off-beat, random humming.  Corbin and Lucy did the same.

Dolls danced around them, slowing and getting sloppy as they got close to the humming.

“Tanner or Sutton, stop them from doing that.”

Sutton took up position in front of Lucy and America, and he held the heavy metal thermos over his head, like he was about to use it as a bludgeoning weapon.

America kept going.  So Verona did too, one eye wincing.  If Lucy got hit, she’d- she didn’t know what she’d do.

The humming loosened the effect of the music box, which freed their heads and shoulders.  America started headbanging with increasing intensity.

“Stop them!” Estrella ordered.

Sutton lowered the thermos.  “I’m not that kind of guy.  I don’t hit helpless people younger than me.”

“Move,” Tanner said.  He reached for America’s neck and held her firm, making her stop the headbanging.

But Corbin, Verona, and Lucy had just started it.  And each swing of their heads freed up more of their bodies.

The glamour shattered.  Verona rose to her feet- or tried.

She and the chair fell hard.

“Ow!  What the hell!?”

She was tied to the chair.

“I like to be doubly sure.  Why would I trust a flimsy music box to handle everything?” Estrella asked.  “I just thought you’d be more comfortable if the restraints were glamoured away while you were bound.”

“You’re a scary woman,” Tanner said.

“I’m pissed off.  Every hit to my glamour slows me down.”

Verona lay on the ground, hands in bags behind her back.  She could feel abrasion now, and she was pretty sure her hands were buried in salt.

One of the bags had loosened a bit in the fall.  She struggled, scooting around, and Tanner stepped on her chair to keep her where she was.

Lucy’s foot settled on the bag.  Verona pulled a hand free.

She’d been gainsaid, but it was the second of three, really.  She hadn’t practiced in a bit, but this had to be worth some cool points that made up for losing a bit to Bristow, right?

She scraped her fingernails along her arm, digging in.  At her back, until she probably had red tracks there and skin under her fingernails.

If she was vulnerable to Shellie enough to be turned into a cat-

She made the hand-motions to manipulate glamour.

She didn’t need to be a cat, but-

“Meow, meow, meow,” Verona said, deadpan.

“Don’t try to sound intimidating.  You’re too nice to hit the captives,” Lucy said.  “You won’t hit us now.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, still holding onto America’s throat, holding her firm in the chair.  “Sutton!”

Sutton was dealing with Corbin, who hadn’t been tied up beneath the glamour.

“Meow meow meow,” Verona said, making the hand gestures.

“Heads up!” Sutton shouted.

Verona’s hand changed.  One large cat’s paw, very nice, and cats paws had claws, and claws could cut binding.  Or maybe not, but she was riding a high and buying her own bullcrap and it worked.  The claws cut through the cordage.

Tanner straightened, and she went straight to him, points of her claws going to his neck.  She used him as cover against anything Estrella might pull.

“Whatever,” Estrella said.  “I tried, I fully intend to tell anyone who asked, I tried.  If you’ll deal with me I’ll deal with you.”

“If Bristow wins this clusterfuck, tell him I tried here, I did a stellar job, it was their fuckups.”

“Hey!” Sutton shouted.

“And if Belanger wins, or I end up captured or cornered or you’re trying to decide what to do with prisoners, I get clemency.  You argue on my behalf.  I want an oath from all of you.”

“Oaths with a faerie practitioner?” Verona asked.

“The other option is that we fight, both sides get hurt, both sides get pissed off…”

“I agree,” Tanner told Estrella.

“You’re on my side, you loser!” Estrella raised her voice.

“I still agree.  Fighting isn’t worth it.  Bristow has my loyalty, but I’m not going to risk dying or being maimed for him,” Tanner said.

“What do we get?” Lucy asked.

“I leave, I’ll only protect myself, nothing aggressive unless I must, and I’ll avoid seeking out circumstances that force my hand.  I’ll get my younger brother and we’ll step down from any fighting for the time being.  I so swear.”

“We can let you be if you allow us,” Lucy said.  “Clemency and a report of… you were an effective jailer, I guess.  I’ll swear it unless the others want to-”

“I want to interject!” America raised her voice.

“Oh god,” Estrella muttered.

“I interject, you stabbed me in the leg.”

“And I want to stab you in the boob.  Sorry hon.  That’s my condition.”

“You could stab me in the leg to make it even.”

“I don’t want to make it even.  I want to stab you in the boob.”

“Or I’ll chase you down and stab you in the boob anyway.”

“Just… fine.  Don’t go overboard.  One stab, shallow.”

America walked over, pulled the knife out of her leg, took a lighter to it, and then jabbed Estrella.

America nodded, satisfied.  “There is justice in the world.  I swear to what she said.”

“Such lazy oaths.  Whatever.  Thank you.”  Estrella turned and strode from the room.

“I can’t swear the same, I made direct oaths to Bristow,” Tanner said.

“Me either,” Sutton said.

Lucy walked over to the music box, picking it up.  She looked at him.

“I’m not a fighter,” Tanner said.  “I predict events.  I do long-distance seeing.  Sure.  Take me out of the fight.”

“Alexander’s close?” Lucy asked.

“With a few of Mr. Bristow’s tenants.”

Lucy stopped the music box, closed it, and it shed a bit of glamour in the process.  She opened it and started it, holding it in front of Tanner’s face.

He stopped moving.  She pushed him down into his seat.

Sutton took a seat as well.

“Is this anything cool?” Verona asked, kicking the thermos on the ground.

“No, not yet.  But it’s getting there.”

Lucy set the music box down, hesitating.  “Wish we could bring this, or leave the music behind while we retreat…”

“Let me have it,” America said.  “I’ll hold down the fort here, send goblins up to me if you see any.  Then I can keep the thing and goblinize it.”

“You tits took way too long to catch on about the humming,” America said.

“It’s been a long, long day, America,” Lucy said.  “Don’t give us any crap.”

“And thanks for the rescue, I guess,” America said.  “Really really slow-to-catch-on rescue.”

“Long day,” Lucy said.

Verona scooped up all the spare Winter glamour she could, while Lucy kicked a hole in the binding around John.

“Don’t you dare use that glamour,” Lucy said, as she and John joined Verona.  “I’d be worried it’d make a lot of permanent glamours a lot more easily, from what we’ve heard and read.”

“Maybe.  But to get down to the ground-”

“Old way,” Lucy said.

Old way was elementary runes.  Simple weight-reduction air runes in a diamond, extended to their bodies.

They jumped from the window and floated into the darkness.

Verona saw Avery come running.

She braced for the incoming hug better than Lucy did.

Avery had Lucy’s hat with the rest of the stuff folded in.  Their masks were stacked on top.

“I rescued your stuff and Toadswallow got the goblins to grab the other stuff from the woods, but I couldn’t get to the upper floors.  I thought about Pathing in-”

“You’re as ridiculous as Verona sometimes,” Lucy said.

“-but I didn’t have any precise landing points.”

A light flickered overhead, and Verona stumbled back into the safety of darkness.

But it was a fluorescent light, flickering overhead.

The field became a room, slightly transparent, like the walls were made of tinted glass.

“They planned for me and acted against Raymond,” Zed said.  “I’ve been here for the emotional support more than any fun tech.”

“With Belanger and Bristow,” Avery said.  “So’s Durocher, and most of the teaching staff, Nicolette, and a lot of the students who retreated from the fighting.  Bristow was putting a lot of resources into making sure you were staying put, but that was about it.  They gave us the lower two floors after a bit, made the staircase disappear-”

“Stop, stop,” Lucy said.  “Easy.  There’s a lot of ground to cover, but, after.  Verona has a deadline?  Bristow said.”

Verona nodded.  “Ten o’clock to bounce back.  My phone?”

Avery pulled Verona’s phone out of the hat.

Verona hit the power button, then mashed the other buttons.

Zed, wearing his power glove, gave it a tap.  The battery icon flashed on and then went to full.

There wasn’t much time.

Which was good.  Fantastic.  Because it was showy, to cut the line close.  It was dramatic and drama made the spirits sit up and pay attention.

She just had to dig into the phone, find if she had what she needed.

She’d let Bristow do his thing and gainsay her.  Hoping to hear some key words.

Or rather, to use the apps that she’d bookmarked after trying to open lines of communication with Tashlit.

One of them was speech to text and text to speech.

And on that app, sitting on her phone, was Bristow’s statements to her and the others as he’d caught up with them.

“Zed?” Verona asked.  She’d hoped for more.  For a key word to drop.  And the fact it hadn’t made her worry.  “I need a thousand percent marks on presentation here.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Broadcast?  I want to reach a lot of ears.  And not just human and Other.”

“Give me a second,” he said.

He pulled out a computer and set on a table, with enough force the table buzzed and fritzed, glitching like a bad computer graphic.  He opened it up and began typing.

“I can put your voice in every phone nearby.  Or just magnify.”

“Both?” Verona asked.  “Or what about a photocopier?”

“You’re all over the place, Ronnie,” Lucy said.

“What do you need from us?” Avery asked.

Verona gave Avery’s arm a squeeze.

She hated that she didn’t have anything more concrete.  She’d wanted Bristow to say some key words, so she could get it on her phone in text, to manipulate and abuse.

With her quill pen, she moved writing from phone to paper.

It’s good.  Gracious.  I have no regrets.  I’m happy.  I’m glad.

She’d hoped for a thank you.  It’s why she’d let him gainsay her.  In hopes his overly talkative self would spill the word as she handed him power just before he was supposed to deal with Alexander.

So she could take Bristow’s words again, crystal clear, and give them to the brownies.

But he hadn’t given her anything great.

The best was that line toward the end.  You probably didn’t even realize you were helping me more than hurting me with this brownie ploy.

She’d use it.  The man talked too much and she’d use every little finger-hold and toehold she could to scale this wall.

“You’re up,” Zed told her.

“I, Verona Hayward, and my colleagues, wish it to be known…” Verona intoned.

Her voice reached many phones.

“…Lawrence T. Bristow expressed his great pleasure for the activities of the staff brownies tonight…” Verona continued.  “I have it in written form before me.  He was grateful for the victory he thought he had because of them, in a roundabout way for the edge it affords him against Alexander now…”

She hesitated, trying to find the words.  She was sore, muddy, and tired, and she had about six different cricks in her neck.

“…I ask you, Lawrence,” she addressed him directly.  Her voice echoed in the various phones nearby.  “Will you concede that you regret crossing us?  That you have some form of regret?  You said you wouldn’t, and we made that a contest between us.  Recanting would mean you’re gainsaid at this critical juncture, and I do believe the timing is bad, with Alexander in front of you.”

She swallowed, looking to Avery and Lucy.

“Or are your words true, and you’re pleased at this final outcome that you got with the help of the staff?  You, grateful to the brownies, with all the implicit danger that comes with that expressed pleasure and happiness?”

She let those words hang in the air.

There was no way to know what he was doing.  He might even be sending people her way.  Kevin or Ted.

“I demand…” Verona spoke into the phone.  She hated public speaking.  She hated it, she hated it, she hated it.  She couldn’t even do a presentation on frogs in front of the class.  So stupid.

“I demand satisfaction and answer now, or I’ll consider you forfeit.  The timing might be inconvenient for you, but you forced that inconvenience by capturing me and allowing me to go free at this recent moment.  I’ve wanted to do this for hours and have acted at the first opportunity.  The brownies have indicated that they expect resolution soon.”

Because of the deadline she’d set for herself, but she didn’t need to elaborate on that for their audience.  Bristow might, but that was fine.

She paused, looking in the general direction of the parking lot and front of the school.  The dark school building separated her and her friends from the front steps where Bristow and Alexander were no doubt facing off.

“This is my first of three challenges put forward to you, regarding our back and forth,” she told him.  She hung up and ended the message.