Calderon flourished the sword. He drew a figure-of-eight, razor-sharp tip hissing through the air as he struck to his left and his right, like he was clearing space for a duel, or instructing others to stay back from this one-on-one contest, though none of the other fairies were rushing forward to help him, and there was nobody at his rear. Then he raised the slender blade level with his shoulder, point forward, arm extended, striking a pose that looked awkward even to somebody who knew nothing about sword fighting, (by which I mean me). With his other hand he hefted the hollow cane from which he'd drawn the sword, and hurled it aside. Mave — my naughty Mimic — squealed and ducked, her yelp chased by a clatter of wood on stone.

I made an instant assessment. Calderon wasn't treating this as a serious fight. Why throw the cane away, when he could have kept it and used it in his off-hand?

That's what I would have done, anyway. The smart thing.

The glass lady tutted. "Cal, you old fool, you almost brained Mave! The poor girl's already scared witless."

"I'd put that away if I were you," mumbled the green man; he was already backing away from the fight. "These two look a bit too serious for me." The slug-person joined him, scooting and slithering across the floor on a trail of wet mucus.

Aspen — the woman in the pink magical girl dress with butterfly wings sprouting from her shoulders — shrieked: "A sword fight is not going to make things any better!"

Calderon glanced at her, his big bushy beard burning like a bonfire around his jolly grin. "Aspen, dear, you said it yourself, these are loose ends to be tied up! Which means we are all on the stage, on the page, ourselves! Imagine what we might do! Imagine, my girl! Think, think where we are!"

Aspen looked stricken for a moment. She glanced up at the pattern faces flickering and dancing across the rear wall. "N-no, no, we … "

Calderon returned his attention to Muadhnait and I. "Have at you!" he bellowed again, and did some more fancy bullshit with his sword, up and down, left and right, fighting cobwebs in the air.

Muadhnait stepped past me. I let her go.

Calderon's blade was slender and slight, like a fencer's rapier. I was confident I could snap it with one hand, but he had maybe triple or quadruple the reach of my kitchen knife, not counting the length of his arms compared to mine. I'd seen enough trashy fantasy anime to pick up the general idea that in a sword fight, more reach equalled better. Of course he couldn't do me any real damage, but I'd rather not get cut up all the same. Also, Muadhnait knew what she was doing, and I didn't.

(You have been paying attention to that, right? You didn't seriously think I knew what to do with that kitchen knife, did you?)

Muadhnait raised her cold iron sword in the same fighting stance I'd seen her use against the Pale Doll — tight, practical, without ostentation. Calderon flourished again, shifting his weight on his hooves, his big wet eyes twinkling with joy.

"Haha!" he boomed, bleating like bubbling peat. "The lady knight, entombed in her armour, takes the vanguard, for the honour of her smaller mistress! Willing to lay down her life for her prize and her paramour! Yes, yes! I like the sound of it, I do think this will make a grand new opening! For what tale, I hear you cry, my dear and devoted public, for what tale? Indulge me for a while, and pray listen to my poor story, my little book, my pitiful twist of words. Why, I tell you, a tale of freedom at last—"

"If you hurt her, I'll kill you," I said.

Calderon fumbled his flourish and almost tripped over himself. His big orange beard went limp. "Pardon?"

Muadhnait was going to hit him with her sword, but she pulled the strike at the last second. I'd spoken too soon, made him hesitate, and now she hesitated in turn. It gave him just enough time to get his own sword back up to parry the strike. The blades clashed and parted, and the grin returned to Calderon's face.

"A-and now!" he stammered himself back into a booming bleat. "Battle is joined!"

They had a sword fight. Do you want to hear about it?

Who am I kidding. I love sword fights, that's one good thing I learned. I don't care if you do or not.

Muadhnait fought for real, the same way she'd fought the Pale Doll. She gripped her sword in both gauntlets, twisting and turning the blade so it always seemed to come at Calderon from an unexpected angle. A professional, like a real knight, the sort of thing not seen on Earth for far too long. She aimed for the obvious — his sword-arm and his right hand, the soft bulge of his guts inside his waistcoat, his head and face and neck, even his groin. She used her armour as a shield, taking the slices and cuts from his slender blade on her chest, her shoulders, even her helmet, without a care, slamming through it all with body weight and forward momentum. She moved so quickly and without hesitation that for one second I kinda realised what my sister saw in Raine and Zheng; if I had found Muadhnait the slightest bit attractive, I would have fallen in love (or at least lust) right then.

(Cute.)

(She was, I mean. She was cute. I wondered what she looked like under the helmet.)

(When I tried to picture her face before, she had been a ghost of Heather. Now she wasn't. My sister can't fight like that.)

Calderon fought for style and showmanship, dancing on his hooves, making complicated flourishes with his sword. He counted the strokes he landed on Muadhnait's armour, naming some of his moves — "Two! Five! The backhand blow of the master's contempt! Rabbit over the hill! Old man's grapefruit!" — though the tip of his sword didn't even scratch the metal. He dodged and jinked and flowed, always one step ahead of Muadhnait's sword, escaping by mere inches each time.

Muadhnait chased him back fifty paces, across the black and white tiles of the cathedral, between the hexagonal columns and the burning braziers full of black wood. But Calderon didn't care. He was having too much fun.

Very flashy, but all wrong.

I keep telling you that I don't know shit about sword fighting, and that's still the truth, but I know a lot about bad anime and worse television, and I know that real sword fighting doesn't look anything like what was happening there. If Muadhnait had been fighting another Muadhnait, then they would have been grappling within the first half-dozen blows, probably gone to the ground. Two knights in armour would be trying to get their respective swords through a visor slit or into an armour seam, or half-swording to crack a helmet with a pommel, battering at each other like tanks having sex.

Muadhnait was half-swording now and again as she fought, grabbing the middle of the blade for better leverage, trying to ram the point through Calderon's gut. Several times she let go of the sword with one hand, trying to grab him by the lapel or shoulder, or catch his sword arm, or punch him in the face during a particularly good opening. Once she did land a kick on his chest, a full-strength slam that should have sent him sprawling, easy prey for her sword. But he just wheeled backward with a clatter of hooves, bleating out some nonsense about the "Lady knight's resolve and courage!"

The satyr-fairy was prancing about like he was on stage, turning the whole thing into a farce. His sword should have snapped on the first three blows. Muadhnait should have been able to smash through his guard and split his skull. He hadn't even lost his top hat.

Either my threat had scared him, or his goals were beyond my comprehension. Flatter myself with the former, or accept the limitations of the latter?

The pattern-faces — our collective audience — were even less certain. They had retreated to the rear wall of the cathedral, forming cheeks and lips and brows and eyes from the gaps between the stones and the fall of firelight on the masonry, gathered around the doors that Muadhnait and I were trying to reach. Some of them looked confused or puzzled, but most of them were growing steadily angry, gnashing their teeth, staring with bulging eyes, raging in silence at the nature of the sword fight.

They seemed to be pressing forward, but were blocked by some kind of invisible barrier. Like the audience in a theatre, unable to get on stage.

Was my earlier speculation correct? Was this all some bastard offshoot of the King in Yellow's rambling family?

If so—

"Hastur, Hastur, Hastur," I whispered under my breath, behind my shawl, to myself. "Come get me you old fuck. Hastur, Hastur, Hastur."

Nothing.

I followed in Muadhnait's wake, covering her back, keeping one eye on the pattern-faces in the rear wall, daring the other fairies to join in. None of them seemed very keen on the idea, (smarter than you all looked, well done). The green man and the slug-person had retreated all the way to the stairs, then paused, as if embarrassed to run away, (which was stupid, because this wasn't their story, it was Muadhnait's). Mave the Mimic was somewhere over on the far right of the cathedral's main floor, peering around the columns at us with a face like a corpse emerging from a swamp; every time I met her eyes she scurried back out of sight with a little squeak (which was cute and risky and distracting and I had to ignore her). The glass lady had straightened up and straightened out the skirt of her glassy dress, regarding us with the look of a woman waiting for security to turn up and deal with the disturbance. Aspen was baring her teeth, butterfly wings all a-flutter.

"Mave!" the glass lady called. "Mave, these are your subjects! You really should come clean this up before things get out of hand!"

Aspen spat, "They're already out of fucking hand! Look at this! Calderon's in the story!"

"Nonsense!" Calderon boomed, losing another five steps as he backed away from Muadhnait's blade. "We are all in the story now, and this is exactly what we want! Don't you see, we're on the page now, we're part of it, down in the muck, rolling through the mud! We must all join in, join in! We cannot be touched if we join in! We may never get this chance again! Aspen, Neomie, join in, join us! Gulrick, Seede, here, here! Mave, you must not waste this chance! With me, my brothers and sisters, with me! Haha!"

Aspen drew back her lips, eyes flicking from Calderon to Muadhnait to me.

"Don't you dare," I said, muffled behind my shawl.

Aspen narrowed her eyes at me. I stared back — easy, easy, why was she so easy, was she easy? She hissed like a snake.

The glass lady — Neomie? — raised her voice. "Actually, excuse me, brothers, sisters, everyone, we can't actually let these two subjects enter the inner sanctum. They'll interrupt the investiture. Margaret will be very upset!"

"Margaret can go soak her bones!" Calderon boomed. "We're on the page now!"

The others gasped or stared; Aspen's jaw hung open, while Mave covered her face, scandalised. The slug-person tightened up, exactly like a slug poked with a stick. Neomie swallowed; the glass of her body seemed to darken.

I refrained from pointing out that we were drawing closer to the doors.

…

More importantly, I didn't care.

Whatever these 'fairies' had going on just didn't matter, not to me. I was here to see Muadhnait to her sister, and see them reunited, and then perhaps see them out of this place, if that's what they needed, or wanted, or found right. This was Muadhnait's story now. If the fairies wanted to be extras and get in our way, then that was their business; I would cut through them and step over them and leave the loose ends for them to tie off. Maybe they were distant relatives of the King in Yellow, or maybe they were a bunch of groupies in over their heads, or something else I couldn't fathom. I hadn't yet worked out why they all seemed so human, or why this dimension was so palatable to the human body and mind and soul, but I didn't give a toss.

The fairies clearly did have something going on, but I wasn't interested.

I suppose you are, though. Inevitable.

Well, guess what? You're in luck.

Even if I wasn't.

…

Aspen decided that this was her moment. She glanced at me and my knife, then at how close Muadhnait and I had gotten to the doors which led to the 'inner sanctum', (I hate that phrase, but I don't want to call it what it really was). She bared her teeth and tossed her long blonde hair over one shoulder, then stretched her fingers, flexing those six-inch diamond nails. Her butterfly wings spasmed and spread wide, and then she sprang forward, to take Muadhnait in the flank.

I was pretty sure Muadhnait's armour would turn aside some fingernails. But what if Aspen's diamonds were for more than just show?

I stepped into her path, knife out.

Aspen skidded to a halt, tottering on her big bright pink heels. Up close she was cute, cute, cute. She was older than me by more than I'd thought; if she'd been human then her face would have said mid-thirties, but whatever she was now made it harder to be sure. Her eyes were bright and wild and exhausted inside, propped up by whatever the fairies had in place of caffeine and cigarettes and cheap ice cream. She was slender and slight and petite inside her pink magical girl dress, with thin legs sticking out from the skirts like two sticks holding up a puff of cotton candy. I hated her nails, but maybe I could snap those off. She was all teeth and eyes and whirling wings, filling my vision.

"Bugger off!" she screeched at me, swiping the air with her nails. Trying to rake my face? Make me move aside? She should have gone for a kill shot, grabbed my throat. Anything less than that wasn't worth the trouble.

I lashed out with my knife, because it was there. Felt resistance, like wet paper.

A long, shallow, bright red gash opened in Aspen's forearm.

(If you don't count Our Lady of the Forded Briar — and I don't, because that was a dream, and I didn't want what she did — then Aspen was my first. Have you been paying attention? Keeping track? Here's the moment I lose it.)

Aspen stumbled back, clutching her arm, eyes bulging from her face, staring at the wound. She went pale instantly; cold sweat sprang onto her skin, shiny in the firelight. Blood welled in the new slit I'd given her arm, crimson droplets splattering onto the flagstones. Drip drip drip. Juicy crimson drips.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

They didn't mean anything, but they made such fascinating patterns as they fell.

Aspen screamed.

I mean really, really, really screamed. No filter, no brakes, no volume control. She screamed her fucking head off, so loud I would have winced if I'd had real ears. She screamed and clutched and bled and clutched and screamed, bleeding onto the floor, getting the blood all over both of her hands, staining her pink skirts. When she stopped screaming she started panting, hyperventilating, heaving in and out. She didn't look at me at all, just at the wound, at what I'd done to her.

All the other sounds in the cathedral had stopped — the sword fight, Calderon's hooves, even the rain had stuttered out.

I felt something I didn't like.

"So—" I made a noise with my mouth, behind my shawl. "Sorr—"

Aspen looked up. She was crying, eyes glittering like gems, tears catching the firelight. I didn't want to apologise anymore, because that was beautiful. Her tears were like real diamonds, not the fake glitter on her nails. Her eyes were bright and shining and full of shock, sad and hurt and confused all at once. I'd done that? I'd done that, and I hadn't even meant to. Her mouth was open, pink and wet and inviting my fingers inside. I wondered what the interior surface of her cheeks would feel like.

"Wow," I whispered behind my shawl.

Aspen probably didn't hear me, which was maybe good, maybe bad. Perhaps if she'd heard me we could have called off the whole fight and gone somewhere else to fuck. Or just done it there on the floor of the cathedral. I think I would have agreed if she'd suggested it.

Instead, her face twisted with rage, eyes bugging out, lips peeling back.

"You— you cut me!" she shrieked. "You actually cut me! She cut me! She cut my arm!"

I pulled my shawl down. I wanted her to see my lips. "I did," I said. "Do you want me to do it again?"

I hadn't meant for that to sound like a threat. (Do you believe me?)

Aspen gaped, the skin around her eyes all scrunched up with horror and outrage. "Do I— what?! No! Of course not! You fucking psycho bitch!"

"No," I said. "I meant do you—"

Aspen made a fist and punched me in the jaw.

She wasn't very strong, but her knuckles still knocked my head sideways, which was a novel experience. The inside of my cheek was ground against my teeth, and I tasted blood, hot iron on my tongue.

Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Is that how the saying goes? Well, it's wrong, because I didn't have a plan before or after.

I hit Aspen back — left hand, loose fist, her eye socket. Thwack! She reeled and spat and came at me again, but I was already jumping on her, and we went down together. Don't try this at home; I had a knife in my right hand, and it was a minor miracle I didn't stick it right into her belly. She hit the stone floor first, screeching and clawing and kicking, cushioned a bit by the poofy skirts of her dress, butterfly wings pinned at a painful angle. I got on top of her and let her go at my face, because what did I care, it wasn't real flesh anyway. That wasn't real skin and blood under her fingernails, it was just a ghost, a memory of a person who had once looked this way.

I made a motion with my knife; I wasn't even sure if I'd meant to, but Aspen screamed again, a big, wide-eyed, terror scream. I tried to say something like, "I can put it down if you prefer," but her hands were in my face and muffling my words and there was blood all over both of us, mostly from her arm, but from my cheeks as well, which hurt.

Strong, sharp hands grabbed my shoulders and tore me off Aspen, so hard that I tumbled backward across the floor. Held onto my knife, but only just; I had to cradle the blade in my clothes so it didn't break on the stone.

It was the glass lady — Neomie. She stood between me and Aspen with her arms out to either side, her glassy dress shimmering in the firelight, face terrified but defiant.

Muadhnait and Calderon had paused their sword fight, though Muadhnait was poised to resume, her body still turned toward the satyr. Mave was out in the open, wide-eyed and white faced, clutching Calderon's discarded sword-cane sheath in two hands.

Aspen picked herself up, clutching her bleeding arm against her chest, pink dress splattered with blood, still crying. Her butterfly wings were all crumpled. I got back to my feet. My cheeks hurt, covered in lacerations from those nails. I was stained with blood as well, all down my face and front. My tie-dye t-shirt was ruined, my skirt not far behind.

"You cut me!" Aspen spat. "She actually cut me! Is everyone seeing this!? She cut me!""

Silence filled the cathedral; the rain had returned, heavy drumbeats on the stone roof. The faces in the rear wall were furious, whipped into a whirlwind of snarling maws and blazing eyes, mostly aimed at me, though with equal attention for Calderon and Aspen, and a few for Neomie.

"I didn't mean to," I said.

"What do you mean?!" Aspen raged. "What do you mean, you didn't mean to!? What does that mean!?"

Couldn't get the words out, or meet her eyes properly. "You were … I wanted to … this isn't … "

This was the same thing I'd done with the doll in the office. I had to control myself.

Muadhnait. Muadhnait, Muadhnait, Muadhnait. This was about Muadhnait and her sister. I had to concentrate. I didn't have time to work out any of this other shit, let alone what I wanted to do with this fairy, or why. I was on a rescue mission, not collecting half-finished sexual conquests.

(Wasn't I?)

I yanked my shawl back up around my face and pulled it tight, even though it was stained with Aspen's blood. "I said, quite clearly, clear enough for you, that if you hurt her—" I gestured at Muadhnait "—then I'll kill you. You're lucky I didn't put the knife through your chest. Lucky enough for just an arm."

Aspen boggled at me for a moment, then screeched, "She's a loose end! She's part of a story that won't ever be finished, can't ever be finished! What's the point?!"

"I'm here to make sure her story finishes. Finish your shit. Get out of the way."

The fairies all looked horrified again, like I was breaking a taboo. Annoying.

Mave — my Mimic — shouted, her voice shaking. "Just fuck off back to your friends! Why did you leave them and come alone?! J-just go back to them, and … and leave!"

Neomie lowered her arms and quirked an eyebrow at Mave. "You didn't say there were others. You brought others, besides the damsel? Mave, you know that can't possibly be a good idea."

Aspen yelled, "What the hell were you thinking!?"

Calderon cleared his throat. "Mave, Mave my dear girl, this damsel, she's the one from that book you were passing around? What was it called again? Analepsis? Catoblepas?"

Mave swallowed and nodded, clutching the cane-sword sheath even tighter.

Calderon guffawed. "Well then, I thought she was meant to have tentacles, and be amiable to reason!"

"That's my sister," I said. "Not me."

"Ah. Hmm. Mave," Calderon said. "Did you take the wrong one?"

"No!" — Mave and I both said, in unison.

Mave and I stared at each other. I showed her my knife. She scurried behind a column again. Then I turned the knife toward the others.

Calderon came to everyone's rescue. "A-and thus, we are, vanquished!" he bleated. Then he glanced at the raging wall of pattern-faces, Our Audience, and quickly added: "For now."

"Good," I said. "Now. Move."

He stepped aside and glanced around for his cane, then saw it in Mave's hands and realised his mistake. He tucked his sword behind his back instead. With his other hand he swept his top hat off his head and used it to indicate the doors we'd been trying to reach. He bowed low. Very low.

"Vanquished?!" Aspen screeched. "Cal, what the fuck?! We're not beaten! We barely even started!" She shook her blood-soaked arm. "This— this is … n-nothing! I can fix this, I can—"

"First blood, my dear," Calderon replied. "First blood has been drawn."

The glass lady cleared her throat. "You didn't say anything about first blood."

"I am saying it now!" Calderon bleated. "And saying it loud!"

"We can't just let them in there," Aspen whined, gone petulant as a child. Her eyes were roving the wall of pattern-faces, clutching her bleeding arm against her chest. "We can't do that, they'll disrupt everything, we'll … we'll … Margaret will lose her shit with us, and … "

Calderon straightened up. "On the contrary, my dear," he said. "The tale is now ongoing, and all of us are involved." He glanced toward the staircases. "Perhaps not Gulrick and Seede, though. A pity. But, as I already said, we are vanished, for now!"

I hurried back to Muadhnait's side and gestured at the doors. She didn't look at me, but she nodded, helmet going back and forth.

"Out of the way," I said, gesturing with my bloody knife. "Out. Off. Now."

Calderon backed out of our path, bowing lower, gesturing wide with his top hat. I stepped in front of Muadhnait and led the way across the black-and-white floor; she covered my back, turning to warn off the fairies with her sword. They watched with bated breath as we approached the door. Mave hid; Aspen bit her bottom lip; Neomie swallowed. The whole room seemed to hold its breath. The drum of the rain faded out. The crackle of firewood in the braziers drifted away. The wall of pattern-faces — Our Audience — froze in poses of watchful ire and confused disgust.

I smirked up at them from behind my shawl. I'd won. (Hadn't I?)

"I'll get the doors," I told Muadhnait. "Be ready."

Far behind us, one of the fairies tutted and hissed, but I ignored her. (I told myself I would get back to Aspen later, but you and I both know the truth.) The doors to the inner sanctum were not as large as the front entrance of the cathedral, but they were at least twice my height, made of that same super-dark hardwood, presumably from the giant trees. A pair of huge black iron handles were nailed to the front, with nails as wide as my thumb.

I grabbed one handle and yanked it hard, expecting the other side to be barred.

The door swung open, sliding on perfectly oiled hinges. Grey light spilled from within, bright as sun after the main room of the cathedral. I almost (but not quite, you know me by now) stumbled in surprise. Then I caught my feet, and swung my hips around the door, stepping through. Muadhnait hurried after me, clanking on the flagstones. The pattern-faces didn't follow us. Which I should have noted.

The inner sanctum gave me vertigo.

(And no, that was no sign of weakness. It would have done the same to anybody. Even my sister.)

The room was about half the size of the cathedral, floored in the same black-and-white tiles, the same endless tessellation of pattern that made me want to kick it to pieces just to create something more interesting. But the walls — the walls were windows, floor to ceiling, wide as an angel's wingspan. On the other side of those windows was the same grey fog that drowned the rest of the castle, smeared with streaks of pounding rain. And through that fog and the veil of rain floated the spear-tips and nodules and rounded domes of the castle's towers.

We had gone down and down and down, then underground, and apparently cycled around, all the way to the top, all over again.

Maybe it meant something, but I didn't have time for visions or vertigo. Fuck the castle.

The inner sanctum was stuffed to bursting with books — not stacked up in cases or piled on themselves in little towers, the way my sister loves them so, but splayed out like raw meat. Thick tomes sat open on tables, their pages weighed down with chunks of stone that bit into the paper, leaving tears and stains in the corners. Paperbacks lay spread out, their spines broken, pages plucked and pinned to wooden boards. Stranger volumes huddled under glass, held from the edges with loops of wire through their covers, like anatomical specimens suspended in lively poses. Other books had been shredded, their pages torn out and stomped on, their empty covers mounted on stone plinths. Orphaned papers were twisted into spiked sculptures, a mass of pulp and mangled text, while dead covers littered their bases like leaves. Yet more books had been simply flung at the walls and left where they'd fallen, pages bent, spines creased, covers crumpled, forming snowdrifts of abused stories; the bottom layers of the drifts were starting to moulder, spongy and damp, the pages disintegrating in a shallow puddle of pale white fluid.

(I'm sorry, sister, but you know I can't pull those punches. It was what it was, and it wasn't Carcosa.)

In the middle of the room was the black and white silken palanquin that we'd seen at the head of the procession. It was bigger up close, a hulking mass of flowing, fluttering fabric, three or four times my height. When I'd spotted it down in the procession, I'd assumed it was being carried by some of the dolls, but there were no dolls there now, just the fabric itself, descending toward the ground in layers like the fleshy skirts of a jellyfish. Ribbons of snowy white and void black reached out in every direction, caressing and stroking the tortured books that lined the walls and littered the tables, like the stinging tendrils of some grey-scale oceanic mollusc checking the corpses of its prey.

The middle of the thing was a cube of fabric, layers rustling and parting and folding over each other. If there was a person inside, they were too deep to see.

Kneeling in front of the palanquin was the final fairy of the seven. She was dressed in a mass of grey rags, like the robes of a monk, but somehow contoured to the impossibly sharp and slender lines of her body, a scarecrow draped with mist. She was lifting a book in her scissor-blade hands, a loose manuscript bound with twine, offering it to the palanquin.

She turned her head as we entered, reflexively clutching the manuscript back to her chest. Wide dark eyes in a pale oval face stared in shock, sheltered inside a deep grey hood.

The seventh fairy cried out. "No!" Her voice was the sound of knives scraping against each other, edge-on-edge. "No, why!? You weren't supposed to come! You weren't meant to—"

Muadhnait stepped forward. She didn't seem to know whether to raise or lower her sword.

Muadhnait spoke — a real word, muffled by her suit of armour, low and husky and desperate. "Sister!"

Neassa (if you hadn't figured it out yet) lurched to her feet and stumbled backward, still clutching that manuscript to her chest, bound by her arms. Her eyes were as big as golf balls, her face a mask of mottled ivory, her body all lines and angles. She shook her head, hood rustling like straw. "How— how can you even recognise me anymore, how—"

"I'd know you anywhere," Muadhnait said. Her voice was cracking. "Please."

Neassa backed away, legs bumping into the tortured books, stumbling over gutted tomes. At first I assumed she was backing away from Muadhnait, that this was something standard, something we could deal with and wrap up, so Muadhnait's story would make sense.

But no. Neassa was backing away from the ribbon-tendrils of the palanquin.

It was reaching for the manuscript she'd been about to offer. And it was getting angry.

Muadhnait stepped forward, trying to protect her sister. The palanquin whipped a white ribbon at her, wrapping around her sword in a swirl of fabric. It yanked hard, trying to drag the blade from her grip, but Muadhnait held on. It pulled her into the air, feet dangling and kicking. She couldn't seem to cut the fabric. Another ribbon, a black one, scythed toward Neassa and suddenly tore at the manuscript in her arms. She screamed, a sound like a clatter of knives falling down a lead pipe. She tried to pull away, sheltering the pages against her chest.

I stepped in and used my knife for a better purpose than bullying magical girls. (Yes, really.) I grabbed the black ribbon, shoved it to the floor, then stamped on it to pin it in place. I yanked it tight, then cut through. It parted with a sound like wet rubber.

The severed end writhed and wriggled in my grasp for a moment, then went limp. The rest of the ribbon whipped back to the palanquin like a sea-snake retreating to its hole. The white ribbon dropped Muadhnait, but she landed on her feet with a clatter, upright in a second, sword raised.

Neassa screamed: "She didn't mean it! They didn't mean it, they didn't! I— I'm still committed, please! I was just surprised. Let me do it, please!"

The fabrics of the palanquin rustled and roiled — then parted like fronds of seaweed, sliding across each other, peeling back, somehow wet and rotten even though they showed nothing but clean surfaces. I dropped the piece I'd severed and wiped my hand on my t-shirt, though nothing came off.

Endless layers seemed to peel back and back and back, as if the space inside the palanquin was infinite. I felt a tug deep down in my guts — a golden hook, trying to urge me forward. I ignored it and dug my heels into the ground.

Finally the silk stopped, and the occupant was revealed.

A stick-figure all skin and bones sat curled in the middle of the palanquin. Pale as ivory, wrinkled like the surface of a walnut, completely bald. The skin was tattooed with an intricate pattern of cream and white, standing out from the wintry flesh beneath as a glinting tracery of lines. The gut was sunken, the ribs prominent, a pair of breasts hanging like empty pouches, the neck and spine bent forward. The arms and legs were so thin, no muscle, no fat, just bone. The face was haggard and sagging with incredible age, a skull behind the thinnest of masks. A hundred years old, two hundred, three? Lips like dead leeches, nose a flat lump, ears gone.

But the eyes were alive, and nothing special, just regular blues gone watery with age. How could something so wizened and withered still be alive?

It wasn't a fairy. I didn't know how I knew, I just did. Perhaps it was like seeing a smudge of ink in an otherwise perfect pattern. Like me, because I shouldn't have been here either. And neither should she.

The occupant of the palanquin was a human being.

The lips moved. A sound came out, raspy and raw and quiet, like bark peeling from old sticks.

"What are you?" it — she — demanded of me.

She had an American accent, but it was a hundred years out of date. Like an ancient radio broadcast.

The golden hooks in my gut pulled on my insides, harder than before, toward the very old woman. Was this the ultimate foe of Our Lady of the Forded Briar?

"Just a girl," I said. "This story is over. We're taking Neassa with us."

The ancient thing in the palanquin showed no reaction. Neassa leapt forward, hands upraised with the manuscript once again, crashing to her knees. "No, please! Please don't listen to her! Please just— I've worked so hard, I— I want— I want this! Please!"

I pointed at the palanquin with my knife. "Unless you want me to climb up there and cut you open. Yes or no? Choose quick, because we're close to the end of this—"

The ancient woman flicked the fingers of her left hand, so quickly that it seemed impossible for something so old. Her finger bones snapped and cracked, digits breaking and reforming into a jagged sign, the rents in her flesh bloodless and empty, shards of bone dry as dust.

"Silentium et quies—" she started to murmur, coughing the last word like it hurt her throat.

The temperature in the room plummeted by twenty degrees. I saw my breath plume and felt a sheen of ice flash-form on the blade of my knife. Muadhnait gasped. The surface of her armour crackled and sparked.

Golden hooks in my gut pulled hard enough to tear a human in two, but I didn't need the Briar-bitch to tell me this was bad. I knew Latin when I heard it.

I launched myself at the palanquin, leading with the knife.

"—finem huic strepitui," the mage finished, and a cloud of rusty blood spewed from her mouth.

As the shock wave hit me and tossed me back like a seed in a storm, and Muadhnait's armour was picked up with a clatter of metal, I thought to myself that next time, I needed to bring a gun. Knives were no good for stopping mages, unless you were quick as Zheng about cutting out their tongues.

I didn't know what the spell was, and I didn't care. It was like being hit by a wrecking ball of wind. It picked me up and threw me at the wall.

I think I hit the wooden doors. I can't be sure, because I was unconscious before I hit the floor.

…

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.