N Leonard 8000 St, says the one green sign, and N St Lous 9100 Av the other, and she clings to the pole that holds them both, “Leonard, Moony!” she hoots. “Le-he-he-henny!”

“Minty,” he says, laughing himself as he hauls her off the pole, “come on, come on!” Staggering away from pool to pool of streetlight slipped over arms clutched about each other’s shoulders, pushing shadows out behind them, shadows that bobbing shrink to be swallowed by stumbling feet as they pass beneath the lamp above to seep out then before them, wavering, reaching, yearning for the return of darkness, “Lenny!” she yelps, and they laugh.

A house barely bigger than its garage, clad all about in clad in pale blue siding, an enormous tree in the front yard of it that dapples streetlight into moon-bright coins spread over grass and sidewalk, pinking the finish of the pickup in the driveway, the late-model sedan on the grass. “Home sweet home?” she says, dragged behind, “on Lenny Street?”

“Avenue,” he says, with a tug, but she won’t step off the sidewalk. Hoisting a bottle in his free hand he waggles it, “Fuck you,” she says, companionably, reaching for it. Taking the step. “Fuck you, Moody.”

Open the door on shouts and gunshots from a big screen television there before the picture window, bursting with digital explosions, a bulky cargo plane heels over crumpling wing, in the foreground ducking a couple of agents in tactical gear, guns up, “Whoa!” a guy on the couch, leaned away from the guy in the middle, controller in both hands swung wide, thumbs wildly twiddling knobs, “Shit!” and the guy on the other end of the couch clapping, “God damn! That was epic!”

“Danny Moody!” says the man in the leather recliner, “back so soon.” Jaw salted with stubble, slick white scar tensing his expression into something ambiguous. “Who’s this?” pointing with his chin, as gunfire chatters from surrounding speakers.

“Ada,” says Moody, an uncertain gesture with his unburdened hand, “this is,” waiting out another eruption of explosions, “God damn!” and “Hoo woo!” from the guys on the couch. “Runs pretty much every goddamn thing you’d ever give a shit about,” says Moody, his gesture having woozily ended up toward the man on the recliner. “Chad?” he says, that hand swooping back to her there by his side, “Ada here took me in, when I was,” both hands coming together, “out of sorts.” Holding out the bottle, clear and colorless but for a pale green label. Chad takes it as more blasts shake the screen, rattle the window behind it. “Pisco?” he says, his expression resolving as a scowl, but Moody’s tugged Ada out of that front room, through a short stub of a hall onto an awkward landing, a short flight of stairs dropping into a kitchen. The treads of the steps have been chewed up, pale splinters left about holes gouged here and there, a couple of bent nails left where they’d been yanked. Moody’s left his broad-brimmed hat on a linoleum table piled with pizza boxes and take-out cartons, he’s headed for the fridge, there by a big sheet of plywood leaned up against the cabinets. Ada stands in the middle of the checkerboard floor, grey-callused slabs of her feet pinched by lime green flip-flops, shoulders slumped in her purple rain shell, laughter draining away as she looks about, garbage overflowing the can, food wrappers and wads of paper towels, empty bottles, crumpled cans, dishes clinking in the sink as more explosions rumble the house about them.

“Hey,” says Chad, on the landing. “Bottle’s half-empty.”

“Half a bottle,” says Moody, rifling the refrigerator, “better’n none.” Ada looks back and forth, from the one, to the other.

“You know the rules,” says Chad.

“She’ll stay in the basement, with me,” says Moody. “Least I could do. Where’s the beer?”

“Everybody pulls their own weight,” says Chad.

“Ada Minthorn,” says Moody, tossing a carton over his shoulder, splat on the floor, “used to be an event planner for, uh, whatshername. Governor’s ex-girlfriend.” A plastic bag filled with something liquidly dark tossed aside, a foil-wrapped oblong scattering sandy crumbs. “Yeah?” says Chad, looking down at Ada. She shrugs.

“The things she could tell you,” says Moody, straightening, slamming the fridge door shut. “She’ll whip this place into shape in no time. Where’s the damn beer, Chad?”

Chad looks up from Ada, then, over to Moody, that scar glossy in the light. “In the tub,” he says.

Moody blinks. “The beer,” he says, “is in the tub.”

“On ice,” says Chad.

Ada takes a breath. A treble fusillade occasions a basso profundo detonation, whoops and cheers, Holy shit! She opens her mouth.

“Ada,” says Moody, still looking at Chad. “Get us a couple of beers. Anything in particular, Chad?”

Chad shrugs, without looking away from Moody. “It’s all good shit.”

“Back up the hall, down the left, other end of the house,” says Moody. “Get yourself one, too. Should be nice and cold.”

Turning, shuffle-snap of flip-flops, Ada trudges up the steps, past Chad pressing against the heavy bannister to make room. The scar makes it hard to tell if his scowl’s become a smirk. Did for those camel-jockeys, somebody says in the front room, and fucko, that was Colombia, did you not see the fucking palm trees? The hall to the left is dark, couple of doors on the one wall, door at the end half-open on an unlit room. Stumbling over something, a pair of maybe pants left lolling on the carpet, “shit.” Leaning back to kick open the door at the end of the hall, coughing, she lifts up an arm, back of her hand over her nose, “fucking shithole fucks.”

The bathroom’s narrow, cramped, windowless dark. Might be a toilet there in the corner, a sink, the one shifting wall’s a shower curtain, drawn. Sweeping her free hand up and down by the jamb, feeling for something, click of a switch and the sudden roar of a ventilation fan, she yelps, flicks another. The bathroom leaps into light, bismuth-pink tiling, brown mat, white towel, shower curtain printed with some old map of the world, and the seat of the toilet’s up. “Fucking Moody.” A four-footed orthopædic cane bent almost in half in the corner there, under the switches. She leaves the fan running, grabs the shower curtain to drag it open, and screams.

Pale pink tub full of melting ice, bergs and chunks of it stained purple and brown with trailing swirls of red and even pink in the water about bobbing cans and bottles lodged about, and a body, a small man curled up on his side packed in white and grey striated ice soaked in a gelid sludge of red and purple and brown about his skinny blue thighs, his crotch, his swollen belly plastered with a T-shirt that might’ve once been white, slashed and punctured, ripped about the ripped-out throat where the packed ice is darkest, the melt most red, head tipped up at an angle on a pillow of more ice, thin lank hair wetly dark, pasted to skull and ear and crumpled, wrinkled cheek, wrinkles that radiate from a sunken nose to snarl shut one dead eye, the other purpled, vacantly shocked.

“The beer’s fine, Ada,” calls Moody from the hall behind her. “Just wipe the blood off.”

“You fucking fuck!” she shrieks. He’s laughing, Chad behind him’s laughing, she seizes a can from the tub and hurls it at them, thump and bouncing heavily down the carpet, “Shit!” yelps Moody, still laughing, Chad doubled over, trying to pull him back, “Your fucking beer!” she yells, throwing another bloody can.

Bulbs a-blaze about the mirror, set in the frame to mercilessly light that face, the planes of it, those cheeks, the nose. Thin lips uncolored, unlined eyes with only a hazeled hint of green. Black hair brushed simply back, shorn at the temples to a stubble that seamlessly prickles the line of that jaw, and all in brightly sharp relief against an empty darkness that helps the light to chisel shoulders and collarbone, bare and hairless chest, long sinewy arms bent to lay those hands upon the table, backs of them starkly rumpled with veins.

“Now why, mon lapin,” a voice slinks from the darkness, “would you want to go and look like that?”

The Starling smiles at herself. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“You never sleep, do you,” that voice, purringly close.

“Sometimes I do.” The Starling looks over her shoulder, away across the basement where the darkness is relieved by a dozen candles flickering before a bed, about a nest of cushions and bolsters laid on the floor, wraps and spreads and Turkey rugs and nestled among them two sleeping heads, the hair of them spread over pillows, black curls, bright floss. To one side a high-backed wing chair where Costurere sits drowsing, a snuffer in one relaxed hand, and Aigulha curled at her feet. The Starling turns back to the mirror. Over her other shoulder the shadows unfold a striking nose, a chin, a wicked, painted smile. “Do you find beauty, tiresome?” that voice, from those lips. “Pleasure, to be passé? Is that why you sink back to this, like a warm bath?”

“I am only ever what I want to be,” says the Starling.

“You want to be what pays the bills, ma sucrette. And la femme’s what’s been engineered, over the centuries, to best provoke, and evoke, le plaisir. If you want to do it wholesale.” In the mirror, fingers lift a shining strand of yellow hair, tuck it behind an ear. “It’s not our fault. Just the way the world’s been wired. Otherwise, you might well suddenly decide it’s a great big mustache you want, to look like,” a chuckle, “Big Jim Turk,” as the Starling’s stroking a knuckle along a lush mustache, gazing dourly from a face now smaller, in a head a touch more wide, sun-ruddied in the blaze. “Lord love her,” those wicked lips twist wryly, “I do not see what she sees in that man.”

“You don’t?” says the Starling, shaking out long and jet-black locks, though the bangs clipped short are brightly pink. She’s smiling again, apple-cheeked and dimpled.

“Oh, oh, no, that face, on that body – !”

“This?” The Starling shrugs, slumping in the chair, blue-veined breasts pink-nippled, broadly full, settling softly atop a soft swell of belly.

“Good lord,” a hand comes up, those blue eyes in the mirror look down, “oh, put that away. That’s cruel.”

The Starling’s fingertip strokes a delicate chin. “There’s no cruelty in this, but what you bring.”

“Oh?” Shuff and swoop in the shadows, shifting from stoop to kneel, head dipping to slip yellow hair behind a shoulder. “Do me.”

“Do you.”

“You never do me. Either of us. Do me.”

A sigh, a stretch of a lengthened torso, hairless chest now once more flat, apples slipped from cheeks. “You already have a double.”

“Do me. But slow. Slow enough that I can see you do it.”

“Slow,” says the Starling, licking wickedly painted lips. Turning away from the mirror and something, a trick of the light as it’s passed over gleams the passing locks from loosely rumpled darkness to yellow pressed severely straight, slipping trimmed a strict straight hem, a gleaming lowered curtain. Those eyes, now blue, blink once. “Slow enough?”

“It’s like,” smiling up, “looking, at my sister.”

“Not,” says the Starling, smiling down, “a mirror?”

“You can’t tell us apart, can you.”

The Starling looks back to the mirror, as up beside her hikes that same face just below, same nose, same eyes, same severely yellow hair. “In pictures, no,” she says. “I can’t. But if I see you in motion, with each other. Or speak with you.”

Ettie’s smile in the mirror turns smirkward. “I can always tell when it’s you, and when it’s her royal majesty. It’s something,” tucking a yellow strand of the Starling’s hair behind an ear, “you do,” she says, “or don’t. Something missing. A lack,” as the Starling looks to Ettie there beside her, “or the presence of,” and tips her head to press a kiss to those murmuring lips.

The Starling sits up, lifts her mouth away, unsmudged, “a, a lack,” Ettie says, fingers lifted to her mouth. “I suppose,” she says, “you think, it looks like the game is tied.” The nails of them clipped close, shelled in the same glossy red.

“Are we playing a game?”

That hand to the Starling’s knee, now. “Evoking, and provoking,” says Ettie, seemingly to herself. “It’s a matter of sensation,” looking up. “I can guess, surmise, presume,” those fingertips further along the Starling’s thigh, “but I can never know, not for certain, what this,” back down the length of it, to the knee, “feels like, to you. All I can ever truly know,” and that hand drops now to Ettie’s lap, “is what it is I feel.”

The Starling shifts in that folding chair, knees a bit further apart than before. “This is something you say to johns,” she says.

“There are but two responses to this bitter truth,” says Ettie, hiking herself back up, both hands on the Starling’s thighs. The Starling sits forward, hands coming to rest on Ettie’s shoulder, her upper arm, “This is just a thing,” she says, lips coming close, “that you’ve cooked up, to have something to say to the ones who want to talk.”

“Are you a john?” says Ettie.

Another kiss, that they both lean into, yellow heads together, turn and twist and dip and lift away with a hiss, the Starling’s eyes closed, pursed lips now redly smeared. “One might,” says Ettie, drawing her fingers up a shivering stretch of belly, “retreat,” thumbing a nipple bluely pinked, “into the sensations one might feel oneself, the experience, of what one does know, for certain, to be real, or,” lifting the Starling’s hand from her shoulder, lick of a kiss for the knuckles, lip-print pressed inside the wrist. “Or, one might relentlessly pursue,” turning the hand over in her hands, the nails of those fingers painted the same hard glossy red, but shaped to meticulous points, “whatever, hints, might be found,” a kiss for the inside of the elbow, and then there, just below a breast, “that what one’s doing to evoke,” another kiss, wickedness askew about her mouth, “provokes,” the Starling gasps as those lips close about a nipple, gently, and those sharp-nailed hands leap into the air to float a moment, aimlessly. Ettie’s hands unseen, tucked away somewhere between them, “the effect, that one intends,” she says, hiked up a bit higher, nose-tip brushing the Starling’s nose.

“What is it you want,” says the Starling.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Ettie’s hands still somewhere between them, smile broadening as the Starling shivers. “What I want. What her majesty wants. That’s what I see, when I look at her. What I don’t when I look at you.”

“You’re saying,” the Starling swallows, eyelids sagging half to shut, “I retreat.”

“I’m saying,” Ettie leans close, looks up, “you don’t pursue.”

“Your sister doesn’t, either.”

Ettie looks away, looks down. “You tell me.”

“You don’t see that lack,” says the Starling. “That need.”

“That question,” says Ettie.

The Starling, smiling, slowly shakes her head, lids lowered, shut away, “No,” she says. “I do not love you, Stephanie Halliwell.”

“Oh,” says Ettie, still looking down, between them, “I think you want me. Well enough. I mean, it’s not a perfect barometer, but.” Between her hands in the Starling’s lap a slender cock’s been lifted pale and bobbing to a quickening pulse. “I didn’t mean for that,” says the Starling, hand slipping down Ettie’s arm, “let me just,” but Ettie shrugs the hand away, “All the more reason,” she says, bent over.

“Didn’t you have enough of that already?” grumbles the Starling.

“No,” says Ettie, “no,” stroking, kiss-smudged lips so close. “Not on this body,” she says, and takes it in her mouth.

The Starling’s hands come to the back of Ettie’s head, but fall away with a grunt of something like frustration when Ettie sits back again on her heels. “Costurere?” she calls.

“What are you,” says the Starling, but again, “Costurere,” and over on that wing chair, Costurere starts awake. “Put on some music,” says Ettie, “something soft, and bring yourself here. With Aigulha.”

Stirs and murmurs, shaking awake, a click. A chorus hushly croons, caramel lips like hers, and a syncopation shuffles through the basement, so I could kiss them, but all she ever do is hurt, as the two of them in crisp white underthings approach the blazing mirror and the two of them, sat upon the folding chair, knelt before it. “I’d change my hair,” says Ettie. “Color it black. And not so straight – not curls, no, something loosely full. However long you’d like. And, Aigulha? Something minimal, avant-garde – black leather. Straps. Buckles. I trust your eye. Don’t lose heart, dear Starling,” as with an “Of course, miss” Costurere steps up behind her, and a “Right away, my lady” Aigulha steps out of the light of the mirror, where racks of clothes-stuff crowd the shadows. “This won’t take long,” says Ettie, and she sighs, as Costurere runs gold-flecked fingers through already darkening hair, and lifts a silvery comb.

The Starling looks down at the erection in her lap. The sun keeps rolling in, that singing voice in the shadows, and the sea fog is great, and I smile, for a while.

Costurere steps back, and Ettie gets to her feet, shaking out a newly heavy helmet of black hair. Aigulha reaches under Ettie’s arms to buckle a wide black leather belt about her torso, just beneath her breasts, cinching it tight, draping a yoke of braided data cables up over her sternum, about her neck, down the line of her back, plastic plugs of them twisted together a-dangle above the cleft of her buttocks. Costurere presses a finger to Ettie’s lips, restoring the cleanly wicked line of red, but Ettie catches her wrist to lick a crumb of gold from a fingertip, turns it about to kiss the rough callus beneath a nail. Her other hand takes hold of Aigulha’s, lifts for a kiss to the palm, and then, their hands still held in hers, Ettie turns her smile on the Starling, sat back in that folding chair, arm propped on the back of it, hair still yellow and severe, eyes yet blue and nose that nose, long lean legs crossed at the ankles, her softening cock a-droop. “Oh, ma crevette,” says Ettie. “We’ll have to do better than that.”

“You want me, doing you, to fuck you, doing her,” says the Starling, matter-of-factly.

“We’ve been over this,” says Ettie, “you’re doing my sister. You don’t have it in you to do me. Do try to keep up.” Turning to Costurere, “Go on, wake them,” and then, to Aigulha, “Gently.” Holding out a hand to the Starling as the two of them set out across the basement, toward the candlelit nest. “Well?” says Ettie. The music about has changed, someone’s chanting over kiltered thumps, sad eyes, bad guys, mouth full of white lies, and the Starling takes her hand.

Wraps and drapes, shawls, scarves, chiffons drawn aside, the two women asleep on the rugs and cushions, the Queen a-sprawl on her belly, one arm flung over a purple bolster, profuse black curls a fan over her shoulders, a pillow for Chrissie’s gleaming yellow head, curled on her side, an arm about the small of her majesty’s back. “Miss?” whispers Costurere, knelt over Chrissie. “Ma’am?” Aigulha, bent over the Queen.

“Not that gently,” says Ettie, plopping herself on the rugs beside Chrissie, gripping a shoulder, rolling her over, slithering yellow into her lap. “Hey,” she says, conversationally loud. “Doodle. Wake up.” Colorful cables a line down the curl of her back, she tugs Chrissie’s silvery camisole back into place. Chrissie pulls her arms about herself, draws up her knees, gold-spangled lips a-twist in a grimace, “mmf,” and “what?” and blinking thickly, opening her eyes, to see Ettie smiling down. She closes them up again.

“Snug as a bug in a rug?” says Ettie.

“In a rug,” says Chrissie, faintly. “The nicest insect.” Frowning. Opening her eyes. “Your hair’s different.”

“I got you a present,” says Ettie, sitting up, out of the way, to reveal the Starling stood among the candles, one arm up, hand of it laid against shoulder, fingers coiled in locks of yellow severe, and something uncertain in guarded blue eyes.

“I,” says Chrissie, “what?” Looking over and up at Ettie, sleep-muzzled, confused, looking back to the Starling, who’s starting to smile, whose other hand there by her thigh, “oh,” says Chrissie, sitting up.

“Look at you, there,” Ettie, sat up close behind Chrissie, chin over her shoulder, “such a big, beautiful sister.” Those wicked lips so murmuring close. “Think of what you could do to yourself, ma moitié.”

“Do you want this?” says the Starling, hoarsely.

“Do you?” whispers Ettie, and only a wincing frown at the interruption. Chrissie’s already shifting her hips on the rug, laying her weight back against Ettie who spreads her legs to make room, awkwardly propped on an elbow till Costurere kneeling a cushion slips beneath, tugging and tucking, stroking, soothing an arm, a shoulder, hair yellow, black, Ettie scowls, snaps “Go on,” shrugging from under that solicitous hand. The music’s changed again, a thumping, more insistent beat, my face is drawn, someone’s sing-songing, my face is drawn with this num-ber two pen-cil. Off to the side a murmur, a rustle as the Queen sits up by Aigulha, the lickerish wick of a kiss, a sigh as Costurere scoots back, but Ettie’s settled against the cushion, Chrissie’s kissing her hand, Ettie bends lightly to press a kiss to Chrissie’s forehead. The two of them look bluely up as one, as the Starling steps onto the rugs, sinks to her knees before them, cock wobbling, erect, those knees between Chrissie’s ankles, falling forward, hands to either side of Ettie’s hips. Swaying forward over their bellies, breasts brushing breasts, lifting to tilt a kiss for Ettie’s mouth. Smiling. Pushing back as Chrissie lifts herself, and kiss and kissing again.

Ettie slumps back, and the look on her up-tipped face, a grunt like a laugh as they start to move atop her, and in her hand clutched tight is Chrissie’s hand, so very like her own, the nails cut close and glossy red, even as Chrissie’s legs twine about the Starling’s legs so very like her own, long and palely lean, like Ettie’s enwrapping them both. Ettie lifts her head back up by Chrissie’s bobbing eyes closed Starling intent the two of them on the thing they’re building, and all that slippery glassy gleaming yellow hair. Looking over, then, to the Queen close by, laid on her side on the rugs, an arm about Aigulha before her, a hand in Aigulha’s lap, and Costurere knelt behind, the three of them watching intent on what’s happening before them. “Like, what you, see?” says Ettie, between gasps, but softly, too quiet for anyone else to hear, or even notice.

He laughs, a joyous yawp that startles her awake in the pastel sheets, “The fuck?” she rasps, blinking owlishly.

“Oh, sweetling,” he says, “don’t take it amiss,” laid his full length atop the sheets. “Merely the wonder of it overwhelms, at times. The living, as I’ve done, from the one end of the world, to the other.” A hand still on the wiry black that mats his sun-ruddied breast. Shoulders red as well, quite red, and peeling here and there in lacy flakes among the shortly coiled hairs that riddle them. “As I’m doing,” he says, absently scratching. Hips and legs untouched by sun, cleanly pale beneath more matting black, lank down the shins of him to his ankles, thinned about wide knees, thickening up his thighs in wiry whorls that converge on the tangled copse of his groin, an extravagant nest for the quiescent nubbin of his cock. “It will let itself out, from time to time.” Smiling at her, and she leans down quickly to plant a kiss, there below his thick mustache. “Well, I’m glad you made it,” she says, shoveling locks of black hair out of the way, over a shoulder, looking up, frowning, at the thin light seeping through dust-shrouded glass. “The hell time is it,” she mutters, leaning out over the edge of the mattress to fish through discarded clothing. He rolls on his side after her, playfully slaps a jiggling buttock, “Hey,” she growls, thumbing a rosy plaque of a phone to life. “Shit,” she says. “I bet the sun ain’t even up yet.” Dropping the phone to the tangle of T-shirt and hoodie and tights, she rolls onto her back there beside him. “But here I am. Awake.”

“If it’s time you’d look to pass,” he says, fingers trailed between her breasts. She pointedly lifts his hand away. “There’s shit to do,” she says, looking down the length of him, then back to his ribald smile. “Besides, you’re not up for anything.”

“But the work of a minute, and I’d be up for anything at all, with you,” he says.

“It is entirely too early for anything that corny,” she says, but he kisses her, and kisses her again, with a gentle fondness, and she shakes her head, trying not to smile, “Tickles,” she says, lifting a hand to his face, but not to push him away. She strokes that thick mustache, black of it hatched with white.

“It’s Sunday, less I’ve scrambled the weekly round,” he says. “A day of rest, for all of us under the sun.” A relishing smile, there below his mustache, her fingertips. “If you would not lie with me, then perhaps just lie, with me?”

She snorts up a giggle. “You’re awfully proud of that one, aren’t you.”

“It’s this blasted ebullience!” throwing up a gesture, hand dropping to her thigh with a slap. “I’m giddy with the wonder of it. And the joy.”

“Is that what it is,” she says, warmly skeptical.

“The wonder,” he says, “and the joy.”

“That’s nice.”

“You like it?”

“Yes, I, not that, wait, wait, too much. Just there. Like that. Like that.” Lifting her chin as he dips for a kiss. There’s a knock at the door.

He looks up, back over his shoulder, at the second knock. “Gloria?” calls someone through the door.

“Day of rest,” she mutters, and then, “Who is it?” she calls.

“Ah, Melissa?”

He cocks a brow. She’s shaking her head. “What’s up,” she calls.

The doorknob turns, the latch clacks, “Shit!” yelps Gloria, kicking her way under the sheets as he sits back against the pillows, arms folded, ankles crossed, watching bemused as the door’s swung open, a woman peering around the edge of it thick lenses freezing in the act of taking a step into the room, “Oh, I’m sorry,” she’s saying, as “Close the goddamn door!” shouts Gloria. “Jesus!” The door jerks shut.

A moment then, Gloria clutching the sheets about herself, Big Jim stretched the length of him nude atop all those pastels, and silence out in the hall. Then Jim starts to laugh, a gust stopped up behind the fist he lifts to his tight-shut lips, leaking in wheezing gasps. Gloria shoves him and the laughter bursts out, a blowsy guffaw.

“Sorry?” says Melissa, out in the hall. “Really. Sorry.”

“It’s not even six,” calls Gloria.

“I know, I, I couldn’t sleep. I heard voices?”

Jim’s eyes squeezed shut, shoulders shaking, he’s only partially successful in not making much noise at all. “And?” snaps Gloria.

“Uh, Anna told me? Once, she said. You sometimes had. Bacon?”

“So, you’re, like, dead. Right?”

Sizzle and pop six rashers of bacon on the little electric griddle, pushed about by tongs. “Melissa,” says Gloria, there by the credenza. She’s pulled on an oversized blue and grey hoodie, St. Mary’s Football, it says, across the front. Undefeated Since 1859.

“What,” says Melissa. Sat on the floor beneath the dust-glazed window in her motorcycle jacket, and leaned beside her a greatsword in a bulky scabbard of iron and dark wood and grey felted wool, the faceted pommel at the end of its long hilt laid up against a murky pane. “It’s not like he’s a hundred and seventy, a hundred and sixty, and lying there, looking like that.”

Big Jim snorts, laid back against the pillows piled at one end of the high thick mattress, wrapped in a corduroy kilt, bare ankles crossed. “I’m as quick as you’d seem to see me,” he says.

“I mean, you’re the guy. You’re the reason we have the Shanghai tunnels.”

“Hardly,” he says, and the merest shake of that big head.

“No, I mean, that’s so cool!”

“They were never as extensive as the tales would have it.”

“I took the tour. I’ve been down there, you know?” Leaning forward, hands on her knees, “Jim Turk’s a legend,” she says. “Shanghaied a fucking wooden Indian. Found a basement full of guys dead from drinking ether, or formaldehyde, or whatever, and hired ’em all off to a captain before they were cold! You’re saying you did that?” but the shake of his head’s more vehement, “No,” he’s saying, “that were the doing of Bunko Kelly, and I’ll not have that bounder’s sins totted up in my ledger.”

“You’ve been alive a hundred and seventy years.”

“Melissa,” says Gloria a touch more sharply, flicking bacon onto a paper plate.

“I’ve read the obituary, printed on the occasion,” says Big Jim. “Died in Tacoma, in ninety-five. Of a broken heart, no doubt.” Looking down, away from them both. “Kate gone on the five years before, and it already being but certain my boys would never hold together what I’d built.” Gloria stumps away from the credenza, thrusting the plate at Melissa, who looks up, takes it with a nod. “I don’t recall a moment of Tacoma,” Big Jim looks up, to Melissa, then Gloria. “What I do remember, like the last shred of a dream, is a little bell, jingling, above my head.” Gloria’s stood there, tongs in her hand. Melissa lifting a slice of bacon to her lips. “I was in the front room of a dilapidated cobbler’s shop, and in my hand a tattered Persian slipper, half its spangles gone, embroidery threadbare, well worn by someone else’s foot, much smaller than my own,” and he waggles his hairy toes. “I’ve no notion where it came from, to be found there in my hand, but I held it up to the cobbler, who nodded and went to fetch something from the back of his shop. Porter, his name was. William Porter. I haven’t thought of that in, in quite some time.” Melissa, chewing slowly, listening intently. Gloria headed past the corner of the mattress to the credenza, her back to him. Wrapping the uncooked bacon in a plastic bag. “He returned,” says Jim, “and set on the counter between us a boot, and a slipper, for all the world as if they was a pair. The boot being one of those heeled and tooled absurdities they wear in Pendleton, to get up fancy, and do so pinch the toes. But the slipper? The Persian slipper, yellow and orange threadbare, and more of its spangles remaining, perhaps, but otherwise a match for the one I held. They’d been worn, of a morning, by the same two delicate feet, fetching tea, perhaps, or every night to a sweet soft bed, that might’ve been my own dear Kate’s.” A wistful shrug of a smile beneath that mustache. “But I did know, even as I reached to pick it up, I knew, sure as the shilling at the bottom of a glass. I was crimped, to a captain unknown, for a duration as yet unspecified.”

“Do you still have them?” says Melissa. “The slippers?” There’s a knock at the door. “Who the fuck is it?” snarls Gloria.

“In a manner of speaking,” says Jim to Melissa, as he’s getting to his feet. “Gloria?” says someone through the door.

“It’s Anna,” says Gloria, to Jim, who’s padding across the floor. “It’s Anna!” she says, again. He opens the door with an unctuous fillip, “Welcome, m’lady,” his jaunty intonation. Anna smartly dressed in herringbone steps into the room, mouth open with what she’s about to say shut tight as she takes in what’s about, shirtless and barefooted Jim, bare legged Gloria stooping to stuff the bacon away in a little refrigerator, Melissa sat by her sword. “I’m,” she says, “sorry. I can come back,” narrow lenses of her spectacles blanked by strengthening morning light.

“You’re here,” says Gloria, getting to her feet, “you’re here. What is it.”

Anna sighs, crisply. Holds up a sheet of official-looking letterhead, creased in thirds. “Apparently, this came yesterday. Did you see it?”

“I don’t know, maybe, probably not,” says Gloria, as if ticking off a list. Big Jim’s settling himself on the mattress. “It’s from Development Services,” Anna’s saying. “They’ve had a complaint regarding, as they put it, illegal occupancy. They’re going to send a Fire Inspector to, ah,” turning it about so she might read from it, “ensure the building is regulated according to its approved use, and the structure maintained in conformance with the Building Code in effect at the time of approval.”

“Okay,” says Gloria, blinking, after a moment. “They can talk to the lawyers. We own the building now. We own the whole damn block. They can,” an irritated wave, “whatever!”

“The same lawyers who do serve the sworn enemy of our lady?” says Anna.

“Well, that’s a,” says Gloria, “a conflict of interest.”

“And in what court would you plead that?” snaps Anna, but then almost immediately withdraws the edge, “you’re tense,” she says, folding away the letter. “You’ve had no coffee yet. I’ll have some brought.”

“I don’t need,” Gloria starts to say, but there’s a wrenching scrape of iron on glass, “Jesus,” blurts Gloria, wheeling, “do you have to bring that fucking thing everywhere you go?”

Melissa, still sat upon the floor, resettles the enormous scabbarded sword she’s just kept from toppling over. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s not like I can just, you know. Make the fucking thing disappear. Like you guys.”

“Melissa,” says Gloria, and there’s the edge now, in her voice, but a shuffle in the doorway interrupts. She turns, glaring, to see Anna stepped out of the way of a stoop-shouldered man in a red apron, and in his hands a gilt tray laden with tall and steaming paper cups. Anna takes one with a smile. Limping over toward the mattress, he extends the tray toward reclining Jim, who takes the proffered cup.

“Right,” says Gloria, with a sigh. “Coffee.”

“Coffee?” says Melissa, scrambling to her feet, and scrambling to catch the scabbard again, scraping it back into balance against the glass. “Can I have some?”

He’s already sweeping the tray toward her, turning it so that one of the two cups left is ready to her reach. Another bustle in the doorway as she takes it, “Majesty?” Anna’s saying, and Big Jim’s getting to his feet, and Gloria closes her eyes.

“Good morning,” says the Queen, stepping into the room, a loose white satiny robe unbelted over white pyjama pants, black curls artlessly loose, bare feet smeared with gold. “How nicely convenient to find you all together.”

“What’s up,” says Gloria, but the Queen’s stepped up to the red-aproned man, “Is that,” she says, suddenly delighted, “Cragflower! Could it be you?”

“My lady,” he says, looking down and down, tray trembling just in his hands.

“You served my mother,” she says, “you’ve served us, always, graciously, and well. It is a tremendous comfort to find you with us in this new circumstance.”

“My own name,” he says, wonderingly, as she takes the last cup from the tray, “never sounded so lovely, in my ears.”

“Anna,” says the Queen, turning away, “we would hold less of a court today, than a cabinet. Make some room ready for the purpose.”

“Majesty,” says Anna, with a nod.

“Don’t we need Marfisa? For a quorum?” says Gloria. “Before we start changing things up?”

“The upper gallery could be,” Jim starts to say, his words falling apart at looks from Gloria and Anna. “Dearest Suzette,” the Queen’s saying, as she turns to Gloria, who’s stuffed her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, mouth snarled in a pout, but she doesn’t look away from those green eyes limpid in this light, from the Queen’s unreadably pleasant mien, and she doesn’t flinch when the Queen lifts up that paper cup of coffee. After a moment, she takes it. Anna looks away.

“The upper gallery will do,” says the Queen, turning to Jim, who, startled, bows. “Make it ready for a light luncheon. Good morning to you all.”

Melissa says, “Ysabel?” But the Queen’s already stepped out of the room, into the hall, away.

Over the brightening trees, away across the river, before hills already lifted into oncoming day, shadows wash away in strengthening gusts of light, and the windows of the houses that line and climb them gleam white and silver, though the towers of downtown still steeped in dregs of dawn catch smoldering sullen brilliant red magenta glaring yellow and that wild mad light between them all too much itself to ever fit the rounding name of orange, sheets and flares that shrink to sparks but do not dim, shining more fiercely as they’re compressed into the corners of so much window-glass and framing steel and aluminum resolving as the shadows about them drain away to differentiate shapes and styles, red brick crowned by a ziggurat, high coolly white the narrow windows of it dark, untouched, or all of dim glass all aflame, and the roof of it a tilted solar panel, there a spindled crane by a naked elevator shaft, skeletal articulation of a new building scaffolded about it, red-topped sandstone already shouldered into warm daylight, and there, off to the side, pink granite and amber glass clutch the last colors of dawn as full day breaks.

“That,” says Abby Tinker, “was a good one.” A long crackling drag from what’s left of a hand-rolled cigarette. Curls of smoke leak from a corner of her mouth, a nostril, till she blows it out, a greyly olive cloud. “Not many of those left.”

She leans over to set the cigarette on a glass saucer there on the low table between them, of worn wood weathered and grey like their Adirondack chairs. Marfisa doesn’t unfold her hands from her lap to reach for it. Creased and empty, tucked beneath them, a rubbery, floppy mask in the shape of a horse’s head.

“It’ll start raining, soon,” says Abby Tinker. “Maybe today. Tomorrow for sure. You ever notice that?” Knob-knuckled fingers loosen the blue knit scarf about her neck. “We get a blast of summer, right at the beginning of May, enough to get a taste for it, and then,” shrugging her shoulders swaddled in a puffy blue coat, under that scarf, over a fleecy sweatshirt. “Rain settles back for another month or so. Rose Festival’s coming up,” she laughs, “I swear. The dozen years I’ve lived here, ain’t never been a Rose Festival wasn’t absolutely soaked in rain.”

Marfisa nods, or shrugs. Legs stretched out before her on the chair’s extended footstool, long grey socks with white stripes over her knees, black running shoes propped out over dew-spangled grass. The chairs and the low table between them have been set out in the middle of the lawn atop the roof, the sun rising behind them, all of downtown spread before them, away across the river. Abby Tinker leans over to pluck up the cigarette for one more savoring suck over the saucer, holding the smoke with a beatific bob, eyes closed behind Coke-bottle lenses. She crushes the spark of it against the glass and sits back, seeping smoke like steam until she opens her mouth to let the last of it escape. “Very,” she says. “Nice.”

Marfisa smooths the mask in her lap, rubber puckered about the molded shapes of its snout, its teeth, its goggled eyes. The stiff black mane of it pricking her knees. “But Eddie will be here soon.”

“That he will,” says Abby Tinker. “Eddie will be here soon.”

Leaving chairs and table, saucer and roach, they head back across the lawn, Abby Tinker, house slippers a-flap over thick wool socks, clinging to Marfisa’s proffered elbow with leather hands. One of the few windows in the back brick wall ahead has been left open, drawn curtains a gauzy scrim over the darker room within. Abby Tinker crouches before it, leaning against Marfisa in a complexly hesitant maneuver that results in her head ducked under the sash, a slippered foot over the sill, shifting her inconsiderable weight with a slip and a scuff from without to within.

“It’s a wonderful thing, having this outside my window,” says Abby Tinker, drawing the curtains back with her inside. “He worries too much, Eddie does.”

“He’s very good to you,” says Marfisa.

“Yes, he is. Eddie is,” says Abby Tinker. “But so is this. Thank you.” The light on her glasses makes it hard to say if there’s a mischievous twinkle there, to point her vaguely pleasant smile. “Maybe next time.”

Marfisa shrugs, and nods, gets to her feet. Helps Abby Tinker close the window between them.

Sitting tailor-fashion in a snug pair of boxer briefs, ink rippling her shoulders and her back, intricate etchings of leaves and branches, flowers and vines, and peeping from them here and there beady eyes, beaks and snouts, she’s leaned forward, intent on one more shuffle of the cards, tap tap into an even deck. The floor and the walls to either side angled up in an atticked ceiling all painted the same clean eggshell blue, seamless, depthless, gleaming. She turns over the first card, fnap, a single unmarked, unmarred color, a dull flat sheenless grey. A second card set beneath it, a featureless field of brownly olive green. A third to the right of them both, magenta lurid against the eggshell floor. She regards them a moment, finger pensive against her lip.

A fourth card to the left, a rich dark hunter’s green. The fifth, laid in the middle of them all, pearly silver, faintly iridescent. She closes her eyes. Sweeps up the cards and returns them to the deck.

Dressed now in a tank top and loosely flowing pants, Ellen Oh descends a grand dark staircase into a low-ceilinged room columned and beamed in dark wood, and none of the distant windows filled with leafy daylight as bright as the television in the corner, surrounded by beanbags, a low armchair, a ratty recliner, a couple of guys watching the wheeling blue that fills the screen, a camera chasing something over a lushly windswept field of grass. Past them into a long and narrow kitchen, where she takes a chocolate brown bowl from the dish rack by the sink, and a spoon, then opens one of the towering upper cabinets on a colorful clutter of clipped or twisted plastic bags, stuffed with all manner of chips, nuts, dried fruit. She pulls out a baggie of toasted peanuts, then opens a squatly yellow refrigerator on a profusion of bottles and cans, half-closed takeout boxes and plastic tubs of leftovers, to fish a single scallion from a drawer. Lays her armload on the counter before a blinking pressure cooker. Unlocking the lid of it, she scoops steaming white congee into the bowl. A rattling staccato with a great big knife renders the scallion to rounds and shreds of green and white that she sprinkles on top, followed by a scant handful of peanuts.

Bowl in hand, back to the low and dark-beamed room, the wash of wind from the speakers scattered about, and pleasantly hesitant notes plucked from an unseen guitar. “I don’t get the point,” says the one guy perched on the recliner, scratching gingery stubble on his chin.

“There’s your problem,” says the guy on the beanbag, tilting the controller in his hands left, then right, proxily steering something. The screens filled with flower petals, red and white and yellow and pink, tumbling in a gust along a line of immobile windmills.

“Tell me something,” says Ellen. “The first thing that pops in your head. Whatever it is. Go.”

The guy on the recliner frowns. The guy on the beanbag tips his head, intent on the screen, the petals, “Well,” he says, “Abby Tinker – ”

“A hatchet’s a tool in most of Oregon, but it’s a weapon in Portland, and you’ll get cited if you open carry,” says the other guy. He points at the screen, where the petals flutter to the ground in a burst of sunset light, and the turbines slowly start to spin in the background. “Either you just won,” he says, “or you lost.”

“Yeah,” says the guy on the beanbag. “That is definitely your problem.”

“What were you going to say, Dan?” says Ellen, taking a bite of congee.

“I, ah,” he’s setting the controller aside, “I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” says Ellen, swallowing. “It was your first thing.”

“Abby,” he says, “Tinker, a minor writer, a Black writer, of the, ah, feminist, New Wave, ess eff,” he shrugs, “she, she lives here. In Portland.” His bulky grey hoodie says RCTID.

“Where,” says Ellen.

“It was,” says Dan, holding up a hand, “this introduction, she wrote, to – ”

“Where, here,” she says, spooning up more congee. “Not where you saw it.”

“I know, I just,” says Dan, shaking his head, “it’s an apartment, over an old-skool Italian restaurant. She writes about how all the Reed kids go there, looking for Goodfellas, when meanwhile the real Mafia drinks at Hung Far Low’s.”

“Where,” says Ellen.

“I’m,” says Dan, closing his upheld hand in a fist. “Inner Eastside,” he says. “She talks about seeing the fireworks, over downtown. And there’s another Italian place next door, Costa, Spiaggia, something like that. She says how there’s two Italian restaurants, on this one block, and only one Ethiopian restaurant in the entire city.” Lowering his hand to his knee. “At the time. Anyway. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s enough,” she says. “I’ve got somewhere to go, and something to keep in mind.” Dropping the spoon in the bowl, turning back toward the kitchen.

“Huh,” says Dan.

“Gimme,” says the guy on the recliner, reaching for the controller. “I want to try it.”

It’s not one table, but six, each of a length and a width, pushed together in two close lines of three tables each, and the tops of them of differing colors of formica, gleaming sunny yellow and dark red a-glitter with silver and black, lavender spun with threads of violet, a sturdy brown, pale institutional green flecked with more and darker greens, or blues, or greys, a buffed matte white, and Iemanya moves methodically about it, polishing the table-tops with a damp rag. The room about is dusty yet, littered with scraps of lath, ivory dollops of dried plaster and brighter scraggles of spackle along the drop cloth where Jim Turk’s knelt, filling and smoothing cracks beneath the line of mullioned windows. There across the room Fildhine with a pair of needle-nosed pliers and Cherrycoke with a screwdriver confer about an exposed junction box. A line of them through half-opened double doors then, Teacup Tall and Charlichhold, Herwydh, Lustucru and Powys, deftly unfolding tray tables, setting down broad trays crowded with bite-sized snacks, and Powys hovering over them, prodding tartelettes back into place, resettling a mound of chips. “Wsht!” a hiss from Herwydh, as Big Jim gets to his feet, as Iemanya drops her rag into the bucket at her feet. The Helm Linesse has stepped through the doors, slender in a sleeveless tunic of gleaming grey, striding toward the trays, where Powys is still fussing. She plucks up a bit of golden crust twisted about a roasted fig, but doesn’t take a bite.

“Chairs,” hisses Teacup, and gesturing leads a number of them bustling from the room. Cherrycoke screws a cover onto the junction box. Jim sets to cleaning his trowel.

Next through the doors, Wu Song, soft white shirt buttoned up to his throat, tattoos at his temples blurred by stubble. A rumble rises behind him and he steps to one side, out of the way of Lustucru and Teacup and Herwydh and Fildhine, guiding a dozen or more wheeled chairs into the room, spinning and turning and pushing the thunderous ballet into place about the table. He steps over to the trays, and after a moment’s contemplation selects a wedge of red pepper, dredging it through a ramekin of spice-speckled salt.

The Huntsman Melissa in her motorcycle jacket followed that herd of chairs into the room, and now, greatsword awkward in her arms, she turns about, taking it all in, “Wow,” she says, just loud enough to echo, “this looks great, you guys have done a fantastic job with this,” heading toward the trays, “this space, wow, these look so good. Thank you,” she says, to Powys, who lurches up and back, blinking, “thank you all,” Melissa’s saying, as they step away from chairs, the table, heads down, looking away, “for all the work you,” Powys already out through the doors, and Iemanya, Teacup Tall and Charlichhold, “do,” she says, as the rest of them hustle and bustle away, and only Big Jim Turk, toolbox in hand, offers up a shrug. Linesse steps around the table, lays a hand on the back of one of the chairs. Wu Song’s thick brows lift, bemusedly consternated.

“Excuse me,” the Earl Alans, stepping in through the exodus. “Such a,” he says. “Hey.” His lightweight sweater asymmetrically patterned in earth tones, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. “You’re the Xingzhe.”

“Wu Song,” says Wu Song. “You are the Earl among Barons.”

“Well, we do for ourselves, over across the hills. Don’t we,” says Alans. “So, I’m an Earl. Not a Baron.”

“And she’s not a Duchess,” says Wu Song, with a nod.

“No,” says Melissa, exasperated, “I’m the Hunter.” Snatching a tart criss-crossed with charred shreds of yellow carrot, she heads around to Linesse’s side of the table, heaving up the scabbarded sword to drop it a-clatter on top, taking up most of the length of the bright yellow top.

“Yes,” says Wu Song.

“Okay?” says Alans, looking over the trays, pursing his lips. “Could we get some water, maybe? Iced tea?” but trundle and chime, there’s Powys returning, pushing a cart overloaded with bottles, flasks, pitchers, glasses, cups, Anna in herringbone trousers at his heels with an armload of pads of yellow foolscap paper that she proceeds to lay out one by one on the table, and a pen with each. Melissa pushes her sword away with a scrape to make room. Gloria’s slipped through the doors after Anna, hands stuffed in the pockets of her hoodie, headed head down for the chair at the one end of the table.

“Hey, um,” says the Bullbeggar Otto, rubbing his ruddy head, “is this everybody?” His ripped black T-shirt says Stone and Salt across the front. Leaning over the trays, he dithers a moment, then selects himself a chip.

“Hello,” says the Shrieve Bruno, stepping through the doors, his trousers, his vest, his jacket all of soberly different plaids. He pours a glass of water from the cart.

“This, this must be everybody?” says Otto, gesturing a chip to take them all in.

“Not, ah, not quite?” says Alans, frowning.

“Good day to you all,” says the Queen, there between the doors. Her white gown plain and simple, her loose black curls brushed back, her gold-stroked smile noncommittally pleasant. Linesse ducks her head. Wu Song nods. Anna bows, and Bruno bows, and Alans bows deeply. Otto lifts his chip, and ducks his head. Melissa, who’d just sat down, stands up abruptly, knocking her chair back squeaking on its wheels. Gloria looks over her shoulder.

“We are pleased you all could be with us today,” says the Queen. “Take your seats, and we shall begin.”

Walls paneled in rich wood, the ceiling of pressed tin panels between box beams, thick drapes drawn, and the only light from lamps with blue glass shades that line of middle of the polished table that nearly fills that close rich room. Ten high-backed chairs pulled close about it, and sat in them the Soames Twice Thomas, in a jacket of green tweed, the Wulver Hoseason, thick greyed hair pushed up from off his forehead, the Baron Alphons in an indigo velvet coat, underlit face warmly red, the Glaive Rhythidd in navy pinstripe, his tie of burgundy, the Baroness Clothilde at the one end in her black leather jacket, and at her right hand Sigrid in a black silk blouse, then the Mason Luys in red broadcloth, collar open, the Chariot Iona beside him in a track suit of dusty pink, her close-cropped hair chartreuse, then the Guisarme Welund in a rich brown three-piece suit, and no tie about his neck, and there, at the head of the table, his royal blue shirt with collar and cuffs of spotless white, the Viscount Agravante, lifting up a slender fluted glass. “Gentlemen,” he says. “Ladies. Welcome.”

“We would hear of the Marches,” says the Queen. “How fares Northeast?”

“Beset, my lady,” says Linesse.

“The rabbits tax you?”

“On all sides, ma’am. North, and south.” Linesse shifts her gaze, sere and even, from the Queen, to Bruno.

“Shrieve?” says the Queen, and Bruno, puzzled, slowly shakes his head. “I know of nothing done to encroach upon Northeast.”

“And yet,” says Linesse. “Majesty, I must beg your indulgence. If we are to discuss this matter, properly, and in full, we would violate a stricture you have laid upon this court.”

“Our indulgence is yours,” says the Queen.

“On Friday, then,” says Linesse, “the Gallowglas did come to my hall.”

The Queen sits back in her chair. Gloria looks up. Melissa sits up, “You’re not supposed to,” she says. Anna looks down at her hands. “As an incursion?” says Bruno. “Or a conversation?”

“A complaint,” says Linesse. “It would seem certain knights and bravos of Southeast,” Bruno draws back his chin at that, “have been,” she says, “threatening? Intimidating, a company of mortals camped in my demesne. She’d have it stopped.” Looking from frowning Bruno to the Queen. “As would I, your majesty.”

“Where is this camp?” says Bruno. “If the Marquess would be so kind.”

“East of Williams,” says Linesse, “north of Burnside. Which is enough. Had you not rather ask the names and offices of the offenders? Or perhaps they are known, already, to you.”

“Ah, fuck,” says Gloria, under her breath. Otto frowns, but not at Linesse. “This dispute,” says Wu Song, gruffly, “should be settled in open court. Not private council.” One hand laid flat on the green tabletop.

“This is a privy council?” says Alans, blinking.

“There’s no dispute before us, my lord,” says the Queen. “The Marquess will name these impertinent knights. The Shrieve will see appropriate action taken. We are all in agreement. There is no dispute.”

“Helm,” says Bruno, after a moment, with only a hint of a questioning tone.

“The Kern, Gradasso,” says Linesse. “And your Cinquedea.” Bruno looks away with a pinch of grimace.

“Shrieve?” says the Queen.

“Steps shall be taken, ma’am,” says Bruno.

“There!” says the Queen. “As we have said. How else fares Southeast?”

Wu Song leans forward. “This one speaks for Southeast, now?”

“This one does,” says Bruno, quickly, “in this room, today? Yes.” Turning to the Queen. “Your majesty’s presence, and generosity, are – ”

“There have been many changes, of late,” says Wu Song.

“And we,” says Bruno, looking back to him, “keep up with them.”

Otto says, “He, ah, he can speak for Southeast as well as I can, for North, or him,” pointing to Alans, “for Southwest.”

“But I don’t,” says Alans, drawing back from the red tabletop. “Do I?” Looking about. “Is that why I’m here?”

“You are here, good Earl,” says the Queen, “to speak of, not for. We’d have the news of each of our city’s fifths and marches, North and East, West, South, all from those best suited to provide it.” A hand on the yellow table to her left, a hand on the white table to the right. “Our friend Wu Song’s correct,” she says. “Change looms large in our affairs, of late. These last two peaceful, pleasant weeks of languid plenty were preceded by a fortnight of abject dejection, when all was lost, that we once more lightly hold.” She sighs. “And even the wealth we have restored can’t salve the loss of our cousin, Frederic Pinabel, nor the cruel joke played on us all, by the monster that’s thought to take his place. Such blows must buffet the sturdiest of courts.”

“Hell, I mean,” says Gloria, at the other end, “you even went and swapped your Huntsman for another.” Sat back, arms folded, brown table to her left, and lavender to her right. Anna glares, and lays a hand on Melissa’s beside her. The Queen does smile. “It’s precisely when all seems quietest, that we must listen the more closely for tell-tale signs of subsidence, settling – of cracks – and it is when all seems to still that we have room enough, and time, to make repairs. Thus,” she lifts a hand, a gesture to them all before her, “we will listen, as you each make known what news you have, and when we’ve heard, we shall impart a newis of our own. So!” Turning to Bruno. “Good Shrieve. How fares the Southeast fifth of this, our court?”

A desultory piano echoes through the darkness, someone humming over it, the space of a breath, if you know me so well, sung over the gathering chords, tell me which hand I use, another breath, and then the piano falls into something self-consciously portentous. Three women sit in folding chairs before the blazing mirror, and each with the same blue eyes, and each with that same nose, and each with the same yellow hair severely straight, brushed back to lop behind those similar bare shoulders, before those same pale breasts. The one to the left in the mirror closes her eyes as Aigulha leans close to brush and shape the lids of them with a charcoal sheen. The one to the right lifts up her chin, lips pursed, that Costurere might limn and paint them balefully with red. Button up, that voice somewhere in the darkness, buttons that have, forgotten they’re buttons. Well, we can’t have that forgetting that. The woman in the middle leans over, then, to the left, in the mirror, to her right, eyes as yet unshaded, lips a dull uncolored pink, lifting a hand to tip the chin of the woman beside her up and over for a kiss too quick, and yet too softly gentle to be brusque.

“You’re welcome,” she murmurs.

The woman in the middle with a scrape pushes back her chair, gets to her feet, as Costurere takes up a shadowy applicator, as Aigulha finds a tiny brush. Pads away, naked, toward the racks of clothes-stuff crowding the shadows, with the piano, and the sudden swell of strings.

“She’s clearly mad,” says Twice Thomas.

“It’s that Gallowglas,” says Clothilde, there at the end.

“She is in pain,” says Luys.

“She’s deranged,” says Hoseason.

“She’s depraved,” says Sigrid.

“It’s not just her majesty,” says Agravante, at the head of the table.

“Not this again,” mutters Alphons.

“Yes, this,” says Agravante, setting down his empty glass. “And yes, again, if that’s what it will take. It’s clear to me, and should be, to you all, the Perry line’s been broken.”

“A canard,” says Alphons, with a dismissive fillip.

“You would use this, as an excuse, to keep the Princess to yourself,” says Sigrid with a sneer.

“Myself?” says Agravante. He lifts his slender glass, filled with something clear. “I assure you, cousin, I’ve no ambitions to be King, much less High King. I’ve ambitions to be no more than concerned, for the future of this city, and its court.” He sips.

“Her majesty has turned owr,” says Thomas. “In quantities not seen in years.”

“Generations,” says Iona, looking down at her hands in her pink lap.

“The future of our city seems secure, for now,” says Welund, there to Agravante’s left.

“Does it?” says Agravante. “Think back, but a year. What was the order then?” Holding up a hand, lifting a finger, one, “Her majesty, Duenna Queen,” he says. A second finger. “The Princess Ysabel, Bride-to-Be of the King Come Back. And the Gammer Gerton, Arabella,” a third finger, “all cozily ensconced Northwest, above the Pearl.” A look for Welund, and for Rhythidd to his left, at the other end of the table, and then that hand’s laid flat. “But today?” Agravante sits back. “Two gammers sit and knit on a couch in a house in the midst of the Northeast Marches, and our Queen, a-squat on a pot of gold in a run-down Southeast warehouse.”

“That blasted Gallowglas,” mutters Clothilde, slumping forward. Lifting a hand, a flutter of fingers. “Everything went to blazes when she found the favor of her highness.”

“It all stems from a dalliance with a mortal, yes,” says Agravante, knock of his knuckles on tabletop. “But not, I fear, the one you’re thinking of.”

Hoseason sweeps both hands through his already swept-back hair. “Well?” he says. “Which?”

“Our Viscount’s showing off,” says Clothilde, lifting the heavy cut glass tumbler by her elbow, filled with something honey-colored, and one great cube of ice. She sniffs it, nods appreciatively to Agravante over the line of lamps between them, and sips.

“Her majesty Duenna,” says Agravante, with an accedental shrug. “Her love for her husband’s Huntsman, that led to the birth of our Prince; the duel, that led to the loss of our King; the uncanny shadow that fell, of the loathly lady, that led to the desuetude of her majesty’s gift; the murther of Gammer Gerton, that led to a new Huntsman, our first in many years; the return of the Prince Foregone, our King Come Back.”

“And gone away again,” mutters Hoseason. “Gallowglas did for him, all right,” says Clothilde, and another big sip. “That’s not,” Luys starts to say, but “You all should note that someone’s fallen from this tale,” says Agravante.

“The Bride,” snarls Alphons, shrugging his velveted shoulders.

“We understood, Excellency,” says Rhythidd, “that the Princess Annisa would stand as Bride. For all she’s not been publicly acclaimed.”

“Herself, a scion of the Perry line?” says Agravante, a touch too loudly for the room. “Flung so far afield she sprouted in the Court of Engines, and only now has found her way back home?”

Sigrid glares at Rhythidd across from her. “Her highness is promised to our house. She’s to be quickened for our new court.” Luys turns widening eyes to her there to his left.

“We have two hopes,” says Agravante, quickly, “for our future, which some might say is more than most.” Twisting his fluted glass back and forth. “But they are such slender reeds, bent already almost to the ground, by the winds of the storm that gathers itself about.” Lifting the glass. “Either her majesty comes to her senses, and finds her dear Bride Arabella, who may well have been lost to us, to dust, to strife and murther,” he tosses back what’s left, “or. We somehow find it possible, in spite of all, to quicken up a new line for this Court of Roses.”

“Having offered her highness up, a glittering prize for our affections,” says Clothilde, “you now would snatch her back, to keep for yourself.”

“We must not think of ourselves, ladies, gentlemen,” says Agravante, “but of us all.”

“Where is her highness?” says Rhythidd, then.

“Safe,” says Agravante, setting down the glass.

“But where?” says Welund, to his left. “We meet, after all, in your grandfather’s house,” a gesture encompasses wood panels, pressed tin, drawn drapes, the blue-glassed lamps, “but without Grandfather Count.”

“He remains at the house in King’s Heights,” says Agravante. “It likes him more, I think.”

“With her highness,” says Rhythidd.

“Yes,” says Agravante, after a moment a moment too long. “Her, experiments. Have proven, difficult. To move.”

“I see,” says Rhythidd.

“One would imagine,” says Welund.

Iona looks to Luys, beside her. Luys looks to none of the rest of them at all.

Puddles and splots of cold wax mar this table, and scattered broken candles, toppled sticks, stacks of mismatched plates still crusted with the remains of this meal, or that, a litter of roses scattered there, petals browning, withering, canes yellowing, snapped, some forgotten on the floor below, by an enfilade of empty liquor bottles, a discarded sock of thick grey wool, a crack-spined paperback splayed open, lolled pages curling in the desultory air, a slender phalanx bone sparked with silver, a long radius glittering magenta, what might well be a shard of ethmoid spangled blue, all in a clutter of shards of glass, swept with dust and dirt to a corner of the porch, before those wide-hipped balustrades. The Baron Euric stood halfway along the crowded length of it, disappointment somehow evident in the impassive thwarts of his features as he gazes upon the only other face in sight, pink-cheeked, crowned by a ring of wind-blown ivory, lost in the dazzle of sunlight behind, sat at the foot of that mess. Pink hands push away a stickily empty cup. “Where the fuck is everybody,” mutters the other.

“Thus, the news of our marches, margins, fiefs, and borders, of our court, and all our people,” says the Queen, “brought by you who know it best, to us that need it most. We hope to find our footing more secure, as we proceed together into this, our bright new day. So much, then, for the business of our council.” Pushing back her chair, smiling a benediction upon Anna and Melissa, Alans, Linesse to her left, and Bruno, Wu Song, and Otto to her right. “Now to our pleasure,” she says. “The news we promised of our own is of a celebration. For many weeks now, this generous house has been made a home for our people, and our court. And for,” a hitch then, in her breath, her voice, “myself. Gloria,” she says. “Dearest Gloria.”

And Gloria, at the other end of the particolor table, lifts up her head.

“Gratitude,” says the Queen, “is not a sentiment we espouse.” Bruno frowns at that. Alans sits up, surprised. “The burdens it imposes,” says the Queen, “on both giver, and receiver, too often and too rapidly redound unbearably.” Wu Song looks from the one end of the table to the other. Linesse is watching Gloria. “But it cannot be allowed to go without saying, that were it not for your open arms, your generous heart, this Court of Roses would no more be a court. And so,” leaning on the table before her, pushing herself to her feet, “we honor not your gift, but you, Gloria Monday,” the others pushing back their chairs, getting to their feet, even Melissa, at a nudge from Anna, “and create you,” says the Queen, “Chatelaine of this, our castle, a fully vested office,” squeak, as Gloria pushes back her chair, “of the court,” as Gloria gets to her feet, tugs her hood up over her head, “with all the rights and privileges pertaining,” says the Queen, but Gloria yanks herself away from the table, and stomps out through the doors.

“Thereunto,” says the Queen. Lowering her head. “There’s food below, and wonders to be seen,” she says, to the rest of them, “the Bullbeggar’s promised us music. Go drink, and eat, and dance. Enjoy yourselves.”

The light is changing. She peers up beneath a shading hand as she steps off a number fifteen bus at the corner, there. The sun, having past its zenith, begins its inexorable descent toward a monstrous wall of rain-heavy cloud already stretched across one whole side of the sky, bulwarks that swell from stoney blues and greys up and up through warming browns to hazy, shredded palisades and parapets of ivory, and already the towers of downtown have been overwhelmed. The bus unkneels with sigh behind her, pulls away with a snort, on up the hill.

Across the street and down, a couple of similar brick buildings shoulder up three or four storeys together, the one at this corner higher than the one at the next as the street slopes before them. Above her, the skeletal frame of what had once been a grand awning to cover the sidewalk, though the wide windows of the storefront are newly, clearly clean. Inside, wide sheets of graffiti’d plywood neatly stacked to one side of the space, lengths of cyclone fencing laid upright against the other wall, and plastic signs lapped one atop another that say Wilson Properties, Sutherlin Bank, Anaphenics. Tools neatly racked against a bar back there, shovels, bolt-cutters, pry bars, and a fading mural on the back wall, of a leaning, red-roofed tower over sketches of olive trees. Lido, the letters cursive above. The next and lower storefront, windows similarly sparkling, and the letters on them freshly painted, red that’s lined and edged with black, Monte Carlo, they say. Pizza. Steaks.

“Two Italian restaurants,” says Ellen Oh.

A truck climbing the hill catches its breath with a gear-change, and in its wake the strikingly sharp pop of an actual drum being actually hit, the wash and murmur of a crowd. The side street by the Monte Carlo has been blocked with sawhorses painted orange and white, and a sign that says NO THRU TRAFFIC in officious sans-serif. Past them, the brick at the head of that block gives way to looming warehouse. The long windows of it, high above, stretched between concrete pillars, have been painted over with a mural of enormously exaggerated wildflowers, fiddlenecks and pimpernels, yarrow and verbena, angelica, camas, columbine and dogbane, sea thrift and manzanita, windflowers, all manner of thistles and lupines, hawksbeard, willowherb, brassbuttons and bog orchids, creamcups, gooseberry, stonecrop, redclaws and milkvetch, asters, nodding onions, each and all subject to the ministrations of busily stylized bees that seem to thrum in the light on the painted glass to gather and dust and throng in regulated streams to and from an abstract hive painted there, a honeycombed boteh above an overhead door. The street itself’s been set about with picnic tables and wheeled carts here and there loaded with bottles of water and soda, kombucha, tea, beer and cider, with burritos and samosas, calzones, sandwiches and onigiri, and a thinly scattered crowd is sat or stood about, or mills along the loading dock down the length of the warehouse, where smaller overhead doors have been cranked open on stalls hung about with photographs, with drawings or paintings, shelves of sculpture, trinkets, knick-knacked figurines.

“This is a new one,” says a woman into a microphone. She’s stood under the overhead door, in a slinkily tight dress that can’t decide in the light if it’s purple or green or blue. “Well, an old one, but it’s new to us.” A simple drum kit’s been set up behind her, but the drummer ruddily bald has taken up the keyboard of a melodica, fitting the mouthpiece to his lips. The kid beside her’s started a licking strum from his big-bellied guitar, his head hung low, face obscured by a lone long lock dyed blue. “But we had to add it,” says the woman into the microphone, “for our backup girls today, what did you go with,” looking to her side, “the Triplettes?” Three women beside her, the same straight yellow hair, the same brief black dresses, the same knowing smiles from the same red-painted lips, “Stevie, Star, and Tina!” Politely smattered applause. The drummer’s blowing a simple repeating phrase through the melodica, three notes, four, and like that the song’s begun, she’s my evil twin, she knows what trouble I’m in.

Ellen sidles in among empty tables on the verges of that crowd, toward a man stood there, quite short, a paper boat of nachos in one hand, licking cheese from his thumb. His jacket, his vest, his trousers all of soberly different plaids. We’re a miracle, the backup singers leaning close to their one mike, genetic miracle. Ellen steps closer, putting on an ingratiating smile, “Abby Tinker?” she says.

He cocks his brow, looks about at no one else close enough, shrugs, shakes his head. “I’m afraid you have me mistaken,” he says, but she’s already turning away. She’s my best friend, she’s my girl, she’s my girl’s best friend. A stoop-shouldered man in a red apron clears empty wrappers from a table, pushing a little pot of cornflowers back to the middle of it. Applause breaks out, the backup singers bow, the drummer’s already kicking a lumbering beat to life, as the kid swings his guitar aside, clapping along with the singers as they start up a shuffling, side-to-side dance, Imetun ímewoi ohuhan dem, they’re chanting, imetun ímewoi ohuhan dem. A woman in a red-dappled sundress and a clinking motorcycle jacket dances unselfconsciously with a great long two-handed sword, the tip of the scabbard of it planted on the pavement. Ellen slips past, around another table, headed toward a barefoot woman perfectly still, necklaces of wildly colored beads layered over her brown breast. “Abby Tinker,” says Ellen.

“Zeina,” says the woman. “The Mooncalfe, of Northeast.” Turning her head just enough to look Ellen up and down, grey racerback tank and the dark ink stitched across her shoulders, up her throat, loose blue yoga pants, bright orange running shoes. “You’re not of the court, are you.”

Ellen shakes her head. Rudan híókan eye, eye, belts the singer, as the shimmying triplets and the rest of the band clap and chant ímehú úlúhúge eyegerava, ímehú úlúhúge eyegerava. The clapping scatters, syncopating, as the kid swings his guitar back into place. Rudan híókan eye! The changing light has finally begun to dim as it has threatened, yellowing as the clouds green over the sky. A few fat drops of rain plop, darkening the street, glossing the painted tables, but the crowd such as it is seems unconcerned, still milling about, clapping as the kid launches a churning riff, and the drummer lifts his sticks, waiting, waiting, the singers all suddenly pressing close as out from under the overhead door behind them lines of men and women hasten, awkward in their arms great furled umbrellas that they hustle into place over carts and tables, this knot of audience or that, shoving them open, ribs and shafts of them strung with tiny lights of white and amber, already lit. The backup singers cluster close about their mike, oohing into it, as the singer lifts hers, give me your mascara and your phosphorous, holding out her free hand, not quite pointing to a woman there in the audience, sat beneath one of the freshly opened bumbershoots, the focus of one of the larger swirls of crowd, black curls brushed back, white gown plain and simple, beautiful queen, sings the band, with your beautiful gene, and here come the drums.

The sun struggles to return, gusts of light sweeping the street, flaring the dull brown hair of a woman across the crowd to russet and gold, and her white blouse too bright for a moment, fading as the sun relents. Beside her, a second woman unchanged by the changing light, her cloud of loose white hair still brightly, whitely gold, even as the drizzle resumes. Ellen makes her way toward them, past a portly man in peppermint seersucker, an older woman in various khakis, a pompadour’d boy in a brown bomber jacket. A woman all in black approaches the other two, heavy camera about her neck, and the brown-haired woman takes her proffered hand. They head together, the two of them, toward the warehouse, and when the thunder calls, it trembles in your belly, but Ellen doesn’t swerve to follow, she keeps on, between a couple of carts, out to the edge of the crowd, “Abby Tinker!” she calls, as she approaches.

Marfisa turns with a jerk, a scowl, a step too close, too quick, “What do you want with her,” she says, too tensely quiet.

“Nothing,” says Ellen Oh, undaunted. “Not a thing. I’m fairly certain it’s you I’m supposed to meet.”

The only light seeps rain-soaked through mullioned windows over those six tables of a length and width pushed together, their tops of differing colors of formica. Gloria’s slumped at the one end of it, elbows on lavender and earthy brown. She sighs, heavily, at the sound of a footfall behind her. “Is it over?”

“One oughtn’t walk out on a queen like that,” says Anna. She flips a naked light switch. Nothing happens.

“We interrupted them,” says Gloria. “They never had a chance to finish. Was an illegal street fair really the smartest idea?”

“Her majesty,” says Anna, stepping tock-clock toward the table, “did you a great honor today.”

“Her majesty,” says Gloria, sitting up, “tried to give me my own goddamn house. That’s gonna make anybody a little testy. And if she’s gonna,” turning about as tick-clack Anna cross behind her, “if she’s gonna honor anybody, with a title, or an office, or whatever, why isn’t it, why didn’t she,” rattle of wheels as Anna drags over a chair, “it should’ve been,” says Gloria, “you.”

“I’ve slept in a filing cabinet,” says Anna Nirdlinger, sitting down.

“I, ah,” says Gloria, “what?”

“When I first started out, I slept in a roll-top desk with a dozen other girls. We each had a pigeonhole of our own. I’ve slept in a banker’s box: spacious, and comfortable, but there’s no cachet to it. Cardboard, you know. At Welund Rhythidd?” she takes off her glasses, “most of the paralegals sleep in the big bottom drawer of their desks.” Wiping a bit of dust from a narrow lens. “I preferred the kneehole. It was considered,” she sighs, “odd.” Puts the glasses back on.

“But,” says Gloria. “You, aren’t a domestic.”

“I was an amanuensis, for a time,” says Anna. “That first night, after I first saw to her majesty, Duenna, that night when I slept in a bed, for the very first time?” looking away, in that underwater light. Gloria shifts a hand, reaching toward her, across the lavender. “Her majesty,” says Anna, “would never deign to honor such as me.”

“But that’s not okay,” says Gloria.

“Yet here,” says Anna, and she smiles, “I sleep in a bed.”

“We could,” says Gloria, sitting back, “maybe,” she shrugs, “see about getting you, a better one,” hands up, a shrug.

Quick fingers, a needle, thin black thread, a delicate scrap of lingerie pinned to a padded board on tailor-folded knees, Aigulha bent over deftly seals a rip, seamlessly matching net-wise warp and weft of lace. “I liked the music,” she’s saying. “I liked the dancing.” Gently tugging, fitting, pulling. Away over there through the darkness a shift, a sigh, a muttering, muffled moan.

“I,” Costurere’s saying, “liked the food,” crinkily smoothing a paper pattern over a stretch of black pleather that shines in the glare of the trouble light hung above them. “Empanadas,” she says, pushing a pin, “potatoes and cheese,” and another, “ancho peppers,” wincing at the sound of a slap. Someone laughs.

“You liked the beer,” says Aigulha, smoothing fretwork with a fingertip.

“I did like the beer,” says Costurere, reaching for a pair of pinking shears.

Away across the otherwise darkness between and among the blocky columns, fresh candles have been set before the empty bed, about the layered rugs and cushions, and two figures tightly curled about each other in that pillowy nest, one atop the other, curl of gold-streaked back, knees jackknifed about gold-smeared arms wrapped about hips, ankles crossed toe-flexing feet locked above and bracing below heads tucked between gold-spattered thighs, soaked yellow severe splayed over buttocks, shoulders, rugs and cushions, sip and slurp-smack shivering undulations, an effortful grunt.

“I wanted,” says Aigulha, precisely trimming a leftover bit of thread with tiny silver scissors. “Would you want to go dancing? Again? Sometime?”

“Put up your work, girls,” says the Queen, warmly magnanimous behind them. “You might have music and dancing, beer and pies, sweet cakes and kisses whenever you wish.” Swish and sway of her gown stepped from the shadows, a hand against the glare of the trouble light. “They got started without us, I see.”

“Ma’am,” says Aigulha, and “Majesty,” Costurere, as they scramble to their feet, laying shears and scissors aside. The Queen spreads wide her arms, tips back her head, as fingers cleverly undo this knot, that hook, and her plain white simple gown collapses to the floor. She catches their hands in hers, and tugs them after, “Come,” she says.

“But, my lady,” says Costurere, looking back.

“The mending, ma’am,” says Aigulha.

“We’ve said,” the Queen pulls them both close. “Now’s not the time for work.” Lifting Costurere’s hand in hers, her knuckle clotted with a curd of gold she presses to Costurere’s lips. Smiling as Aigulha leans in for a taste. “Let’s go,” says the Queen, “and see what play they do inspire.”

Behind them, as they head away toward the candles, someone steps just close enough to the trouble light to reveal black spike-heeled pumps, bare knees, a brief black skirt. Tick-click, tack-click away from the light, not toward the candles, but the darkness. Scrape of a chair. Snap of switch, lights blaze about the mirror over the dressing table. She sets down a stack of red plastic cups, a bottle half-filled with amber wine. Oremus Tokaji Aszú, says the label. Öt Puttonyos.

Sitting herself in the chair, she tucks a long and yellow lock behind her ear, but it twists as her fingers slip through it, coiling in darkening curls. When she reaches for the bottle her eyes are green, not blue. She pours a slug in a plastic cup, and another, then sits back, lifting the cup in something of a toast. In the mirror, up behind her, a bright wild knot of candlelight, the rugs and cushions, the Queen reclining, and Aigulha and Costurere laid with her, mob-capped heads in her lap, on her hip, watching intent that ouroboric knot of pleasure, something like it there before them, striving for, straining for, gasping, and a groan.

“What time is it?” she says, sat up abruptly in pastel sheets. “Is that?” Rubbing her eyes. “Are you, is that, bacon?”

“Good afternoon,” says Big Jim Turk, there by the credenza, stirring something about on the little electric griddle. “You’ll note I didn’t say good morning. It’s late enough I thought I’d try an olfactory cue, as kisses and sweet nothings hadn’t seemed to do the trick.”

“Me and Anna were,” she says, rubbing her forehead, “talking, you were already asleep when I, isn’t that, like, a violation? Or something?” Complex calligraphy across the front of her T-shirt says The Mandarin Miranda. “The meat.”

“If there’s any sin,” he says, pushing and turning, “these spatters of hot grease should prove penance, ow! enough.” Thumbing the lop of his belly. His buttocks pale and hairless, flat, almost concave beneath the heft of his thickset torso. “Smell alone’s enough to remind the likes of, tst! me, what I’m missing, but also,” scooping slices onto a chipped blue plate, “enough to tell me, were I to take a bite,” tap tap, and he shuts the griddle off, “what knots would twist my gut.” Turning to hold out the plate, but she’s already off the bed before him, taking it from his hand, setting it back on the credenza, wrapping him in a sudden hug. His hands up, startled, settle gently, awkwardly on her shoulders. He kisses the jet-black top of her head. “It’s only what a Chatelaine deserves.”

She shoves out of his arms, away, hard enough to rock him back a step. “Don’t you start.” Wheeling off toward the window.

“Gloria,” says Jim.

Her back to him, both hands on the sill of it. The glass has been cleaned but painted over with blossoms, a nodding columbine in red and yellow, a suncup, an orange blanketflower. Out beyond those colors, a rainy day.

“Stay in the game,” he says, “or walk away from the table, but if you stay?” Eyes sternly direct over that mustache of his. “Then play.”

“Thing is, Jim,” she says. “I like the table. I built, the fucking table. I just don’t like this game somebody else decided to play on it.”

“And now,” says Jim, “you’re a step closer to being able to change it.” She glares at him over her shoulder, and he chuckles, “I forget, sometimes,” he says, “how very young you are.”

“I’m a Sagittarius,” she sneers. “You got nothing to worry about on that score.”

“It’s your impatience,” he says, taking hold of her hand. “You can afford to be patient, Gloria. You have more time than you think.”

Softening, taking his hand in hers, “And you made me naked bacon.”

“I did fry you up some speck,” he says.

“It’s,” she sags into him, and his arms come about her, “maybe it’s the rain,” she says. “It’s back. It’s gonna rain for weeks, now. At least until after the Rose, ah, Festival,” she frowns.

“It’s feast or famine, here in the Great Northwest,” he says, looking down, dipping the better to see her turned-away face. “Gloria?”

“Something,” she says, a distracted gesture, “I don’t know. Probably nothing. Probably.”

Leaned against the staves that make up that great wooden tub, Marfisa reaches out over the expanse of gold within. Brushes it with her fingertips. Draws them back toward her, furrowing the brightness. Shaking, flicking them free of dust. Pressing her hand to the inside of the wall of the tub, stroking the glossy oaken staves. Not much less than a palmspan above the level of the dust, the wood’s not stained but brightened by a detritus of gold, all the way around the inside of that tub. She looks up to see Joan-the-Wad dredge a red plastic cup through the owr, drawing up a generous scoop as she laughs back over her shoulder at something somebody’s said.

Marfisa turns away, taking a step to nearly collide with someone, a woman in a black dress a bit too brief for her height, black hair brushed back, unpainted lips, eyes with only a hazeled hint of green, nodding an apology as she turns away, tugging her skirt back down. “Starling?” says Marfisa.

Pausing, caught, turning then with a shrug and a smile, looking her up and down, loose T-shirt and tight shorts, low grey running shoes, white hair tied back. “Outlaw,” she says.

Marfisa tips back her head, lips pursed, parting about something she doesn’t say. What she does say is, “I wish to speak with her majesty. Here you are, without her. Is she, otherwise, engaged?”

The Starling looks away, shaking her head with something like a laugh. “The twins,” she says, “complained of hangover, and are off away somewhere, sulking. Her majesty’s below.”

“Alone?” says Marfisa.

“When last I saw,” says the Starling, and then, calling after Marfisa’s retreating back, “but who can truly say?”

Away down the length of that cavernous warehouse, past stalls where here and there someone’s tinkering, sketching, polishing, some sort of intricate contraption set in tensely whirling motion, splinters and sawdust being swept, clatter of dice and a token slapped triumphantly down on board, and laughter, teasing banter about an enormous steaming pot. Marfisa passes under and through a long low arch lit by strings of clear glass bulbs along the ceiling, out into a foyer floored with yellowing tiles. A scaffold’s erected up one wall of the stairwell, a couple of painters wiping out the mural of a tree with great swathes of fresh white primer. She ducks under, past the corner of it, heading down instead of up.

But it’s not dark, down there. She pauses a moment, hand against the wall, feet on different steps. It’s quiet. She continues, softly, down.

Boxy work light on orange tripods set among the columns obliterate shadows to starkly reveal the candles congealed about the skewed rugs, tumbled pillows, the wadded, crumpled throws and wraps before that big wide bed, pristinely made. Across the basement, past the dressing table where the Queen is sat, a dressing screen’s been unfolded, the frame of it of whitewashed wood, and panels of plain linen. The basement otherwise is empty.

“Where’s the rest?” says Marfisa, so quiet in all that space.

The Queen turns about in the folding chair, white suit coat buttoned once, loose white trousers, black curls artfully tangled. Smiling. “Outlaw!” she cries, brightly. “How wonderful to see you!”

“I wanted to,” says Marfisa, “talk,” still looking past her.

“Of course! We must talk, and drink, dine, dance and sing, and laugh,” says the Queen. “We should laugh. We’ve missed you. I, have. Missed you.”

“You’ve been busy,” says Marfisa.

“That’s not an excuse. For either of us.”

“And the clothing, and the costumes you’d been gathering? They’re all,” nodding toward the screen, white hair shining in this light, “there?”

“I’ve been debating whether to even keep this,” says the Queen, with a gesture for the dressing table, the mirror over it, lamps about unlit. “I suppose it’s important, to be able to check. Even if we know the looks will be perfect.”

“And the seamstress,” says Marfisa, turning away. “And the maquilleuse.”

“They’re well enough, I suppose,” says the Queen. “Certainly more comfortable.” Turning about, at the soft footfall as Marfisa walks away. “But, Marfisa,” she says. “You wanted to talk?” Marfisa continues on, back down the starkly bright length of basement. “Marfisa? Outlaw? Outlaw!” Marfisa climbs the steps, away and up, without once looking back.

The Queen turns back. On the table, before the mirror, three or four red plastic cups stacked together, and a lone cup, crumpled, on its side, by a clearly empty bottle of wine. “Oh, I am regal,” says her majesty, very much to herself. “I do rule.”