Side by side on the grass, the one draped in lace and black curls artfully tangled, the head of her pillowed on the shoulder beside, red jacket tightly zipped, glossily platinum hair against those curls, hands of them tightly clasped, fingers interlinked, as together they watch as a wee kid, black and tan, white ears stood out like little wings in the sunlight, gathers itself at the edge of the one tree-trunk segment to spring, suddenly, to the next, a celebratory peep, an answering yammer from one of the nannies below. A murmured question, cold? maybe, a negatory shake of those curls. Another murmur, jacket, perhaps, but those curls shake again. Pulling apart, each turns to look to the other, green eyes blinking, calm eyes the color of mud, “I’m sorry,” they say, at the same time.

A cough of a laugh, a smile, tipped together, forehead to temple, nose to cheek, a kiss, gently pressed. “I should not have cast you out,” says Ysabel.

“I never should’ve left,” says Jo, looking away, down to the goats in their corner of the lot, enclosed by that temporary fence of orange webbing. “This is all, too late to be from, before it was built, so it must be from after it, ah, got torn down? or whatever?”

“If,” says Ysabel, that shoulder once more her pillow. “If it had.”

“How did you find me?” says Jo, cheek brushing curls. “Or is this just what, I mean, you lost the goods, right? So they took your palace?”

“And who,” says Ysabel, “do you imagine, might do that?”

“I, I don’t know,” says Jo. “The, you know. Powers that be.”

“I assure you,” says Ysabel, “my palace is where it has always been.” Sitting up. “Would you like to go within?”

The light’s changed, the warming sunlight brighter, the slanting sunlight shining upon, reflected out from, so much yellow stone, and white.

“Oh,” says Jo.

Lift then the helm, tufts of the red and black panache a-bob, set it aside. Unfasten the gorget, tinted a watery rose, edged with gold, lift it from her shoulders. Undo the lacings of her nylon coif, peel it from her forehead, brush her glossily colorless locks from the blast shield. Reach in to pick apart a waxed knot from the riveted point on the gambeson. Grunt with the effort of uncoupling the power cables from the butt of the lance. Pop the spring-catch at the palm of the gauntleted right hand, allowing steel-mittened fingers to unfold from about the clear glass haft, swivel that blast shield away and hoist off the mighty powldron, unknotted ties a-dangle. Tug off the bridle gauntlet with a clack of laves to find wound about the elastane underglove a length of lacey ribbon, finework crushed and matted with sweat. Unbuckle the gilded plackart, and a clatter of tassets, then the mail skirt, links tinted a rosy gold, a weighty segment sagging where the mail’s been torn from the burgundy velveteen lining, “Sorry,” she says, “I don’t know how,” she winces, falling silent, as the skirt’s unwound from about her hips. Pick at the waxed knots revealed, lashed to the points hung from the gambeson’s lycra waistband, clatter and clack of cuisse and poleyn as loosened they settle about her thighs and knees. Brace her against the force of relaxation as the clamps are undone of the breast-plate, mirror-bright, etched with golden filigree about a single wine-dark beryl, big as a fist, set just above her heart. Lay the front plate aside as the back plate’s lifted away, cable lopping from the battery-pack, and laid by the great glass lance on its silken wrap. Undo the greaves as the gambeson’s unzipped, peeled open, tugged down her arms, then help her step from the clanking sabatons. Unbutton the hose at the back and tug them down her legs and, finally, off.

Take up amphoras of uncolored bisque and pour bright oil along her shoulders, her breast, her back, sluggish runnels down her belly, her thighs, set to rubbing the oil in, slap of palm against flesh, industriously stroking, smack and squelch of oil, “Wait,” she says, “don’t, don’t touch,” as slickened fingers lift from her breast, from the nodule there, just below her sternum, above her heart, opaquely clouded but flaked with delicate colors, the whitened pucker about it the end of a long pale scar stretched the length of her torso. Take up instead the golden strigils to scrape away, sluicing oil, grime, filth, dead skin, dried sweat, the dust of the road, water-stains and mud-stains and streaks left by leather, copper, mithril, of ruddy umber shaded to deeply red where it’s still tackily wet enough to marble the oil, mingled but not mixed, splatters of ashen black, powdery flakes of white that slough off resolutely dry, refusing to soak in the oil, carrying with them glittering sparks of violet and of indigo, cyan and viridian, canary and vermillion, magenta winking, flashing, gone, all of it slopped and spattered with the oil to the tiles at her feet.

Break the ice stretched over a narrow pool, knock the plates and floating shards aside, help her wincing shivering into the pool and down. Look away discreetly as she spits a forceful “Jesus Christ” through chattering teeth, sunk to her shoulders, the oily residue lifting away in listless swirls atop the gelid water. Take up towels of thick white terry cotton from the heated ceramic stand, hold them ready as she climbs dripping up and out to rub, pat, wrap her about even as she brusquely pushes past beneath the arch into an antechamber about another pool, surface of it gently steaming, warmly lit within. Secure an urn of unguent, a cake of soap from a floating platter laden with phials and bowls and folded cloths, but scramble to steady it all from toppling in the sudden wake kicked up as she dunks herself, clumsily stroking away, toward the opening at the end of the pool, between the pillars, out into a vast wide basin beneath a cloud-stacked sky. The churn of her passage disturbs the mirror-still surface, ripples the reflected lines and angles of yellow stone and white risen up behind her, wing walls to either side of that water gate sloped to a curtain wall stretched between mural towers, white-capped turrets at the corners, about the yellow bulk of a donjon piled storey upon storey behind a criss-crossing welter of arcades and alures to a high-peaked steep-sloped roof, and more and slender towers under white conical caps that reach for the clouds.

Out and out with each gulping stroke toward the far side, the rim of dressed yellow stone a flat straight line cut across the infinity of blue sky set with sculpted clouds. There atop it, the confluence of the wake she bobbingly draws across that breathless water, a café table and two spindly chairs of wrought iron, and sat in one the Queen, her kaftan stiff with gold embroidery, her long black curls held back by a simple band of white, smoking a cigarette. Help her out of the water when she reaches the stepped edge of that rim, pat her down with more soft terry cotton, then unfurl a chlamys of grey wool and drape it about her, pin it at her shoulder with a brooch of bronze, a quartered circle set with a single glowering cabochon of garnet. Dressed, she steps past the empty chair to kneel at the Queen’s feet, and lay her head in her majesty’s lap.

“My Huntsman,” says the Queen, running her fingers through glossily colorless hair.

The Huntsman lifts up her head, then plucks the cigarette thin and brown from the Queen’s fingers for a deeply appreciative drag.

“I thought you’d meant to quit,” says the Queen.

“These don’t count,” says the Huntsman.

Set the egg coddler on the glass tabletop, and the plate laden with soldiers of crispy toast, a smear of ruddy marmalade. Pour foaming coffee from the long-handled cezve into a demitasse cup. Bring the folded napkin, knife and fork, but she’s already dunking a soldier in the egg, munching it hungrily down, working with her right hand freed from the opening in the chlamys, her left tucked away. “Your grace’s hunt went well?” says the Queen.

The Huntsman waggles her emptied cup.

“They tell me,” says the Queen, “your lance was utterly spent on your return. It’ll take a day, at least, to fully recharge.”

The Huntsman’s cup is full again. She looks back, over her shoulder, the empty rim, and no one there.

“You don’t want to talk about it,” says the Queen.

“Tell me,” says the Huntsman, “how is it you happened to meet me there, that day, that place, that particular,” dunking another soldier, “angle,” she says, “of the world.”

The Queen tips ash from her cigarette.

“I mean, I know why I dropped out of everything, but you haven’t said a word about what happened to land you there.”

“Jo,” says the Queen, but then she looks away.

“So, I guess,” says the Huntsman, “you don’t want to talk about it.”

The Queen looks away, out over the rim of the moat, where the talus of the outer wall slopes down, the regular courses of ashlar blocks roughening to meet the living rock all overgrown with sprawling mats of rockrose bloomed in purple and yellow and pink above the swell of the great silver envelope serenely floated over the earth so very far below. “Perhaps,” she says, “we were concerned for our favorite, out of all our – ”

“Ysabel,” says the Huntsman.

“My very best of friends,” says the Queen, stubbing out her cigarette, “returned, at last, to me, but so, so angry,” she says, with a questioning lilt, “driven,” she says, and then, “hidden, where I couldn’t reach,” a breath, “to let you know how very much you’re loved. How very, sorry, I am. That, alone, might’ve been enough. But,” lifting her own cup for a sip, “it’s much more sordid.” Dabbing a drip of coffee from her lip. “Marfisa does love me, but that is not enough, for her. The Starling’s ever cautious, and chary with her heart. I understand. Etienne? Was never mine, but that’s all right. Christienne, though,” and here she sets her cup down, clink. “Such a silly girl.”

“How was brunch,” says the Huntsman.

“She’s leaving,” says the Queen. “Tonight, tomorrow, perhaps she’s already gone. To the City of Angels, to be with her sister. It will not go well for them, I fear.” Sitting back in her chair with a creak. “That would be the impetus for catching a bus at half-past five in the morning, and riding it to the stop at Twelfth, where I disembarked to walk up and over to find,” a smile struggles for her lips, “my palace a field, tended by goats, and my Huntsman, waiting for me. And that would be the why and how of it.”

“You rode the bus, by yourself. I’d’ve liked to’ve seen that.”

“Then I wouldn’t have been by myself.”

The Huntsman looks down at the crumbs on her plate, the residue of egg in the coddler. “I am,” says the Queen, “sorry, for what happened to Melis – ”

“Don’t,” says the Huntsman.

“But – ”

“I haven’t forgiven you for that.”

“It was a mistake,” says the Queen. “We should never have sent her alone. We shouldn’t have named her to the office. We’re, I, am sorry.” Her hands laid flat on the empty glass. The plates, the cups, the utensils and napkins gone from between them. “So,” says the Queen. “Here we are.”

“For how long,” says the Huntsman.

“What do you mean?”

“Is this it?”

“This?” The Queen looks out, the water, the castle, the clouds, the sky. “This is everything.”

“Then everything’s in trouble.” The Huntsman tugs a lop of that chlamys aside to expose the nodule lodged there, in her breast, all of a single color now, a terrible dark red.

“That?” says the Queen. “That’s nothing.”

“I know.” Chair-scrape on stone, “I’m maybe the only one who could possibly know.” The Huntsman gets to her feet, looking away, from her majesty, from the castle, out over the edge of the wall. “Jo,” says the Queen.

“This is just a dream,” says the Huntsman, taking a step.

“No,” says the Queen. “It’s not.”

“All the more reason,” says the Huntsman, taking another.

“We have all we might ever want, here. We have time.”

“That’s all it needs, Ysabel.”

“We will not let it,” says the Queen, standing now, white and gold and crowned in black, but, “I can’t,” says the Huntsman, palely colorless, wrapped in grey. “We can’t,” she says, looking back over her shoulder, “take that chance,” and steps over the edge.

Steps over tipped forward to topple, but doesn’t. Hung in midair, chlamys unwinding as she wrenches herself about, wall-rim just out of reach of her reaching foot. Twists to sit up, struggling for purchase in thin air, scowling with dismayed frustration as she wraps the chlamys back about herself. The Queen stood there at the edge of the rim of the wall, one arm lifted, the heavily embroidered sleeve slipped down to her elbow crooked, hand loosely curled in what’s not quite a fist.

“Let me go,” says the Huntsman.

“If you would fall,” the Queen opens her hand, “we fall together,” and off she steps from stone, into air, arms spread to gather the Huntsman to her as they drop, twining white and black, gold and grey, down and faster down past rocks and roses, the silvery ridged swell where they bounce, softly, once, clung together, slipping, sliding, tumble and dropping, gone.

An empty paper cup rattles between two funneling flanges behind a clear plastic door, as machinery hidden within the cabinet grinds to humming life. There’s a prolonged hiss. Enjoy a delicious cup of coffee! says the sign above the door, a steaming ceramic cup nestled amidst mounds of rich dark beans. She jumps when something spurts into the cup, the whole cabinet gurgles, and a thin but steady stream fills it until hiss, spit, the gurgle stops, the grinding hum, she blinks.

“It’s done,” he says. “You can, ah,” he crouches, grey tracksuit flapping open, jerks up the plastic door to carefully, gripped by the rim, pull out the steaming cup. Offers it up to her, his dwindling hair clipped close, an abstract frown, “Go on,” he says. “Take it.”

She does, wincing. Switches to her other hand gripped carefully by the rim, sucking air through her teeth as she shakes the heat from her fingertips. White-gold hair unsprung from an otherwise ruthless queue a snarly halo in the light. A tentative sip, another wince, “This is terrible,” she says.

“It’s coffee,” he says, getting to his feet. “And hot.”

The room is dim, cramped, overwhelmed by the enormous bed set at an angle, away from any wall, safety rails engaged to either side, the head of it ramped up in a semi-sitting position, foot of it lowered, a rumpled throne surrounded by monitors on carts, pumps, stands laden with drip bags, watchful courtiers clustered about. He’s sat in the one chair, before a curtained window, poking at the phone in his hand, “Mackenzie missed her connection,” he says, hushed.

“What?” she says, hunched on the only other chair in the room, paper cup in her hands, almost empty, now.

“Her flight from Denver.” He looks up. “She won’t be here till after midnight.”

She looks down to the cup, back up to him. “Okay,” she says.

Neither of them look to her also there in the room, laid back on that bed, so very tiny under white sheets and a pale pink blanket, closed eyes lost among those wrinkles without Coke-bottle lenses to magnify them, and the rest of her face swallowed by a clouded plastic mask held in place by elastic straps of vivid green, and the constant susurral seep of flowing air.

He’s fallen asleep in that chair, an inhalation step by snoring, snorting step until a peak is reached, the breath released, a sigh, slumping till it ratchets up again. She hisses, suddenly, paper cup full and steaming, she manages bent over to set it on the floor, “Don’t do that,” she whispers, harshly. He’s lurched upright, blinking. “Nothing,” she says. The faintly regular beeps, a chime, the quietly constant push of air. She looks down to the cup, now capped with a fluff of whipped cream.

Up on her feet, cup in hand, she steps into a hallway fluorescently bright. An alcove, there, across the way, a garbage can sheltered somewhat from the relentless glare. She pushes open the flapping lid and lifts the cup over it, “But it’s good,” says the man close behind her.

“How dare you,” she mutters.

“It’s from the cafeteria, not that machine,” he says, quiet and low. “Fresh.”

“I am the Outlaw,” all the more forceful for being whispered. “You do not do for me.”

“You are,” he says, even more quietly, “the Queen’s Outlaw. And we do love our Queen.”

She lets the cup drop, clang and slosh. Turns about, in the utterly empty hall.

Tinker, Abigail scrawled in fuzzy blue on the whiteboard, COPD, Emph, 6/2 05.30 FEVI 28%, the percentage circled, Group E, the letter underlined, twice. 6/2 again, in red, RN Fanshaw, Attending Sokolit. His tracksuit’s black, now, his T-shirt white, and she’s sat in the chair in the corner, still in her loose tank top, a few more strands of hair unkinked from that raveling queue. Neither of them look to the fourth figure crowded into the room, the tall woman by the bed, thickset in a long dark dress, greying hair swept up and back, a hand at the edge of that pink blanket, and the trembling of her fingers there, far from that hissing mask, those hidden eyes.

He says, “We should talk,” looking toward the half-open door. “Mack.”

She looks up, looks over, looks to Marfisa sat in the chair, back up. He’s pointing toward the door. Rustle and thump of an effortful limp, she follows him out.

Marfisa looks, then, from her hands, between her knees, to Abby Tinker, unmoved within that crowd of monitors and devices. “She what?” the voice from outside, not his, flatly hoarse, and Marfisa looks back to her hands.

Thump and brush of skirts returning to the room, “This will not stand,” says Mackenzie, harsh and flat and hoarse. “You are not equipped.”

“She trusts me,” says Marfisa, without looking up.

“You’re not equipped!” shouts Mackenzie. “Hey,” says Eddie, come in behind her, but a touch too mollificatory, “Those books,” Mackenzie’s grating, “her library, it’s a national treasure!”

“And I am building shelves for it,” says Marfisa, and now she lifts up her head. “She trusts me.”

“We will get,” snarls Mackenzie, “an injection, you hear me? Prostate! Rebate! Estoppel! I’m not,” curling a shaking fist between them, “a lawyer, but I know so many lawyers, let me tell you,” and “Mackenzie,” Eddie’s been saying, all along, “Mack,” but it’s not until the tip of the bat panks against the linoleum that Mackenzie, “you scruffy,” jerks to a halt. Steps back. Marfisa, leaning her weight against the braced bat, pushes herself to her feet. “You,” says Mackenzie, “don’t you threaten me,” but Marfisa’s reaching out and over to lay a knuckled finger against a sliver of dark cheek, just above that mask.

“Mack,” says Eddie.

“We will stop you,” says Mackenzie.

Marfisa, bat in hand, steps away from the bed, deftly slips between them, out of the room, into the hall, away.

The sparks, the smoke, the flaring licks of flame, the soughing collapse of gypsum, something topples, crack of glass, a picture from the crumbled wall, thumping rumbles, something, someone tumbled down and away to shouts and cries below, the banging clang of an impact that roils the smoke, even up here, that shivers more dust into the air, but stood in the midst of it all he only lifts a hand to touch his cheek, then looks to his fingertips, gloved in leather the color of fawn, smudged now with greasy soot and bright red blood. Rubs them absently against his shirtfront, but the poplin’s already marred with tarry ooze and more red blood, and he only dirties them further. Tugs that glove with the other, resettling the fit. Closes his eyes, pressing the clean thumb to that other palm, and twist.

Shakily he makes his way down the enclosed spiral staircase, flames flickering flaring orange and yellow behind him, down and out into a hall of bedlam, “she didn’t!” bellows the Oubliette, hammer in hand, “their majesties?” says the Laguiole, in her pink suit, “the kitchen!” shouts the Chariot, pointing with her sword, and behind her the Majordomo, eyes widening in alarm to see him, stepped from the stairs, “Excellency!” he cries.

Agravante points with his filthy hand, unsteadily, behind him. “The upper storey, is on fire,” he says. “See to it. Their majesties,” pointing to the Chariot, “get them outside, now, until we are certain it’s safe. The garage,” pointing to the Oubliette. “Go around the front. Make certain it’s secured.”

“My lord,” says the Laguiole, “your hair!”

He touches his right temple, the back of his head with his clean hand, brushing away the ash of the burnt remains of his locks. “The Pinabel is final,” he says, “finally, gone, and I,” a breath, “am now, the Pinabel.” Lowering his hand. “Go. Time is of the essence.”

“Excellency,” says the Oubliette, his hand on the knob of the front door, “what of the assassin?”

With his filthy hand, Agravante points to the floor, the blood streaked and splattered from the staircase beneath his feet across the hall and into the lemon yellow kitchen. “That’s why,” he says, “I’d have you out front, to see she does not escape through the garage. Go!”

He lurches into the bright-lit kitchen, dragging blood with every step, following the trail as it thickens, widens, pooled before the closed door at the other end, and the smear of blood a shock about the knob, and the clean white frame. He takes hold of that knob with his filthy hand and twists, and shoulders open the door.

Shadows fall as he pulls it shut behind him. What dim light’s left shines down on two white SUVs, both with the same gold trim, interiors anonymously dark, and the handprint of blood smeared on the fender of the nearest.

She’s huddled, a fœtal crouch in the shadowed space between rear bumpers and the closed overhead door, the head of her a snouted oblong, and one goggled, sightless eye. “Take that thing off,” he growls, stood over her, the weight of him on his shoulder against the back glass of the SUV. “My sister,” he says. “The Outlaw. Marfisa. Where is she?” Nudging her with a foot. “Is she here?”

No response. No movement.

Groaning, he sinks to his knees beside her on the sticky concrete. “This was,” he says, “personal. Wasn’t it.” Taking hold of the snout of that mask with his filthy hand, tugging it with some little effort from her spike-haired head, hung limply from the ruin of her ink-stitched throat.

“You think you have your revenge,” he says, and lets the mask drop with a soggy slap. “All you’ve done is make a terrible mess.”

The light changes, the door behind him swung open to brighten the hulks of those SUVs. “Agravante?” says the King in a patterned silk gown, longsword in his hand. “The assault would seem to have been quelled. The fire’s put out, though it has done some damage.” That lemon light, bouncing off the white panels of the overhead door, sifting down enough to bring out the pale blue of Agravante’s shirt, beneath the blood and ash. “I fear we’ve lost the Count, your grandfather.” And then, “Have you the assailant?”

Those shoulders shift, and Agravante turns to look up in that light, his white locks clearly burned away, and the face of him singed black, and redly smeared with blood. “She’s fled,” he says, gently.

Dancing in the street, purple pool-ring like an octopus about his waist, stubby inflated tentacles bobbing to the music from the speakers clipped to his rainbow suspenders, lyrics striding over a slinking beat, fuck the lease, I’m on my knees, he’s an atheist, I give him reason to believe, God bless, tiny white lights strung about his shoulders against the falling night, and glow sticks of every prismal color lopped about his purple capotain, stole his heart cause my cheeks thick as thieves. Half a dozen men and a woman in lederhosen and Tyrolean hats, and cradled in their arms the brassy curls of tubas, a euphonium, a sousaphone, Trebel Frei, says the sternly Gothic blackletter on the white cap over the big bell end of it, someone cheers. A squad of transparent umbrellas, the poles of them neon tubes of actinic pinks and yellows and greens twirled about to more applause. “Friends!” an amplified voice from speakers somewhere oddly distant, pointed away, “Neighbors! Honored guests!” and “Here we go,” says the man with the contrabass bugle, “Visitors from far and wide!” that booming voice, “Gracing our not-too-chilly and only somewhat rainy waterfront! Welcome, as we light up the Rose Festival with the one, the only, the best to ever do it, the greatest west of the Mississippi, welcome here and now, tonight, to the CareOregon! Starlight! Parade!”

“Okay,” she says, and sets a clipboard on the table between them, “okay. So I’m gonna read you your rights, and when I’m done, you’re gonna sign that, to show you understand.”

“I don’t need any rights,” he says.

“First, you have the right to remain silent.”

“I don’t want to be silent!”

She holds up a hand. “Bear with me. We’ll get through this. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you, in a court of law.”

“There’s no need!” he almost wails, “I came here to confess!”

“You have the right to an attorney,” and he slaps the table with both his hands. She starts back, blinking, slowly getting to her feet. “I need you to let go of that,” she says. “Leave it there, good. Lift up your hands, up and obviously empty, now: leave them there, okay? Or shit gets ugly, fast.” She leans back, without taking her eyes off him, “Officer Villaraldo? Could you, maybe, join us a minute? Keep ’em up, you’re doing fine,” as an officer in black fills the doorway, “Corey,” she says to him, “mind telling me if y’all patted him down already?”

“Yeah,” he says, “of course we, Jesus!” hand leaping to hip, “ut, ut,” she says, raising that hand of hers.

There on the middle of the round grey table a revolver, laid on its side, black cylinder in a silver frame that sprouts a barrel long and slender pointed nowhere in particular, darkened hammer uncocked, handle of it paneled with black, inset with silver smudged and nicked.

“I’m giving that to you,” says Chillicoathe, the Harper.

‘You’re doing fine,” she says. “Officer Villaraldo, you mind bagging and tagging that piece in accordance with our clearly stated protocols and procedures?” He slips sideways past her, nitrile glove clutched loosely in his fingers to keep the skin of them from touching the revolver. “Now. Where’d you have that?”

“Wherever it was,” says Chilli.

“And where is that?”

“It’s mine, now. I put my hand to it when I’ve need of it.”

“Wheel’s empty, Detective,” says Villaraldo. “Frisk him again?”

“You’ve done enough on that front, Officer. Get it squared away. Chilli? Chilli. Eyes on me.”

“I traded my sword for it,” he’s saying, “and the Outlaw’s sword, that I took as mine. And now I’m giving it to you! All I’ve left are my spurs.”

“Let’s, table that. You’re saying, you killed the girl, Melissa De Voor, with one of those swords.”

“Yes.”

“And then you traded the swords for that gun?”

“Yes!”

“Chilli,” she says. “Tell me. What did you do with the gun?”

“Absolutely not,” he says.

“Chicken.”

“Oz, you are positively frisky in a crowd.”

“Well, you’re a chicken, and now everyone knows.” She’s wrapped in a red down coat, white socks on her feet, and striated clogs of purple and red, a black broad-brimmed bolero hat that turns to follow the group all dressed in red T-shirts over flannels and sweats, Portland Firefighters, they say in white, carrying a great round life net between them, beckoning as they do to the crowds along either side, come on, it’s okay, try it!

“I will be pleased to tell them one and all,” says Jimmy, with a distractedly disapproving mien, “I’ve proved myself a coward.” His cardigan patterned with yellow feathers and red berries. Someone’s stepping out from the crowd, black jacket, purple hair, and the firefighters lower the life net to help them, laughing, step aboard. A bass drum thumps a regular cadence, a rattling line of snares, a shimmering carillon of xylophones and glockenspiels, a marimba, PSU Pedestrian Percussion, says the banner across the front of it, “Wait a minute,” says Oz, “that, sounds awfully familiar.”

“I believe,” says Jimmy, “they mean to essay Radiohead’s seminal composition, Paranoid Android. There – those are supposed to be the guitars,” as meanwhile, ahead, the firefighters haul up the life net in sudden unison, hurling the laughing black-jacketed someone laughing into the air, “and there, see?” says Jimmy, pointing with his chin. “Thus am I vindicated.”

Oz squawks, grabs his arm jerking back, and unrest ripples through the crowd about. He looks down to see a gurgling freshet slickening the bricks, slopping his black running shoes, a grunt and he joins them all, pressed back from the wee flood slipping away down the slope of the street, while out on the pavement, seemingly unconcerned, the parade marches on.

“How did you get this number?”

“I, don’t have the countersign for that,” says the phone.

“Dr. Uniform,” he says, black hair oiled and combed in a part, round glasses rimmed with clear plastic. “Let’s not play games.”

“Let’s not play games,” says the phone, “is that, I’m sorry, Mother, is that boots without shoes? Solve mu for mi?”

“We shall,” he says, “forego the challenge. Why are you not here.”

“Even burning at one end, you eventually run out of candle.”

“Expense another.”

“Can you source for me a felon, on the West Coast, who’s been hanged by the neck until dead?”

He looks up, glasses glossed over with green-white fluorescence. The man to his right, dull black suit, crisp white shirt, shrugs haplessly. “There are other paths,” he says, looking back down to the phone. “You’re needed here.”

“Did you get my report.”

“Your,” he says.

“Should be in the drawer to your right.”

“Drawer,” he says, and yanks it open with a grating squeal. Draws out a manila folder that he opens to reveal a stapled sheaf of laserprint, TO MOTHER/HQ, it says, across the front in a boldly serifed font, FROM UNIFORM/ROSE, AGILE SAFFRON COLOR GLASS SITUATIONAL ASSESSMENT. “How,” he says.

“November owed me a favor.”

He looks up, sharply. The man to his left, white linen jacket, shirt of silky grey, shakes his head, an elaborate pantomime of disavowal.

“I must warn you,” says the phone, “events on the ground have already outstripped the projections on page four. I was,” a briefly considering pause, “too conservative.”

“Uniform,” he says, and takes a swig of smoke from his cigarette. “Station Rose hereby stands relieved.” Exhaling a tenuated stream of smoke. “You are ordered back to Home Office by whatever available means.”

“Mother? You’re breaking up. Can you repeat that?”

“Uniform!” he snaps, “this is no time for,” but the phone’s muttering away, “If you can hear me, Mother,” and “Uniform!” he roars, the man in the white suit flinches, “as events warrant,” the phone’s saying, and the man in the black suit’s blinking rapidly. Smoke seeps up from the cigarette held high. “Uniform,” he says, quietly, and more calm. “Answer me.”

The phone says nothing.

A sip of smoke, a more considered inhalation. He folds the phone shut, snap. “Color Glass?” says the man in the black suit.

“Gluon saturate,” says the man in the white suit. “Decelerating from a significant percentage of c.”

“Antethesis?” says the man in the black suit.

“Gentlemen!” He gets to his feet, cigarette upright. “Saddlebag protocols are to be maintained at all times, without exception.”

“Sir,” says the one, and “Mother,” the other, heads contritely ducked.

“The infraction has been noted,” he says, closing up the folder. Looking over the index cards arrayed on the tabletop beyond it, goldenrod, salmon, cornflower, peashoot, each with a neat word precisely centered in blue ink, Apple, Engine, Nickel, Rocket, Camellia, Rose, Fountain, Angel, Electric, Sand. “Leave me the room,” he says. “There’s recalibration to be done.”

“Try reading the sign, Lizzi,” says the girl with the bangles about her wrists.

“Marysville Strawberry Festival,” says Lizzi, peering through rain-speckled glass. “The sign isn’t helping. And she’s singing.”

“Talent is an important consideration of any beauty pageant,” says the blond girl in the camisole.

“She’s singing Pink Pony Club.”

“The Marysville Strawberry Festival Queen,” says the girl in the hijab, reading from her phone, “and all her princesses, and princes, have come to Portland’s Rose Festival as ambassadors of all things strawberry, from Marysville, obviously enough, some thirty-five miles north of Seattle, on the Snohomish River delta, though still very much a part of the greater Seattle metropolitan area.”

“Viva viva viva SeaTac!” shouts the girl in tights and big black boots.

“Ladies, there’s a pickleball tournament,” says the girl in the hijab, “how can we resist,” but the girl in the paint-spattered smock’s leaning over to shove the girl in boots, “Shut up, Penelope,” she hisses, “they’re gonna kick us out.”

“Edith,” says the blond girl, “nobody’s kicking anyone out.”

“Chloe,” says the girl in the smock, with an acidic twist, “we’re not supposed to be here.”

“Leave, if you’re nervous,” says the blond girl. “Now, let’s all wave bye-bye to the Strawberries,” she steps up onto the bottom rail of the balustrade by Lizzi, “Sanaa,” she says, “careful,” steadying the girl in the hijab, and Penelope to one side of them all, Edith to the other, all of them leaned forward, foreheads pressed to the glass, looking down as the lit-up float swans beneath, sparks of white light sprinkled over lumpish plastic grass, Pink Pony Club, the queen and her court in rich dark red, blouses and gowns, black trousers, I’m gonna keep on dancin down in West Hollywood, waving laconically to the crowds before display windows left and right, Godiva Chocolatier, say the awnings, and True Religion Brand Jeans, Ann Taylor, say placards in the window there, they’re on a bridge, the five of them, enclosed in glass a couple-three storeys up, stretched over the street between two beigely concrete midrise blocks of a downtown shopping mall, either end of it opening onto genteel walkways, glass-fronted shops about open atriums, but each end blocked by velvet ropes slung between stanchions, Closed, says a sign hung askew, CareOregon® Starlight Parade.

“What do you think Gloria would say, with a real queen here like this,” says Penelope, as the float trundles away below.

“Who gives a shit about Suzie Gloria Monday freaking Wilson,” mutters Chloe, even as Lizzi says, “Gloria! Whatever. Where the fuck is Olivia?”

“Ready?” she says, all in black but for the pink and silver ribbons in her hair, jet black but for the bangs dyed pink, crouched beneath the stiff cloth tented above them, hefting the two-by-four stretched horizontally to the bracketed cross-bar ahead, a frame obscured by drooping golden cloth.

“Always, sweetling,” he says, with a quick kiss for her mouth, the black of his mustache hatched with white, and stooped he takes up his two-by-four, parallel to hers, hoisted, braced, he looks about, to all the others darkly dressed, hunched beneath that tenting gold, hands on poles and struts, and out there the laughter and the cheers, a whoop, the cheerful buzzing of what sounds like a flotilla of kazoos, “Ready?” he bellows, and then, “Go!”

The flimsy door of the motorcoach bangs open, fluttering the yellow strip of tape, CRIME SCENE, say the black letters printed over and over the length of it. Down he stumps, a hissing camp lantern held out in one hand, balancing his short but portly frame to the grass. An awning’s hung, blue plastic tarp held up by a couple of canted poles, protecting what’s laid out on more blue tarp beneath, stacks and piles of magazines, and pages ripped from magazines and fragments of pages filling a plastic tub there, and more spilled from black plastic bags, and the crumples and twists of them all, the softly ragged edges torn, split spines all painfully evident even in the thin lantern light, gleams shifting, limns slipping as he sets it on the ground. His fingers long and slender take up a candidate from the pile there by the door, careful of the pages loosely tucked within, lingering over the imprint of a bootheel cruelly pressed into the cover, marring the title, Planet or Plastic? it asks, over a floating shopping bag, all framed in rumpled jonquil yellow.

A rustle, out there, he looks up. Sets down the pages, steps away from pile, and coach, and light, slowly, into shadow. There, out in the grass, a small pale shape, sat looking back at him, the glint of one fierce eye. He steps back toward light’s verge, slips a little notebook from his pocket, peeking quickly within. “You are,” he says, looking up to the small pale shape, “Malocchio, the Great and,” a quick look back down, “Great and Terrible. This one,” a hand pressed to his sternum, where the lapels of his windowpane vest give way to his green linen shirt, “serves the Duchess,” he says. “There’s kibble, and fresh water. Go,” a gesture, that hand reaching out, but the pale shape spooks, “tell your brothers and sisters,” he says, lowering his hand. “This one is charged with setting things to rights.”

The first of them leaps from the onlooking crowd, “Hup!” a darkling figure on prancing, stamping boots, spinning to flare the skirts of a long dark coat, “Ho!” the head, the head too large and round, the great long corvid beak of it gleaming with rainwater whipped with the spinning jerk and point, jerk and point, dancing between the trundling tail of the float ahead, a complex interplay of swirling ribbons of light that tangle high in the air above the men and women in spotless white coveralls pulling it along, between them and the vanguard of the band that marches after, all in black with strings of colored lights about their foreheads and their necks and shoulders, Black Cross Marching Kazoo Band and Temperance Society, says the banner folding up as the bearers at either end are jostled pushed and shoved aside by comrades pushed themselves, the buzzing tootle of their chorus snarled into aimlessly arhythmic atonality by a second figure leaping whirling splashing among them, flap and slapping whip of a great wide ankle-length dress, the head an oversized crudely shaped snub-nosed prick-eared cat’s. A drum pops to thumping life, a fiddle skirls through a squall of feedback, a third figure, a fourth, a crocodile’s head, a bull’s, crudely shaped, hastily painted, too clumsily large as they dip and bob in frenetic time, splashing slashes of rainwater, “Ha!” and here comes the whistle, whirling and twirling around and about the fiddle line, punctuating the melody with piercing rills and runs, and then, the first of the puppets.

Wriggled from the exit there of the parking garage a ripple of gold held out and up on a pole pushed high and followed by another to become the arms of an enormous figure unfolding, the people beneath it, four, five, hoisting upright the poles they hold to open those long arms wide, the gown of gold gleamed rain-wet in the streetlights, head of it lifted slowly, a mass of paper pulp dried to a hard shell over shaped chickenwire, suggesting a mass of artful black curls hung loose to drape the canvas tarp sprayed with glitter over sturdy shoulders of two-by-four, the whole of it crowned by, click, a wheel of countless white lights as this towering queen a-sway lumbers vertiginously into the route of the parade, scattering kazooers before the prow of her already soaking hem, to the manifest wonder and evident surprise of the crowd, and also delight, but, as well, the growing alarm, as a second puppet appears.

Long skinny arms jank their way out and up, draped in tattered swathes and fluttering ribbons of glossy black, the length of it levering up to become another towering height all in black, and a hood made from a black garbage bag, and within two bright white spots light up as eyes to peer this way, that, those long and skinny arms outstretched, hands reaching, click, shining, powerful spots now blaze from each palm, lighting upturned faces to either side, gasping and squealing and shrieking in playful terror in that drifting not-quite rain, the water running more quickly now down the street, wavelets, rivulets ripple the pavement, plop and splash with every dancing leap and twirl and kick, with every step of the puppeteers up that onrushing stream, slopping the curbs to slick the sidewalks and lick at the shrinking, retreating, consternated crowds, as a wallop of white lops from the exit, a third puppet emerging.

Sharply angular shoulder, whipping slap of enormous lacey veil splashed in all that water, but it flutters, the lace. The air’s changing, rising to a sound, the rush and wash of water become a rumble to drown out shouts and cries and screams, the float ahead swamped by a rising swell, ribbons of light lashing as it twists and tilts, abandoned by white-suited attendants scrambling away with band and dancers and clowns and acrobats and firefighters, the crowd all full-tilt fleeing the water that rises shoving spilling slosh, the lit-up float lifted, skewing, sparking, picking up speed with the churn, rushed back toward the golden puppet already a-sway, one arm dangled, abandoned, so slowly toppling back and back into the collapsing arms of the second all in black, sparks and pops from the great crown of light, and the third puppet slumps not even half out the gate.

Around the corner, riding the last of the failing swell, here comes a canoe, a ponderous dugout of a thing a-wallow on the settling slosh through and past the detritus, piloted by a couple of men, one in a black suit coat and a beaverskin chimney-pot hat, the other in shearling and a coonskin cap, the both of them paddles held up and out, ready, waiting as they look around, astonished, aghast, at the walls, the windows, the lights all reaching up and up to a starless sky.

“Nah,” says Sweetloaf, ducking around behind the concierge desk, “it’s, ah, it’s fucking under here,” rattle and thump, and up he comes to set on top of it a Bakelite telephone, dusty face angled with a worn dial, sleekly angular handset in the cradle. “There,” says Sweetloaf. “Oldest fucking working phone in the city.” Light sweeps the lobby, passing headlights overwhelming for a moment the chandelier, brightening the gold that threads the wallpaper. “Go on, pick it up. It’s all wired in, you get the fucking tone and everything. You, ah,” twirling a finger in the air, “you know how to fucking dial it, right?”

“I, yeah,” says Christian, taking up the handset, turning it about, the unkinked cloth cord trailed awkwardly, pressing it to his ear, his other hand over the dial, but he frowns, “Hello?” he says, and then, “Op, operator? Do you, um, can you hook me to, a, Vanport number? The, the Vanport exchange, yeah, that’s it.” Tilting the handset away from his mouth, “She just, started talking,” he says to Sweetloaf, his other hand digging through the pockets of his oversized jeans. “Yeah,” he says, unfolding a much-folded sheet, “can you, um, put me through to,” peering in the dim light at the printed image of an old sheet of typescript, “Tyler four, five six, four two?” Tilting the handset away again, “It’s ringing,” he says.

Sweetloaf, looking away, distracted, nods.

“Still ringing. Uh. Operator? Can we try another number? Can we try Tyler, ah, Tyler four, oh one eight oh? Thanks.”

Sweetloaf, stepping away, ostentatiously rolls his eyes.

“It’s, ah,” says Christian, and then, leaning over the concierge desk, “Hello? Ah, is this, is this Mrs. Bunch?” Angles shifting from cheekbones to brow, skepticism perplexing toward something like wonder. “This is,” he says, “I’m Christian Beaumont, ma’am.” Sweetloaf nudges his elbow, he shifts, “I was looking for Cora? Is she there?” Sweetloaf grabs his sleeve, irritated, he pulls it away, “went to the, I’m sorry,” something’s dripping, Sweetloaf tugs, “Christian,” he hisses, “did you say,” says Christian, turning to glare, “cakestand?” His glare faltering, fading, he turns more fully around, his back to the concierge desk, “Tell her,” he says, “I called,” lowering the handset, reaching back, hanging up by fumbling touch. “Holy fuck,” he breathes.

The short man before him blinks behind thick spectacles, his brow a mighty shelf of disapproval, “Language, son,” he rumbles.

“Reverend Lee!” The woman behind him seizes his arm for comfort, for balance, but her grip squelches. He’s soaked, the Reverend, his pastoral lavender rendered more of a violet by the water dripping from his suit. “I will not tolerate,” he growls, turning to her, but “Reverend?” says someone else, and “Where,” and “Oh, my,” and someone’s calling “Pearl! Pearl!” and a shriek of “What happened?” and wailing, wailing. Water’s dripping from all of them, everyone, trousers and dungarees heavily pasted, skirts of various dresses runneled, clinging, water flung from outthrust, pointing, reaching hands, water squeezed from grips and embraces, water swamping the marbled marmoleum floor.

Roughly shaggy woolen greyly fold and crumple dropping fall a limply scribble down the sunlit sky to finally so dribbled down collapse a puddle lopped upon a stretch of close-shorn grass, and then the sharp plop of a pin, a single glowering cabochon of garnet. Chanting below, harshly barking anger, simmering resolve, a rumble as something draws itself tighter and more tightly about the air, the sun, the light, the trim green lawn stretched flatly toward the parapets of brick that line the roof, a sudden rush of air, a dopplered squeak, a disorganized stumbling thump. She rolls heavily over to lie on her back atop that crumple of grey. Blinking at the shadow darkening the air above, the grass about, clenching up her eyes to brace herself as with a wallop a great white drapery stiff with gold lands beside her, a softly settling collapse, a drawn-out groan.

Jo’s up on her hands and knees, “Ysabel,” she’s pushing aside confusing folds of kaftan, “Ysabel!” but “I’m here,” says Ysabel, muffled, “it’s all right, I’m okay,” and a half-hearted laugh as Jo throws a placket aside to reveal her black-haired head, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“You fall, you’re gonna land, sooner or later.” Jo sets to yanking free that length of rough grey wool, hunched over, away. Ysabel sits suddenly up, heel of a hand pressed to her frown, “You’re,” she says, and then, “we’re still.”

“What,” says Jo, draping the wool about her shoulders.

“I would’ve thought,” says Ysabel.

“What,” says Jo, snatching up the brooch.

“What is that,” says Ysabel, getting to her feet, heading toward the parapet yonder, where the menace is loudest. The sky above a mighty bowl of cobalt blue piled high with stark white sharp-edged clouds that do nothing to dim the sun, and the hills away across the river and the towers downtown before them stand in merciless focus beneath it all. Somewhat more slowly Jo follows after, looking out over the parapet and down.

A crowd fills the street below, a couple-three dozen or more folks thronging the loading deck, but so many more in knots and clusters a ragged arc between the warehouse and Gatto & Sons across the street, and in the space between these two imminent camps a handful of police cars, three, no, four of those trim black-and-white SUVs, a white sedan striped green and gold, officers in black uniforms and tactical vests stood about, seemingly unfazed by the shouts and jeers from either side, and a couple more, there by the sedan, conferring with two deputies in uniforms of slightly mismatched kelly green.

“What on earth,” says Ysabel, but Jo grabs her arm, “It’s the eviction, Jesus, get back!”

One of the officers by the sedan is pointing, up, another turns, a deputy lifts something, a bullhorn, YOU THERE, his voice amplified to an order of magnitude above the ambient animosity, YOU ARE TRESPASSING, and Jo yanks Ysabel stumble-flap back from the parapet, out of sight, OFF THE ROOF, and the swoop and whirl of it all, GET DOWN OFF THE ROOF, the attention of those below, turned away from each other, the cops, turned up, that flap of white at the edge of the long flat roof. YOU WILL DISPERSE, that brassy voice, THIS IS AN ILLEGAL GATHERING, and the awful attention atomizes, the yammer resuming, YOU WILL DISPERSE, that voice overwhelming it all, as unperturbed as ever.

Ysabel tries to yank herself free from Jo’s grip, “They need us,” she’s saying, hushed, but firm, “they need our help.”

“The cops will fuck you up,” says Jo. “We have to get down from here, somewhere safe, figure out what’s going on, find some fucking clothes, where’s that goddamn hatch,” looking about, the close-cropped grass, the Adirondack chairs. “There was a winch, or a lift,” says Ysabel, “when they laid the turf, but,” a shrug, “that will have been taken down,” as another COME DOWN OFF THE ROOF YOU WILL DISPERSE erupts below. “They could not hurt me,” she says, looking back toward the parapet. “They would scatter and flee if I showed my face.”

“Gotta be something,” mutters Jo.

“Oh,” says Ysabel then. “Of course.” She tugs at Jo’s chlamys, Jo yanking it back into place, turning as she does, “The hell?” she says.

The brick backsides of the buildings at the head of the block, rising two and three storeys above the lawn, and one of the few windows looking out has been opened. Leaned out through the gauzy curtains there’s Marfisa, her cloud of white-gold hair lit up by the sun, imperatively beckoning to them both.

And, once more, below, YOU WILL DISPERSE

The King looks up from the book in his lap. Closes it, about his finger, keeping his place, Retornamos como sombras, say the lurid orange letters on the cover. “Your pardon, majesty,” says Joaquin, a hand against the jamb. “I was passing. The door was ajar.” His two-tone shirt of cream and orange, crimped by the strap of his holster.

“We are rather on top of each other, aren’t we,” says the King, looking about the bedroom, the unmade bed, the baggage stacked against the walls papered in royal blue, sketched with white to suggest columns, a mighty portico.

“The repairs take longer than they should,” says Joaquin.

“They’ll take as long as they take. Hasn’t the Vicar’s council begun?”

“He sent me up here, to see to your majesties – ”

“Khara!” harshly shouted from somewhere back that way, a thump, a crash, the other door bursts open, the Laguiole Florimell stumbling out, clutching the various pieces of her suit to herself in a wad of salmon pink, dangled white sleeve of a blouse as head down around and past the foot of the bed, heedless past the King to the door swung wide as Joaquin steps quickly back, but not quick enough, there’s a collision, she gasps, he grunts, helps her along as she yanks herself free from his supporting hands, a flutter of pink, he’s left to pick up her abandoned jacket. “My lord?” he says, looking to the King, who sets his book aside, “Go,” he says. “I’ll see to her majesty.”

The bathroom off the bedroom’s tiled in blue and pink, chrome fixtures and a mirror over matching sinks, one small window to look out on branches laden with leaves. She’s sat in the pale blue tub hunched forward, hair uncovered and undone in inky tendrils to drape her shoulders, cloak her back, pool in coils to float along with indistinct clouds of white that thread the shallow water. He steps over the ewer tipped on the white bath rug, drizzle of something slimily white from the lip of it, and sits himself on the edge of the tub. Offers his hand, after a moment, held low to trouble the surface of the water, there beneath her face tipped down, and after a moment ripple and slosh she lifts her hand to take it, and squeeze it as he squeezes.

“We’ll try again,” he says.

“We scatter the police,” says Ysabel, in the middle of the empty storefront, hands spread at the self-evidence, unfolding the kaftan. “It’s easily done.”

“Hell no,” says Jo, sat on the sill of the wide front window, and the empty sunlit street behind her, the murmur of an unseen crowd. Dressed in a sweatshirt now, black, No Gods, it says, No Billionaires, her tights spangled with stars. “You ain’t going anywhere near any goddamn cops.”

“The people, out there,” says Marfisa, leaned back against sheets of graffiti’d plywood stood up along the wall, “they aren’t your,” shaking her head, white hair an undone cloud, “they’re not us.”

“You mean to say they’re sworn to Agravante’s creature?” says Ysabel.

“They’re with that mountebank,” says the Shrieve Bruno, sat off to one side on a folding chair, “Lake,” and “Who?” say Jo and Ysabel, pretty much at once. “He preaches, on the radio,” Bruno brushes something from the knee of his summerweight suit, grey with delicate white stripes, “to the homeless, the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked.”

“But that’s absurd,” says Ysabel.

“Your Chatelaine invited him,” says Marfisa.

“When?” says Ysabel, turning back to her. “How? When?”

“Ah, folks?” says Jo. “What, what day is it?”

“Friday,” says Marfisa.

“It can’t be,” says Ysabel. “It’s Saturday afternoon, at least.”

“Ysabel,” says Jo, tone sharpened. “The date. What’s the date.”

Marfisa frowns. “Eighth June,” says Bruno. Ysabel lowers her hand. “A week,” says Jo. “A whole freaking week.” The restless mutter of the unseen crowd, a distantly amplified yawp. Ysabel turns away from Marfisa, back toward Bruno, “What,” she says, hushed, “what’s become of them all.”

“Those knights,” says Bruno, “domestics, hobs and clods still with a house to keep, have mostly, largely, returned. Were you here for the parade? Gloria had them build great puppets, when her float fell through. But there was,” blowing out a sigh, “a flood. Something to do with the digging, for the Big Pipe project. Storm sewers backed up downtown. So the city’s said.”

“But,” says Jo.

Bruno shrugs. “Without a queen, or rather, with another queen to look to, the omens seemed clear. They’ve even held an Apportionment.”

“From my stores!” snaps Ysabel.

“Obviously, majesty,” says Bruno. “But from her hand. Which would seem to be consequential.”

“And anybody who didn’t have a house to go back to?” says Jo.

Bruno shrugs, again.

“You stayed,” says Ysabel, to Marfisa.

“Not for the palace.” She gestures over her shoulder. “That was Abby Tinker’s flat.”

“Who the hell is Abby Tinker?” says Jo, but Ysabel snaps her fingers, “She wrote those space stories! That you like so much.”

“She wrote the Caravan stories,” says Marfisa, “and she wrote Cynara’s World, which I like best.” A deep breath. “She left her papers to me, and her books. That’s why I’m still here.” Head tipped forward, looking down. “Not for the palace.”

“What’s to become of it all,” says Ysabel, to no one in particular.

“Demolition,” says Bruno. “Condominiums. Ground-level retail, perhaps a parking garage, should development resume,” a gesture, toward the plastic signs lapped one over another against the mural on the back wall, Wilson Properties, they say, and Anaphenics, beneath a leaning, red-roofed tower, suggestions of olive trees. “Lake would have it become public housing, for his flock, though there’s far too many ever to fit within. But the palace isn’t the point, majesty,” leaning forward, elbows on his knees, “if I were to gather what medhu I might, a drop at least from every fifth, if you were to turn it, even a fraction of what was turned before, and before the other queen might turn her own – that, too, would prove, consequential.”

“Is that all,” mutters Ysabel. Jo’s frown tightens. “Until then,” Bruno’s saying, sitting back, “we must find somewhere safe, where your majesty might stay. Your things are still in the grotto, but we can hardly take you there. The pied-à-terre on Hawthorne’s been emptied, I think?” looking to Marfisa, who doesn’t seem to notice.

“Why are we even,” says Ysabel, spreading wide her arms again, turning about in that storefront room, the golden embroidery pricking the dazzling white of her kaftan. “Have it done,” she says. “Take our things to the Hawthorne apartment. Turn down the bed and make ready for us, and when all’s in place, we shall merely walk there, it’s not far,” but “Majesty,” Bruno’s saying, and “That’s not,” says Marfisa, “your majesty, you must,” but “you haven’t,” and “understand, there are,” and “heard,” says Marfisa, voice rising as she pushes off the upright plywood, “issues,” Bruno says, trailing away as Marfisa steps up to Ysabel, “a blasted, rotten,” she’s snarling, and then, a shout, “There is! No one! Else!” her icy blue eyes locked with Ysabel’s green.

Bruno says, gently, “For now, majesty, all that is left of your court is met here, in this room.”

“Well,” says Ysabel, lowering her arms, and again, “well.”

“Stay here,” says Marfisa, her voice cracked. She swallows. “Stay in Abby Tinker’s flat,” more certain, and direct. “A night, or two. It’s close, but out of sight. I will see you’re safe.”

“That, that might well do,” says Bruno, considering. “Between the unrest on the marches, the refugees in North, King Luys has a very full plate. The last thing he’d want is anything further stirred between the Outlaw, and the Vicar.” Pushing himself to his feet. “Let’s get you upstairs, then, majesty, and I’ll set about the swelling of your ranks, and our stores.”

“I’m sorry,” says Jo, still sat there, on the sill. “King who the what, now?”

Walls paneled in rich wood, ceiling of pressed tin between dark box beams. The heavy drapes are drawn, and the only light from blue-shaded lamps that line the middle of the table. Sat at the head of it, white locks cut short, white shirt buttoned to the throat, hands laid before him, in gloves the color of fawn, Agravante clears his throat and says, “Your agreement – ”

“Treaty,” grates Wu Song, sat at the foot.

The briefest smile crooks the corner of Agravante’s mouth. “Your agreement was with another king, another court, another line entirely. It no longer obtains.”

“I see, no king,” says Wu Song, his jacket of burgundy and black, the blocky hexagrams at his temples blurred by silvery stubble. “I see no queen. No duke. I see,” looking about the table, “a baroness, a marquess,” to Sigrid and Clothilde, in white and black, the helm Linesse, her left arm sheathed in a gleaming rerebrace and cowter, “I see the, spokesman, of a labor union,” the Soames Twice Thomas there, by Bodenay, the tallest of them all, across the table from Calidore. “I see,” says Wu Song, looking back to Agravante, and Pyrocles sat at his left, “no court.”

“I am his majesty’s Vicar,” says Agravante, “in every matter under his encompassing hand. These men about you hold each of them a fifth of this city, and its portion. The Baroness is here to speak for our neighbors to the west, much as you, General, are here to speak for our neighbors to the east.”

“You’d have us truckle with Hopper John.”

“I’d have you avail yourself of the same privileges and opportunities afforded anyone in the hinterlands. No one is being slighted here.”

“Piecework,” snarls Wu Song, looking from Sigrid, to Clothilde. “They do piecework,” he says. “We never did piecework.”

“Even so,” says Agravante, but that heavy chair at the foot of the table scrapes back, and everyone about it tenses, Pyrocles’ hands leap to grip the edge of it, as Wu Song gets to his feet, “Should’ve waited a couple of weeks,” he’s saying. “Could’ve sent a boy with an empty hat. Would’ve saved us all the bother.”

A beagle, white coat spotted with black, and tan, stood proudly in a field, and brushstrokes somehow suggest a foreboding copse of low trees in the distance, and a blue sky streaked with feathery clouds. The frame about it of ornately carved and gilded wood, tipped back up on the mantel over the hearth beneath of yellow brick, and embers a-simmer on the grate. He turns from it, folding up his arms in that two-tone shirt of orange and cream, creased by the worn brown leather strap of his sling holster. The black butt of his gun, poked out just above the crook of his elbow. Looking to the only other person in the room, sat in one of the two wingback chairs before the hearth, Becker, his sport coat of blue and grey over a trim fleece vest.

“Left to cool our heels,” says Joaquin.

Becker looks away from whatever middle distance, blinking, befuddled, as if noticing him for the first time, “I’m, I’m sorry?” he says.

“The King doesn’t want me,” says Joaquin, taking a step away from the hearth. “His Vicar doesn’t need me,” and another step, closer to Becker, and another, inclining his head. “Your Anvil’s left you here, as he sees to his duty.” The denim of his faded jeans shellacked with old oil, grease, dirt ground deeply in, and long ago. The buckle of his belt a massive thing, enameled in blue, the chromed paisleys of it suggesting a bandana. “So, here we are,” he says. “Cooling our heels.”

Becker swallows. “I,” he says, looking to Joaquin’s hand there, braced on the arm of the chair, but that hand leaps up to the butt of the gun, a slam out there, and heavy footsteps. Joaquin’s suddenly by the doors, sliding one open just enough to peer into the hall, gun out, held high against his chest. The door across the hall’s swung open, there’s Agravante, looking about, “Vicar?” says Joaquin.

“Wu Song was,” says Agravante, “called away. Our council continues. You should see to their majesties.”

“But,” says Joaquin, “my lord – ”

“We’ll be fine,” says Agravante, letting the door swing shut.

“Ah, well.” Joaquin looks back to Becker. “Up and down and up again I go.” He tilts the gun back toward the holster, but dips his head to kiss the rear sight of it, first. “Until next time.”

Becker gets up out of the chair as the pocket door’s slid shut, looking from the doorway, to the embers on the grate, then up, to the portrait on the mantel, the hound there, so serenely alert.

All the books on all the mismatched shelves about seem somehow to be leaning in and over, closing themselves about the one lone lamp, a fantasia of blue glass and beads, shining to one side of an overstuffed loveseat. Colorless hair’s splayed over the arm of it where she’s laid her head, turning a page of the book in her upturned lap, running her fingers along the text, dissolving into the maternal character like a drop of blood into another drop of blood. Closing the book, she sets it on the floor among the stacks and piles of so many others, sitting up to carefully place her feet among the stacks and piles. Reaches down for a drinking glass, tipping it in the light to confirm its emptiness, then sets off gingerly through through that darkly crowded room.

The kitchen lit by streetlight bright enough to make out the sink, and all the books that line the countertop, leaned one against another, sloppily piled on the glass plate of the stovetop, by an empty pizza box. She fills her glass at the sink and drinks maybe half of it down, stood there, looking out the window at nothing in particular.

To her left, the book-lined room, the burning lamp, ahead, the unlit hall, closed doors to either side among more books, the curtained window at the end, defined by street-glow. A soundless, barefoot step, another, head cocked, listening, her attention focused not so much on the closed door to the right, as the left, where a thread of light shines dim along the carpet. Somewhere on the other side of it a quiet flutter of laughter, something’s said, a sigh.

Into the book-lined room, she drinks down the rest of the water. Sits herself on the loveseat, lifting up her feet to turn herself sidelong, reaching for a knitted throw. Drags it back over herself, but there’s a slithering avalanche of paper and she halts, mid-tug, as some portion of a manuscript settles to the floor with a flump.

“Shit,” she breathes.

Falls back against the arm of the loveseat, legs at least tucked under the throw. Reaches up to shut off the lamp, clack. Closes up her eyes.

Jerks them open, awake, the lamp’s burning, someone, Ysabel’s leaning over her, “Wake up,” she’s shaking her shoulder. “I am awake,” says Jo.

“Come on,” says Ysabel, hushed, into the hall, opening the door to the right on a narrow bathroom, tile and fixtures barely a-gleam in the darkness. Ushering Jo inside, closing the door, Ysabel hunts about reaching, patting, finding the light switch, chipped gold trim, white tile, white sink, white toilet, lid of it covered by a plush brown cushion, a bathtub, dingily white.

“Go on,” says Ysabel, skinning her ivory nightgown up and off, awkwardly, with just the one hand. Dropping it to the floor, she reaches to tug at Jo’s sweatshirt, “Run a bath,” she says. “Get ready.” Her other hand closed about something. Jo kneels, skroink, skoink, adjusting the taps for water hot and cold. Fits the plug in place. Ysabel’s holding whatever she has in both hands, now, and watches. The sound of the water falling deepens as it fills, thickens, loses its trebled edge.

“Jo,” says Ysabel.

She looks up from the filling tub to Ysabel, up the bare brown length of her, black curls about her shoulders, the green of her cooly expectant gaze. Wrestles her way out of the sweatshirt, drops it to the floor, shoves off her briefs. Her one hand to her chest, she holds out the other, but Ysabel doesn’t take it, instead, she drops into it what she’s been holding, a weightily sodden handkerchief.

“That better not be,” says Jo, hoarsely wry.

“Don’t be a child,” murmurs Ysabel, stepping into the water, lowering herself with a hiss to sloshing sit, water gurgling, steaming, lips pursed, she looks to Jo, crouched beside the tub. “Show me,” she says.

“What?”

“Let me see it.”

The handkerchief still in her one hand, she lifts the other from over the nodule there, at the end of the long pale scar stitched from hip across belly up and up between her breasts to end in a whitened pucker about that thumb-sized gem, all of a single color now, a red so rich, so full, so very opaque.

“Oh,” says Ysabel. “It’s as dark as it was.”

“Believe me, I know.” That free hand reaching out, skroink, squonk, shutting off the water. Looking down, to Ysabel’s knees, “So,” she says, “what do I, just, squeeze, or,” and, annoyed, Ysabel says, “Yes, Jo. As you have done before. Pour the medhu, into the water, over me,” and “Yeah,” Jo says, “I know, I just” but “I need to know,” says Ysabel. “I don’t. And I need to be sure.”

“I get it,” says Jo. “I do. I was asking, I mean, logistically. Squeeze it, or, I could dunk it? Let it, seep out? We might get more,” but Ysabel’s shaking her head, “Squeeze,” she says. “Let it fall.”

Jo nods, both her hands together. A deep sigh. “Ready?”

Ysabel shakes her head, but closes her eyes, lowers herself, black curls spreading, a-float, till the water laps her chin. Jo squeezes, bundling the handkerchief more tightly in her grip, and squeezes. Oozing out from her clenched fingers a droplet, white of it dimmed by gold, swelling, trembling, dangling till it’s heavy enough to break free, to float, for a moment, in the air, beneath her hands, over the water, turning as it shivering starts to fall, followed quickly enough by a couple-few more in an uncertain trickle, pop-plop, splip. Milkiness unrolls from the impacts, spreading in thready tendrils through the water, over, around, about Ysabel’s lap.

“Maybe,” says Jo, shaking out the handkerchief, twisting it about, wringing another thin stream of milky droplets into the water, “I, ah,” says Jo, and then the world hiccups, and the tub is full of gold.

Ysabel sits up, squeak of dust about her hips, under her pressing hands, her shoulders rising, falling with each deep breath. Plop of the handkerchief dropping from Jo’s hands to the brightness. “Holy shit,” she says.

“Yes,” says Ysabel, muffled.

“No,” says Jo, “I mean, it’s not as much as, but, I mean, from just what, holy fucking shit.”

“Yes,” says Ysabel, holding up a hand. “Help me out.” Glittering shimmerfall of dust as she levers herself up, pulling on Jo’s offered hand, hiking a leg over the edge of the tub, dust falling with the unsteady shift of her foot on the water-slick floor, catching, floating, blackening to peppery flecks. Ysabel stands there, hands at her sides, looking back down at all that gold. Jo’s tugging her sweatshirt back on, “Hey,” she says, as her head appears, and gestures toward the discarded nightgown, but Ysabel reaches down to scoop up a handful of dust, turns to pour it out in a tidy little pile on the counter by the sink. Leans down to scoop up more. “Turn on the water,” she says.

“What?”

“I’ve portioned out what my court requires,” she says, and three piles now, set forlornly by the sink, “the rest, as we’ve been told, is but superfluous. It would be, imprudent? to leave it here, out in the open, where anyone might take it,” and then, when Jo doesn’t move, or open her mouth to say anything, “turn on,” snarls Ysabel, lunging for the faucets, “the blasted water,” twisting one with an horrific squeal, a sudden gush of water crashing into the golden dust with a hissing spitting whistling plosion of steam, “Jesus,” from Jo, knocked back, backing up, as Ysabel wrenches a lever around and, up, above, the showerhead gurgles, chugs, spurts out a strengthening widening fall of water splashing over rippled golden piles of popping blackening smoking shriveling dust.

Jerks them open, awake, sunlight shining low and indirect from the window there, but no one, not anyone else about, at all.

Sits up in that oversized sweatshirt, No Gods, No Billionaires, places her feet among the stacks and piles of books and papers, “Ysabel?” she says, barely disturbing the air.

In the hall she opens the door to the right on a sunlit bathroom, white tile, chipped gold trim, the tub she squints scummed over with a brackish slurry faintly steaming still she backs abruptly out, stifling a cough, “Ysabel,” she manages, blinking.

The door to the left.

The door to the left opens on a room filled with so many more books, a frozen turbulence piled and stacked to the walls, knee-high, hip-high under the windows there that look out over the flat green lawn, all about a wide bed, brass headboard and footboard, blankets and sheets all tangled about the one lone figure splayed across it, Marfisa, face down, her white-gold cloud of hair about her shoulders bare and back, rising and falling with a lustily rattling snore.

She pulls on tights, stars spangled over a midnight purple, shoves bare feet into running shoes, tightens the velcro straps, they’re a little unsteadily loose with every step out the front door and down the stairs, “Ysabel!” she calls, out onto the sidewalk, looking about, dark storefronts to either side, the brick garage across the street, high narrow windows blankly dark in the early light above a singular overhead door. Someone’s getting out of a car there, hard by the curb, a sleekly anonymous grey sedan. Blocks away down the hill a bus gathers itself for the climb. The street is otherwise empty. Down the sidewalk, past the sedan, windows of the storefront there say Monte Carlo in red letters freshly painted, Pizza, Steaks, around the corner, the façade of the warehouse stretching away down the gentling slope, the litter of the long-gone crowd, a lone police car at a somnolent angle before the loading dock, but otherwise the street, the block, the morning’s empty. Her hands press the heels of them to either side of her forehead. Shoulders rise and fall with shallowly accelerating breaths.

“She’s fine,” says someone behind her.

A woman, leaned back against the rear fender of that sedan, loosely tailored suit of pearly grey, amber aviators peering out from under the bleached brim of a jipijapa fedora set atop her corkscrew curls.

“Ysabel?” says Jo.

“She’s fine.”

“Where is she?” Soles slapping as she heads back up the sidewalk from the corner, “you know where she is, you fucking tell me,” but the woman lifts a hand, hold up, “She’s about her business. You should be about yours. It’s gotten heavier, hasn’t it.”

That hauls Jo up short. “What,” she says.

“Warmer, too, sometimes. Is the color changing, yet?”

“You’re,” says Jo, “Upchurch. That’s your name. Right?”

“Joliet Kendal Maguire,” says Mrs. Upchurch. “You need to deal with the qlifot.”

“Quicksmoke,” says Jo.

“Antethesis,” says Mrs. Upchurch. “So long as we’re listing names. Get in the car; I want to show you something.”

“Show me what,” says Jo.

“If I could just, tell you, I would. You need to see.” Opening the passenger door of the sedan. “Go on. Get in.”

“I’ve developed this complex, see? As to wizards, and second locations.”

“Luckily for us both,” says Mrs. Upchurch, heading around the front of the sedan to the other side. “I’m not a wizard.”

“She scares the shit out of you, doesn’t she,” says Jo.

Mrs. Upchurch opens the driver’s door, those carefully painted lips judiciously pursed. “That’s how you know she’ll be fine,” she says.

“That’s not,” says Jo, stepping toward the passenger door, “she’s not all I’m worried about.”

“I’ll take you right to her, when we’re done, if you want,” says Mrs. Upchurch.

Jo sits herself on the passenger seat. “Can you at least tell me,” she says, a hand on the seatbelt, “where it is we’re going?”

“Salem,” says Mrs. Upchurch.

“Oh,” says Jo. Fastening the buckle. She pulls the door shut.

Aisles of pillars stretch ahead, reached up to bear the weight of the viaduct above. It’s not all that much darker here beneath it, the slanted morning light strikes crumbled grass-choked pavement all about, and the embedded rail lines cross gleaming straight and true. The blocky hulks of warehouses closing in to either side ahead still steep in cooling shadows, and while out in the open the white siding of a double-wide trailer’s dazzled, the pallets offloaded beside it are still dimly uncertain, bundled panels of cyclone fencing, perhaps, Jersey barricades waiting to be deployed, and all the unhung signs leaned up against them in anticipation, Umpqua Bank, they say, and Crutchfield Evans, Sogge Enterprises, Hoyt Street Properties, Hoyt Yards, Coming Soon, Hoyt Yards.

The pillars, though. This one, here, one of the central file, flat grey face of it figured with a hermit in chalky white, a lantern held high in one hand, and calligraphed above, well out of reach, faded letters that say Diogenes the Greek Cynic Philosopher walking the Streets of Athens with a lantern looking for an honest man. He was born about the year 412 B.C. She reaches up to lightly brush the chalked rays of light stroked out from the lantern-shape, just above her head. Black curls hang loose in artless tangles about her shoulders. Her slender, knee-length gown of ivory satin, edged with lace the color of bone. One last tap at the pillar as she steps away, slowly, even regally, despite the hint of a limp. Her feet are bare, and filthy, stickily damp, glistening amidst the grime.

The deck of the viaduct slopes gently down and closer until some dozen yards ahead it declines much more sharply to end, of a sudden, in a blank flat concrete wall. She looks down, at the random assemblage of litter strewn about between the pillars here, the screwed-up twist of paper, an uncrimped can, Washington’s Viking Beer, it says, the crisp plastic wrap spilling soy sauce packets, a grimy yellow dish-glove, ripped half inside-out. She looks back along the length of the viaduct, the pillars. Shading her eyes against the rising light.

Her limp is more pronounced, crossing the sunstruck pavement. She leaves the most faintly glistening footprints.

Hitching up the skirt of her gown, she kneels by one of the smaller signs, a white placard that says Hoyt Yards in dark blue letters, and marks a number of organizations along the bottom as smaller sigils and logotypes in the same dark shade. She touches one, toward the right of the sign, Welund Barlowe & Lackland, it says. When she lifts her fingers away, smoke unspools from the spot where those names had been.

Scrape and clanking grind she drags that sign back with her, both hands held behind her, rattle and clack, head down curls swaying with the effort of it back toward the deepening shadow beneath the viaduct, back between the ranks and files of pillars, back to let it drop, clang, its own small island, cleared, clean, smooth, laid flat on the pavement there.

Pushing back all that tangled black hair, blowing out a resolute sigh. Bending down she sits herself tailor-fashion on the sign, tucking the one foot on top of the other knee, wincing as she wipes the grit from the edge and the sole of it. Settling her hands in her lap.

“All right,” says Ysabel Perry. “Here we go.”

He spritzes her hand with something, “Wait,” she says, “what?”

“Photo ID,” he says.

“No, with the hand,” she says.

“Photo ID,” he says, with a come-hither gesture, tucking the little spray bottle away on top of the hulking X-ray scanner.

“Thing about that,” she’s looking over her shoulder to Mrs. Upchurch, making her way past the row of metal lockers toward them, “hey,” she calls out to her, just loud enough to catch attention, “we, ah, there’s a problem,” as Mrs. Upchurch reaches into her jacket, “I have no idea what happened to my license since the, ah,” faltering, as Mrs. Upchurch pulls a card from a slender wallet and hands it to the guard, then holds up the opened wallet itself. He peers at what’s within, holds the card up to check Jo’s face against it, then returns it to Mrs. Upchurch. “Hand,” he says, and spritzes the back of Mrs. Upchurch’s hand. “Nothing blue, good,” he says. “Belt, jacket, keys. Shoes should be fine. Underwire?”

“What?” says Jo, as Mrs. Upchurch lays her folded jacket on the conveyor belt of the scanner. “Underwire,” says the guard. “In your bra.”

“We’re,” says Jo, “we’re good.”

“Down the hall,” he says, as she steps through the gate of the metal detector, “left at the end,” as Mrs. Upchurch collects her jacket. “Stay to the right of the line.”

Dim, long, the hall’s pitched down at a moderately steep angle, a dark line painted straight and true along the polished linoleum, leading the way. “Here,” says Mrs. Upchurch, handing the card to Jo, “you’ll want this.” Oregon, it says. Driver License. Her photo, expressionlessly surly, hair of her blond, cropped close, here and there a couple locks left long, dyed black. “Neat trick,” she says. “Cops had it, is that it? And you just, held onto it, till you could whip it out, all dramatic-like?”

“A wise man once said,” says Mrs. Upchurch, “magic is usually someone spending more time and effort on something than anyone might expect.”

At the bottom of the hall, that line right-angles left into a dimly empty lobby, a heavy sliding door lit by thick glass reinforced with chicken wire, and more chicken wire strung over the apertures of an unlit booth to one side, “IDs,” says a gruff voice within.

“But,” says Jo, as Mrs. Upchurch steps over the line, holding her wallet up to the wire for inspection. Jo, with a shrug, steps over the line, holding up her license. “Hands,” says the voice.

“But,” says Jo, as Mrs. Upchurch offers up her hand, “you were just, up there,” as a little buzzing wand’s waved over the back of Mrs. Upchurch’s hand, a patch there glowing a sickly indistinct blue-white. “You let us in.”

“Hand,” he says.

“You were the one who,” she says, offering up her own hand. He lights it up. “Wait for the door,” he says. “You’ll be shown to a room. They’re looking for him.”

“Protocol,” murmurs Mrs. Upchurch, leaned close as keys jangle. “They’re short-staffed.”

“I don’t want to be here,” says Jo.

“I know,” says Mrs. Upchurch.

The heavy door slowly, smoothly slides to one side, revealing another guard, taller, beefier, but the uniform’s the same, shirt a grey touched with lavender, trousers a black touched with grey, the same heavy gear hung below his paunch, same patch on his shoulder, Penitentiary, it says, Oregon Department of Corrections. He ushers them into a room immediately beyond the door, just big enough within for a small round table and three plastic chairs. “It’ll be a minute,” he says. “They’re looking for him.” Behind him, the space opens out, a common room filled with rows of picnic tables, men sat at them, paired over a checkerboard, alone, conversing, joking, discussing in small, muted groups, all of them dressed in another uniform of rough, ill-fitting denim.

Mrs. Upchurch directs Jo toward the chair across the table, then sits herself in the chair to the side. “He’s not gonna want his back to the door,” says Jo.

“Do you?” says Mrs. Upchurch. She pats the tabletop. “Go on, sit. I don’t imagine we’ll be here very long.”

Scrape of the chair against linoleum. Creak of plastic, taking her weight.

“Where were you?” says Mrs. Upchurch, after a moment.

“What?”

“You were, gone.” The nails of her, carefully shaped and polished to gleam in the harsh fluorescence. “Completely. Utterly. Until about eleven o’clock, yesterday morning, just over a hundred and fifty hours. Gone.” Her lips, the color of plum, widen in a welcoming smile. “Where?”

“You’re, tracking me,” says Jo. “Down to the hour.”

“There’s a lot riding on you, Miss Maguire,” but the door to the room’s pushed open, the guard leaning in to make room for a man in one of those denim uniforms, his black hair a greasy, spiky shock, and under his beak of a nose a pointed smile that sharpens in evident delight, “Bambi Jo!” he cries, with gusto. “I swear, you are just about the last person I ever would’ve expected to pay a visit to little old me.”

Mrs. Upchurch looks from him as he sits himself easily with his back to the door, to Jo, sat bolt upright, frozen until she manages, just, a whisper, “Dread,” she says, “Paladin.”

That grin folds itself into a look of some concern, somehow still sharp, “Aw, shit, girl, you shouldn’t ought to call me that, not no more. I hope,” he lays a hand on the denim over his breast, “you ain’t still mixed up in those wicked, evil games. They only lead to darkness. As you can plainly see.” His hand, set back on the table, the knuckles of the pinkie and the ring-finger not so much swollen as knobbled and twisted out of shape by some old incident, or accident. “But seeing as how the business of this place I’ve found myself is penitence, and I always take my business seriously,” and here he leans forward, across the table, Jo flinching violently, Mrs. Upchurch quickly shifting a hand toward her, but just as quickly holding it back, “I got to ask you, Bambi Jo,” he says, seemingly unawares, “have you sought forgiveness for what it is you did,” that crooked hand laid open, waiting to clasp the hand she isn’t lifting from her lap, “have you, girl, accepted the love and grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ into your heart?”

They sit together, unmoving, for some time, in the silent sedan, still in its stall in the parking lot, before Mrs. Upchurch says, “He’s been there the entire,” and Jo says, “I know.”

“So the Daniel Moody in town,” and “Yeah,” says Jo, “I know.”

“There was a home invasion last week. Wednesday. In St. Johns.”

“Bruno said. The, CO. Couple of his boys. Moody did that?”

“He was involved.”

“More names for my list.”

“You didn’t do it,” says Mrs. Upchurch, suddenly insistent, sitting forward to look across to Jo beside her. “The qlifot has begun to put things into the world, now, instead of taking them out. All you did was to suggest a form.”

“All I did,” says Jo. “A hundred and fifty hours, you said, we were gone. So. Tell me. In the hundred and fifty hours, those six days, or whatever, did anybody happen to see Mr. Danny Moody walking about the greater TriMet area?”

Mrs. Upchurch sits back, curls against the headrest. “I can’t say for certain,” she says.

“But as far as you know?”

A deep breath drawn in through her nostrils, blown out through her lips. “No,” says Mrs. Upchurch.

Green signs sail by overhead, indicating exits, distances, Kuebler Blvd., Delaney Rd., Albany 19, Springfield 62, Grants Pass 198, and blue signs off to the side, State Police Exit 252, and Food, a sequence of logos, Chick Fil-A, Carl’s Jr., McDonald’s, Applebee, presumably hidden away behind the trees grown lushly green to either side, behind the immediate berms of turf, and the evidence of the mowing of it, brightly green, and the signs, the endless stretch of dull grey pavement, the rush and flow of traffic up this way, down that, the only signs of habitation here about, those, and the occasional glimpse of a parking lot, of a concrete wall, of a red tin roof, snatched from among the whipping greenery.

Another, different sign juts from the trees off to the left, over a glimpse of parked cars, atop a pole, a white suggestion of crenelated wall, towers to either side with conical caps red and yellow, and an egg sat atop in a red top hat, waving to the freeway below. Enchanted Forest, it says. Next Exit. Jo swivels in the passenger seat, looking past Mrs. Upchurch at the wheel to watch it go by, ducking to peer back through the inconveniently small rear window, the other side of the sign much the same, castle wall, towers, that smiling egg who’s somehow turned about to wave its other hand to everyone else as it recedes. Another of those green signs floats by, alerting those headed the other way, Salem 8, it says. Portland 53.

Trees dwindle as the rolling flattens into seemingly empty farmland, and now and then a stretch of frontage road, a pocket of low commercial buildings, a motel, a strip mall, an entire subdivision of blankly grey townhouses crowded cheek by jowl behind a high thick wall, and only here and there a tiny darkling window to look out over it, and gone, behind them. A green field dotted with unconcerned sheep, and in the tall grass along it another green sign, 34, it says, Lebanon, Corvallis, 1 Mile, and the sedan gathers itself, surging past the semi to the right to close on the pickup ahead, signaling quickly, neatly slipping from behind the one truck ahead of the other, and then, as an overpass approaches, angling for the off-ramp.

This highway’s scaled down, four lanes but without a median strip, the pavement of it older, so many cracks blackly repaired with ragged strips of tar. The traffic about’s not so thick or all-enveloping, and the sedan seems to relish the chance to let loose and glide, past more farmland, garages and anonymous warehouses, more blank walls around townhouses clustered so closely together despite all the emptiness about. A tensely tuned harp and a lonely saxophone trade breathless passages over sauntering bass, shaking bells, a haphazard sitar, and Jo closes her eyes. Mrs. Upchurch signals a lane change.

The trees close in again, and climbing rise as hazes up ahead, under a high hazed sky. The road narrows from four lanes to two. A sign that says Philomath. A sign that says Noon. A sign that says Cardwell Hill Cellars. Those hazily rising trees become hills around about and above, the road curling as it climbs to find its best way among the slopes and rounded peaks and down. Toledo, says the sign approaching, pointing off to the left. Newport, it says, and points away ahead. The distant blur of slopes ahead has fallen away behind the onrushing trees, and now an emptiness seems to grow there, patiently.

Guardrails appear, those trees thin, off to the left that emptiness appears within, behind, beyond, a deeper, weightier blue out under the unfocused sky. The tenor of the traffic’s changing, slowing, intermittently dispersing, as turn-offs proliferate, as intersections assemble themselves about thickening blocks of houses, of storefronts, a gas station, a lot lined with tractors and cherry-pickers, a lumberyard, and that vast emptiness looms somehow behind it all, around them, now. The largest intersection yet ahead, arrays of stoplights to regulate various flows of traffic. The sedan slips into the rightmost lane, signaling a turn, taking it against the light. Thriftway, Momiji Sushi Bar, Rodeway Inn, Free Wifi, and off to the left, between low roofs and scrubby tangles of trees, there, you can just catch sight of the ocean, so enormously far, so very coldly blue.

The sedan turns right into a small and nearly empty lot, Sea Breeze Budget Motel, says the short sign planted in the dead grass on the corner, the office and the low one-storey wing of rooms painted a sea-foam green, the trim about the windows more of a forest, and across a side street a two-storey block of rooms in those selfsame colors. The sedan stops, brake lights shining. The passenger door, after a moment, pops open, and Jo climbs out. Watches as the sedan neatly wheels itself about, slows briefly to gauge the traffic, pulls smoothly out of the lot, turning left, away.

Dim within, the office shaded, cramped, a low voice muttering somewhere, a radio, an unseen television, this is what I’m talking about, this is what we have to watch out for, we must be vigilant, there’s no excuse, no one else to be seen, behind the counter, sat in the one lone vinyl chair, looking over the rack of brochures and cards under a curved sign that says Sightseeing. “Hello?” says Jo.

An older woman looks around the doorway to one side of the counter, her expression of expectant concern becoming something, something else, as she takes in the figure stood there, the colorless hair, those thin lips, that nose, the muddy, wary eyes.

“Hey, Mom,” says Jo Maguire. “I’m back.”