This tub’s of beaten copper, not of wood, set in the midst of the trim green lawn stretched flatly out to parapets of brick. Panels of palest gauzy blue shiver in an intermittent breeze, screening the tub from the backsides of the buildings at the high end of the block. Above, shreds and scuds of darkening clouds slink from the setting sun, and those last bright beams of daylight strike window-glass and metalled trim, shine slantwise over graveled roof and silhouetted copse, softening as they fall to wash the edges and details away, dissolving all that distance to a deepening haze outshone already by storefront and streetlit intersection, artificial colors sharper, more precise, though small, and thin, to be so sharp. Jo’s sat at the one end, shoulders lapped by faintly steaming water, head hung low. Knelt behind her on the grass Queen Ysabel in a rough white robe, leaned over the beaten rim of the tub to rub and knead Jo’s wet-dark hair with sopping clouds of suds. Jo flinches, and she halts, her hands become cradles, “Did they hurt you?”

“They, ah,” says Jo, turning away, “they weren’t that careful, putting me in the car.”

Her hands now combs, to sluice away the suds. “My poor Gallowglas.”

“Are we done?” Slop of water restless against copper.

“Rinse,” says Ysabel, lifting away her hands to blot them, front and back, on the nubbled lapels of her robe. Jo dunks her head, then pushes out into the middle of the bath, her wake a soapy iridescence. Ysabel looks back, over her shoulder, “It seems it’s time,” she says, to no one in particular, “for refreshment, and illumination.” Parting those lapels to draw aside, let slip, down her arms and off. She lifts a bare leg over the rim, slowly to settle herself with a beatific wince, the water displaced rolled silkily across to lick the edges, lift Jo’s hair, brush her ducked chin as she looks away. The sun gone down, away behind the hills, the city turned toward night below. “Quite the spread,” she says. “Those from the old place?” She’s pointing, down the lawn yet glimmering to the angled shadow-shapes of a couple of empty Adirondack chairs.

“You know, I think they are?” says Ysabel. “Gloria hasn’t bought anything like that.” Leaning back to soak her curls, sighing extravagantly. “We can have them taken back, if you’d prefer.”

“What?” says Jo. “No, I don’t,” something, a flicker, she turns back to see the surface of the bath now littered with floating candles, a dozen or so, and Ysabel, smiling in their lambent glow. A small tray’s been set beside her, on a stand, and on it a bottle in a silver pail, two slender fluted glasses. “What’s that?” says Jo.

“Vodka,” says Ysabel, plucking the stopper from the bottle, “infused with tarragon,” pouring a gelidly viscous trickle, “and kept on ice,” into one glass, then the other, “all day.”

“So,” says Jo, eyeing the liquor palely green that half-fills the glass she’s offered. “That’s a thing.”

“Don’t sip,” says Ysabel. “Not yet. We must have a toast.” A small brass box has been placed on the tray where the glasses had stood, and she flicks it open with a fingertip, prising out two slim brown cigarettes. Leaning forward, she tops one toward Jo, who shakes her head. “For the toast,” says Ysabel. “A sip of liquor, through a mouthful of smoke. The spice,” waggling the proffered cigarette, “complements the herb,” lifting her own fluted glass.

“Clove?”

“Of course.”

“I’m trying to quit.”

“I know. But one, just one, won’t hurt. I am the Queen; I do so decree it.”

“Is that how it works.” Jo takes the cigarette, and lights it, following Ysabel’s lead, by bending over one of the floating candle-flames. A long and crackling drag. “My God,” she says, sunk back in water, cigarette and glass held high.

“We toast,” says Ysabel, enbowed in curling smoke and steam, “then inhale, then sip.”

“Complicated,” says Jo, sitting up, inclining her glass toward Ysabel’s. “To what?”

“To your return.” Clink of glass on glass, but Ysabel pauses, frowning, in the act of lifting her cigarette.

“I, ah,” says Jo, her glass unmoved, her cigarette aside.

“You’re back, and you’ve come back. What else could there be?”

The two of them, there, in that tub, flickeringly lit from below as night settles about them, Ysabel sat up, leaned forward, Jo almost submerged, and only her head and laden hands to break the surface.

“I haven’t,” says Ysabel, then, “asked. Anyone. Not since you told me you did not, again.”

“So, what,” says Jo, “you’re coming up on your thirty-day sobriety chip?” and then, almost immediately, “I’m sorry,” she says, looking away, the steam.

“It’s only been three weeks,” says Ysabel, quietly.

“Shit,” says Jo.

“Since we restored the owr.”

“Cinco de Mayo, yeah.”

“I’ve asked no one but you, that once, since then.”

“What,” says Jo, “what is that, what does that even mean.”

“They’re free,” says Ysabel. “All of them. Freed of the burden of the answer they’d given. And some of them, many, did leave. Go on to live their lives elsewhere, and they’re happy, I suppose, but those who stayed? Anna, my mother’s amanuensis, and Petra B from the coffee shop, with her camera? The Starling, and Chrissie, and her sister? Melissa, and Gloria our Chatelaine, who’s somehow made this house into a splendid palace, for a queen,” she takes a gliding slowly closer lowering step, glass and cigarette both high in one hand, her other reaching, her fingertips to brush Jo’s cheek. “There is room here, in this house, for you.”

Jo, eyes closed, takes in a breath. “I have to go back,” she says.

“What?”

Hiss of cigarette dropped in vodka, “I don’t know,” Jo’s saying, turning away, “if they’re okay, I don’t know if they got picked up, too,” gripping the rim of the tub, “if May or Hector,” glass held high as over she throws a dripping leg, “fuck, Jack, he could’ve been in the next cell over, I never would’ve known,” looking to set it down on the tray, but the pail’s gone, and the brass box, and in their place a stack of neatly folded towels. “I gotta go back,” she says, and lets her glass drop to the lawn.

“You’ve got to do no such thing,” says Ysabel.

“You weren’t there.” Jo seizes a towel, shaking it out. “You didn’t see what they did, the cops, when they showed up in force.” Wrapping it about herself. “Yanking people around, smashing shit up, like they were pissed,” tucking it close, above her breast, “they had to be there at all, and they were gonna take it out, on whatever they could reach.”

“There is nothing you can do tonight,” says Ysabel, “that you cannot do as well, or better, tomorrow.”

“Is that how it is,” says Jo. “Your majesty.”

Something, some tension, slips, or shifts, in Ysabel’s expression, “Don’t,” she says. “Not between us, Jo,” and a swallow. “Please,” she says. “Do not.”

“What else, am I supposed to say? You’re the, the Queen. I’m just, a lowly Duchess, or whatever. You conjured up a hot tub, on a lawn, on the roof of your fucking palace. You,” she says, catching her breath, “you were, lit up, like the goddamn sun, Ysabel. How do you even do that.”

“I was furious,” says Ysabel. “When your Shrieve told me what the Harper had done.” Turning to her cigarette. “I should’ve assembled the knights,” she says, and lets out a cloud of smoke.

“I doubt it would’ve gone any better,” says Jo, “you’d rolled up with an army.”

“Well.” Ysabel sits up in the water, drinks off her vodka in a swallow. “It’s not an army, or a sun, we’ve sent to chastise Chillicoathe.”

“What?” says Jo, her hand closed over the knot tucked in her towel. “Why?”

“He betrayed your grace. Sold you, his leige, for a moment’s advantage in a silly feud. He’ll have to face our Huntsman.”

A blink, looking away. Looking back. “Who?”

“Melissa Gallowglas. Don’t be jealous, Jo. We are the Queen. We must have a Huntsman.”

“Ysabel,” says Jo. “My God. What have you done.”

Over the door, red neon letters, VERN, they brightly say, the T and the A before them hung lightlessly from the crumpled frame. A boxy car pulls up beneath, the color uncertain in this light, dark green, perhaps, or purple. The back door on the sidewalk side pops open, letting out a bluesy riff, a chanting voice, got a good thing going, God damn, gotta give it to you, girl, you got game. Somebody’s climbing out, but even as bootheels hit the curb she’s rolling over, reaching back, jingle of buckles as she hauls out a bundle long and heavily awkward, “Careful!” calls the driver, over the music. “Heck is that, anyway, is that a sword?”

“Yeah,” she says, rough with effort, “a goddamn,” yank, “sword,” stepping back, swung around to clang the tip of it planted on pavement, scabbard rising wooden frame and iron fittings, thickly felted wool, handle of it long and straight above the wide strong quillions, topped by a gleaming faceted pommel. “Gonna take it in there, put the fear of God in some asshole, because that is apparently what I do, these days.”

“You?” says the driver, leaned back, peering up. “With that?”

Leaned there, hands on the quillions, motorcycle jacket over her sundress of pink and spangled marigolds, she lets out a bark of a laugh. “As if. This?” hefting, dropping, clang and chime, “it’s a prop, for a music video. Band’s inside.”

“Hey!” he says, leaning even further back as she’s about to close the door. “You can leave a tip in the app, whenever you want.”

“Sure thing,” she says, shutting the door. Watches the car pull away. Gripping the hilt with a grimace she yanks, lifts, the long and leather-wrapped ricasso tugged free of the quilted throat, and then, there, an inch, another, of the bare steel blade, sharply gleaming in the mean red light. She drives it home with a grunt. Hauls the scabbard up to brace the weight of it against her shoulder, tipped back the hilt and quillions, weight of it balanced by her hand laid lightly. The door there, under the light, a sign by the narrow window of it, NO MINORS, it says, Permitted Anywhere On This Premises. “Well,” she says, “here we go,” and makes her way up the poured concrete steps to take hold of the handle of it.