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.