And now the sun is setting once again, to hurl against a towering wall of clouds such brilliant washes of a wildly nameless color that deepens as it rounds, and fades, to merest orange, and red, and ruddy gold, and greening, there, along that edge, and blueing into greys, receding across and beyond the river, sailing away into oncoming night. The city below lit up as well in painful gleamings struck by those last few lances from glass and steel and even here and there the clean white stone of this climbing tower, the interlaced yellow timbering of that construction site, it’s all too bright to look upon for long. The trees that crowd the slope to seat and frame the view provide a darkly cool relief about the city far below so crisp it almost seems too close against those cyclopean clouds, so close and small enough to reach out, from here, among those trees, against a stone wall risen up abruptly on this side of the street, but even as those towers so bright so close so small she might reach out with her hand to cup them, lift them in the palm of her hand, all that brightness swelling up from darkening streets to climb those delicate planes and edges of stone and glass and steel, it all takes on a fiery rose, a blush that falters, fades, sinking away before it might escape the falling fulness of night.

She steps off the sidewalk into the street, two lanes of dimming tarmacadam, the high stone wall behind her, the gap in the trees ahead. Not even a crumble of sidewalk on that other side, not yet, just a verge of grass where she twists a quarter turn and sets to striding, one definite foot before the other along the edge there, of yellowing grass against pavement, matte black soft-soled shoes, bare shins and knees up to loose black shorts, grey jacket zipped up to her sternum, where ink climbs in spikily knotty thickets up from under along the lines and cords of her throat, up and under to the point of her jaw. Slowly, languidly lifting her arms to either side, as if walking a tightrope, as if reaching for the stone wall to her left, out over the dropping grass and treetops to her right. One of those hands holds an awkward rubbery bundle, oxblood edged with black, the other a slender boning knife, the single edge of it curling to a needly point.

Ahead, the grass slope gentles, the verge widens, enough for a sidewalk to start itself and even more for the side yard of a low house built out on stilts over the drop. She stops short of that first step onto concrete, lowering her laden hands. Eyes the next house along, and the next. Each of them from the street seems nondescript, and all much like the others, but she fixes on that one, there, fourth along, a meander of paving stones set in the scrap of yard leading to a yellow front door, the shallow curl of a driveway leading to a white garage shut tight.

Ellen Oh shakes out the bundle in the one hand and, careful of the knife, tugs it on over her head, a goggle-eyed horse’s head with a stiff black mane. “Take two,” she says. But it’s another long moment before steps onto that sidewalk.

A dozen or so clear and empty capsules piled on the island countertop, translucently soft, yielding under his fingertips as he plucks one up, pinches it apart, tucks the one end upright, there, in a small hole drilled in the slender plank before him, and the other end laid beside it. Another plucked, pinched, tucked and laid, and another, again, six holes neatly and evenly drilled in that end of the plank, six capsules so prepared. He takes up in one hand a little silver funnel, carefully fitting the slender stem of it into the first cap-end held upright in the plank, and in his other hand a tiny scoop at the end of a longly delicate handle. He dips the scoop into a spill of golden dust tipped out on a square of paper, there by an empty glass tube, lifting up a pinch of a portion of it, glimmering in the harsh light shining down from above. Leaning close to eye the amount, pewter weights a-dangle at the ends of his long grey mustaches, he taps the delicate handle with a precisely trembling fingertip, and again, knocking just enough of a puff back carefully onto the paper and then, with a sure swift shift and twist, deposits the payload into the mouth of the funnel, then strikes the rim of it once, a silvery clink, dislodging any lingering trickles of brightness. “We must be parsimonious,” he says, setting aside funnel and scoop to squeeze the two ends of the cap back together, “at least until our new Queen finds her footing. But our lot’s enough,” taking up funnel and scoop to set to filling the next, “more than enough, for a dozen pills, twelve days, and some,” tap, twist, clink, “left over.” Looking up from his work. Lifting up to perch on his forehead a pair of glasses, the half-moon lenses set in wire rims. “More than enough,” he says.

Out past the otherwise pristinely empty island, beyond that belvedere of focused light, the darkly glossy kitchen floor ends in a featureless surf of pale shag stretched untroubled by table or sofa or armchair to a sweeping upright wall of glass that looks out over the bright night beyond, and just before that glass untroubled by any reflection he’s sat tailor-fashion, bare feet tucked beneath bare knees, bare shoulders rounded, slumped, hands laid limply in his bare lap, and Pyrocles smiles to see him. “Becker,” he says, gently, lowering his glasses, taking up funnel and scoop once more. “When you’re ready, I’ve a dose prepared.”

A moment more, and then, with a sigh, Becker sets himself in motion, leaning forward as he hikes his haunches, arms spreading as they lift, legs unfolding as his head works back and forth, the wince of a crick. “Did you,” he says, turning, frowning, nakedly unconcerned, “what did you,” he says, looking across that wide and empty space to Pyrocles, iron-bright beneath the kitchen lamp, busy about his work, “what do you,” he says, setting out across the shag, “think, of Joaquin?”

Six filled capsules glimmer on the island, discretely separate from the larger pile of empties, and Pyrocles doesn’t look up from his hands as they set to preparing another six, pluck, pinch, tuck, “What do I think of him?” he says, mildly puzzled.

“He’s a, he’s new,” says Becker, the color of him warming as he approaches the light. “I mean, Sacramento. You’ve, none of you has ever, worked with him. Before.” Blinking against the brightness. “So. What do you think?”

“He is,” says Pyrocles, intent on scoop and funnel, “a doughty knight.”

“Doughty,” says Becker. “That’s, that’s a word. Yeah.” Shadows deepen, sharpen to underline wrinkles and sags, defining the shift of tendon and muscle as he lifts a hand to brush back what’s left of his hair. “Did you, ah,” he says, “I mean, when we, um,” gesturing fruitlessly, “you know, did you,” as “Yes,” says Pyrocles, looking up. Lifting his glasses back up onto his forehead. “As did you.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s, I know, that’s not what I, that’s, I just, I mean,” and Pyrocles, smiling, says, “Pleasures of the flesh, and treasures of the heart, lie in very different realms, love. So long as we keep that borderline in mind,” laying his hand, palm up, on the island countertop, “we’ll be fine,” as Becker clasps it, “That’s you,” he says.

“I rather think,” says Pyrocles, “our Shootist’s attentions, pleasure and treasure, are currently occupied elsewhere.”

“No, I mean, you’re ringing.”

“Am I?” says Pyrocles, frowning.

“Your phone, it’s the buzzing, on silent, it’s, mine,” Becker points, “mine’s in the bedroom, charging, and anyway,” looking down, “no pockets, so,” as Pyrocles, leaning back on his stool, pats about himself, “I will never,” he mutters, lifting out a glossy white plaque, the screen of it lit up, Incoming Call, it says, Viscount, the buzz of it strident in the open air, “understand,” he says, poking a green icon, “hello?” he says, lifting it to his ear. “Yes. The Anvil, yes.”

He frowns. “I see,” he says, and then, “of course,” and sets the phone down on the countertop.

Becker tilts his head to take in the expression Pyrocles turns away from him. “Is,” he says, “is everything,” but Pyrocles takes off his glasses, setting them clink by the phone, pinching the corners of his eyes. “Something’s happened,” he says.

Abruptly up in the darkness, a gasp, a retching groan of a cough. Throws back a drift of comforter, lunging for the edge of the sliding to heavily thump that high wide bed and slippery flap a pillow tumbles those oversized bolsters littering Persian rugs spread each over another on the concrete floor, “shit,” she gets herself on hands and knees but tangled still in kicking loose, “shit,” again as a flame blooms, a candle, lit, another, and another, off on the verges of this upholstered confusion, “cut it out,” she snarls, “stop it,” as yet another flares to life, “go away, leave me alone, I told you, just, go,” she snaps, “I don’t,” the slither, of long black strands of hair dragged with the motion of her head across marbled brown marmoleum, “need, anything,” she says, the patterfall of more long strands falling from about her shoulders, from where they had been pooled in the small of her back, as she sits up, back, on her heels. The sway of all that black hair, squirming about her arms, coiling up to lap her knees, lofting suddenly as if in some unfelt gust to shimmying float, all that long black mane a crown a cloud a tree above her, and slowly, so slowly, she lifts her hands to her face, to the mask over her face, shaped like a skull, her eyes behind the empty staring eyeholes of it, the crude teeth hung from the upper only jaw limned with thick black ink. “No,” she says, with some little force behind the word. “No.”

“Huntsman,” says whoever it is who’s stood behind her. She turns about, getting up on one bare foot, still crouched, her movement troubling the upward cascade of that mane, a sinisterly languid ripple to shadow the ceiling above.

“I wish,” says the man stood there across the crepuscular lobby, “I could say,” his brownly baggy boilersuit unzipped enough to reveal a lushly knotted necktie of paisleys in orange and gold and pink, “I were surprised,” the tone of that word left hanging, as if another clause might be forthcoming, but he stands there, the marbled stretch of earthen brown between them, hints within of numerous incongruous shades suggested by the light of a dimmed chandelier above, he’s stood there, waiting, and his strenuously flattened affect of disdain barely papers over an expression that trembles with an urge to slink away.

“This isn’t,” says Jo, lowering one hand from her mask to clutch, a fist, at her breast. The other lifting, tipping back that mask, the mane of it still a billowing tower above. “This isn’t how it went down.”

Puzzlement troubles his mien. “I don’t understand,” he says.

“This already happened,” says Jo, pushing herself up, onto her feet, her bare legs, her shapeless black sweater, that mask sitting atop her fakely colorless hair. “You’re Cotlap, the Lovejoy Earl. Tight with the Soames. Started running your mouth about how the King was a pretender and the Queen a bona roba, which, I had to look that up. You,” and a deep breath taken in, held, as the mane shivers above her, and then, let out. “You were number ten,” she says.

“I don’t,” he says, “understand – ”

“You don’t have to,” she snaps, a stomp of a step and another over that floor, yanking the mane in her wake as more and more of it loops in tendrils up and out, and up, “this already happened,” she snaps, as the chandelier above jangles, loose crystals shoved about by seeking darkness, and the light begins to fade. “You were the tenth. Early March, the eighth,” she says, “a Thursday,” and lifts the mask away entirely. That thunderhead of darkness collapses, the terrible weight of the mane slapping the marmoleum, whipping her sweatered shoulders, her arms, slipping away down her back.

“Today,” he says, hesitantly, as darkness restlessly settles.

“Three months ago!” she bellows. “Not even!” Letting the mask drop from her hand. “I,” she says, “I’m not, dreaming,” she winces, her other hand tightening at her breast. “So this, you, you aren’t you. This, I’ve, been here before. This has happened before. You, you’re Daniel fucking Moody, and I am fucking sick of this.”

“I,” he says, “who? I,” thumping his sternum once with his knuckles, “am the Cotlap Grady, Earl of Lovejoy, I take my portion from the Guisarme’s hand direct, and see to the needs of a dozen and one in this building,” those knuckles lifting, fingers spreading, a gesture to take in the lobby, the night-blanked glass doors there, the two gold-flecked elevator doors behind them, “that his majesty would would see demolished, and that, dear Huntsman, not the truths I’ve spoken through my running mouth, but this nagging impediment, that would be why you are here.”

“Christ,” she says, that fist still clenched, “it was boring the first time. We are not going through this again, Moody. You’re not him, I’m not here, and, and, oh, oh God,” doubling over as her knee buckles, refusing her weight, slumping sidelong wretching for breath, and, for one fleeting instant, as he stands there, watching her struggle, a spark flares in his eyes, and his chapped lips quirk in the briefest, but clearest, most savage little smile. She’s wrestling her arms up under the hem of that sweater, heedless of her exposure, grappling, grasping at something, quivering with the effort, and some growling climbing groan claws out of her mouth with a sudden ripping yank her hands beneath the sweater churn their way out, her fingers unfolding as she stares, appalled, aghast, astonished, at a feather so very long and slender as it is, the vanes of it a grey so iridescent it might contain all other possible colors paling to a clean and simple white about the quill, “shit,” she says, as glittering sheenly shining silvery dropping from the palm of her hand to the darkness draping the marmoleum below, “what,” she spits, “I, what?”

“Do me this honor,” he says, that trembling slinking urge returned but ducked again behind his flat attempt at chilly disdain looked up, and out, to where she had been standing but a moment before, and not to herself there crouched on the lobby floor, over the black locks of that fallen mane, the feather in her hands. “Draw your blade and show it me before you strike,” he says, to where she’d been, not where she is. “Do this, for me. I will not take it amiss. I do still hold it true,” bracing himself, “as anyone must, that our King Lymond Perry’s a bastard illegitimate, spawned of the Gammer’s gallowglas lover, Handless Vincent Erne,” a shuddering breath at the effort of having said that, let halfway out, for the effort of what’s to come, “and I will tell you,” he says, as she laboriously pulls herself unseen to her feet, “you, and anyone who’d listen, that his sister Ysabel’s a lust-drunk strumpet no more now fit to be Queen than a cat! But I would never,” and he swallows, “I would never raise a hand to any Huntsman of the court. And I will never shift my people nor my feet from off these floors. So.” Still not looking to her stood wavering there at all, he tightens the knot of his necktie, adjusts its drape. “Show me your blade, then cleave me to the bone. For I,” and he sighs, heavily, “am so, so very tired,” but “Grady,” she’s saying, with some effort, “Grady. Earl.” Snapping her fingers before his gaze, and he blinking looks from where she’d been, to where she is, half-slumped before him, sweater hiked, askew over her other hand, clutched at her heaving breast within. “I’m, sorry,” she says. He steps back.

“I’m sorry,” she says, again, and takes in a breath that lifts up, steadies, “I thought, you were someone else.” Dragging her hand out from under, tugging the hem of the sweater discreetly down about her hips. “I’m sorry,” she says, “that I did, what I did. You said some shit, you said that shit, and it, but, that’s not a reason. If I had to do it over again I wouldn’t, but that doesn’t, excuse, any of it. All I can do is tell you I’m sorry but that doesn’t, I don’t, I’ve got no idea, how much of you this,” the heel of her hand, thumping her chest, “this fucking thing,” and again, eyes squeezing shut in a wince, “I don’t,” she says, “know, what kind of, ghost, but you,” she says, looking up to him again, “are here. And I,” she says, but, trailing off, “am, sorry..?”

He’s smiling.

He’s grinning, lips spread, teeth bared, corners of that mouth dragged back and back to crumple his cheeks in a horrific rictus of surprised delight, an upwelling of malevolent joy that erupts in a snapped-off bark of laughter, “You,” he says, his head shook slowly, one side to the other, “still,” he says, “don’t get it.”

She screams, a ragged burst of wordless rage as she lurches backwards, making room to find her footing on slipping hanks of mane, that one fist white-knuckled over her breast but her other even as she lets out another scream, as rough, as loudly raging, but longer, thinning, drawn out as that other hand curls in the air between them, fingers closing about a brightly aching white-hot flare that dimming subsides to reveal the hilt in her hand, three fingers gripping the glossy black tape wound about it, index finger against the stubby wodge of a barrel angled down, to one side, top of it slickly blued above the pebbled black of the frame, and the letters Kel-Tec stamped there, where her thumb is curled.

“Lucinda!” he crows, and throws up his hands. “You done growed up!”

Those hands flop forward, his chest punched back, the crack of the gunshot too much for the lobby followed quickly by another that powders the side of his rocked-back head, the whole of him collapsing withered to mane-strewn marmoleum and one step, two, she’s stood over arm stretched down at what’s leaving of him, pistol banging once more and again, too enormous to echo. The silence, stunned, returns to find an oiled spring-wound click of a mechanism, and another, another, the pistol in her hand not leaping but still reflexively kicking, braced for something that doesn’t happen, over and over again. She groans, click, a choked-off sob, click, rising click by click to a shriek, click, until her arm jerks upright, cocked and poised to throw the pistol.

She doesn’t throw the pistol.

The rug before her, beneath her feet a threadbare Persian, tangled knots of pomegranate and gold laid over damp concrete, and fitful candlelight picks out a single smoking scorch-edged hole, no bigger than a fingertip.

The pistol still in her upraised hand.

She lowers it, slowly, her other hand taking hold of the hem of the sweater. Yanking it suddenly up, under her chin, baring belly, breast, the slender white scar that climbs to end there as a nodule set in a pucker of blotchily ruddied flesh. She holds the pistol out away from herself, turns it about, brings it close to press the mouth of it right up against the darkly glassy surface of the thing, clink. She closes her eyes.

Click.

A splash, at her feet. The gun’s been dropped. Her emptied hands at her sides. Somewhere, in the distance, the sound of falling water.