Just a little she smiles and opens her eyes. “All right then,” says Ysabel. Standing by the window in her yellow underwear. The daylight soft and grey, dappled by raindrops on glass. She looks down at the cigarette burning between her fingers. Black blood thick on her fingertips and palm. Blood smeared around her mouth, her chin. “Pfeh,” she says, cocking her hand, wiping her lips with the back of her wrist. Blood’s splashed between her breasts, a trickle of it black and shining oozes down her belly trembling a fat drop of it falling to plop on her bare foot. She takes in a sharp breath through her nose and lets it out in a sudden shivery laugh. “All right,” she says.
A rustle from the futon across the room.
“Jo?” says Ysabel.
“The hell you will,” says Jo, muffled. Kicking her mismatched Chuck Taylors in the sheets.
Ysabel stubs out the cigarette in a plate puddled with black blood, a slender bloodstained knife on the table beside it. Scrubs at her chest with her fingers, knocking loose a sparkling fall of dust. She crosses the room to kneel by the futon. “Jo,” she says again. Jo moans, her face buried in the blue-and-white striped pillow. Ysabel brushes Jo’s cheek with the back of her hand. “Wake up, Jo,” she says. “It’s October.” Jo jerks her head away, one arm fighting free of the blanket. Pushing herself up breathing sharply, blinking. “I can’t,” she says, “what?” Staring unseeing at the wall.
Jo spits toothpaste into the sink and rinses her toothbrush under the tap. Runs the brush around her teeth and spits again.
“What did she tell you?” says Ysabel, leaning on the open door of the refrigerator. She’s pulled on a white tank top. Something glitters at the corner of her mouth.
“She didn’t,” says Jo, running her fingers through her hair, pushing back the blond fuzz to reveal dark roots. Tugging at one of the longer black locks. “Not for real. For real, she just laughed that goddamn laugh and walked away across the ice.” Out in the little hallway kitchen Ysabel pulls a carton of milk from the fridge. “But in the dream it was like she’d been saying something all along and, it’s not like I couldn’t hear her or it was in another language or something. I could understand her. I just wasn’t paying attention.” Ysabel takes a glass down from the cabinet and pinches open the carton. “I was looking at something else, I don’t know, but by the time I figured out she was saying something important and started paying attention she was laughing and turning and walking away.” Ysabel sets one hand on edge by the glass, four fingers curled around it. She pours the milk slowly, watching the level rise finger by finger. “And whatever it was was so important,” says Jo, “and I’d missed it, and I knew I was never going to get another chance.” Ysabel puts the carton back in the fridge. “Which just. Hurt.” In the bathroom, Jo’s still looking at herself in the mirror. “Nineteen goddamn names and I don’t know a one of them,” she says, quietly. She runs some water, catches it in her hands, splashes her face. Shuts the water off. Something’s trickling. Jo frowns. Looks out, into the little hallway kitchen. Ysabel’s holding up the glass tipped over, pouring milk over the counter, down to the floor. “The fuck?” says Jo.
“You shouldn’t be having dreams like that,” says Ysabel. She shakes the last drops of milk from the glass and sets it down on the counter.
“So you make a fucking mess?”
“It’s a punishment,” says Ysabel.
“Oh,” says Jo, pushing past her, out into the main room, “the milk, the blood, that fucking tongue, it’s a punishment all right.” She stops, staring down at the plate on the glass-topped table, the cigarette butt in the blood, the slender bloodstained knife. “Ysabel?” she says, turning around. “Where’s the tongue?”
Ysabel’s dipping a finger in the milk.
“The tongue. That was ripped from the head of that– thing. And dropped on this plate right here last night. That tongue?”
Ysabel turns, opening her mouth to say something. The phone rings. “I’ll get it,” she says.
“No!” says Jo. “Let it ring.”
“It could be–”
“Spam,” snaps Jo. “Fucking telemarketers selling a fucking timeshare or something. Look. Don’t tell me about the tongue. Okay? Fine. I don’t trip over it or find it in the freezer or something, it’s gone, I’m good. Okay? Just put on some pants or something so we can go to work.”
“Or we could not go to work,” says Ysabel. “Go see a movie or something.”
“Godammit.”
“We had a long night,” says Ysabel. “I’m tired. You’re exhausted. And you’re already paid rent, right? So–”
“Yeah, but now I have to buy more fucking milk!” The phone’s stopped ringing. “We’ve been over this,” says Jo. “I have to go to work. And I have to keep an eye on you. So you have to come to work with me. Dead fucking simple. And it’s gonna be like that until, I don’t know. Something happens.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe one of your bully-boys challenges me to a duel and I lose and you get to be his problem instead.”
“That’s not going to happen,” says Ysabel, smiling.
“Oh yeah? Maybe I’ll just pick a fight with Roland the next time he swings by. I bet he’d like that. Are you going to clean that up?”
Ysabel looks back at the puddle of milk. “No,” she says.
“I’m not touching it.”
“Of course not.”
Jo throws her hands in the air. “Just, just get dressed. Okay? Let’s go.”
“Who are the three lions?” says Marfisa.
“What?” says Roland, headphones down around his neck. On the table a thick white mug half-filled with coffee, a scatter of gel caps, a little toy car, silver and green.
“The three lions,” says Marfisa, pointing back to the words painted on the window by the door. “I was just wondering who they were.”
“Haile Selassie,” says the woman sitting across from Roland. “Richard Nixon. Luke Skywalker.” She’s hunched in a sweater the color of flour, a floppy brown hat pulled low over her yellow hair. Roland snorts. Marfisa looks about, the gleaming barista station, the long glass case full of brightly lit pastries, the blackboard clouded with palimpsests of old menus. “What?” says the woman. “Was it a rhetorical question?” Her face tics sourly, her eyes darting under the brim of her hat.
“Here,” says Roland, scooping up the caps. “Hold out your hand.” She does. The fingers tremble, just a little. He sets the pills in her palm, one by one, picks up the toy car, folds her fingers over it. Marfisa pulls a spindly chair over from an empty table. “I was wondering how you were keeping up your rounds,” she says. She drapes her blue rainshell over the back of the chair.
“Thank you, Miss Cheney,” Roland’s saying. The woman in the floppy brown hat stands, stuffing her hand in the pocket of her corduroy skirt. “Thank you, Chariot,” she says. “May you be fierce and proud, precise and steady, proper, unified, vigorous, nimble-handed, swift, ardent-coursing, very dextrous, and unhesitating.” She takes up the red-tipped cane leaning against the table and tapping it before her makes her way out of the café.
“I didn’t ask you here to speak about my business, Axe,” says Roland as Marfisa sits.
“Of course not, Chariot,” says Marfisa, looking back from Miss Cheney’s exit to Roland’s frown. His track suit crisp and white with green and yellow stripes down the sleeves. “The four fifths know I’d’ve died last night if you hadn’t happened by. I owe you,” and she tilts her head back a little, jaw working, “my life.” Curls the color of clotted cream unsprung from her tightly bunched ponytail. “So I guess you want to tell me what I must do to see that debt discharged.”
Roland’s picking at the velcro on his bicycle gloves. “We hunted the boar together with a gallowglas. A joint effort. Either of us could have died then. I’m not,” and then he looks up and says, “You must do it because it’s right. Not because of a debt.”
“What,” says Marfisa, after a moment.
Roland’s laid his gloved hands flat on the table. “Stop seeing her,” he says.
“Who?” says Marfisa.
“You know,” says Roland, and then he stops himself and says, “the Princess.”
“How can I not see her?” says Marfisa. “Should I put out my eyes?”
“She’s the Bride.” Roland’s glaring, leaning over the table. “Promised to the King Come Back. You’ll do nothing to jeopardize that promise.” His voice low, the words bitten short.
“Jeopardize?” says Marfisa. “How could I do that? Tell me, Chariot. Spell it out for me.”
Roland sits back. “The Dagger,” he says. “As mild and temperate a knight as you could ask, for all that he was the Duke’s man. This knight would have struck your head from your shoulders last night. Would have wiped you from this world.”
“So we’re back to the debt,” says Marfisa.
“Why?” says Roland, his eyes burning. “Why would he try to do something like that?”
“I don’t know,” says Marfisa, but she looks away from him, down at her hands, curled in her lap. Roland drinks his coffee. “You must stop,” he says. “Now. I won’t be able to allow it when she’s under my protection once more.”
Marfisa looks up. “You must worry,” she says, “about facing a gallowglas, to win her back. Jo’s a friend of yours, isn’t she?”
Roland finishes his coffee and sets the mug on the table. “The Queen will tire of indulging her daughter’s whims soon enough.”
“Without a fight, huh?” says Marfisa, standing. “Is that what Miss Cheney told you is going to happen?”
“Stop,” says Roland. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“Yeah,” says Marfisa, putting on her rainshell, “try telling her that.”
Night falls. They come around the corner of the building and duck out of the rain, three of them, under a dull burgundy awning that says Fada Salon. Already fishing for cigarettes. Jo’s lit, she flicks the match away into the rain and shakes open a newspaper. Ysabel, unlit cigarette in her fingers, turns to the short older woman with a loose wattle under her chin. “Do you know,” says the older woman, thumbing open a lighter, “a young man insists I am from India.” Her voice rough with old smoke. Ysabel leans over her small flame. “I asked him, how is it so, and he said, you have an accent. Of course. I am from France. He says no one in France must call people for money.” The older woman shrugs. “So now I am Indian.”
“Fuck,” says Jo, rattling her paper shut. The window behind them dark. Rows of shampoo bottles catch what little light. She steps under the next awning down, dark grey over a glass door lit up inside, a beige hall, a row of dented mailboxes. Holds the paper up in the light, turns it inside out. “You know, Crecy,” says Ysabel, “Jo says there’s a difference. Between spam, and what we do.”
“Of course, darling,” says the older woman. “Spam is on the internet.”
“Phone spam,” says Ysabel. “Sales calls,” says Jo, scowling at her paper.
“We don’t do sales,” says Crecy.
“But it is a transaction,” says Ysabel. “It’s not a sales call,” growls Jo.
“We don’t ask for money,” says Crecy.
“We ask for their time,” says Ysabel. “A piece of their life. And isn’t time money? Why does this make you so angry?” she says, turning to Jo.
“What do we sell?” says Crecy. “If we are selling.”
“Your answers,” says Ysabel brightly, “will help Pet Depot better determine where and how to improve their service to ensure our clients and their people will have the best possible Pet Depot experience. What was it we said for Winthrop Bank? Your answers will enable WinBank to better assess the service they provide? It’s a good deed,” she says. “A chance to help. Attention. That’s the transaction. Time, for attention.”
“Sales,” says Crecy. “No, sales we go to do when we can’t do this. Out to Market Solutions in Beaverton, hour and a half by bus, and we sell. Or worse, to a customer service farm.” She lets her cigarette fall to the sidewalk and mashes it with her heel. “No one trusts a phone anymore. All the sales and the robots, and the Indians. So many surveys done on the internet now.”
“Like spam,” says Ysabel.
“You are being difficult,” says Crecy.
“Not a goddamn thing,” says Jo, dropping the newspaper. She flicks her cigarette-spark into the rain. “Get your things.”
“There’s an hour left in the shift,” says Ysabel.
“I don’t care,” says Jo. “There’s something I need to see.”
“What?” says Ysabel, as Crecy shaking her head says “With Guthrie out again, and Dorfman– what will you tell Becker?”
“That I feel like shit,” says Jo. “What else?”
Leaning against the dingy fridge, head down, long black hair to one side like a curtain drawn back. Rings glitter on his fingers, an ankh, a skull, dice. “Wow,” he says, hauling himself upright, scratching his ribs. Black drawstring pants hang from his narrow hips, cuffs lapping his bare feet. He pulls a clear plastic pitcher from the fridge and pours water into his mouth.
“Guthrie,” she says. The hall behind her’s dark. Hard rattle of rain outside the half-closed window. Her black T-shirt tight says A Mysterious Chunk of Space Debris. Her hair lost under a confetti-colored patchwork cap.
“You never take that off,” he says. “Do you. The hat.”
“I have my reasons,” she says.
“I, see, have no idea how you pulled that shirt on over it.”
“Same way you took it off, except.” Her hands spin about each other. “In reverse.”
“That’s one of my shirts,” he says. “Your shirt buttoned up the front. Unbuttoned.” He runs his fingers up the T-shirt to brush her chin. She bites at them. “Like your sweater. And your other sweater. And your jacket unzipped. So.”
“My skirt,” she says, “and my other skirt,” and she kisses him.
“And your bicycle shorts,” he says, “and those goddamn granny panties,” and he kisses her chin. “But not the hat. Is it a thing? If I take off your hat, do you leave and I never see you again?”
“Such questions,” she says, kissing his throat. Her hand in his pants. He spins her around bare feet shuffling and lifts her shrieking with laughter to sit on the edge of the sink. The hem of her shirt rucked up past her hips, the hair crowning her thighs dull brown and glossy auburn, fiery red licking the edges, coiled springs of gold here and there, white glistening, thin black shading a ghostly line up her belly under the shirt. “If you’re supposed to make me forget,” he says, as she leans forward, reaching for his pants, “I remember everything.” He helps her push them down. “The window and the boar and the swords and.” She stops his mouth with a fingertip. “Do you want to forget?” she says.
Guthrie shakes his head.
“Am I safe here?” she says.
He shrugs, his face torn between a frown and a smile. “As houses,” he says.
“I have your word?” she says, and his face falls. He kisses her, a long rolling lick of a kiss, and closes his eyes, and lays his forehead against her chest. “Of course,” he says.
“Guthrie,” she says.
When he looks up she tugs the patchwork cap up and off and out spills her hair, tumbling over her shoulders, down her back, into the sink, across the counter, down, brushing his knees, coiling about his feet. “Wow,” he says.
She shivers as he touches her hair, takes up a heavy hank of it in his hand, lets it run through his fingers like water. “Oh,” she says as he sinks his fingers into her hair to either side of her face, his palms, his wrists. “Wow,” he says, and she nods and says, “Like that,” breathing quickly, her hair brushing his forearms, his elbows. “Wow,” he says, and he kisses her. The rain long since gentled to a hush.
The weirdly slender doll tosses an arch salute in the harsh light of the desk lamp. Its uniform a tight orange jacket and a short flippy skirt, dark stockings stretched halfway up elongated thighs. Mr. Charlock touches its head carefully, as if it might burn. “Week ago Wednesday,” he says. “The equinox. That’s where I’m putting my money. So he was out and about a week before you called us in? Still.” Mr. Charlock touches the doll again. “Seven confirmed sightings– five solos and a deuce. We cleared ’em all.”
“Seven,” says Mr. Leir. His eyes almost grey. His face unlined under all that white hair.
“Mr. Keightlinger’s sources back us up,” says Mr. Charlock.
“I don’t doubt it,” says Mr. Leir. “But seven is a rather… notable number.”
“Yeah,” says Mr. Charlock. “So’s three and five and twelve and nine and four.”
“And eight,” says Mr. Keightlinger, in the shadows behind Mr. Charlock.
“But this is seven,” says Mr. Leir.
Mr. Charlock shrugs. “Anyway, last night they run him out of the world and into a hunt. Being my understanding of your instructions was not to interfere, we didn’t.” Mr. Leir nods. “Bride was there,” says Mr. Charlock. He picks up the doll, fingering a long brown plastic ponytail. “On the hunt.” Tips the doll over, looking up its skirt. “Gallowglas, too.”
“On a horse,” says Mr. Keightlinger, leaning forward, his beard ruddied in the light. Mr. Charlock looks up at him, curl bobbing on his forehead. “Yeah,” he says, “there were horses. Point being, they pull this girl any closer, they’d have to knight her or something.”
Mr. Leir reaches across his desk, pale hand palm up.
“She’ll be as hard to peel off as one of their own,” says Mr. Charlock. “Harder, even.”
Mr. Leir’s fingers beckon once, twice. Mr. Charlock lays the doll in his hand. “What in hell are those things for, anyway?” says Mr. Charlock.
“Numquam sine phantasmate intelligit anima,” says Mr. Leir, standing. He opens a glass cabinet behind his desk and sets the doll on a shelf lined with more dolls, a schoolgirl in a kilt, a swordswoman in a chainmail bikini, a girl in a maillot climbing onto a blocky scooter, a magician in a top hat and bustier. “You think,” says Mr. Leir, and then, “I’m not certain what you think.” He closes the cabinet. “That you’re to help me by stealing the Bride from them?” He plants his fists on the desk, leaning over them. “You are to watch, and report, and that is all. You’ve watched. You’ve reported. I thank you.”
“Sure,” says Mr. Charlock, jerking his shoulder from beneath Mr. Keightlinger’s hand, “but what’s it all for?”
Mr. Leir smiles under those cold clear eyes. “She is exaltation,” he says. “She will cross each sign at its zenith. She is the morning that climbs into the sky and the rose that arises from tears. Her throne is a high mountain and from there the sky of light is beneath her feet, and her diadem the stars.” His smile leaves. “Would you like to ask another question, Mr. Charlock?”
“Not so much?” says Mr. Charlock, swallowing. He stands. “Maybe some other time.”
A white tray laid on the low broad ottoman. Two glossy cards lie on it, one white, printed with a stylized bee in black and yellow. The other brown, a hawk’s head in red and black. A small stone cup overturned, salt spilled from it on the tray. A clear glass saucer dotted with bread crumbs. A small brass lamp, low flame smoking at its tip. The Duke looms over it, leaning heavily on a cane. He blows out the lamp. Picks up the silver-handled knife on the ottoman before the tray and pushes himself upright. Drops the knife in the pocket of his tweed jacket.
“Thank you,” he says.
“There’s no need to thank me,” says the Queen. Dressed all in black, she sits at one end of the long white leather sofa. A little brindle cat beside her ducks its head to lick at its chest.
“Ah,” says the Duke, “but I would ask another boon of you.”
The Queen strokes the little cat’s back. “No,” she says.
“No?” says the Duke. “But you don’t–”
“We will not ennoble Jo Maguire.” The cat slumps against her, lifting a leg to worry at its haunch. “Unless you had something else in mind?”
“No,” says the Duke, “no, that’s what, ah, I–” He frowns. “Why not? You’ve a perfect excuse. She hadn’t done what she did, I’d be dust blowing down the highway, instead of that fucking pig. I don’t care what the Bodach said.”
“So offer her a street yourself,” says the Queen. “Sidney must have left something behind.”
“But I take her in, I get your daughter as well,” says the Duke. “That’s crazy. You give her the knighthood. That brings the Bride back here, safe and sound, away from clutching grasps like mine–”
The Queen stands. The little cat freezes, then leaps from the sofa, scampering into the shadows. “You forget yourself, Southeast,” she says. “We will not have a gallowglas in this house.”
After a moment, the Duke ducks his head. “Can’t say I didn’t try.” He turns to go, but stops, one foot on the shallow steps. “Duenna,” he says. “I will sit the Throne one day. Whether you’d will it or no.” He looks over his shoulder at her. She’s sitting again, the white card in her hand. “But this has nothing to do with that. This is me, trying to do what’s right. Remember that.”
She smiles to herself. “We will always have been who we are,” she says, laying the card back on the tray, next to the brown one.
She gets out of the car, a low-slung thing, and opens the passenger door as he lurches down the porch steps. She wears a short clear plastic raincoat over a grey chauffeur’s jacket. The Duke leans on the roof of the car and levers his left leg in, lowering himself into the seat. Pulls his right leg in, wincing. Tosses the cane over into the narrow back seat. She lowers the hand she’d put out to help him. “You shouldn’t be walking on that,” she says, climbing into the driver’s seat.
He runs a hand through his hair, shaking out the rain.
“You want to,” she says, starting the engine, putting the car in gear. He snaps on the radio. Guitars and a clattering drumkit crash into a slow keening verse, cymbal ringing like a bell, in a town, deep in the dark wood, there were streets of colored lanterns, there were musicians and juggling troupes, sticky baked things and booths and booths. “Want to do anything tonight?” she says.
“Go home,” he says.
“Because if you want, you know, to take it easy.” She steals a glance at him. He’s looking out the window. “You must be exhausted, so I was thinking, right? I could call a friend of mine. Penny? From the club?” She looks about, signals, eases over into the right lane. “We could put on a show, if you like.”
“Yeah, okay,” he says, still looking out the window.
“Yeah?” she says.
“You should go out. With whoever. See a show. I’ll be okay.” He smiles at her. “You went above and beyond last night, you know? Take the night off.”
“Oh,” she says. “Okay. Thanks.”
And then she says, “How’d it go?”
“As well as you’d expect,” he says. “Hey. Last night. Did the Mooncalfe finally show? Or was I dreaming?”
“Orlando?” she says. “Yeah, he showed.”
“What did he have to say for himself?”
“Just,” she says, “you know. Get well soon.”
He snorts, looking down at his leg. “Fat chance of that,” he says.
de anima, written by Aristotle, translated by Willem van Moerbeke, within the public domain. The Tarjuman Alashwaq, written by Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, within the public domain. “What He’d Just Said,” written by Paul Winkler, ©1997 Arms.
The blue umbrella’s smeared with whorls of starry light, a fiery painted circle of yellow moon. Ysabel eyes the rain dripping from its edges with moued lips and pinched brows. “I’m not dressed for this,” she says.
“No one told you to wear heels,” says Jo. Hatless, she’s flipped up the collar of her army green jacket.
“I didn’t know we’d be walking for miles tonight,” says Ysabel.
“It’s a couple of fucking blocks,” says Jo, glaring at the ivy-choked fence that towers to the right.
“Thirteen,” says Ysabel. “Since we got off the train.”
“So it’s a big couple,” says Jo.
“You’re not going to see anything,” says Ysabel.
After a minute, Jo says “I think that” as Ysabel stops there in the middle of the street and snaps, “You’re not going to see anything! Thirteen blocks in the rain and it’s cold, my feet hurt and we’re in Northeast again, again, and it’s all a complete waste of time because you’re not going to see anything!”
“I think,” says Jo, slowly, pointing up the sidewalk, “that driveway there, that’s a parking lot, it’ll take us to the edge. Past this crap.” She walks on, hands jammed in her pockets, shoulders hunched.
Ysabel spins the umbrella between her hands, flinging raindrops about. Tips her head, resting it against the umbrella’s shaft. The other side of the street lined with parked cars. The house behind her porch lit up, strings of lights wound about the columns, draped from the eaves.
The ivy-choked fence ends at the driveway. The driveway opens into a parking lot for a rambling low apartment complex. Jo’s there, under a sign that says American Property Management, No Trespassing or Loitering, Violators Will Be Prosecuted. Her fingers laced in the chained links of a gate. Past the gate another lot dips down the edge of the gulch around a jumble of building, weatherbeaten oblongs under a flat tarpaper roof. Below it the railroad tracks. Beyond them a wall ten or fifteen feet high and then the freeway, traffic shushing busily east and west through the rain.
“He must have come through that fence up there,” says Jo, pointing back along the top of the gulch. “Down the slope and maybe he jumped from there to the roof. Where we saw him. That’s.” She thumbs a trickle of rain from her forehead. “He jumped,” she says. “From there to the fucking freeway. The freeway. Landed so hard he broke the road. I was picking pieces of pavement out of my hair. He broke the fucking road and look.” She rattles the fence. Rainwater splats the shoulders of her jacket. Traffic passing back and forth below, red lights and white lights and the yellow wink of a turn signal. “Nothing. No work crews. No orange cones. Not a goddamn crack. Like it never happened. Like he was never there.”
“Jo,” says Ysabel, “he was a monster.” Jo looks at her over her shoulder, frowning, “I,” she starts to say. “His name was Erymathos,” says Ysabel, and “I know what his name,” says Jo as Ysabel’s saying, “and a long time ago, as everyone knows, he winnowed the oak-mast of the forests above Eugea, there among the ankle-bones of the Dyfün Mountain, until he found and gobbled three certain acorns.” She lifts her umbrella, holding it over both of them. “The first swelled his shoulders like a mighty canopy of oak, sun-shield and thunder-trap. The second rooted the four great boles of him to the earth, and from then on he could never be overturned. But the third.” She stands quite close to Jo now, her voice a soft murmur over the distracted rain. “The third acorn hardened his heart like knot-wood, shriveling it down to a nubbin no bigger than his eye, and as black.” She reaches out to brush more rain from Jo’s forehead. Jo shakes her head away. “There will never again be a forest above Eugea.”
“I don’t,” says Jo, turning back to the fence, the ramshackle building, the trees along the wall of the gulch, the railroad tracks below, the freeway.
“Why are you so angry, Jo Maguire? Because he’s gone? He was a monster. For all that cities terrified him, and concrete was like ice under his hooves.” Ysabel’s hand on Jo’s shoulder, the umbrella brushing the fence above them. “A hundred hundred knights sought him out with sword and spear and hound and he laughed at them all and sent more than a few down to dust. Is it because the Duke picked you for his gallowglas? It could have been anyone. Any one of you, ten months from now, or ten years, by his side, or the Anvil’s, or the Chariot’s.”
“It’s, I just,” says Jo. She hits the fence again. Rain splashes. “He should have stopped traffic. You know? After all that.”
“Three weeks?” says Ysabel, sitting on the bench under the shelter, umbrella furled between her knees.
“It was a Saturday night,” says Jo, leaning against the ticket machine. “Becker’s little promotion shindig at the VC.” She cranes her head, peering down the railroad tracks into the rainy darkness. Pulls a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket. “Three weeks ago.”
“Twenty-one days,” says Ysabel.
“Assuming math still works,” says Jo, cigarette bouncing in the corner of her mouth. A pop and a match flares in her hands.
“Seems longer.”
Jo blows a stream of smoke up and out past the dim lights of the shelter.
“You’re still angry,” says Ysabel.
“I’m not angry,” says Jo.
“You are,” says Ysabel. There’s a light down the tracks, getting brighter. Jo laughs. “Works every time,” she says, taking one last long drag from the cigarette.
“What?” says Ysabel.
“That’s why I haven’t quit,” says Jo. “You’re waiting for a bus or a train? Light one up and boom. There it is.” She drops the cigarette to the platform. “Like magic.”
“Jo,” says Ysabel, as the train pulls in. Jokes on us, says the ad running along the side of it, swarming with smiling television stars. Jo steps into the second car and climbs a couple of steps up from the floor to the raised rear seats. The car’s otherwise empty. Ysabel’s standing in the doorway. “Come on,” says Jo, as a recorded voice says “This is a Red Line train to Portland City Center. Next stop is Northeast Seventh Avenue.” Another voice says, “Este un tren de la línea roja a Portland City Center.” The first voice says, “The doors are closing.”
Ysabel steps into the car. The doors close. “What’s wrong?” says Jo.
“I’m not sure,” says Ysabel. She grabs for the handrail as the train lurches into motion. The lights flicker.
“What is it?” says Jo.
“I don’t,” says Ysabel. “Gabba gabba hey,” says the boy lounging in the accordioned joint in the middle of the car. “Jo?” says Ysabel.
“Yeah, I see him,” says Jo.
“And he,” says Ysabel.
“He wasn’t there when we got on,” says Jo.
“Gowan,” says the boy. “Smile!” His head’s bald. He’s wearing a grey denim jacket over a baggy grey hoodie.
“Why don’t you,” Jo’s saying, as Ysabel says “I told you we shouldn’t have.” Jo’s standing in the aisle. “Why don’t you get up here.”
“Lovely,” says the man standing next to the boy, swaying with the motion of the train. Ysabel’s quickly climbing the couple of steps and swinging into a seat. The man wears a tan trench coat and his pink and yellow tie is loose. An old brown briefcase on the floor between his feet. “Hubba hubba,” says the boy in the hoodie. The lights flicker.
“What’s going on?” says Jo.
“We’re in Northeast,” says Ysabel.
“Yeah? So?”
“A spitfire!” says the man in the grimy blue coveralls, pushing past the boy in the hoodie, out onto the floor between the doors. “Lose the jacket,” says the boy in the hoode. “Hell yeah!” says the lanky guy in basketball shorts. He’s back by the man in the trench coat. “Panties,” says the man in the trench coat. He giggles. They’re all laughing, barking, roaring, the lanky guy hooting, the man in the coveralls doubled over, hanging one-handed from the handrail, slapping his knee. “Jesus,” says Jo to herself. “Where the fuck are they coming from?”
“Gimme a kiss,” says the boy in the hoodie, laughing. “Let’s see them legs!” says the man in the coveralls. “Sweet little things,” says the man in the trench coat. “Northeast Seventh Avenue,” says the recorded voice. “Doors to my right.”
“Get up,” says Jo. “Slowly. Get up. We’re getting off.” She heads down to the floor of the car one slow step at a time, eyes not leaving the men no longer laughing, swaying together with the train.
“It’s not stopping,” says Ysabel, standing up.
“It’s not stopping,” says Jo. The lights flicker. “It’s not stopping!” A woman’s face sweeps by outside, dismayed, framed in a yellow slicker hood. The man in the coveralls plants his feet against the wobble of the train, arms out, hands free, grinning. “You want some of this,” he says.
“Of course she does,” says the man in the trench coat. “Tag team,” says the lanky guy. “Fuck yeah!” says the boy in the hoodie. “Swallow this!”
“Jo?” says Ysabel, eyes wide.
“I, ah,” says Jo. “Are these your people?”
“What?” says Ysabel. The man in the trench coat snorts. “Gagging lolita,” says the lanky guy.
“Are they, you know, like you?” says Jo.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Gang bang, gang bang,” sing-songs the boy in the hoodie. “Roly-poly gang bang.”
“Shut up!” yells Jo. The man in the coveralls frowning, smiling, chuckling deep in his throat like a growl. “Jesus whichever,” says Jo, “it’s self-defense anyway. Get ready.”
“For what?” says Ysabel, but Jo’s foot has already left the floor.
“Baby wants to pinch them,” snarls the man in the coveralls, and then the crook of Jo’s foot catches him right in the crotch, lifts him up on his toes. There’s a smash like breaking crockery. His arms curling in mouth rounding air blowing out of him in one big burst. Her foot dropping she reaches past him for the front of the boy’s grey hoodie hauling as the man in the coveralls sags over the seat beside him. Hauls the boy past her and around squawking “Yah!” to fetch up clang his forehead into the handrail knocked back arms wheeling over and down. The man in the coveralls still moaning.
“Excuse me,” says the man in the trench coat.
“Now!” yells Jo, throwing her elbow back, hurling a sharp-knuckled punch into the lanky guy’s chest. “Hey,” he says. “Now!” yells Jo, kicking at his knee and missing.
“Now what?” screams Ysabel standing, fingers white around the handrail. “Jo!”
The lanky guy’s caught Jo’s off-balanced fist in his big flat hand. He lifts, wrenching her wrist. “Now!” she yells, and hisses, eyes crumpled. “The brake! Pull it!” She kicks again. Her toe bounces off his shin with a tinny clank. The man in the coveralls growling on the floor hands slipping and pushing at nothing. The boy in the hoodie rearing back off him hands to his forehead wobbling upright, a deep dent dug in that bald head. The lanky guy grunts as Jo kicks him and kicks him again. “Pull it!”
“Pull what?”
“The brake! The brake! The motherfucking brake!” Jo throws herself at the lanky guy and back, yanking at her fist still locked in that hand. Ysabel’s looking all about her eyes wild one hand up to her mouth. “On the wall!” cries Jo. The man in the trench coat steps gingerly around the lanky guy, wary of the rocking of the train. “Behind you! On the damn wall!”
“You little bitch,” says the man in the trench coat, and hunkering arm dropped swings his briefcase up at Jo’s head. Ysabel screams. Jo dangles from the lanky guy’s fist head back blood shining her cheekbone. Spun about the man in the trench coat swings back at Jo the briefcase into her gut. He pulls but doubled over she’s caught it with her free hand. Roaring. The man in the trench coat stumbles as she yanks it from him. The lanky guy watches frowning as the man in the coveralls grabs his ankle. “Do you know who I am?” bellows Jo, her other hand still caught. “The fucking Gallowglas!” She slams the briefcase into the lanky guy’s chest and again. “I will end you!” And again.
The lights flicker. “Whore,” grunts the man in the coveralls, crumbling the word, pushing himself to his knees clanking a weight dangling between his thighs. “Let go of me!” Jo’s screaming. “Frigid little cunt,” spits the man in the trench coat, rubbing his wrist. “Jo, I can’t,” Ysabel’s saying, “I don’t,” and Jo’s face twists. “Fucking dyke,” says the man in the trench coat. His briefcase hits him squarely in the nose. Something crunches. His hands up shaking as Jo lowers the briefcase, his nose gone, sunk with his eyes, his brows and mouth and chin clenched around it all, he backs away, feeling for his face, yowling, muffled, choked. Jo looks up at the lanky guy, at her fist in his hand, his warm-up jacket fluttering, blowing out as he exhales, sucked flat against his chest as he inhales, rasping, ragged. He squeezes.
Jo yanks harder eyes frantic her fist not moving kicking his shin and his knee and it twangs bent by her shoe. He grunts. The man in the coveralls crotch clanking plants his foot grabbing her jacket yanking it to one side swaying with the train his other hand wrapping under Jo’s chin fingers denting her cheek smearing blood thumb along her jaw pushing up and back. “You, you will,” he says, fighting for breath, “Fuck. You.” The lights flicker. “Fuck you.” The lights go out and the train shakes a wallow ripples its length squealing monstrously and they all fall Jo suddenly free, briefcase tumbling away down the car as the train judders slowing, squalling, stopping.
“On the wall,” says Ysabel, bent over clutching the handrail. She laughs, a little gasping burst. It’s gone quiet.
“Jesus,” says Jo, in the shadows.
“Jo?” says Ysabel. “Jo!”
On her shoulder and elbow and knees cheek to the floor in the accordioned joint in the middle of the car Jo says “Fucking hell.”
“I found it,” says Ysabel, “I did it. I found it.”
“Yeah,” says Jo, sitting back on her heels. Blood streaks her reddened face, a handprint smeared along her cheek. There’s no one else in the car.
In the darkness by the sink a dishtowel’s laid flat. On the towel a small plate, a slender knife, a glass set upside down. Out in the main room on the glass-topped café table a spill of smooth clean pebbles, a scatter of dead leaves. A key rattles in the lock. Jo limps in shrugging a shoulder out of her sodden jacket, flicking on the light in the little hallway kitchen. The knife gleams. She shimmies her other arm free and lets the jacket plop to the floor. Heads across the main room stumbling over the black spear-haft stretching away under the table and sinks to her knees by the futon. She falls forward, onto her face, arms flung wide.
“You’re soaking,” says Ysabel. She sets the furled umbrella by the armoire in the corner. Jo says something into the comforter. “You’re on my side of the bed,” says Ysabel. She opens the armoire, squats to tug at a drawer at the bottom. “You’re still bleeding, Jo. Get up.”
The phone rings.
“I should get that?” says Ysabel.
“No,” says Jo. She’s pushed herself up on her elbows, head hung.
“Just let it ring,” says Ysabel.
“Telemarketers,” says Jo. “Windshield repair. Timeshares in Bend.” Her fingertips dotting the blood along the split skin of her swollen cheek. “Gonna leave a hella mark.”
“No,” says Ysabel. “It isn’t. Roll over.” Jo settles on her side. Ysabel sits on the floor beside her. In her hands a clear plastic baggie swollen with dust the color of old clay in this weak light.
“What is that stuff?” says Jo.
“Don’t,” says Ysabel, scooping up a pinch of dust glimmering faintly.
“Don’t what?” says Jo. The phone’s stopped ringing.
“Don’t,” says Ysabel. “Hold still.”
“Don’t hold still?”
“Jo,” says Ysabel. She strokes Jo’s cut cheek and again, the darkening bruise, the skin puffed under her eye, glittering her face with gold dust. “You could have been killed,” says Ysabel. Jo snorts. “Don’t,” says Ysabel. She taps dust from her fingertips back into the baggie. Jo says “What are you,” and then she says “Come on.”
“They were going to kill you,” says Ysabel, twisting the baggie shut.
“How?” says Jo. She sits up abruptly, swinging her feet off the futon. Ysabel leans out of her way, shifting to climb to her feet, but Jo grabs her wrist. “How the hell were they gonna do that?”
“Don’t,” says Ysabel.
“Huh?” says Jo. “I mean, with what? That briefcase?”
“That hurts,” says Ysabel.
Jo lets go. “Roland had a goddamn sword,” she says. “He shoved a goddamn sword through me. Right here.” She taps her chest.
“We can’t hurt you,” says Ysabel. “People like me. Is that what you think?” She sets the baggie on the floor by her knee. “I,” says Jo, but Ysabel’s saying, “You were in Robin Goodfellow’s house when Roland struck you with a borrowed blade. You were brought to my Gammer and her potions within the hour. If any of that had been otherwise, you’d never have come back.”
“Come– back?” says Jo.
“People like me,” says Ysabel. “You don’t know what they were. I don’t know. Monsters? Vengeful spirits? Men, like you, ensorcelled?”
“They weren’t like,” says Jo.
“You don’t know!” snaps Ysabel.
“Well how the fuck am I supposed to find out if you blow me off every time I ask a question?”
“I don’t,” says Ysabel, and then she says, “You don’t ask questions, Jo. You demand answers.”
“Rah!” yells Jo, leaping to her feet. Stepping past Ysabel, over the spear-haft. Stopping in the little hallway kitchen. Head down, she touches her cheek unswollen, the bruise faded, the gash an angry red line. “What’s it called?” she says, her voice low. “The powder stuff. The glitter.”
“Owr,” says Ysabel.
“Our what?” says Jo.
Ysabel stands. “Owr. Just owr.”
Jo turns to face her, one hand squeezing into a fist, opening flat again. “And those guys. If I hadn’t leaped in like that, what were they gonna do to us?”
“I don’t know,” says Ysabel.
“Yeah, you do,” says Jo. “I’m supposed to protect you, right? Keep you safe? That’s what I swore to do, three weeks ago.”
“Jo, you’ve kept me, as you should, warm, and dry, and fed.”
“So you’re a cat now?” Jo reaches out for Ysabel’s hand. “You don’t have to,” says Ysabel. “I said yes, and I mean it,” says Jo. “I’m all in. I will not let you down.”
“But you mustn’t die,” says Ysabel.
“Ain’t planning on it,” says Jo.
Ysabel closes her eyes at that. “All right then,” she says. She opens her eyes. Smiles just a little. Tips her head to kiss Jo’s cheek, lightly, where the cut had been.
Becker’s running his hand through what little of his hair is left. “Hey,” he says as Jo walks past his desk. “You talked to Guthrie.”
“Not since, what, a couple days ago,” says Jo. “Last time he was here. Why?”
“No, I mean, you talked to Guthrie,” says Becker. “He said he wasn’t feeling well. Right? Said that’s why he hasn’t been in.”
“I, uh,” says Jo. Ysabel, standing behind her, frowns. A bald man pushes past them, a crumb of lipstick at the corner of his mouth, his eyes raccooned by blurry eyeshadow.
“You see him again the next day or so,” says Becker, “tell him we mailed his check.”
“Okay,” says Jo.
“That’s it,” says Becker, eyes on his computer monitor. “Best find yourself a phone.” He’s typing something.
“Yeah,” says Jo. She moves past Becker’s desk into the narrow office full of people taking seats before kelly green carrels, a couple dozen of them set up on long folding tables against the walls. She grabs a chair next to Crecy, who’s stuffing a tapestry bag into the space between carrel wall and computer monitor, headset already cramping her curly coppery hair.
“What was that about?” says Ysabel, sitting in the chair next to Jo’s.
“Three days,” says Jo.
“What?”
“All right, listen up,” says Becker. He’s leaning back in his chair, looking around his monitor to take them all in. “Yes, we’re almost done with our monthly round of Pet Depot. And no, we don’t have anything in the pipeline to replace it. That doesn’t mean you can take it slow and drag it out. Maybe we’ve got nothing today, but maybe they land something tomorrow, and I’ll pick my team based on the numbers. So you want to keep your numbers up. I know Sales is working on some business-to-business possibilities, which means small crews and day shifts. Okay? And maybe there’s a political thing.” He shrugs. “Phones are live. Clock is ticking. Let’s go.”
Rattle of fingers on keys, clatter of handsets pulled from phones. “What’s three days?” says Ysabel, adjusting the mike of her headset.
“Good evening, ma’am,” says Crecy into her mike. “I’m calling from Barshefsky Associates, an independent market research firm. Is Sara Ryan available?”
“Since Guthrie’s showed for a shift,” says Jo, bringing up her survey database on the computer. “If he hasn’t called in, on the third shift you’re fired. Pretty much automatically.” She flashes a grin at Ysabel. “He’s covering for him.”
“Actually,” says Ysabel, looking up past Jo, “he’s waving at us.”
Jo leans back, looks past her carrel. Becker at his desk one hand holding a phone to his ear is pointing at them, two fingers waggling then crooked, beckoning.
“Huh,” says Jo. “We haven’t been here long enough to screw up.”
He’s standing between the two leather armchairs under the large copper letters on the wall that say Barshefsky Associates: Quality Assured. He’s tall, his suit is black with shiny elbows. His face narrow and somber under extravagant gin blossoms that apple his nose and sunken cheeks. To one side of the lobby a door opens on a wash of questioning voices and clacking keys. He turns, nods. “Princess,” he says.
“Oh,” says Jo.
“Hello,” says Ysabel.
“Your mother,” he says, and he sniffs. Shudders suddenly. “The Queen has sent me to ask that you join her for dinner.”
“Dinner,” says Jo. Ysabel puts a hand on her arm. “Dinner?” she says.
“A car will be by for you at seven o’clock,” he says. “Now. If you’ll excuse me…” He nods, once, his chin dipping between the upright points of his stiff white collar, and turns to leave. He stops before the glass doors leading out of the lobby, looking them up and down before reaching out hesitantly to push the crash bar.
“The Queen,” says Jo.
“Yes,” says Ysabel. “We’d better go get ready.”
“Go?” says Jo, rounding on Ysabel. “It’s only just past three. We haven’t even made a phone call yet.”
“I know. It leaves us barely enough time to do something about your hair.”
Jo scowls, jams her hands in her pockets. “The fuck are we gonna tell Becker?”
“What else?” says Ysabel brightly. “You feel like shit.”
It’s a dark cave of a garage, most of the bay doors closed against the rain. Fluorescent lights aren’t doing much from the ceiling. Racked drawers of tools and parts stand here and there, a red metal stool, by a column a tall still fan, its cage long gone. A single radiator stands upright on a couple of bricks. By a workbench in the back a pilot light fitfully licks the air.
“Anvil!”
The Duke stands in the soft grey light falling through the open bay door. He’s leaning on a wooden cane, his fingers clutching the stern, rough-hewn hawk at its head. He’s looking down at the radiator standing upright on the bricks before him, a coil of wire looped carelessly about it on the stained floor. His coat is long and camel-colored, his hat a derby, reddish-brown.
“There’s nobody here,” says the woman in the tight blue jeans. She’s standing to one side, out of the rain, arms crossed, shoulders hunched in her brown bomber jacket. The Duke looks up, toward the back of the garage. “Anvil!” he calls again. “Pyrocles! We have business!” He raps his cane against the floor.
At the back of the garage up and to one side there’s windows in the concrete wall, a metal staircase bolted beneath them up to a blue metal door. Warm lights shine through the grime and stacks of binders and paper can just be made out through the glass. The door opens and a big man steps out onto the top step, leaning against the railing, head ducked up there under the rough concrete ceiling. “Your grace,” he says. He has long grey mustaches and he wears blue coveralls over a faded pink T-shirt.
“Where is everybody?” says the Duke.
“It’s Sunday,” says Pyrocles.
“So?”
Pyrocles shrugs, coming down the stairs that creak with every deliberate step. “What do you need, your grace?”
“How’s your, ah, how’s your back? No hard feelings, I hope?”
“Why should there be, your grace? Orlando isn’t your man.”
“Of course not,” says the Duke, smiling. “I need a sword, Anvil.”
Pyrocles stops, there at the bottom of the stairs. Perched on his forehead a delicate pair of glasses, silvery, the lenses small half-moons. He pulls them down and cleans them with a rag from his pocket. “You should go to Hawthorne Cutlery,” he says, settling the glasses on his face. “I can put an edge on one of the replicas for you.” He pushes them up the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “It won’t hold for very long, your grace, but it’ll look nice enough.” The Duke’s shaking his head. “I need a sword,” he says. “A new sword forged by hand with someone very particular in mind.”
“Whom?” says Pyrocles.
“Jo Gallowglas,” says the Duke. “I believe you’ve met her?”
Pyrocles looks down, his mustaches drooping about his pursed lips. “No one’s ever given a sword to a gallowglas before.”
“I know! I’ll be the first. Ain’t that a kick in the shorts?” The Duke takes a couple of limping steps toward Pyrocles. “I mean, technically I guess I’ll be giving it to the Queen, and she’ll whack Jo on either shoulder, bang bang, and then she’ll be the first ever to give a sword to a gallowglas, but hey. I’ll’ve done my part.”
“The Queen means to knight a gallowglas?” says Pyrocles.
“Whether she will or no,” says the Duke.
Pyrocles takes off his spectacles, rubs his nose with dirty fingers. “Your grace,” he says, shaking his head, “I, ah, I don’t think–”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” bellows the Duke. “What does a fellow have to do in this town to be trusted?”
“Don’t you see?” A lock of black hair falls to the white tile floor. “She’s going to recognize you. Keep your eyes closed.”
“Which is why you’re cutting my hair,” mutters Jo.
“You were starting to look bedraggled,” says Ysabel.
“Stop trying to talk me into this,” says Jo. “I’m here.”
“And your roots are making everything look so muddy.”
“Do it already,” says Jo. Scissors whick and flash, and another lock falls. “It’s just dinner with your mother. I don’t get what’s–”
“There is no just dinner with my mother.” Another lock, and another. “She hasn’t let me set foot, she hasn’t seen me in three weeks.”
“I know,” says Jo, quietly.
“Don’t blame yourself.” Whick-wick. “It’s not your fault you are what you are. It isn’t my mother’s fault she’s a hidebound reactionary prig.” The scissors hang there a moment. “Go on,” says Ysabel. “I didn’t,” says Jo. “Eyes closed,” says Ysabel. “She’s asked me to come to her now, knowing you’ll come with me, as you still have my keeping. She’ll recognize you, she has to. You’ll be there. I think this is about something more.”
“Something more than her saying oh, hey, how’s it going, Jo?”
“I think she’s going to announce your knighthood. We’re not done yet!”
“Knighthood,” says Jo, eyes wide under her closed eyelids. “Like, knight in shining armor hood. Like I’m gonna be Sir Jo.”
“You’ll be the Gallowglas,” says Ysabel.
“I thought that was already the problem.”
“You’ll be a knight in her service, a member of her house. My house. I can finally go home, Jo, because you’ll finally be able to come with me. You’ll never have to make a spam call ever again.”
“This is,” says Jo, “I don’t, this is all coming out of nowhere.”
“You saved me last night.”
“Oh.” Out in the main room of the apartment the phone rings. “But,” says Jo. “I’ll get it,” says Ysabel, stepping out of the bathroom. “You wouldn’t have been there in the first place if I hadn’t,” says Jo, and then, “Ysabel! Don’t answer–”
Scissors whick. The last lock of black hair falls to the floor. Jo opens her eyes. There in the mirror over the sink a man standing behind her, short, peering over Jo’s shoulder frozen, eyes black in sun-darkened cheeks blotted with black freckles. “Hello,” says Ysabel, out in the apartment. Silver scissor rings cruelly jammed over a wide flat thumb and a thick index finger. “The phone,” says Jo. The scissors fall to the floor. The mirror’s empty.
“The fuck?” says Jo.
The sky above still filled with soft grey light that does not seep down here among the trees. Stalking up the path she’s heedless of the buckled pavement, past a green-doored mausoleum, brick crumbling through cracked stucco wrapped in rickety chain-link fence. Her long brown coat unbelted hanging open. Reliable, says the rusted sign hanging from the corner post. Fence and Construction. Her short hair gunmetal grey. Up at the top of the hill he’s sitting on a low stone wall, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “Dagger,” she says.
He looks up. “Not since last night,” he says, lifting a hand from his pocket. “I swear I could feel it,” spreading his fingers suddenly, a burst, “when they took salt and bread and fire from me.” He puts his hand back in his pocket. “I would have thought the whole city could feel it.”
“Sidney,” she says. Looking away, one hand before her face.
“Just Sidney,” he says. “Did you bring it? The fiat?” She doesn’t say anything. “Like I asked?” he says. Across the path a grave lies buried under fallen flowers, legs of a tumbled tripod jutting up to one side, a banner that says Our Beloved trailing in the dirt. Past it another grave, headstone dark, a silvery photograph etched in the polished stone, a couple of mirrored balls purple and green, pinwheels stuck in the grass before them. An unopened bottle of orange soda. “I can’t stay here,” he says. “Just sitting here on this wall. I can’t. I need a ticket. For a bus, a train, a plane, whatever, I need a ticket. I need fiat for the ticket. Did you bring it?”
She’s lowered her hand. “How long,” she says, still looking away, “have we known each other?”
“You’re angry,” he says, flatly.
“How long, Sidney?”
He says, “A night and a day.”
“A night and a,” she says. “All that, and you.”
“I can’t stay, Helm.” He shifts, his feet crunching gravel at the edge of the path.
“No,” she says, “you can’t. Set one foot out of this cemetery in any of the days to come and the Count’s men and the Duke’s men will cut your belt and snap your spurs and break your sword. If you can find it. No,” she says, reaching for something in the pocket of her long brown coat, “you can’t stay. But you can’t leave, Sidney.” She tosses something to the ground before him. “You can’t leave.”
Sidney stands, looking down. “What is that,” he says. A knife, unsheathed, hilt wrapped in brown leather, long blade with a single edge, there between his feet. “A joke?”
“Pick it up,” says the Helm.
“It isn’t funny,” says Sidney.
“Pick it up,” says the Helm. In her hand a sword, short and broad, a battered round guard rattling loosely above the hilt. “You’re not getting on a bus, you’re not getting on a train, you’re not climbing into any tin can. You aren’t sailing down the river to the sea. Pick it up, Sidney. You aren’t leaving.”
“Helm,” he says.
“You didn’t tell me,” she says.
“You said not to tell you what I would do.”
“You didn’t tell me what you were doing, Sidney.”
“And you said you wouldn’t tell me not to do it.”
“I didn’t know what it was!”
“That isn’t,” says Sidney, and “I,” and then he shuts his mouth. He kneels slowly. “You can’t,” he says, “you can’t strike me here.” He doesn’t reach for the knife. “Cemeteries and churches. The Axe,” he says, “broke her oath–”
“You tried to destroy her,” says the Helm.
“So you’ll destroy me?” he says. “I don’t see a gallowglas.”
“Who sleeps in the ground all about us?” She shifts, her sword held back, the skirts of her long brown coat wound about her left arm low before her. “Let’s see what happens.”
“The Axe,” he says, his hand over the knife, “broke her oath–”
“It’s not your place to judge,” she says, and steps into a low-slung cut at his arm as he snatches the knife and springs back, blade up before his face. “To the King Come Back!” he says. “Her oath!”
“You don’t make that call!”
“Someone has to!” He catches her blade with the knife a bang scraping as he pushes back both hands on the hilt. “Someone has to prove we’re not all carpet knights and popinjays!”
“Then prove it.” She cuts at his arms, his head, him scuttling back, ducking, swinging the knife in jagged chops she bats aside with her swaddled arm. She lunges thrusting just wide of him as he twists and lunges in turn. They stand still a moment held close, face almost to face. “Linesse,” he says. She steps back, the knife jammed in her left shoulder. She lets her sword fall to the grass. Someone away down the path laughs. “What have you done?” says Sidney.
“It’s what you’ve done,” says the Helm. “Struck me, on her ground. She doesn’t like that.”
“You did this on purpose,” says Sidney. There’s a flash of light, blue-white, everything about them lit up for an instant, limned by crisp black shadows.
“You aren’t staying,” says the Helm. “You aren’t leaving. You aren’t going to embarrass us.” She yanks the knife free, grimacing. “Go on,” she says, dropping it at his feet. “You’re hers now.” Sidney turns, and the woman standing behind him throws wide her arms. In one hand a gnarled grey stick, smooth and dull as driftwood, its tip a blue-white spark too bright to look upon. He steps back but his arm is caught, his hand already sunk in the tatters of her black cloak lofting in the sudden wind. She laughs again and his eyes go wide his mouth opens as she folds her arms about him and the wind dies. He is gone.
One hand to her shoulder the Helm kneels, grunting, peering about at the grass. “I,” she says, “I can’t–”
“It’s not the shed I mind,” says the woman. Holding her cloak shut with her free hand at her throat. The tip of her gnarled grey stick still lit up blue and bright. “Of blood nor honey. What’s another spill?” She smiles. The Helm still on her knees. “Such a cruel trick to have played on that young man.”
“Ma’am,” says the Helm. “I mean no disrespect, but I can’t find my sword.”
“He was betrayed, little knight,” says the woman, “and betrayal must needs have a traitor. It’s that I mind.”
“Lady,” says the Helm, climbing slowly to her feet.
“Do not fret.” The woman spreads her arms once more. “Such work I have for you! You’ll both be kept quite busy.”
“Of course I wasn’t going to do it myself,” says Ysabel. The taxi starts then lurches to a stop as a woman under a clear umbrella dashes across the street before them. “Farging pedestrians,” mutters the driver.
“You could have said, is all,” says Jo. “Before.”
“You could have asked,” says Ysabel. “Or haven’t you noticed you haven’t had to do laundry in weeks? You didn’t thank him, did you?” She glares at Jo. “Or ask his name?”
“The mystery man in my mirror?” says Jo. “I was too busy being shocked. You have to tell me these things–”
“How about your mother? How about if you’d said something about that?”
“I told you not to answer the phone,” says Jo.
“Because of spam!”
“Ladies,” the driver’s saying.
“Can we worry about your mother instead?” says Jo.
“Ladies, we’re here,” says the driver. The taxi’s pulled up by a loading dock rising dark and green to a black metal railing, tables up there under grey umbrellas. Ysabel’s opened her door. The driver’s reaching over the seat as Jo opens hers. “Four seventy-five,” he says. “Ladies?”
“Oh,” says Jo, half out the door. “He said they’d send a car, I mean–”
“Four seventy-five, miss,” says the driver.
“Here,” says the tall man, coming around the front of the taxi. His suit is black, his face narrow and somber. “Here,” he says. In one white-gloved hand he’s holding out a folded five-dollar bill. Ysabel’s headed up the steps of the loading dock. A round clock hangs there, blue hands lit up by white neon. Jo takes the bill and shaking her head reaches down to the top of her boot and plucks out a small wad of money clamped in a medium-sized binder clip. She tugs free a couple of ones and hands them with the crisp five to the driver. “Miss,” he says. A boy in a blue and white rainshell at a valet stand by the steps, eyeing a yellow SUV rolling up in the rain. Laughter from a knot of people around one of the tables, ruddy in the glow of heat lamps. None of them Ysabel. “Inside,” says the tall man, gesturing with a hand now bare. The taxi’s nosing around the SUV into the street.
Inside candlelit tables with low brown chairs curtained here and there by gauzy grey-brown drapes hung from thick white beams. The floor well-worn, painted white. “Perry party?” says the woman by the hostess stand. “Your table’s not quite ready, but if you’d like to wait in the bar?” Behind her a low dark room walled here and there by more drapes, lit by a wall of liquor bottles, white light shining through caramel and red, green and yellow, orange and cold clear nothing. A synthesizer chirps under a loop of boys chanting oh, oh ah oh. Ysabel there in her long-sleeved minidress shining silver and white, a drink already in her hand. A drumbeat perking under the music opens into a blare of guitar like a jet engine. Oh but we go out at night, chant the boys. Ysabel laughs. The man next to her smiling, saying something else. White dreadlocks brush the shoulders of his blue seersucker suit. Roland sits there, hunched over a table head in his hands headphones over his ears. Ignoring the man leaning over him, red hair bobbing. Marfisa by the bar, her coatdress pale and blue. “Take your coat?” says the Duke.
Jo shakes her head, hands in pockets pulling her army green jacket closed. “How’s your leg?” she asks.
He lurches back, leaning heavily on his wooden cane. “Lends a certain gravitas, don’t you think?”
“He said dinner,” says Jo. “I wasn’t expecting a normal, you know, restaurant. A normal, fancy restaurant.”
“The Queen may take you into her house,” says the Duke, “but she’ll never let you in her home. What’s with the crest?” He’s pointing at her shirt, bright yellow, a squirrel posed with an acorn as if stiff-arming through a defensive line. “Not hound, nor hawk, nor hive,” he says, “Not hare, hind, or hollow. But squirrel.”
“Ysabel said wear something yellow,” says Jo, looking around. Marfisa’s pushed away from the bar, headed toward the back of the restaurant. “Where’d she go? I should–”
“We’re all friends here,” says the Duke, his hand on her arm. “Let me buy you a drink. They make a Manhattan where they rinse the glass with port. It’s,” he kisses his fingertips. “What do you say?”
“It’s not much,” says Marfisa in Ysabel’s ear.
“I still have so much left,” says Ysabel. A faint lip print left on Marfisa’s throat. In her palm by Marfisa’s hip a small clear plastic bag, a thimbleful of gold dust sparkling. “You’re too generous.” Dark hair against curls the color of clotted cream. “You should leave something for yourself.” Another kiss on her cheek, her mouth. Ysabel’s other hand working a button loose on Marfisa’s coatdress, and another. All those beautiful boys, flutes a voice over unseen speakers. Tattoos of ships and tattoos of tears.
“Lady,” says Marfisa. Shaking her head away. “We can’t.” Stepping back against the corner of the bathroom stall. Ysabel’s hand falling away. “Can’t?” she says. “That word doesn’t work. Not here. Not with me.”
“They’re all out there,” says Marfisa. “My brother–”
“And they have no idea,” says Ysabel, pulling Marfisa back. Kissing her and kissing her again. “My mother’s,” she says, “always late.” Loosing another button above Marfisa’s knees, and another.
“Roland,” says Marfisa.
“Roland is a dolt,” says Ysabel.
“Roland saw.”
“Saw what?” says Ysabel, leaning back in Marfisa’s arms, looking up at her.
“Us, lady. The night of the hunt, when we. Stopped playing games. He said as much. He told me–”
“What did he tell you,” says Ysabel.
Marfisa takes one hand from the small of Ysabel’s back to brush her fingertips along Ysabel’s cheek. “I love you, Princess,” she says. “Beyond all reason. But that’s on me only. You are promised to the King–” Ysabel jerks free from her grasp. “Lady, listen, please, you are promised–” Ysabel’s thrown the bolt on the stall door, shoved it open and out into the restroom. Aged eighty-seven, a woman’s singing from the unseen speakers. Could justifiably be called the last to go up to Surrealist heaven.
“You’ve decided then,” says Ysabel, her back to Marfisa. Baggie of dust in one clenched fist.
“I have no choice,” says Marfisa.
“Yes, you do,” says Ysabel. “I’m giving it to you. Marfisa. Please.”
“Roland will–”
“Roland!” Ysabel spins around, glaring. “Of course!”
“What do you–”
“I said of course he saw us! How else was I going to get you to leave me alone?” Ysabel steps over to the sinks. “Like some six-foot fucking puppy dog I swear.” Sets the bagging on the counter and runs cold water over her hands. “Go box up your mouth and your hands and your heart in your room, Axe. You’ll be perfectly safe. He’s very discreet, he won’t say a word. Watch it all from your window, Axe. I am going home.” She splashes her face with water, yanks paper towels from the dispenser to blot it dry. “My mother will take Jo as a knight and she will come home with me and she will never tell me I am promised to anyone.” Marfisa isn’t looking at her, hasn’t moved. “I will have everything I need,” says Ysabel. “You can rot, Marfisa. Rot safely. I won’t need your pathetic handouts ever again.” Leaning over the sink mashes the baggie against the mirror, mashing until it pops, gold dust clouding her hand, streaking the mirror, glass darkening, creaking, a crack chasing through it suddenly to the edge. Dust settling on the counter, blackening where it hits the water puddled about the sink. Ysabel turns to go. Marfisa’s lifting her hands to her mouth. Deep in her throat a rough-edged keening, almost a growl.
Laughing Jo comes down the stairs, her boots, her kilt, her yellow T-shirt. Her jacket’s gone. The Duke a few steps behind her. “Hand to heart,” he says.
“And then he?” says Jo.
“Right over the edge,” says the Duke. “I lost count after the fifth bounce.” Jo’s laughing harder, stumbling over the last step, one arm out liquor sloshing from her cocktail glass. “Whoa,” says the Duke, catching her other hand. “Oh,” says Jo, looking about. It’s a close room, long enough for the table running down the center of it draped in white cloth, lined with wineglasses licked by candlelight. Leather banquettes along one wall behind a row of shorter tables. The other’s racked with wine bottles floor to ceiling, thousands of them, flickering black-green and honey-green and deep blood brown. Ysabel sits in a straight brown chair, elbows on the table, chin on her hands, one hand wrapped in a white napkin. Candlelight spangles the silver sewn into her dress. Her eyes are hidden behind her hair. Across the table an old man in a soft blue suit, ivory hair a wild crown about his pink head bobbing. There at the head a young man in blue seersucker, his white dreadlocks touched with gold, smiling and saying something to an older man in a crisp white shirt and a white apron brushing his shoe-tops. “Gallowglas,” says Roland. His jacket checked with green and black. His hand on the back of the straight brown chair by Ysabel.
“Such an ugly word,” says the Duke, letting go of Jo’s hand.
“Truth is frequently ugly, your grace,” says Roland.
“Truth is a process, boy,” says the Duke, limping into the room. His high-buttoned vest of deep red suede with a pinstriped back. “Not our fault it turns to shit in your hands. You’ll want to sit next to the Princess,” he says to Jo.
“Boy?” says Roland.
“Privileges of rank,” says the Duke airily. Jo’s pulling out a chair next to Ysabel. “You okay?” she says, softly.
Ysabel looks up from the napkin wrapped about her fist. “I’m fine,” she says. “Why would you ask?”
“I don’t know,” says Jo. “I just thought–”
“Roasted beets!” blares the old man. “Red and gold with arugula and spinach and the first blood oranges of the year. Virgin olive oil from a cold first press and cracked pepper– not ground– a sherry vinegar, and sea salt smoked over an alderwood fire. Alder!” He bangs the table with a fist surprisingly large for such a skinny arm. “I will know if it’s not. And the risotto, with the heirloom squash and the wild mushrooms. They were picked this morning?” He’s suddenly querulous, looking about at the rest of them. “With the shallots?”
“We ordering?” says the Duke, sitting a couple of places down from the old man.
The waiter in his apron carefully unsmiling inclines his head, a nod and a shrug at once. “We have a succotash,” he starts to say.
“Surprise me,” says the Duke. “Agravante! Have you met Jo Gallowglas, who saved our Princess from a fate most foul?”
“His usual, yes,” the man in the blue seersucker’s saying. “I’d quite like the risotto myself, and the twenty greens salad. I hadn’t,” he says as he heads toward Jo, hand outstretched, “had the honor, not in person, though of course I saw you at the Duke’s Equinox hunt. Agravante.” Jo half-stands, shakes his hand. “The Axehandle.”
“Marfisa’s brother,” says Jo.
“The very same,” says Agravante.
“The risotto,” says Ysabel. “It’s not an heirloom,” the waiter starts to say, and she says, “That’s fine.” He turns to Jo.
“Are we it? Do you know what you want?” she says to Roland.
“The onion salad,” he says.
“I mean, I thought there was more of us or something, I guess. More of you. The party, I mean.”
“You would choose who sits at our table, Miss Maguire?” says the Queen, standing at the bottom of the stairs dressed all in black. The Duke smiles. Ysabel’s unwinding the napkin from her fist. “No, ma’am,” says Jo, “majesty, I, um. Ma’am. I’ve just never been to a dinner party in a fancy restaurant with a queen before. I don’t know the protocol.”
“One could never tell,” says the Queen. She’s come around to the head of the table. “Do you know what you’d like?” she says, sitting.
“The, um,” says Jo, looking up at the waiter, “steak? The New York whatsis, with the, um.” The waiter is not nodding. He isn’t smiling. The Duke’s looking at an empty wineglass at the end of the table. Ysabel’s wrapped the napkin around the fingers of both her hands. The old man’s glaring at Jo, one fat fist trembling over his plate, and the Queen’s smiling to herself.
“The succotash, perhaps?” says the waiter.
“Sure,” says Jo. “The succotash.”
“I’d like that as well,” says the Queen. Bang! Cutlery rattles and glasses chime. “You bring it with you wherever you go, girl,” snarls the old man, and he bangs the table again with his fist. “Blood, and death–”
“Enough, Frederic,” says the Queen. He lowers his fist, spreads it open on the table, fingers bent and trembling. “Unless a dinner’s an affair of state, Miss Maguire, we prefer them to be small, and intimate. We’d asked our vassals each to bring but one guest, much as our daughter would, much as we have our Chariot. The Count, of course, has brought his grandson. The Duke, however..?”
“My Helm, it seems, is otherwise engaged,” says the Duke.
“Perhaps she seeks your Dagger?” says the Queen. “No matter. But though this is a small and intimate dinner, there’s still business to conduct before the bread. The Duke has sought through honesty what he could not accomplish through guile: he has openly asked you be knighted in honor of the service you did us last night.”
“But not formally petitioned,” says the Duke.
“Why so modest, Leo?” says the Queen. He shrugs. “Have you anything to say to this news, Miss Maguire?”
“What I did, ma’am,” says Jo, “I didn’t do for any reward, or honor. We were being attacked. I’m not just going to let that happen.”
“Perhaps you’ll listen, then, when told our sister’s demesne is not to be trifled with? No matter. We have decided to grant the Duke’s request. However informal.”
Ysabel lets out a breath she’d been holding. The Count curls his hand into a fist again. The Duke sips from his cocktail. Agravante frowns. Roland sits quite still with his hands in his lap.
“We shall create you a knight banneret, Jo Maguire, at the Samani at the end of this month.”
“Banneret?” says Jo.
“A great honor,” says the Duke, frowning. Setting down his cocktail glass. “A very great honor,” says Agravante. He isn’t frowning. Ysabel’s tightened her grip on the napkin.
“I’m sorry,” says Jo, “but what’s it mean?”
“You may fight under your own device,” says Agravante. “The squirrel,” says the Duke. The Count’s sitting back in his chair, fist falling open. “Responsible to no one,” says Agravante. “Like the Mooncalfe. But no one’s responsible for you, either. Still: mortals have no need of owr, and three weeks without seem to have done the Princess little harm.” Ysabel scrapes back her chair and drops her napkin on her plate. Jo puts her hand on Ysabel’s. “Is something wrong?” she says.
“Of course not,” says Ysabel.
“Isn’t this what you said would happen?”
“I said–” says Ysabel. “I want to go–” She stands. “Wash my face. Let go. Please.”
“I meant it. I’d take that chance.”
“Jo.”
“Have someone fight me. If that’s what it takes to set this right. I’d–”
Agravante’s laughing. Ysabel’s yanked her hand free. She’s walking away, down the length of the long white table.
“What happened?” says Jo.
“No one will challenge you,” says Roland, quietly. “If there’s a hint you’d lose deliberately.”
“You said yes, Gallowglas,” says the Queen.
“I cannot have her in my house,” says the Queen, quietly. Ysabel does not turn to face her. Across the bar Jo’s handing a ticket to the hostess. “Doing such an honor to a gallowglas when lackeys are dying and knights being run out of town is– unthinkable.” The Queen puts her hand on Ysabel’s shoulder. “Who was bringing the owr to you? The Axe?” Ysabel jerks at that. “Did you think I was blind, child?” says the Queen. “Did you think I cared?”
“I will be Queen, mother,” says Ysabel.
“One day, yes,” says the Queen.
“Soon,” says Ysabel. “I’ve seen it. And she will be at my side.” The hostess is handing Jo her army green coat. “She’s so much stronger than you know.”
“Poor Erymathos,” says the Queen, lifting her hand from Ysabel’s shoulder. “I’ve seen things as well,” she says. She leans close, and murmurs in Ysabel’s ear. “You will not be the one to break her heart.”
“Here,” says Jo, holding her jacket out to Ysabel.
“Why?” says Ysabel.
“Unless you’ve got cash for a cab, we’re walking. And you don’t have a coat. And neither of us has an umbrella. But hey.” She holds up a white paper bag. “At least we’ve got lots of risotto for lunch.”
“You’ll freeze,” says Ysabel, taking the jacket.
“So let’s hustle,” says Jo. “It’s maybe a mile. Come on.” She turns to go.
“Happy birthday, Jo,” says Ysabel, settling into the jacket.
“What?” says Jo, scowling.
“It’s what your mother said. On the phone. Tell her happy birthday for me.”
“I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, I didn’t know, and I thought I should say something. When was it?”
“Yesterday,” says Jo, still scowling. “The first.”
“Happy birthday, then,” says Ysabel.
“What happened?” says Jo. “I was supposed to be knighted, or whatever, and I’m gonna be, and that’s suddenly like the worst thing in the world?”
“Nothing happened, Jo,” says Ysabel. “Nothing changed. Nothing at all.”
“I Need a Life,” written by Born Ruffians, remixed by Four Tet, ©2007 Warp Records. “Beautiful Boyz,” written by Bianca and Sierra Casady, copyright holder unknown. “Leonor,” written by Katell Keinig, ©1997 Warner Chappell (BMI).
Sitting on the banks of the sea, sings the radio. She had a forty-four strapped around her body, and a banjo on her knee. He shuts off the engine. The radio goes silent.
He’s a big man, fussing about the back of the pickup truck. His raincoat blue, hood up, shining slick in the weird dim morning light. He comes up with a pair of grey workgloves and tugs them on. Rain trickles from his hood as he leans into the truck again. Long grey mustaches droop to either side of his flat mouth. He comes up with some brightly colored bungee cords and an armload of canvas sack.
The building over across the street is a long warehouse, a grey corrugated metal wall interrupted here and there by garage doors. Big letters in flaking paint say Bushnell Warehouse, Corp. over the doors. Down at the end there’s a slice of parking lot, a flatbed trailer with a load of rebar. He stands there a moment by a telephone pole, looking over the trailer. The rebar’s long and straight and black, piled neatly and wrapped in clear rain-beaded plastic. Raindrops splat on his hood. There’s a piece of white card nailed up over his head. 5+ Acres, say the sloppy black letters. 55K Lg Down. Another sign nailed to the next pole down the line says the same thing. He heaves the load of sack and cord over one shoulder and walks past the trailer, around the back end. Over past it up against the back wall of the warehouse is a pile of rusting sheet metal, tangles of steel cable, bent and broken rebar jutting at odd angles, streaked with orange and red. He rubs his gloved hands together, his mustaches spread by a small smile.
“Hey,” says a young guy in shapeless green coveralls, up on the concrete steps by the back door to the warehouse. “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?”
The big man straightens up, brushing his knees. “I’m the Anvil,” he says, peering up from under his hood. “Pyrocles. Open Mike around?”
“Who?” says the young guy in green coveralls.
“You go and find Open Mike or Twice Tom. Tell them the Anvil is here.”
“You know Tommy Tom?”
“Yes,” says Pyrocles, squatting back down. “Okay,” says the young guy, opening the back door. Pyrocles is reaching under a corner of the pile to pull at something. Bends down to get both hands under there, wrenching it loose.
The back door jerks open and a short, heavy man in shapeless green coveralls steps out into the rain. “You white-shoe motherfucker,” he says, grinning. “What, come to fill your nose with an honest stink?” He’s wearing a blue meshback cap that says Vanport 15.
“This, this is good. I like it. Can I have it?” Pyrocles doesn’t look up from the long gently curved bar of metal in his lap. He’s stroking it with his gloved hands, worrying at scales of rust, knocking some free with a slap.
“That’s a leaf spring,” says Twice Tom. “From Peabo’s dead Buick, I think. No idea what the hell it’s doing back here.”
“Never went as fast as it wanted,” says Pyrocles. “I’d need to cut it down, but the rust’ll help with that. Also some cable.” He points back over his shoulder, still looking down at the bar. “I can just take a coil instead of trying to cut it here.”
“You got to tell me what you’re doing with it, first,” says Twice Tom, leaning on the metal railing.
“The cable’s just warm-up,” says Pyrocles. “Maybe a couple knives. But this?” He looks up from the bar, his hood falling back to settle on his shoulders. “This I’m making a sword.”
Twice Tom whistles. “And how long has it been since you made one of those?”
“A while,” says Pyrocles, looking down at the bar again. “Quite a while.” Rain shining in his close-cropped grey hair. “But it’s not like I forgot.”
“Darling Corey,” writer unknown, within the public domain.
Slopping two fingers of bourbon into a coffee cup he makes a face, eyes wide, head bobbing, “They fight,” he says, his mouth within his salt-and-pepper Van Dyke twisting around the words. He sets the bottle on the edge of a long table lost under haphazard stacks of books and piles of paper, picks up the cork and jams it home, then picks up the coffee cup and throws back one long swallow. His other hand a metal hook at the end of a beige prosthetic attached just below his elbow. He sets the cup down, snaps off the light.
Past the double doors under a frosted fanlight a wide deep room the far end lost in shadows, one wall lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. She stands in the middle of it threadbare slipper-toe worrying at an X of blue masking tape stuck to the floor, her hair a great crown of tiny braids wound about with colored thread and beads all held up atop her head by a blue silk scarf. A half-dozen kids lined up roughly between her and the mirrors, sweatpants and yoga pants, gym shorts over longjohns, a brown sweater vest over a white T-shirt. She looks up at them, a hank of hair slipping from the scarf and slithering down her shoulder. “They fight,” she says quite loudly.
Over by the doors he snorts. He’s tugging loose with his hook the twine about a bundle of swords.
“Shakespeare was never much of one for stage directions,” she says, “but here we are, at the climax of our play, our Harry and our Hotspur have finally met on the field of battle, and how does the Bard frame the epic action of his climax? ‘They. Fight.’” A murmur of chuckles, someone laughs. He’s clutched the swords in his right arm, pulling the twine free. “So we will need,” she says, “to write our own scene of actions, to complement the words. But.” She holds the moment then, until all of them are still, are looking at her, even the laughing girl in the T-shirt that says Bard with Bite. “The blocking– the choreography– we devise; that’s just as words on paper.” She looks down then at the X, smiling. “Just. You all need to become as adept with a sword as you are with your voice: to know, Shaquina,” to the laughing girl, “how to riposte as surely as you know how to tell him you’ll no longer brook his vanities. To know, Jason,” to the boy in the sweater vest, “not only that you must drive her up and stage left, but how Harry would do it.” She turns then with a magnanimous sweep of her hand introducing him there by the doors. “Vincent Erne has been the fight director for every Serpents Tooth production that’s needed one.”
“Almost every,” he mutters, walking toward the line of kids, swords rattling.
“He’ll train you in stage combat, and work closely with me in blocking the fights, but most importantly he’ll work with each of you to become comfortable with this admittedly strange way to move– with these weapons, on your hips and in your hands.” He’s offering the bouquet of swords still tucked under his arm to them, tapping the bundled hilts with his hook. “Go on,” he says. “Until,” she’s saying, “you know, in your bones, how to move, how to strike, as Harry, as Hotspur, as Falstaff, or the King.”
“Judith is too kind,” he says. “I’ll settle for none of you putting out an eye.” And they laugh, swords in hand, fingering the blunted tips, whipping the swords about, striking poses in the mirrors. “It’s been two hundred and sixty-seven days since our last workplace incident,” he says, and there’s chuckles now instead of laughs, and the swinging stops. “All right. It looks like you all know which end to hold, so we’ll skip straight to lesson two–” One of the double doors creaks open. Judith turns her head sharply, beads clattering. “Excuse me,” she says, “this is a closed rehearsal.”
“I’m sorry,” says Jo Maguire, one hand on the doorknob. “I didn’t have the phone number.” She limps into the room, her short brown hair sleek, her army-green jacket dark with rain. Under her left arm a bundle long and thin, wrapped in towels. “I could come back.”
“Please do,” snaps Judith, not yet turning back to her kids.
“We’re done, you and I,” says Vincent.
“Yeah,” says Jo, “I just, I wanted to talk about–” but Vincent’s started across the room toward her, the doors, the last sword in his hand, toward Ysabel stepping up beside her, pushing back the hood of her yellow slicker, coils of black hair glossy tumbling free, Vincent head ducked dropping to one knee at her feet, Ysabel’s feet, the sword laid to the floor hilt first before her, his hook tucked up in the small of his back.
“Majesty,” he says.
“Highness,” murmurs Ysabel, smiling just.
“Of course,” says Vincent, sitting back on his heel. “Lady.” Looking up at her, the ugly bruise swallowing her eye, the scrape along her cheekbone. “What,” he says, and he swallows, “what happened?”
The sanctuary’s dark. Pink-tinged streetlight leaks through high narrow windows, a false dawn staining white columns that loom over the aisles. Jo’s sitting toward the front slumped down, her mismatched Chuck Taylors black and grubby white propped up on the back of the pew before her. A click of a door latch somewhere in back. A man steps out from the shadows under the white-railed balcony, his hair a shock of pinkish-orange bobbing as he comes down the aisle, his eyes bulging over an uncertain grin. “There you are,” he’s saying. His leather jacket creaks as he folds himself elbows and knees into the pew across from her.
“Just needed to, I don’t know,” says Jo. “I’m such a fucking idiot.” Forehead in her hand, elbow braced on the knee before her. “You’d think I’d’ve figured it out by now. Never go anywhere with her. Not without a fucking army.”
“We could keep waiting,” he says. He’s looking down at the bottle in his hands, green glass dark in the dim light.
“For who, the Duke?” says Jo. “Roland? Anybody’d help us has to get through them out there, same as the Anvil. Might as well wait for her to show up herself, and her goddamn nineteen names.”
“She wouldn’t cross the river,” he says, sloshing the bottle at her.
“What else has she got that would?” says Jo.
He shrugs, unscrews the cap. Swigs. “So don’t wait,” he says, looking up at the ceiling. “He’s under the, the damn bridge.” His eyes slide over in a smile at her. He points back over his shoulder. “Maybe ten blocks or so. You can’t miss it.”
“You’re right,” says Jo. “We won’t.”
“Jesus,” he says. “Christ. It’s not like I’m ducking out on you or anything. I’ll take you there.”
“Last week,” she says, still looking not at him but up at the dark altar, “a two-ton boar took out the east-bound lanes of I-84. Smashed ’em to bits. Can you take me there, too?”
He frowns, looks down at the bottle. “I don’t, I mean, sure, of course–”
“Because maybe he’ll be there under the bridge, and maybe he won’t, you know? I just don’t trust anything where you people are involved.”
“Me people? My people?” He laughs and takes another swig. “Jesus, Jo. Here I am, sitting in a church, drinking gin from the bottle…”
“Is that supposed to make you more like me, or them?” says Jo. “Because there’s a roomful of them in the basement, and Ysabel drinks like a fucking fish.”
“Sure,” he says, “but they aren’t up here in the, the, she does?”
“Yup. The Duke, too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him unloaded.”
“Huh.” Eyes goggling, he grins around snaggled teeth. “Guess there’s a difference between can’t, and don’t usually.” He holds out the bottle. “ You sure you don’t want a taste? Before we take off?” Jo takes it from him. “I mean, if they are me people– if I am like them, and I go out there, you’d know soon enough. One touch from those spooky motherfuckers and I’d be toast.”
“But you’re like me, Ray,” says Jo, “so it’ll be nothing but kisses and love-taps.” She sips, screws up her face. He laughs. “Fucking turpentine,” says Jo.
“Clears the noggin,” says Ray, tapping his temple.
“You’re plenty clear,” says Jo. She hands the bottle back to him. “Let’s go.”
“Okay, okay,” says Ray, climbing wobbly to his feet.
Becker’s waiting in the shadows under the white-railed balcony, arms folded, licks of hair sprung out by his ears, on top of his head. Jo says, “He ready?” as she comes up the aisle toward him. Ray behind her stumbles over a ruck in the carpet.
“Are you?” says Becker. Ray laughs and makes a show of shaking out his left foot, then his right.
“We’ll be fine,” says Jo. “We just have to run. You get downstairs with the Princess.”
“Sure,” says Becker. “She can help me keep Guthrie calm.”
Off away through brick dimly a roar and shrieks, the belling scrape of metal. “There he goes,” says Jo. She puts a hand on Becker’s arm. “Whatever happens,” she says, “whatever happens,” squeezing his arm, “don’t set foot out there. Not till it’s over. He’s gone for sure if you do.”
Ray’s kneeling by the double doors leading outside, one hand on the crash bar. He pushes gently, cracking the right door open. A swarm a flurry a half-dozen bicycles down on the street circling circling, bicycles all painted white, gleaming white smooth and patchy white uneven daubs and once-bright racing stripes and brand names lost under foggy coats of sprayed white paint, white-walled tires and grimy whitened treads, blank white cards tucked ratcheting in spokes, a fluttering train of xeroxed notices on white paper. Dried flowers the only washed-out colors, wired to a whippy pole clamped to the back of a white-taped banana seat, dead green and pale yellow flowers piled in a white-painted handlebar basket, flowers once red and blue draped about this rider’s neck, that rider’s wrists, riders in grey sweatshirts, a hood up here, a grey helmet, a brown helmet there, grey sneakers pumping white pedals as they swoop to peel away left and right, chains and cards clacking, flowers rustling, speeding away to the back of the church.
“It’s working,” says Ray. He stands, lets the door close, claps his hands and rubs them quickly together, tilting his head to one side and the other. Nods.
Jo kicks open the doors.
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, written by William Shakespeare, in the public domain.
He’s a big man straining the shoulders of a dark blue jacket, sitting back in one of the leather armchairs beneath the large copper letters that say Barshefsky Associates: Quality Assured. Long grey mustaches droop to either side of his mouth. He flips over and over in his hands a white business card. When the side door swings open with a sudden wash of questioning voices and clacking keys he climbs to his feet and those mustaches spread around a smile. Becker steps out into the lobby, a big striped shirt unbuttoned over a yellow T-shirt, thin brown hair licked up here and there at the top of his head.
“It’s Becker!” says the big man. “You manage a phone bank.”
“I’m, sorry,” says Becker. “You’re very– Do I know you?”
“Of course,” says the big man. “Pyrocles.”
“Pyrocles,” says Becker. About to nod, he shakes his head slowly instead, his face settling toward a frown. “Is that, what, is that Greek?”
“No, I’m from Vergina, where the Argead ruled. But they have heard of me in Byzantium.”
“Huh. I didn’t know there was a Byzantium left.”
“Goodness,” says Pyrocles. “I certainly hope so.”
“And you’re here because…”
“Oh! Jo Maguire. I need to speak with her. Briefly, of course.”
“Had to be one of those two,” mutters Becker.
“You see, I must examine her hands.”
“Her hands?”
“I’m making,” says Pyrocles, and then he holds up the business card. “Forgive me, is this appropriate? As her sigil?”
“Her what?” The card’s printed with a stylized B, rounded, with furled serifs. “That’s the Barshefsky logo.”
“This is her house, isn’t it?” says Pyrocles, and one of Becker’s frowning eyebrows goes up. “She does work here, doesn’t she?”
“Sure, but she’s not–”
“Oh but I should ask her myself,” says Pyrocles. “Not waste your time like this, I’m sorry.”
“Thing is,” says Becker, “she’s off. Today.”
“Off?”
“Not working. Don’t know where she is, in fact.”
“Oh.”
“Not that I could tell you if I did.”
“I see,” says Pyrocles.
“I mean, it’s not. Regulations. Nothing personal.”
“I wouldn’t think to take it personally.”
“If there’s anything else?”
“No, no, I’ve taken up quite enough of your time–” says Pyrocles, as Becker says “I’ll be sure to let her know, I’m sorry, you were here–”
“I guess I’ll have to come back, then,” says Pyrocles.
“All right,” says Becker. “Whenever. Although– five’s a good time. Weekdays. Usually taking their first break right around then.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Jo sits tailor-fashion midway along a line of bookshelves. By her side a stack of books, old, clothbound, titles written on the spines in white ink, a big flat paperback with a glossy photo cover, a figure in a white outfit anonymous behind a mesh mask foil held up en garde, the tip obscured behind a barcode sticker. A book splayed open in her lap. Her right arm stretched out to one side she looks down its length to her hand, relaxed, palm down. “Pronation,” she says. She rolls her arm over her palm now facing up. “Supination,” she says. Curls her fingers into a loose fist and rolls it back and over again.
“Wouldn’t that be easier with the sword?” says Ysabel, her back to Jo. Idly running her fingers along book-spines.
“I’m sorry,” says Jo. “Did you say something?”
Ysabel tips a book from its place on the shelf with a finger, tips it back. Jo’s still eyeing her fist now moving in a little square, up here, up there, down there, down here. Palm up, palm down.
They come down the wide sweeping stairs into the lobby one after the other, Jo her books stacked in her arms, Ysabel’s long patched denim skirt swaying like a bell, frayed hem brushing the dark stone steps. “You’ll never learn a thing of value, reading those,” she says.
“I know you can’t be talking to me,” says Jo. “What with swearing a mighty oath just this morning never to speak to me again.” She’s headed past the self-serve kiosks to the high dark counter running down one side of the lobby, where she drops her books by a librarian’s flat-screen monitor. “I need to take care of some fines,” she says, pulling a wodge of cards and paper from the pocket of her army-surplus jacket, undoing the purple hair-tie holding it together. She peels a grubby white library card from the middle and hands it over. The librarian scans it and hands it back, not looking away from his screen. “Been awhile,” he says. His hair is sandy, his eyes red-rimmed.
“How much,” says Jo. She’s counting through the bills clamped in a medium-sized binder clip.
“Y’know, you could always give us your email address,” says the librarian.
“How much,” says Jo.
“Because that way we could send you email when your books are due. And you can renew online. Which–”
“Which would be great if I had a computer instead of having to come here to get online, which kinda defeats your whole point. How much. Do I. Owe.”
“Twenty-seven seventy-five,” says the librarian. He starts scanning Jo’s stack of books.
“What,” says Jo sidelong to Ysabel beside her. Hands in the pockets of her skirt leaning back against the counter Ysabel lifts her head a little, pointing with her chin. Jo turns. A short, heavy man in shapeless green coveralls stands by the self-serve kiosks. He isn’t looking at them. He isn’t looking anywhere else. Turning over and over in his hands a blue meshback cap. “Highness,” he says.
“Shit,” says Jo.
“Highness, we’re meeting tonight, and we wonder, our Soames wonders, if you’re willing and able to attend.”
“Attend?” says Jo. “Who the hell are you?”
“Twice Thomas,” he says, and he ducks his head. His thick black hair shines with grease.
“I’d love to,” says Ysabel.
“You have any idea who this guy is?” says Jo.
“I know all my mother’s subjects,” says Ysabel. “And who are we, Twice Thomas?” He looks puzzled. “The we, who’ll be meeting?”
“The Local Two Three Five, lady,” he says.
“Ah,” she says. “The Hare.”
“No, lady, I’d never–”
“Please,” says Ysabel.
“Just a fucking minute,” says Jo.
“You know, Thomas,” says Ysabel, “it would be so much easier if you’d challenge her to a duel.” His laugh’s more of a hiccup. “Ysabel,” says Jo, sharply. Ysabel’s smiling. “She can’t fight, you know. Has to read about it in books. Defeat her, and all her offices are forfeit. There’d be no impediment to my attendance.”
“This is way past being funny,” says Jo.
“You are a glory to behold, lady,” says Twice Thomas, “but my hand’s not fit for the likes of yours.”
“Oh, well said,” says Ysabel. “You see, Jo, he knows his place.”
“I should just let you go,” says Jo. “Fart off where the fuck ever. Get kidnapped again. I’d be done with you.”
“All right,” says Ysabel, and she steps up to Twice Thomas and takes his arm.
“Oh, fuck me,” says Jo.
“Um,” says the librarian. “The, uh, they’re due back the twenty-sixth.”
“Right,” says Jo. She scoops up the stack of books. “I’ll write it down somewhere.” Jo heads off after Ysabel marching away, Twice Thomas stumbling at her side, mouth slack eyes wide at the sight of her hands tucked in the crook of his elbow.
Jo leans back against the long table lost under haphazard stacks of books and piles of paper, wincing, rubbing her hip. “You should sit,” says Ysabel, leaning forward in the office chair to put her hand on Jo’s. Jo shakes her head. “If I’m gonna be a knight,” says says, “I should get used to that whole chivalry thing, right?” The poster on the wall behind her says Gorboduc– Ferrex and Porrex.
“Don’t be an ass,” says Ysabel, squeezing Jo’s hand, sitting back in the chair. The door to the office opens. Vincent’s there in the doorway, the cable running along his prosthetic jerking, the hook snapping open and shut, open and shut. “Well?” he says.
“I need to learn how to fight with a sword,” says Jo.
“Why come to me?”
“Because you know why I need to learn how to fight with a sword.”
Vincent snorts.
“Mr. Erne,” says Ysabel.
“Highness,” he says, “I’d never question your judgment, but–”
“Good,” says Ysabel.
His hook snaps one last time. “Where’s the épée, girl. That piece of shit I gave you.” Jo’s stooping to pick up the long thin bundle, undoing the rubber bands, unwinding the towels. Careful with her left hand, the palm gone red and raw. “Were you trying to keep it dry?”
“Out of sight,” says Jo. “Cops’d jack me for a butter knife in my back pocket.”
Vincent snorts again. “What good is this gonna do you? I told you. You get in a fight with these people, you lose.”
“I’ve done pretty well so far.”
“Have you,” says Vincent. “You lose with a sword in your hand, you die.”
“I know.” Jo balances the sheathed sword tip balanced on the duct-taped toe of her shoe the loose hilt with its dull and battered bell lightly in one hand. The other, raw, distractedly rubs her chest, there where her jacket’s parted over a T-shirt that says Farmers and Mechanics Bank. “But they’re making me one.”
“They are,” says Vincent, flatly. His hand held open at his side, his thin sweater hanging loosely from his shoulders.
“Jo Maguire is to be made a knight,” says Ysabel, leaning back and crossing her stockinged legs, primly careful of her short tweed skirt.
Vincent steps back, his hand on the doorknob. “Come with me,” he says. He nods at the épée. “Bring that.”
Lights flicker to life in the wide deep room, the far end still lost in shadows. Practice swords laid in a serried row on the floor. Vincent stoops to pick one up. “You arrive promptly at eleven o’clock in the morning for an hour or two of instruction, depending on my schedule. Monday through Friday.” Jo, limping, pulls her jacket off, lets it drop to the floor. “You pay me two hundred dollars a month. In advance.”
“Is that how to change your mind,” says Jo, drawing her sword.
“That’s less than ten dollars an hour for me,” says Vincent. “For private instruction. Not exactly lining my wallet.” He slashes the air once, twice, turns to face Jo. Ysabel’s lowering herself to the floor, her back to the mirrors. “Has to cost you something, girl. So you aren’t ever tempted to fuck off and not come in one fine eleven o’clock. Money spent tends to focus the attention.”
“How long does it take?” says Jo. She’s turned her right foot toward him, looking at him over her right shoulder. The tip of her sword touching an X of blue masking tape stuck to the floor.
“How long?”
“To learn how to fight with a sword. The Vincent Erne way. How many months do I have to focus my attention with two hundred bucks?”
“To learn?” He smiles, a sour twist in his salt-and-pepper Van Dyke. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know tonight. Four simple lessons. The rest is practice. We’ll know in six months how good you’ll ever be.”
“Okay,” says Jo, lifting her blade, settling herself, knees bent a little. Her left arm hitched up and back, crooked over, her left hand dangling over her shoulder. “Four lessons. First is which end to hold it by, right?”
“No, girl,” says Vincent. “That’s a joke, for theatre students who aren’t learning how to fight. First lesson’s a question.”
“A question?”
“A question. Where are you, girl?”
The basement room is brightly lit. A felt banner hangs on the back wall, an abstract blob of a dove, green leaves, a rainbow hanging over a folding table laden with a coffee urn, paper cups, corrugated paper jackets, packets of sugar and non-dairy creamer, a plate of crumbs and a couple of donuts. A baby grand piano on giant casters under a quilted brown cloth. A rack piled high with folded chairs, more chairs unfolded in a rough circle, men and women standing around them and beside them, coveralls in blue and green, overalls and dungarees, denim jackets, meshback caps in hands. Jo over by the coffee urn in army green, beside her pink-haired Ray in his black leather jacket. In the center of it all stands Ysabel next to a very small woman wearing a pink T-shirt that says Choose a Job. The very small woman holds a tarnished metal tray. On the tray a dozen or more small clear glasses. In each glass glimmering in the bright light a pinch of golden dust.
He stands at the head of the low flight of stairs leading into the room, a blue-black cloak thrown back from his shoulders, his arms and head bare, his dark hair shot through with white, flopping about his eyes and ears, his lean face roughened by a half-grown grey-black beard. His cuirass milky white and edged with silver, though it is shadowed with dents, and the edging pitted. His right hand rests on the hilt of a long knife stuck through a belt of greenish silver links. Shining around his neck a polished silver torc.
“I do not know you, knight,” says the very small woman. Her face is worn, her cheeks round and ruddy. She wears small round spectacles with a thin chain that droops about her neck and her yellow-white hair’s pulled back in a tight bun. “But you must know this is hallowed ground, made sacral by their long use and habit. There’ll be no fighting here.”
“And if I were to draw my blade?” He pulls the knife from its sheath. “The one you’d call, who’d see I keep the peace, it’s her bidding I’m about. Take one more step, Gallowglas, and I let loose my arm. People will get cut.”
Jo hasn’t moved. Her fists are clenched.
“I know you,” says Ysabel, stepping away from the very small woman, her long patched denim skirt sweeping the floor. “And I can tell you, Dagger, neither you nor her–”
He comes down in a rush then, a sudden squall of chair scraping, men and women stepping back away as Jo steps up between Ysabel and the knight stopped still at the bottom of the stairs. His hand up knife reversed in his fist blade flat back against his forearm. “Not any more,” he says, and he spits. “Just Sidney now, plain Sidney. Your mother’s seen handily to that.”
A shell of glossy white paint flecking from the doorframe Becker’s leaning against. He picks at it crackling under his nails. The door opens slightly, Guthrie peering around the edge. Becker clears his throat. Guthrie jumps. “Sorry,” says Becker.
“Fuck,” says Guthrie, opening the door. His black T-shirt says Mai Pastede Hed in white letters. A guitar strums through cheap speakers from somewhere further in. I would like another way to breathe, sings a girl over the guitar. Keep my eyes wide open in my sleep. ’Cause when I’m underwater, you keep me under glass…
“You haven’t showed up in almost a week,” says Becker.
“To work,” says Guthrie.
“Yeah.”
“You’re here about work.”
“Yeah,” says Becker.
“You getting paid for this? Come to my place and wake me up for, for uh, to what exactly?”
“You haven’t showed up. You quit? Did you find something else?
“Because, I mean, you don’t show up at Burger King, the manager doesn’t come to your place and ask, you know, what’s up, where you been.” Becker says “Manager at Burger King isn’t your friend,” as Guthrie’s saying “They just fire your ass. And Tartt never would have showed up here or anything.”
“Tartt wasn’t your friend either. You want me to fire you? Did you find something else? Because I’m seriously covering your ass on this.”
“I didn’t ask you to–”
“Dammit, Guthrie!” Becker runs a hand through what little of his hair is left. “Just shut up a minute, okay?”
“What is it,” says Guthrie.
Becker’s looking up at the flaking ceiling. “You remember those two guys. That you, that you wanted to talk to me about. That one time. And we never, I mean, the two guys,” but Guthrie’s shaking his head. “We did,” he’s saying. “You forgot.”
“Forgot,” says Becker. “Did one of them have a mustache? Long, and, uh, grey, and–”
“No,” says Guthrie. A pale hand a sleeve the color of oatmeal snakes around his waist. “No mustache.” A confetti-colored cap over two eyes bright and blue smiling as she stretches up bare feet tiptoed to lick at Guthrie’s ear. “Come back,” she says, and kisses his cheek. “Come back.” Her legs bare beneath the ragged hem of her sweater. Over the cheap speakers a woman’s singing I’m in a backless dress in a pastel ward that’s shining, think I want you still, but it may be pills at work. She sees Becker then, and her blue eyes corner under pinched brows. Still pressed against Guthrie she lifts an arm across the doorway two fingers pointing to just so touch his nose. Becker jolts back.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
“The hell?” says Becker, rubbing his nose.
“Didn’t anyone tell you? You’ll spoil it all!” She steps out into the hallway.
“Um,” says Guthrie, “hey–”
“We have to get him where he’s supposed to be,” she says.
“I mean,” says Guthrie, “um, pants–”
“No time,” she snaps, and she stomps a foot clomp ringing from the heel of a worn workboot, laces undone, tongue lolling, spinning about shimmying her hips hands smoothing a fall of orange pleats, a heavy corduroy skit. “And you’re already wearing pants!” She stomps her other foot flatly flop a dirty green and yellow running shoe. “We have to go now.” And turning again she clomp-flops down the hall.
“What,” says Becker, staring after her, “just happened?”
The woman in the pink T-shirt beams up at them through her small round glasses. “I can’t say, highness. A tremendous honor.”
“Yes,” says Ysabel. “And you are..?”
“Nell,” she says, bowing her head slightly, “the Soames. Welcome, lady.”
“And this is,” says Ysabel, turning as Jo says, “Excuse me,” and walks away across the basement toward the coffee urn, there on the table in the back.
“That was Jo,” says Ysabel behind her. “My Gallowglas.”
The man standing by the coffee urn straightens, lifting a paper cup. His hair’s a shock of pink and orange. “Hey,” says Jo. “It’s Ray, right?” His paper cup stops halfway between the table and his quirked mouth under goggling blue eyes. “I’d like to think,” he says, “I’d’ve noticed if I’d seen you here before.”
“No, from the Zoobomb. Roland’s friend.”
“Friend?” he says, and his cup salutes her. “That’s, that’s good. About time he got one of those.”
“He said you were a friend of his.”
“Did he.” Ray lifts the cup, lowers it again. His smile’s gone apologetic. “I know him. Roland doesn’t have any friends.”
Jo picks up a cup of her own. “He also said you weren’t like him.”
“Well, I do have a couple of friends…” His cup floats back towards his lips again. “Hey, Sproat,” he says.
“Hey,” says the little man with the extraordinarily large nose, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“I mean,” says Jo, “you’re not, you’re not one of his people. You’re not from wherever it is they’re from.”
“The West Hills?”
“Ha. You’re like me, is what I mean.”
He cocks an eyebrow over one of those bulging eyes. “I hope I’d’ve noticed that, too.”
“I know why I’m here, is what I’m getting at,” says Jo, twisting the spigot on the urn, filling her cup. “Because of her. Why’re you here?”
“Her?” says Ray. Ysabel’s stooped to listen to the Soames, who’s ticking points on the palm of her hand. “Really? Huh.” His cup makes it this time. He sips. One of those eyes screws shut and his lips pucker. He fishes in a pocket of his leather jacket, pulling out a green glass bottle with a silver cap. “Is that why you’re being such a dick?”
“What?” says Jo.
“The coffee,” says Ray, “not that it’s any of your business.” He pours a slug of something colorless into his coffee. “Was that too rough? ‘Dick’? If that was too rough– no, that’s weaselly. It was too rough. So I apologize. No ifs.”
“The coffee?” says Jo. “I don’t–”
“It’s free,” says Ray. “To answer your question. Shitty, but free. And this is free, this meeting, as in speech, as in beer. So again. I’m sorry. But you’re the one who leaped in demanding answers.”
“I didn’t–”
“You did a lousy job of hiding how badly you wanted me to justify myself.”
“Yeah?” says Jo, her voice gone low and fast and quiet. “Well I got dragged here on her whim with some guy I never met and I don’t know what’s going on and usually, I go places with her, usually, I end up on a horse or getting assaulted or, or I’ve been stabbed, and here you are that I’ve actually met once before, and maybe you come here every night, I don’t fucking know, but maybe you can tell me something so yeah, I’m gonna ask questions.” Her hand a fist on the table by her discarded cup.
“Every month,” says Ray. “I mean, I haven’t. Just twice. But the first Wednesday of every month, Saint Patrick’s under the bridge. We’d better get chairs.” He heads over to a couple of empty chairs in the ring that’s filling up, chairs about them squawking on the linoleum floor as they’re pulled out, pushed back, settled here and there, the men and women taking their seats, coveralls, overalls, dungarees, denim and flannel and chambray, yellow-brown boots and white-wrinkled black boots, meshback caps in their hands. “See, Open Mike,” says Ray, leaning over to murmur in Jo’s ear.
“Open Mike?” says Jo. A long and lanky man in a black T-shirt’s clapping Twice Thomas on the shoulder.
“He’s about to corral everybody, all the stragglers. Usually about twenty, maybe two dozen. Although I should say that when I say twice what I mean is this is my second time here, so I should say more like one and a third or maybe a fifth or so, and you should take all this with a grain of salt. But next…” He leans closer, those eyes bulging over a smile tucked into the corners of his mouth. “What,” says Jo.
“Biscuit’s about to play the piano.”
A man in brown coveralls has lifted the keyboard lid of the baby grand piano and with his left hand plays a low thick chord once, then rapidly one two three, letting that last beat hang in the air a moment before snapping the lid closed and dropping the edge of the quilted dust cover back over it. They’re all standing, Ray too, and after a moment Jo, and they’re humming that chord from the piano, and the Soames standing there by Ysabel still sitting alone of all of them, the Soames throws wide her arms and opens her mouth to sing “Arise,” and they all join in, “Arise, ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want! For reason in revolt now thunders, and at last we end the age of cant!”
“And then they sing!” says Ray in Jo’s ear.
“So comrades, come rally,” they’re singing, “For the struggle carries on! The Internationale unites the world in song!”
“Brothers and sisters,” says the Soames, as the echoes of the last chord of the chorus dies away, faintly ringing the strings in the closed-up baby grand. “I call this meeting of the Order of American Mechanicals United, Local Two Three Five, to order.”
“I’m in your practice hall, your dojo, whatever the fuck,” says Jo.
“Where are you, girl?” says Vincent.
Jo’s brow crinkles. “Second floor? Park and Oak? Northwest corner. In, uh, in Southwest, I mean downtown. Which is whatsisname’s. The Count’s. No, wait– it’s open. Unclaimed. Right?” Ysabel eyes closed smiles, her head resting back against the mirror.
“Where are you?” Vincent steps his left foot forward hips and shoulders swiveling head still locked his eyes on Jo. His prosthetic crooked up before him right arm loose at his side, hand canted, sword tilted up, back, away.
“Here?” says Jo, settling her knees, wincing. “Here. Standing here. In front of you.”
“Where’s your feet, girl?”
“Under my shoulders.”
“Where’s your shoulders?”
“Where I left them,” she growls. “Edge-on. To you.”
“Your hands?” he says, but she’s already saying “My left hand’s up and back like a queer-ass dandy pirate to balance a lunge and it itches like a motherfucker. My right hand’s up, wrist in seconde.”
“You’ve been reading,” says Vincent. “Who? What? Naldi? Talhoffer? The Abbé?” His head up, back, his sword twitching.
“I don’t know,” says Jo. “I just got some books from the–”
“Forget it,” says Vincent, snapping his hook. “Throw ’em away.”
“I left them in Twice Tom’s truck. Probably never see them again.”
“Four lessons, girl! Then practice. I don’t want anything else cluttering your pretty little head.”
“Four,” sneers Jo. “And number one’s I tell you where I am.”
“Number one is knowing where you are, girl.” Vincent steps back, his left foot in line with his right. Lifts his blade to point at her. “Know it in your bones, without doubt, without fumbling for words to describe it. Know where you are. Without that, you’ve got nothing.”
“And I wouldn’t want to walk into a room like that,” says Jo.
Another twist in his Van Dyke. “Lesson two,” he says.
“Another question?”
“Another question. Where am I?”
“Then her sister finished us off.”
She stands at the head of the low flight of stairs leading into the room, the folds of her blue-black cloak parted just over a long gown of watery mail marred by shadowy blooms of rust and here and there some broken unsprung links. On her head a plain round metal cap from which her hair does not escape. Shining around her neck a polished silver torc. “Be about it quickly, Sidney, that we might more quickly take our leave.”
“Can’t I take a moment instead, Linesse? To savor this strange new experience?” He looks back and forth along the ragged arc of men and women standing before him, the knife still in his hand, his hand before his face. “I’ve never bearded rabbits in their den.”
“It’s there they are most dangerous,” says Linesse, but he’s stepping further into the room. Jo draws herself up there between Sidney and Ysabel, her eyes wide, her breath shallow. He licks his lips. Nell looks up at Ysabel through her spectacles. Open Mike behind them squeezes his hands into fists but does not lift them.
“Well, Plain Sidney?” says Nell then. “What is her bidding? What would the Cailleach with the likes of us?”
“With you?” says Sidney. “Nothing, with you. You have this once a choice: stand up, fall back. As you like.”
“We stand with the Bride,” says Twice Thomas, there by Open Mike.
“Will you?” Sidney’s laugh’s a snapped-off syllable. “Even though she’s dallied with the Axe, and sullied the gift she’s meant to give the King when he returns? Put down your fists. She’s in no danger. Our mistress doesn’t care what lips she’s kissed, though it pleases me, to use her as our bait. No,” and he moves his hand then, slowly, pointing the hilt of his knife at Jo, “it’s her bulldog we’re about– who’s killed our lady’s boar, who’s made her laugh most cruelly. Who has no place at her sister’s court, and yet.”
Ysabel says, “Dagger– Sidney–” and with a roar he steps to the right to pass Jo who rushes to block him but his next step’s left, pivoting around her the hilt of his knife swinging to catch the side of Ysabel’s head. Twice Thomas rushes to catch her as Jo yelling grabs Sidney’s cloak hauling him back “You fucking motherfucker” as he’s stumbling bellowing “Gallowglas!” and she slaps a hand on his mailed shoulder. There is a sudden hiss. Jo screams. The tarnished metal ghosted with dew about the hand she jerks away, a ripping sound, the flesh of her palm and fingers red.
Sidney turns, slowly. Twice Thomas on his knees by Ysabel on her side her hands to her face, Open Mike over them both, fists ready. Jo stumbling back falling to the ground cradling her hand. Nell glasses clinking on the tray she hasn’t put down. “It’s not about fighting you, girl,” says Sidney, but he’s looking now at Nell, at the trembling tray. “It’s about making you watch.” And then, to himself, “This farce,” he says. “You all deserve what’s coming.”
Linesse at the head of the stairs shakes her head. “Sidney!” she cries, an admonishment.
He whips his knife around and across a short chopping swing that slams the flat of his blade among those glasses, scattering them, driving the tray from Nell’s hands. A golden glittering cloud explodes around them. His other hand’s aloft, holding a bicycle bell. He thumbs it, twice, chiming sharp and clear. “You all deserve what’s coming!” He pushes his way out of the crowd, up the stairs after the swirl of Linesse’s cloak. The glittering cloud’s collapsing, settling on the tiled floor, the shards of glass, their boots and shoes, on Ysabel a-sprawl, on Thomas’s knees, his sheltering hands. Then the lights go out, and they all begin to holler at once.
“Acetone,” written by Lauren Laverne and Marie du Santiago, copyright holder unknown. “A&E,” written by Alison Goldfrapp and Dougal Wilson, copyright holder unknown. “The Internationale,” written by Eugène Pottier and Pierre De Geyter, in the public domain.
“Turn up there,” says Guthrie from the back seat.
“It’s going the wrong way,” says Becker behind the wheel. A flock of cellos scrapes and squalls from the stereo.
“It’s on Nineteenth!”
“Which is one-way the wrong way. I’m going to go up and double back. If it’s even there.”
“It’s there,” says Guthrie, as beside him in the back seat the woman in the confetti-colored cap says “It’s under the bridge. Right where it touches down.” Guthrie’s holding one of her hands in both of his. “I swear it’s on Nineteenth,” says Guthrie. “You go up too far, you’ll have to come down Twenty-third, which, I mean, fuck.”
“It’s been there for over a hundred years,” she says. “The bridge is no older than you are. They built it to close the circle but it was too late.”
“You’ll end up having to double back through all those, uh, parking lots. Where that company is.”
“You’ve been there before?” says Becker. “What’s the cross street? Which letter? R? S? U? What the hell is U, anyway? Is there a U?”
“I don’t know,” says Guthrie. “Upshur,” says the woman in the confetti-colored cap. “Hurry. Hurry!”
“What’s the deal with that?” says Becker, cranking the car through a quick right turn against a red light. “What is it I’m gonna spoil, anyway?” The cellos thundering now. Becker snaps the stereo off. “Huh?” She doesn’t say anything. “Guthrie. What’s her deal?”
“You know,” says Guthrie. He’s looking down at her hand in his. “She sees things, sometimes. I think sometimes that includes, you know. The future.”
“The future,” says Becker, stopping for a stop sign. “This is why you haven’t been coming to work?”
“You never believe me,” mutters Guthrie.
“Don’t stop!” cries the woman. “What’s wrong? Go! Go!”
“Why?” roars Becker, glaring at them through the rear-view mirror. “What’s going on? Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing to Guthrie?”
“You– don’t?” says the woman.
“He forgets,” says Guthrie. “He’s forgotten again.”
“Forgotten what?” Becker snaps around, eyes ugly, mouth screwed tight. The woman trembles under her confetti-colored cap. “What am I forgetting? What?”
“Go,” says Guthrie. “You’ll see.”
Growling Becker jerks the car into gear jolting forward into the intersection lurching to a stop as something thump-rumbles over the hood, a figure white in the streetlights.
“Shit,” says Becker. “Oh, fuck me.”
The woman in the confetti-colored cap screams.
“Shut up!” says Becker. “Shut her up.” He climbs out of the little red hatchback. There’s a bicycle on its side rear wheel canted up spinning clicking loudly, a white bicycle, handlebars twisted, flowers scattered on the pavement, over to the side someone face down, grey hoodie and grimy white jeans and black sneakers still. “Hey,” says Becker. “Hey. You okay?” He steps toward the body slowly, hands held up before him. “You’re not dead. Please don’t be dead.” Stooping over the body, reaching down for the hood. “Honestly please.”
“You’re far too late, my friend.”
Becker looks up. Walking toward him across the intersection a big man in a dark blue suit. To either side of his mouth droop mustaches, long and grey. Behind him off to the right there above the trees behind a row of houses the swooping curves of onramps, the great towering arch of the bridge hazy in the dimming blue and gold and rose, the red-roofed tower of a church.
“Pyrocles?” says Becker.
The body at his feet scuttle-rolls away hands and feet scrabbling on pavement swarming over the bicycle hauling it upright as Pyrocles leaping forward hands up over his head swinging down a greatsword cracking the pavement striking sparks where the bicycle’d been and Becker stumbling back loses his balance falls on his ass oofing out his breath. Pyrocles takes a long lunging step swinging the sword sideways skimming the hood of the car to slice through the grey hoodie collapsing into a twist of rag of nothing at all as the bicycle riderless falls again to the pavement with a clatter and a clacking thump.
Pyrocles straightens. Wipes his hands on his thighs. “Need a hand?” he says.
“I hit that guy,” says Becker, climbing slowly to his feet. “Where did he go? What just happened?” Pyrocles raps on the windshield of the car. “Didn’t you just have a sword? Hey! Are you listening to me?” Guthrie’s opened the car door, craning his head up to peer out over it.
“We must hurry,” says Pyrocles. “They won’t follow us into a church. There’s one a few blocks that way.”
“That’s where we were headed,” says Guthrie.
“We’re not going anywhere,” says Becker. “We’ve got to call the cops or something.”
“The police can’t help us,” says Pyrocles. Guthrie’s helping the woman in the confetti-colored cap out of the back seat.
“I can’t just leave my car,” says Becker.
“That car,” says Pyrocles, “will kill the next person to drive it. Quickly! They never travel alone.” He strides away down the darkening street, followed quickly by Guthrie hand-in-hand with the woman in the confetti-colored cap.
“Would someone,” says Becker, staring after them, “please tell me what just happened?”
They’re sitting again, the twenty or twenty-four of them, Ysabel feet tucked up asprawl across two folding chairs by the Soames, Twice Thomas behind them, his cap resting on his knee. Across the circle Jo sits by Ray, who’s leaning over to murmur something in her ear. Open Mike stands in the center of the circle, arms wide, saying “With all due respect–”
“Seven days and a day, Brother Mike,” says an old man with a big white beard, an American eagle embroidered on the back of his worn denim jacket.
“With all due respect, Brother Templemass,” says Open Mike. “I’m well aware of our terms.” He looks about the circle, his thin brows drawn together in a single line. “You’ve all heard Sister Jenny’s report. Our reserves were depleted by the clean-up and repair of the mall. His payment for that bill was almost enough to cover the subsequent repairs to the freeway in Sullivan’s Gulch. Until he covers that, brothers and sisters, we’re tapped. I only ask that you look to the future.”
“I don’t like the future after we’ve needlessly antagonized the Duke,” says a sharp-chinned woman in grey coveralls that say Jenny Rye over the left breast.
“How can even he pay such steep freight twice in a month?” says a small-featured man with fox-red tufted hair and a goatish beard.
“Seven days and a day,” says the Soames. “We press the issue Sunday morning, not before. Unless–” she inclines her head, bright light sliding up the lenses of her spectacles. “Is Brother Michael’s proposal seconded? That the Local seek restitution immediately from the Duke, for the repair of the freeway in Sullivan’s Gulch?”
“Let me get this straight,” murmurs Jo, leaning over Ray’s shoulder. “They fixed the fucking freeway?”
“I guess so,” he says.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because I was there. It was totaled.”
“But it’s fine now, right?”
“With that,” the Soames is saying, as Open Mike takes his seat, “unfinished business is concluded. I should like to introduce our guest this evening, who has done us an incalculable honor by attending on such short notice.” Jo snorts. “Our Princess, the intended Bride of the King Come Back.” A rustle sweeps the room as caps are removed, heads bowed, hands placed palm down on knees. The Soames still standing says, “I’ve asked her to tell us of a matter that bears directly on Brother Michael’s concerns. In a word, lady,” turning then to speak directly to Ysabel sitting upright now, legs crossed under that voluminous denim skirt, “the Apportionment. It has been rather lean of late.”
And then the Soames sits.
Ray, catching Jo’s eye, hikes a brow, shrugs his mouth.
Ysabel uncrosses her legs, sits forward as if to stand, stops. Then with a deep breath pushes herself to her feet. “Thank you, Nell,” she says. “This is all something of a surprise to me. I’m afraid,” and then she shakes her head a little, to herself. “I can tell you,” she says, “that when the King comes back, and I am sat as his Queen, you will find in me a true and constant friend.”
For a moment nothing is said.
“Thank you, lady,” says the Soames, “but might you speak to your mother, and tell her of what you’ve heard here tonight?”
Ysabel starts to say something, but does not. Her hands folded one wrapped in the other. “No,” she says. “My mother knows your plight, as she knows everything that happens in her city. If your portions are lean, it is because times are lean. You’ve seen it yourselves– a Duke’s as pinched as a charman–”
There’s grumbles at that, groans. “Oh I doubt it,” someone mutters. Rustling, shifting. “I,” Ysabel’s saying, “I don’t, you must understand.” The Soames gets to her feet. Ray’s hand is on Jo’s arm. “Brothers and sisters,” says the Soames, pleading.
“Settle down!” booms Open Mike.
“I am not yet Queen,” says Ysabel as the room quiets. “I am not my mother.” She lifts her hands to her face, fingers fencing her mouth, and her eyes closed she lets out the breath she’s been holding and lets her hands drift back down before her, once more folded together. “I can’t do anything about the Apportionment, not now, not yet. But I can do this.” One hand unclasped slips into the pocket of her skirt to pull out a small plastic baggie, swollen with gold dust.
“What is she,” says Jo.
“This,” says Ysabel, “is the last of my reserves. Times are what they are. But I know the, the importance of the work you do.”
“Oh,” says Ray.
“And so, because I am, and will be, your friend.”
“Ysabel,” says Jo, but quietly.
“I offer it freely to you.”
“Oh, wow,” says Ray, and chairs scrape, shoes squeak, the room climbs to its feet, surges toward Ysabel, arms reach out, some push away, some are pushed, and Jo’s shoving her way through the middle between Biscuit and a kid in a grey T-shirt. “Hey!” calls Ray, lost in the hubbub of thanks and pleas and cries of “Lady! O, lady!” Ysabel’s stepping back from them, eyes wide, and stepping back again, hemmed in by the piano, the baggie in both hands up over her head. The Soames beside her, arms wide, “Brothers and sisters!” she cries, but they’re reaching over her head. “Hey!” cries Jo, in the thick of it, “Gallowglas here! I’m the fucking Gallowglas coming through!”
“Animals!” bellows Twice Thomas, and suddenly it’s still again.
“Little better than rude beasts!” he says.
“Tommy Tom,” says someone, and “Hey, I” says someone, and “Shut up” says someone else. Twice Thomas working his way along the front of the crowd says “That’s what they say about us. That’s why, they say, they must portion it out. To each his own, they say, but on their terms, and in their own sweet time, and if they take the lion’s share for their troubles, who are we to complain?” He’s standing by Open Mike now, before Ysabel and the Soames. “So a Duke will never feel the pinch the way we do. That’s no excuse to prove them right.”
“Your gift,” says the Soames, catching her breath, “is very generous, lady.”
“I hadn’t,” says Ysabel, leaning close to her, “I didn’t plan on this, I don’t have scales or little bags or–”
“There’s glasses and measuring spoons in the kitchen,” says the Soames. “Brother Michael, if you’d be so kind?”
Jo doesn’t say anything in response. She straightens her right arm wrist rolling clockwise the épée in her hand a line pointing shoulder to tip at Vincent’s chest. He nods and without unlocking his eyes from hers he steps his left foot out to the side his weight shifting right foot following and again. The tip of her blade smoothly follows. His left foot crosses behind his right swiftly doubling the step and twice more quickly now, his prosthetic still cocked between them, his sword still down and away. Her blade-tip swinging to follow she’s stepping her left foot back to the right her shoulders swinging to stay edge-on. “What else,” says Vincent.
“What else?”
“What else is here?” He lowers his left arm, relaxing his right arm, shoulders lifting and settling, his feet planted. “It’s not just me, girl. There’s the light.” His left arm gesturing, harsh light glinting from the hook. “The shadows off to the side. The mirror. Those swords by the door behind you, ready to trip you on your ass. There’s a lot in this room besides me.”
“Okay,” says Jo, her arm bent again, her épée back in its guarded angle, “okay. Number two is where’s everything that isn’t me. Got it.”
“You’re sure,” says Vincent.
“Yeah,” says Jo. “On to number three.”
“So you’re in a hurry,” says Vincent. “Okay.”
“Wait–” says Jo, but he’s taking three quick loping steps to plant himself before Ysabel hitching her feet back out of his way, hiking herself up, back against the mirror. His left arm’s up between them hook snapping once turning his head toward Jo his blade coming up knees settling there between Jo and Ysabel, and his smile is now quite clear and sharp. “Well?” he says. “Now what?”
“Ysabel!”
On the floor on her side in the dark her left hand held close in her right, Jo’s worming around tucking as a boot crashes down next to her head as someone else trips crashing over her legs.
“Jo!”
On the floor on her knees her face in her hands Ysabel’s crying out to the floor unseen, Twice Thomas huddled over her his cap long gone, gold glittering the backs of his hands. The darkness sparked by flickering spindrift swirling in the wake of scooping hands pinching fingers tumbling legs to limn shirt-creases and pant-cuffs, chair-backs and upended chair-legs, fingertips, lips, the edge of a face. “Jo!” she cries again, and “Jo!” as all about them ring sobs that billow atomies of gold, moans and cries of “No, oh no!” and “Lady, please!” and “The owr! Save the owr!” In the midst of it all stands the Soames stock still, her hands empty before her, at her feet the bent tray, the litter of broken gold-shot glass.
A click, a buzzing hum, lights flash to life in the ceiling here and there, the basement once more pinned beneath that harsh white light that silences them all. They’ve stopped where they are, then slowly they turn, slowly look about. Biscuit rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, his fingertips gleaming. Sproat curled into a ball in a litter of fallen chairs, Rye Jenny crouched beside him, her fingers in his glittering hair. Jo’s hunched over an upright chair by Ysabel, on her feet, looking up to the head of the low flight of stairs leading into the room.
“Anvil,” she says. “Welcome.” Her voice flat and calm, her face expressionless. Her eye swollen red and purpling, a red weal down her cheek.
“Lady,” says Pyrocles. “You’re hurt.” Behind him Becker, panting, behind him Guthrie and the woman in the confetti-colored cap.
“Sidney,” she says. “The former Dagger.”
“He’s shown his face,” says Pyrocles, coming down the stairs, reaching into an inner pocket of his suit jacket.
“He’s turned his coat,” says Ysabel. “Gone over to my mother’s sister, and the Helm with him.”
“They’re the ones who’ve called the ghost bikes,” says Pyrocles. “The church is surrounded.” He’s pulled out a small plastic baggie, a thimbleful of gold dust. “We only just made it.” He stoops to peer at her face, working the baggie open with his fingers, but she shakes her head. “Jo’s hand,” she says. “She touched him.”
Jo’s holding her left hand tightly in her right, the skin of it tightly swollen, red, blotched here and there with black blisters. “My motherfucking Christ but he was cold,” she gasps.
“Please,” says Ysabel to Pyrocles, cupping her hands together. He tips the dust into her hands. “I do not know that it will suffice,” he says.
She folds her hands together and lifts them to her lips, whispering something eyes closed into the steepled hollow of her fingers. She sinks to her knees by Jo. “Hold still,” she says. She opens hands over Jo’s palm, and Jo hisses. She takes Jo’s hand between hers, rubbing the dust into the flesh. Jo’s shoulders jerk. She bends over Jo’s hand and presses the palm to her lips as her heavy black hair slides from her shoulders to curtain the kiss. Jo lifts her head face clenched gasping then slowly, slowly relaxing, her breath slowing, deepening.
Ysabel straightens, brushing dust from her lips. “It wasn’t enough,” she says. “It’ll sting, for a few days yet.”
“And you’ve got one hell of a shiner,” says Jo.
“I’ll be all right,” says Ysabel, and then, with an uncertain little laugh, “I can’t have a one-handed knight.”
“We are so sorry, lady,” says the Soames. “We should never have put you in such danger.” They stand together now, before the folding table laden with the coffee urn, beneath the banner with the dove, the leaves, the rainbow. Hands at their sides, folded together, clasped behind their backs. Caps on heads. “We must get you out as quickly as possible.”
“Don’t be foolish,” says Pyrocles. “What do you mean to do? Batter your way through the cordon of ghosts? Touch one with anything but a weapon and not even your dust would be left.”
“How many are there?” says Open Mike.
“Dozens!” says Guthrie, as Becker says “Ten or so.”
“Eleven,” says Pyrocles.
“So call for help!” says Open Mike. “A handful of knights could scatter them in minutes!”
“That’s what they want,” says the Soames. “Certainly, they could be scattered. But one or more knights would die.”
“That’s what they’re for,” mutters Open Mike, as Jo’s saying, “And it’d be my fault. Again. This touching thing,” she says to Pyrocles, wincing as she opens and closes her hand. “Is that for everybody? Or is there a gallowglas exemption?”
“You might feel a chill,” says Pyrocles.
“All right. And there’s three of us here, now–”
“Four,” calls Ray, sitting in a chair over by the piano.
“It would not suffice, Gallowglas,” says Pyrocles. “Even if you locked arms to shield her with your bodies, they’d ride into you, knock you down, touch her. I could perhaps surprise them, attacking from inside their cordon– if I cut enough of them down–”
“There’s another way,” says Ray. “Bust them up without knights. Without putting any of you in danger. This church,” he says, looking up at the low ceiling, “is practically smack dab under the biggest bridge in town.”
“Oh!” says the woman in the confetti-colored cap.
“She’s got a clue,” says Ray. “What is it, folks, that lives under bridges? In fairy tales?”
“Hall of the Mountain King,” written by Edvard Grieg, in the public domain; performed by Apocalyptica.
