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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” says Jo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Huntsman waggles her emptied cup.

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

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

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

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

The Queen tips ash from her cigarette.

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

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

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

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

“Ysabel,” says the Huntsman.

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

“How was brunch,” says the Huntsman.

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

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

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

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

“Don’t,” says the Huntsman.

“But – ”

“I haven’t forgiven you for that.”

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

“For how long,” says the Huntsman.

“What do you mean?”

“Is this it?”

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” says the Queen. “It’s not.”

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

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

“That’s all it needs, Ysabel.”

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

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

“Let me go,” says the Huntsman.

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