“What time is it?” she says, sat up abruptly in pastel sheets. “Is that?” Rubbing her eyes. “Are you, is that, bacon?”

“Good afternoon,” says Big Jim Turk, there by the credenza, stirring something about on the little electric griddle. “You’ll note I didn’t say good morning. It’s late enough I thought I’d try an olfactory cue, as kisses and sweet nothings hadn’t seemed to do the trick.”

“Me and Anna were,” she says, rubbing her forehead, “talking, you were already asleep when I, isn’t that, like, a violation? Or something?” Complex calligraphy across the front of her T-shirt says The Mandarin Miranda. “The meat.”

“If there’s any sin,” he says, pushing and turning, “these spatters of hot grease should prove penance, ow! enough.” Thumbing the lop of his belly. His buttocks pale and hairless, flat, almost concave beneath the heft of his thickset torso. “Smell alone’s enough to remind the likes of, tst! me, what I’m missing, but also,” scooping slices onto a chipped blue plate, “enough to tell me, were I to take a bite,” tap tap, and he shuts the griddle off, “what knots would twist my gut.” Turning to hold out the plate, but she’s already off the bed before him, taking it from his hand, setting it back on the credenza, wrapping him in a sudden hug. His hands up, startled, settle gently, awkwardly on her shoulders. He kisses the jet-black top of her head. “It’s only what a Chatelaine deserves.”

She shoves out of his arms, away, hard enough to rock him back a step. “Don’t you start.” Wheeling off toward the window.

“Gloria,” says Jim.

Her back to him, both hands on the sill of it. The glass has been cleaned but painted over with blossoms, a nodding columbine in red and yellow, a suncup, an orange blanketflower. Out beyond those colors, a rainy day.

“Stay in the game,” he says, “or walk away from the table, but if you stay?” Eyes sternly direct over that mustache of his. “Then play.”

“Thing is, Jim,” she says. “I like the table. I built, the fucking table. I just don’t like this game somebody else decided to play on it.”

“And now,” says Jim, “you’re a step closer to being able to change it.” She glares at him over her shoulder, and he chuckles, “I forget, sometimes,” he says, “how very young you are.”

“I’m a Sagittarius,” she sneers. “You got nothing to worry about on that score.”

“It’s your impatience,” he says, taking hold of her hand. “You can afford to be patient, Gloria. You have more time than you think.”

Softening, taking his hand in hers, “And you made me naked bacon.”

“I did fry you up some speck,” he says.

“It’s,” she sags into him, and his arms come about her, “maybe it’s the rain,” she says. “It’s back. It’s gonna rain for weeks, now. At least until after the Rose, ah, Festival,” she frowns.

“It’s feast or famine, here in the Great Northwest,” he says, looking down, dipping the better to see her turned-away face. “Gloria?”

“Something,” she says, a distracted gesture, “I don’t know. Probably nothing. Probably.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

•

Leaned against the staves that make up that great wooden tub, Marfisa reaches out over the expanse of gold within. Brushes it with her fingertips. Draws them back toward her, furrowing the brightness. Shaking, flicking them free of dust. Pressing her hand to the inside of the wall of the tub, stroking the glossy oaken staves. Not much less than a palmspan above the level of the dust, the wood’s not stained but brightened by a detritus of gold, all the way around the inside of that tub. She looks up to see Joan-the-Wad dredge a red plastic cup through the owr, drawing up a generous scoop as she laughs back over her shoulder at something somebody’s said.

Marfisa turns away, taking a step to nearly collide with someone, a woman in a black dress a bit too brief for her height, black hair brushed back, unpainted lips, eyes with only a hazeled hint of green, nodding an apology as she turns away, tugging her skirt back down. “Starling?” says Marfisa.

Pausing, caught, turning then with a shrug and a smile, looking her up and down, loose T-shirt and tight shorts, low grey running shoes, white hair tied back. “Outlaw,” she says.

Marfisa tips back her head, lips pursed, parting about something she doesn’t say. What she does say is, “I wish to speak with her majesty. Here you are, without her. Is she, otherwise, engaged?”

The Starling looks away, shaking her head with something like a laugh. “The twins,” she says, “complained of hangover, and are off away somewhere, sulking. Her majesty’s below.”

“Alone?” says Marfisa.

“When last I saw,” says the Starling, and then, calling after Marfisa’s retreating back, “but who can truly say?”

Away down the length of that cavernous warehouse, past stalls where here and there someone’s tinkering, sketching, polishing, some sort of intricate contraption set in tensely whirling motion, splinters and sawdust being swept, clatter of dice and a token slapped triumphantly down on board, and laughter, teasing banter about an enormous steaming pot. Marfisa passes under and through a long low arch lit by strings of clear glass bulbs along the ceiling, out into a foyer floored with yellowing tiles. A scaffold’s erected up one wall of the stairwell, a couple of painters wiping out the mural of a tree with great swathes of fresh white primer. She ducks under, past the corner of it, heading down instead of up.

But it’s not dark, down there. She pauses a moment, hand against the wall, feet on different steps. It’s quiet. She continues, softly, down.

Boxy work light on orange tripods set among the columns obliterate shadows to starkly reveal the candles congealed about the skewed rugs, tumbled pillows, the wadded, crumpled throws and wraps before that big wide bed, pristinely made. Across the basement, past the dressing table where the Queen is sat, a dressing screen’s been unfolded, the frame of it of whitewashed wood, and panels of plain linen. The basement otherwise is empty.

“Where’s the rest?” says Marfisa, so quiet in all that space.

The Queen turns about in the folding chair, white suit coat buttoned once, loose white trousers, black curls artfully tangled. Smiling. “Outlaw!” she cries, brightly. “How wonderful to see you!”

“I wanted to,” says Marfisa, “talk,” still looking past her.

“Of course! We must talk, and drink, dine, dance and sing, and laugh,” says the Queen. “We should laugh. We’ve missed you. I, have. Missed you.”

“You’ve been busy,” says Marfisa.

“That’s not an excuse. For either of us.”

“And the clothing, and the costumes you’d been gathering? They’re all,” nodding toward the screen, white hair shining in this light, “there?”

“I’ve been debating whether to even keep this,” says the Queen, with a gesture for the dressing table, the mirror over it, lamps about unlit. “I suppose it’s important, to be able to check. Even if we know the looks will be perfect.”

“And the seamstress,” says Marfisa, turning away. “And the maquilleuse.”

“They’re well enough, I suppose,” says the Queen. “Certainly more comfortable.” Turning about, at the soft footfall as Marfisa walks away. “But, Marfisa,” she says. “You wanted to talk?” Marfisa continues on, back down the starkly bright length of basement. “Marfisa? Outlaw? Outlaw!” Marfisa climbs the steps, away and up, without once looking back.

The Queen turns back. On the table, before the mirror, three or four red plastic cups stacked together, and a lone cup, crumpled, on its side, by a clearly empty bottle of wine. “Oh, I am regal,” says her majesty, very much to herself. “I do rule.”