Jumble and clink the keys in his hand, falling to chime on the pile of them in that wide-mouthed jar, seventy-five cents the price on the tag about it. Past the bins of loose handles and knobs, dulled nickel and pitted brass, wood smoothly turned to satiny finishes, white enamel cleanly bright but chipped, cracked, he stoops, there at the end of the aisle, over a low bucket filled with tiny dice like chips of ruby, sapphire, diamond, emerald.

“Anvil?”

He straightens, shoulders shifting in a blue-sheened coat a trifle tight. “Mason,” he says. In one hand a worn brown leather satchel.

Back through an angled corridor more doorways than walls, out one of them into a courtyard crowded with birdbaths leaned companionably one against another, cold fire pits set before a line of chimineas, great earthen pots and planters and mirror-bright gazing globes, a clustered flock of spindly orreries and armillary spheres flanked by blocky concrete sundials poured from the same mold, and in the middle of it all a dry and empty fountain, the heavy-lipped basin surmounted by reticent angels. A low doorway opens on a steep flight of stairs to a cramped hall, lumpily carpeted and no angle entirely square. Luys knocks once sharply at a door, then opens it wide.

The office within surprisingly spacious, tall dimly shaded windows, spotless dark-stained floorboards, a brusquely modern desk in a corner, and behind it Bruno in a moleskin vest. “You weren’t kept long?” he says.

“I did pass the time,” says Pyrocles. “You’ve a great many distracting articles below.” In the other corner an armchair, a low table with a single cut glass decanter, a dark shelf tastefully appointed, a dourly analog clock. “Someone would’ve met you direct,” says Bruno, with a look for Luys hung back there, by the door, “but her majesty did need a car today.”

“You’d have this business done most privily,” says Pyrocles.

“I’d have it done as smoothly as it might,” says Bruno, “an her majesty says it shouldn’t.”

“Her majesty,” says Pyrocles, stroking with a knuckle those long iron mustaches from his lip, “forbade it the brother of the Guisarme, which is neither here nor there for – ”

“It’s been forbidden to any who yet serve the Hound,” says Bruno. “As well we all do know. To think, it’s come to this,” a shake of his head, “the mighty Pyrocles would cloak himself in sophistry.”

“Bruno,” says Luys, crossing the office to lay a hand there on the desk, and Bruno sitting back. “Give it to me,” says Luys, “if your delicacy forbids.”

“It’s not delicate,” says Bruno, opening a drawer, “to be specific.” Pulls out a rounded golden brick tight-wrapped in clingfilm. Lets it fall, heavily, to the desk.

“You’d press a point, but wouldn’t break the skin,” says Luys, a hand on that brick. “In this, we serve no Hound nor Hawk. We serve the Rose.” Bruno looks away. Luys takes up the brick, turns to Pyrocles, who lifts up his satchel, holds it open, empty. Luys drops the brick within. Pyrocles hefts it with a nod, and zips it shut.

“We only delay what’s inevitable,” says Bruno.

“We provide,” says Luys, “what stability we might.”

“Stability,” says Bruno, “sediments. The crack, when it comes – and it will come – will be all so much the worse, by how much more firm, how stable, all has seemed.”

“You’d have us do nothing?” says Luys.

“I’d have us consider the implications.”

“The desperate, Shrieve – the hungry – are the more likely to lash out. It’s merely as simple as that.”

“The comfortable, Mason, might be just as rash, if they smell a change in the wind. And the well-fed wield a stronger bite.”

“Gentlemen,” says Pyrocles, but “This,” says Luys, a gesture flung toward him and the satchel in his hands, “nonetheless grants us time. A measure of peace.”

“Is it peace we’d buy?” says Bruno. “Or a festering resentment?” A gesture of his own for the satchel, weightily a-dangle. “If this is a gift you’d have us give, the obligation’s well beyond whatever we might bear. But if it’s our duty? To the court, as you might have it?” A shake of his head, rhetorically slow. “You’d have us doling out their portion. You’d forge a bright new link of toradh. You’d set the Hound beneath the Hawk.”

“We’re neither of us the Hawk!” snaps Luys.

“Yet you did decide,” says Bruno.

“And you did concur!”

“Gentlemen!” says Pyrocles, a bit too loud, a touch too quick. “I’d take my leave, if I have leave to take?”

Bruno’s studiedly impassive gaze shifts to him from Luys, and Luys turns about, his frown a disconcerted blend of skeptical amusement and temper interrupted. Pyrocles lowers his head, muttering, “Levity was never my forte.”

“Just as well,” says Bruno. “A light Anvil’s pretty much useless.”

Luys snorts, once, his frown tipping over till a shake of his head recovers his expressionlessness. Pyrocles blows out his mustaches, pewter beads at the ends of them a-sway. “We forget ourselves,” says Bruno. “From one servant of the Rose, then, to another, good Sir Pyrocles? Go as you might; make of it,” a breath, “whatsoever you will.”

“I’ll,” offers Luys, taking a step, but Bruno holds up a hand, “The Anvil knows the way.”

A hand on the knob of the door, Pyrocles looks back. “He means well, the Viscount,” he says. “They all do. Like you, they only want what’s best. What’s right, for all.”

“Of course,” says Luys, stood in the middle of the room.

“That may not be enough,” says Bruno, behind his desk.

Pyrocles hoists the satchel up onto his shoulder, rumpling his coat. Out into the hall and down those stairs, the door at the bottom opening on a wide room crowded with the jetsam of abandoned bathrooms, bowls of old sinks stained and cracked stacked one within another along the floor, parched toilets crowded cheek by jowl, seats of them haphazardly raised or lowered. Coming up along another aisle the Harper Chillicoathe, scowling over his big yellow beard. A hitch in Pyrocles’ step and the scuff of his footfall reaches Chilli, who looks up, over the toilets between them, his scowl becoming something more considered. “Hound,” he says.

“Harper,” says Pyrocles. Chilli’s scowl redoubles, those narrowed eyes noting the satchel. “You had business with the Shrieve?”

“An I did,” says Pyrocles, “it’s none of yours.”

Chilli looks away. Abruptly continues up the aisle, past tubs, over sinks, ducking through a low doorway, around a corner and down a couple of steps into a cramped hall, lumpily carpeted and not an angle entirely square, and Luys, who’s shutting one of the many doors.

“Well,” says Chilli, reaching to push open what hadn’t fully closed. “He’s awfully busy today.”

“What?” says Luys, but Chilli’s closing the door between them.

“You’re early,” says Bruno, still behind his desk.

“Better than late,” says Chilli.

“Sometimes.”

“What did the big lug want?” Chilli crosses the office, but toward the armchair, not the desk.

“The Mason?”

“There was another big lug?” Chilli plucks the stopper from the decanter, waves it under his nose. Cocks an appreciative brow. “Oh, you know Luys,” Bruno’s saying. “Hold on, hold tight, don’t rock the boat, and soon enough her grace will set it right.”

“Her grace,” says Chilli, selecting a squatly heavy glass from the shelf, “seems happy enough in her tent, of late, with her boy, and his by-blow.”

“You’re keeping an eye on them.”

“We’re keeping an eye, yes, though it spreads us terrible thin. Peg Greentooth’s out there now, and Gradasso next to spell her, and there’s two who could be otherwise – ”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“You’re no longer interfering.”

“No,” says Chilli, pouring a slug from the decanter, “we’re no more interfering.”

“We can’t have her riling the Marquess again.”

“Relax, dear Shrieve,” says Chilli, stoppering the decanter with a fillip, “neither you, nor our old dear friend Linesse, has any cause for concern. My associates and I take great, meticulous, horribly terribly boringly detailed pains,” waving the glass, “not even to be seen, at all.” He sips.

“Chilli,” says Bruno, “who pissed in your whisky?”

Shoulders slumping, Chilli lowers his head. “Her majesty’s bitch,” he says, “has claimed her majesty’s old pied-à-terre.” He throws back what’s left of the liquor.

“What?” says Bruno, after a moment.

“The flat,” says Chilli, waving his empty glass. “Hawthorne and Twentieth, above the resale shop.”

“No, I mean, you’re talking about the Outlaw. Marfisa.”

“Yes,” says Chilli, setting the glass quite deliberately there, by the decanter.

“Chilli,” says Bruno.

“She has my sword,” quick and quiet and cross.

“You,” says Bruno, looking away. “You lost a duel. Another. To the Outlaw.”

“I didn’t lose.”

“She has your sword!”

“She cheated!” Crossing from armchair to desk, “that woman, Shrieve, I, I found her, took her in when she wandered witless through a parking lot. She didn’t have her words,” thump his fist on the top of the desk. “And in return she steals my coat, she decides it’s my delivery needs hijacking, if it weren’t for her, Conary would still – ”

“If not for her,” says Bruno, “you’d not be here, with me. We’ve spoken, Harper, about your propensity,” he opens a drawer of his desk, “for squandering opportunity,” dropping a plastic baggie swollen with gold to the desktop, “responsibility, good will,” shutting the one drawer, opening another. “You really ought to look to that.” Pulling out a small white note card, plucking a pen from the rack to one side of the desk. “See to it the Outlaw’s removed from the premises. Do not do the deed yourself.” Consulting a small black notebook, he writes out a ten-digit number. “This man,” he’s saying, “did scutwork for the Duke. Chad, though he’s known as the XO.” Pushing the card and the baggie across the desk.

Chilli takes up the baggie. “I want my sword,” he says.

“There will be time and opportunity enough,” says Bruno. “After.”

“I want,” says Chilli, but Bruno slaps the desk, “This is not an exchange, Harper,” he says. “This is a thing for you to do. Make the arrangements to have your mess cleaned up. Keep me apprised of her grace’s doings. We must know the angles, if we’re to play them.”

Now Chilli takes the card. “If I’m to make arrangements,” he says, “on our behalf, perhaps some petty cash?”

Bruno takes a deep breath in through his nose, and opens a third drawer.

•

“Imagine, then, your majesty,” says the kid behind the wheel, “the fucking look on my face,” brown pompadour a-bob over the brass and leather goggles pushed up his forehead, “when I find out there’s a whole fucking kingdom of Brooklyn, in the fucking Court of Apples, and that’s the one he’s fucking going on about,” hurtling through an intersection, horn-blare dopplering behind, “any-fucking-way, that’s the sort of shit that maybe ought to be seen to,” twitch of the wheel edging left around a paused bus, back to the right before the startled windscreen of an oncoming truck, “if you’ll pardon me for saying so, ma’am,” eyeing the rearview mirror for a glimpse of the Queen in the backseat, bracing her jostled self as the car humps up and bouncing over a speed bump, “but as I was fucking saying, there’s none of that horseshit to worry about up here! Even though North’s not fifteen fucking blocks away,” one hand flicking a gesture at the driver’s side window as the other twists the wheel, bending them around a slow hatchback, “shit!” at the stuttering honk from an approaching van, hands leaping about, the one to twist the wheel right as the other yanks to downshift, engine whining, a slower floating rise and fall over another speed bump, and “Nothing, to worry,” the Queen mutters as the engine roars.

Another intersection, squealing into a right turn. Squared buildings two and three storeys high and brightly freshly painted whip past either side, a bicycle scoots out of the way, a couple of pedestrians have second thoughts about a crosswalk. “Hang on,” says the kid, flicking the wheel to the right then wrenching left, working the gearshift, engine yowling, rear end slewing all the way around in the middle of the street juddering drifting back a smidge to the side as he rights the wheel and stomps the parking brake. Sudden thunderous silence. “Here we are!” he cries. “Last free house in the Northeast Marches. Oh!” at the sound of the Queen resuming herself, squeak of naugahyde, squonk of springs, he’s throwing open his door to dash around the trunk and open the passenger door smoothly, levering the front seat forward, offering his hand. “So I should announce you?” says the kid.

“This is more by way of a personal appearance,” she says, her new white jeans, old boots, her long and lemon-colored cardigan. “Were it a matter for the court, perhaps, but,” looking past the welter of bicycles along the sidewalk, thick hedges at the corner, to the building across the side street, two storeys of green clapboard and a neon sign unlit, Alberta Rexall Rose. “We’d be there. Not here.” The house before them painted pink with mud-red trim, cramped front porch strung with tiny lights and crowded by a single enormous figure, an evidently empty suit of wicker armor topped by a great woven barrel of a helm.

“I’ll just, wait in the fucking car, then,” says the kid, shutting the passenger door, darting around the front of it, “just, it’s as I’ve said, ma’am!” Opening his door. “The fucking trains! Brooklyn Intermodal! Not the fucking Brooklyn of the Apples!”

Up the steps, onto the porch, she lifts her hand to the doorbell but thunk and clack the door creaks open, purple curtains a-sway. She spares a look for the suit of wicker armor.

Past the foot of the stairs, the hall butler hung about with all manner and type of hat, a derby and a Stetson, a floppy bonnet, a boater and a meshback cap, a dusty black stovepipe and a shako, elaborately plumed, set on the bench of it. Through the wide doorway into a dim, high-ceilinged room, drapes tight-shut and only a couple lamps lit, and seven or eight men and women, black turtlenecks and T-shirts, black tights and trousers, each of them fitted with a black beret, stood in two lines, an aisle that leads to a brownish-pink sofa, pulled away from the hearth, and two women sat upon it, leaned back against either arm, outstretched legs entwined beneath a couple of blankets and a quilt, the one her white hair bound and braided tight, the other her white hair loose, undone, and both the same small crafty smile. The Queen’s expression vacillates, amused, perplexed, widening in alarm as a little round man steps from his place right up before her, “Sic omnes lusere pii,” he intones, savoring the orotundity, “Dionysius, et qui increpuit magno mystica verba sono.” Those men and women all in black utter in a union mirthlessly polished, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” and then file past, one after another, out of the room.

“Well,” says the Queen.

“It’s not often we receive a head of state,” says the one of them.

“Such occasions,” says the other, “must be marked, with pomp and pageantry.”

“You knew, that I was coming?” says the Queen.

“Oh, none of that was for your majesty.”

“Not specifically.”

“It’s something they’ve been working on.”

“By way of,” an airy gesture, “a statement of purpose.”

“An artistic philosophy, expressed within, and by, the art.”

“They did think you might appreciate it.”

“They were quite,” a brow, wryly lifted, “excited.”

“And enthusiasm can be contagious.”

“But also exhausting.”

“Well. It can be exhausting.”

“Will this take long, do you think?”

The Queen turns away, a shake of her head, “This was a mistake,” she says.

“Is her majesty really such a coward?”

Pausing, in the middle of a step. “Do we seem afraid?”

“We seem a bit rude.”

Turning back. “We’d rather not waste anyone’s time,” says the Queen.

“Then don’t.”

“Tell us why you’ve come.”

“It must be terribly important, to have dragged you all this way.”

“I,” she says, “came,” stepping back toward the sofa.

“Thou cam’st?”

“For your help,” says Ysabel.

“But whatever could we possibly offer your majesty.”

“Whose reign is one of plenitude, and peace.”

Ysabel looks away, looks up, “When all,” she says, “was lost,” the picture molding crowded with wigstands and the heads of mannequins, each garishly painted with its clunically peculiar churlish buffoonish face.

“The owr,” says one of them.

“The King,” says the other.

“Our son.” One hand squeezes another, there on the quilt.

“Your son.” The hand lets go, withdraws.

“When all was lost,” says Ysabel, a bit more forcefully. “They chose to stay. The hobs and clods, domestics all, some knights, and also the Starling, and Christienne, her sister, Petra and sweet Jessie, your old amanuensis, even Gloria, even,” a breath, “Marfisa, my Outlaw. Though all was lost. Until Jo Gallowglas came back. And we did turn the owr once more. But.” Looking down, to them on the sofa. “Just yesterday, Marfisa walked away from me. Again. And Gloria, Gloria’s turned her back. Jessie was here, with us, the one day, gone the next. And Jo,” but here she looks away from them again.

“It sounds as if some few are left to you.”

“Enough, at least, to crowd a queen-sized bed.”

“This is not that,” says Ysabel, quickly.

A serrated cack of a laugh. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” a rough-hewn chuckle.

“Do not think to mock me, Mother.”

“Whyever not?”

“You openly consort with whores.”

“And strumpets.”

“I am the very Queen of Heaven!” cries Ysabel, flinging up her hands. “The Zenith, and the Acme! The Rose Arisen from our bitter tears! I will do, whatever brings me pleasure, when, and how, it please me!”

“And still, they have the gall to break your heart.”

“That is not why I am here!” Turning, stepping away, arms folded about herself. “Gloria,” she says. “We never, there was never,” and then, “her entanglement with us was nothing but a cruel jape of the Mooncalfe’s – yet such a lovely grace has come of it. The house, that she has made, and opened, to us all.” Letting go of herself there, in the middle of the room. “We thought to create her a Chatelaine,” says the Queen. “She spat on the office in our hands.”

One of them says, “Then – perhaps – it’s not the company you keep.”

“Perhaps,” says the other, “it’s how you keep that company.”

“Ask again, my pet.”

“Be done with it.”

“I can’t,” says Ysabel.

“You can’t.”

“Of course you can.”

“I can’t,” says Ysabel. “I only ever asked when I knew what the answer would be. When I asked Jo Gallowglas that first time, I knew she would refuse. That’s why I asked.”

“Poor girl.”

“Poor fool.”

“She saved me, Mother.” Stepping back toward the sofa. “She saved us all. And when, unbidden, she told me that, she loved me? A gift I never,” blinking quickly, looking away. “The night that she returned? When we restored the owr? I knew, the answer. She’d told me her answer. But I was, greedy. I needed to hear it, once more. And so I asked again.”

“And she refused you.”

“For a second time.”

Nodding, Ysabel takes a trembling breath. “And now,” she says, “I don’t know. Not anymore, not anyone. I didn’t know what Marfisa would say, or Gloria. I look at the Starling, I look at Christienne, even sweetly stupid Melissa, I look at them and I do not know how any of them would answer. How, how is it, how can I not know? Mother, tell me, how do I do this? How, when I don’t know that I’ll ever know again?”

One of them says, “How, thou art.”

“Why, the rule,” says the other.

“Thou art regal.”

“That is all.”

“So it must be enough.”