Hands by a bare hip, sun-browned, water-beaded, undo the knot of a bikini string, A hint of things to come, the caption, 2,421 likes. Don’t tease us, Sooeurs! says the first comment, followed by a string of emojis, hearts red and purple, a peach, a spurt of pale blue droplets. “What’s wrong?” says Ysabel, leaning close.
Chrissie swipes the photo away, shuts off the phone, “Ettie,” she says. “Posted that, to our feed. Without telling me.”
“From, ah, Los Angeles?” Ysabel presses a kiss to her shoulder. “Do you regret not going with her?”
Chrissie curls her fingers in artful tangles, inky black in the shadows, “No,” she says, quite firmly, and it’s her mouth that’s kissed next. “Though,” she murmurs, when it’s over, “it has only been sixty-seven hours and forty-five minutes. Or so. But she shouldn’t’ve done that.” Her hair’s been shorn to a fuzz of candlelit gold that clings to the curve of her skull.
“Very rude,” says the Starling, sat up on the other side, her yellow bob mussed to disarray, collarbone ruddied by a smudge of lipstick.
“Then you must post something of your own.” Ysabel sits up. “We should stage a tableau! Have Petra photograph it, I’m certain she’d be superior to,” a dismissive fillip of her fingers toward the phone, “whoever did that,” but Chrissie’s shaking her head, “I don’t want to bug her,” she says, nestled among the pillows. “And anyway, there’s the show, tomorrow.” Rugs and wraps now lopped up to her chin. “That’s enough.”
“Your television début!” Ysabel claps once, delighted, looking from one to the other, “as sexy devil-spirits, how could I forget.”
“As tulpas, my lady,” says the Starling.
“I’ll be the tulpa,” says Chrissie. “Both, I guess.”
“What will you look like? What will you wear?”
The Starling shrugs. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Fitting’s at six,” says Chrissie.
“But you must have some ideas – go on,” nudging the Starling, nudging Chrissie, “whip something up. Dress in character. Your Queen commands!”
Leaning over Ysabel, the Starling offers a hand to Chrissie, who takes it with a sigh to pull herself up and, hand in hand, shedding silk and satin and brocade, bolsters and cushions bumped and slippingly tumbled, they step through the ring of candles flickering in their wake, padding toward the dressing screen set up there, between two of the blocky columns, and the frame of it is whitewashed wood, and the panels of pale linen. Ysabel smiling tugs cushions and pillows to arrange a comfortably makeshift throne against the side of the widely empty bed, and drapes her lap with a diaphanous scarf of purple roses and blue, edged with orange tassels. Laid out on the far side of that bed atop the blankets smoothly spread and tucked a black T-shirt, a kilt tartaned with black and red and white, an assortment of tights in blacks and greys, neatly rolled, a pair of fingerless cycling gloves.
“Majesty,” says someone in the shadows off that way.
“Not now,” says Ysabel. “Set the scene: music, something good for a dramatic entrance, at a nightclub. And a glass of the vodka, the vanilla vodka.”
A clack, and the space is filled with a humming chord of voices stretched, a simple echoing phrase plucked from a guitar, breathy vocals, I’m in bed, texting girls, but I’m thinkin bout you baby, and Ysabel takes a colorless sip from the slender fluted glass in her hand.
Buckled platform pumps step from behind the screen, the one, the other, hand still in hand, yellow hair in ringlets tumbled to their shoulders, bodices of ivory folds plunging from their necks in scoops that shift and sway and somehow gather in tightly brief hip-hugging skirts, and clattering bracelets about their wrists, and filigreed armbands of gold, as the chorus swells to a thumping crescendo, you might be someone I could love, or you’re just somebody I fucked once. “Oh, that’s a start,” says Ysabel, but the Starling straightens, hips unslung, arm lowering, as Chrissie steps close, behind, “We have an audience,” she says.
Ysabel’s wryly merry leer melts as the music abruptly ceases with a clack. Next to a column there a figure fitfully limned by candlelight, the crease and placket of a fine white shirt, the knot and drape of a tie, the curls of his long hair. “I created you my Axe,” she says, quite cold and steely sharp. “Shall I have you uncreated? Transformed to a stag, and set upon by hounds?”
“Majesty, I’ve news – ”
“Not! Now!” The candles flare, a slop of light past the columns round about to show the gold of his tie, the gleaming grey of his trousers, the ashen surplus of those curls. “You should be out, with her grace, in the field,” says the Queen, her green eyes fiercely stern.
All in a rush, “Majesty your humble servant has,” he says, “been,” a breath, “tasked, with remaining here, to coordinate her grace’s efforts. But it’s from this vantage that I might report Luys, the Mason, is not either in the field, nor here, nor seen today by any of the court. Her grace is wrothly vexed by this development.”
The Queen’s head droops, with a sigh, black tresses slipping to curtain her breast. “This news,” she says, her words pitched low, “might’ve waited, till we had finished our ablutions.” Chrissie takes a step away from the Starling, but doesn’t lift her hand from the Starling’s arm. Ysabel’s looking back up, her smile considering a return. “But you’re here now,” she says. “You might as well favor us with an opinion: are they not lovely?”
“Majesty?” says Jeffeory, the Axe. Chrissie’s hand slips away as the Starling looks to her with eyes that are green, not blue.
“Play on!” cries Ysabel then, getting abruptly to her feet. “Vodka for all!” Arms out for balance as she negotiates the slippery tumble of pillows and rugs. “I’ll outfit myself as well,” she says, skipping past the candles as the music resumes mid-beat, you this but fuck it, here’s my confession, as Ysabel catches Chrissie’s hand, lifts it for a kiss, “We’ll have dancing!” Leaning in to quickly kiss the Starling’s lips even as she’s letting go, twisting away, “Vodka!” she calls. “Shots for all!”
“My lady,” says the Starling, “it’s only just past ten.”
“Not in the Dvůr Sto Věží!” says Ysabel, her smile now wickedly bright, and she ducks behind the screen.
•
“I couldn’t possibly.”
“No,” says Gloria, “seriously, it’s not,” a hand up as if to push it away, but the gold card doesn’t waver in Anne Thorpe’s hand. She’s sat at one end of the nubbled green couch, black trousers crossed at the knee, mustard-yellow sweater vest, her snap-brim at a jaunty angle on her head. “It’s not anything you’d ever have to worry about,” says Gloria. “That’s the beauty of it.”
“It’s precisely why I would have to worry about it,” says Thorpe, but Gloria’s resolutely folding her arms, stood at the edge of the unlit stage, the cavernously busy warehouse opening out behind and below. Thorpe lowers the card, setting it precisely on the arm of the couch. “It’s been a couple-three weeks. Why call me today?”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You’re still,” says Gloria, “working on the story.”
“I’m always working on a story.”
“Well, this,” a gesture toward the card, “is part of that. I mean, you don’t think it all,” a gesture tossed over her shoulder, at all the daily bustle, “came from my father’s estate, did you? That’s still tied up in, who knows what. Legal shit.”
Drawing back her hand, Thorpe peers down her nose at the shining card, “Bank of,” she says, “Trebizond? Okay, it’s definitely not just the ethics I’m worried about.”
“It’s totally legit.”
“Sure.”
“Anything you need. Within reason.”
“This,” says Thorpe, looking pointedly past Gloria toward the activity below, the overflowing stalls to either side, the yammer and chatter, jangle and strum, the rattle-thump and clang and chime and the clack-lack blunder surrounding that great wooden tub in the middle of it all, the scaffolding at the other end framing a half-painted mural, great sharp fang of a mountain lit up in orange and magenta, unearthly pinks and greens and an appalling blue that looms over what might soon become a tree-stuffed town, “all this?” says Thorpe. “Is within reason?”
Gloria shrugs winsomely. “Reason is,” she says, “as reason does. Don’t you need something like this?”
“Christ,” says Thorpe, studiously refusing to look at the card, “of course I do. That’s the whole fucking point. Why. Did you. Call me. Today.” And then, as Gloria looks toward the half-opened overhead door, “Are you really going to make me ask? About the truck, out there? The trailer? What you’re going to do with it?”
“You saw that?” says Gloria, and she snorts at the stone-faced look of patience depleted that Thorpe offers in response. “It’s, another part of the story. Might make a good ending. We’re building a float. We’re gonna crash the Starlight Parade.”
The stone holds a moment before it cracks in an exasperated, a perplexed, an admiring chortle of a sigh. “Good lord, girl,” says Thorpe. “You are bound and determined to get yourself noticed.”
“It’s a celebration!” cries Gloria, throwing up her hands, turning about, “all of this, of everything we’ve been able to do,” looking about, turning back, “we deserve to get noticed. It’s gonna be epic. It has to be.”
“And the very next day, you’re shut the fuck down.”
“You forget a step or two?” Gloria throws wide her arms, taking all of it in, “This whole place is mine! Free and clear!”
Another complex guffaw. “You mean that circus, a couple-three weeks ago? Sweetie, absolutely nothing about any of that was a legally binding document.”
“They can,” says Gloria, but she’s looking down, turning away, a change in the tenor of the bustle below, a sharpness, a stentoriousness, a shift in focus surging about that tub. “I mean,” Thorpe’s saying, “did you think you saved the Lovejoy Ramp, too? Gloria?” But Gloria’s stooping, a hand on the edge there, stepping off from the stage to drop to the floor below, “Hey!” making her way toward the knot of hobs and cods coalesced to one side of the wooden tub, faces concerned about something in the middle of them all, arms outstretched, helping hands, all suddenly undone, shoved back, flung up, away, some stumbled to the concrete floor, some against the staves of that tub, a haze of golden dust a-shimmer in the air with a yelping coughing whoop, and hands on the lucent Himmelbarb’s shoulders Gloria steps between Cherrycoke and Dewslip, past Loati and Angavelle, to come to the hunch of a girl on the floor, blowsy madras shorts, black hair in curls, shaking with sobs, “Olivia?” says Gloria, small, appalled.
The girl looks up, eyes far too wide, gold smeared about her lips, her cheeks, sheen of it split by the blackening tracks of welling rolling tears, “Gloria,” she says, “oh my God, Gloria,” lunging for her, grasping with hands that drip gold, “She’s had,” says someone, but “Only what you need!” pipes someone else, “Only what you need!” a refrain taken up by others, “Only, only what you need! What you need!”
Gloria kneels to catch her by the elbow, “Olivia,” she’s saying, the waist, “what are you,” but “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Olivia’s saying, “I never, I didn’t know, I had to know, Chloe, Chloe said it was just, but it’s, it’s so much,” those eyes, and nothing but darkness between and beneath the lids of them, filling up so wide, “I can see,” she’s saying, “it’s all so,” twisting in Gloria’s grip, “wait,” says Gloria, “Olivia, wait,” but those eyes look past her, up to all the rest of them pressed close about, “the hands,” says Olivia, “the noses, the cheeks! I see it now! The clothes! It’s, it’s like,” and Gloria flinches as that wondrous mask of cracked and grimy gold, as those eyes turn back to her, “Muppets!” cries Olivia, “Brian Froud! Brian Froud Muppets!” Brows flaking brilliance as they lift in amused bemusement over those depthless eyes, “You’re wearing a wimple!”
On the other side of the tub Ellen Oh lurches with a shove against her tattooed shoulder, and turns to catch the end of a baseball bat before it can poke her again, sweat gleaming her cloak of sharp-drawn ink, blinked from frowning eyes. Marfisa draws back the bat to an angle en garde, “They have it well enough in hand,” she says. “Let’s resume.” White-gold hair in a ruthlessly braided queue, grey shorts and T-shirt, sleekly seamless running shoes, both hands on the black-taped handle of the bat she twirls once, slowly, swings a slow deliberate blow that Ellen parries with a quick shift of the staff in her hands, clack, stepping to one side bare feet deftly crossing one before another beneath the belling cuffs of yoga pants. Another deliberate blow, caught by another jerk of that staff, slender and long, lemony palely troubled by a hint of grain, held warily, hands wide apart. Marfisa sets to with one-handed alacrity, slinging blows that Ellen grimly blocks, down from above, up from below, roundabout into a jab of a thrust clack-lack, whack, whack, pressing forth, falling back, leaning in, to and fro this emptied stretch of aisle between the stalls. “Hit me,” says Marfisa. “Hit me. You’re not trying to hit me.”
“I don’t,” says Ellen, clack, “see the point,” lack-crack, as Marfisa tosses the bat from hand to hand, turns a chop to an uppercut that Ellen whacks aside, “none of this,” stepping back, swing ducked, “will do, any good,” whick, “against that monster,” clack-crack, but back she steps again, and back.
“Exercise!” cries Marfisa, whirling the bat above her head. “Is it not the case,” a chop, and Ellen blocks, “every day you cannot manage to race your heart,” chop, and block, “a measurable stretch, why, then,” crack, “a day is stricken from the brief allotment given you to live!” another chop, but Ellen ducking skips back from it, “Make room! Make room!” someone’s bellowing.
Marfisa lets the unchecked force of that last blow swing her bat down around and up, readily cocked in both hands above her shoulder. “Make room!” It’s Templemass, waving his red-draped arms as he backs his way down the aisle ahead of Gloria and Big Jim Turk and, cradled in Jim’s arms, Olivia. His shirtfront smeared with gold where she’s clutched it groaning, sniveling, gleaming cheeks beneath those black and empty eyes, and the mass of others pressing after, far more than Templemass might hope to clear with his exhortations. Ellen steps back into a stall lined with racks of shawls and bandanas and cravats, as Marfisa, bat still at the ready, steps into a stall across the aisle, hung about with garishly dour portraits on fields of velvety black. “Make room!” cries Templemass once more.
As they’re passing Olivia cranes up in Big Jim’s arms to look to the one side, the other, that cracking golden mask hollowing about an opening mouth, those empty eyes, and she points a golden hand at Marfisa, “Horse!” she cries, she screams, pointing at Ellen, “Horse!” struggling against Jim’s unyielding arms, throwing off Gloria’s comforting hand, and with another “Make room!” they’re off, away down the aisle, headed for the arch at the far end, followed by the tremulously murmurous crowd of those about, the rest stood watching, looking away, resuming what they’d been doing before, and but none of them left there by the wooden tub.
Marisa her bat yet cocked steps back into the clearing aisle with an expectant look for Ellen, leaned there on her staff in the stall opposite, but Ellen’s looking up past the tub, not to the unlit stage, not to the woman watching there in black and ugly yellow, but to the man headed toward them both, quite short, rough moleskin over discreetly checkered shirtsleeves, trousers of rumpled corduroy, “You,” he says, to Marfisa, “you should not be here.”
“This hall’s as open to me,” she says, “as to anyone, whose jacket isn’t blue,” tock, the tip of her bat on concrete.
“You should not be here,” he says, again. “The news has spread, of what your brother’s said you’ve gone and done.”
Ellen’s laid down her staff, she’s taken up a roughly simple jacket, shrugging it over her tattoos. “I have no brother, Shrieve,” Marfisa’s saying.
“Let’s not mince words, my lady Outlaw. The Viscount has told of a figure with the head of a horse, that broached the house at King’s Heights, and did there murther the Glaive Rhythidd, and cut him to the bone.”
“His excellency’s mistaken,” says Marfisa, flatly quiet.
“Of this, I have no doubt,” says Bruno. “Nonetheless. The Glaive is gone, and her Majesty’s Huntsman is gone. It were best if the Outlaw were not to be seen so openly at court, for the next few days.”
“Few,” says Marfisa, looking past him, over his shoulder, to Ellen, the staff once more in her hands. “I wonder if the Shrieve’s not optimistic.”
Bruno claps a hand to Marfisa’s shoulder. “I’ve no doubt the perpetrator will be soon found,” he says, smile faltering as she blinks, once, and he lifts his hand away. “A violation, of this magnitude.” He steps back, starting at how close Ellen has come. “I trust you’ll – both, agree.”
“Well,” says Ellen, when Bruno’s out of earshot, “it’s not as if we’ll find the monster here.”
“Nor my brother, neither,” says Marfisa.