Hung on the wall the letters, deep and wide, precisely serifed forms cut from some dully leaden metal dark against the pale wood paneling, and the man in the brown coveralls up on the stepladder grunts as he lifts the capital R from its hooks, grimaces as he twists to lower it, carefully, to the floor. “Welund Barlowe and Lackland,” murmurs the receptionist, beard meticulously trimmed, a small but ornate brass telephone headset clipped to one ear. “How might I direct your call.”
Out in that lobby all chrome and cream and beige she’s vivid, her pink track suit, bright blue piping down the sleeves, her hair, close-cropped, a virulent chartreuse. Behind her a confusion of reflections and refractions interleaved, glass walls lightstruck by lamps discreetly tucked away delineating this hall, that conference room, until at last the high grey gloomy clouds without.
Reflections shift and swing, a suggestion of movement, and she stands herself alacritously up. He’s coming out alone, his navy suit, his shirt and tie of the same chalky blue, his white white hair in dreaded locks gathered loosely together, expression grimly set. She hastens to the elevator bank, pressing the button to summon one, checking within as the doors open, allowing him brusquely to step in first, taking up a position beside him as the doors slide shut.
“Send word,” he murmurs. “The Barons, the Soames, the Mason, all to the house in King’s Heights this very afternoon, ready to move in strength. And our knights to assemble, and Joaquin as well, under the Anvil’s hand.”
“My lord,” she says, outwardly unperturbed.
“And I need a meeting with Reginald Davies, as soon as it might be arranged. You can reach him through his firm, Maieutics, or possibly his development concern, Anaphenics.”
“Is this to be a drink, my lord? Dinner? A phone call?”
“Whatever it might take,” he says, “logistically, to get us speaking, together, as soon as possible,” and a sigh, “so be it.”
Elevator doors slide open on a dim garage filled with ranks of close-packed automobiles. Iona in pink leads the way toward a black SUV, looming there on a rumple of concrete hard by a thickset pillar. Agravante, white head lowered in thought, crisply following after. She stops, abruptly, there by the tail of it, lifting a hand, fob in her fingers, thumb poised, “My lord,” she says, but then the fob drops with a clank as light blooms about her hand to banish shadows lighting up the figure leaping spring-squonk and panel-crump from the trunk of a sedan to swinging bring a long staff down from overhead a savage whipping chop that’s caught, just, by Iona’s shivering blade.
Press, a twirl, whack, click-clack, the staff spinning, swinging, jabbing to test Iona’s parries and ripostes, black tights and a baggy black jacket, flop-muzzled goggle-eyed horse’s head, the mane of it stiffly upright. Agravante shakes out his white-locked head, stretches out his navy arms, a long-bladed dagger in either hand, hilts of them wrapped in blued wire, “Stop,” he says, politely enough. “Outlaw,” he says, “you should not have,” but then revelation dawns, as his shoulder’s shoved from behind, by the tip of a bat, “come,” he says, “alone,” lowering his daggers, annoyed.
“Never alone, in a herd,” says the figure stepping out from behind him, white T-shirt and grey running tights, baseball bat delivering another insouciant push, and rising wobbly from the shoulders a limp-snouted bristle-maned horse head, glaring at him somehow through pop eyes skewed in different directions.
“Put up, Chariot,” says Agravante, stepping with the push of the bat, “stand down,” his arms still open wide, but now his hands are empty. “This is bark, not bite.”
“Bite enough, for a lie direct,” says the horse with the bat.
“A lie?” says Agravante, suddenly concerned. “How so?”
“You,” a poke of the bat, “have a day, and a night, to put it about that you misspoke. To say, where any and all might hear, that the Queen’s Outlaw,” a shove, rocking his shoulder back, “has been most grievous wronged by your own words. A day, and a night, and if you do not? It will then be proved upon your body,” and another thrust, but this one he catches, one hand whipped in to grip the end of the bat, hold it firm against a briefly push-pull struggle.
“I spoke nothing but the truth,” says Agravante. “Someone wearing a horse mask broke into the house at King’s Heights. The Glaive was murthered, then and there. Cut down to bone, as if struck, perhaps, by a gallowglas,” looking from the horse with the bat, to the horse with the staff. “There is no lie in that.”
“A day, and a night,” says the horse with the bat, backing away. “Make it right, or it will be made right.”
“And then we come for your monster,” says the horse with the staff, lifting it up, away. Those floppy snouts turn then, toward each other, a look shared between them. Then they’re off, into the shadows among the cars.
“Well,” says Agravante. Iona stoops to find the fob.
•
Six tables of a length, pushed together in two close lines of three tables each, the tops of them differing colors, dully scrubbed white and sunny yellow, pale green and sinister gleaming red, stolid brown and lavender, but she’s not sat at any of them, she’s standing there, at the one end of the mullioned windows darkening in the wall above, pale feet bare, laddered tights printed with clockwork gears, vast blue T-shirt, her long black hair undone, and one hand balled in a fist.
“Chatelaine?” says the Queen.
She’s stepped through the open double doors, black curls artfully tangled, loosely belted robe of lace. “What,” says Gloria, turning away from the windows, “you don’t even bother to dress, now?”
“I was told it was urgent.”
“Close the,” Gloria’s free hand gestures, “doors. Come here.”
The double doors swing shut together as the Queen, golden slippers on her feet, lace frothing about her knees, her shins, steps to the end of the table, “Well?” she says.
“Just,” says Gloria, still stood there by the windows, “first, actually, first. Ask me your question.”
The Queen looks down to her hand, fingers spread on the brown tabletop. “What?” she says, looking back up to Gloria.
“Ask your question. Whenever you want, something, a cup of coffee, a ride to the store, to feel, better, about, your fucking self, you ask it, so go on, ask. Ask the goddamn question.”
The Queen lifts her hand from the table, folds up her arms.
“I was dead,” says Gloria, and the ragged edge of that word. “I said yes, I told you yes, I would’ve done anything for you, I did all of those horrible things to you, and he, he killed me, I was dead, and you, you,” blinking rapidly, “your brought me back,” says Gloria, simply, quietly. “Why did you bring me back.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Gloria,” says the Queen, gently, even tenderly. “What is this about.”
Gloria lurches toward the table, “I haven’t,” she says, unclenching her fist, “painted a goddamn thing in weeks.” She lays out what she’s been holding in it all this time, click, click, click.
A moment’s hesitation, and then, with uncertain steps, the Queen makes her way up the line of tables, past lavender spun with threads of violet, past deeply banked red a-glitter with silver and black, there to look down on sunny yellow formica and set atop it three black jagged shards of plastic, embossed with a broken string of numerals. Printed there, at what had been a corner, interlocking circles of red and orange. Bank of Trebi, on another, continuing across the third, zond. Gloria Monday. Good perhaps, 8 maybe, or 7, the date’s been sundered by a crack.
“It’s the end,” says Gloria. “Is what it’s about. Happened this morning. I’m pretty sure. But the Safeway delivery just got canceled, so there’s, we’re out the, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and Doe refused our order, so that’s, ah, no donuts, or coffee, in the morning, we were gonna, we have to put in the Rubinette’s order, next day or two, I’m not sure how we’re gonna, Anna, Anna has some, she’s gonna make some calls, about, ah, about my father’s, uh, but,” shaking her head, pink bangs a-swish.
“Who did you tell,” says the Queen.
“Christ,” Gloria’s saying, “the internet, the phones, wait – what?”
“These,” says the Queen, pressing one daintily manicured fingertip there by the broken card, “are always secured by an awful secret. If that secret is shared, with anyone, that security is,” lifting her hand away, “broken. The value,” to her breast, clutching closed the lace. “I hope,” she says, so very tenderly, “it was worth it.”
Turning away, walking away, back down the length of the tables. “Ysabel?” calls Gloria, after her. “Ysabel!”
One of the two double doors bursts open, well before the Queen has reached them, forcefully enough to bounce off the stuttering twang of a doorstop. He’s standing there, wide-eyed with chagrin as that door swings slowly back. “Lady,” he calls, catching the handle, pushing within, “my lady,” but he’s looking to Gloria, not the Queen. “There’s trouble, with the truck. You must come.”
“The truck,” says Gloria, coming down by the Queen.
“Rabbits have come, lady,” he says, “on behalf, they say, of the Guisarme,” his neatly knotted tie of gold, his ashen curls, brushing his shoulders, “they mean to take the truck, but Jim Turk refuses – lady!” pressing back against the door as she bulls past him, out of the room, into the hall, away. “Majesty?” he says, turning to the Queen, stood there, stricken.
Bare feet slapping, down the stairs, around and past the scaffolding skewed through the gloomy foyer, under a wide low arch, bulbs strung along the ceiling of it dark, out into the cavernous warehouse, echoing with the commotion of the crowd about the open overhead door at the other end, there before the empty unlit stage. She breaks from her hasty harried trot into a plunging arm-pumping run past stalls filled with garbage and equipment and art, up to and around the lustrous wooden tub as shouts break over the clamor, “Hey!” and “Whoa!” and “Stop!” and “Gallowglas, gallowglas approaching! Gallowglas to the field!” Hands grab, torsos interpose, she’s stumbled, buffeted, shoves in turn, “Dammit,” she snaps, and yelps “Out of my way!” shouldering on, but “Lady!” cries someone, and someone else, “Chatelaine!” There, suddenly, before her, wee Goggie, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, hands up, halt, stop, “you mustn’t, you can’t,” she’s saying, “he’s horribly wounded, if you set foot out there, he’ll be done to dust, and for sure!”
A latter, shots from without, they’re all surging forward, jamming the doorway to see, “Why,” growls Gloria, “why aren’t,” struggling, yanking, wrenching against the hands that grasp that clench that hold, that bar, “help him!” she roars.
A mighty crash out there, the splash of glass, a howl of rage, hoots and taunts, Gloria hurls herself about, against those implacable hands, but someone out there, someone, a high clear voice is singing, “Was on a jolly summer’s morn,” and another voice leaps to join, “the twenty-ninth of May!” as a wornly ragged chorus assembles itself, “that we took up, our turmut hoes, and here, we means, to stay!” and oh, the cheers at that. One last shrug of a yank from Gloria against slackening grips, hands falling away, bodies that step back, as out there a single voice, deep, but threadily hesitant, “For some delights, in hay-makin,” and a heavy, hacking cough, Gloria shoving abruptly forward and again the grabbing clutching gripping, “and some they fancies mowin!” strengthening with every word, “but of all the jobs, what we like best, give us, the turmut-hoein!”
The light, changing, changes.
Gloria turns away, from the door, the song, the crowd, to see her majesty then, approaching, up the aisle between the stalls, and that cavernous late afternoon swells with the daylight that shines from her face, her hands, and they all, all of them, falling silent, fall away, press close to either side an aisle of their own past the outshone tub, toward the open overhead door.
The Queen in sunlight and in lace steps out onto the loading dock, illuminating the scene below, the battleship of a pickup truck, intimidating grille dented to one side, fender crumpled, headlight shattered, and Big Jim Turk stood up on the hood of it, hunched over clutching himself, wobble of a hilt there winking in her daylight, a rapier shoved through his shoulder, tip of it a-gleam above his back, and a smile grimly twists beneath his mustache. On the pavement before and about there’s bald Otto Dogstongue, and Mulciber behind him, doubled over a wound of his own, and Trucos and Getulos, side-by-side, paint-spattered fists up and ready, and Lustucru in his apron and looming, limber Fell Swinton. Arrayed against them a tidy knot of rabbits, the empty-handed Stevedore and the Gaffer, the Kamali with his jeweled gloves, lowering a scimitar, the Luthier with his chain, and there among them the Guerdon, glowering in pinstripes. Off around that way, by the side of the flatbed trailer, there’s the snarling Buggane squared off against Swift and the Jackstaff, spinning away his stick, deferentially alarmed to see her, shining, there.
“What is the meaning of this,” says the Queen.
Crumple-pop of the hood as Big Jim with a grunt sits himself, “They would,” he says, taking hold of that workmanlike hilt, “repossess our truck,” and, grimacing, prepares to pull.
“Majesty,” says the Guerdon, smoothing away his glower, “if we might repair in camera?”
“You might address us here, before the court.”
The Guerdon’s expression, smoothed, betrays a squint of disdain. “It should be a matter simple enough, majesty. Funds for its purchase were drawn from an account found to be in arrears. Until we’ve ironed out the irregularities, which I’m sure we will, the truck must be,” wincing, he pauses, as Big Jim Turk with a guttural groan hauls the rapier free from his body. “Must needs be secured,” he says, then.
“The truck’s secure with us,” says the Queen. “There’s no need to remove it, if all’s so simple, and so certain, as you say.”
“But, majesty, there are bonds beyond those of the court,” again, he pauses, as Jim Turk tosses the freed blade to the Stevedore’s feet, clang. “The damage, of course,” a gesture, toward the dented grille, “must be seen to.”
“That,” grits Mulciber, the word scraped thin by pain, “is on you.”
“You will leave the truck,” says the Queen.
“What, then, majesty, are we to tell the Glaive?”
“That you failed,” she says, and at that, he looks down, to his polished bluchers on the tarmacadam. He nods, once. “It shall be even as your majesty has said.”
“It is always to be as we say.”
The evening above, deepening to an eerily sullen blue, still held at bay, for the moment, by her warming golden light. The Guerdon lifts a hand, beckoning, and the Jackstaff heads back around the truck, followed by cautious Swift, and the Stevedore collects his sword. Big Jim scoots himself to the front of the hood, a hand clapped to his leaking shoulder, and there he plants a boot on the bumper to glare as the rabbits and the Guerdon retreat, up toward the two SUVs angled at the top of the darkening street, and then, as cheers break out, as applause smatters up from the crowd in the doorway, on the dock, as Otto offers an arm to Mulciber, and the Fell Swinton throws up her great big hands, and Trucos, shaking his head, looks over the broken headlight. Jim Turk steps off the bumper and hauls himself onto the dock with the help of many hands, hands that return to and redouble the applause, as he bows before the Queen. She waves a benison over them all, but turns away to step back into the warehouse without a word.
The applause patters to silence as evening falls all about. The Buggane hops onto the flatbed and from there to the dock as Getulos, pointing, insists something to Trucos. Big Jim, hand once more clutched to his shoulder, nods absently to Iemanya and to John Wharfinger, to beaming Charlichhold, as he joins with most of the rest of the crowd to filter back in under the overhead door, into that cavernous room as racks of fluorescents above flickering buzz to actinic life, dispelling shadows, and with them the warming ambience of the tub. And there’s Gloria Monday stood before it, her T-shirt rumpled, askew, expressionlessly watching his approach.
“Sweetling,” he says, lifting his hand from the hole torn through his shoulder, holding it wetly shining between them as she steps close, “but a moment with the owr, and I’ll be right as rain.”
She slaps him.