An apron of bare dirt slopes from a retaining wall down to a row of slender columns upholding the bridge above, a file of proscenia framing the quietly empty cross street, dimly lit, the one-lane ramps arising close by either side. A couple of old dome tents pitched right up against the wall, beneath criss-crossed stripes of whitewash palimpsesting old graffiti, before flattened cardboard laid out, an impromptu parquet floor, but everyone hooting and hollering’s gathered about the wide circle scratched in the dirt, down by the arches, where all is vaguely lit by an orange haze of sodium vapor. She’s on her hands and knees in that circle, coughing, groaning, wrapped in a puffy ski jacket of some filthy color, impossible to name, and he’s strutting shirtless about her, preening for the crowd, skinny arms spread wide, fingers beckoning for more, nodding that head under a slop of dark hair, stringily greasy, sharp nose, sharp chin, those sharply eager eyes, “Another?” he roars, and they all bellow their approval. He rears back a heavy brown boot and hurls it forward, an unsteadying kick to her belly that lifts her bodily off the dirt, and a plosive burst of breath. He drops to a squat, sharp-bent elbows braced on sharply bended knees, teeth bared, waggling his tongue. Moaning she’s pushed herself back up on hands and knees, her mismatched shoes scuffing the dirt, “Oh, no!” he cries, sharp angles unfolding to lever him upright. “You ain’t got permission to leave, Bambi!” Stalking around to plant those boots once more between her and the sketchy edge of the circle as, grimacing with a labored sob, she pulls herself down, in, curling about herself as the crowd about them jeers. “Oh, no, indeed,” he says, quiet and close, as he tugs something free from the small of his back. “Bambi Jo, you ain’t never gonna leave.” An elaborate swing of his goosefleshed arm to bring to bear a long and tapered poignard, the hilt of it wrapped in wire.

“Dread Paladin.”

Silence falls about those two words, spoken, not loudly, but with cuttingly definite purpose. She’s stood with the others, outside the circle, older than all of them, taller than most, rough hair unkemptly dark, craggy cheeks and a jut of a nose, frame of her softened by a puffy coat of her own, greasily bright, pink or orange or yellowy gold, perhaps. “That’s enough tax.”

“Oh, no,” he says, “no, jefe, we ain’t talking tax, not for what she’s done,” reaching, seizing, yanking up by that hair-colored hair a face crumpled with effort, or terror, or grief, perhaps. “Not for what she thought she was gonna do,” he says, hunching close with that knife.

“Moody.”

She steps out of the crowd, into the circle, hands still tucked in the pockets of her puffy coat. He looks up, heaving his breath, ribs broadening, yielding, sharply defined by shadows, and the awful look upon his face.

“We got no sanction,” she says, stepping closer to them both.

“Fuck that,” he spits, with a savage shake of the head in his hand, “she thinks she’s gonna leave us. Thinks a job and a room in a box is enough to get her out of here. No way,” and another shake, “we let that go. No way,” leaning close, tip of his tapered blade sinking into the puffy nylon of her jacket, “and here,” he says, the rage drained out of his voice gone cold, “right here, is where I should’ve done it. Split you open,” shifting the tip from yielding nylon to slick taut flesh, “throat to cunt, dumped you out, there and then, fuck the chief and the fucking commandant, and fuck Bambi, I’d’ve been done with her. That time would’ve been worth the doing.” Standing abruptly, letting her drop to the dirt. “Instead of letting whichever one of you,” swinging the blade in a wide circle, taking in that crowd of still and silent silhouettes, “gets beat to hell, down by the tracks,” that flash of anger once more muttering away as he looks to her, crumpled in the dirt, the face of her turned away, the back of her head a darker shadow among shadows. “At least you know what it’s like, now,” arms at his sides, his blade hung low, “doing time for for someone else’s crime. Jacked for what you didn’t fucking do. But,” and, suddenly sputtering, “damn, the, the look,” a gasping cough of a laugh, “on poor, poor Jasper, on his fucking face,” shaking his head, “bang!” doubling over with paroxysmal giggles.

“She ain’t there, Moody,” says the tall woman, and his giggles pull up short, he turns to look up to her stood there, hands still in those pockets, looking not so much at him as where he’d used to be. “She ain’t in jail, Moody,” she’s saying, but the voice that seeps from those barely moving lips is thicker, lower, softer, slurred. “You said you put her in jail, but she ain’t there.”

“Ada?” he says, incredulous, pushing himself to his feet, “but I don’t meet you yet, not yet, not till way after,” looking down, to his hands, but instead of a glinting silvery knife there’s a heavy golden watch. He shoves back the cuff of the jacket he’s wearing to stare at the dials of it, the majestic sweep hand atop them all swung slowly, inexorably widdershins until it reaches the bottom of its arc where it shivers to a halt, pointed straight at him for one long stretch of a moment, before soundlessly resuming its clockwise course.

Rattle and scratching crackling pop he scrambles crabwise up off flattened cardboard, out from under sunstruck blue tarpaulin, shouldering past Ada flapped over and back in her bone-dry purple rain shell to hunch up and clanging claw at a kiltered panel of cyclone fence. Out there in the street a low-slung ruddy car, black stripe down the side of it, an elderly man in a shapeless suit lowering himself into the front passenger seat. “Hey!” shouts Moody, but the engine’s rumbled to life, swallowing the rattle of the fence in his hands and whatever it is he hollers next. Tires squeal and the car leaps away, tail of it shuddering slewing until the velocity catches up with it straightening, accelerating, gone.

•

“Hold up,” says Jo, one hand lifted, a warning gesture tossed back over her shoulder, her other held to her chest, loosely curled.

“Problem?” says Jack on the top step, behind her, above her.

“No,” she says, “probably,” taking another step down, “probably not. Still,” as she makes her way down step by quick but careful step, passing from thinly daylight, muralled walls, yellowing tile, down into rough-poured concrete grotto, a darkness shaped and ranked by blocky columns thrust up to groin a ceiling lost in shadows, hiding and revealing by turns an archipelago of candlelight at the far end, about a cluttered nest of pillows bolsters rugs and wraps and Persian carpets laid upon the floor and a figure stood there, two, silhouettes uncertain in the glimmering flicker.

“Hello?” calls Jo, as she makes her way along the unlit aisle between the columns. “Excuse me, hello?”

One of them, thickset in a long white coat, looks away from the candles, peering into the darkness to see who called, but turns back to the light with a shrug. The other, shorter and more slender, doesn’t look away from whatever it is it seems they’re both awaiting.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” she calls, “I thought this was, I mean, I’m looking,” but they’ve drawn themselves upright at some signal or sign, as what they’ve been watching for appears, stepped out from behind the screen stood there, linen panels set in frames of white-washed wood, a figure tall and slim, draped in frothy white and spangled with gold, and black curls artfully tangled about her shoulders.

“Ysabel?” says Jo, brought up short.

The woman in the white coat turns again to look to her, candlelight slipping to pool in the roundly concave mirror she wears on a band about her temples. The shorter man, his shirtsleeves gartered, doesn’t deign to register Jo as he steps to Ysabel’s side, lifting from about his neck a loop of tape-measure that he fussily deploys. Ysabel stands impassively, tugged this way, nudged that, as he takes the measure of a length of sleeve, the stretch of a seam, noting the results on a minuscule notepad, and all the while Ysabel’s gazing down at Jo with a vaguely imperious disappointment, and Jo closes her eyes, then opens them, a gesture far too considered to be thought of as a blink.

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“Starling,” says Jo.

“Duchess,” says the Starling. “Have you come to stay?” A half-step forward as the shorter man kneels behind, twisting to reach with his tape-measure.

“I, ah,” says Jo, “what?”

“Your grace’s things are laid out on the bed, there. No one has, interfered, with any of that,” a gesture made awkward by an attempt to measure a hem.

“I, ah, I’m not,” says Jo, looking over to the high wide bed on the other side of that puddle of candlelight, “here for, ah, this,” she says, and the dark clothing laid out to one side of the pillowy white duvet. “That,” she says. “Um.”

“All’s intact and as you’d left it. We’ll just be a moment longer,” looking down to the shorter man as he tucks his pad away in the bib of his apron.

“That’s fine,” says Jo, brows pinching, “we’re just, I’m,” a gesture, toward the dressing screen, “just here to use the, ah,” looking back, over her shoulder, “I thought I told you to wait,” she says.

“Yeah,” says Jack, stood at the very verge of the light that glints and winks the buttons pinned up and down his denim jacket, he’s staring, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, one hand lifted, reaching, but not exactly, toward, but not precisely, the Starling. “You, ah,” he says, blinking, “said. There wouldn’t be, ah. Problem.”

“There isn’t?” says Jo, as the Starling’s saying “And you are?” and Jack leans back, suddenly, away, into the shadows. “It’s not,” says Jo, “nothing’s, can we just, Jack? If you could, okay?”

“A moment more,” the Starling says, turning away from them all, back toward the screen, “and we’ll be out of your grace’s hair.”

“No!” says Jo, a sharply interrupted gesture, “wait,” she says, “nobody, I’m not here to, kick anybody out, or anything, Starling, just, hang on a minute,” but the Starling’s stepped herself back behind the screen, “I, ah,” says Jo. The woman in the white coat looks down, brushes something from a sleeve. The man in the leather apron pushes himself up off his knees.

“What,” says Jack, “is going on?”

“You,” says Jo, that interrupted gesture resuming askew, yanked back at him, “are in dire need of a shower, a bath, whatever, a change of clothes,” and he closes his arms protectively about his clattering jacket, “Then what the hell are we doing here?” he says.

The Starling steps out from behind the screen, taller, wrapped in an oversized hoodie of pale pink gently overwhelmed by the cornflower seeping from those puffily broad shoulders, the hood of it lowered to lap her shoulders like a ruff of richly royal blue. Squeak of spotless white sneakers as she kneels by a black gym bag, unzipping it enough to slip a handful of filmy lace within. “I’m not, moving in, or anything,” says Jo, quickly, “so you don’t have to go anywhere, I’m not, kicking you out, Starling, you’re, you’re okay.”

“Wait,” says Jack, unnoticed, “what?”

“Rest assured that your grace in no way is putting my out,” says the Starling, hauling up the gym bag as she gets to her feet. Looking about the guttering island of light, the pillows, and the rugs. “I’d meant to leave regardless.”

“Starling,” says Jo, as she turns to leave, “wait, is there a light switch somewhere, or, like, any lights, at all, besides,” looking down, at all those burning candles.

“All else is packed away,” says the Starling, setting off.

“Yeah, but,” says Jo, “is she,” and at that, the Starling stops, there in the shadows.

“Is she okay?” says Jo.

The Starling looks back, over her shoulder. “No,” she says, and she’s gone.

“Jo,” says Jack, an unvoiced cough to catch no one’s attention but hers. And then, again, “Jo,” more urgently insistent, “Jo!” She turns to him, slowly, with a shake of her head. “Come on,” she says, stepping off the rugs.

“Where’d they go?” the same hoarsely insistent not-quite whisper. “The other two.”

“They left,” she says, looking up at the screen. And then, “Jack,” she says, and he jerks away from the shadows, peering back at her through the candlelight, “some of this shit,” she’s saying, “you don’t know the answer, just don’t ask. Trust me.” Beckoning. “Get over here.”

“What is that,” he says, without stepping onto the rugs between them.

“It’s just,” a gesture at the three tall folds of it, shallowly zig-zagged, linen panels obscure in that light, “you go behind it, they’ll clean you up, change your clothes, fix your hair, cut it, rearrange, whatever. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” he says, “I want?” Looking back, over his shoulder, into the shadows.

“Yeah,” says Jo, but then, “I mean, it’s not like you’ll have time to, to tell them what you want, or anything, they’re pretty damn fast. But just, have an idea, in your head, they’ll do whatever’s best for you, and, you know, what’s going on. You, uh, Jack?” He’s slowly turning back, staring not at her, but the screen, expressionless. “You want me to go first?” she says. “I mean,” looking to the screen herself, a sour twist of her lips, “they like to fuck with me, sometimes, but that’s because they think they can get away with it. I’ll make sure they know they can’t get away with fucking with you. Okay?”

Jack’s still staring, flatly, at the screen.

“Jack,” she says, and then, a bit more forcefully, somewhat more loudly, “Jack,” she says. “Jack.”

•

The hand on her knee laid so gently it doesn’t trouble the rumpled corduroy. “Sarandib,” she says, voice cracking about the name. “There were,” she says, “three princes,” her own hand, so knobby and so spare, liver spots laid loosely over knuckles, veins, lifted shakily to press two fingertips quite deliberately to her wrinkled, lowered forehead. “I can,” she says, and the man knelt before her leans close to catch her whispered words, sandals shifting scratchily on gravel, hem of his pale cardigan heedlessly brushing the dust, but not an ounce of the weight of him leaned on the hand he’s lightly laid on her knee. “I can see them,” she says, “such, brightly beautiful robes, and gowns, the turbans, and the jewelry, they were,” lowering her hand, then, to set it, quivering, atop his, “on the right-hand page,” she says, her other hand a-tremble, laid palm-up on her other knee, “and they pointed to the lovely map, on the lift,” lifting up her head, but her eyes are closed, looking away into somewhere else. “A teardrop, in the ocean,” she says, “amber, and gold, and the names, written in black ink, Sandocanda,” she says. “Bumathani. Nagadisu. Anuro,” and she takes a deep breath, “Grammi,” and a sigh. “All those houses, the corners they would turn, their flowers grew up to meet their balconies, where they would eat their breakfasts, fruit and tea, rice puddings, sweet and sticky,” her next breath taken in stepwise sips, like little sobs. “All gone,” she says. “All lost, forgotten, but all, somehow, still there, in that map, those lines, that ink,” and one more thready inhalation, “the princes,” she says. “They ripped it,” no longer a whisper, “the map,” lifting up both her hands, “the three of them, torn apart,” and her hands drop, nerveless to the mattress she’s sat upon, quilted, filthy, formerly white. “They tore it all apart,” she says, and he tips his head to better catch her words, sere ghosts of consonant shapes now, barely bound by unvoiced vowels. “The princes, tossed away, the map, crumpled, under their boots, so, so many of them, photographs, interviews, drawings, stories, maps, the maps,” her last few words so many suppositions, drawn from twitches of those lowered lips.

He lifts up his head, straightens his shoulders, pats her knee with that hand once, twice, but leaves it there, fingertips brushing the corduroy. “A terrible thing, Mother,” he says. “We are so very sorry it has happened to you.”

She looks up, blinking quickly, “Mike?” she says, those eyes of hers darting back and forth before she squeezes them shut against the light, cloudily weak though it is, “Mike?” she says, again, “that you?”

“No,” he says, and now he lifts his hand away, looks over his shoulder, a mildly impatient snap of his fingers. “But you are someone’s mother.” The woman behind him turns away from an older man, who snatches the plastic-wrapped packet of clean white underwear from her unresisting hand as she sets down an overstuffed shopping bag, Ross, it says on the side of it, in rounded purple letters, Dress For Less. She digs into it, past more packets of underwear and bundled-up socks, white and athletic grey, maroon and navy blue, each wrapped in clear unlabeled plastic crinkling to come up with something smaller, wrapped in plastic that’s anonymously grey. She slaps it into his waiting hand and he draws it to himself, slitting it open with an unzipping flick of his thumb, tipping it over to shake out the contents, a pair of black plastic sunglasses, oversized, flimsy, wraparound, that he presses into her hands, knobbled and spotted. “Oh,” she says, shakily unfolding them, lifting them into place, over those milkily tremulous eyes, “oh thank you, thank you, sir. They broke mine, when they pushed me down. Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

“Lake,” he says. “Call me Lake. And, Mother,” taking those hands of hers in his, squeezing them, gently, as his lush brown beard lifts and spreads in a smile of grim determination, “what was done to you is inexcusable. Unforgivable.” His brown eyes darkening, hardening. “And we will make them very sorry that they ever did it.”