[12] Leon's Picking Them Off

The two vehicles followed a mostly flat road through mostly flat country for most of an hour, at which point they reached a juncture beside a modest farmhouse. Perfidia said to take the north fork, which led into the woods. Shannon assumed that meant Jay definitely took the west fork, which led to the castle, until Wendell discovered horse tracks headed north.

"Just remember," Shannon told Perfidia, "if we run into trouble, it's trouble for you too."

"Don't believe me if ya want, but he went into the woods, what else can I say?"

The SUV made careful progress along a narrow forest path while the jeep followed.

"Amazing." Dalt leaned over the wheel and pushed his view up at the towering trees. "Just amazing. There really is a whole other world out here. I mean Jesus Shannon. Can you imagine the headlines? If we told the news about this place?"

Dalt back on that track. Shannon, however, was frankly unimpressed by this so-called "fantasy world." Certainly, it possessed standard topological features one might find in most habitable corners of the world—mountains, farmland, fresh water—but she detected none of the novelty that had Dalt so giddy. Only facsimile of the real world, uninspired facsimile at that. What exactly compelled her brother to escape here? If he wanted grandeur he'd find more of it in most of the United States of America's sixty-three national parks. The forest through which they currently trawled looked no different than Cuyahoga Valley, where the Waringcrane family camped summers prior to the suicide. For mountains there were the Appalachians or the Rockies, and if he wanted a castle there was San Simeon or, if truly desperate, Europe.

Shannon never understood the draw of such places, but they existed within the real world for a purpose, careful pieces of cultivated fantasy rendered accessible on vacation days for—she supposed—the purpose of escaping perceived monotony. The same reason a pulpy paperback romance between a knight and his lady existed (such romances, admittedly, Shannon perused on occasion). Escapism. A small wish of something other than the thing one had. But emphasis on the word small; three hundred pages, a weekend in the back of a camper. An oiling of the small parts that comprised the machine. That was how the world operated. That was how it continued to progress. If everyone acted like her brother, gorged themselves so full on the fantasy they grew sick of it, needed stronger and stronger doses to function, then the mechanism fell apart.

"I mean, not only would we be famous Shannon, we'd be rich too. We could sell off the lumber rights, the fishing rights, the hunting rights, the farming rights—we'd own the land of course—the mineral rights, I mean fuck the place is huge Shannon. We could build cities and name them after us. Daltonville. Shannontown. I mean obviously we're gonna find your brother first, but think about it Shannon. Seriously, think about it."

"Given the portal to this world is located in the United States," said Shannon, "ostensibly the distribution of those rights is under the jurisdiction of the United States government."

Dalt waved a hand. "Well, we'd make money off it one way or another. That's not the point. We're changing the world here Shannon. Literally. They're gonna have to reprint all those Rand McNally maps after this."

"The real world hasn't changed. If they mapped this world, it would be an entirely separate map."

"Nah. Nah. They'd do it like, like, you know how with maps of America, you have the contiguous states, and then they'll put little boxes in the corner that have Hawaii and Alaska. It'd be like that. You have Earth as the main part of the map, and then this place, uh—what's this place called again?"

"Whitecrosse," Perfidia offered drily.

"Then you have Whitecrosse in a box in the corner."

"By the way," said Perfidia, "you guys are gonna wanna stop soonish—"

"You're wrong," said Shannon. "It's not as though they have a box now that shows a map of Mars, after all. They are two different worlds. They are separate. You wouldn't map them on the same map."

"No Shannon, I'm pretty sure you're wrong." Dalt took both hands off the wheel to gesticulate, although what his motion meant Shannon lacked the slightest clue. "You said yourself this place would be under US jurisdiction. Part of the country. How do you have a map showing the US and not include it then?"

"Guys—"

"The United States planted a flag on the Moon and we don't include that in our maps, Dalt."

"We don't own the Moon, Shannon. You know that, you just don't want to admit I'm right."

"Guys..."

"When was the last time you saw a map of the United States that included the Northern Marianas Islands? We own those, but they're not on our maps."

"Yeah yeah Shannon I get it, you're the smart one, I'm just the meathead, just the linebacker, so that means you always gotta be right. I get it."

Shannon scrunched her face in legitimate confusion. "Where's this coming from? I just happen to be right this time, that's all."

"Right, sure, okay Shannon. I just so happen to have never been right about anything in my entire life unless I agree with you."

"That's absolutely not true."

"Name one example then. Tell me one time I was right and you were wrong."

"Guys," said Perfidia, "if you wanna torture me just do it the old-fashioned way and ram metal spikes into my flesh. I'd prefer that."

"Shut up," Dalt and Shannon said together. Although Shannon found the interruption welcome, since she couldn't on hand think up a response to Dalt's request.

Dalt refused to drop it though. "You can't say a single time even though just a few hours ago I was right about hacking your brother's phone and you were wrong. Just a few hours ago, and you already removed it from your mind—"

"I never said you were wrong. I only said it would be better to let the police handle it."

"You said I couldn't hack it and I did."

"I said you weren't a hacker, Dalt, there's a difference. And you're not a hacker. Jay leaving his computer unlocked doesn't make you a hacker."

"That's how you found me?" said Perfidia. "I'm gonna wring that kid's throat I swear."

"This is ridiculous Shannon and we're getting off topic anyway. The point is this world is a discovery. It's a discovery and we're making it, and for some reason you're not happy. Just like my fucking dad, I can't believe it. I get into Ohio State, oh it's only a sports scholarship. I go undefeated, oh you only made first string because the other guy got injured. I get a job at the IRS, oh you're only the hired muscle. I can never win! I can never be good enough!"

Shannon prepared to fire back some choice words about how typical it was for men to act this way, to feel threatened and inferior if they weren't some absolute Napoleonic paragon of the human race, because truly she'd seen this behavior from so many past boyfriends that it nauseated her. But the tail end of his rant, the mention of his father, made her shut her mouth.

"I'll ask Wendell," said Dalt. "I'll get Wendell in on this, he'll be the tiebreaker. I'll ask him about the maps." He plucked the walkie-talkie from one of the twenty clips infesting the dashboard and pressed the button with a chirrup. "Brutus 1 to Brutus 2, this is Brutus 1 to Brutus 2 over."

"We don't need Wendell. Look Dalt, forget what I said—"

The walkie-talkie fizzled: "What."

"Got a bit of a theoretical question we're gonna need you to weigh in on. Regarding maps—"

"LOOK OUT!" Perfidia shrieked.

Dalt slammed the brakes. The SUV's tread bit into mud and they skidded at a slight angle as Dalt twisted the wheel to keep from plowing directly into the white barrier spread across the road. Only thanks to the excessive quality of his automobile did they avoid collision.

A few moments of labored breathing. Shannon placed a hand to her heart and felt its heavy beat return to normal over a period of ten seconds as the rain sneaking through the canopy made a metallic din along the roof. "Christ, Dalt."

"That's the thrill of adventure for you," Dalt said after a nervous chuckle. She returned it with a glare.

The walkie-talkie came to life and Wendell, stopping without trouble in the jeep behind them, asked: "Everything okay?"

"Yeah it's fine. Almost hit something." Dalt pressed his face to the windshield to see through the growing tableau of droplets. "The fuck is that anyway?"

It appeared to be a white wall. Under scrutiny, its holistic surface developed a cloth or cottony texture, and rather than a wall it turned out to be some kind of giant sheet spread between two trees. Something Dalt's Land Rover would've plowed through without trouble.

Shannon wheeled on Perfidia. "You know what it is."

"I swear I didn't know it'd be there. Honest. I'd put my hand on my heart if I could move my hand." A jangle of zip-tied wrists.

Dalt rubbed the inside of the windshield to remove a layer of fog. "Seems like there's some kinda words on there. A picture, even."

"I didn't ask if you knew it'd be there, I asked you to tell us what it is. You know that at least. Don't lie to me."

"Okay fine, it's a spiderweb. Happy?"

"Had to be a big spider to make that," said Dalt, and he said it with a growing excitement for which Shannon cared little, an excitement that led to him reaching for the shotgun stored in the slot beside his seat. "Brutus 2 we might have a bogey on our hands, over."

"No Dalt," said Shannon, "we have no bogeys. Just drive around it, there's room. There's plenty of room."

The walkie-talkie burst a spray of static. "Stay in the car I'll handle it."

"Y'know, the girl who made the web is harmless, trust me. She's a total pushover. Shy too. If you try to find her you'll spook her." Perfidia adjusted her position in her seat and only made it look more awkward. "Glad we stopped though, this is about where Jay left the road. He went to Flanz-le-Flore's court which isn't far from here. The trees get denser though, so you'll need to move on foot... Yeah, yeah, perfect, just like that."

Dalt's door opened and Dalt squeezed through, carting the shotgun and apathetic to the rain that immediately glistened his hair.

"Dalt, if the devil is telling us it's harmless and we need to go out on foot, it's certainly harmful and we do not need to go out on foot. Dalt. Dalt. Oh my God."

There he went, toting the shotgun like he knew how to use it. (Shannon couldn't believe Wendell lent it to him, she'd said to just give Dalt a pistol, but did they listen to her? Of course not.) Shannon tried to nab Wendell's attention by gesturing through the back window. Perfidia, in the backseat, seemed to think Shannon was gesturing at her and responded with a comically wide-eyed and ironical expression, a stock face a sitcom scene stealer might wear once an episode: Why you askin' me?

Eventually the door to Wendell's jeep opened. Shannon felt the situation become significantly more secure, but she still climbed over the front seat partition and leaned out the open door to yell at Dalt to stop wandering. Her gaze drifted and she looked again at the giant web, no longer obscured by a rain-drenched windshield, and made out the words Dalt mentioned:

PLEAS O GOD I AM SO SORRY

IT HERTS IT HERTS BAD

HELP ME GOD OR ANY ONE

JESUS WEAPED JOHN 11:35

Organized, haphazardly, around a web-string drawing of a young woman in a nun's habit being crucified and leaking white teardrops of blood from the places of the stigmata. Melodramatic, Shannon thought. Abhorrent spelling, too. Apparently spiders in this world possessed intelligence, but only to a limited extent.

The thought gestated that she should yell at Dalt some more but as she attempted to turn this thought into action a blast invaded her skull. She clapped her palms to her ears but it was too late, the sound was already a deafening ring in her eardrums, and with wincing delay she looked only fast enough to see wood chips spraying off the bark of a tree before splattering the ground. Dalt stood with the shotgun raised, smoke rising.

"Shit fuck," Perfidia sputtered, doubled over and flinching herself but unable to shield her pointy devil ears due to her binds.

"Dalton put that fucking gun down right now!" Shannon overcorrected to account for the numbness of all auditory sensation in the wake of the shotgun blast and wound up howling so hard it strained her vocal chords. "Dalton I swear to God!"

Wendell meandered into view, rifle perched lackadaisical on his shoulder. "See something?"

"You fucking bet bro. Big ass spider. Scuttled right behind that tree. It's still there for sure."

The rifle remained on Wendell's shoulder. He wore a clear plastic poncho over his rumpled jacket. "Well. Guess you scared it."

"Could we not just go around murdering the first thing we see?" said Perfidia. "Come on guys."

Wendell tapped Dalt on the shoulder and motioned him to return to the car, which Dalt started to do but immediately stopped when a stretch of spiderweb extended from the tree to its lowest branch and communicated the words:

PLEESE DONT KILL ME IM HERT

HELP ME

"I told you! I told you it was there bro. Come out you creepy spider thing. Seriously guys you gotta see it. Huge!"

"If someone's there," said Wendell to the tree, "then come out. We won't shoot if you come in peace." He placed a hand on the barrel of Dalt's gun and lowered it.

After a pause, the web changed to read:

I DONT WANT TO GO OUT

I DONT WANT YOU TO LOOKE AT ME!!!

"Can't help you if you don't come out," said Wendell.

In the long stillness that ensued, as though the spider were considering this conundrum, Shannon got an idea. "Ask it about Jay." She leaned over the front seat, cupped her hands over her mouth, and yelled: "Hey! Have you seen Jay Waringcrane? Jay. Waringcrane. My brother."

What the fuck was she doing. Talking to a spider. This world was beyond delusion. The web rearranged:

THE HERO?

Then it changed again, drawing a picture. A picture of a young man holding a baseball bat, wearing a jacket and a hat with, incredibly, a highly accurate rendition of the Cleveland Browns logo.

"He's certainly no hero," said Shannon, "but that's him."

HE SAVED MY LYFE...

Well how quaint. Jay had gone from doing absolutely nothing to saving giant sentient spiders. Shannon supposed that counted as an improvement.

Dalt, who only seconds before had wanted nothing more than a target to pump full of lead, rushed to the back of the SUV, opened the trunk, and came back with a fistful of Doritos bags. "Hey. Hey! We'll give ya some food if you tell us where Jay went."

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"Dalt, spiders don't eat Doritos. They suck the organs out of insects."

The web shifted again. YOU ARE HEROS TOO. YOU CAME TO HELP HIM.

"Correct," said Shannon. "He needs serious help."

HE WENT TO THE

The webs lingered on that partial phrase several seconds, then shifted around, not quite making a word, undoing, trying again, finally coming up with:

MANASTARRY

"Manastarry?" said Dalt.

"Monastery," said Shannon. She turned to Perfidia. "Where's this monastery?"

Perfidia gave a look of explosive disbelief. "What? You're just gonna trust this spider? I'm telling you, Jay went into the woods. He—"

"Monastery. Where."

"Blah! Just follow the road."

Sure enough, when Shannon looked back, the web also read: FOLLOW THE ROAD.

At Shannon's nod, Dalt tossed three Doritos bags to the tree. Slowly, uncertainly, a gigantic spider leg extended from around the trunk. Once nothing happened, no shotgun blast, the leg speared the bags and dragged them behind the tree in rapid succession. The sound of foil ripping soon mingled with the patter of rain.

They left the spider to feast, receiving a parting GOD BE WITH YOU for their trouble. Car doors slammed shut, engines started, and with Perfidia shifting even more uncomfortably in her seat—or so Shannon imagined—they proceeded toward their new destination. Shannon spent the next fifteen minutes of the drive chewing Dalt out for firing the gun, a scolding to which he could only respond: "Didn't we bring them to fire them?"

—

Makepeace John Gaheris Coke, Prince of Whitecrosse, heir to the throne, owner of titles he never bothered to remember, destined to become King John the Whateverth and lose even the name that rendered him distinct, cut via regnal mold into a pale imitation of that man he both admired and limped away from, watched his sister slump down the wall with a dagger in her throat and quite unbecoming to that interminable list of birthright achievements could not help but smile. A smile made all the more wicked by the misery burned into Sansaime's dear features. Oh that repulsive face! So wisely hidden away, revealed not even in the throes of lust, a deed done in darkness, twofold wretchedness bleeding out of each body to smear the other.

What could she possibly be so anguished about? She knew nothing of Mayfair; knowing her could only eliminate the possibility of tears. Or was it Makepeace himself she wept for, her bare face twisted his way? Labored she under some delusion that he possessed an ounce of familial feeling?

Her hand whipped out. Three silvery needles quick as lightning flew and Jay caught them with the back of his hand. The needles had been aimed for his pocket. For the faerie.

Makepeace supposed, perhaps, Sansaime cried for herself. For she must know she would not escape this tower alive. Regardless of how Makepeace felt about his sister, he did need the little brat alive. Who else would take his place on the throne? He'd fled before; it was easy to escape. Difficult to stay escaped. The world itself was a prison, a land of few nations, few cities, few people. Always at his back were his mother's champions, loyal knights, men enamored of her unearned charms, and always—no matter what—they dragged him back.

They dragged him back so many times, under so many circumstances, after he fled so far, after he rode horseback (he'd miss that poor horse) day and night and day and night again and wound up in some far-flung corner that could not rightfully be called anywhere, places nobody would ever think to look, and yet as though some heavenly force compelled them the champions appeared. By the seventh time, when Makepeace was fifteen, old enough to know how to cover his trail, how to leave no trace, how to disappear completely—and he did it successfully by then innumerable times within the confines of Whitecrosse's white walls, gallivants with thieves and whores—by then Makepeace knew it was no mere matter of skill or luck, that there was something else in this world, some mechanism, some trickery or stage machinery, that foisted toward him the crown he had no choice but to accept.

It was, simply, fate. The fate of every cursed descendent of John Coke the Original. Makepeace checked the annals. Four hundred years and the crown passed solely to direct descendants. Never was the line extinguished, never was a king or queen without valid issue, never did the genealogy need resort to some forgotten cousin or half-brother to maintain the name if not, in part and parcel, the blood. Then he checked the annals of California, over which Whitecrosse reigned suzerain, and which rumors abound claimed its royal family also descended from John Coke, albeit not as a byproduct of his legal marriage. One found the same story: four hundred years, an unbroken direct line. (A stronger line, actually, once one factored all the incest.) What were the odds?

Their world existed in stasis. Change was impossible. Sons became their fathers. Makepeace John Gaheris Coke would sit upon the throne.

And the words of the archbishop's cult rang true: In this world, there is no God.

There were only heroes. As a stroke of brilliant luck, as Makepeace embarked on a quest to drag Mayfair home under the vain hope she might somehow take his place so he could slip between the chains to die on his own terms, he found a hero.

Jay Waringcrane.

Who lunged forward and hurled his body shoulder-first into Makepeace's latest conquest, an attack Sansaime might ordinarily have been able to avoid but couldn't due to the morass of papers flooding the room, a kind of ridiculous convenience that only a hero could muster.

"Heal the princess!" he shouted at his faerie.

Makepeace supposed he better help. Only a hero could change this world, after all. Only a hero could buy Makepeace his freedom. For the hero to take Makepeace's place as king, he needed a princess to marry. Oh, what a match made in heaven! The little bitch in her tower and her knight in a brown jacket to save her.

One swing of Makepeace's blade chopped through the cascade of pages before him and he clanked forward while Jay staggered back nursing a thick spurt of blood from his palm. Sansaime, another dagger out and glittering a bead of blood on its tip, flicked her gaze from Jay to Makepeace to—what she seemed to care about most—the faerie, who flew to Mayfair and attempted to remove the dagger by tugging with four limbs against the wooden handle. Jay slid between the faerie and Sansaime to block further attack with his body, a bold strategy but one Makepeace could not especially fault given any wound would be restored instantaneously.

Sansaime considered her position one moment, and then threw off her cloak at Jay's face. He beat it down with his club and the moment the club went down Sansaime was there going for the jugular and stopped only by the full brunt of Makepeace's shield ramming her from the side. She cracked against a dusty shelf which rocked and sent books and a flickering lamp cascading around her. Rather infuriatingly the debris got in the way as Makepeace swung his blade for her head, hoping to finish her off quickly given how much of a nuisance she could be.

The lamp landed and shattered and at once it started: An orange tail rising from the ancient pages. Such excellent kindling, these dry tomes. Oh dear.

"Hero! I can't get the dagger out!" the faerie shrieked. Mayfair's head jerked as the beastly thing pulled and pulled. "I can't heal her if there's still something in her! Hurry!"

Jay hesitated; Makepeace nodded at him, and with a glare—although one not, Makepeace imagined, as severe as most already levied in their short period of acquaintance—Jay turned and slid to Mayfair's side. Makepeace extended his shield and made himself as broad as possible, walling Sansaime into the corner as the fire grew from a flicker to a streak.

"Now now Sansy, you've made quite the blunder," Makepeace said, assuming this slight delay would lend Jay enough time. "Whoever hired you might've been better served sending an actual assassin and not a glorified hunter, don't you think?"

"Idiot," Sansaime said. "Time is on my side."

In a way she was right, because half the room was now aflame, and the smoke choked all, and the fires rose up the shelves into bright columns. Alas. But Makepeace checked over his shoulder and saw Jay helping—or rather hoisting—a shaken but healed Mayfair to her feet, and grabbing with the same hand that held his club the Staff of Lazarus, while the faerie urged them to start moving: They needed to go NOWNOWNOW (many more nows appended). The glance lasted a fraction of a second and yet it was an error; Sansaime took that moment's distraction to pounce.

She whirled at him, blade in each hand (even with her cloak gone she somehow produced these blades from all over). That was quite alright, Makepeace didn't mind, the poor girl for all her speed lacked any chance. He might be slow, but he was rather difficult to kill.

His shield moved to cover his face. She would expect that, of course, his face being his obvious weakness, and so she would attack low. She would believe she knew his armor well enough. She would believe she could stab between the plates. Makepeace knew she believed this and with a single strong jerk brought his shield straight down. If Jay could predict her moves and block accordingly, then Makepeace, who knew the silly girl as much as any man could know a woman, might as well have lived inside of her head.

In a turn of immediate irony, hoisted by one's own petard you might say (not that Makepeace knew what a petard was, he simply for some reason knew that phrase, despite not remembering where exactly he heard it), the sharp point at the bottom of Makepeace's shield drove not into Sansaime's unprotected neck or skull, but only into paper. Sansaime did not attempt to strike low. She was, in fact, flying through the air, having clambered up a shelf to dive down at him from on high, both daggers aimed at his head.

Well, rather unfortunate.

Makepeace still held his sword and started the laborious process of swinging it but knew already it was much too late.

Hm. Seeing those daggers coming down at him, though, Makepeace didn't feel much in the way of fear, or horror, or whatever other things one might feel at the thought of their own mortality. Not, the way Jay did, because he anticipated the faerie would cure him; Jay and the faerie had already escaped the inferno of a room with Mayfair. No, Makepeace knew Sansaime would finish him, but in that knowledge only a certain solace crept.

He accomplished it, after all. Jay left with Mayfair in his arms. Together they would escape to the castle and together they would take Makepeace's place. If that were to be the end—well—

Their eyes met. One single, sheer stare. A look of authority. No words spoken, only the look.

Sansaime, eyes red with tears already, dragged her face away and dropped her daggers.

Rather than plunge steel into his skull, she fell harmlessly as though she expected him to sweep her up in an embrace. She was right to expect it because it was what he did.

All was flames around them. A solid wall of fire blocked the exit, and the fire was now nipping at Makepeace's legs, heating his armor, searing his skin. Sansaime held him; he held her. She sobbed into his chest. She whispered: "It wasn't supposed to be like this."

Maybe it was, though. What a romantic death, no? Reduced to cinders with one's lover in their arms. Mutual immolation so that their ashes might mingle into one inextricable mound of dust.

Makepeace brought the hilt of his sword hard against the back of her head. She slumped against his shoulder, unconscious, and he pushed her off him. Her body flopped against the empty shelf next to them.

Could he still burst through the flames and charge out the exit? His eyes ran with water from the smoke; he struggled to breathe. No. By now the fire would've spread further anyway. Then where—Aha. He glimpsed exactly how to make his daring escape.

Not a moment to spare. Yet he spared one, despite himself, unsure why he did so; he glanced at Sansaime. Rather tragic the poor girl was so enamored with him. But she was not his first conquest and would not, given his devil's luck, be his last. Oh well. Poor girl. Poor girl.

His jaw clenched. A thick bead of sweat burst and rolled down the furrow of his eyebrow. Poor girl, he thought. Poor girl. Then, for some reason divorced entirely from logic, reason, and good sense, he scooped her up and hoisted her onto his shoulder.

—

Jay dragged Mayfair down the hall as fast as he could, but for no discernible reason she swayed, staggered, became off-balanced at every possible moment, with a blank-eyed look and hands that kept grabbing at her throat. The fire crackled behind them and smoke belched out the stairway. Under their feet was carpet and on the walls were tapestries and Jay figured in a few minutes this place would be an inferno too. They needed to move faster.

"Come on. Get over it, you're fine now. Even if you did die we'd bring you back with the staff."

"We'll bring back everyone!" Olliebollen attached herself to the bulbous orb at the end of the staff, four limbs wrapped around it as she nuzzled her face against its opaquely mirrored surface. "We'll bring back my court. All of them! They'll all come back!"

If only Jay knew how to use it. But his focus now was escape. Makepeace didn't seem to be coming after them and that meant Jay was on his own. At the end of the hall ahead, blocking the only exit he knew, was a gaggle of nuns.

Keeping Mayfair under one arm, he brandished his bat before the nuns even grew close enough to distinctly make out which particular animals they were halfway transformed into. Some kind of bird, some kind of lizard. Didn't matter. "Bad fire back there. You wanna stop this whole place from burning, you better stop it fast. Now out of my way!"

They didn't move out of his way. They just stood there, maybe ten or twenty of them, they were like fucking zebras the way their nun habits made them blend into one indistinct mass.

He shook the staff to get Olliebollen off it, expecting he might need her soon. Mayfair gripped Jay closer, but her eyes stopped looking at nothing and started looking at the shiny fairy, as though seeing it for the first time. A burst of heat hit his back, a fireball bubbled out the tower stairway.

"See that?" he shouted at the nuns. "You have bigger things to worry about. Deal with that, don't worry about me!" Step-by-step he advanced as much as Mayfair allowed. The corridor filled with smoke. "I SAID MOVE!"

"Hero," the nuns said, not all at the same time, nor exactly staggered, an overlapping echo made awkward by the diverse range of voices from angelic to wretched. One added: "We need you, hero. You're the only one who can save us."

"The power of your soul can make us human again."

"We were never human! That's what the archbishop said. Your soul can make human those that aren't!"

"You can take us to the other world. You can let us feel the warmth of God's love."

"The princess knows, aye. Don't you, Your Royal Highness?"

Mayfair blinked away from tracing Olliebollen's erratic movements. "I..."

She clung even more tightly to Jay. For her slight stature she possessed a tight grip, to the point she felt like a gigantic human-sized tumor metastasizing on his side. Obnoxious—or intentional? Whose side was Mayfair on?

Fuck it.

Jay drove Mayfair hard into the stone wall to their side. In the tightened grunt of pain that exited her mouth her hold loosened. Jay threw her off and in the same movement spinning he brought his bat into the head of the first nun. There was already a second and a third and he dropped the Staff of Lazarus to two-hand the bat like a whirlwind into the narrow corridor swinging and swinging and not caring who or where he hit. They needed him alive, he understood now, because they needed his Humanity, and as Perfidia said—when he died he lost it. Maybe not even the staff could bring that back. Despite their claws and fangs and quills they cut only into his limbs, trying to hold him still, and through all of it the bright puff of Olliebollen's magic revitalized him instantly, and the hard metal baseball bat broke bone.

When he couldn't swing he kicked, when he couldn't kick he hurled himself bodily at the next nun and bowled her over. They were just women, just "poor girls" as Makepeace said, orphans and whores, nothing. They rolled to the corners heaving and crying and holding the hurt spots and by the time he took down five the rest scooted back.

"Come on!" Jay shouted. "Come on, do any of you really think you matter to me? I killed Flanz-le-Flore." His fingers tightened on the neck of the bat, fingers brittle shattering in his grasp. "I killed that bear—Pluxie. What will any of you do to me? I'm the hero. I'm the hero!"

"He's the hero," Olliebollen added sagely.

The nuns grabbed their fallen sisters and dragged them away. The crackle of fire grew, the heat a constant deluge of sweat down his face and neck, the collar of his jacket a dry and jagged scrape against his skin.

"Now back off. Do something about that fire, you idiots. Live a fucking life. This is your home, isn't it?"

Wide eyes watched him unblinking.

When he stepped back slowly, watching them in case they still tried something stupid, he found Mayfair clutching the Staff of Lazarus and yanked hard to pry it from her, nearly making her lose her balance in the process. "You get a grip too. I'm sick of carrying you everywhere. Let's go."

He motioned Olliebollen into his pocket and made due with pulling Mayfair by the wrist when she still dragged her feet.

They wound between the rows of nuns cleaved to the walls. Nobody attacked.

More nuns ran from the stairwell. But they were carrying buckets of water, and they didn't give Jay a glance. Jay passed a window and through it the tower where Mayfair had been shone bright and orange against the dark sky, flames whipping in lines along exposed roofbeams faster than the intense rainfall could suffocate. Across the slanted shingles, bounding, a figure cut a gallant silhouette, face a black mask until a bright flash of lightning revealed his magnificent form: Prince Makepeace. Sansaime slumped over his shoulder. Well, Jay hadn't expected the man to die here anyway.

Another squadron of nuns fluttered past and at their tail was Charisma, barking orders while carrying one bucket in her normal hand and two in her monstrous one, an arrangement that caused water to slosh out with each step.

"Move it, you insipid tubs of lard! Hustle, dithering wenches! The fire must go out. The archbishop demands it!" Passing Jay, one knifing glare and a hiss: "Don't think we're finished with you, hero. Don't think you'll get away so easy! I'll be coming after you personally once this is dealt with. Got it?"

Didn't they know when to give up? Jay kept moving, around a bend and down a staircase, to where the smoke no longer choked his lungs.

"We're gonna make it," said Olliebollen. "I can't believe it. After everything! You really came through, hero. You really did it! It's amazing! You'll—you'll remember I helped you, right? I was only ever helpful to you. It's me, Olliebollen, your faithful helper! You'll remember, right? Right? You'll help make me whole again won't you? All my friends and family?"

He was too busy to talk navigating awkward uneven stairs, premodern architectural techniques lacking rigid uniformity, while also pulling Mayfair behind him. "Whatever," he muttered absentmindedly.

"It's like it's like it's like it's finally becoming real, I wasn't sure before, I tried my best but I had suspicions, now maybe you really are the hero, just maybe? Just maybe you can put everything right. Turn a tiny twig back into a giant tree. Arbiters of all life!"

"What are you babbling about."

He shoved himself and Mayfair against the wall to let something squidlike shamble by with more than two buckets gripped in more than two tentacle appendages. Afterward he gave a sharp jerk to keep Mayfair moving and they exited the stairwell into the archbishop's star-domed chamber, empty save for a few oddly-spaced figures: Charm, Theovora, and of course the giant plant, all still and muted and every sign of activity from somewhere distant: distant fire, distant shouts, distant thunder, and distant smell of smoke.

Charm only stared at Jay, trailing black tears without sobs. Theovora, unsupported, sat slumped on her knees, the archbishop's tendrils still implanted into the back of her head.

Jay and Mayfair's footsteps echoed. If the fire spread, Jay realized, the archbishop would surely burn. Did they let him in so easily hoping to trap him when he tried to exit, only for the bad luck of the fire to reorient their priorities?

"I thought you could see the future," he said (to Theovora, not the plant).

Theovora looked deactivated. Jay didn't expect a response, but when he crossed the dome and entered the final stretch of corridor, one came:

"I have seen... salvation."

Jay glanced back. "What?"

"Everything... has changed. I see now... this world... these people... they shall be saved."

On her knees, Theovora spoke emptily. No cognition of the meaning of her words. They were only words. Mayfair, whose attention had wandered aimless the entire escape, suddenly stared intently.

"Everything..." Theovora said. "Everything is better than I could have ever imagined..."

"Come on." Jay wrenched Mayfair's wrist. No point in hearing more.

The downpour pattered him as across the courtyard he moved with efficient strides. Was he imagining Mayfair no longer dragging her feet? Her shellshock wearing off, or a response to the archbishop's words? If the secret behind the archbishop's foresight was Perfidia feeding him info, then—He tried not to get lost in it. He glanced back to search for Makepeace but nothing appeared except orange flame among the stonework, an inferno belching black clouds into a sky already black-clouded. The only nun in the entire courtyard was Charm, who followed for some reason, keeping her distance.

Makepeace would catch up later. Why did Jay need him anyway? The front gates were unbarred, no token attempt to impede him. He couldn't worry. What other choice did he have but to leave? He had the Staff of Lazarus and the princess of Whitecrosse. He'd won. With Olliebollen puffing him up, maybe he even enjoyed that success. At the very least, he was now arbiter of life and death in this world. Could do something with that. Make something out of that. Become something.

A hero. Yeah. Maybe. Someone who mattered. Someone with power. He walked out of the monastery with everything he wanted, without a scratch on him, and left it in flames at his back. What had Olliebollen babbled about? Making the world whole again? Yeah. Jay thought, yeah.

First, he'd go back to the faerie court. Revive Lalum, and Flanz-le-Flore too. Then—

He passed through the gates and started down the road that sloped toward the forest and stopped. Whatever thought was in his head stopped being there. He blinked. He rubbed his eyes. What came up the trail had to be—anything other than what it was. Illusion. Conjured by the smoke, incessant rainfall, fairy magic—anything.

"No," he said.

Olliebollen looked. Mayfair looked. Charm, peeping from the gates, looked. They all looked.

"No."

"I dunno what that is," said Olliebollen. "So odd! I should know what everything is, but I don't know that!"

"No."

Coming up the path were two cars. Two modern cars. An SUV and a jeep. Their high-powered LED headlights cast him and Olliebollen and Mayfair in a ghostly white glow, a glow as powerful as lightning. The cars screeched to a halt. The passenger door of the SUV opened and Jay's sister, Shannon Waringcrane, stepped out.