[17] 666, L'Empereur Napoléon

The journey from the monastery to the castle was uneventful. Shannon only attempted to strangle Jay to death once.

It was the night of the first day, a day spent climbing over rocks and picking through thornbush, led via Ariadne's thread through labyrinthine walls of sheer stone, only a joyously cream-colored sky above to remind them of their collective psychosis. Lalum didn't speak. Ollie didn't speak. Jay didn't speak. After an hour speaking to herself, Shannon didn't speak either. Sleek and slippery eels slid around the surface of her brain.

They camped in a cave. Lalum built them a fire. She also caught them a brace of hares, then cleaned and cooked them when Jay proved incapable. All, somehow, without revealing herself beyond a grayscale shape tapdancing on spider legs in the dark. Jay devoured hare with gusto. Shannon instead ate chips from a snack bag she previously recovered from the Land Rover's wreckage. She offered a chip to Ollie, who nibbled away a sliver before sinking back into the pocket to sulk.

Designed to break her, Shannon thought in the dark while Jay slept peacefully, happily. All anyone ever wanted was to see someone like her break down and cry. Nothing she ever did was enough. Not for Mother. Not for anyone. In classes she took diligent notes every lecture, studied them daily, memorized them well in advance, aced the test. The other students in her advanced classes crammed the night before the exam, regurgitated, and got the same grade. At work? At work she discovered new efficiencies, new procedures, ways to improve not just herself but the office as a whole, the IRS as a whole, and what did her suggestions earn her? "Shannon, these are some nice ideas. I think right now we're just going to focus on executing our current workflows."

Oh, that's so nice, dear.

When she failed to show up Monday—it was Friday now, Thanksgiving day come and passed with the skin of her legs scourged by bristles—when she failed to show up Monday they'd fire her without a second thought. The machine must keep clanking. All parts replaceable. So nice dear. No child left behind. No child gets ahead. Jay was never left behind and she never got ahead. The machine feared a part it could not replace more than a part that was broken. So nice dear.

"Do it, come on already," Ollie's voice whispered in the dark. "You big stupid spider. Come out here and bite my head off. I know you want to. I don't mind. Do it. I'm less than 1 now. Less than 1 but not quite 0. I'm not even strong enough to end it all myself..."

Shannon squinted her eyes at the small, slightly fluorescent figure fluttering dustless wings and facing the mouth of the cave. So nice dear. No child left behind.

"Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Why won't you kill me? Why?"

Silence. No spidery scuttling.

Ollie sank to the cavern floor and sobbed the tears that Shannon had, via sheer force of will, withheld the entire day. Tiny fay squeals, no attempt to muffle them for the benefit of those sleeping (or believed to be sleeping), and yet Jay only continued to sleep, his contented deep breaths a heaving swell in this acoustic prison: Heave, ho. Heave, ho. Heave, ho.

The entire day he smiled.

She was never going to make it home.

Shannon climbed off the hard and filthy floor, swaying like a zombie, possessed of some faint notion to cup her hands around Ollie and quiet the little thing, stroke its soft filaments and feel its tiny heartbeat, but that was not the direction her feet took her.

Next thing she knew her hands were around Jay's throat, she was stooped over him and squeezing, squeezing that smile off his lips, squeezing that breath out his lungs, thinking over and over, electric shimmer in the aching veins behind her eyes: You cannot escape you cannot escape you cannot escape you cannot escape you cannot escape

He woke up, his fist slammed into her side, didn't matter, her knees scraped open on the rocks, he was reaching for his baseball bat but in his fumbling it bounced away a metal tinkle while her eyes pushed closer and closer to his, her forehead scraping the brim of that shitty Cleveland Browns hat that once belonged to their father and never found its way into the garbage like all the rest of his stuff, Shannon now the one smiling, sucking his smile away and making it hers, no child left behind, so nice dear, so nice dear, would this be so nice Mother, would you think this was nice too?

Something slammed into her from behind and her body ragdolled until her head bounced against a hard outcropping and rattled her into a senseless mush. Headless her body scrambled amid a feral shriek she realized only seconds after the fact was hers, willing with bare hands to rip them all to shreds, to rip them open and devour their still-beating hearts—!

Thread whipped around her. Her arms shot flush to her sides as thin wire silvery in the low light dug into her clothes. She struggled, kicked, screamed, but as more and more lines wound her body all attempts became increasingly futile.

Jay rose, rubbing his neck. His outline was effervescent compared to Lalum, to whom he reached out and managed to give a brief pat on the shoulder, prompting the spider to emit a shrill sound as she scurried back into hiding. He looked at Shannon. His smile quickly returned to his face, like mud shifting into its void.

Then he laughed. Laughing, laughing, laughing. Laughed at her futility, her hopelessness. She may have spouted words at him in return, she didn't remember. Leaving her strung up, he eventually stopped laughing and, as though nothing had happened, went back to sleep.

Ollie kept crying until Shannon, burnt out of rage, fell asleep too.

The next day everyone went back to not talking and everything proceeded exactly as the previous, Shannon allowed to do nothing except think as the terrain became imperceptibly less rugged, and everything she thought so fucking useless all the time, circles and circles of the same words repeated. Ollie back to quiet. Jay still smiling. Sometimes even humming? He fucking dared.

Mid-afternoon the treeline on one side dropped away and the rock wall of the other side dropped away and a few clear miles of verdant pink farmland arose on all sides to a hill on which the castle manifested all spires and white brick.

The castle.

Vague hope remained: Someone would be there, some governmental structure, some way to reopen the gate to the real world. Cracking meant giving up. Shannon refused to crack.

Lalum's web, strung on the leafless branches of the last tree of the forest, formed words: NO FARTHER FOR ME. NOT UNTILL NIGHT.

"Only one L in until," Shannon said. The word corrected itself.

"Just come," said Jay. "You're with me. The hero. Nobody will do anything to you."

I AM SO SORRY. I SHALL WAIT UNTIL NIGHT. I DO NOT WANT ANY TO SEE ME. I LOOK AWEFUL... A MONSTER.

"A-W-F-U-L. No E." Shannon corrected the spelling out of habit, but suddenly this actual semblance of conversation yanked her out of a day-long stupor. The lines that composed the interior of her life sharpened and with it she sharpened too. Sharply she spoke:

"This is ridiculous. You're an absolute idiot if you think what you look like matters. Hygiene is important, sure. Hygiene indicates a base level of caring for yourself. Even the most rancid animals care about their hygiene. You're not filthy are you Lalum? You keep yourself clean do you?"

A hesitant pause. YES I DO. I AM CLEENE.

"C-L-E-A-N. I figured as much anyway. You care enough to fix your spelling so you seem a fastidious type. That's all that matters. I want you to come out now. Let me see you."

Jay, attention lost, started walking down the field, but now that there was no way for her to lose him Shannon stayed behind to wait for the web to rearrange.

I AM HIDEOUS IN GODS EYES.

"God made blobfish and naked mole rats. If he exists, he can't possibly care about you. Also 'God's' is possessive, you need an apostrophe. No not after the S. Before. There you go."

Seconds passed; Lalum said nothing else. "Useless," Shannon said as she walked off. "You're making yourself useless. You could go out there and accomplish something, but you're too afraid. Hiding all the time. No wonder he likes you and you like him. Peas in a fucking pod!"

Only after she left the trees behind did she decide to check over her shoulder. There she saw a much larger web:

PLEASE DON'T HURT HIM AGAIN. HE IS GOOD. HE SAVED ME... GOD BLESS YOU ALL. And a massive picture, more detailed than any of the previous. A nun praying, a ray of light descending onto a Jay and Shannon walking toward the castle. Jay, Shannon, and the castle all exact likenesses, and the whole thing scribbled in less than a minute.

An excellent artist. But she was too afraid to be seen. Whatever! There was only so much you could do to help people.

They went to the castle.

Peasants poked heads out of pink waves of wheat and stared agog. They spoke not a single word but congregated into larger and larger clumps that remained on the fringe of vision. Impoverished, hollow, hungry types. Classic feudal agrarianism. Not simply unfair but also inefficient, a few skinny beasts of burden and some entire segments of field fallow. Clearly pre-agricultural revolution. Fertilizer, soil, selective breeding—all unknown. A harsh Malthusian limit enacted on the populace. With fewer people you had fewer workers, fewer workers meant lower production, lower production meant a kleptocracy where the small amount the richest hoarded was all that ever existed.

"What are they even farming?" Shannon asked, as if her voice might call these peasants to life.

Instead the reply came as a mumble from her pocket. "The staple crops of Whitecrosse... Barley, wheat, oats, rye... Sheep raised for wool, pigs for meat. Oxen as draft animals. Sometimes horses. The best farmland is west of the castle, where you'll find the territorial holdings of the larger noble houses... Including those of Mordac, Meretryce, and Malleus..."

A small head turned its beady eyes upward the same time Shannon looked down. "You know all that?"

"Yep," Ollie said, "but I guess you don't care, do you?"

"What else do you know?"

The insect eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Knowledge is power. They have that saying in this world? Scientia potentia est. Francis Bacon." A favorite quote of Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Jefferson too. This place seemed pre-Renaissance though, let alone Age of Reason.

"Knowledge is power..." Ollie muttered.

"Remember that guy I was with? Dalt? The big one." Shannon kept a sidelong eye at the rows of peasants now packing the roadside as they neared the castle gates. "That guy's strong. I keep fit myself, but there's just nothing a woman like me can do against a man like that in terms of physical power. But I've got a better job than him and I make more money. Know why? Knowledge is power. Only thing he learned at college was football. It's knowledge that lets the weak beat the strong." Except Dalt's the one who made it home and you're stuck here, Little Miss Knowledgeable.

Her words seemed to have an affect on Ollie, though. The dark eyes sank in contemplation. Shannon patted the pocket to reassure. "Do you know anything else?"

"I know lots and lots and lots," Ollie said, and for the first time it sounded the slightest sliver of chipper.

"Then I'll have lots to ask you." She glanced around again, at the peasants. At Jay's back several steps ahead. "Later. When fewer people are listening."

After she finished speaking she looked up and stopped midstep in surprise. In front of her the castle loomed and now that they were much closer and she actually had a chance to look at it she was shocked by its astronomical size. Or rather, the size of the tall white stone wall that surrounded the hill on which the castle stood, itself surrounded by a deep moat. Four or five stories high and stretching far in each direction, it existed in complete contradiction to the impoverished yokels of the farmland that surrounded it. It struck her like the Pyramids of Giza—not that she ever saw them in person, but she had seen diagrams in books that compared their height to the tallest modern skyscrapers like the Burj Khalifa or the Empire State Building. The towers were taller, yes, but it made one wonder how such a feat was accomplished by an antique people without concrete or mass-produced steel, relying primarily on the labor of slaves and oxen.

It produced vertigo. Her head was tilted almost all the way back on her neck to see the sun cutting over the top, and even that light was bisected by the higher rising form of the castle itself, plus what looked like a cathedral and a third, somewhat smaller structure the purpose of which she couldn't immediately discern. That vertiginous feeling transformed into a smile, one of her own to match the one perpetually on Jay's face: There was no way a society capable of such a construction could not open the gate home. No way.

The gigantic main gate set dead center in the wall was already down, forming a broad drawbridge over the moat strung by chains each link of which were half the size of Shannon herself. A few horse-drawn carts clopped over the bridge, some heading out, some heading in. Other commerce on the move as well, peasants or slightly more presentable peasants leading pigs and sheep presumably to sell or barter with (and a resulting animal odor whipping across the drawbridge in waves). Everyone who noticed Jay pass, however, ceased whatever they were doing, tugged hard on the reins to bring their horses to halt, and stared. Eyes peeking past dirty cheekbones, first at Jay, then at Shannon, who quickened her step to close the distance between him and herself.

Near the cavernous aperture that led through the wall, someone finally spoke. It was a man with some sort of grooming in his wavy hair and pointed beard, dressed in a more fashionable bright red tunic, who appeared to be directing a pair of goliath types as they loaded bales of hay onto a cart. Clearly a merchant of some sort, one of the movers and shakers of economy, the kind of person that put Shannon at more ease to see than the ominous gaggle of onlookers trailing behind. He took a long time to look away from his ledger or his subordinates and when he did he gave an outrageous, sitcom-tier double-take, his eyes widening and his mouth tumbling open.

"Unbelievable... it cannot be!" Even his dialogue felt unreal, but at least it was an unreality Shannon found familiar. "You—you—those clothes—"

"That's right," said Jay. "I'm the hero from another world." He kept walking without further acknowledgement.

"That shield," the merchant muttered, eyeing the shield Jay plucked off the one guy's corpse, with its white cross on a red background that made it look like the flag of Denmark (a similar design flapped on a row of banners atop the wall). "That belongs to the prince..."

"Right again," said Jay. "The prince is dead. But I'm here."

Of course Jay would blab details that were best conveyed more diplomatically. Shannon strode forward, putting herself between Jay and the merchant to take charge of the situation. "Yes, hello. My name is Shannon Waringcrane and this is my brother, Jay. As you already guessed, we're not from this world, so could you perhaps direct us toward some of kind of government official so we can get our whole situation sorted out as efficiently as possible?"

A befuddled moment dissolved into an effusive series of nods. "Of course, of course! I am actually, ahem, I am actually of the nobility myself, the beloved nephew of Duke Meretryce to be exact, Gonzago of Meretryce you may call me—milady. Milady." He looked around wildly, passed off his ledger to his head henchman, and waved the man away with a few flighty hand-flicks that were something the flamboyant gay side character would do in a chick flick. His reedy voice and suddenly unctuous posture possessed a smidge of that type too. "I was in fact—in fact I was fulfilling some business on my uncle's behalf just now, but of course all that can wait, all that is but a trifle! I'll take you to my uncle straightaway, you're lucky you caught him on an occasion that has brought him to the capital, usually he prefers to keep to his country manor—oh but don't we all prefer the beautiful countryside, ehe, eheheh"—his laugh attempting conviviality but expressing anxiety—"I shall take you to him straightaway."

Jay, who of course kept walking during this ramshackle display, stopped. A few guards by the wall lounging and conversing in a disorganized and frankly unprofessional gaggle (reminding Shannon sharply of the law enforcement she dealt with in her initial search) finally noticed him and whispered among themselves, apparently to figure out what they should do. But Jay spoke to Gonzago:

"Take me to the queen."

"The—queen. Ahem. Well. Ah. You see, Queen Mallory is, shall we say—she is not especially interested in the day-to-day governance... Lady Shannon, I can tell by your bearing that you are a... shall we say? Serious woman. Yes. A woman who well handles her affairs, a woman who keeps her household in order. I believe you would be much better served speaking to my uncle. Much better indeed, yes."

"Take me to the queen," Jay said to the guards. "I'm the hero. Her son is dead and her daughter killed him. Let's skip the handwringing already and get me where you all know I'll wind up sooner or later."

God! Incorrigible! A senseless brute, plowing his way through everything, and the moment Shannon thought she got used to it, that she simply had to accept his willful blockheadedness, he managed to ascend to a whole new level. Did he not comprehend the idea of keeping information close to the chest? Did he not think one should ask favors with at least a faint sense of politeness?

"Her daughter... The princess is the killer?" Gonzago pulled another sitcom face. "No! Unfathomable! It cannot be!"

"My brother is being melodramatic," said Shannon. It was the giant dragon that killed the prince, technically. "Don't listen to a word he says.—Now. Mr. Gonzago. While I appreciate your suggestion—"

But of course it didn't matter. One of the guards broke from the group and ran off toward the castle, while two of the other four stepped forward to escort Jay. Jay didn't hesitate, he simply started walking, going where the guards followed, and Shannon wanted to tear out her hair and scream—or maybe grab at Jay's throat again, although the night prior felt like a dream now—but kept up a reasonable face among these people as she trailed behind, lacking any choice otherwise. If Jay was committed to making the worst first impression possible, Shannon must cover for his errors.

Another frenetic series of hand flaps beckoned Gonzago's underling back to him. After hurried whispers, the underling nodded and veered a beeline through the gate into the city; Shannon imagined en route to dear Uncle Meretryce, thwarted from first communication with the vaunted "otherworldly heroes." Sorry Gonzago, but Shannon knew your type. Obsequious sycophant, social climber. Your big powerful duke uncle having you run bookkeeper errands down by the mounds of horse excrement cut a clear picture of how much he valued you, and it was only natural for one in your position to ingratiate yourself at every opportunity to the one with the most direct bearing on your standing. But a queen outranked a duke (assuming this wasn't a more modern constitutional monarchy, which Shannon severely doubted), so Shannon had to suppress her gag and agree with her brother's decision-making, even if his methodology left so, so much to be desired. At least it was a queen in command. Maybe Shannon would be subjected to marginally less sexism than in a more patriarchal premodern society. Maybe a queen would be more willing to listen to Shannon's word instead of taking Jay's by default. Premodern times went poorly for women. Being a "heroine" might elevate Shannon to a class above your common walking womb, but their backward prejudices would make them value him over her every time. Unless she proved herself more worthy of value.

Which she was. If nothing else, she was still Shannon Waringcrane.

The slopes of the hills were choked by tightly-compacted two-, three-, four-story structures that seemed to rely on leaning against one another to keep from collapsing, divided by streets so narrow the sunlight didn't touch them. Out of every shuttered window or irregular alleyway leered an eyes-only face, while mangy wild dogs scurried between the legs of the guards who needed to assemble single-file on their procession up the steeply-sloped roads. Nonetheless the procession grew steadily, people seemingly manifesting out of nothing to exist between two people who had previously walked only inches apart, so that without warning Shannon was pushed three foul-smelling bodies back from Jay while Gonzago waved his arms frantically over the five bobbing heads in front of him as if he feared he would disappear if Shannon could no longer see him. Past thin wooden doors came intermittently the clank of hammers against anvils, the hard tones of hawked wares and the harder rebuttals of those bartering for a better deal, and even in one precariously slanted structure the orchestra of some performing troupe honking horns, banging banjos, and whistling ditties amid ample laughter. Every door they passed went abruptly silent, though, as somehow the people inside invariably became aware of what shadows lay upon their threshold. Windows opened, doors opened, and eyes peeped out, eyes and eyes and more and more heads in the parade to match.

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On a balcony ahead a young man and a young woman dressed in styles similar to Gonzago's waved and tossed pink flower petals to rain down before seizing one another and making an utterly inappropriate amorous display that must have bordered on public indecency even in the modern world, let alone this one. The guards—at least seven in the parade now—didn't bother to bark at them to stop, even when they fell onto their sides and began rolling over one another and their happy cries turned to squeals. Shannon plucked petals from her hair and crushed them between her fingers, divesting her of some of the city's omnipresent fecal funk.

Pre-sewers. Pre-germ theory. How did humanity ever make it as far as they did? Not King Arthur. Not Charlemagne or Napoleon either. Louis Pasteur, John Snow, Jonas Salk. Scientia potentia est. Not the people who chopped the machine with their blades; those who made the parts run longer, stronger, more smoothly.

Music trailed them now, perhaps the same troupe heard playing before, and more bodies crawling over the high gabled roofs to clap and toss petals. Higher they climbed and wider the roads became, not that the burgeoning parade became any less dense because of it.

Finally the incline leveled, the road opened, a courtyard appeared, a statue soared skyward, its artistry frankly lacking and its size designed to compensate: One regal man clutching sword and cross and overlooking the city. White splotches on his hair and shoulders. Behind him, the fairy tale castle, the romance novel castle. Its doors were already open wide, trumpets blared, guards in polished armor stood in rows only marginally crooked to usher in the way. The human chaff ceased their parade, they dared not pass the statue. Not even the guards passed. Only Jay did, and after him Shannon. Halfway across the empty semicircle of courtyard Shannon looked back and saw Gonzago struggling to follow, yelling at faceless figures to let him through, but nobody did. Jay and Shannon alone entered the castle.

Jay didn't even stop to take in the scenery, he only moved forward, and Shannon knew she couldn't let him talk to anyone important by himself for even an instant, so she didn't stop either.

In fact! Why was she trailing behind him anyway! No longer did a crowded city street block her path. She strode faster down the ornate lavender carpet toward the sepulchral throat of the castle, past the lines of halberded knights who might have just been empty suits of armor. She passed him, made it one, two steps ahead, then suddenly, after having moved at the exact same pace the entire long walk through the city, Jay sped up too. They weren't exactly jogging, but they verged closer and closer to powerwalking, neither so much as glancing at the other as though it wasn't the other dictating their exact behavior. At one moment Jay was ahead, then Shannon, then Jay again, their path taking them toward a pair of doors they reached for at the exact same time, each pushing against one another and Jay—no Dalt—able to open his as quickly as Shannon opened hers. Together they spilled into the throne room.

"Your Majesty!" Shannon blurted, only unsure afterward whether "Majesty" or "Highness" were the proper form of address for a queen (the other, she knew, was used for princes and princesses), and deciding with test taker logic that her gut impulse was correct. At the same time, though, Jay was spouting something stupid, his words blended with hers, and he browbeat his way forward exceeding her address to finish: "—the vault and give me your relics!"

At least thirty pairs of eyes blinked back at them.

"Your Majesty," Shannon repeated, stepping forward, stepping forward a second time when Jay stepped forward his first, sweeping an arm out grandiloquently to obstruct at least part of him from the view of the woman enthroned before them, "please forgive the impertinence of my brother. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Shannon Waringcrane, and he is—"

"I'm the hero. Just like John Coke. I already know there's a vault under the castle full of magical relics. Let me have them and I'll turn this place into a paradise—"

"Obviously we are but humble guests of your dominion and are in no position to make demands of you, Your Majesty. We seek only a night's shelter and, if possible, a way back to our own world—"

"Makepeace is dead. Mayfair killed him."

More and more Shannon's strangling attempt seemed less like a momentary lapse in sanity and more like a perfectly logical and rational thing to have done. Shannon lacked ready words to fill the hushed void that followed that proclamation, her fingers upturned into twitching hooks. "My brother doesn't speak for me," she only managed weakly.

"That's not the full story though. Someone, probably someone in this room by the looks of you"—Jay pacing forward tapping the tip of his baseball bat against the rug—"ordered Mayfair assassinated. Hired the elf hunter Sansaime to do it. It was me who saved her from death. But after I did that she stole the Staff of Lazarus, revived the dragon Devereux, and killed Makepeace. Then she fled."

The queen, Shannon noticed for the first time, was seated sideways in her throne, her legs within a tangle of silky cloth dangling over one armrest and her head hanging off the other as she chewed on a stick of cinnamon. She was outrageously, obnoxiously beautiful and she looked no older than Shannon herself, which was obviously wrong because she was ostensibly the mother of that Makepeace guy who died at the monastery, and the Makepeace guy also looked no older than Shannon herself. Even assuming the queen became a mother at an age only acceptable in barbaric society, she ought to be in her thirties...

"The dragon Devereux," spoke someone. Not the queen. Some bloated official, almost perfect in his rotundity, bursting arrays of ruffles from wrist and neck that gave him a scarecrow aesthetic even if his corpulence contradicted it. His mustache sprawled outward and the giant cross dangling from his neck glittered gold. "It is indeed true, true indeed it is—was it not true? All have seen Coke's Cross, where the dragon fell, crumbled on the mountaintop. Lends this not some credence to the hero's tale? True indeed, indeed true! Oh, who could have foreseen such calamity?"

"Who could have—who could have foreseen?! Archbishop Tintzel, you dare to speak such absurdity?!" another howled, lavish in his flowing robes, black hair streaked with fetching wings of white. "Have my charts and tables not prognosticated ill omens?! These are my predictions come to pass! Who still dares doubt the prowess of Prime Astrologer DeWint?"

A jester, coxcomb and codpiece and all, tumbled. Upside-down, he kicked his feet and sang: "Makepeace and Mayfair, their names a seemly pair; for the one made peace with life—let's see how the other may fare!" Rolling back upright, he tilted his jangly head with a sly smirk and appended in a stage whisper: "Yet if love's the opposite of war, then our dear prince surely made much peace another way, hee-hoo!"

"Booooo!" said a notably brown-skinned girl with an eyepatch and peg leg (who was, however, not a pirate), leaning on a cane. "Same joke as last week. DeWint, perchance you put your books to real use and divinate the location of the Fool's lost wit?"

Instantly the DeWint character calmed out his pompous reddened rage, slicked back the white parts of his hair, and donned a debonair ease. "Ah, well, my sweet lady, paid you better attention to your studies you might know yourself the way to influence personality via the celestial arts; I would not, however, be opposed to an extra session of private tutoring to demonstrate to you firsthand..."

A quick cackle caused the eyepatch girl to sway on her cane, stopped from falling only by the timely intercession of an equally brown-skinned man halfway in the shadows behind her. "Shameless!" she spat. Her one eye, deep gold, gleamed wide and wild.

"Silence, all of you," said a vampiric old man, dressed in black, "be you fools by trade or merely pleasure. Grave tidings befall Whitecrosse; we must consider them with due weight." His bald head and harsh array of wrinkles indicated, finally, a serious personage; his voice's heavy intonation smoothed over the tomfoolery of the rest.

The spherical scarecrow, Archbishop Tintzel, nodded rapidly. "Hum-ho, ho-hum! Duke Mordac speaks sooth. If what we hear is true, then grave indeed, indeed grave our situation sits. One heir killed; the other a murderer—Your Majesty, I am afraid you have no recourse but to take a new husband. The lineage of King John Coke must be preserved above all else—Aieah!"

He shrieked, because the Fool got it into his head to push him over and start rolling him across the court like a ball. This level of wit was apparently far more amenable to the eyepatch girl's tastes, for she howled laughter and nearly toppled over again.

"Another husband?" the ghoulish Duke Mordac continued with a shiver that sent flakes of dead skin cascading from his bald pate. "What need have we for such pageantry. We all know how the queen shall take to it anyway. No, this is not the time for—WILL SOMEONE BEHEAD THAT DAMNED FOOL?"

The Fool had hopped onto the flailing Tintzel and started piloting him around the court with his feet, at the same producing five colored balls that he juggled poorly so that they dropped onto the heads of various among the gathered, including Duke Mordac himself, reasonably prompting the outburst. In response to the duke's finger, extended crookedly due to all the knots, a pair of what appeared to be the duke's men stepped forward with their hands on the hilts of their swords, only for the Fool to give a nervous twittering laugh and steer Tintzel between Jay and Shannon and out the door before they could catch him. It was the stupidest thing Shannon had ever seen. The girl with the eyepatch, by contrast, was hyperventilating with laughter, flopping onto her side despite the attempts of her attendant to keep her upright and now seemingly choking to death. DeWint bustled to her side and attempted to convey to the attendant, who did not seem to understand, that she needed to be repositioned to another part of the court that was more "favorably aligned."

It was so farcical Shannon thought even Jay would have to agree. He didn't seem to notice the mayhem at all, though. He stared ahead at the only person he'd actually addressed: the queen, Mallory. Who did not look back.

"What's this I hear of beheadings?" said yet another person, entering the court the same way Jay and Shannon had, along with a train of attendants that included the unfortunate Gonzago, who immediately tried to catch Shannon's eye without being too obvious despite his innate obviousness. Shannon assumed this new person must be his uncle, Duke Meretryce. "Mordac, if we put to death everyone you thought deserved it, we'd have nobody left in this world but you."

Like Mordac, Meretryce was an old man, but the spry kind, the just-retired-and-bought-an-RV kind, his skin tanned and tough in conflict with the finery of his clothes. He exuded an easygoing nature without sacrificing respectability, sweeping past and placing a grandfatherly hand on first Shannon and then Jay's shoulders, looking each in the eye with geniality. "So here they are, hero and heroine. I've heard the whole story from my nephew of course, no need for any laborious repetition. I'd apologize for my tardiness, but I see Malleus still isn't here, so I'm not the worst in that regard at least. Too bad what ought to be a joyful moment for all Whitecrosse, a shining sign from God of our brighter future, is so marred by the tragedy that has befallen our royal family. Prince Makepeace slain! Much too young, much too young. I express my sincerest condolences to you, Your Majesty. Wherever is his body? The monastery? I shall dispatch a group of my finest men to recover it and carry it through the city on a bier, as such a fine and valiant youth deserves. There shall not be a man, woman, or child in all Whitecrosse without tears in their eyes at that tragic sight."

He stood in the center of the room, forcing all eyes upon him with elegant gestures as he modulated his voice to a perfect pitch of sadness, a pitch that conveyed genuine regret without verging into anything too melancholic or depressed. Controlled.

Even Jay broke his stare to squint a sidelong eye at him. "So you'll send men to the monastery now, but not before. Not when Mayfair was kidnapped."

Meretryce continued as if he hadn't heard, which given Jay's poor elocution was a realistic possibility. The regret dissipated from his voice, trending optimistic: "But shall we dwell too deeply in the sorrow we feel? No, that would produce only idleness, and at a time we can most ill afford it, given the rumors we hear daily from our many adversaries. Think now on the possibility bestowed us by the manifestation of these Godsent heroes! It was John Coke, a hero from another world, who saved Whitecrosse from ruination at the hands of a wicked, corrupt church in league with the Saracen kingdom of California and their pagan idol, Mahomet. I see in these new heroes that same potential, that same salvation. It is a reminder of God's love for us His elect, and we would be ill-served not to take full advantage of what He offers so freely."

His speech silenced the court, even the choking girl with the eyepatch, who DeWint and the attendant dragged to the fringes. That alone was reason enough for Shannon to know the man was more dangerous than the rest of them combined, but at the same time potentially more useful. Then he continued:

"Those gathered here today, I present a modest proposal, one I believe may indeed be pleasant to all parties. Your Majesty, think you it not now time to peacefully relinquish the crown that has weighed so heavy on your head these past twenty years?"

He looked at the queen and received no response.

"When I was a somewhat younger man, I saw you, beloved Mallory, thrust into a position you did not want—married to my own elder brother! But as you were John Coke's true descendant, you rose to the occasion to the best of your ability—none shall deny that. You have reigned over Whitecrosse for more happy years than sad; for that, we your dutiful subjects are eternally grateful. But surely you must see now that the time for your long-awaited rest is come. Please. Step down from your throne, Your Majesty. You shall be provided for; you shall never want. Take the time you need to grieve the tragic fate of your son and daughter. If it is God's will to send us these heroes, then we have no choice but to bend. Let a new lineage take hold, and allow God's blessing once more to grace Whitecrosse, building an earthly paradise to better prepare us for His celestial one. Your Majesty, what say you to this proposal, made in the best interest of both you and your people? Your Majesty?"

For the first time since entering, Meretryce allowed silence to take hold.

"Your Majesty?"

"Your Majesty," said Duke Mordac. "Spare us the wasted time and respond."

"Your Majesty!"

Others, some of the lesser lords and bannerman, chimed in. "Your Majesty." "Your Majesty." "Your Majesty." DeWint added to the chorus in an operatic baritone designed to draw attention to himself even within a crowd. Only a handful didn't contribute. The eyepatch girl and her attendant, withdrawn nearly out of view. Jay and Shannon, of course. And a row of seven armored knights who brought up the back of the gathered crowd, placed in a perfect mathematic pattern behind the throne despite the vast differences in their sizes and armor, some short and squat and some tall and thin, some with helmets crafted into the shape of a roaring dragon and some with polearms that reached absurdly high toward the distant reaches of the throne room's arched ceiling. These knights said nothing and did not move.

"YOUR MAJESTY!"

In a manner that Shannon could only conceptualize as a cult ritual, an entire host of people incanting in perfect unison, a final pealing shout rang across the hall and the demon was finally summoned with a flickering series of blinks. Queen Mallory's lolling head snapped to attention. She glanced left, she glanced right, her infuriatingly pretty supermodel-tier face somehow gorgeous despite the perplexion marring her features.

"Ehhhhh? There are rather a lot of you here today. Has something tiresome happened again?"

Meretryce browbeat his way to the fore and was quick to speak: "Unfortunately yes, Your Majesty. With illimitable sorrow, I regret to inform you that—"

"Your son is dead. Your daughter murdered him," said Jay. "I am the hero from the other world. Give me access to the vault of relics and I'll—"

"Ignore my brother's rudeness, please," said Shannon. "My name is Shannon Waringcrane. I—"

"Makepeace is dead?" Queen Mallory looked at Jay, at the shield Jay carried, and lastly at Shannon. "And Mayfair killed him."

"Yes," Shannon said, feeling compelled to speak 1) to stop Jay from speaking instead and 2) because Queen Mallory kept staring at her. "It's... it's unfortunate. I am... deeply sorry for your loss... but my brother and I need your help."

One casual flick and Mallory tossed aside the cinnamon stick on which she'd gnawed aimlessly from the onset. Shannon suppressed a grimace. It was, in fact, extremely inconvenient that the queen's son happened to die during all that stupidity at the monastery. Not only because that caused the ugly elf girl to steal the key to the gate, but also because it was preventing Shannon from broaching the question of receiving help in an elegant fashion. She felt almost as boorish as Jay except Jay felt no shame whatsoever so only she had to feel this way, and that was more awful than feeling it in the first place. She awaited Queen Mallory's response, certain to range between either abject misery or abject fury, neither emotion being one Shannon was equipped to handle—and both beings ones she could normally avoid, both within herself and others. It'd be just like Mother, she thought, sobbing inconsolable after Jay's disappearance. Worse than Mother.

Instead Queen Mallory's eyes shone alive and she said, "Thank God."

"Excuse me?" said Shannon.

"Thank fucking Christ Almighty," Queen Mallory said, rising, fanning her arms. "Thank the Lord! Twenty years. Twenty years they put me in this prison. Twenty years! I'm finally fucking free!"

"Your Majesty, your language..." DeWint fidgeted to the side.

"I'll use whatever language I damn well feel like. I'm queen of Whitecrosse and compared to me every single one of you. Every. Single. One! Are ants. Ants! Hear me, DeWint? And you, Mordac? Of course you too Meretryce, I wouldn't forget about you. Nor these so-called heroes. Hero and heroine, hm? A perfect pairing to breed a new royal line for this kingdom, is that what these dukes have been braying?"

"Um." Shannon's eye moved sidelong toward Jay. "No. Nothing like that at all. In fact, as I already said, we're siblings."

"Oh? That certainly hasn't stopped her excellent family." A hand cut a clean ninety-degree arc, starting in front of her and ending straight at her side, to point across the room at the wheezing and sputtering eyepatch girl. "No matter. I'm free. Finally free of this prison! Oh, the joy, the endless joy a family brings. The heavenly bliss of filial devotion. What they told me I would reap. What these very men!"—finger jabbing one after another at the faces of the old men arrayed, at Mordac, at Meretryce—"What these very men said to me when I was thirteen, when they married me off so I might produce a male heir, solely because a king on the throne sat better in their gluttonous stomachs than a queen! Filial devotion! That was what I was to reap for forbearing this torturous penal colony they call a castle!"

She bent this way and that, her body careening at wild angles without her leaving the orbit of her throne elevated on a dais, her arms a frenzy, her golden hair a swirl as her head tossed and a series of screechy laughs came out with strained difficulty. "HAA, HAA, HAA!" The folds of her silken gown flowed. "Twenty years, twenty years, and it's all come to this! Oh, I could die of laughter."

"Your Majesty," said Meretryce, "we are all well aware of the immense stress and difficulty you have endured. The crown has been most heavy on your head. That is why we extend to you a simple, pleasant offer to renounce your title and live your days free in—"

"Renounce my title! Renounce my title!"

"Is it not, as you said yourself, a prison?"

Queen Mallory snapped into a straight, albeit crooked, line. Her head remained tilted back but only her eyes moved, rolling along a downward semicircle to lance Meretryce through the heart and forcing him to flinch.

"My title a prison? The throne a prison? Oh, dear dear Duke Meretryce, you misunderstand. Alas, it's to be expected. You have only ever misunderstood me. Nay! You have never even attempted to understand..."

For the first time, Meretryce lacked any words to respond. Mordac, unburdened by the queen's icy glare, filled the void. "Your Majesty. Twin heroes have arrived. It is a hero's duty to drive Whitecrosse forward, just as in John Coke's time. Recognize that, Your Majesty, and do what must be done for the good of the kingdom."

A low snicker escaped Mallory's nose, soft and susurrate and transforming into something akin to a dog's whine, trapped in the throat. Her imperious eye swept Mordac and he crumpled into his pitch black cloak, erasing himself from view.

"Look." It was Jay. He tapped his bat against his shin. "I don't give a shit what these guys say. They're obviously all scheming. You can stay queen or not, I don't care. But let me into the vault. Give me access to the relics. That's what I want."

His words brought the queen's gaze to him. She stepped off her dais, descending the few steps to reach Jay's level, swaying as though she never actually learned how to walk, and when the seven oddly-shaped knights at her back clanked incipient motion to assist her she held them back with a trenchant palm. "Hero," she said. "Brother of Shannon Waringcrane. Your name is?"

"Jay."

"You see them? In the city streets, in this claustrophobic court? They're all smiles, Jay, all grinning ear to ear. Why? They all know the legend of John Coke. And each in their own way thinks you will do exactly what they want to make their lives perfect. A hero. But I'll tell you one thing. John Coke really was a hero. He didn't simply walk into this world and have the title appended to him. He earned it. And I? I am his trueborn descendant. So unless you earn the title, I see you only as what you are: A man, no different from any other."

Jay nodded along to this speech, as though it were perfectly reasonable, which it honestly was. Perhaps the sole reasonable thing said in this entire court so far. Nonetheless, when the queen ceased speaking, Jay flipped his bat into the air, caught it by the handle, and pointed it straight at the queen.

"Fine. Then I'll prove it."

The seven knights clanked, the crowd cleaved to the sides, sharp spearpoints shined. Shannon snapped. When he'd been merely rude, it only annoyed her, especially since everyone else in the court was rude too, meaning he didn't especially stand out. Now, though, she couldn't take it anymore. "Jay! You absolute buffoon! Are you suicidal? What are you doing?" She rushed forward and reached for the bat. "Your Majesty, I am absolutely sorry for the crass behavior of my brother. Please know that his actions in no way reflect upon me, and that I do not agree with him whatsoever—"

"Shannon," said Jay. "Move. Can't you see? I'm giving her exactly what she wants."

It was true. The queen's bright blue eyes gleamed. Her hands held back her knights as though by magnetism; their armor quivered as they slowly, reluctantly retreated. A smile lined her face.

"Then let us begin."

In an instant the queen's body became animalistic, fingers hooked, arms bent at severe angles, all of her force carrying her into a potent momentum straight toward Jay that Shannon only barely had enough time to dance away from. At the same time Jay drew back and swung his bat.

It happened so fast Shannon only figured out what happened after the fact. The bat did not collide with the queen's head, despite a trajectory that should have made that incontrovertible. Instead, the queen caught it in one hand. What really confused Shannon was that Jay had already let go of the bat even before she caught it, as if he expected all along she would do that, even though trying to catch a metal bat being swung full force was an utterly moronic maneuver that should have only led to several shattered fingerbones.

Why was this happening. Jay couldn't fight. Shannon had seen him try.

Jay jolted to the side and angled his whole upper body to catch the queen in the midsection. The logic seemed to be to throw his whole weight into her and overwhelm with the raw physical advantages the adult male body had over the female. Jay was no Dalt, but he was still half a foot taller than Queen Mallory, and probably a good fifty pounds heavier. Maybe this maneuver would've worked, too. But Jay was dealing with someone who could catch a metal bat mid-swing. Before Jay even got close a knee rose up and nailed him in the head.

The Cleveland Browns hat swirled. Jay reared back, trailing twin streams of blood from his nostrils. Before he got a chance to revel in this agony, the queen danced back on nimble feet, shifted her stance, and swung her leg straight into his crotch.

Jay staggered to the side, seemingly fine for the first few seconds despite the blood running down his chin, but everyone watching knew, including the queen, who spread her arms straight out in victory moments before Jay keeled to the floor wheezing and curling into a ball.

"Voilà! I am the queen of Whitecrosse, and I shall remain queen until I breathe my last breath. No hero will take my rightful throne."

Nobody clapped. Queen Mallory's head rolled and her wide smiling eyes drove from the sky straight into Shannon. A hungry, disrobing gaze.

"Yes, well," Shannon said, backpedaling slowly with her hands raised in non-aggression, "I have never doubted that, and in fact I intended to beseech you to assist us in leaving this world entirely—"

The queen rushed at Shannon and landed a glancing punch on her shoulder as Shannon tried to pull away.

"Hey! Hey! I don't want to fight. I never tried to fight! Hey!"

A swift kick struck Shannon's shin and funnybone pain shot up her leg. She winced, buckling, holding her hands first over her head and then lower to defend the pocket where Ollie sat quietly, and for her trouble received two quick and discombobulating strikes to either side of her skull.

"Hey. Hey! Stop..."

No stopping. Next came a blow to the gut that doubled Shannon over, and a knee to the chin that launched her back.

She smacked the thankfully plush carpet without cracking her skull open on the stone floor underneath and rolled over as though dead or unconscious. Which did not stop the queen from landing a final kick most rudely to her ass, which Shannon barely felt because her body was agony all over and her head swam with blurriness and nausea. The queen's voice floated in a distant realm... "The next who doubt me—I'll have their guts out on my fingertips..."

Psychosis, Shannon thought. Shared psychosis. Insanity in the air. The lunacy microbes, flitting down to this world on a migratory path from their breeding ground, the moon. Germ theory... infecting them only for breathing. She didn't pass out, but she might as well have, and remained a solid lump when hands gripped her and dragged her away.