[24] All Deadly Economy

Mayfair returned from the frenzy of activity that proceeded her Sunday sermon to Pastor Styles' church so late and so wearied she could not will herself awake long enough to more than fiddle with the Whitecrosse papers. She slept, and after rising the activity continued. More and more people wished to speak to her or hear her speak; Styles facilitated their wishes generously. Mayfair little comprehended. She did not think the sermon she gave was any good. She spoke with all due eloquence; utilized the tripartite persuasive modes of logos, ethos, and pathos; and flourished her remarks with rhetorical devices pleasant to the ear. Yet the content of her speech rang to her hollow, and while Styles' people came to her with kind words, she detected within their pleasantries subtle condescension: "So young!" they all said. The words she spoke meant nothing to them, only that she spoke them well—for someone her age. They looked at her like a trained animal who performed a quaint trick. They looked at her like her mother.

Styles told her she did excellently—flawlessly even. She was exactly what he needed, what America needed. (He did not say: You are the perfect dog to peddle the word of God.) Associates of his had seen her sermon, and already he was arranging a televised broadcast for her to speak to the nation at large.

"And when you talk to the nation, you'll perform the miracle. The same you performed for me."

The miracle. Of course. What did her words matter when she had the miracle? He only needed her to speak adequately, as the miracle would speak for her. She knew that well enough; it was why she performed it for him at the funeral anyway.

Perhaps that was the entire point. It was not that she could not speak well enough, but that nobody could. Words no longer mattered to the people of this world; all the words had already been spoken. Books upon books existed, learning upon learning. These men and women of democracy, each of them a partial ruler of America, had heard everything before. Their infants no longer died, their tables no longer went bare, their nation no longer warred. This was paradise. In this land of plenty their unspilled blood accumulated, a thicker and thicker glut, until the mass became such that it encompassed nearly everything and thus, in the words of Ecclesiastes, there was nothing new under the sun.

The meanest of them would be a hero in her world; what could she possibly provide theirs? Yet Jay Waringcrane went to Whitecrosse.

These people, somehow, continued to yearn. Continued to strive for—something. Not words. No, they strove for the one thing their solved world's God-given bounty denied them: a miracle, a wonder, a question outside their comprehension. Perhaps even that same thing Mayfair felt in the cathedral: enveloped in holy fervor.

If she gave them that feeling, no matter how, then perhaps they would no longer look at her as a trained dog.

Monday afternoon she finally returned to her room at Styles' home, bid Dalton stand guard outside, and sank into the plush chair that swiveled to stare down at where her papers lay.

Her worries in this world caused her to neglect her duty to Whitecrosse. What mattered whether she spoke to a crowd, or appeared on the 'television,' or performed miracles to shatter the trim perfection of their lives? She must become serious about her new role as Master of Whitecrosse. Faced by the tides of papers, though, a sense of dread filled her. She still barely knew what she was and was not capable of accomplishing. Her first and immediate goal, to somehow move the entirety of Whitecrosse into Earth, now seemed a remote fantasy. A childish whim, even.

Or were those thoughts merely an excuse to cut ties altogether? She stroked the stitches on her chest from where Sansaime slashed her. At least someone in Whitecrosse did not forget. But her mother, the dukes, even her tutor who praised her acumen so highly; all would barely mention her. Viviendre still stewed—good! Let that malformed cretin seethe in her inadequacy. Mayfair saw her paper, saw it written: Viviendre de Califerne hired Sansaime to assassinate Mayfair of Whitecrosse. How dismal, how pathetic, that her killer was not one of the innumerable personages who might benefit from Mayfair's death, but a simple academic rival.

Hmph. Viviendre was beneath Mayfair's concern; she tamped down initial impulses to render unto her divine retribution in the form of a pox, a malady, or perhaps—striking the girl where it hurt most—a quick return to California, where she would fall prey to her mad brother's most deranged, bestial desires. Mayfair tittered in her seat to think of that sort of revenge, detailed delectably for her reading pleasure on the page, then beat the thought back, beat it away, turned from it, plucked it out her mind, and failing to fully extinguish it finally fell to her knees and prayed for Christ's strength to steer her on a righteous path.

Mercy, not spite. Mercy! Viviendre could do nothing against Mayfair now; killing her would not stop Sansaime, and Mayfair was reluctant even to kill Sansaime now that she was spirited safely away to the pastor's home in this sprawling agglomeration of structures they called a city. Sansaime may look and look and never find her, and so what was the point of murder besides sating sinful wrath? Besides, on Sansaime's paper was written—No, no point dwelling on that. Mercy! The entire point was mercy. The entire point was to save these unfortunate souls. Lalum and the other nuns, the dukes, the peasants, even Viviendre, even mother. For all the coldness they showed her she would show them warmth; that was the way of Christ, that was the way she must tread.

As she stared at Viviendre's page, pen poised to doom her with a few strokes, she lowered her hand and expelled a contented sigh at her merciful inclinations. But she decided if she intended to keep to those inclinations she ought not stare at the page much longer. She pushed it aside, sorted it atop Sansaime's page (noting as she did that Sansaime remained at Avery Waringcrane's home, doing nothing of interest), and announced to herself mentally that she would get to work.

Her goal: Bring Whitecrosse into this world. Bathe it in salvation. Show them the love they failed to show her.

Time to master herself, her whims, her thirst for aimless knowledge. Time to apply what she knew to a true purpose. First, she calculated the difference in size between Whitecrosse and Earth. Using the devil's notes and Dalton's 'phone,' she procured exact measurements for each, and discovered how immensely larger the real world was compared to the fake. It made sense; the Bible listed hundreds of nations, whereas Whitecrosse possessed only two, bounded by slabs of wilderness where fae and else lurked. Yet those two nations paled even in comparison to the one nation of America. Paled in comparison to the state of Ohio. With some rearrangement, the entirety of Whitecrosse's land area could fit inside the five so-called "Great Lakes" to the north of Cleveland.

Earth dwarfed Whitecrosse. Obviously! Why should a devil create a world as great as God's? More importantly, it answered the question of where to put Whitecrosse after she brought it to Earth. But how to move it? For that, she needed the relics inside the castle vault, but that was not the entirety of the tale. None of those relics possessed the power to accomplish such a feat on their own or even in tandem—not as they currently were.

The devil placed impositions preventing the modification of relics. Or more precisely, her pages on each of them made enough limiting qualifications of what they could or could not do so that substantial change was impossible. Furthermore, the exact number of relics (forty) had been defined explicitly in the time of John Coke, as he set out on a quest to collect them all and succeeded in collecting about three-quarters (hence the vault). It was impossible to create a new relic out of nothing. Likewise, engineering some new powerful fae king or queen with some tremendous power proved impossible; the number of courts was set.

Yet looking through the devil's most recent changes Mayfair discovered she brazenly and easily gave a horse the power to heal any person who fell off it. Ostensibly, this alteration was permitted because the concept of a "horse" was ill-defined compared to substantial elements of Whitecrosse's political and magical reality. Nothing ever stated that horses could not possess magical powers. Probatio diabolica—devil's proof.

Then Mayfair ought to be able to bypass the vault entirely and give a horse the power to transport Whitecrosse through the Door. She found the sheet for Makepeace's horse, the one the devil already modified, and attempted the change. Did it work? Of course not! Mayfair tossed her hands in frustration. Every idea she struck upon turned out untenable for a reason incomprehensible without sorting through thousand of documents until she found some oblique proclamation the devil once made. By the time she figured it out, the sun would be setting, she would need to sleep, then the next day Styles would take her somewhere or take someone to her, and by the time she had a chance to resume her efforts her train of thought would be lost and she would cycle again inert in her abilities.

Ignore it, attempt something new? Nope! Mayfair's empiric mindset prevented any such efficiency. She spent those hours delving into the question of why, lured by the thought that the answer must in fact be quite simple, and most certainly had something to do with the properties of the Door. So she examined the Door's page, or rather pages, because the Door was rendered in significantly more detail than any other single element of Whitecrosse, with so much minutiae dedicated to its exact properties, materials, and measurements that it reminded Mayfair of the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus. Was the issue that the object defined as "Whitecrosse (world)" was too large to fit through the starkly-defined portal? But her statement of "this horse has the power to transport Whitecrosse through the Door" did not contradict that, as such a power could manifest in, say, shrinking Whitecrosse and all its inhabits to an acceptable size, or teleporting Whitecrosse altogether. She tested several variants of her original statement accounting for that, but none worked. Why? Two hours passed and nothing to show, daylight ticking away on the pastor's fine mechanical clock.

If the issue wasn't the Door, then... She sifted through the stacks of papers and finally found the singular page that defined objects of category "Horse." (This search alone took forty-five minutes; some of these papers were buried even within their subcategories.) And once she found the page the answer presented itself to her instantly. Her hypothesis that the devil's modification to Makepeace's horse was due to the undefined nature of horses turned out demonstrably incorrect.

Horses were, in fact, defined as "non-magical animals." (A distinction that set them apart from unicorns, which were explicitly magical, although frustratingly with their own clear set of parameters and limitations.) However! The devil had, apparently, written into the horse document a loophole that allowed "notable individual horses" (?!) to have "properties exceeding the scope of their species" (?!?!?!). Meaning what exactly?

Mayfair launched into another hour-long investigation and eventually discovered that Makepeace's horse was not the first horse the devil modified. In fact, the first was nearly four hundred years dead: the personal steed of one John Coke. The devil apparently did not want the rather old man falling off his steed and breaking his neck. It'd been easy for her to introduce the same exploit into Makepeace's horse because she wove the exploit into the world's fabric. (As an aside, Mayfair almost tumbled into a new hole of attempting to discern just how much of John Coke's heroic deeds were spoon-fed him by the devil, but managed to reel herself back in time.)

None of this answered the core question, however! What defined what magic horses were and were not allowed to have? Mayfair's attempted alterations had been done to Makepeace's horse, so the "notable individual horses" ambiguity did not apply. So what was the issue?

Another hour-long foray. Pastor Styles brought her dinner on a plate, which she wolfed down before wiping her fingers on her dress. At long last the answer revealed itself. It was not an issue with the Door, or an issue with horses, or even an issue with "notable individual horses." It was an issue with magic.

Mayfair long suspected that the devil had not crafted every single living being in Whitecrosse from hand; the pages she found proved her theory true. "Mechanisms for the automatic propagation of species," these pages read. Humans, horses, other animals, fae. It was this automation that forced the devil to institute any limits on her handiwork at all, in fact. Clearly, she did not want a random milkmaid giving birth to a messianic hero, or a farmer's cow giving birth to a magical beast, and thus enforced restrictions along some sort of scientific discipline the devil coined "genetics" but which seemed to follow principles known even in Whitecrosse for the selective breeding of dogs and other domesticated creatures. Mayfair caught herself once more thumbing through Dalton's phone to piece together a better understanding of "genetics" as an academic field and pried herself away to keep focused on the matter at hand.

When it came to the fae and other magical beasts, many words were spent limiting what magical powers they could and could not possess. Logically, it made sense, as the devil might have found her world tumbling out of control if (for instance) Flanz-le-Flore were able to generate an offspring faerie with devastating destructive power. First, only fae royalty was allowed any power beyond the most limited and basic; but even then, the kings and queens of court were curtailed to specific ranges and areas of effect that fell far below the planetary. Magical beasts received similar limitations, as did the animus magic that humans and elves could access under certain circumstances.

And that was it! Five long hours of searching and now Mayfair knew why her alteration to Makepeace's horse failed. She now knew she could not imitate the alteration for a faerie, or human, or elf, something she could have established in five minutes by empirical testing. It was that burning curiosity, that need for why, that drove her to such wasteful pursuits, and even so she disdained the descriptor "wasteful." Knowledge was an intrinsic good. If she disbelieved that statement then she must scourge herself for yet another sin.

She was back where she started. The only type of magic not limited in scope was relic magic; but this lack of limitation stemmed from the direct, non-automated control the devil exerted over it. So what now? Should she spend another several hours determining how to modify the relics that already existed despite the seemingly ironclad set of restrictions placed upon them? And still she didn't even have access to the relics. So should she prioritize that or their transformation—

Transformation.

Mayfair uncurled her stooped shape, pained by the effort but able to ignore the pain within the thrust of her epiphany. "Transformation," she said aloud. The chime of the word in her ear spurred her onward; her lips twisted again and this time the sound that came out was somewhat changed, the word undergoing its definition:

"Transmogrification."

—

The loose canopy let through littered beams of soft sunlight. Dazzling, sparkling, they honed themselves to narrow points upon the stage, and as the leaves above shifted slightly in some unseen breeze the light shifted too, traveling the stage in slow and steady circles to accompany the silent dancers engaged in their tragic ballet. Six pairs of them, not a one synchronized with another, yet each in their own heavy swaying making known a story that could not otherwise be uttered.

No music. Not even a lonely whistle or pipe. Only the softest patter of the dancers' feet, tattooing for themselves in their disharmony a queer orchestra reminiscent of rainfall. Gathered at the edges of the stage the faces of animals grouped, predator and prey at peace to watch the show, every natural woodland beast: Dormouse, squirrel, vole, weasel, rabbit, hare, badger, deer, wolf, and bear. In low-hanging branches birdfowl watched as well, while upon the twigs and leaves vibrant butterflies stayed their wings. Altogether, a tableau of fauna bound together by an unseen web, destined to kill and eat and die and decompose together.

Centered on the stage stood a throne of sticks and stubby branches, which in some seasons might sprout flowers but not this one. And while a queen ruled this court a man instead sat upon the seat; a man of no regal bearing, in lean pragmatic clothing, peering through thick glass lenses.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

This man, this hero, was Wendell Noh.

He sat with one leg lifted so that his boot, caked in dry mud, rested on the seat; his balled fist supported his chin, while tangled between his arm and body extended the tall metal barrel of his formidable rifle. His mouth hung ajar in either stupefaction or abject apathy. Behind those glasses, did his eyes even watch the mute ballet before him, or did his pupils simply point the proper way?

Beneath his hair, delicately combed and coiffured, a simple bandage still shone upon his brow. Another bandage enveloped the hand that gripped the barrel of the gun, and were his jacket and his jeans not so covering more could have been seen upon his legs and arms. Wendell Noh, as befit a hero, entered the wood in a maniac way, hurtling from high above, and yet by some miracle he landed without a single bone shattered, merely scrapes and cuts from the branches as they raked him on the way down. Yet he still bled, and still moaned under the spell of a brutal weakness, and so for the past few days he recovered in a bed sipping bittersweet concoctions designed to restore him to his past vitality. Now he sat here, a hero, rightfully regal; even his inattentiveness was regal in its own way, as the minds of great men are rarely focused upon mean thoughts of mere entertainment, pondering instead greater mysteries or matters of universal import.

Likewise, he'd spoken precious little since his arrival, often merely to indicate to his most dutiful helper his current needs, be they sustenance or comfort; when he did focus on his surroundings, it was with sharpened focus, as though dissecting every element. His aims, his ambitions remained oblique, yet he had neither asked nor attempted to leave. The only sour note in his entire being were the words he had sometimes mumbled in half-conscious daze during the initial days of his recovery; words about a wife, a daughter, a home in a far-flung land called Cleveland. Once he mentioned a man named Dalt: "Dalt—Dalt—we're here," and once, later, he asked what happened to "your brother," although the person he spoke to as a matter of course possessed no siblings, no parents, and no true children at all, had been birthed not from a womb but by the gently opening petals of a magnificent flower.

That floral-bloomed figure drifted upon the fragrant air, arriving onto his lap with a glass chalice of wine which she lifted daintily to his lips. He sipped, absent from the physical present.

What went on in that mind? What thoughts floated behind those sharp, intelligent eyes? Oh, she wished to know. She wished to know him; she wished to become part of the framework he enacted upon the world, to imbibe a little of the agency he possessed.

"Is this to your liking, my sweet? Or shall I find you more fitting refreshment, better suited to one of your stature?" Flanz-le-Flore nestled her body into his, her clothes a near-perfect facsimile of those he wore, save for the boots, which she never changed. She even wore his glasses, although with certain adjustments to the curvature of the lenses because otherwise she would be incapable of seeing anything clearly.

"It's fine," he said brusquely, although he did not swat her away as he had in days prior; instead, his hand moved from his rifle to pat her idly on the head.

John Coke disappointed her; chose another over her. Jay Waringcrane did more than disappoint, and she danced fleetly from his name, as even invoking it mentally might mar her disposition. But this third hero, Wendell Noh, would be hers, her wiles subtly working upon him, seeping into the spaces between his lofty thoughts.

Her subjects danced. This idyllic world was hers and his alone, and together they might shape it as they wished, the way only a hero was allowed. Careful not to touch the barrel of his gun, her arms wound around him and her fingers caressed. That name, Jay Waringcrane, remained a bitter aftertaste on her tongue, but among such pleasures could she truly bind herself to grudges? The rule-breaking horse had eradicated all trace of her wounds, so should she not ease the wounds within her mind as well? All soothed, all proved pleasant, she and Wendell Noh together in a land of enchantment she devised alone.

If only such bliss could continue uninterrupted. If only there were not agents who sought her undoing.

Flanz-le-Flore well knew what transpired in her wood. The arrival of the ambassadors, although unheralded, was nonetheless a fact of which she was aware before their silhouettes further darkened the dark fringes beyond the stage. The dancing ceased, the animals turned their heads, but a subtle gesture of Flanz-le-Flore's slender hand stilled any antagonistic activity. These messengers were not dangerous, she knew; and although they had played some small part in her earlier maiming, the part was so small that she no longer possessed the wrath necessary to obliterate them where they stood. Let it be known that unlike the wicked fae of the other courts (not least of which being that Olliebollen Pandelirium, who dared side against her in a struggle of fae against humanity), Flanz-le-Flore was merciful and kind, beautiful and benevolent, quicker to laugh than to scowl, and never rising above mere mischievousness in the jests she played upon those men of Whitecrosse who blundered too near her borders.

The ambassadors stopped at the edge of the stage, illuminated by penumbra alone. They were a pair, their appearances most extraordinarily alike, although the corruption that wracked their bodies had distorted them in different directions. Indeed, all outward likeness was deceptive, for at a glance Flanz-le-Flore understood these two to be now more dissimilar than a raven and a writing desk.

One, with feathered wings, was alive. The other, with leather wings, was dead.

One was merely human, or even more merely less than human, while the other was an inert vessel for something far greater: The Master.

Flanz-le-Flore's skin went cold and she discovered her fingers clenching tighter against Wendell Noh's body, her cheek close to his as she stared over the stage with suspicious eye. The Master had returned? Flanz-le-Flore had felt the Master's presence snuffed out around the time she discovered Wendell Noh fallen in her wood, and while she was normally attuned to such significant shifts in the underlying energies of the world she had not felt that presence reignite. No—no. Something struck her as unusual about the sensation emanating from the dead and animated twin; this was not the Master she knew. Slipping her hands from Wendell Noh, her thumbs touched to her fingertips, prepared to snap.

"We come bearing a message," said the live one—Charm—her face a mask of freshly-escaped agony, like a cloth that has been wrinkled and then smoothed out. Blackened streaks painted her cheekbones, but now she appeared somewhat limp and drained. "A message from this world's New Master."

"New Master." Flanz-le-Flore loosened from around Wendell Noh, effected an aura of nonchalance. "Yes, I suppose that seems so. What a novice Master indeed they must be if they cannot communicate to me directly, though."

"The New Master wishes to show proper respect to your station, faerie queen," Charm intoned, her words not her own, a puppet in some regards as much as her sister; what had this New Master said to or shown her? The corpse itself of course. "As such, she has sent a formal envoy to convey her intentions."

Like as not the true goal was so that this New Master, whoever she was, may make her words known as much to Flanz-le-Flore as to her esteemed guest, who as a hero from the other world was not subject to the Master. Desirous of Flanz-le-Flore's delicious companion, was she? Perhaps the woman signified by that spiteful metal band Flanz-le-Flore witnessed on Wendell Noh's ring finger?

"I dislike dead things," she said. "Remove that corpse from my presence at once. I care not if it moves; it is dead."

The words drove—as intended—like a dagger into the live one, whose destitute musculature slumped in a sort of sudden daze. Her eyes grew freshly wet and she clawed at her hair:

"Charisma! O Charisma, forgive your wretched fleshbound sister! She never treated you as you were, as God's sole gift to a feeble sinner, a comfort to her in ways she recked not! O, but now the scales have fallen from her eyes, and she realizes how bitterly she spat upon your love, and in so doing the love of God! Seek solace, if you will, only in her assured damnation, not because her sins are too great for God to pardon, but because she is so blind as to forsake his mercy when it is so freely offered!"

"Enough of that," Flanz-le-Flore said. "Though the seasons shift toward winter, that is no excuse to pollute my fine and happy court with flagellating dolor. New Master, both of your messengers insult me. Remove them or I shall."

Instead, the corpse opened its mouth and spoke. "I'm curious. Why does Wendell Noh have bandages? Possess you not Makepeace's horse?"

"One capable of true magic knows what magic cannot accomplish."

"As for you, Wendell Noh. Do you not wish to return home? Do you not wish to leave this world—"

Snap. The corpse transmogrified at once into an owl. A dead owl—she could only change like to like—but the shape of a owl, capable of only the speech of a owl: hoo, hoo. A moment's consideration of her handiwork and Flanz-le-Flore performed the same service for the live one, whose rapid hooting formed a song rather than a lamentation.

She turned then to Wendell Noh and with discomfiture saw him leaned forward in his seat, blinking rapidly. For a moment his sharp eyes shifted to view her sidelong, then settled back to a hazy murk. "Home," he muttered. He repeated the word, albeit squishing it together and eliding its vowel, so that it became: "Hm."

He could not seriously be enticed by such an offer, could he? Though his vitality and fate-strings were far stronger than any man in this world, Flanz-le-Flore knew from his clothes and his lack of refinement in speech and manner that he was no highborn noble, no wealthy aristocrat in that world he left behind. What luxury might he want that she could not provide? If he so desired, he might even take her gorgeous, flawless body—was whatever woman his ring symbolized so fair? She coiled around him, slipped her arms around him, nuzzled her chin to his shoulder. His body remained stiff, cold, insensible perhaps to her presence, his eyes no longer shifted her way, he watched the pair of hooting owls whose heads twisted back and forth on their necks.

You misunderstand me, said a voice in her head.

I misunderstand nothing, Flanz-le-Flore thought back. You seek to steal him away, my hero, to snatch him from this delightful court!

I simply offered him a way home. He is not trapped here of his own will, after all. If he decided he wished to go, would you stop him? Imprison him?

You'll not take what is mine.

A pause; in the strange and staggered emptiness, Flanz-le-Flore flicked her wrist to bid her subjects continue their elegant pantomime, as though nothing were amiss.

Sigh, the New Master said, which was a rather strange word to say. I suppose that is the nature of queens, fae or human.

I am like no human queen—

Believe whatever you like. It is irrelevant. Returning to the point of discussion, you know well enough I have the power to lead Wendell Noh home. If he wishes to go, nothing you do will be able to stop him; I can revert the effects of your magic, open the gates of your prisons, bind you if necessary. Or do you doubt my power? I possess every capability of the previous Master, only I am more intelligent.

We shall see, thought Flanz-le-Flore. I too am changed from what I was before. Metal has burnt my flesh; I know it now, and what I know I may change.

Yes, your page did include that recent addition. However, testing me is a foolish maneuver no matter your might. You know that as well as I. Well, there is another option. You need not fight me at all. Wendell Noh may leave if I will it, but not otherwise.

Ah! The shape of it made visible its inner form. Flanz-le-Flore was capable of connecting the said to the unsaid.

How base. How common, she thought.

Such veiled threats are part and parcel of diplomacy. I am pragmatic above all. My offer is quite simple: I wish for you to transmogrify a few objects for me. I shall provide them to you sometime in the near future. Change them the way I specify and Wendell Noh shall be yours until the limits of his mortality. This request comes at almost no cost to you, so I see no reason why—

"Never," Flanz-le-Flore spoke aloud, to the bewilderment of her subjects and even Wendell Noh himself, who suddenly turned toward her. I am the faerie queen of this court and this wood, and have reigned here since the true beginning of this world. I shall not stoop to threats and grossly economic bargains, no matter how cheap you claim your deal is.

Flanz-le-Flore. This is foolish. You have no reason to make an enemy of me, and I require next to nothing from you. A few simple applications of your magic.

I shall not be treated as your pawn. No longer. New Master, Old Master—I have been a marionette for you both, and shall not be so roughly used again. Your threats have a fatal flaw, New Master. Wendell Noh may only leave if he wills it. You cannot compel him to leave, just as you cannot compel him to stay—you can only close and open the Door.

Please. You—

I shall ensure he never wishes to leave Whitecrosse. And I shall come to know him and that essence of his humanity that makes you incapable of ruling him, because just as the Old Master you lack it yourself, you may change only the empty husks who flit and flutter upon your grand, immaculate stage. I shall come to know him and we shall be united harmoniously; then we shall see who is this world's true Master. Then we shall see!

Simply thinking these words lacked the grandiosity Flanz-le-Flore desired, the theatrical spectacle, and so she burst out laughing, indicating to Wendell Noh that she did so at some japery performed by the clownish faeries who wove amid the dancers on the stage, but in truth her laugh was set against that unseen arbiter of fate—this world's fate, no more—and that arbiter saw her and knew the truth.

You're being illogical, the New Master said. You're not thinking—

This conversation is finished. If you wish for your messenger—the one that still breathes, at least—to leave this court alive, you'll speak not another word to me.

Wonderful silence returned at last. Funny, at least, that one ostensibly so lofty could be quieted for the sake of one as mean as that sobbing, corrupted harpy.

Flanz-le-Flore kept to her word, though. A snap and Charm returned to normal. Flanz-le-Flore contemplated leaving the other an owl, as allowing it to continue as it had was a mockery of Nature, but seeing Charm on the verge of another sobbing spree, she snapped again and once more allowed the forms of life and death to resume their rightful mirroring.

The harpy twins departed. Wendell Noh spoke not a word more, his eyes a murky mystery behind their lenses, but Flanz-le-Flore slid close again, touching her fingertips to the well-defined line of his jaw.

"I will bring you greatness beyond your wildest imaginings," she whispered in his ear. "I will show you a life of awe and potency. You shall become a conqueror of man and fae and beast; nothing will be denied you."

Wendell Noh nodded along to her honey words, as though he found them not so unpleasant, and his eyes shifted from blankness to the opposite: a kind of farseeing, as though he looked upon the other end of the world, or else the future. Then he shrugged and spoke to her the clearest, most defined sentence he'd spoken since she found him:

"Can you spare me a cigarette then."

To Flanz-le-Flore's dismay, she lacked the faintest clue what that was.

—

On Earth, Mayfair sagged in her seat. Of course! Oh, how expected. Not a single person could she ever convince of anything, anything at all! Not Flanz-le-Flore, not Lalum, not her mother either! It never changed, none of them ever listened, no matter how reasonable her arguments, no matter how undeniable her power, nobody ever listened! Dalton's parents hurled a plate at her head. Nobody, nobody, nobody ever listened to Mayfair Rachel Lyonesse Coke. Should she be surprised at this point?

Only Styles. Styles and his churchgoers; only they listened. They listened the way DeWint listened though, because she could be a feather in their caps, a point of light to brighten their own prestige. She had nobody. Nobody except the dead. Even Charm had been a battle to bring to her side, she had to thrust that dead puppet in her face to break her down into a sobbing wreck. Nobody, nobody, nobody.

At least the churchgoers did listen. Even if their motives were selfish, at least some sort of admiration fell upon her. She wondered again, perhaps she ought to abandon Whitecrosse to its own devices, allow it its powerful will toward perpetual status quo, and focus all her energy on this world, on spreading the message of God to its effete and empty populace; perhaps given the vast size of Earth she could even save more souls that way than on her harebrained schemes for her homeland.

She expelled a sigh. The moment of weakness passed, and she settled to a more stable state of mind, having only tugged a few times at her skin and clothes amid her wild and manic inner monologue.

Such setbacks were merely that: setbacks. If not via Wendell, Flanz-le-Flore could be convinced in other ways. Mayfair knew her history well, knew the history of the fae courts. And she had seen the final, half-finished pages the devil left behind, her designs for a narrative past the one that led Jay Waringcrane to the monastery. Olliebollen Pandelirium had factored greatly into that plot, and what mattered to Olliebollen would also matter to Flanz-le-Flore. Perhaps even more so, given what Mayfair knew Flanz-le-Flore's doings during the days of John Coke. She had vied then for that old hero's heart, vied with many others—and to one in particular she lost. That one, Flanz-le-Flore could not forgive.

Mayfair pulled the devil's unfinished page before her and read it over. The beginnings of a plot were etched there, with only a few clear omissions: placeholder names, for instance, which Mayfair was unconcerned with changing. The only issue was how to initiate it.

She mulled it over for a bit; nothing came readily to mind.

Anyway, she needed to open the vault first. Without the vault opened and the relics acquired, Flanz-le-Flore's cooperation was irrelevant. By now, Jay Waringcrane must have realized that Lalum could open the vault using her animus. It was possible he'd already opened it by feeding her Olliebollen. She acquired the relevant papers, glanced them over, and groaned. No—of course not. Jay Waringcrane was no longer even in the castle. He was marching westward, for a purpose Mayfair couldn't begin to fathom. Lalum and Olliebollen were with him.

Her groan drew longer, intensified as she tilted her head back over the edge of the chair and pressed her wrists into her eye sockets. Nothing ever went right, did it? Now she would need to convince Jay, or at least Lalum, to return to the castle. How? She couldn't even begin to fathom. Jay was already impetuously willful—

Mayfair realized how.

She realized how to open the vault.

She realized how to ensure Flanz-le-Flore's cooperation.

It wouldn't take convincing anyone. It would all happen as a matter of course. None of them would even realize Mayfair's hand in it. If none of them knew it was her doing, then the curse that caused all to do the opposite of what she willed would not apply.

It would all happen so simply; it would emerge organically from the loose beginnings of a plot the devil had already prepared for her. Renewed vigor surged through Mayfair, she dragged her chair directly up against the desk so the desk's edge dug into her stomach, and shuffled the papers in frenetic animation. Where did they go? She just had them. Where—there!

A perfect plan. Mayfair shuffled the pages for the elves into a neat stack, and then got to work.