[4] Amorous Birds of Prey

In the inn, a skinned and disemboweled corpse dangled from the ceiling. Prince Makepeace pulled it down, hefted it over his shoulder, and carried it to the kitchen—Deer, he explained. Caught and dressed prior to his grand plan for a pre-meal swim to "loosen the stomach." Now he had to cook in the dark.

He did so, deftly, lighting the stove with aplomb while he hummed the song Sansaime played from the dining room. As the meat roasted, Makepeace alone spoke, slick shallow statements, stuff like "Pleasant little inn huh?" and "Too bad no horseradish to go with this." Only after he lugged to the table a big plate of venison, only after he sat so that in the flickering candlelight Jay saw he had a face nothing like his voice—sharp and pensive and even to Jay undeniably pretty, as befit a storybook prince—only then did Makepeace broach the subject of Jay Waringcrane.

"So," hewing a slab and plopping it onto Jay's plate, "I'm a natural skeptic. Disinclined to believe fables. But your clothes are nothing anyone from this world wears, which lends credence to your claim."

They sat, the three of them, one to a side. Sansaime refused to remove her hood. No longer concerned about taste, she flared her pipe as Makepeace doled her portion, and in that flare Jay noticed she had dark skin and many scars. Her gaze remained riveted to his pocket, within which Olliebollen either seethed or shivered.

"Earth, though―God's great dominion." Makepeace filled his own plate and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling while shadows stretched across his fair face. "So you're from England." He shoved forward and narrowed his eyes. "Or are you French?"

"I'm from the United States. Cleveland." Jay tapped the Browns logo on his hat.

"Old King John never mentioned a 'United States' in his memoirs."

Jay remembered the statue of King John in the graveyard. OUR DELIVERER. Olliebollen mentioned a John too; said they built the road after he died. With the purpose of moving the next hero from the gate to the city. The first hero having come with a Bible. Which meant—

"This John was the first hero who came through the gate."

"The Door, we call it the Door." Makepeace tore at his venison with fork and knife, paused, and motioned for Jay to eat too. Jay lacked even the faintest trace of hunger thanks to Olliebollen's magic, but he acquiesced for sake of taste and discovered to his disappointment the venison tasted good. Better than the microwavable junk he usually ate, so low bar. "But yes. John Coke, my oh-so-vaunted ancestor. Appeared four hundred years ago, ish. My tutor battered the damnable year into my skull. 1642—I think. Sansy, you know if that's right?"

Sansaime puffed smoke and cut her venison.

"In 1776, part of England broke off and became its own country," said Jay. "That's the United States."

An unconcerned nod. "Well praise God you're not French."

Jay didn't feel like talking more about Earth. "You must be trying to rescue the princess. Your sister, I guess."

"Ah, so you heard about that."

"All I've heard since coming here is about your sister and the archbishop who kidnapped her."

"Yes, rather irritating affair for me too, my good man. I take it you're not eager to involve yourself."

"No," said Jay.

Makepeace nodded, as though this were all quite reasonable, but Jay guessed what would happen next: Yet another entreaty for Jay to rescue the princess. Rescue the princess, rescue the princess. Everyone in this world wanted him to do it, the most template of fantasy quests. Perfidia created the world and when she thought "what should I have him do?" her mind went to that archetypal plotline because she was a thousand-year-old devil and knew nothing even slightly more modern. And now, because of Jay's dogged determination to instead go to the castle, she hurled one impetus after another to follow the story she crafted.

As he thought: Illusion of choice.

But Makepeace finished his mouthful and said: "In that case, let me handle my sister. Familial duty and all―far below your stature. I recommend instead you go to the castle."

For a period of what felt like five minutes but was probably five seconds Jay stared. On the sixth he blinked and comprehend.

"The castle." He cleared his throat of a shred of meat trapped there. "You want me to go to the castle. To Whitecrosse."

"Right. Were I a smarter sort I'd give some smiling reason, but I'll be honest, for I'm no good at subtlety. Mother—the queen—needs you. Needs someone, anyone. Needs a hero. The kingdom's collapsing."

He paused, rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as though he expected someone to interrupt him, and when nobody did continued:

"None of it's Mother's fault mind you. She's a good woman, I suppose. Even if we've never seen eye to eye. Even if she's never cared for me. But forget the family drama. The issue is she's more like me than like Mayfair—my sister that is—and the kingdom needs someone like Mayfair now. Someone smart. I get the feeling you're a smart one, Jay Waringcrane." He winked, then grew serious again. "War would better serve Mother and me than this blasted muddle of politics rotting everything from inside. Archbishop Astrophicus is the least of it, truly, just a dodderer who dipped his face too deep into powers he ought not have. He and those poor women he twisted have plagued these lands for months, but they're mere nuisances. Were. Until they had to overstep, kidnap Mayfair, and steal that relic."

Another pause, even more self-conscious than the last, even more strongly concealed behind a broad grin. Out of the speech Jay honed on one detail. Nobody mentioned a stolen relic before. But before Jay could ask about it, Makepeace continued:

"The true threat's the nobility of course. Always the damnable nobility. Eating away, nibbling, biting. They want Mother to be their figurehead and do all they can to make it so. And the people are angry, the church as you may expect is a rancid mess, the archbishop's bloody cult spreads like a disease, and I hear whispers the young king of California's lost his mind or never had one to begin with. His sister's sane, but in some ways that's worse. Have I touched the heart of it, Sansy?"

"I know no politics," said Sansaime, her smoke a veil, pungent in the cramped quarters, "save those of the fae. And only that out of professional necessity."

("Ribbons," Olliebollen muttered.)

Jay thought: California? Given they already established this world knew nothing of the United States, it must've been coincidence.

Makepeace expelled an arduous sigh. He leaned over the table and cradled his eyes in one hand. "This must all sound like a bother to you. For me it's a migraine. What can I do? I've no mind for these matters. I know how to fight. To fight, to kill, and maybe I could rouse a few men to fight beside me. No more. Mayfair's the logical one. The one who reads and speaks well. The one who knows law, astrology, religion, the like. The one with a mind for, shall we say, 'The Greater Good.' Yet I'm heir to the throne."

He tossed his hand, glancing a rap against the tabletop with part of a knuckle. But he managed a slight smile, a laugh, and a shrug, as if to say what can you do? The room fell silent. Makepeace ate vigorously as he waited for someone else to contribute.

Sansaime spoke first: "Was it wise to tell all that, Mack."

"Oh what's it matter, I'm not at court, I can say what I want. He's from another world, he's not a spy for Lord Such-and-Such—or worse, Mother."

"He's not the only one listening."

"The faerie? Who fucking cares Sansaime, only you. Only you care about those buzzing little beetles."

"You'll care tomorrow. In Flanz-le-Flore's woods." Sansaime settled back into her chair, picked up her violin (she had finished her meat, although Jay never noticed her take a bite), and played a melody, signaling her exit from the conversation.

Jay and Makepeace leaned over their murdered plates to consider the last remnants of a slain deer. "You mentioned a stolen relic," said Jay.

"Oh―does that interest you?"

Obviously. But Jay saw no reason to say it aloud.

Makepeace twiddled his fork. "Well, it's only a bauble to me. Although the court astrologers got into quite the hubbub over it." It sounded like an Olliebollen-esque evasion, but Makepeace spoke so casually and guilelessly, and seemed so emptyheaded in general, that Jay figured he might actually be telling the truth.

Jay pressed. "What does it do."

"The relic?" Makepeace's face assumed an expression of utter vacancy as he searched and searched and finally shrugged. "I dare say, my man, I've quite forgotten! You'd have to ask Mayfair; her mind's a catalog for that sort of trivium. I'll sleep on it and see if I can't recall by morn, before you leave."

Another interval of silence passed.

The spell broke with a broad grin from Makepeace. "Anywho! Apologies for ensnaring you in my troubles, good sir. Simple hope on my part; the last man through the Door performed deeds one might describe as almighty. Perhaps you're cut from the same cloth."

"Maybe," said Jay.

"Sometimes one simply becomes so overwhelmed it bubbles over. It's why I'm helpless at politics. Though"—he tilted forward to pull Jay into confidentiality, his smile magnitudes more wolfish—"I've found such lapses in decorum popular with certain ladies." He winked.

Shut the fuck up, Jay decided not to say.

Makepeace shoveled the last of his venison into his mouth and stood. Still chewing, marring his prettiness via blackhole table manners, he said: "Well! Big day tomorrow. Sansaime and I must trudge through that damnable wood, and you'll have a hard walk yourself if you seek to reach the castle before nightfall. So let's get our shuteye, yes?"

—

Testament to this world's emptiness that they went the whole dinner and nobody felt compelled to explain why the inn was abandoned. Jay lay on his back in one bed of six in a long room, the only bed with sheets and the only bed occupied (Makepeace and Sansaime having decided to sleep elsewhere). He bored his gaze into a blackened ceiling, able in prolonged silence to finally reflect.

God. Why was he here. Or anywhere. What did he hope to accomplish. What in this world could even make him happy.

Now the way to Whitecrosse stood open to him. Makepeace gave him his blessing and even confirmed the castle was only a day away, ending the uncertainty of its perpetual place on the horizon. What was more, the castle had things for him to do. Political intrigue, infighting nobles, a corrupt church. All of this meant Perfidia no longer kept him on rails, if she even did to begin with, if that wasn't just him perpetually second-guessing everything.

He got what he wanted, but it was like Olliebollen satiating his hunger with magic: he didn't feel bad, but he felt nothing else, either. Even the thought of Perfidia scrambling to come up with a new plot after he rejected the first barely made him smirk. Like the fight with the twins, a few seconds of pleasure gave way to even greater hollowness. He didn't, he realized, actually care about going to the castle. He'd simply not wanted to do what he thought Perfidia wanted him to do.

What did he want to do?

The answer came easily enough, like rote: Change the world. Make it better. Create a paradise.

Keeping that in mind, he could tamp down the empty malcontent floating cold in his heart. He simply had to ask himself which route better helped him attain that purpose. The castle was the obvious answer. It immediately put him in position to make maneuvers toward stitching up a kingdom Makepeace claimed was falling apart. It'd been easy to convince Makepeace he was a hero from another world, so even if Jay showed up penniless (or quidless) he'd have a foot in the door.

On the other hand. Putting aside the stolen relic, which he decided not to worry about until he knew what it actually did, Makepeace's description of his sister was surprising. Ever since Olliebollen first told him about the captured princess, Jay envisioned a stereotypical damsel-in-distress, a worthless socialite good for little more than a cutesy thanks and a chaste kiss. But Makepeace said the princess was the smart one of the family. Limpwristed attempts to imbue distressed damsels with positive qualities as a nod to gender equality were as tired as the cliché they sought to subvert, but Jay could respect intelligence (as long as it wasn't too full of itself, like Jay's own sister). Pragmatically, if he intended to make political maneuvers in the capital, having a well-positioned and competent ally opened avenues he otherwise lacked.

Furthermore, two possibilities existed if Jay went to the castle and let Makepeace rescue the princess alone. If Makepeace failed, then Jay would have to explain to a potentially distraught or wrathful queen why he didn't help when he had the chance. If Makepeace succeeded, then the princess herself might become a thorn in his side, assuming she was as sharp as Makepeace claimed.

Plus, Makepeace would receive a hero's adulation for his bravado. Jay imagined him: Waltzing into the castle, arms spread wide to throngs of cheering townspeople, downplaying his accomplishments as "no big deal" in his douchebag voice, winking at the ladies. The image burned. Was that the real reason Makepeace told Jay to go to the castle first? So he could garner the glory alone?

Jay caught himself gnawing a thumbnail and forced his hand under the covers to stop. Either way. If Jay intended to leverage his status as a "hero from another world," he couldn't have another hero stealing his hype.

The issue was, were these logical arguments potent enough to compensate for the fact that, if he went to rescue the princess, he'd have to suffer that useless tool as his companion—

Someone cried out.

Jay hefted himself onto his elbows. Beside him, atop a half-dresser, his hat tilted and Olliebollen peeped out. Her silvery fur exuded the faintest light, enough for out of total darkness the contours of the room's dimensions to manifest murkily. They looked first at each other, then at the wall, behind which another cry pealed. And a third.

A woman's voice. Olliebollen literally lit up upon recognition, casting the room a brackish white. Her voice chittered gleefully: "He's hurting her."

Sansaime cried out again—and again. If not for the complete lack of alternative suspects Jay might have thought it was someone else, given how little of her smoker's rasp imbued the sounds only mildly muffled by the inn's thin walls.

"Nngh, ah—oh—Eaah! Mack—Mack!"

Jay sagged back into his bed. The dumpy pillow did its best to absorb him, but he could only sink so far. He rubbed his face with both hands and expelled a long, laborious groan that caused his blanket to flutter.

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"He's not hurting her."

"Hyeh?" said Olliebollen. "But—buhbuhbut—She's screaming!"

"How old are you."

"Three," Olliebollen said proudly.

"That explains it."

He stared at the unseen ceiling, tracing the outlines of half-formed rafters. This, too, he remembered from those Friday nights when Shannon brought a boyfriend home. Bunching his pillow over his ears did little. Those moans found a way to seep into every silence, no matter how deathly.

I've found such lapses in decorum popular with certain ladies. Wink! Should've staved his head in when he had the chance.

"You don't know what you're talking about. He's definitely hurting her. Definitely. Oh yeah!" Olliebollen wrapped her arms around herself and swayed on her knees. At uncommon intervals her wings spasmed and her antennae twitched and the intensity of her light ebbed and flowed. Jay wished to sink into an inviolable silence where these degenerates could not follow.

But Olliebollen landed on his forehead and bounced up and down. "Heyheyhey! Come on! Let's go help, hero! Let's take your bat and join in. Yeah!"

"No. Stop. Get off me. Jesus fuck."

"We'll—pound her and—smash her and—break her and—" Each pause accentuated by another bounce. "Make her scream and—make her beg and—and—andandand—" She finally got off Jay's forehead and flopped onto the pillow beside him, rolling and spewing her noxious dust everywhere. "I'll heal her. Right! I'll heal her so you can do it again. You and him. All night long. Until her mind is a puddle of mush. Until she wants it that way!"

Over the wall, Sansaime moaned again. "I think she already wants it that way," Jay muttered in disgust.

Olliebollen gripped the pillowcase tight to herself and throbbed. "Ugh! If you won't join in, I'll go watch by myself!"

"No you won't." Then, mainly to stop her from going―even though it was the first time she offered to leave him alone since they met―he asked: "Why do you even hate her so much? Because she kills fairies? You weren't this persistent about the twins."

The distraction worked. Olliebollen stilled, releasing the pillowcase and falling into a kneeling position. "You want to know that?" she said sluggishly, turning her shiny black eyes toward him. To humor her, Jay nodded, and she immediately perked into her chipper, here's-a-shitton-of-extraneous-info demeanor. "That's simple! She's an elf."

"An elf."

"Right! She wears that hood so nobody can tell, but she can't hide from Olliebollen. Nope, no sir! I know because she sang that song in their ugly, degraded elfin language. Just like their ugly, degraded elfin race! Elves used to be fae, but they broke the rules so all the kings and queens of all the fae courts got together in a big council and said they couldn't be fae anymore. So they lost their animus, and their bodies degenerated, and now they look more like humans than faeries now. Yeah!"

She rattled the details rapid-fire, so fast that only after a brief pause at the end did Jay get the opportunity to wonder how skewed this account was. But Olliebollen wasn't done.

"The fae forgot about elves for a long long time. So long we used to think they were just—heh, heheheh—just faerie tales! Then one day out of nowhere, they showed up to my court, far to west. A lot of them. And they—and they—"

A hiccup. Olliebollen retained her smile, but as her eyes blanked it became dull and lifeless. Absentmindedly she gripped one antenna and twisted it in her fist.

"There were four thousand, four hundred, and forty-four faeries in my court," Olliebollen finally said, speaking with slow and careful precision. "The elves killed four thousand, four hundred, and forty-three. So it's quite obvious why I hate them in particular over all the other evil things in this world!"

"And Sansaime was one of the elves who attacked your court?"

Olliebollen shrugged, as though this question were immaterial. "Birds of a feather flock together."

At the same time, across the wall, events reached a climax. A final, protracted, piglike gasp out of Sansaime—then stillness. The brutality ceased.

In its wake, quiet enough that it could only be heard because Olliebollen finally shut up, sobbing began. Strained sobbing, like whoever did it was trying as hard as they could not to—a sharp contrast from the twin in the graveyard.

Olliebollen beamed at Jay. "See? I told you he was hurting her."

But as soon as she said that another sound joined the sobbing. A man's voice, murmuring reassuring words. Nothing passed distinctly through the wall, which didn't matter because Makepeace lacked anything of substance to say. Platitudes: "It's okay," "it's alright," et cetera. "I'm here for you." Jay imagined him stroking her hair as she turned away from him, then decided he would rather imagine nothing at all.

Imagining nothing was difficult. After the crying and the cooing stopped, after even Olliebollen gave up listening and crawled back under his hat, Jay remained staring at the unseen ceiling, drifting through thoughts about why he was here, and where he should go next, and why he should do it. Dimly, he remembered his deal with Perfidia. One day done. Twenty-nine until she came collecting. Would he be satisfied by then?

—

Bad sleep put him in a bad mood as he emerged from the inn the next morning, hand clenched on a stiff neck while Olliebollen—apparently unable to cast her fancy fatigue-erasing magic on herself—drowsed in his pocket. He found Sansaime, cloak and all, stooped in the stable holding a bucket of oats in front of two stupid-looking horses who champed and snorted and did not eat. Her pipe stood rigid between her teeth, unlit.

"Go on already. It's not poison." But the horses stared insensate. "Long ride today if we're unlucky, and it's bad to count on luck when fae are involved."

The sound of Sansaime's voice roused Olliebollen and she twisted in the pocket until she poked her head out. But when she saw the same cloaked figure as the night prior, unmaimed, she scowled and dipped back inside. Jay would have to ask her to heal the crick in his neck later.

"Where's your boyfriend," Jay said to Sansaime, punctuating with a yawn.

By the end of the yawn Sansaime was on him, her cloak fluttering against his jacket, and the tip of something sharp prodding his stomach. Even face-to-face, even in the bright dawn light, her hood obscured most of her face, although Jay got a close enough look to tell that the scars crawling along her chin were neither burns nor cuts.

"You say something?" Her breath heavy with ash.

"Go on, stab him!" Olliebollen poked out again like a prairie dog. "Do it! Won't matter at all. You're up against a Faerie of Rejuvenation, y'know!"

Sansaime didn't even glance at her. The weight of her stare remained on Jay. "I'd slit you nave to chops so fast you'd be dead before the slice even stopped. Let's see her heal that."

A swollen claim. Even with a blade to his stomach Jay found it difficult to take Sansaime seriously. He scrutinized her, trying to pierce the veil of her hood, trying to detect elfin features in what little was visible. Nothing.

She took his silence either for acquiescence or recognition of her futility, retracted the blade, and sharply returned to the horses. As she walked away, a long arm shot out and indicated with a leather glove the direction to the castle, golden in the morning glow.

"We've no extra horses lying about for you, so you'll have to walk. Should be no more'n a day, though you may arrive after sundown. Mack'll give you a note or seal or somesuch to present to the guards. He's washing at the pool now."

She seemed to rue talking so much, and made a show of busying herself with the horses, adjusting their bridles and straps while nudging the bucket with her boot to draw their attention to it.

"Shouldn't there be people only a day from the castle," said Jay. "Farms. Villages. Something more than an abandoned inn."

"Nobody wants to live so close to fae woods even in the best of times. And with the archbishop's mischief hereabouts, the few who did cleared out for greener pastures."

Olliebollen pounded a flimsy fist against Jay's chest. "Hey! You coulda asked me that! The hag doesn't know a thing. She didn't even explain how all the best farmland is west of the castle anyway—Hmph."

Jay didn't care about the minutiae of crop distribution in the kingdom. He cared about why people did what they did. Casually, he asked Sansaime: "If it's that rough out here, why risk your neck to help the prince. Money?"

Whatever horse goofery Sansaime was doing, she stopped. Her face turned partway toward him and her pipe shifted from one corner of her mouth to the other.

"Aye," she said.

She was lying.

Her hesitation proved it clear enough—she made an identical pause right before she tried to lowball him on Olliebollen's worth the night prior. But he expected her to lie before he even asked, mainly because after hearing her activities the night before he thought he knew the true answer and still felt mean enough to prod her on it. What surprised Jay was how calmly she lied. No discomfiture whatsoever.

If love—or lust—were her true motive, she should've reacted with emotion. Previously, an innocuous comment about her relationship with Makepeace caused her to draw her blade. Now she attempted to cover it up with perfect stolidity. What changed? It wasn't consistent behavior. And it wasn't like concealing it made sense. Jay already knew, and had told her as much.

Maybe Sansaime felt ashamed of previous outburst and tried better to control herself. Or maybe Jay got the tell wrong and money really was her motivation. Maybe she hesitated for an unrelated reason, a momentary lapse in thought.

But Jay wasn't sure. He wondered if Sansaime hid something other than her face.

He tried to engineer another question to subtly probe further, couldn't think of one quickly, and went with his favorite maneuver. "Liar," he said. "He's not paying you anything, is he."

She tensed. He tensed too. His grip tightened on his bat. For a moment he thought she might actually attack him, but this time dispassionately, businesslike, without boasts beforehand. The moment broke when a ghost of a smile traced her lips.

"Maybe there's something to this hero talk after all."

Even now she could play everything off if she went with the love excuse, Jay figured. But her pride wouldn't let her. Exactly like his sister Shannon: Business and pleasure do not mingle.

She said instead: "As Mack told you, Mayfair wasn't the only thing that went missing. A relic disappeared too. To my best customers, that relic's worth a thousandfold more than the princess's life."

It fit; Sansaime had mentioned her business was selling magical stuff. But that explanation still meant money was the motive. Then why did she—

"Wanna learn more about relics?" said Olliebollen. "I can tell you all about em, yepyepyep! Where they come from, how many there are, why they're so rare, anything really! As a faerie, I obviously know more about magic than that hag, so be sure to ask me instead of her!"

The intrusion came at the worst possible time. Jay had been on the precipice of a thought, but his mind tumbled within a waterfall of Olliebollen's exuberance and whatever he intended to scrutinize was lost.

"Then tell me: What does this particular relic do," he asked, hoping to redirect the topic somewhere that might reinstitute his thought. "The stolen one."

"Uhhhhh," said Olliebollen.

"It's supposed," said Sansaime, carelessly, like she didn't fully believe a rumor she was going to spread anyway, "to raise the dead."

Whatever thought he lost no longer mattered.

"Raise the dead?" Jay repeated.

"Oh, so it's that one huh?" said Olliebollen. "Right, I know all about it! Ahem—The Staff of Lazarus! It was used by this evil wizard until King John and his knights slew the wizard in a great battle. But then, being a dumb human, John said, 'This power is reserved solely for Christ!' and sealed the staff in a vault under Whitecrosse Castle, where it stayed until—now! Strange though! I thought only those with royal blood could open the vault, so how'd it get stolen? I wonder!"

For once, finally, Jay did not respond with annoyance or impatience to Olliebollen's overload of information. For once his focus remained like a laser upon every word she spoke, both pertinent and extraneous. It didn't even bother him that Olliebollen had clearly known the castle contained relics despite her previously telling him she didn't know where any were. None of that mattered. What mattered was the Staff of Lazarus, with the power to raise the dead. The power reserved solely for Christ.

If Jay wanted to create paradise, he needed that power.

The scales of decrepitude fell from his eyes and something deep inside shifted and rumbled. Giddiness, actual giddiness rose between the fissures, he wanted to smile broadly, to laugh, to ask Olliebollen and Sansaime for more information and stand there for hours learning it, because something truly sparked inside him, something that wasn't simply a moment's fleeting adrenaline, something akin to that magic he felt so long ago when he played his first RPG and felt transported to another world, a world where what he did actually mattered, where his actions raised kingdoms and toppled empires and left him tantamount to a god in power and prestige.

But before he could ask more, thick footsteps crunched through leaves and Makepeace waltzed up the hill bellowing a big obnoxious good morning. Whatever washing he'd done failed to unmake his hair from its carefully-arranged tousle of locks and curls.

"Well now! Looks like you two've been getting on swimmingly," Makepeace said, looking from Jay to Sansaime. "Lovely day for a ride. Suppose I won't be singing that tune by day's end though, eh?"

Jay's exhilaration plummeted. His thoughts lost their bloom and his face resolved into a mask of general displeasure. He said nothing, even as Makepeace nudged him in the ribs with an affable douchebag smile.

"Anywho, my good man! I slept on it, and it turns out I do remember what the stolen relic does. It—"

"Yeah we know! We were just talking about it! The Staff of Lazarus!" Olliebollen blurted. "Didja know that sow right there plans to steal and sell it off and that's the real reason she's guiding you to the monastery?"

Makepeace stared at the tiny, dusty fairy as she fluttered out of Jay's pocket and perched on the brim of his hat. He turned. "That true, Sansy?"

"Could be," said Sansaime.

"See! She admits it! Kill her. Kill her now!"

But Makepeace only laughed and shook his head and let his loose locks toss about him. He clapped Sansaime on the shoulder and tried to clap Jay too. Jay stepped back to avoid it, but Makepeace's reach extended faster than Jay expected and he wound up jostled anyway. "Fae are cruel and soulless little cunts, aren't they?" he said, like he was telling a joke. Then he straightened and managed a moment of sharpness, a moment of authority—the same type with which he cut short Jay and Sansaime's bartering the night before. "Look. I've my business, and Sansaime has hers. Far as I'm concerned, as long as Mayfair's brought home, the staff can go to Hell. It's worthless languishing in the family vault anyway."

"But! Buhbuhbut—"

"Shut up," said Jay. He had watched Sansaime carefully after Olliebollen told the prince her secret. Waiting for her to show discomposure, aggression, anything. Not a flicker. Sure, her hood helped her, but she was an emotional woman when she wanted. Did she know all along he wouldn't care? Maybe. But Jay remembered his previous thought, the one he lost before Olliebollen started talking about the Staff of Lazarus:

Sansaime was still concealing something. She hadn't told the whole story by half. She threw out the staff as a plausible diversion, something to sate suspicions. Whatever her true objective was, she was willing to make herself look like a thief to conceal it.

It didn't matter, though. Jay figured regardless of her main goal she wouldn't mind stealing the staff as a bonus if the opportunity arose. And that made her Jay's competition—because he was going to take the staff first.

"I'm coming with you," Jay said, cutting off some inane remark of Makepeace's.

"Hm? What was that? You'll have to speak up."

But Sansaime heard him, and the straight line of her mouth tightened even before Jay repeated himself word-for-word.

"Coming with us," Makepeace said.

"Yes. To save your sister."

"Well! My good man—"

"He can't," said Sansaime.

"Yeah!" Olliebollen added. "What is this?! I've been telling you to save the princess this whole time and it was just: No, no, no! Why won't you do it when I ask but you will when, when, when—"

"Flanz-le-Flore's dire enough." Sansaime remained cold, rational. "But if he's what he claims, a hero from another world, the fae'll want him. Want him bad. And they'll do anything to ensure they get him. That's not to mention his little friend, from the far west. They'll see her as an intruder. Fae politics are a mire from which none escape unscathed."

"You'd say that, you ugly elf! But maybe if your degenerate race didn't force our hand you'd still be fae yourself. Hm?!"

"If you let him come, Mack, I can't in good conscience guide you. Not worth the risk."

"As if you have a conscience, you rotten lowlife murderer!"

The whole time Makepeace contemplated and considered, making pensive nods that fit his features if not his brainpower as he stroked a clean-shaven chin. Finally, he broke his stare into the Whitecrosse countryside and said: "If you won't guide me, Sansy, the faerie can. Faerie, you know the way through the forest, right?"

Olliebollen whirled straight out of her latest slew of insults and beamed proudly from Jay's shoulder, onto which she had fallen during her apoplexy. "Oh do I ever! Enchanted forests are my favorite terrain. I'll cut a path that takes half as long as whatever route she knows—"

"You're bluffing Mack," said Sansaime. "You wouldn't trust a faerie to lace your boots. They're Hellspawn."

"I'll trust whoever I must if it'll get me to Mayfair."

"It's much more dangerous with them. You don't want to run afoul of the court of Flanz-le-Flore, Mack. You do not! Their queen's a fickle temptress, an eater of men. Her devil magic puts that runt in the pocket to shame."

"Hey!" said Olliebollen, but Jay shushed her.

"A hero from Earth's worth putting one's faith in," said Makepeace. "Flanz-le-Flore never stopped King John, did it?"

"That fool is no King John, Mack, if King John did even half the things you claim."

"I don't believe in much," said Makepeace, "but I believe in John Coke, and I believe in the world he came from. Flanz-le-Flore is not what concerns me most, Sansaime. What awaits us in the monastery is, and for that―a hero is the most valuable thing you can have."

A change took over Sansaime, a sudden and irrevocable violence. Rising straight, looming, she jutted at Makepeace with the intensity of rock wall immobile for generations put to immediate motion by the act of an earthquake. But Jay doubted she even considered drawing a weapon—not against him. "You'd betray me. Betray me would you?"

"It's not about you, Sansy. Not about you at all."

"I thought―I thought the two of us―What are you thinking, Mack. What are you doing."

It was as though Makepeace didn't notice her. He noticed nothing. He stared straight ahead, past the stable, past the hillside of ruined wildflowers, past the forest that fanned broadly, at the mountains, and at the white cross blazing. An imperious eye. A conqueror's gaze—A Napoleon. No matter how tall Sansaime stood he was taller. And he only said: "I'll do what needs to be done."

That was the end. Sansaime lacked any more words, and she whipped away, scowling. She must have expected Makepeace to side with her. Why else would she have admitted even the partial truth of the relic? She expected Jay to be sent packing before the hour was up. But that wasn't why she was mad. No. When it came to her professional secrets, whatever they were, she exhibited no emotion no matter how close anyone touched to the subject. The emotion came from elsewhere.

"Told you he hurt her," Olliebollen whispered. A tint of smugness—but mostly a knowing gravity.

Only in the ensuing silence did Jay realize how strange it was that Makepeace told him to go to the castle the night before but agreed so readily, without protest, to his decision to go to the monastery instead. A thought came: Could Makepeace have wanted him to go to the monastery the whole time? Could what he said the night prior have been reverse psychology? Had he pretended not to remember what the relic did so he could spring it on Jay right before he left and push Jay into an impulse decision?

No way, Jay wanted to conclude. Makepeace was a moron. No way could he have known Jay would never do what Makepeace asked him, would automatically be inclined to do the opposite. No way. Right?

Nobody spoke much after that. They gathered their things, Makepeace and Sansaime mounted their horses, and with Jay walking behind them and Olliebollen on his shoulder, the small party embarked toward the forest of Flanz-le-Flore: Adventurers on a righteous quest.

None of them noticed the lone tree up on a hill off from the inn. A broad, leafy tree, casting long shade in the early angular light. Nor did they notice the two figures in nun habits nestled within its branches, although those figures had been watching them intently for some time. As the party disappeared into the forest, the figures stretched their wings―one's like a bat, one's like a bird―and followed silently behind.