Before any impudent mouth or vulpine snout dared propose to answer the fatherly inquiry from his royal personage, the speaker completed his ponderous approach, his shadow flickering upon the back wall of the locker room, as if caught in the guttering flames of a storm-blown fireplace. He turned the corner into our locker-bounded canyon with a click of metal-shod feet. A spectre, a spirit, a visitation from the underworld, he filled the mouth of our fleeting refuge, his form pierced at the hip by a lance of silvery moonlight.
The King in Yellow.
He paused — a player savouring his first step upon the boards of the stage, with the ladies and gentlemen of the audience primed with tremors of otherworldly fright by his speech from the wings, by the crack and snap of his clever trick costume, by the smouldering visage of his magnetic charisma.
Was I the audience? Myself and my companions? Or was the pause for the benefit of another watcher entirely?
The King wore a new mask, one I had not seen before. He was elderly, easily well into his seventies or eighties; his shoulders and back were both strong yet bent and buckling beneath the weight of terrible burdens. He was clad in the garb of a medieval knight — or rather, of a medieval king, dressed for war. A gaunt frame was wrapped in a motley collection of metal plates and hanging sheets of chain mail; the steel plates were rusted to a deep and corrosive amber-yellow, while the links of his chain mail were stiff with dried pus, streaks of urine, and clumps of crushed mud the colour of bile. His head was covered by a ragged mail coif, punctured by tufts of white-blonde hair, so thin and dry that a stiff breeze might strip him bald. His narrow chest and sunken belly were announced by a tabard full of holes, torn at the edges, clinging onto his shoulders by a few narrow threads. The tabard bore a standard — three canaries upon a field of flax.
All three canaries were dead, their intestines pulled out by the claws of some great beast looming over the scene. The guts were yellow too. As was the beast.
The face of this Sombre Sovereign sagged with sorrow, weeping tears of crusty salt water, the fluid tainted yellow with some unspeakable disease. His skin was paper-thin, liver-spotted, and dusted with the whiskers of a white beard. His eyes were yellow too — but not with the exaggerated comedy of the previous mask. The eye of this King showed the final stages of real liver failure, a milky-yellow ruination in his sclerae.
He wore a sword at his belt, and clutched the hilt with one claw-like hand, his nails overgrown into yellowed talons. But the blade looked like it was rusted into the scabbard, as if it had not been drawn in a decade.
A feudal king, dressed for a war that had devoured all the years of his life. A monarch whose battle would soon be over, whether he willed it or not — but with no heir to carry on his work, no child to pick up the torch of his bloodline, no princess to inherit his besieged realm.
He was completely out of place in Cygnet Asylum. He had chosen a mask utterly irrelevant to this dream.
Unfortunately, I understood the metaphor with perfect clarity. He had made it impossible to miss. I would have sighed with exasperation at the ridiculous melodrama if he hadn’t been making such a valid point.
The mask of the Melancholy Monarch was a waking question: where was Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight?
My friends and companions did not react with quite so much comprehension or compassion; I could hardly blame them — the ghost of Hamlet’s Father had just strode onto the stage before us with an implicit threat in his words and a sword at his waist. Rusted though his armour may be, it would turn aside the blade of Raine’s machete or the point of Lozzie’s shiv with equal ease.
Raine took a single step back, to body-block any route to my own person, and kept her hand on her own noble blade, the machete tucked away in a fabric sheath. Lozzie went quiet and tilted her head to one side, poncho flat and unfluttering; a very bad sign, from her. Evelyn hissed a sharp breath through her teeth. The Saye Fox let out a tiny growl.
“Wait!” I said out loud, throwing my hands wide. “Wait, he’s making an unsubtle point. Raine, do not draw. He’s just—”
“A King should not be forced to repeat his words,” the Crown Bereft interrupted. His speech was slow and sonorous, silken and soft, yet full of sand. A man lost in the desert of his dreams. His tear-stained, yellow-crusted, broken eyes found mine. “Little Watcher. You were entrusted with the hand of which I inquire. With care, and stewardship, and love. I ask my question, one grace to another, though you may be sevenfold divided within these walls. Where is my daughter?”
Perhaps it was the archaic structure of his speech, or the combination of moonlight and shadow, or the tight confines of the locker-canyon, or the dream itself, or the way the King’s words echoed off the tiles and the metal and the darkness; whatever the cause, nobody spoke for a long moment, as if an audience was giving the King his due.
Then, Raine’s grip tightened around the handle of her machete, with an audible creak of flesh on plastic.
“No!” I hissed to her under my breath, tapping her on the side with my finger. “Raine, no. I know him, I know how this works, let me handle it.”
Raine did not reply. She only loosened her grip.
I took a deep breath, lifted one corner of my yellow blanket, and opened my mouth; I intended to tell the absolute and unvarnished truth — that we did not know where Sevens was, but that she had left me this blanket by way of help. I queued up explanations of our situation, of the nature of the dream, of my own lack of tentacles, of the painful absence of my other six selves. I braced on the edge of unburdening myself to the King, on including him in our quest. For he was a knight at present, was he not?
But then I beheld the trembling in those yellowed, rheumy, dying eyes.
I paused, mouth open, words unsaid.
“Heather?” Raine hissed.
The wound in my left shin was throbbing with every beat of my heart. Cold sweat broke out down my back, sticking my t-shirt to my skin.
“Oh,” I murmured. “Oh no, I think this is real.”
“What?” Raine whispered back.
What exactly were we looking at, standing in the shadows and the moonlight? An actor upon a stage? Yes, certainly. That was the nature of the King. But he had said it himself, had he not? We are what we pretend to be.
What was he being?
Pain, sorrow, careworn love.
The King in Yellow — whatever he was and whatever his nature bade him do — did care about his children, in a way at least vaguely analogous to human beings. What if he wasn’t being silly? What if this was deadly serious? What if the metaphor was all too real?
I dropped the edge of my yellow blanket, then reached out to gently move Raine aside. “Excuse me,” I muttered. “Raine, let me past.”
Raine did not move. She didn’t even look down at me, watching the King with an unfaltering gaze. She hissed: “Heather?”
I raised my voice so the King could hear. “Please move aside, Raine. I wish to address the King in Yellow as an equal.”
Raine smirked. “Not until he drops that sword.”
The King raised his hoary-shadowed chin, spotted with white-yellow stubble. His hand tightened on the hilt of his blade, creaking with leather on metal. The sound echoed off the bare walls of the locker room.
Evelyn snapped, her voice strangled by terror: “Raine, for fuck’s sake! Don’t threaten and quibble with this thing! Get out of Heather’s way!”
“Evee,” I said gently, trying to keep my voice level, high — regal, even. “Raine is mine to command. Raine, move aside, please.”
Raine growled, giving ground with great reluctance. “I don’t like that sword.”
“The King has a right to remain armed,” I said, scrambling for the right words, trying to match the King’s tone and diction with what little eloquence I could summon. “I commend your dedication to your duty, and your sense of unwavering loyalty, even in the face of my own decisions, which you may consider lacking appropriate wisdom. You are a good hound, Raine. The very best in all creation. But I am in charge. Step aside.”
Raine either caught on to what I was doing, or thought I’d gone completely crackers, or picked up on the tremor in my voice; she nodded once, then stepped aside, hand on her machete.
I was racing to string together the right-sounding words for this scene set by the King. I had to play the part, I had to give him what he needed, in the form he was requesting. His anxiety and fear was not a joke. If denied or provoked, he would lash out in the form he had defined — an ageing father, a monarch, politely but firmly demanding an account for the whereabouts of his daughter.
I doubted he would explode into a sea of nightmare-yellow froth and melt us into blood and bubbling bone, but he would take a swing with that sword. And right now there were no Cygnet staff present to re-assert the properties of the narrative.
“Thank you, Raine,” I said, and stepped forward.
I walked until I was well within range of the King’s sword. The Mask of the Melancholy Monarch was quite tall, and yet stunted at the same time; I had to look up to make eye contact, though his shoulders seemed slumped and his spine was crooked with old wounds and age and the weight of most terrible cares.
The King relaxed his grip on his sword. He lowered his head. An acknowledgement, waiting for my own.
I did the best imitation of the curtsey I could, without the benefit of a skirt. I pinched the sides of my nasty brown sweater and bent one knee. My left leg shook with the effort, waves of dull pain radiating upward from the wound in my flesh.
“Your Majesty,” I said.
Raine snorted with derision; I knew she would not be able to help that.
Luckily the King in Yellow did not take offense at my own knight’s insult. He took his hand off his sword and bowed to me in return, with his armoured right hand pressed over his own heart.
“My Ladies Morell,” he said. “Though I address only one at current, and wish good health and long life to all seven.”
I straightened back up, trying to hide the wince at the pain in my leg. Playing along seemed to be working.
The King mirrored my pose, returning to his full height.
“You are correct,” I said. “You do only address one of me, at current. You can tell that, at a glance?”
“Yes,” he said, and did not elaborate. His countenance turned stony once more. “Ladies Morell, I have addressed you with a question. It goes unanswered.”
“I do not know where Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight is,” I said. “All my hours in this place have been consumed by attempting to find and gather all my friends, allies, lovers, and family. Your daughter is included in all four of those categories. I believe she may have a hand in creating and sustaining this … ‘dream’. As of yet, none of us trapped here have been harmed in any permanent sense. I believe your daughter is safe, but I wish to find her all the same, as quickly as I can. I offer you my solemn promise that she will not go abandoned, or forsaken, or forgotten in this dream of my own past. I would not abandon any to this, let alone her.”
I finished by swallowing a hiccup, which made an awful noise in the echoey locked room.
My heart was racing and my palms were growing slick with sweat; my wounded left shin throbbed beneath my makeshift bandages with every beat of my heart. I badly wanted to sit down and take the weight off the wounded limb. But I had to maintain my part in the play. I prayed that I had spoken just the right amount of faux-Shakespearian dialogue, and that I had said what the King wanted to hear — or at least something that was acceptable to his fatherly worries.
The King in Yellow sighed with a great and terrible weight. His eyes tightened with sadness. His mouth twisted with care.
“Then it is as I feared,” he said, soft and croaky. “She writes alone, to sustain the very air which we breathe.”
“I … yes,” I said, struggling for words. “I think she does.”
The King nodded, head creaking on his ancient neck. “And I, her father, though I be clad for war and strong of arm, cannot render aid unto my life’s blood.”
Before I could figure out how to respond, Raine said: “Why not?”
His Mournful Majesty raised sorrowful eyes. “Why, my good lady knight? You ask why? Why, because this is not my type of story. It is her own. She has travelled so far beyond my realm and those of my erstwhile and loyal allies, that I am a stranger in foreign lands, a trespasser on the holy soil of another, with whom I have no cause to quarrel, and if I did, I would not prevail. I am halfway around the globe, with no wind at my back, and not a friendly port in sight. But her, ahhhhhh, my daughter. She is at home here.” A single tear rolled down the King’s left cheek. “And thus I am surpassed, though not for the first time, and not by the first of mine children. But no matter how many times, the absence of one’s hand guiding one’s child brings tremors to the breast, and a great terror to the heart. Hope and fear are the same, when it comes to children.”
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks freely now, vanishing into the rim of white beard upon his chin.
“She’ll be alright,” said Raine. “You’ve raised her well. And hey, she’s not alone.”
“Yes,” I added, silently thanking Raine for her quick thinking. “Your Majesty, your daughter is never alone, not while I still draw breath. The princess is loved, no matter how far away she is. I promise.”
The King lowered his tearful eyes. He nodded, just once. “Then I suppose the time has come.”
The Despairing Despot grabbed the hilt of his sword with a flash of one hand — and ripped his weapon from the scabbard with a rusty scream of tortured metal.
He whirled the blade in an arc as he drew, more like something from an old samurai movie than an ageing Macbeth doddering about the stage. I yelped and flinched backward, but I was too slow of reaction and too clumsy of foot. The arc of the sword would take off my head at the neck, even as I fell toward the floor. My backside and severed head might land together in but a moment. Behind me, Raine leapt into motion, her own machete flying from the sheath. Lozzie ducked and hopped forward too, as if she could somehow catch the killing blow in the folds of her poncho. Evelyn spat some scrap of Latin — an instinctive spell — though she could do nothing with magic, not here, not yet.
But the King’s blade was all rust.
Yellow flakes of long-dead metal disintegrated to nothing beneath the pitiless silver moonlight.
The sword crumbled before it reached my neck, leaving behind an arc of yellowed dust upon the floor tiles. The King’s arm completed the motion, drawing an empty handle through the air before my throat, and finishing at the end of an executioner’s blow. He put his whole body into that swing.
Raine had to catch me lest I tumble backward onto my bum. She held her machete half-raised, shielding me from any follow-up blow. Lozzie hovered on my other side, bobbing from foot to foot.
The King stood unmoving for a moment, his empty blade pointed toward the floor, eyes downcast.
“Let me up,” I hissed to Raine, then hiccuped, loudly and painfully. “Ow— hic! Ow.”
She hissed back: “He swung at you!”
“With an empty sword!” I whispered back. I was drenched in sweat, panting for breath, and shaking all over, but I knew what I was handling here. “Raine, it’s the King in Yellow! He’s all about plays and metaphor and meaning! He swung at me with a harmless blade! Let me up, I have to finish this!”
Raine frowned.
“You’ve been a good girl,” I whispered, catching her eyes. “But you have to let me up.”
Raine growled like a hound barely held at bay by the words of her mistress — but she let me up, helping me back onto my own two feet. My wounded left leg was throbbing so badly that I had to limp a few paces.
“Your Majesty,” I said, voice croaking with adrenaline. “I must protest this gesture.”
The King finally left his pose, like an actor rising from the end of a scene after the curtain had fallen and the audience were blinded to the truth. His shoulders did not carry quite so much weight. His tears were dry. His face looked fake — and about ten years younger.
He considered the blade-less hilt in his right hand for a moment, and then held it out to me, as if presenting me with a priceless relic, the bone of a saint.
“Accept this in her stead, Ladies Morell,” said the Grief-Gripped Potentate. “She has more need of it than I ever will. Especially in this darkened theatre, in this most unsavoury quarter of a blighted city.”
I accepted the hilt with both hands. It was much heavier than it looked, made of a dusky golden metal. The surface was inlaid with a complex geometric design, all swirls and spirals, like looking down into a sea of storms upon the surface of a gas giant.
“Thank you,” I said. “Though I know not what I thank you for, Your Majesty. I will pass this to Sevens, when she is found.”
“Which she will be,” Raine growled. “Believe you that.”
The Regent in Rags bowed his head in acknowledgement. “It is done.”
He stayed like that, and did not move. Silvery moonlight ghosted across his tarnished legs and his stained belly. Raine and I shared a glance. Lozzie bobbed closer to him, as if peering at a waxwork. The Saye Fox clicked across the floor tiles and sniffed at the King’s metal-shod feet.
Evelyn swallowed and cleared her throat. “Heather? Heather, is this over? Can we speak freely now? Is this … this … ”
The King raised his head. “Is this farce done with, Lady Saye? Is that what you intend to ask?”
Evelyn went very quiet. I glanced back over my shoulder and found her staring at the King with barely concealed terror, clutching the Praem Plush tight in her lap. The Praem Plushie was facing outward, toward the King — which was odd, because I was certain that Evelyn had been hugging it face-in, with Praem’s face toward her belly. She had turned it around to face outward, as a sort of protective talisman?
“It’s alright, Evee,” I told her. “You can say things to him, he’s not … well, he is dangerous, when he wants to be, but not like that.”
Raine snorted softly. “All monarchs are dangerous. Comes with claiming the monopoly on violence.”
Evelyn didn’t seem to know what to say. She hesitated, cast about in her wheelchair, then wet her lips. “So … so this, this is the King in Yellow? The actual King in Yellow? We’re in the presence of a … a … ”
She was addressing me, not him. But the King answered for himself.
“I wear but a mask, Lady Saye,” he said. “As do we all.”
The King in Yellow raised one gauntlet, clicked his armoured fingers, and shed his monarchical melancholy like shucking off a second skin.
Tainted steel plate hit the floor with the dull thump of paper mache. Sheets of chain mail pooled at his feet with woollen softness. The tabard, the coif, the sword-belt, all of it landed like costume foam and cheap rubber.
Beneath the knightly guise lay simple white robes. Sandalled feet stepped from the ruins of the Sorrowful Sovereign.
The King in Yellow was now a middle-aged man, tall and gangly, self-consciously awkward in his bearing, like a tree wedged into a place one did not expect to find a tree growing, vaguely apologetic for its imposing presence and unlikely flourishing. Warm brown skin was topped by dark curly hair speckled with grey, unable to conceal his rather large ears. A greying beard and oiled moustache twitched with an uncertain smile around a gentle mouth. Plucked eyebrows and thick, dark, luxurious lashes framed a pair of eyes the colour of burning brass.
I had met this mask before. I recognised it well, and breathed a sigh of relief. A sign the King had concluded his little play.
We were in the presence of the Kindly Prince.
“Ooooooooh!” went Lozzie, lighting up. “Hello!”
The Kindly Prince had been in the process of raising one hand to stroke his beard, but Lozzie’s exclamation rather threw him off his studied pose. He hesitated, then smiled at her, as if unsure how to respond.
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“Hello to you, Lady Lilburne,” he replied.
His accent flattened all tonal stress, vaguely Middle Eastern in a way I still could not place, while his tone of voice rolled with warm amusement and boyish awkwardness.
Lozzie giggled behind one hand.
The King cleared his throat and resumed the beard-stroking pose. “As I was about to say, I am very proud of my daughters, all of them. But Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight has surprised me here. This, I did not believe was possible. Not for anybody.”
I sighed, no longer able to fully contain myself. “You could have led with that, instead of … whatever all that was.”
The Warm-Eyed Mask shot me an almost apologetic smile, waving one hand in a vague arc, floaty white sleeve following his arm. “My concerns were — and remain — most real, Ladies Morell. My daughter is missing, writing a miracle all by herself, perhaps under some form of duress. It is only your confidence and love in her that have dispelled my darkest designs upon those who have misplaced her, intentional or otherwise. I apologise for any consternation, but that too is the face of a monarch.”
“Bloody right,” Raine murmured from my side. She slowly slid her machete back into its sheath, eyes locked with the King in Yellow as the metal rasped against the woven fabric. “Monarchy is just face over the monopoly on violence, ‘your majesty’.”
Raine made the words sound like an insult. I winced. “Raine, please.”
The Soft-Spoken Sovereign smiled at Raine and raised his eyebrows. “And the monopoly on violence is the root of all strength, no?”
“Technically correct,” Raine grunted. “At least you’ve got a dash of materialism in you.”
“Raine!” Evelyn hissed. “For fuck’s sake. He’s an Outsider god, not an actual aristocrat.”
The King bowed his head gently. “Power grows from the barrel of a gun.”
Raine paused, running her tongue over her teeth. “Now that’s not a line I’d expect to hear from the mouth of some royal brat. Thought your power was handed down by God. Right?”
The King smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with playful mirth. “Ah. This is true. Kings and Queens rule by the grace of God. But what if the King himself—” he indicated his own body with a wave of one hand “—is also the god in question? Whence does the power originate? Where can we locate my right to what I rule?”
Raine snorted, smiling as she warmed to the game. “Alright, fair enough, let’s get down into the weeds. What do you rule?”
The King flicked his hands, rolling out the white fabric of his voluminous sleeves, as if gathering up the moonlight beneath his arms. His deep amber eyes burned in the shadows of the locked room. He made a big show of looking into one sleeve, then into the other. He raised his head again and shrugged. “I rule nothing but the contents of my own sleeves, it seems! Is not everyone a monarch of one’s own body?”
Raine laughed, shaking her head. “Equivocator.”
“That is another of one’s Royal prerogatives.” The King smiled with a twinkle in his eye. “Well met, lady knight. Your duty and your honour are both satisfied. I am no enemy to you and yours.”
“Duty and honour alike can eat my arse,” Raine said with a smirk.
“Speaking of eating,” I said before this could veer back into dangerous territory. “Your Majesty—”
“Oh, no no,” he interrupted gently, with a wave of one hand and a jolly little laugh. “There is no need to stand on ceremony any longer.”
I hesitated, then spoke my mind: “I’m not going to call you ‘father’, or ‘dad’. Sevens and I aren’t married. Yet.”
The King looked suddenly embarrassed, smiling with a breach of some personal protocol. “E-even in your heart?”
I sighed. “This really isn’t the time for that particular discussion.”
The King cleared his throat. “In that case, for the time being, you may all address me as … Zard.”
“Ha!” Evelyn barked with laughter.
We all turned to look at her.
“Lady Saye and Lady Saye,” the King said, without the slightest hint of offended dignity. “You find this amusing?”
Evelyn snorted, eyeing the King with wary curiosity, but then asked me instead: “Is he always this … this … ridiculous?”
“Ah? Evee?” I said.
Evelyn sighed and waved one hand. “Zard is just Farsi for ‘yellow’. Shouldn’t have expected anything less silly from somebody who once signed himself as ‘Rex Saffron’, I suppose.” Evelyn raised her chin, somehow managing to look down at everyone else even though she was seated in her wheelchair. “Need I remind everybody that we are still very vulnerable to discovery, with our backs to a wall? The nurses could descend on us at any moment, especially if we make too much bloody noise. Whatever you’re going to do, do it. Stop nattering.”
The King raised his hands in a pantomime of surrender, putting one finger and then the other to his lips, miming a shushing motion.
“Alright, alright,” I hissed, reversing course quickly. “First things first. Your Majesty, can you get us out of here? Out of this dream?”
The Kindly Prince pulled a pained and apologetic wince. “I am afraid that is beyond my power in this place.”
I nodded. I hadn’t expected things to be so simple anyway. “Right, and … you’re not stuck here too, are you?”
He shook his head. “I am a cameo in this story, am I not? A jarring tonal intrusion at worst, a forgettable sheet of cardboard at best. I may flitter out of the narrative whenever I wish, forgotten by the audience in the final analysis of any cathartic reckoning. In fact, I am barely here right now.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it with all my heart. “Thank you for coming when I called. I think we would have been done for without your help.”
The King bowed with a flourish of his wide sleeves. “It was but a trifle, Ladies Morell. A messy piece of improvisation, certainly, but pulled off with enough panache and verve to distract the pen of this world for but a moment.”
“Nevertheless,” I repeated. “Thank you.”
Evelyn cleared her throat. “Actually, I have a question about that. If he’ll answer seriously.”
But I held up a gentle hand to Evee. “One moment, Evee, please.”
Evelyn scrunched her eyebrows, but she gestured at me to continue.
“Your Majesty,” I said to the King — then indicated Raine’s shopping bag, the packaged sandwiches and crisps and bread rolls spread out on the end of the wooden bench. “Would you care for some food?”
Before he could answer, Evelyn sighed sharply. “Heather, surely he doesn’t have any need for—”
I glanced back over my shoulder and pulled a face at Evelyn, making my eyes wide with warning. She stopped and frowned again, suddenly getting what I was doing.
“Oh,” said the King, with soft and pleasing politeness. “I could not deprive you of your hard-won vittles, my gracious ladies. I have no right to your bounty.”
“Vittles!” Lozzie chirped, then descended into giggles. The King winced with vague embarrassment.
I faced the King and stared into his eyes, past those heavy dark lashes, silvered in the moonlight.
“I insist,” I said.
The King’s smile crinkled at the corner of his eyes. “You are acting like a fairy, Ladies Morell. Tempting me to linger with a bite of food, in this fey underworld?”
I cleared my throat; the King had figured out what I was doing as well, though he was phrasing it in the most uncharitable way. “It won’t have that effect on you.”
“A joke! A joke only. My apologies, Ladies Morell.” He shrugged, easy and loose, though a little awkward with his gangly frame. He said: “Ah, well. I will accept this delightful offer. I shall sample … a bread roll, I believe.”
I fetched the roll personally. My left leg throbbed with every step as I limped over to the bench and back again, trying my best not to show the damage; Raine twitched as if she wanted to help, but she had figured out what I was doing, and let me complete the ritual. I walked back to the King and held out the bread with both hands. He accepted it, sniffed the roll with obvious relish, then broke it in two and handed half back to me.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting half of the fluffy white roll.
We both took a bite. I chewed fast, still shaky with urgent hunger. The King took his time, chewing thoughtfully, pulling a face of culinary appreciation. The bread wasn’t anything special, nothing one could not have picked up in any Tesco.
“Breaking bread, huh?” Raine muttered. “Are you always like this?” she asked the King. “All metaphor, all the time?”
The King in Yellow winked at her, and that was his only answer.
“It’s his nature,” I said. “Just like Sevens. Oh, though, uh, I suppose you don’t remember her right now, do you, Raine?”
Raine shrugged. “Friend of yours is a friend of mine. That’s all I need for now, sweet thing.”
The King finished his piece of bread roll and frowned with fatherly concern. “Little Watcher, please do sit down. Your leg plagues you so. I can tell, you are not that skilled at concealing such a wound. We need not stand on ceremony any longer. Do not pain yourself on my account.”
The danger of His Majesty’s sorrowful wrath had passed. Somehow, by joining in with the play, I had averted the narrative. So, finally, I sat down, with relish.
“Join us, please,” I said. “We’ve got some more questions, if you have the time.”
The King nodded. We all withdrew, deeper into our refuge, huddling in the night-time shadows.
Raine remained on her feet, hovering behind my shoulder like the loyal hound she was — though she took a moment’s break to hand another sandwich to Evee and make sure she resumed eating. The King joined us, standing on the opposite side of the gap between the lockers, with his hands tucked into opposite sleeves. Lozzie kept peering at him, bobbing from foot to foot with naked curiosity. He indulged her with a smile, then a wink, then a wiggle of his nose.
“Lady Lilburne,” he called her again. Lozzie just grinned and giggled.
“Do you know each other?” I asked.
“Noooope!” Lozzie chirped.
The King said, “Only by reputation. Both ways.”
The Fox padded back toward Evelyn as well, though her place in Evee’s lap was now firmly occupied by the Praem Plushie; perhaps it was my imagination again, but I could have sworn the plush was staring at the Fox with a look of gratitude. I watched the Praem doll for a few moments, but the stitched-on facial features did not twitch or adjust. The mouth was a simple line. The eyes were flat, round disks.
The King in Yellow made an abortive attempt to squat down and pet the Fox as she padded past, but the animal deftly hopped aside to avoid the invitation of his gentle hands. He cleared his throat and smiled an awkward smile, trying to pretend he had not been so casually rejected.
“Remarkable beast,” he muttered when he straightened up. “Most clever and wise, yes. I would like to speak with her, sometime.”
“Good luck with that,” Evelyn grunted around a mouthful of sandwich.
“So,” I said once the moment had passed. “Your Majesty, can you do anything practical, to help us?”
The King shook his head with genuine apology. “I am sorry, Little Watcher, but I am close to powerless within the boundaries of this dream. My earlier interruption has been neatly corrected.”
Raine snorted. “Some King you are. Can’t you summon us a squad of soldiers with guns? Or some body armour? Or just a nice quiet room so we can have a proper sleep?”
The King dipped his head. “I have played my hand already, inserted my one line of appearance. Any further adjustments to the script would attract … how shall we say it? An editor, perhaps? At the very least it would bring the antagonists running to contain this divergence in narrative arc. I dare not. You would all be overwhelmed by my mistake. I am no longer welcome in this narrative.”
I sighed, but nodded and tried to look grateful. “You did all you could. For which we are very thankful.”
“Ah, but I leave you with one thing, do I not?”
“Excuse me?”
The King extended one hand and indicated the bladeless hilt of his sword, which I was still clutching in my left fist. “If you can pass this inheritance to my daughter, it may do some good.”
I held up the empty metal hilt and considered what he meant. “The pen is not always mightier than the sword?”
“Haha!” The King burst out with delighted laughter, then covered his mouth with the end of one white sleeve, like a courtly lady embarrassed by her own outburst. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes even the most eloquent author must use a knife. I learned this early in my career, but my children have lived much more sheltered and comfortable lives than I. They have rarely had cause to take up arms.”
I slipped the hilt inside my yellow blanket for safe keeping. “I’ll give it to her when I find her.” I plucked at a corner of the blanket, too. “She left me this, by the way, in my room, when I woke up here. Could this be some kind of connection to her?”
The King frowned in thought, then reached forward with an unspoken question. I nodded, allowing him to touch the blanket. He rubbed the fabric between thumb and forefinger, then shook his head. “Her techniques are opaque to me. I am afraid I cannot tell.”
“Ahem,” Evelyn said out loud. “Speaking of helping us, I know something you can do, very easily.”
“Oh?” The King raised his eyebrows toward Evelyn.
“You can explain what’s going on. You can explain this place. This dream, whatever it is. I have my own theories, but they’re just theories. You’re … well. The King in Yellow.” Evelyn huffed an exasperated sigh after she pronounced his full title, as if the effort had pained her.
The King dipped his head. “But I have already told you, Lady Saye.”
“Huh,” Evelyn grunted. “Typical cryptic bullshit. Look, start with this. What happened to you back in that room? How could a nurse put her fist through a … a ‘god’?”
The King spread his hands and adopted a rather sheepish expression. “This is not my kind of narrative, Lady Saye. I am not suited to the contours of these themes. Tragedy, arrogance, the descent from grace into self-ruination — those are my coin. Not whatever wonders my daughter is penning here. I did what little I could against the prevailing tone. But then it reasserted itself. That is what you witnessed. The … ‘nurse’, she did me no real harm, but she would have, had I not fled the scene shortly after yourselves.”
Evelyn frowned. “So Sevens really is doing all of this?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t think it’s that simple, Evee.”
“Quite right,” said the King. “This is a story, a narrative, and my daughter’s fingerprints are all over it. But it was not her script originally. She has been handed it, by another.”
“Me,” I said with a lump in my throat. “This is mine, isn’t it?”
“No.”
I blinked. “No? But … Cygnet! All of it! All of this is my memories, my fears, my past. I mean, okay, well, it’s obviously also made from bits of everyone else’s fear too, but mostly mine.”
The King shook his head. “Your signature is in the content, Ladies Morell. All your signatures are there. But not in the form. The form is not of any of you. The form comes from … ”
The King trailed off, opening the fingers of one hand toward the ceiling, toward the wrinkled black sky beyond.
“The Eye,” Evelyn grunted.
The King nodded. “Just so. This is the dream of the Casma — the Eye. But it has no narrative, no stories, nothing of its own. This narrative is an attempt to explain itself, to itself. But it has nothing other than that which it has observed, no context but that which is seen, without being comprehended. Am I correct, Little Watcher? I use your own words to describe this, for it is beyond me.”
“I … well, I think so. We’re inside the Eye’s dream?”
“Hmmmm.” The King stroked his beard again. “What does it mean to say that a dream belongs to oneself? A dream is something we ‘have’, yes? As we have an experience. Does an experience belong to us?”
Raine said: “Experience changes us. Even if just a little.”
The King smiled and nodded to Raine. “Just so.”
My heart had risen into my throat. My skin was covered in goosebumps. My mind was racing. “Wait, wait. You’re saying … ”
The King regarded me with a look just a fraction too sharp for the warmth of the Welcoming Prince.
“The play’s the thing,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” I finished the quote, then sighed. “Yes, fine, I get it. That is the third time you’ve used that Hamlet quote on me. Sevens said it once, too!”
The King cleared his throat, vaguely embarrassed. “The rule of threes is a strong technique in any story. I am afraid I may have stepped on my daughter’s toes by incrementing the count too far.”
“You can’t be serious.” I was shaking my head. “We’re actually doing it? This play is all for the Eye’s benefit? We’re, what, showing it all this?”
The King shrugged. “I cannot be certain. It is merely how I see the world. It is as I advised you, during our previous meeting, no? What is observed—”
“Changes the observer,” I finished for him. “Yes, that’s what you told me, last time we met. Put on a play for the Eye.” I sighed and shook my head. “Sevens said the exact same thing. I didn’t think she would go ahead with it, not this literally.”
The King smiled a sad smile. “She is writing hard. But she is not the sole author, nor in total control of this narrative. If she was, I could find her myself, merely by asking. But … ” He shook his head.
Raine said: “We’ve heard some of the other people here mention a ‘Director’. That could be her. The wordplay’s pretty obvious.”
The King shrugged with his floppy white sleeves. “I wish you luck.”
For a long moment, nobody said anything. The implications of what was happening here — or the King’s theory of what was happening here — took a while to sink in. Evelyn and I shared a long glance. Raine sighed with a curious look in her eyes, tilting her head back and forth as she examined the King in Yellow. Lozzie sat down with a flutter of pastel poncho, holding her arms out for the Fox; to my surprise, the animal gleefully hopped up into her lap.
The King broke the silence: “And now, my part in this play is done. To linger upon the boards risks the attention of an over-eager stage-hand, clearing away the scenery. I must depart, before I am noticed.”
“Is there really no other aid you can render?” I said. “Thank you for all you’ve done, but even just a hint would help.”
The King shook his head sadly. “I do not see the contours of the story, for it is not mine to tell. It is yours, Little Watcher. Look after my daughter, please.”
“I promise I will,” I said — then glanced over at Evelyn. “Evee, we need to start planning. If we can find the Director—”
“Oop!” Lozzie let out a little yelp of surprise. The Fox joined in with a yip.
Raine said. “Huh. He’s gone.”
And so he was.
During a single split-second in which we’d all been looking away, the King in Yellow had departed. In his place was nothing but floor tiles and moonlight.
His shed disguise still lay in a heap upon the floor at the mouth of the row of lockers. Raine spent a few moments down on her knees, sorting through the pile to see if it contained anything useful, but it really was all paper mache and dyed wool, not a scrap of real armour among the fakery. She gave up and returned to the bench, clapping one hand on my shoulder.
“Yip!,” went the Saye Fox, snuggled down in Lozzie’s lap. Lozzie herself stared at me with big round eyes, sleepy at the edges, slowly tilting her head back and forth as if she was fighting the urge to flop over. Evelyn was focused with thought, hunched deep in the seat of her wheelchair.
My left leg was throbbing with slow waves of pain. Exhaustion was setting back in, after the excitement of our unexpected royal guest.
“Well,” Evelyn said eventually, chewing slowly on the last of bites of her second sandwich. “That was enlightening, I suppose. Maybe if we get that hilt to this ‘Director’, the whole damn dream will re-organise. Regardless, we still need a plan.”
I nodded in agreement. “You were right about what you said earlier, Evee. This place runs on some kind of narrative logic.”
“Living in a story,” Raine murmured. “Talk about meta-fictional, huh?”
“I say we lie low,” I offered. “We sleep here until the morning. Story or not, we’re all exhausted. We eat, rest, sleep on the towels Raine brought.”
Evelyn shook her head. “What if we could brute force the dawn? What if we act like dawn has already arrived, like it’s time for the next day?”
Raine laughed. “That might work for you, my oh-so-spooky lady, but if this is a story, I’m still in it. We all gotta sleep sometime.”
Evelyn snorted, but not without affection. “What happened to ‘I can fuck all night on a thimbleful of water’, Raine?”
I sputtered. “Evee!”
Lozzie snorted as well, into a corner of her pastel poncho. I wondered if the Fox understood.
“I’m being serious,” Evelyn grunted.
Raine grinned back down at Evee. “That’s something I said once, isn’t it?”
I lit up with sudden hope. “Raine, you remember?!”
But Raine shook her head. “Nah, just sounds like something from my mouth. And yeah, sure.” She shrugged, shoulders rolling with easy amusement. “I could go all this night and into the next day. I could take a dozen nurses — fight or fuck, whichever way they want. But I’m only human. I’ll slow down eventually. I do have a refractory period. We need to rest, one way or another.”
Evelyn tutted. “No, we don’t, not really. This is a dream, a story. ”
Raine stuck to her guns. “Besides, Heather’s leg is hurt. We need to take weight off that wound, for as long as we can. She needs to rest.”
Evelyn hesitated. “Ah.”
“I can walk!” I said. “I can!”
Raine caught my eyes. Her gaze smouldered, dark and knowing. “And every step is pain. You’re resting, sweet thing. No arguments.”
A tremor of command gripped my belly. “O-okay.”
Evelyn sighed. “Fine. But, right here? In this old locker room? Raine, one of those things out there wandered in here and peered down the rows. We could get caught. In our sleep!”
Raine nodded and folded her arms over her chest. “We can sleep in turns. Set watches. I can take the first few hours while you all get some rest.”
“You’re a good girl, Raine,” I said. “But you need rest as well.”
“I can go first!” Lozzie chirped. “‘Cos then I’ll be going!”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Good point. You’re not staying, are you, Lozzie?”
Lozzie shook her head, absent-mindedly petting the Fox.
“We need a proper plan, for the morning,” Evelyn grunted. “What’s our next move?”
“Wake the others,” I replied without hesitation. “Zheng and Twil take priority. If we can break either of them out of the nightmare, the nurses won’t be able to stop us. Zheng could have taken on all those nurses yesterday without even breaking a sweat.”
Raine made a curious purring noise in her throat. “I’m dying to meet this girl. Sounds like a challenge.”
“She’s the other corner of our other triangle,” I said to Raine. “Um, I know that’s confusing, sorry. You and her have a … well, an odd relationship, but you’re very close.”
Raine grinned. “Bet we are.”
“But she doesn’t look much like her usual self right now,” I said. “Sadly.”
Evelyn said: “I agree in principle.” She tightened her grip on the Praem plush in her lap, an unconscious gesture of protective love. “If we can’t reach Praem, we should free some muscle. But I must insist we try Twil first.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
Evelyn raised her chin, radiating a fraction of her old smouldering pride. “Because I’ve been thinking, and I think I can wake her up.”
I blinked in surprise. “How?”
Evelyn narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t figured it out? Neither of you? What about you, Lozzie, did you see her?”
Lozzie shook her head. “Fuzzy is all un-fuzzed!”
“Exactly,” Evelyn said. “It’s obvious. Isn’t it? No? Am I the only one who sees this?”
“Evee,” I said very gently. “I think of all of us, you’re actually the closest to Twil. You know her better than we do.”
Evelyn squint-frowned at me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Heather.”
I sighed. “Evee, she stayed in your bedroom the night before Wonderland.”
Evelyn froze. “Yes? And?”
“We all know you and her are having some kind of on-again off-again thing. Which is entirely your business, of course. Just, well. You know. Um, sorry.”
Evelyn stared at me, jaw clenched, slowly turning red around the ears.
“Evee,” I added quickly, “I’m not judging you, and it’s none of my—”
“We just— we— there’s no— I—” Evelyn jerked out several sentence fragments, but could not get much further.
“Bambi-style?” Raine said. Her voice was suspiciously free of mocking.
“Tch!” Evelyn hissed. “Don’t call it that! For fuck’s sake. Stupid term.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, a little confused. Lozzie had gone silent, muffling a giggle in her poncho, on the verge of losing her composure completely. She seemed more and more like her usual self with every laugh.
“Means they just cuddle,” Raine said. “No fucking.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes so hard I thought she might detach both retina. She thumped the arm of her wheelchair. “I thought you said it was none of your business!?”
“None of Heather’s business,” Raine purred, smirking with too much pleasure. “But all of mine.”
Evelyn glowered with the force of an open forge-mouth. The Praem Doll twitched in her lap.
I cleared my throat before things could spiral out of control. “Evee, I’m sorry. To answer your original question, no, I don’t think I know how to break Twil out. What do we do? What’s your plan?”
Evelyn lowered her eyes from Raine and focused on me, taking a deep breath to expel her mortified anger. “It’s simple,” she said. “Twil is self-conscious about being a werewolf.”
I frowned. “Really? I … I don’t think that’s right? I always got the impression she loves being a werewolf.”
Evelyn sighed and waved a hand, brushing my statement aside like a bunch of old cobwebs. “Yes, fine, she does love being a werewolf, but it’s more complex than that. Look, just get me in front of her and let me speak. She’s wrapped up in all these anxieties, and I think I can snap her out of it.”
“You really think it’s that simple?”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Well, no. But I do know how to needle her, in just the right way.”
Raine murmured, “That’s what she said.”
I looked up at Raine, feeling rather clueless. “I’m sorry, Twil said that? I don’t remember that.”
Evelyn huffed. “Raine is winding me up, Heather. That was a sex joke.”
Lozzie chirped, “That’s what she saaaaaid!”
Evelyn sighed again. “Right.”
“Oh,” I said.
Raine and I shared a look. She shrugged, then said, “I’m willing to put my trust in Evee. Even though I only just met her. Weird stuff.”
“Me also,” I said. “Then we’re agreed? We go for Twil, first thing in the morning? Do you think she and her two girls will be in the same spot as before?”
“Narratively speaking,” Evelyn said, “it does make sense. Though … ” She trailed off with a grumpy sigh, then tapped her fingers against the arm of her wheelchair. Suddenly she looked angry and bitter. “Getting me out there without being seen is going to be a bitch of a job. The nurses will spot me from a mile off.”
Raine nodded slowly. “Not many girls here in wheelchairs, right.”
Evelyn’s eyes flashed at Raine. “If you suggest carrying me—”
“Wasn’t gonna,” said Raine, unsmiling and serious. “We take you in your chair. We just need a way.”
I unwrapped a chocolate roll, bit off one end, and chewed while I thought about the problem. “We could get Twil to come to us, somehow. Bait her over. Maybe peel her away from her friends?”
Evelyn said, “I can think of a few ways.”
“You haven’t met this Twil. She’s completely unlike herself.”
“Huh,” Evelyn grunted. “More importantly, Heather, what do we do after we’ve freed her?”
I stared at Evee for a moment, blank-faced. I must have looked rather gormless. “Um … we … take on the nurses? We rally the Knights, somehow. We free Maisie!”
Evelyn held my gaze, level and calm. “And what if that doesn’t end the dream?”
“Oh … ”
Raine took a deep breath, straightening up and rolling her shoulders. “We start another riot. That’s what.”
“Yeah!” Lozzie cheered.
“Oh!” I lit up. “Oh, that sounds … dangerous, but good.”
“Better organised this time,” Raine went on. “Better prepared, with a plan for how to escalate. We need the Knights on side, that part is right. And the ringleaders of what happened earlier. Lozzers, can you do that for us? Can you help get the other patients ready?”
“Mmhmm!” Lozzie chirped. “I can!”
“Good,” Raine purred. “A riot, a real one, one that doesn’t end until we’re in control of the asylum and the prison. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Take over the institution, throw open the cells, make hostages of all the staff.”
“Huh,” Evelyn laughed without much humour. “Even lacking memories, you’re still Raine. That idea is dangerous, difficult to control, and will have unclear outcomes.”
“I know,” I added with a sigh. “It’s not the best, but—”
“And I love it,” said Evee. “You always were suited to be a mad bomb-thower, Raine. Well, you’ve finally found your moment. Let’s hope we can locate you some dynamite before the job is done.”
Raine grinned at Evee. “Oh yeah. I can see why we get on so well.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though,” Evelyn said. “First is rest. We should eat up the rest of this food, too. Heather, you have—”
Tap-tap — tap — tap — tap-tap-tap.
Everyone froze. The Fox went stiff in Lozzie’s lap, ears suddenly perked up.
The tapping noise was soft, muffled, and metallic, like fingernails rapping against a faraway pipe, somewhere off in the dark of the night time asylum.
It came again, in a slightly different form: Tap-tap-tap. Taptap. Tap. Tap.
Evelyn hissed, “What the—”
“No no!” I whispered. “I recognise this! It’s coming from the pipes! I heard this same thing, in the morning! Somebody was tapping on the radiator pipes.”
I stood up from the bench, limping on my wounded leg. Raine helped me hobble down the row of lockers, to one of the iron radiators on the back wall.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap — tap. Tap. Tap.
The tapping was coming from the radiator — from all of them, from the pipes that connected them to the asylum’s heating system. It was so faint that we would not have heard it if not for the bare walls and tiled floor of the locker room. The tapping made little echoes in the moonlit shadows.
Some distant source was sounding out a message into the night.
“What does it mean?” Evelyn called in a whisper. “Heather, what does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” I hissed back. “But I think we should try to find the sender.”