The twang of strings somewhere in the walls reverberated through the corridor, and the approaching footsteps were silenced as the wall was suddenly pulled closed. Ove turned to flee, but Holmfridur’s spiteful halls strummed eagerly, ringing with a ravenous cadence that stalked Ove as she darted through the encroaching passage.

The pursuing chords suddenly halted, the hall falling silent for only a moment before another strum pulled the passage shut before her. Theophilus’s heavy footfalls resumed ahead of her. Ove reached into her cloak and helped another Ove climb out, wielding the Puppet Master’s Key. The depleted Ove climbed into the cloak, and the fresh Ove brandished her sword at the oncoming assailant.

The light shuddered, tearing off Theophilus like a layer of cloth. He was a human man, long brown hair flowing over his broad shoulders. His beady stare, rimmed with yellow paint, radiated untethered malice. He did not draw the Puppet Master’s Key that hung at his waist. He spread his lips round, his arms swinging determinedly as he walked, and from a throat tempered by decades of arduous choir, he assaulted Ove with song and Sound.

The potency of his voice knocked her from her feet and tossed her back through the hall. She tucked herself into a ball to land in a roll, and the humming of plucked strings in the wall urged her to her feet. The strings revealed where the wall would move, but they shifted quickly. As the corridor closed in behind her she dove forward. The stones cracked behind her just as she tumbled away.

Theophilus’s voice rose in another crescendo, and she swung her mana before her. “Quiet!” she screamed, matching his tone, their spells annihilated each other in a discordant crash. Ove seized the scattered Sound and began ripening it to conserve her own mana.

He grimaced at her, “Still brandishing that Key as though it belongs to you, Forsaken? I will retrieve it if I must cut it from your hands.” His throat resonated with power. The walls twanged, pulling closed behind Theophilus as he marched purposefully towards her. He propelled the chorus of his song with a percussion that rattled the walls.

“Retrieve? It is mine!” She flung her ripened Sound, and the shortening corridor exploded with dissonance. Ove sheltered her face under her wing. She stood contained in a fragment of hall with nowhere to go and Theophilus standing maliciously before her.

“It ceased being yours when you were banished from the Guild. You betrayed us all! We served three years confined in silver cells while you sat with the High Queen, dining off of silver platers!” His lilting rage buffeted her like a thousand pounding organs.

Ove was thrown into the wall. Her head hit the stone, and she heard it crack, but it was only wood. Her arm hung loose, snapped at the elbow, the feathers frayed and dishevelled. She braced herself against the song and pulled it off. The wing disappeared into her cloak as the tap of his boots growing closer joined the chorus.

The shockwaves stuttered, and Ove took the opening to swing her Key at the wall and pull it out of her way. She charged forward, flicking her key to seal the corridor behind her. She spared a moment only to replace her arm, the walls strumming in clashing pitches as she forced her way through Holmfridur’s Halls. The corridors bent like serpents under the competing tugs for authority.

The stone sprang open before Ove, revealing a warm sitting room with plush couches arranged around an opulent table. Tall Holmfridur, in a rippling ruby dress that hugged her figure, stood in the centre of the room with her Key in hand. A man with black hair like hers and a tattoo on his neck sat rumbling with trepidation. The wall slammed shut with a twist of Holmfridur’s Key, and when Ove wielded hers to command it to reopen, only another length of corridor was revealed.

A string announced another section of wall being pulled mid way through the hall, and Theophilus appeared. He still did not hold his Key, but he continued to wield his voice with immaculate proficiency, battering her with wave after wave of Sound. She flung the wall aside, casting open another corridor to retreat out of earshot of him.

With the corridor bending to her will, she circled around to catch Theophilus from the side. The hall opened, but was vacant except for the gentle echo of strings remaining in the walls. A tap on the ground alerted her, and she twisted around to find him coming out of a hall behind her. She lunged with her sword, but he danced aside, only to catch the dagger of another Ove, tumbling from the cloak, in his arm.

The wall behind him sank as Theophilus screamed, and he stumbled into the open space, disappearing as it sealed around him. “Ah!” He called, muffled in the walls. “I accept this pain gratefully, to share a modicum of the suffering my son endured because of your misconduct!”

Ove commanded the walls aside, chasing the echoes of Theophilus’s voice. “Will you never stop blaming others?” she called after him.

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“I blame others when they are at fault. My son starved while I was away paying for debts on your behalf!” His voice grew clearer, and a wall pulled up to release his perturbed attack, a downward slash with his Key that missed Ove as she fluttered out of the way.

“Not my fault!” Ove cawed at him, stabbing his protruded arm with her sword.

He yanked his arm back with a growl. Blood seeped over his fingers as he squeezed the gash. He wiped his bloodied hand on his clothes, his wound now healed. “Then whose is it?” He bent down to meet Ove’s eyes and let out a tormented cry. “Who is to blame?” Theophilus brought his blade towards her head, forcing her to back away. She swung at him from behind with her dagger, but he snapped his fingers to knock her down with a blast of Sound empowered by the blood on his hands.

“Blame your self for getting locked up when you had a child at home!” She ducked away from his sword as it came down again. She could not match his strength if their blades clashed. She twisted away from his bloodthirsty slashes, prying desperately for an opening, but her Key only met his, nearly knocking free of her grip every time their blades met. Her dagger sought weakness from behind, but the brutal snaps of his fingers occupied her attention.

Holmfridur’s strings plucked in the walls again and the corridor began shifting unpredictably. Ove rolled between his legs as the entire hall sealed around them, coiling like a constricting snake, trapping them together. She pressed forward, blasting Sound at his empty hand with a snap of her beak to counter his spell while swinging high with her sword. He deflected her stroke, and as Ove lunged forward, dagger hunting his heart, he stepped back, appearing two paces away in a blink of Light that left a gentle spectre of his image where he had been.

She brought both her bodies bearing down on him, tossing daggers and spells to distract him while she released her other Oves. He surprised her by not attacking with spells of his own, instead swinging his arm out and catching one of her by the throat, kicking her other in the chest. His eyes flared with enmity as he crushed her neck with one hand, letting her head and body fall separate to the floor.

But he had not noticed the other two Oves slip behind him. She embedded her daggers into his shoulders until they protruded near his chest, and his arms fell limp at his sides. Theophilus collapsed to his knees with a scream, tears drawing the yellow paint from his eyes to run down his cheek. His head hung back, and the defeated man let his shoulder rest against the wall.

Ove watched him carefully as she knelt by her destroyed doll. His sobbing eased as he watched her curiously. She unscrewed the stubs of her broken neck, and replaced it to reanimate the doll.

“I am sorry about your son.” Ove said to him. “And I am sorry your wife left after his death. But it was not my fault.”

His chest swelled with each breath. “For a moment, I had it,” he sighed, “what I had longed for. I crushed your neck with my own hands, and for a moment, I felt that I had killed you. Justice for the Guild.”

Ove returned to the shadow space in her cloak, leaving only one of her behind. She was glad to be happily eating supper with Athen and Lyrua. It helped cut the stress that being in the Guild Hall imposed on her. And she did not feel alone. She looked at Theophilus. His eyes were only weary now.

“Do you want to know what I learned caring for the Prince?” Ove asked. Theophilus pointed his eyes at her. “He may break a bowl of stew because he did not know he was too small to hold it. Then Four-staile comes to scold him for messing her gardens up with stew, and he cries enough to scare nobles out of the city for a week. And then Four-staile scolds his mother the High Queen for not teaching him better, and she cries because she is a child with a child and does not know what to do. Then Four-staile scolds me for watching bees instead of him, and I cry because I always do even if I have done some thing wrong.

“The Prince sees his mother crying, and he sees me crying, and he stops. He turns to Four-staile, and he scolds her. He asks her what she was doing. He says, he does not know whose fault it is, and neither does Four-staile, or she would scold only them. Some times, it isn’t any one’s fault. Some times, every one could have done better.”

Theophilus pushed off the wall and slumped forward. Breathing heavily, he met Ove’s eyes. “I wonder if he heard that someplace.” He tried shakily to lift his arms, but winced, letting them fall. “Good lad though, to stand up for his mother. I bet my son would have liked him. Might have taught him to fish, if they’d been friends.”

“Will you try to kill me if I pull the daggers?” Ove asked. She hopped closer to him.

“Why? I already did.” He was shaking a little, but his voice was smooth and calm. “Andersine said killing you would not fix anything. We knew it, but… in anger, Cyprian’s words carried weight that, lost in our emotions, we desperately needed to be carried. So we moved on, but we never let go.”

She moved behind him, and braced herself on his back with one leg to pull the daggers free. He squealed as blood squirted from his wounds, before letting his head hang a moment. After a few deep breaths, he poured Light into his wounds to weave them shut and seal them.

“I suppose we all pay for our mistakes, one way or another,” he said.

She nodded in agreement. “Some pay more than others, but we all pay.”

“What will you do about Holmfridur?” Theophilus asked, rising to his feet. His long hair fell over his shoulders and stuck to the sweat and tears on his face.

“I don’t care about Holm-fridur, but she has Braheem, and I need to speak to him.”

“Well, you know where she is,” he said, pushing himself up on wobbling knees. He brushed himself off. “I… I need ale. I need a lot of ale.” He swung his sword, pulling the wall open before him, and dragged his feet towards the stairs.