Flailing tayl. Shay stood bleakly in what once was her shop. Sparse candles cast the space dancing in dead shadows. The crimson and violet curtains had been eaten almost to their hangers, and the large windows were barricaded with forgotten furniture. Pressing her eye close to the glass blurry with smears, gargoyles were out there stalking, sticking at the moveless things with their stone spears. Searchships glared above them, making short then long their winged and wicked shades. As one age to another. Some of the ships’ bulbs were dim and other vessels roamed without light at all. Then one, an oaken galleon of old, seemed at odds and battle with the rest, with blue sails through the air as though it was water.
∞
Turning back inside to shelves that brimmed with dust forming strange castles, Shay found the jars of most-everything she needed to fight The Ersecutor were empty. Though, even traces of certain death can be promising. The crumbled grandlock, its once-face fallen to the floor, watched her no more.
∞
Before she could question whom-or-what was surviving in the tunnel beneath her or lighting candles here, she heard something whirring mechanically behind her, and she in an instant knew it had stepped into her shadow. Whatever it was. No other explanation could justify the sudden speed. She coughed against the rotten smell of its presence, daring not to move. It spoke mostly in her own voice:
“’Twas-was I really oh-so careless? Hooping-looping…”
The whirring continued as the thing walked harmlessly past Shay, and the stale rotting smell worsened. It threw some stolen bread onto a table that was so weak it leaned to one side with the weight of the loaf. The same table where Serib asked for some smoky far-bark to crumble over her soup.
“For you-two.” The thing said to Shay.
∞
She had not eaten since she could not recall, and the smell of fresh bread sent away the rotten scent of the imposter, bringing other memories.
“Go-on would-should you-two?” The thing chattered. “Heart-start is here-these walls… not hurt-nor-harm.”
Shay took this to mean she was safe here. With a fragile trust she ate the bread standing protectively, and the warmth filled her somehow with a new hope awakening. Her thoughts were clearer.
∞
In candlelight the thing looked at her meanwhile and she at it, its metal jaw gleaming in the flame. A bony prosthetic hand reached up to adjust the jaw from falling off, fiddling-tighter with a screw near the neck:
“I’ve not-rot spoken in pages and pages…” they pointed at their makeshift jaw, as though not being used it had fallen to disrepair. “Less-stress of you-two make it through.”
Human eyes stared at Shay and she recognised them, for they were her own eyes, her own face-almost, without masks or props or any disguise aside from great decay. She covered her mouth to muffle her gasp - she had met a past or earlier version of herself still grieving, and now she met a future iteration.
“You-two didn’t make it in this done-one. Worry-sorry to say.” Amneshay spoke to Shay, in a way trying to explain what was happening, already had happened or was going to. “Not too early not too late, you just didn’t win. The mixture of events was-as wrong. The mangled-tangled threads were strong, and the red-read words have gone astray-away.”
∞
“You-two?” Shay stepped closer to the candle, to rotting-and-whirring Amneshay, whom so far from our tenses, our dimensions, our sense of Sense had drifted.
I do my best here - translating I suppose - what cannot be.
“You are me, and you are you, too.” The now-old assassin replied, stepping cautiously back into darker shadow, remaining barely there. “One of me will happen-by-now-and-then-when, one of the me’s like you! Out-about there in the blood-floods and old-folds that was not late-yet, that left Serib and Woid at The Dam’e’s office. When you stop coming in, I’ll know the roll-toll is all finished, the penultimate-past, and I’ll head-dead out to The ‘Thedral.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The candles dimmed, struggling to stay alight.
∞
“I left them there.” Shay did not want to believe. “You’re saying something is wrong if I left Woid and Serib at The Club?”
“Yes, then! You’re-or doomed to this.” Amneshay rose up their arms and spun weirdly around hugging the swollen room, and did not for too long put them down. “Doomed to me! Tea? It’s all-wall you-two have left-bereft. We’re needed to know-throw Fate off the scheme, chasing us instead into these-deader-Dreams, getting lost in No-Longer’s Seams.”
Shay did not fancy being a decoy or a failure, though she thought tea would be most welcome.
∞
“Your Lay’d needs you.” Shay tried. “And… you know the blend I like.”
“My-why Lay’d? Who-knew would that be?” The Shadow’s jaw chattered.
Shay heard a clatter of cups behind her. Amneshay had 'appeared in two places at once' for a moment, talking to Shay from darkness and making tea in the collapsing kitchen behind. Opening a cupboard door pulled it off altogether, and even the steel spoons were soft. This far along, Amneshay it seemed, had mastered the umbra-step style that Woid knew: stepping into any shadow or darkness. Their slurred speech had worsened to the point of nonsense:
“Lordyr Fate wouldn’t-shouldn’t want us to scheme with them? Then-in-when-again Lay’d Payn couldn’t wish us to scheme with them, either.” Amneshay froze mid-tea-making, as though unsure what she had said.
“You’re confusing me completely, do you serve Lay’d Payn or her enemy, Fate?”
“I’m-fine confusing me aswell! But first, where-there’s the tea-would-be? We won’t have what we like, we’ve had it all by now-how.” Amneshay rummaged mindlessly. “Oh-so! We’ll plenty, because I never made this delivery to the prison, nor-or did you.”
The thing opened up their jacket, and pulled free a jar of preserved tea leaves, once destined for the pot of Lay’d Payn. Shay subtly checked her own harness to ensure they were still there, and was quietly grateful.
∞
“Lay’d Payn…” A third spectre of Amneshay waddled in thinking aloud, in varied states of decay, carrying a great bucket of rainwater while the second (Shay being the first, if you follow) stared blankly at the jar of tea leaves.
The ancient two of them shrugged at each other and laughed at a who-knows-where-or-what. Shay realised this was not a higher level of Woid’s technique - there truly were three versions of herself present. With candles a primitive fire was lit, and an old iron kettle there hung flaming as the water-bearer was crying softly. Shay pressed:
“We have to save Serib. She can help Lay’d Payn with this Timeless mess… and we’ll see our parents back-again.”
“Oh-so!” The separate shades of Amneshay vanished into one-again. “Converted-reverted have you-two? Got Grief by ‘throat, hmm?”
“Converted-reverted?” Shay stumbled through the conversation.
“You-two teeter-tether don’t-won’t you-two? On the wedge of believing and not, of loving and rot, remembering what is forgotten, forgetting what was remembered.” Amneshay slapped their real but dead fingers onto their prosthetic arm, indicating where injections once had gone.
∞
The candlelight caught something shiny on a nearby stool; both Shay and Amneshay eyed it at the same moment.
“Don’t…” Urged Shay. “We both know it doesn’t help.”
A simple, empty-looking syringe, the needle rusty-here and bright-there along its crooked length.
“Just-must need another ingredient, or take-forsake one away. A mixture for old-everything, a remedial for nothing-new.”
Using their prosthetic arm, clanking Amneshay picked up the syringe and struggled to not fall over, such was the weight of its emptiness and her own numbness. She injected straining into her still ‘living’ arm, with what few dusty drops were left. Shay herself felt the pinch, even when drifting Amneshay did not.
∞
“Lay’d Payn… Lay’d Fayte said to stay away from Lay’d Payn… to wait-eight here.”
“Wait-eight… wait forever?” Shay scowled, thinking of the symbol Serib had drawn on her palm. “What happened to you?”
“Now you’re-fore-forgetting! You-two left Serib and Woid there-where, so you’ll know if you leave here, and you will leave. You-two always do. And you’ll crawl-step back and I’ll be here because you’ll be here. We signed it.”
“What did we sign? What silliness are you slipping into?”