They reached their destination the following day. At first, catching sight of it in the distance, Percy thought it was a fire. As they approached, the fire broke into smaller sparks in a scattering of light. It was only when they rode closer that Percy knew it for a city.

He had never seen a city so big before. Crossing the gates was enough to make him believe that there was nothing but that city in the world. Everything was big and everyone was loud; every house was built to take up space, and every passer-by moved with an eagerness to make noise. Forged iron lampposts oozed a golden-orange glow over a grey fog, amber on velvet. Percy saw gleaming carriages and fashionable dresses – he did not know what the fashion was, but he knew only fashionable people carried themselves with such confidence. There were avenues with rows of tidy and tamed trees, loud shop windows, and crowded conversations. It slowly dawned on him that his parents' manor would not look so disproportionately grand in the illustrious company of the houses he rode past now.

By his side, Myrtle was gawking unreservedly.

"I've never been anywhere like this" she said as she craned her neck to catch sight of the top of the buildings, and turned her head about to wonder at the lights that glistened in the street like scattered pearls.

Percy had never been anywhere like that, either, but he was determined not to look awe-struck and dazzled. He had thought himself worldly; and he was, if one counted the self-contained little world of his hometown. And yet he found now that many other worlds existed, despite his ignorance of them. But he would not indulge others by revealing that: the admission of his ignorance would be prised from his cold rigid hands.

Myrtle, however, seemed glad to display her inexperience with giddy abandon. They had just ridden past a hat shop with a window that had colourful caged birds, and colourful feathers adorning the hats. He had no idea whether that was a normal sight in big cities, but he chose to play it safe, and nodded knowledgeably at the canaries in intricate golden cages.

"You do look like you've never been anywhere like this" he smirked at Myrtle.

"Well, that's because I haven't" she replied with cheerful plainness. "Does it make me look provincial? I am provincial. Don't mind looking what I am. It cuts corners and saves time for everyone."

Percy heard Valeria's chuckle, and felt he had been defeated, though he wasn't quite sure in what. He cleared his throat.

"Do we know where we're going?" he asked.

"Do you mean right now, or in life in general?" Valeria smirked.

"Right now, obviously."

"I don't know, darling, you strike me as the type to have an existential crisis here and there."

"We're here."

They both turned to Evans, and then to the house he had just stopped in front of. Percy forgot all his efforts not to gawk. The house looked like something he might have fancied to have built, if no one talked sense into him on time. The façade was monstrously crowded with friezes and frills, ornamented columns and ornamental crenellations, turrets and stained glass windows. A small park surrounded it and separated it from the other houses. Through the forged iron gate, Percy could see a gravel path flanked by luscious red roses that drooped under the weight of their own magnificence.

"Of course it had to be the weird one in the neighbourhood" Valeria muttered.

Even that house's heavy ornament warfare could not cower Valeria into awed submission.

"And what is it we have to do, exactly?" Percy asked, his eyes still fixed on the frantically busy façade.

"Break a curse" Evans said.

"Well, yes, I know that, but – "

"Myrtle" Evans turned to her with a quiet smile. "We can drop you off anywhere you'd like in the city, before we move ahead with this."

"What? No, I want to stay with you while you go through with it. This is the manor where servants got turned into objects because of their master's curse, right? This is important to me. If I want to start spreading awareness of our professional plights, there's no better place to start than this."

"You asked to ride with us to the nearest town. That's what we agreed to" Valeria rumbled, crossing her arms.

"No no, no. I said I assumed you would be riding through a town sooner or later, and that that would suit me fine. All of it true. And I'm not leaving quite yet."

"We don't know how dangerous it will be" Evans sighed. "We don't know what the curse does exactly. You might get hurt."

"And, what, because I'm a lady's maid I might get turned into a ladle as soon as I step through the front door? Trust me, I'm acquainted with the collateral damage of curses. I mean, really, I'm paid to work for someone else's story. I'm the definition of collateral damage. Don't worry, I'm not walking into this blindly. Well, perhaps a little blindly, but no more than you all are."

The other three traded a few looks between them.

"I suppose I can't stop you from following us" Evans gave in eventually, his eyes fleeting back to the mad house.

"I think it's a bloody terrible idea" Valeria announced. "Myrtle, I'm going to be incredibly disappointed in you if you get hurt."

Myrtle blinked at her for a moment, taken aback. Ready as she had been to face down the most incensed refusals, she hadn't quite prepared herself for motherly disappointment. Percy saw it in her now, just as he had felt it himself several times before. Caring about Valeria's opinion seemed like an inevitable outcome of being in her presence.

"I promise you I won't get in the way of danger or do anything heroic. I know better than that" Myrtle said, clearing her throat and straightening her shoulders like a pupil on a straight-backed chair.

Evans placed his hands on the gate of black iron forged like ink swirls. It swung open with suspicious ease. They now had a clear view of the beautiful grounds beyond, with stone fountains that held themselves in stern silence, and a gravel path that lead to the front door. The garden guarded the manor against the clamour of the street. Percy glanced at the sumptuous rose bushes that lined the path at regular intervals, like soldiers in red and white uniforms standing at attention, saluting them as they went past. Two lanterns flanking the front door gave off a faint, miserly orange glow. In the dim light, Percy thought he could see small handwritten cards planted by each rosebush.

The four of them stood by the door for a while, unwilling to do more than just reach it. Eventually, Evans stepped forward, raised his hand and gripped the lion-head knocker, banging it thrice. Percy winced slightly at the colossal sound it made. It took up too much space, it stretched over the gardens behind them, it made him forget that there was a busy street even further behind, where such a sound would get lost in the crowd.

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They waited. And then, the latch under the door knocker slid open.

"Good evening" Evans began with his most audible smile, "we're here about a cur – "

A fearsome roar pushed them away. Compared to it, the sound of the door knocker was merely a pebble hitting the ground: that roar was the ground opening up in a groan to swallow the world. Percy clamped his hand against his mouth to stifle a cry, for fear that he too might get swallowed.

The latch slid close. They stood a few feet from the door. They stood, which Percy thought was an achievement in and of itself. Valeria released one of her long whistles, and Myrtle had a little cough. Evans' hair was slightly dishevelled.

"We'll have to find another way in, then" he said.

"Only one way to get information like that" Valeria said, glaring at the door.

"Where?" Percy croaked.

"Well, last night you asked when we'd get to the inn part. I think this is it."

In a quiet corner of the tavern, tucked away from the din of a busy drinking night, Percy clung to a tankard of some of the best ale he had ever not drunk.

"They've been gone for a while" he said to Evans, who sat next to him with a glass of milk.

"Myrtle seems to be getting something. And Valeria has her methods."

"Please tell me they don't involve starting a tavern brawl again."

"Not necessarily."

They had been sitting there for almost an hour, watching as Valeria posted herself at the bar and spun a conversation that soon ensnared every faithful drinker gathered there. Sometimes drinking songs would burst forth, and Valeria would learn them after a few verses, spilling the words from her tankard as she swung it around. Myrtle, in the meantime, fleeted from table to table with a drink on her hand and an apologetic smile on her lips. She was dreadfully good at playing the part of a poor lost girl in need of help, Percy thought – perhaps because she was the furthest thing from it there could be, and knew it.

"Myrtle looks like she has a method, too" he commented, bringing the tankard to his slips and forgetting to drink, again.

Evans grinned.

"I never doubted that for a moment."

"Although... do we really have to go and break that curse?" Percy asked, letting go of the tankard to flatten his folded arms on the table, and then flatten his head on his arms. "If that's the kind of welcome we get, maybe the man who's cursed doesn't want any help at all. Just like the sleeping girl back in the castle. If he's a misanthrope, we can leave him be."

"Even if that's true, there's still the matter of the servants who got cursed along with him."

Percy stood corrected, which was his least favourite position. Without lifting his head from his arms, he turned it to face Evans.

"Why aren't you over there as well trying to gather information?"

"I don't think I'm good at speaking to people in these situations" Evans murmured.

"In... taverns, you mean?"

"In tavern-like situations."

"So people drinking and having a good time, when they're not having the odd fight."

Evans opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, Valeria slammed her empty tankard on the table and sat next to them with the intense satisfaction of a job well done.

"Harold over there told me quite a few things about the cursed manor" she said.

"And who is Harold exactly?" Percy asked.

"You know, he looks like the type who asks himself that every night. Pretty exhausting fellow" she sighed as she looked at her tankard. She downed what little drink she could prospect for. "He said the man who was cursed is named Armand, and that he's a famous musician around these parts. Apparently this city is damn serious about music. Holds a festival every year, and they compete against a rival city. Anyway, all the townspeople know is, one day he was turned into a horrible beast, and he locked himself away in his big house. Pretty standard stuff, and it matches what we already knew. But here's something more. A while ago, a local girl went into his gardens, picked a rose, and he abducted her. She's been in there ever since."

Percy blinked.

"Because she... picked a rose?"

"It can't have been just because she went into his garden. We did as well, and nothing happened to us" Evans joined in.

"Well, I wouldn't say nothing – "

"Everyone I spoke to was pretty adamant. It was because she picked a rose" Valeria nodded. "They said she was always a bit of a funny girl – you know when people use 'funny' unkindly. They're not sure why she did it, everyone knew not to touch the roses. And they're all wondering what happened to her. They see her at the windows sometimes, so they know she's not dead. And they say she looks alright. The top half, at least. But they don't know anything beyond that. And there's no end to their morbid curiosity... those fuckers" she mused as she glanced back at the crowded counter.

Just then, Myrtle returned and sat primly on the remaining chair.

"I found someone who knows someone who knows someone else who worked as a servant in the cursed house" she announced with obvious pride. "They actually resigned just before the curse hit, otherwise they would have been turned into, I don't know, a feather duster or a clock or something less dignified, like a toilet brush or, anyway, what matters is, apparently the master there is a right bastard, which is why they quit, and there's a backdoor that leads to the kitchens. But it's kept locked at all times."

They sat for a few moments as they laboured silently to detangle Myrtle's words.

"That's... incredible work, thank you, Myrtle" Evans said, looking appropriately stunned.

"I know" she grinned.

"So there would be a way for us all to get inside the house, if just one of us manages to get in and unlock the kitchen door."

"Would that really get us anywhere?" Percy muttered. He was already running his hands through his hair; in no time he would be nibbling at his fingernails. "If that man, beast, whatever he is, roared us away when you knocked at the door to very obligingly help break his curse, I don't think he'll be any more amenable to us breaking and entering his house."

"I get what you mean, but I don't see any other way for us to solve this without actually going into that house and making him listen to us" Evans sighed.

"But how would we even get one of us in to unlock the kitchen door?"

A moment of shared understanding came to them, and cleared its throat until they reluctantly acknowledged it.

"There's always the rose-picking option" Valeria said.

"Oh, you have to be kidding me" Percy scoffed.

"Why? There are two things we know: the girl got taken into the house because she picked one of his roses, and she's been seen at the windows alive and unharmed."

"Unharmed from the waist up" Percy countered.

He was aware that he didn't sound as inflexible as he wished. He compensated by leaning forwards and challenging Valeria to a staring contest that he lost in about three seconds.

"Alright, if we do that, who would go and pick the rose?"

"Not Evans" Valeria said right away. "Assuming it was Armand who roared at us, he will have seen Evans, since it was him who knocked. He'll recognize him and know it's a trick."

"I could – "

"You neither, Myrtle. Granted, you seem to have a terrifying set of skills" Valeria glanced at the tables Myrtle had scavenged for crumbs of information, "but they don't include armed combat yet, and whoever goes in there needs to be able to defend themselves, just in case. I suppose I could go. Even if that man is beastly... or even if that beast is a bastard, I can keep my cool long enough to not smash his face in. Well, I can try."

"We all know how long that's going to last" Percy sneered.

"This is true" she agreed with an admirable degree of composure. "I am gifted in many ways, but I lack the talent required to do things I do not wish to do. In which case, that leaves you, Percival."

He glared at her. He felt he deserved better than to have his full name summoned to the conversation just to witness his discomfiture. But he supposed some habits from her nanny days would only die with her.

"I don't think so" he muttered under his breath.

"I'll go" Evans interjected.

His voice was weightless and pliable; he might have been volunteering to simply go fetch another drink from the bar. Percy frowned and scrunched up his nose.

"No, I'll go."

He cursed himself over a long, sullen silence. He didn't understand why he had been so quick to throw himself forward as soon as Evans had spoken. Valeria and Myrtle looked at him, with half amusement and half unease. He knew how it looked, and what they saw: a boy eager to not allow a rival to one-up him, springing at a challenge just to make a point. It annoyed him that that was what they thought. It exasperated him that it wasn't true. He might have respected himself a little better, had he been moved by an urge to prove his worth. As it was, he didn't even know what had moved him at all. Just a minute ago, the thought of provoking the beast and getting taken inside that house made his hairs stand on end. It still did.

Evans did not try to talk him out of it, and Percy was thankful for it, even as part of him wished someone would. Evans merely gave him a nod, and finished his milk.