FTA: The Name of Fear

XV. The Name of Fear

It was this level of waiting, and foreknowledge of it, that had made Niles decide on a policing career over the marginally more prestigious and better-paying military life. He leaned against a locker at the rear of the boat, as the pushing wind from behind them brought more and more hints of the mighty and terrible storm he could see in the distance. At first, he thought he’d misjudged their position and heading, and that it was the Northern Guardians looming in the full distance. Now, with the benefit of time, he could see it was a great grandfather of a storm.

The idea made him pale. Storms at sea had a very special, very negative place in his heart. Like the child who was burned, or stung, or scalded, he had a very specific and very justified hatred of weather, water, and the prospect of drowning – all the relevant hazards of this kind of thing.

The soldiers weren’t doing much better, pointedly going around their re-arming with the deliberate, zen-like focus endemic to avoiding their situation. Even the other Grey Angels were highly agitated. Banker lingered below, engrossed in his work on a startlingly new-looking mobile phone, whose coverage here in the middle of the bay should have been questionable at best. Prodigal and Scion were often with Banker, or else with the braver sister, which made sense, since arriving in Fen Ridge could only be a violent and pseudo-military act.

And yet, there was their pilot, moving from end to end of the boat in sedate calm, adjusting what needed adjusting. The young woman showed no interest in the gathering weather. She made no effort to encourage her passengers to get below decks (however cramped a one-man yacht like this would be for the dozen of them), nor to seal up any of the open cases or hatches on the outside of the craft. She’d surely noticed it – throughout the trip she’d been pointing out oddities like porpoises or shoals of fish long before anyone else had spotted them, inerrantly.

Her calm wasn’t doing Niles’ nerves any good. Storms moved quickly over water, and the horizon wasn’t as far away as people tended to think it was. He turned to her, casting the end of his last cigarette over the side. “Doesn’t look like that storm is going around us.”

If she looked up, other than at him, Niles must have missed him. “It’s going to bank around us to the south overnight and sweep across the eastern shore an hour or two before our arrival.”

“Huh.” Niles gazed back off in the direction of the storm, seeing no obvious sign of rails for it to run on. “… Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes.” The young woman giggled, somewhat, ducking under a boom to get to whatever her next task was. “It’s my storm.”

The comment rankled in Nile's mind like a thorn lodged between fingers, twisting and pinching at odd times. He tried his best to put it out of mind, running himself through the exercises Scion had given him, intended to clear his mind. To some degree, he was effective, but the further he ran toward Scion’s purported “neutral mind”, the more oppressive the unreal nature of all of reality became, and from time to time he had to come up to a mundane awareness in order to breathe.

It was during one such breathing period of immersive unreality that he gave voice to his concerns. He was laying on a makeshift bunk in the ship’s cabin, long after sunset. Most of the others were sleeping, or trying to, but by the dim glow of a screen he could see banker’s masked face obscured entirely from his view.

“Do you trust this woman?”

Banker gave no sign that he had noticed Niles, for a moment. Perhaps he was finishing the sentence he was reading. “Intimately.”

Niles found the answer surprising. “Why?”

Banker inclined his gaze toward Niles. “She’s Archangel’s twin sister.”

---

Fen Ridge was burning. Prince found that he could not remember who had started the fire – he was reasonably certain that it was against GSDF policy to do so, which ruled out Alexis and her cadre of officers. He was reasonably certain even Edward wasn’t mad enough to use fire in combat, in spite of his stylistic affinity for it, which ruled out the Crimson Knights. It almost fit, for the Grey Angels and their fanaticism, but they had a taciturn and practical way about their business, which Niles had gone from grudgingly respecting to actively supporting.

Must have been the enemy, then.

A heat haze rose from all around, making the scene swim, and yet Niles was pleasantly cool. The skyline twisted and contorted, mirage-like spires rising above the low brick-and-brownstones that made up most of this section of town. He was running, running with the pack, under an archway between two buildings which lead into the town’s central square.

Those spires no longer seemed so mirage-like. Banners whirled in the thermals, always twisting and contorting so as to be just barely out of his sight-line, and where once he thought he got to see the face of the standard, the sight resolved to static.

Powerful hands landed on his shoulders and he was dragged backward, the pack running along blindly ahead, and he twisted in this grip to see a frightening figure before him. Too tall and lithe, this mannequin of a man with his alabaster skin and inkwell eyes glowed softly from within. As Niles struggled, the assailant sidestepped the detective, letting him go such that the man stumbled and fell hard on the ground.

“Don’t look,” the Alabaster Man calmly admonished the Prince, as he fell.

Niles awoke from the jolt of having been thrown from the cot he occupied in the belly of the yacht, the taste of red wine he hadn’t drank on his lips.

---

The cliff had been a disappointment enough. To Greta, a Dean lowborn through and through, uphill was as good as downhill in the wilds, and with no decent visual cue for her altitude, she had expected to come out on the shores of the Blasted Bay, not on a craggy, fresh-hewn cliff overlooking the equally alien bay.

Sober and in daylight for the first time, feet planted firmly in the material empiricism of the Waking World, the true scale of the devastation the Kraterburg Eruption had caused was now clear for her mind to process.. The Dreamlands had a funny way of exaggerating such topography, and the complete lack of correlation-of-position between the two had allowed Greta a certain, deliberate, convenient denial. There was water as far as she could see, when here should have been the rolling foothills of the Northern Guardians and a smattering of quasi-suburban communities on the forested outer fringe of the City in the Crater.

She paused, her breath catching in her throat. Behind her, her stoic guardian shifted his position, moving past her and up onto a slightly higher promontory that stretched out from the ledge and allowed him a better view of the sea.

She was the first to spot the sails near the horizon, a line of ships curving inward, making, no doubt, for the relatively deep-looking cove nearer a shallower slope of the bay-shore. She sighed, deeply. “They're here, too. It's over.”

Her guardian loomed over her, extending a steel-shod hand. “Never over til it's over, kid.”

There was movement in the bushes that fringed the wood behind them, and the pair turned at about the same time a quartet of mail-armoured foot-soldiers brought their crossbows to bear on them. Greta absorbed the scene, needing no sign that these were yet more Fae apart from their strange armament. Archangel, for his part, stepped just slightly forward and left, obscuring much of her silhouette with his body.

A giant of a man emerged from the thicket with his foot-soldiers. He was a mountain of a man, blue-skinned, with sweeping horns that followed the curve of his skull backward and slightly out. A troll, Greta recognized him. His gruff command to “Hold” brought his retinue to a stand still, and for a moment, this plate-armoured Knight and the Lich stared each other down, taking the size and doubtless the mettle of the other into account.

“… In the name of Valarian ap Dougal, Prince of Galba Dea and the Sunset Marches, the two of you are under arrest.”

Greta drew herself up to her full, less-than-impressive height. “On what charge? I am freeborn Dean!”

“You are suspected of being unseelie spies,” the captain explained. “A witch and her undead ghoula in the middle of nowhere who just happen to have a good view of a military operation strikes me as suspicious.”

Eli threw Greta a warning look, masked though he was, and the girl seemed to drop it, following the soldiers at their armed gestures. “Her ghoul” fell into lockstep behind her, moving much more shambolically than he had. Though the witch was certain he’d object to the characterization of being a mere reanimated corpse, his immediate co-operation was all the help she’d need.

He’d beat Holly Bell, after all. Surely he knew what he was doing.

---

Having only known the dominion of the helter-skelter Unseelie, Greta was startled by the military orderliness and practicality of the Seelie camp. While it included elements of the fantastic, such as gryphon-roosts and, she suspected, tents with disproportionately large interiors, the camp was clean, orderly, and contained none of the bawdy, decadent riotousness that she’d come to associate with the Fae. Everywhere flew one of two banners – black with two silver chevrons (“House Sussex”, Eli muttered to her) or, as the Troll captain wore and as featured more prominently, purple with a rampant, white unicorn, which she didn’t recognize, but guessed probably belonged to House Dougal.

Brass-armoured knights saluted to the Troll as he and his prisoners passed them, moving into a pavilion-tent that was, on its inside, a grand, columned hall. Military functionaries both human and Fae moved back and forth, though the activity seemed focused around one grand table, where a pacing man in a blue naval uniform seemed to command the most attention.

“Mister Smith-Jamison, relay to the conventional forces that they are to begin their transit of the strait immediately. They’ll take Zvanesburg Port by force and with support from what’s left of the Zaxtonian Air Self-Defense Forces.”
“Your majesty,” the lone human at the table replied, turning to carry out his orders at once.

Here the troll stopped, stomping to attention and bowing immediately. “Your majesty.”
“What is it, Sir Rayleigh?”

“The prisoners you requested.”

Greta did not have long to puzzle over how they had attracted the Seelie’s attention. He turned to them at once. He was tall, lithe, dark-haired and pale-skinned – a Sidhe, not unlike the Duke. This Prince, however, had a martial, even human look about him, in terms of his fashion and demeanor. She found it a strangely alluring combination. “Thank you.” Bidding his companions to carry on, the prince and the knight escorted the witch and her ghoul to a quieter part of the tent, where they could no doubt speak frankly. Greta wished there were some way to warn Eli that there were slaugh among the Seelie too, and that even this apparent privacy could not be trusted.

Archangel, of course, trusted nobody, and would need no such warning.

“… Well, I suppose you had best start by introducing yourselves,” the Troll demanded.
Greta flushed. Of course, you idiot, this is a prince. “F-forgive me, your majesty. I am Greta Dean. This is my ghoul.”

“Archangel,” the Lich offered, with a helpful growl that sounded ghoulish, if not entirely too intelligent. Greta winced. The ghouls the Fae were used to were animalistic and absurd. The zombie to Eli’s vampire, in popular ideation.

Valerian perked. He knew the name by association. It was on the lips of the Brass Knights who had reported on an attempt to kill Viscount Rainwright – an attempt Valerian had tacitly allowed, by failing to order the appropriate follow-up. Still, he was polite, polite as he had ever been. He was not about to call Greta on her lies so early. In dealing with the Fae, some dishonesty was to be expected. “How is it that a citizen of Galba Roy and her pet corpse come to be in my company so very far away from home?”

Greta swallowed hard. “I was a prisoner of the court of Duke Adron, your majesty, and have been for a few years. I recently escaped capture and became lost in the Terrwald.”

Valerian looked to the troll, who had been listening silently, in the fashion typical of his kin. “That’s possible, your majesty. A Slaugh was hunting them.”

Valerian nodded. “Well, then, Miss Dean, it sounds like you’re in need of some protection. I have some use for a human clever enough to outsmart the likes of Adron. Or, more accurately, the tool she used to make good her escape.”

Valerian gazed hard at Archangel. “… Yes, I have a use for you indeed.”

---

Prodigal’s luck seemed to have carried into the rest of the companions. They had made landfall an hour into the wake of the great-grandfather of a storm which had been hounding them the night before. For their own part, they were unharmed, though the storm surge had destroyed much of the shoreline they used for a beach-head. To the surprise of all but banker, they found this beachhead deserted.

He’d forced them to wait there while he took Alexis to find ‘something’, returning nearly twenty minutes later with two large cases containing rifles and ammunition enough for those in the party who cared to make use of them – Edward, Francis, and Scion all abstaining for lack of proper training. Prince was very pleased with the quality. Factory-new rifles, of a modern production run, good solid construction. He didn’t need to see the Magnussun hallmark on the side to know who had made them, and instead shot Banker a stare which, with the two of them masked, conveyed less than it had been meant to intend.

What sort of deals are you making with those devils, Banker?

Alexis took leadership of their advance on the town, and in point of fact they largely meant to skirt around it. They’d scarcely begun to circle around when the city itself went up in flames, a great conflagration that took mere minutes to fill the sky above itself with thick, black smoke.

Prodigal chuckled, at that. “Right on time. That’d be Driver stealing his truck.”

At that, Francis rose an eyebrow, turning to look back at the Angel. “Is all that really necessary to steal a truck?”

“The city is held,” Niles said, as though that were explanation enough.

The crew plodded on. As they mounted a rise, they came to see that the far side of it was flooded heavily. Traversable, but certainly not on any kind of timetable, and the fact of their necessary rendezvous with Driver made it all the more unlikely they could proceed in that direction.

Eventually, Alexis sighed. “We have no choice. We’ll have to cut through the suburban section.”

“Well,” Edward conceded, “at least the enemy should mostly be concentrated in the center of town.”

The discussion dragged on while Niles perched, unconcerned, at the edge of the little hillock, leaning on what had once been a park signpost, staring out toward town. He could see, or supposed he could see, taller structures in the smoke, flickers of great towers and grand, terraced buildings for which he didn’t have a name. Everywhere, yellow banners flew, and those he could be certain had existed. They flapped in tatters on the breeze, marked in black in some manner which he couldn’t distinguish from here.

“Hold on a moment,” he said, as the others started moving out. “There’s more to this than meets the eye.”

Scion tilted his head in exaggerated fashion, clearly used to communicating in a mask. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we can’t just move through the city and assume we can shoot to kill anything that aims to stop us. This is going to be less like Stalingrad and more like Kraterburg.”

This comment, of course, caused a stir. The Angels certainly knew the truth of Kraterburg, having lived it, as had Edward, but for Alexis and her contingent, the party line had been that the great and slumbering volcano under Kraterburg had enjoyed a moment of wakefulness, a super-volcanic eruption the likes of which human history had yet to weather. Niles still didn’t know what had lead, directly, to the destruction of the city, but it had started with hundred-foot tentacles and the curious five-legged Crawlers that had proved so particular in the killing.

It had been proceeded with events stranger still, he shuddered to admit. His reliance on science to fill in for his lacking sense of waking and dreaming was wearing thin.

“What do you mean, like Kraterburg?”

“He means,” Edward said evenly, “that this is less the sort of work you do, and more the sort of work I do.”

He and Francis gestured compulsively and elegantly with the swords they suddenly drew in their right hands. A warding of some kind, Niles supposed.

He hoped it was enough. “Listen, Eddy, we’re talking Avert-Your-Eyes-type precautions.”

“This isn’t my first Rodeo, ‘Prince’,” Edward countered, all but spitting the name.

---

The Queen Pretender was deeply uncomfortable. This discomfort was not down to luxury – the rooftop court her people had constructed for her lacked none of Carcosa’s decadent pleasures. She could lounge in any of a dozen positions, secure in the thickness of her cushions and the remoteness of her place. Wine, brandy, and other consumables flowed freely here, accompanying a beautiful view of the captured city of Tererra. From here, she could see the evolving baroquity of the towers that surrounded her. A whole city, reaching for the sky, which in places was dotted with black stars, alien to the sensibilities of the survivors of her invasion, who huddled in tenacious pockets of resistance, rapidly swallowed by the advancing yellow tide, lay before her.

Somewhere in that city, she was convinced, was something to fear. Having once crossed paths with Vidcund Därk, she was not wholly prepared to see him again – his daring escape from Carcosa by means of plunging from a great height having been as dramatic as it was suicidal. That their next encounter should be in the throne room of her war-court was striking enough. That he should get so close to her with such murderous intent was unconscionable. Cassilda would have been livid, but little Maria’s fear overrode even the strong pull of her Role. She had seen Vidcund not as he claimed to be, but as he was. A great, swarming malice, born and bred by Hastur-knew-what for the sole purpose of destruction.

She paced the perimeter of her rooftop High Court, watching smoke as it rose on the western horizon, or momentary pockets of conflict as roving patrols of the Carcosan Host encountered pockets of resistance. For the most part, the humans of the city folded easily to the otherworldly advance, but a few – sundry Grey Angel renegades or Lipan loyalists full of piss and vinegar on tales of their ancestral hero, Acumen.

Her generals, the Subsumed Duke and the Phantom of Truth both, assured her the city was safely and irrevocably held. But the threat of Vidcund Därk and his unpredictable advances had her on edge. It was a fear Maria could leverage, coming up to the surface of relative sanity for a deeper breath. She was not Cassilda, though she played the role well. She was a scared little girl from Tererra, child of divorcées, a once-hapless victim of the Cult of the Sleeping Eye, whose lucky break had come in the form of a stray copy of a proscribed play. She’d thought she could play one side against another, countering one madness with another. But she’d miscalculated. The masque of Cassilda was too hard to take off, the role she’d fallen into too compelling to shake. It was hard to tell, even as herself, where the Cassilda part of her ended, and the Maria parts began.

Lost in this reflection, she’d missed the Phantom approaching her. Her first warning of his presence was the inexorable swordsman pulling her close, pinning her back against his chest as he buried her face in the palm of his hand. A cold slither began there, quickly plunging over and through her nostrils and lips, spreading across her cheeks and over her eyes, delving into her ears and plunging down her neck.

As her muffled screaming subsided, and the Pallid Mask took hold of her, the Phantom stepped back, adopting a posture of respectful attention, as the struggles stopped, and Cassilda drew herself up in courtly pride, folding her hands behind her back.

“Forgive me, your majesty, but the people need their queen.”
“Yes,” she said evenly. “Of course.”

It was a terrible fate, to fall into the hands of the Living God.

---

Though Alexis had the same respect for Prince’s warnings as Edward had – taken with a grain of salt, albeit seriously – she had proven to win the day in her assessment that Enemy was more dangerous than their propaganda. They had sprung their attack as the officers and their Grey Angel entourage were traversing a commercial avenue, emerging from windows of the town’s low, brick buildings to fire upon them with crossbows. Though they were adequately armed, the officers were not armoured, and the arrow-fire proved to be as deadly as if it had been bullets.

The Grey Angels provided the necessary bravado to advance, encouraging the others to fire upon the windows in waves, suppressing the enemy, or mowing down those braver than clever. Still, the traverse was slow and demanding. More than a few of the officers, pierced in the neck or chest, died where they fell. Respite only came when Scion, with a furious shriek, gestured sharply at the face of the nearest building, caving the facade inward as though his mimed punch had been actual and writ-large.

“Move!” Banker bellowed, and the men did, in fact, move, rushing down the length of the street in full advantage of the confusion and chaos they had caused. Scion alone knew when the next such attack would come, and the Carcosan host, usually so full of bravado, was smart enough to stay out from underfoot.

That, Prince thought, or we’re running into a trap…

As though by cue, a section of wall fell away as they rounded a corner, allowing a dozen or so of the Host to rush them, armed with swords and knives. At such close quarters the weapons were not wholly ineffective, being brought to bear more quickly and intuitively than rifles. Prince allowed his to fall aside by its strap, blocking a strike with a reverse-gripped nightstick, swinging his other arm up and free. The Detective Special kicked, its plus-pressure round ripping into the Carcosan who had attempted to skewer him. Prince retracted in horror as the round’s damage was made manifest – where a gout of blood had been expected, the effect was something more like firing into cottage cheese, with the texture and consistency of the creature’s aersolized body being surprisingly similar. For a moment, he even seemed to absorb the blow, before Niles forced the weight of the other’s blade off his weapon, and the creature crumbled.

Fear overrode the need for answers. He backpedaled, repeating the same trick as another stepped in to take the first’s place. “Keep moving!”

He saw Edward and Francis in the thick of it, uniquely suited to this fight, and perhaps battle-hardened enough to be unphased by their alien opponents. The pair were a whirlwind of steel, thinning the herd as they tried to fight their way to Alexis in startling, silent co-ordination. Prodigal and Scion had fallen back as soon as the wall came down, having been furthest from the chaos to begin with, and now the former was unloading his handguns into the crowd, while Scion flung bricks from the rigged wall into, and often through, the fencers.

Prince felt the edge of a car fender at his hip and reflexively rolled across the vehicle’s hood, landing in the relative safety of the far side, where he could force his shallow and rapid breath to deepen, bringing with it his usual clarity and unreality. While the average day seemed to border on a dream, this was even more unreal, almost theatrical. As he looked, the buildings seemed to resolve into false-fronts, the skyline a painted backdrop, Scion’s bricks painted polystyrene.

As he looked, he could see that, physics aside, the Carcosans were continuing to flood from the space behind the broken wall, as though stepping in from the wings of some stage he couldn’t quite perceive. He holstered his handgun, switching to the rifle again. He fired and volleyed into the throng, focusing on those furthest from the main fray, which were both the safest targets and the most likely to be actually dangerous.

Down the street, another wall had crumbled, and it was Banker who responded. He moved down the street in a blur – more moving colour than form – taking a position not unlike Niles’ own. His discipline was frightful. Unlike Prince, who had become indiscriminate, he was making every shot count, taking advantage of the unusually soft targets to decapitate each in turn. He had a few moments of advantage, before the new horde began to turn on him, advancing at a rush. To his credit, he remained calm, first moving around the car, then, as it became clear he was encircled, springing up onto it.

That won’t work, Prince realized, and shouted as much to Prodigal. “Prodigal, Banker needs cover!”

Before the other could bring himself to bear, there was a gout of flame, and Banker and the vehicle both vanished, as though a trap door had opened beneath them. Scion hissed, and for a moment, the world went dark.

When the lights came back up, so to speak, there was an eerie and ringing silence. Prince lifted himself from the pavement, where he found himself, under a light and ashy pall of dust. The scene was chaos. The skirmish had moved further down the road, with Prince’s party fighting on the run, fleeing under the covering fire they themselves provided. The immediate area looked like a bomb had gone off, but there was none of the characteristic smell of chemical explosives. Smoke hung about them, but of no discernable source. There was no fire presenting itself to Niles’ nostrils.

He took just a moment to check the load of his revolver, his rifle having suffered a suspicious-looking bend in its barrel, and darted to the left. The gamble paid off – he could cover excellent ground at a full run with no concern for the enemy, for the swarming Carcosan host seemed ignorant of his separation, and had made no move to stop him. From here, along this avenue, his suspicion of the buildings having been facades to facilitate a trap was reinforced. In places he could see that the buildings were framed only on three sides, and the sturdy-looking brickworks were revealed to be little more than set-craft. It was here, in the wings of the world, that he lost consciousness again, coming too only as he bounded, inexplicably, out of a second-floor window.

Landing at a roll, he brought himself back to his feet, driving the rounded point of his night-stick into the breastbone of the nearest Carcosan, where it sank, as though the figure was filled with a soft, slushy interior.

As before, a quick report from the Detective Special flung the creature backward, sans tete, and Prince was free to swing his nightstick around in his hand, gripping it by its cross-member in a reversed grip, to add a stronger bar of protection along his fore-arm, which he had just used to repel the sharp edge of the next incoming attack.

This was no carcosan saber, nor crude weapon of a pressganged local, but the bayonet of one of Alexis’s fellow officers. The man’s face showed no sign of recognition, in spite of the stark contrast between his allies – the Grey Angels – and the garishly-clad invaders. The officer shouted, and Prince was forced onto the defensive, moving reflexively backward and toward the others. He moved defensively, betraying a prowess greater than most police could brag of with this weapon, greater, in fact, than he himself had thought he had.

It was fortune, more than skill, that got him his opening, a brief glimmer of a chance which had allowed him to fire into the man’s hip, causing the soldier to buckle. As training had conditioned him, he kept his weapon trained on the man. All around them, the fighting stopped. The strange, opressive, buzzing silence took hold again.

The officer lurched back to his feet, mouth widening into an impossibly wide grimmace. His yellowing eyes bore into Niles’s soul as he bellowed with brandy-scented breath, “Have you seen the Yellow Sign, my brother?”

Behind his mask, Prince blinked once, uttering a flat “No.” Then, he fired twice, letting the recoil of his weapon track the shots upward. The soldier vanished in a puff of that same, grubby muck all the other enemies had.

He turned to the others in their silence, and strode past them, toward the edge of town.

—

Of the various rivals and potential-enemies Kline occasionally called upon, he had to admit that Walter Smith-Jamison was among his favorites. Beyond simply being personable, the Viscount Rainwright’s Butler was a living encyclopedia of decadence, in a word. He always arranged for subtly, splendidly appointed venues for their meetings. In this case, the Butler had designated a small, traditional restaurant in the Dean countryside, as far south to Galba Roy as still existed. The teahouse had a conservatory full of vibrant tropical plants. Somewhere, Kline’s ears told him, there was a water feature.

Walter was late, which was uncharacteristic, and so Kline had busied himself with trying to spot the Butler’s entourage. He knew that the Viscount’s right hand surely traveled with personal security, but so far, over nearly a century of dealings with the man, he’d yet to pick out individual people. Every time he thought he had, the Viscount appeared himself, meaning they had actually been Rainwright’s men.

Was it possible the butler was foolish enough not to maintain an entourage? Or was he keeping aside the best part of the Viscount’s men – the subtlest – to himself?

The answer would have to once again go unresolved, as Walter suddenly arrived, shaking the Professor’s hand as the other man rose to greet him. “Ah, Walter, there you are.”

“Terribly sorry for the delay, Professor. The road conditions are about what you would expect, given the state of things.”

“Oh, not at all, not at all,” Kline said, neither acknowledging the fault nor altogether reprimanding the man for his tardiness. The two danced a delicate dance. Kline had learned, over a century of dealing with the butler, that he was at minimum his master’s equal in the game they were all playing. It was possible he was even the man’s better, which was an interesting prospect.

If it was true, it made Walter something Kline was starting to run out of – a true rival, if not one in the larval stage. “Are you certain it was the road? I hear the Viscount’s grounds are suffering something of an infestation at the moment.”

Walter’s expression remained impassive as he sipped the tea that had been waiting for him. It was a move of remarkable trust, that he should drink something an enemy had had unfettered access to. Not that Kline had spiked the drink, but he could have. So was it that Walter had trusted him not to? Or was it that the butler didn’t need to concern himself with what was in it? “The grounds are quite secure, in spite of what you may have heard. The country house has always been useful in the Viscount’s studies.”

“Miss Bell’s drama notwithstanding, of course.”

Walter smiled slightly, being gracious in accepting the man’s rather blunt point. “Of course.”

“Walter, I wanted to speak to you today because there is a rumour floating around that concerns me.”

Walter sipped his tea again, nostrils flaring slightly as Kline uncorked his own bottle of wine. “There are a great many rumours that concern you, Professor Kline.”

Kline exhaled his amusement, not quite a laugh or a huff. “There are some in the Society who believe I am to blame for the present situation in the Union.”

Walter’s face returned to practiced, card-playing neutrality. This was, understandably, a delicate subject, not least of which because he was the one who had started the rumour, through his contacts with the Society. The conversation derailed slightly when a server encountered the pair of them, and Walter had still not re-engaged the point for several minutes afterward. “I can’t pretend to speak for the entire Society, Donnovan. I only know a few of the members.”

“Of course, of course.”

“However,” Walter continued, “there is a feeling that allowing Maria Frost access to the unabridged King was a fatal error on someone’s part.”

“And that someone was me,” Kline asked plaintively, showing neither annoyance nor outrage but feeling a fair amount of both.

Walter shrugged, just barely, before returning his cup to his saucer. “I didn’t say that. I certainly don’t believe it was you. We’ve known each other for a while, Donnovan. Such a blundering gamble seems outside your usual competence.”

Kline stewed for a while, on that, and the two received their food in silence. Was Walter being honestly complementary? Or was he being backhandedly slanderous? “… My analysis of the situation has been that whoever allowed Maria Frost that access had done so to undermine the power of the Cult of the Sleeping Eye. The single action of her escape forced Creena’s hand onto the more radical path she ultimately took.”

“That’s one means of analysis,” Walter set the empty cup down beside the empty plate, folding his hands politely in his lap. “Though, if I may say so, there were safer means to achieve that goal. Whoever took that action was possessed of the same suicidal self-interest as Creena herself… or had access to better foresight than I do.”

Kline tilted his head slightly. “You’ve always been pretty good at reading the board a few moves ahead, Walter.”

“One or Two,” the butler countered. “Thank you for saying so. I wonder, though, if the price is worth the prize. If the hidden actor we’ve been discussing saw this far ahead, he was a fool.”

Kline paused. “It’s possible to defeat the play. It’s been done before.”

“Never on such a scale,” Walter said. “Our player has placed too much faith in the pieces themselves, I think. I would argue they have a responsibility, now, to act.”