Taym lies on the floor of his parlor. This is his usual locale when he's had a few drinks too many, which means it's his usual locale.
Just as he normally is when he adopts this state, he's bare to the waist, his skinny body with its dog bite scars grey in the light of dawn, and shaking. He is always so cold, but his clothes always feel like bindings and choke him and restrict him, and so off they come and he copes with the shivering.
He doesn't know where he left Bird. He doesn't know for sure, even, how he got home. The events after the glamor lifted are a painting under a spilled cup, dreamlike and without delineation.
He thinks of synonyms: glamor, delusion, hallucination. Apparition.
Rolling over to dry heave into the coal bucket--he'd already gotten rid of everything, of the fruit, of the goddamned wine, at the front step, but he heaves anyway--he reaches blindly for Maple, who inserts her soft nose into his cupped and shaking fingers reassuringly.
She is strangely steady, her usual trembling and starting shaken off like snow, and he does something he does rarely--something that frightens him--and reaches out to feel, gently, the shape of her thoughts, if she will allow it. To see whether she hides her fear for him or has truly conquered it. He meets a wall, and withdraws, stymied and more afraid than before. <******** 'im," spits Janet. Maeve is hurriedly directing the men in the back lot, rushing their armfuls of lumber. They have broken ground in Oldcastle, but Maeve is not nearly ready to relinquish her bit of Palisade devoted to Warden-training. She has relayed the events to Janet in a clipped, brisk voice that does nothing to conceal the electric excitement jolting along under the skin.
"Language, Janet," scolds Maeve, but it is a half-hearted ******** 'im," she repeats defiantly, crossing her arms over her chest and sucking deeply on a cigarette. No one can scowl over a cigarette like Janet. "The man ********... ate a soldier, or something, and you tell me to watch my language?" Finnavair stomps a hoof as though she agrees, and Lily starts.
"You'll need to watch more than that. A temper does nothing for you on a battlefield. Steady heart, steady hands."
There is no fear here. There is fear in many of the curious onlookers gathered gaping at the gate, who've heard the stories from Oldcastle and tempered their sarcastic comments about the old madam's presumed insanity.
If anything, Maeve's detachment from reality has never been clearer: where terror should be there is only a tremor of thrill. Maeve is eager for the battlefield, and she thirsts for a fight like a green soldier raised on propaganda. In the old stories the Wardens always win, and there is glory, there. It is written in the histories so clearly, and books, Maeve thinks, must not lie.
There is no fear in Janet, either. She flicks the ash away as though it's offended her, and she trembles with raw and barely-constrained rage.
"What's the deal with the ******** tree?" she demands, and Maeve shakes her head, vague and distracted.
"I'll pull down some of the older books, do some digging," she says. She'd never had much energy for that sort of research, not when there were so many battlefields littering the pages, distracting as a trumpet's cry.
-*-
"I have flown on the wings of the crow above the fallen on the fields," says Patience, and for once Agnes is not delighted with the theatrically-inflected sound of her own voice repeating poetry. She shoos the bird away and it flutters indignantly to Samhain's antlers, where it rattles its wings into place and sulkily adds: "May my spirit fly to my lover, whose ring I should have given before I went to fight the war."
"Shut up," snaps Agnes. She shivers but does not close the window, instead closing her eyes to lean into the cool air and let it bathe her aching head.
The morning light does no favors to her hangover, which she suspects is only partially from wine. Her powder runs in streaks, her fine gauzy dress torn in a way that is less romantic than she would have hoped, and Agnes remembers the events that had come at the end of the evening with numbness, as though they had happened to someone else.
Wars happen to other people. Samhain stands tense and alert at her side, focused as a pointer dog, gazing on the far edges of the fields, as though waiting for the encroaching enemy even now. She places a hand on his shoulder, willing him to relax, but he only shudders as though shooing a fly. Never before has his face beneath the impassive skull seemed so wrought with emotion. Never has he seemed so human. She barely recognizes him.
"Stop that," she whispers. "Nothing's going to happen." Even when she says the words she feels herself believing them. "And if it does it'll happen out there. We're safe here. They don't need us."
Samhain tips an ear, but otherwise does not acknowledge her. He looks like a warhorse, like a creature made for fighting. He looks as though he wants to fight.
"They don't need us," she repeats.
She tries to imagine how romantic it would be, white-gowned and with a dripping sword, astride Samhain as the dark buck leapt through the wolves like an avenging demon. The thought is appealing for a fleeting second, but quickly becomes repugnant. She turns away from him, away from the window, and towards bed.
"We'll just wait for it all to blow over."
-*-
"A silver tree."
Gramarye leans back from the scrying bowl. Of course she'd already heard about the tree, but that didn't stop her from making it out in the swirls of ink. A good diviner knows her fortunes beforehand, and Gramarye fancies herself quite good. She wipes her sweating brow with a skinny hand and Dirty flaps onto the table, upsetting a bottle of liquor which Gramarye, luckily, had had the foresight to empty regardless. Nothing about her demeanor betrays the fact that a pint of whiskey occupies her belly.
The rooster pecks angrily at the dry tabletop and Gramarye runs her finger along the edge of the bowl thoughtfully.
"A silver tree, and blood."
Standing, she dusts her hands on her skirts, pulling down clusters of herbs from the rafters and mumbling as she does.
"Harefoot, salvia. Lavender, for peace."
Perhaps an onlooker might assume that Gramarye readies in some small way for the war ahead. But Gramarye is a practical sort. What is there to do now, before the battlefields are marked, before the wounded are carried in gasping for relief, before blood requires blessing? There are no bodies to sanctify or soldiers to bless or enemy lines to hex, not yet.
There will be visitors, tomorrow. More than usual, perhaps. They will want the little things, the things that Gramarye can give them: peace of mind, wise words. The elixirs and foul-smelling concoctions will cement the illusion that she has done something other than allow them to help themselves. She pulls down a cluster of fresh blackberries and tosses one to Dirty.
"We will be very busy soon," she tells him, and he clucks in what seems like agreement, and the juice of the berries runs black down his beak, like old blood down the beak of a battlefield crow.
-*-
The battlefield. Like he was eager to start a footrace, the b*****d. In distraction Taym reaches for the poker to see if he can swing it, but it is a useless and shaking stick in his unsteady grasp and he can't will himself to stand, anyway. Maple folds herself gently to the floor to press her chin to his head, and he wraps his arms around her neck, white-knuckled in his efforts to steady his grip on his makeshift weapon. And to his shame, to his unutterable, terrifying shame, he begins to sob like a little boy.
He remembers the men on the floor, and the man stooped like the stretched shadow of a vulture. It reminded him of dead cattle on the road at home--home, his mind repeats to him incredulously--with the gaunt birds on their flanks tearing.
"I didn't want this," he barely manages to say, guilty as he says it, trying to stem the flood of resentment and failing. But she doesn't shun him, or shake her head or lay back her ears. She whuffs gently into his hair, presses against him to let him lean heavy and useless into her neck. She forgives him in all his shortcomings, and it shakes him the harder. He cries like a child cries, uninhibited and choking, even though there had been children (or near enough, to Taym's eyes) who'd only stood up straighter and given the Queen a look as steady as a soldier's.
There is still a green silk ribbon tied around Maple's ear, a festive little dainty he'd put on her like she was a kitten. He thinks of the girl by the door and Gwyn's gift to her, and he thinks of Maple's hooves, petite and shining, striking the coarse fur of a wolf and the blood running over them. He does not think of himself on her back when she does, because he cannot. He can't fight, and he'd thought until this moment, when she is steadfast and silent, that Maple couldn't either. He reaches up and clumsily, angrily, impeded by his shaking and by the tears fogging his eyes, he struggles with the knot. When it comes loose he tosses it away over her shoulder.
Taym can't imagine ribbons in his future. He can't imagine much of anything but a portentous certainty that looms heavy from the shadows of the upcoming times, a quiet tick mark next to his name that is written in ink and cannot be removed.
-*-
They watch the working men, Janet scowling and Maeve stoic, and finally it's Janet that speaks again.
"Queen's got a stag and a tame fairy, eh?"
"A stag, at least." Maeve watches Finnavair, and it is obvious that she's weighing her Guardian's merits against those of the Queen's stag. Her mouth thins. "We must find out what causes that. They are so much more... formidable, after whatever it is that awakens in them."
Janet says nothing, but she's watching Lily with shrewd eyes. Between the two of them, girl and deer, it is easier to imagine Janet striking down a wolf.
"What about the fairy then?"
"I don't know. I do not know if he is to be trusted, and had no opportunity to speak to him. There were crowds clamoring to get a question in, and stupid frivolous questions nearly all. That damned drunk who comes here every month on family money mocked him, the fool."
"Seems like a damned picture book."
"It isn't, though." Maeve's sudden smile is redolent with satisfaction. "A stag lies by the throne and one of the Autumn Court stands near it."
Janet grinds the remainder of her cigarette beneath her heel. "Long live the ******** Queen."
Finnavair bucks impatiently, and lowers her head to charge at some imaginary foe.
-*-
"I'm afraid," Petra whispers.
"I know," says Spokelse. Her breath is warm on Petra's neck.
Their camp by the side of the road has long since lost its fire, burned down to embers. The stories have already come through, and Petra cannot sleep. Every bark of a dog makes her tense; every shift in the familiar shadows has her reaching for her knife. Spokelse's soothing words cannot prevent her heart from racing when a crow suddenly rattles overhead.
"It's real, isn't it? All the... everything. It's real."
"It's real," says Spokelse gently. "As real as you and I."
"When you were a fawn I saw you kick a dog that growled at you. I thought--I thought, I hope that's the most that ever comes of that." She laughs a bitter laugh, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. She has a feral look to her now, sleeping mostly outdoors, because Spokelse can no longer come in. It is easier to be outside and with her than to be indoors and alone. The thoughts that swim between them are not enough to sustain her, and she craves her arms around Spokelse's neck, the reassuring power of her stride when Petra walks alongside her, or climbs onto her back.
"Why is it happening, Spokelse?" she asks, after a long silence. She speaks as much to dispel it as anything. "I don't... I'm not a soldier. I'm... I'm just a little..."
"I do not know. Sometimes I feel as though I remember things--glimpses, branches and eyes, and battlefields and pawprints in the snow--but it all feels like remembering a dream. But know this: if it is my duty to do this, to be this, I am grateful that I am able to fight alongside you. You may be afraid, but you have the heart and stomach of a soldier. Fear is no shame, but retreat is. You have never once thought of running." She says this with certainty: they nearly never close the bond now, and it is true. Terror has haunted Petra's days and nightmares her sleep, but never once has she considered the possibility that they might flee.
Petra tightens her callused little fingers around the heavy knife Ayle had helped teach her to throw, the one she practices now for hours a day while imagining shaggy grey fur under her makeshift targets. She sinks her other hand into the thick fur of Spokelse's elegant neck and tightens her fingers.
"It isn't fair," she whispers.
"I know," says Spokelse, her voice soft and fragile and brokenhearted. "I know."
She holds her head high, and they watch the empty road as though waiting for the regiments. Spokelse feels Petra's fingers on her neck, and they are so tiny and frail, and so cold and so callused, that she experiences for the first moment fleeting doubt--a thought she carefully guards from Petra.
She's just a child. Gazing into the morning fog, she holds steady. That is all they can do: hold steady, and wait.
