“Christ and all the saints,” swore Blanche. “The poor Queen!”
Amicia turned-with more venom than Gabriel had ever seen. Amicia looked old. She had lines on her face that she’d never had, and even the torchlight was unkind. Gabriel, who had two bad cuts on his head, a blinding headache and a left hand so sore as to penetrate all that, assumed he looked as bad.
He turned to Toby. “Get my harness off,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be attacked while the Queen gives birth. And I’m about to drop.”
As if on cue, Bad Tom appeared at the far door, by the donkeys. He had a long sword in his hand.
“Barn’s all ours,” he said. He nodded to Lord Corcy.
Corcy had been replaced at the water kettle by Nell, and he stood with a hand to the small of his back. “Weren’t you for killing us all, an hour back?”
Tom Lachlan laughed. “Nothing personal,” he said. “Better this way.”
Corcy nodded.
It was a big room, a third of the barn, and the squires and pages moved in among the knights, disarming them. The metal falling on the stone floor made a racket.
“Quiet!” demanded Amicia. “Can you so-called gentlemen not manage to let this poor woman have a little peace?”
The squires began to move about more quietly. Somehow, the scrape of metal on the floor seemed even louder.
The Queen screamed.
Ghause stood in her citadel, amidst the dark trees and the bright cascade of flowers.
The whole vastness of her working was all one brilliant plant with deep roots and a carefully cultivated single yellow rose that was as big and lush a blossom as the real had ever seen. It was perhaps more perfect for never having known real weather or real bees.
Ghause did not pray, as she did not think it fitting to pray when she was about to kill. But she did reach out to her lady.
“You promised me revenge,” she reminded her patron.
And she thought-I hope Thorn is watching. Perhaps he’ll slink home.
One slim hand reached out, and plucked the rose.
The world screamed.
Thorn could not smile in triumph, but the triumph was there. “I knew she would have to do it,” he said to the rain and the darkness.
But Ash was elsewhere.
Thorn raised his own net of cobweb and deceit and false guidance-camouflage and deception such as nature practised on herself-as long prepared as her working. Into her magnificent black cathedral of a curse he launched his own working so that it nested inside, like the resident mice and bats and moths in a castle.
“Goodbye, Ghause,” he said.
At the Queen’s scream, Amicia stood.
Gabriel suddenly understood that this was not a matter of the birth.
Blanche caught the Queen’s hand.
Gabriel stepped straight into his palace. There, Prudentia stood on her plinth. She frowned.
“It’s your mother,” she said. “Oh, Gabriel-”
Gabriel pushed open the door to the aethereal. He loosed workings that he kept ready, a careful barrage-his own shield first, as he had learned from bitter experience, and then his glittering tapestry working.
He spat names at his statues and his signs as his room whirled about him.
In the real, his heart had beaten once.
Then, having done what he could, he stepped to the door.
Prudentia moved to stop him. “Master,” she cried. “This is death, come for the Queen, from your mother.”
Gabriel nodded. “I’ve made all my decisions,” he said.
“I’m no fan of your mother, boy. She killed me. But this-you would give your life to baulk her?”
Gabriel set his jaw in a way that those who knew him often dreaded. “Yes.”
Prudentia stepped out of the way. “Goodbye.”
“I’ll be back, Pru,” he said. Then he stepped out of his palace.
In the real, Toby saw the captain pause, and his face did-that thing.
Toby had the spear to hand-he’d just put it by the fire, having oiled the shaft. Nell saw him, and without more thought he snatched it and threw it to her, and she pressed it into the captain’s unmoving hands.
In the aethereal, the curse was like a thick black curtain of felt-if an entire quadrant of the sky could be made of black felt that extended for an infinite distance.
Gabriel found himself on the infinite plain of the true aethereal. He was not alone. He and Amicia stood side by side, and Desiderata stood a pace behind them.
The curse was so remarkable that Gabriel wasted a non-breath in awe.
“I will not surrender,” Desiderata said. Gabriel watched it rush at them.
There was something in it-something riding it. He had the senses-thanks mostly to Harmodius-to see the fine details in the aethereal.
He had the time to curse his bad fortune. And his mother.
And the delightful irony that if he could reach her to tell her that he was about to offer his life to defend her target, she would relinquish the working. That and other ironies. It was all-absurd.
He had nothing to lose, and the aethereal offered the illusion of time.
“What did you promise God for my life?” he asked Amicia.
Amicia didn’t look at him. “Everything, of course,” she said.
“All I did was cast a little love charm,” he said.
She turned. Desiderata laughed aloud, for all that her existence was about to be blotted out. “She is not charmed,” Desiderata said. “By my powers I tell you.”
Gabriel wanted to grin like a boy with his first kiss. “Take power from me, Amicia. All you can. Spend, and save not.”
The three of them joined hands.
“No,” Desiderata said. “Let me.”
Amicia turned her head away from Gabriel, and began, “In nomine patri…”
She began to walk forward into the black, and they went with her, arms raised.
And then, in the way of the aethereal, he held the spear.
Too much time, and no time.
He thought that the idea of felt was itself interesting. Usually, the manifestation of the working had something to do with the caster-and everything to do with the context.
Gabriel thought-how do you defeat a mountain of felt?
And then it filled their aethereal horizon like a sudden summer storm.
Gabriel cut with the spear.
But at the moment that they met the curse, it overcame everything.
Thorn’s working was the flight of a butterfly passing a spider’s web.
But Ghause was an old, powerful spider, and in that moment her foolishness was revealed, and she saw her adversary’s working.
Discovered, but deep inside her defences, Thorn had no choice but to strike. He enveloped her power, the better to subsume her-to take every iota of her essence. Her soul. Her power.
Ghause laughed. “Richard Plangere-is that all you want of me?” she asked, and her voice dripped with the seductive contempt of an experienced woman.