Tarragon glanced at Morgan, the lantern she held, and then at Heser the Cheg. “No.”

  “Good.”

  “I would call you an imbecile,” Tarragon continued, as if Morgan had said nothing. “I would say you are unfit to rule a just kingdom. And I might⁠—”

  “Mind your tone,” Morgan bridled.

  “Mind your face,” Tarragon snapped. Morgan felt the sting, but long years atop the Raven Throne kept her expression a mask. I hope it’s a mask, anyway. “The maybe-Vhemin is risking all for your kingdom. Your people. Bringing justice to a rudderless land.”

  “Hmm,” Heser the Cheg said, in the manner of a man with something on his mind.

  Morgan ignored him. “I do not need the whelp’s help to regain a kingdom I’ve not lost. A quick tally.” She counted on her fingers. “I’ve lost a ship, and some good men. My capital is aflame, but it isn’t the first time. My lickspittle brother thinks to govern, but the man is incapable of tying his shoelaces unaided, so I’ve little to fear there. With a few good people I will put this to rights.”

  “Hmm,” Heser the Cheg offered, but louder this time.

  “I think I would like to get out of this lantern,” Hitch said.

  “I think I would like to not be surrounded by cowards,” Tarragon said. “You’re afraid, queen of nothing, ruler of invisible subjects. You’re afraid because you have tasted death, and Evanne rules that realm better than you hold this one. Your power is that of rituals, held in the muddy hands of Vhemin, and all might wonder how one of your lordly line got it.” She looked down her nose at Morgan, an impressive feat because the sprite didn’t come half-way up the Raven Queen’s shin. “I don’t think your ancestors lay with the enemy. I just think you’re made of the same dirty material.”

  Morgan lunged for the creature, and there was Heser the Cheg, the impossible man the size of an ox, face as impassive one too. His hand was up at her chest height but didn’t touch her. “My queen.”

  “She dares!”

  “Hmm,” he said.

  Morgan hissed. “You agree with the creature?”

  He gave that some thought, looking as if he were chewing some internal cud. “Not on all matters.”

  “Sirrah,” she snapped. “You forget yourself.”

  “I have forgotten many things. I’ve lost my name once or twice. I lost my way more than that. Found myself in your house, rose through service, then lost that too. But never have I forgotten myself.” He lowered his hand. “I remember the Raven. A black bird, but so clever. I remember when you reached out to the lost, brought them close, tried to build something with the sorcerers who’d been hunted by the Tresward. Worked with the Knights, those who could see, and did something great.” He stood aside, showing Tarragon behind him. Giving her permission, perhaps. “I have never seen nor remembered you to be weak. Perhaps I was wrong.”

  Weak. Morgan wanted to scream. Curl her fingers into a fist, slug Heser upside the head, and storm out. She felt her jaw clench, feared her teeth might break. Heard the snarl more than felt it, and knew the mask wasn’t holding. “You think I am weak?”

  He didn’t meet her eyes. “I said I remembered no time when you were.”

  “You mean to say something else. Just get it out.”

  The slightest hint of a wrinkle touched the corner of his mouth. By the Three, is he smiling? “Tarragon is small. No, sprite, I mean no disrespect. It is merely a fact. I am large.” He breathed deep, chest expanding, then let it out. “Only the weak hit the small. That is all.”

  The Raven Queen felt her gut clench. She deserves it. Morgan wanted to storm past Heser, lay about with righteous fury, make the fairy take it back⁠—

  Righteous fury? There would be nothing right about it. Morgan stilled herself, straightened, and breathed for a moment. “And what do the strong do?”

  “Hmm.” Heser the Cheg sagged a little. “For truth, I don’t know. My queen, I have strayed. I am not the man you need. I’m too old to hold the blade steady.” She raised an eyebrow at this, looking at the breadth of his shoulders, the biceps that were like coconuts, and the chest that would make a Vhemin jealous. “I believe I owe Evanne. I have shared a road with her. We tried to drag her to us. And,” he waved a hand at her look, “Knight Champion Vertiline. We needed aid against your brother. Help against those who turned on us. We brought our best to Imshir and failed. Barret … fell.” He looked at Tarragon. “There have been precious few who stood by us. Fewer still who did so with nothing to gain. The fairy. The bard. And the spectre.”

  She waited for him to continue, but the silence stretched between them. “And you think we should help them?”

  “I think they are helping us. The least we can do is meet them halfway.”

  Morgan sighed. “Fuck.”

  “Good talk,” said the lantern. “Can someone get me out of here?”

  “About that.” Tarragon was cautious, as if she felt she and Morgan still needed a set-to. “I have an idea.”

  “Oh?” Morgan lifted the lantern. I still like the idea of a talking lantern. What a shame. “Let me hear it.”

  “Um.” Tarragon toed the ground. “Well, before when I said you were dirty⁠—”

  “Yes, yes, lay with sows, all of that.” Morgan rolled her eyes. “What of it?”

  “We need you to be dirtier.”

  Heser the Cheg led them. He stalked like a very quiet anvil. Tarragon sat on his shoulder, clutching his ear, the man’s bald head giving her no purchase. Her guardsman didn’t seem to mind.

  Morgan followed with the lantern. The task seemed impossible. Tarragon spoke of a room of relics, explaining they were probably tokens used by the vampire to bind his thralls. He needed a ritualist to make more. Odds are, the fairy hazarded, a good ritualist could unmake the ones he has. Then she’d bit her lip, which was perhaps the cutest thing Morgan had seen in her life, and added, It’s not that I don’t think you’re a good ritualist. Hic.

  The keep was a sprawl. Ravenswall’s castle had fewer twists, Morgan would swear her life on it. Tarragon insisted they go up, so Heser the Cheg tried to find stairs. They rounded a promising bend and came face to face with a startled man. He had the look of a woodcutter. A bit simple but made of stern stuff. He wore armour and a surprised expression, a broadsword belted to his hip.

  Heser the Cheg said, “Ah,” leaned back, and punched the man. Not in the face, but right in the chest, into that armoured breastplate.

  The man flew back as if kicked by a horse to clatter in a stunned pile. A low, long groan came from him. Tarragon fluttered her wings uncertainly. “Why didn’t you just knock him out?”

  “An unconscious man is unlikely to tell us about the stairs.” Heser the Cheg stamped forward, grabbed the front of the woodcutter’s cuirass, and hefted the man to a sitting position. “Stairs?”

  Morgan noticed the cuirass was dented where Heser’s fist hit. The woodcutter looked at Heser, then at his fist, somehow magically cocked for another hit. “That way.” His chin jerked from the direction he’d come.

  “Thank you.” Heser stood, let the man’s breastplate go, then helped him up.

  “No, thank you,” said the man, then fell over unconscious as Heser’s fist clocked him in the jaw.

  Morgan wasn’t sure if she should gasp or smile. Tarragon glittered, then put a tiny kiss against the large man’s ear. “I know why Evanne likes your style.”

  When this is done, I will owe her nothing. Morgan stamped up stairs, the refrain beating in her head. Owing people leads to repayment plans you can never meet. It leads to overreach of the royal treasury. Before you know it, you’ve lost a kingdom.

  That was it, wasn’t it? She’d lost Or’sen. For a moment her feet slowed on the old stone steps, sickness in her gut, hand against the worn stone wall. Tarragon glanced back, saw her distress, and flitted to land on the railing beside her hand. The fairy was worn thin, faded like ancient parchment, but by the Three, still in the fight. “Are you okay?”

  “Your concern for my welfare is touching,” Morgan said.

  “I’m not concerned for your welfare. I’m concerned whether you’ll be able to do your job, so we can get out of here without dying, or worse, becoming undying. That would be bad.” The fairy didn’t glimmer, just stood there, looking like she weighed about thirty kilograms for all her tiny size.

  “Fairies can become the living dead?”

  “Evanne could,” Tarragon said. “Fairies can only be fairies. We’re really good at it.” She glanced away. “I don’t hate you, you know.”

  “You don’t?” The Raven Queen felt a smile on her lips. Delicate, only half there, but miraculous.

  “I hate what they made you.” The fairy cocked her head. “If I look at you like this,” she framed Morgan in her hands, as if the queen were a painting, “I can see the girl you were, then the young woman you had to be. And I can’t believe what you are now is what you wanted, when you were a girl.”

  Morgan saw Heser the Cheg pause, the man fidgeting, wanting to press on, but also tethered to her. His fate, hers. I am responsible for what happens to this man. The thought was another kind of debt, but it didn’t feel bad. Important, perhaps. “You see all that from thirty centimetres of height?”

  “Not really.” Tarragon dropped her hands. “Evanne told me.”

  “The Vhemin?” Morgan frowned. “She’s sixteen.”

  “She’s Evanne.” Tarragon glimmered, suddenly bashful, one foot behind the other. “Can you do your job?”

  “This is a difficult conversation to follow. You flit from topic to topic.”

  Tarragon clapped her hands, surprisingly loud for such a tiny creature. “Keep up! Bigs are slow. I get it. But you’re not stupid. You made all the good things in the world, once. You can do it again.” She took wing, struggling up to Heser the Cheg, alighting on the big man’s shoulder.

  Heser the Cheg didn’t seem to mind.

  We made all the good things. We can do it again.

  Morgan looked at her hands. Long, delicate, soft. Used to ruling, not doing. We made all the bad things too though, didn’t we? We made everything stop, when it was so good. She glanced up. “I don’t know if we should be in charge.”

  “First smart thing you’ve said all day,” Tarragon said. “Now hurry up.”

  “Please,” said the lantern. “It’s cramped in here.”

  The room of talismans and relics smelled of age. When Morgan was young, her father had shown her the castle library. He’d explained, hand out, Everything you need is here. Then he’d smiled, touched her head, then her chest. And here, and here.

  She hadn’t understood, until she’d found a book where a princess lived in a castle. Kept prisoner by a dragon, a thing that breathed fire and ate knights. Not Tresward, just the ordinary kind of knights, because a dragon needed to be mindful around even a lowly Adept.

  Morgan loved how the library smelled. It wasn’t until much later she understood the dragon was an allegory, a creature that stood in place of something the reader needed to see. From one side, it was the dangers untold, the thing we must face to get the prize.

  I am not a prize, she realised when she was eight. I am the knight. The princess, too. And the dragon is doubt. It is fear. It is the uncertainty in the hearts of men.

  And then she’d realised, I am no man.

  The library smelled of knowledge and wisdom, timeless and ancient. She’d loved that smell.

  This room smelled nothing like it. It was the crooked part of time, where mould grew, and all the lessons were bad. Where doubt festered, and the hearts of men failed.

  “We are here, my queen,” Heser the Cheg murmured. He perhaps felt it important to remind her, because she’d been standing in the doorway for thirty seconds.

  “She knows,” Tarragon hissed. “Give her a minute. It’s a lot to take in.”

  The fairy wasn’t wrong. There was a hearth that promised warmth with a little rekindling, but the wood was gone. The walls were lined with knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. A helmet. A spinning wheel. A hoe beside a fishing rod. A wheel from a ship. Canvas. The shuttle of a loom. A sword, but bent and old. A halter too large for a horse. It went on and on, and made the room feel large, as if Morgan was eight, in Ravenswall’s library again.

  “The doubts of men,” she said.

  Tarragon glittered in the gloom. “The who?”

  Morgan bared her teeth. “Have you ever met a dragon?”

  “Umm.” Tarragon glanced at Heser the Cheg, who remained impassive as basalt. “Yes? Not really. I’ve seen a dragon, but never been introduced. I’m sure they’re very nice.”

  “I’ve met one.” Morgan strode into the room. “She was huge. The world shook when she walked. Ormeon breathed fire and could destroy the Artifices that ruined a legion of my best soldiers.”

  “My queen,” Heser the Cheg said. “Ormeon has been lost these many years.”

  “I wonder.” Morgan rubbed her arms. “I don’t think you meet a dragon and don’t take a piece of her with you.” She turned a slow circle, examining the relics. “I don’t think dragons are supposed to make you afraid.”

  “You what now?” Tarragon looked lost at sea.

  “I think we’re supposed to be the knight, the princess, and the dragon.” Morgan sighed.

  Tarragon glittered for a moment. “You’ve no idea what to do.”

  “Not a clue,” the Raven Queen admitted. “I had a coterie. They would know.”

  “Probably not,” the fairy argued. “Ritualism is … different.” She crossed her arms while she fluttered. “Why not give it a shot?”

  “A … shot?” Morgan blinked. “We need a plan! Some kind of system, a way to control⁠—”

  “There’s no controlling it,” Tarragon said. “This is magic, witch queen, and it controls you.”

  Morgan strode about the room, stopping before the ship’s wheel. She threw an arm toward it. “You’re telling me I’m supposed to stand here and take it?”

  “I don’t know,” Tarragon said. “I’m a Builder. But the last time I saw you go all googly-eyed⁠—”

  “I do not have googly eyes! I am the Raven Queen of Or’sen!”

  Tarragon pursed her tiny, perfect lips. “You’re right. They’re a bit squinty, not googly.”

  “Squinty?”

  “Not important.” Tarragon flew a small loop. “Last time, you were in a demon summoning circle. You had no control. And the time before that was at the docks.” She sighed. “That seemed a long time ago. I thought Evanne was the enemy. I thought I could find my commanding officer and help win the war.”

  Morgan let her hand drop, felt her heart slow. Looked at the fairy for a moment, really looked at her. Saw the angel face, the wondrous glow and glitter, and the impossible sadness hidden in the green gaze that held the cold of the ocean depths. “And now?”

  “Different war. That’s all.” Tarragon looked away. “Why don’t you try touching one? See what happens.”

  Morgan scoffed. “One does not simply touch a thing and expect magic to happen. To think that your best plan is for me to place my palm against this wheel and hope? Hope is not a strategy!” For emphasis, she slapped her hand on the ship’s wheel.

  Felt ocean spray.

  And fell overboard.

  Quinton held the wheel in a grip made iron by fear. The sky was shot through with spears of lightning. The Three warred above, he was sure. Threw their might against the clouds, tried to shatter the storm with a greater fury.

  They weren’t helping.

  The skiff surged through. They called her Dancer, because she skipped over the water like the graceful performers who’d come to Hollyhead’s fair ten seasons past. He and his wife had laughed, ate toffee apple, talked of their future, and bought a boat.

  The boat would bring luck.

  He gazed to the west, squinting through the squall. The rain befouled his vision, and made shadow monsters of simple waves. He’d come out here looking for Wolrif, or some news of his boat. The lad had gone out after Yvette or some such nonsense and wouldn’t hear about how unlikely it was she wasn’t anywhere on the water. Not in this storm. Not even a fool would come out here.

  A fool, or someone who had a dancer to keep them safe.

  Quinton grinned, feeling the fear still with him, but mindful of another emotion. Hope would be too trite, but he could admit to excitement.

  No, to the west there was something. It had the look of a man with great wings. Lightning gave him the gift of sight, throwing the night back with a casual flash. The man was like any other, excepting the wings, and how he flew over the whitecaps.

  Hand on the wheel, Quinton wondered if this was how he’d die. Will I know my killer? Will he make it quick? Is this how Wolrif died?

  The man landed on Dancer’s deck with a wet thump. The wings became the billowy flutter of a great cape, so long it dragged like a train. A gaunt man, but strong against the storm. Wet, he but didn’t look mad about it. Like he’d been wet before and knew it would pass. Quinton kept his hand on the wheel, rubbed more water from his eyes, and said, “Help you?”

  The man smiled. The expression might’ve been meant as a kindness, but it wasn’t a smile like you’d get from Jenna as she glanced your way while tending the flower cart, or even the type little Jack would throw your way while scampering off with a few coins he’d ‘found’. It was the smile of a corpse, fixed, held a little longer than the living ever would. “What an interesting question.”

  “Only, you’ve come at a bad time,” explained Quinton. “We’re out here looking for Wolrif. Storm’s bad, and if it’s all the same, perhaps you could come back later.” He wondered why he’d said that.

  “You’re trying to be polite, because this is an unusual situation.” The man looked at his hand, turning it over as the rain lashed about them. “Men used to offer a handshake to let each other know they had no weapon. Courtesy is the same. A platitude to let someone else know you’re trying not to offend them. It won’t help.”