Muadhnait was probably dead.

Was this what she'd meant by danger? Doll-assisted defenestration?

It doesn't take much fall to kill a human being — even a ten foot drop can do the trick, if you're especially unlucky. Thirty feet is a coin toss, fifty-fifty. Sixty feet? No chance, lights out. And Muadhnait was wearing all that armour, pound after pound of metal dragging her down faster and faster. The suit would foul her landing too, even if she knew how to roll herself into a ball, even if she wasn't grappling with an animated doll on the way down. The suit would break her — skull, ribcage, hips — unless it was more cleverly padded on the inside than anybody on Earth had ever managed, or those magic sigils on her joints and seams could resist the tyranny of gravity for long enough to spare her the impact.

No, she was dead. And I couldn't do anything to help her. Because I am not Heather.

My sister has some experience with falling out of buildings, sometimes involuntarily, sometimes on purpose. She could have found a way to save Muadhnait — skipped herself across the surface of reality like a flat stone, materialising on the ground in the nick of time, then catching the falling nun with her tentacles. She might have endured a broken bone or two, but she would have done it anyway, even if Muadhnait had been swinging a sword at her head a moment before, (though perhaps not at mine). Or maybe she would leap out of the window, straight after Muadhnait, bunching her tentacles like a cluster of springs, catching the nun on the descent, braking her impact at the last second as they tumbled across the ground together in a tangle of armour and cephalopod flesh.

Yes, I think she would choose the latter. It would be the most fitting. She leaps before she looks, and she tends to hesitate until there's no other option but the best of the worst. She would make it dashing and heroic. She would cut it close, but she would come through. She would be perfect.

Heather could — and would — have saved Muadhnait's life. But I'm not Heather. I'm not my sister. I will never be my sister.

I am made of carbon fibre. My bones don't break, my organs don't rupture, and my blood doesn't matter.

I rushed to the broken window, scrambled up onto the stone sill, and leapt off.

Membranes of mist broke beneath me, air rushing past my ears, borrowed cloak whipping out behind. I almost lost my shawl, (and that wouldn't do, would it, Evee? Technically it's yours, bought with your money, so you're the only one with a right to strip it off me as you like) until I pinned it to my throat with my free hand. Black-and-white castle masonry plunged upward, devouring the sky. The procession of dolls raced up to meet me — then vanished behind a lip of rooftop. The castle had so many layers, and one of them was going to catch us, like a concrete wall catches a speeding car.

Muadhnait and the doll were locked together in the air beneath me, falling faster than I, grappling over Muadhnait's sword.

And yet they kept falling — and falling — and falling — and falling — and falling.

We fell for twenty two seconds.

The rush of air, the whipping fabric of cloak and shawl, the wind on my face — all of it died away to a trickle, as if the layers of fog and mist were catching me, slowing my fall. There is a special kind of rage, one that comes when you've committed yourself to something so utterly, that being denied the consequence of your own choice is worse than being saved.

I cannot put that anger into words, or my voice would boil your brains.

Muadhnait's fall had not been slowed by nearly as much as my own. She and the doll smashed into a large flat section of black tiles — a stately balcony which jutted out from a wall of dark windows, surrounded by the low platforms and sharp slopes of other rooftops. She hit the surface with a clatter-crack of metal on rock, throwing up a little cloud of stone chips. The doll was knocked clear by the impact, tumbling across the floor in a whirl of pale wooden limbs, dragging Muadhnait's sword out of the nun's gauntlets.

I hit the rooftop a heartbeat later — crunch, crash, slam — but infinitely less hard than I should have done. I tucked myself into a ball, landed with a roll, and then sprang back to my feet.

A human being would have broken half a dozen bones, including their skull, maybe a spine; that roll had bounced my head off the stone floor at least four times, and the angle of my landing had made my left arm creak like it was trapped in a vice. My fingers were numb and my hips felt like I'd been clipped by a bus. My jaw felt knocked out of place and my feet left bloody prints as I staggered forward.

"Did you think I couldn't fucking do it!?" I roared, spitting blood from a split lip, wiping crimson out of my eyes. "I didn't need your help! I didn't need saving! I could do it! I could have saved her! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck!"

Who was I shouting at? Take your pick. Our Lady of the Forded Briar? The Giggling Darkness? (Or maybe you.)

Muadhnait was on her back. She wasn't getting up. The doll from the office was whirling to her feet, dragging Muadhnait's cold iron sword after her, moving like a dancer spinning a cluster of veils. Somewhere off to my right, down another several stories, the slam-slam-slam of marching feet still wound through the open passages of the castle. We hadn't made enough noise to disrupt the parade.

I was in too much pain to properly articulate my anger, and too angry to feel all the pain. So I made the second mistake of my little adventure (and yes, I have only made two so far, no matter what you think.) It was the same mistake as the first one — I looked up.

Why? Because maybe the Briar-bitch would be up there, floating in mid-air, holding the edge of the fog like a sheet she'd used to slow my fall, so I could throw my knife at her. Or perhaps our mutual friend the Giggling Dark would peer around a corner of shadowed wall, and I could tell it to go fuck itself to death on one of the giant trees. Maybe both of them. Maybe they were working together. Maybe everything here was working together for the express purpose of breaking me. But I don't shatter easily, and I was going to kill them both for this.

Instead, I discovered I was at the bottom of a pit.

The inner walls and towers of the castle rose up and up and up — ten or a hundred or a thousand times taller than the depth I felt I had fallen. Black and white and black and white and black and white, blotting out the weak sunlight, until all that remained of the sky was a ragged circle of dirty clouds pinned to the void by the tips of the towers. The castle had become a thousand, a million, a billion times larger and more complex, as I had unwittingly descended into it, like an optical illusion that draws a victim into a pattern which at first seems like a flat surface. The castle had sprung its trap.

Pattern recognition slapped me upside the brain, same as it had with the clouds, when I'd chased the Mimic out of the giant's forest.

A vision—

…

—teeth wet with blood and filled with scraps of human meat—

—brackish water rising through cold dungeons to drown prisoners where they lay chained to the walls screaming unheard by—

—those who preferred to watch the unfolding of the world from within their hidden fastness, always tracking and recording and reacting but never really hearing the voices made by the lips they saw shift and shiver in cold—

—from unassailable heights of closed stone and sealed rock and metal covers on the ways in and out and never to be breached—

—unless allowed, for the amusement of the ultimate—

…

—took me.

The vision was quick, no more than a second and a half. I almost slipped over in my own bloody footprints.

Now I knew more than I had before, but I had no time to think it over. The doll from the office was striding toward me, raising Muadhnait's cold iron sword in her right hand.

"I'm sorry I kissed you," I croaked, then spat a glob of blood onto the ground. "I'm sorry I touched you without permission. I didn't think you were really real. Too real for kisses. Not real enough for words? I'm sorry. Can't do this now. Stop."

She stepped over Muadhnait's corpse and kept coming.

"Are you doing this for yourself, or because you've been told?" I hissed.

She strode toward me, readied the sword.

I whipped the peach-pink cloak off my back and held it out. "Here. Yours. You can have it back."

The doll lunged for me, sword-point going for my chest.

(Would I have reacted any differently, if some crazy little bitch had kissed my face and hands while I'd been held immobile? I would have done worse, I think. I would have gutted her alive. Unless she was cute.)

I really didn't want to kill this doll. I didn't want to fight her at all. I barely wanted to show her my knife, (and she wouldn't have liked it anyway). If she was herself, then I had violated her, in a way that would have driven me into a rage if our positions had been reversed. If she was nothing but a puppet then it wasn't her fault, even if she was an inert lump of wood.

I dodged the sword-thrust and threw the cape at her. What was I trying to do — blind a thing that saw without eyes? I had no plan, nothing but slippery blood-washed feet and rage drowning in worse. The balcony where we'd landed was bordered by other low rooftops, and backed by a line of big glass doors, though the room beyond was too dark to see. With the doll blinded for a moment, I would run away rather than fight, because she was too beautiful to kill, and it is very hard to kill somebody who you have just kissed, and I could not think.

The peach-pink cloak wrapped around the doll's head and tangled in her limbs. She stopped, frozen in mid-turn.

I stopped too, (it was only polite).

Stomp stomp stomp went the marchers down in the streets below. The only other sound was my breathing, and it was very hard.

"Was that really all you wanted?" I asked. "Were you incomplete without your cloak? Completed by clothes? Complete … failure … completed … "

Cheated again. Falling without landing. Kissing without consequence. I reached out and tugged on a fold of the peach-pink cloak; the doll twitched, sword-point shivering. Perhaps if I gave her an excuse, I could keep pretending to myself that this was about the kiss.

"You didn't care about the kiss, did you?" I said. "You don't care about being touched."

She didn't answer. She didn't care.

Prying the sword out of her hands wasn't difficult. She didn't resist, or move, or do anything, not now that she had her cloak back. I unwrapped her fingers and took Muadhnait's cold iron sword. It was lighter than I'd expected.

I stepped back and did nothing but breathe and bleed for about twenty seconds. Then I looked up again.

(So I didn't have to look at Muadhnait? What do you think? I don't need reminding.)

The castle — which had expanded itself as I'd fallen — was a tiny piece of a much larger pattern. The vision had thrust that into my mind. From that small piece I had already reconstructed a sketch of the whole. And the whole told me that I was in a hole.

This vast edifice that Muadhnait had implied used to be a hold, a place built by her people, it had nothing to do with human hands. The pattern was rock and wind and rain. The pattern was erosion. The pattern was a piece of up-thrust rock, pushing from the plate that lay beneath the surface of this dimension. The castle was built from the rock, and the rock was the truth of this world, the face beneath the mask, the—

I can't do it.

I can't explain it like my sister does. She has beautiful metaphors by the dozen for places like this, even when she's mad with panic and pain and worse. I can't do it, I can't make it beautiful, not while there was a corpse lying a dozen feet from me.

I'm not strong like her. I'm not like her.

…

Forget I said that.

…

I'll try again. And I won't ask you to forgive me.

…

This dimension was shaped by erosion. The lowlands, the giant's forest, the trees, the plants, the animals, all the relative 'normality' of almost earthly conditions — it was like windblown soil gathered in a crack. The castle was a bare crag of truth.

But there was another layer to the pattern, one I couldn't unravel just by looking. It was held in the eye-drop shape and position of the castle's windows and arrow-slits, the brow-ridge angle of turrets-tips and the sloping cheeks of rooftops, the cracked masonry like wrinkles on skin, the lines between blocks of stone like old scars and pockmarks.

I lit a fire in my heart, in a steam engine that a fool might call a soul, and then shovelled in a few more fragments of a little girl who used to be called Maisie Morell.

The pattern resolved into a crowd of faces.

They were made from castle and cloud, from stone arch and dark window, from the lines between one thing and another, and the empty spaces of black and white. There were dozens of them, or perhaps hundreds, peering down at me.

The surface of the castle didn't change. The faces simply suggested themselves, making meaning from within a pattern. They moved through the masonry without disturbing a single stone. They had been there all along, lurking, watching.

They were the forces that had filled the castle corridors with spooky bullshit — shadow-puppets cast by a flickering fire, and here were the shapes that cast the shadows. They were the forces who made up Muadhnait's 'danger' — the real danger of venturing into the closed stone of the castle. Their hands were gravity and fog and the angle of a sword. They were the catch of wind against rustling branches, making a sigh out of nothing. They were fog and mist twisted into a figure at the end of a path. They were windows for eyes and an age-worn crack for a mouth, all in the eye of the beholder. If I was up there, clambering across the stone, I would find only cloud and rock and air, not faces at all, and the faces would be in the floor or the fog or the sky.

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Vast intelligences, watching me run through a maze they were building as I went.

(I see you!)

…

Do you think I'm crazy? No, you don't have to be polite, or even nice. Again, I'm not my sister. You can tell me the truth. I know I'm crazy. Seeing faces in clouds and thinking they're real, that's a classic symptom, isn't it? You don't have to hold back. Point it out all you like. I'm not being shy.

Outside is not a sane place. You've gotta get a little bug-fuck crazy to read the patterns out there.

…

Anger suddenly seemed pointless. The faces in the pattern, the audience for my 'little adventure', they were so beyond my reach that I may as well have spat at the moon.

I lay Muadhnait's sword across my shoulder and walked over to her corpse. Her armour was surrounded by little chips of black stone, cracked off the floor tiles when she'd landed. There was no blood seeping through the seams, probably absorbed by her clothes and the armour's padding. She wasn't breathing.

I squatted next to her.

"Get up," I said. "Get up. Get up. This is meant to be your story now. You can't die. Get up."

Should I replace the sword in her hands? Should I strip her out of her armour? Or would she prefer to stay like this, buried in her suit? I had no idea — I didn't know her, not really. And what about her sister, Neassa? I had inherited a story, but I didn't know the way. I looked over to the right; the procession of dolls and little fey creatures was still tromping past below, their parade so long and narrow that they would be going for a while yet. Perhaps Neassa was with them? I didn't know what she looked like. Small and delicate. All I had.

Muadhnait's helmet would probably unscrew from her gorget without too much difficulty. Perhaps if I got a look at her face, I could match it with her sister's.

I tried to reach for her helmet, but my hands were full, sword in one, knife in the other.

I made a noise I didn't like, then another one, much worse.

Kimberly was right — I couldn't be trusted, my judgement was dogshit. My messing around with a doll had gotten somebody killed. This was meant to be a fun little adventure, my in-and-out in ten minutes with a slutty Mimic. A one-night stand with no consequences. And I could still salvage that, couldn't I? I could turn around, go back, go find the others, pretend I'd lost Muadhnait somewhere in the castle, or that she'd died in some other way. Not my fault. Not my fault! The others would accept it, or pretend to accept it. Suggesting otherwise would be impossible, at least for Kimberly. Casma would know, but she wouldn't tell.

But you — you know. No taking it back, not now.

I could not save Muadhnait, because I was not Heather. Jumping out of the window, racing after her, none of that mattered. Muadhnait was dead the moment she had started falling. Because I. Am not. My sister.

Because I was a hole where a girl used to be, full of fragments of a person I barely recall. Other people see meaning in those scraps. I can't see anything there but fuel.

And what if the fuel ran out before I reached my destination?

Destination? Ha! I didn't know where the fuck I was going.

A pair of bare feet stepped into my field of view, planted in line with Muadhnait's shoulders.

"You should have taken my advice," said Our Lady of the Forded Briar.

Her voice was like hot ash in my eyes, a sharp stone in my throat. She carried her not-a-spear over one shoulder, the same way I carried Muadhnait's sword, (imitation is flattery, but she was doing a shit job of that). The little fires of her eyes were dimmed by the dense fog.

"You don't seem very upset by her death," I hissed. "Amusing yourself? Or just unmoved?"

She shrugged, slender shoulders inside her dress going up and down like a sailing ship on the ocean. "I have no need for that. You don't exactly look tearful, either. Do you even have tear ducts in that face of stone?" Her eyebrows went up. "Oh. Perhaps you do, then."

Golden hooks glowed red hot, deep down in my abdomen, tugging at my groin.

"Come with me," said Our Lady of the Forded Briar. "You have work to do."

I rose to my feet. I lifted Muadhnait's sword from my shoulder. I pointed the tip at the throat of the Briar-bitch, though she was suddenly a hundred times my height.

I made it look easy; it wasn't. No human being with real flesh and real blood would have stood her ground and resisted the pull of that hooked fist in my cunt. But I didn't have a real cunt, nor any guts for the hooks to burn. I had carbon fibre and steel, and neither of those things could feel.

Briar (no more titles for you, bitch) tilted her head and raised her eyebrows again. The fog thinned, revealing the gauze of her dress pressed to her curves. "Do you need more sugar in your medicine?" she said. "I can give you a taste, but not at sword point—"

"Muadhnait was one of your children. You told me to give her a happy ending. But you clearly don't give a shit. Give it up. Give— tch!"

Briar sighed. The hooks in my abdomen pulled harder. The stone beneath my ankles started to crack.

"She's dead," I said, and I didn't know why.

Briar nodded. "I expect you'll be wanting revenge—"

"On who? Me? Myself? I?"

She rolled her eyes, the absolute bitch. "You didn't kill her—"

"I took the cape, I dodged, she got hit."

"That doesn't mean—"

"Did you slow my fall? Fail me from falling? Was that you, one of yours, your own? You—" I bit my cheek to stop the words. A mouthful of blood made nothing better.

Briar paused mid-gesture. Her hair was like a cooling wave of molten metal suspended in seawater, her eyes little pinpricks of forges struggling against the moist fog. "Why? What if it was me?"

"Because you slowed me but not her, and this is nothing but you fucking with me, instead of getting fucked by me."

Briar shook her head. "Your survival is in my interest, but not within my power, not if you fling yourself around like that." The hooks in my gut pulled so hard that I hissed between my teeth. My knee joints creaked. "Now come along. The parade is getting away from you, and we can speed up the inevitable conflict by getting you down there as soon as possible, so we can behead the snake. You're ready, you're angry, you're burning with the need for revenge—"

"What are you trying to get me to do?" I said. "Kill your enemies?"

"I said I would make use of you, unwilling instrument or not."

"This isn't your story," I spat. "It's hers now."

Briar gestured vaguely. The tugging was so strong that a human hipbone would have snapped.

I shook the tea towel off the knife in my other hand. Two blades now, one short and one long, no spare hand for jilling about. I put the point of my kitchen knife against my abdomen, as low as I could get. "Keep doing that, and I'll go digging."

Briar smiled the smile of one who had already won. "And I thought you were too robust for a little knifing?"

"This one's big enough. Unlike yours." I glanced at her spear. "More intact, too."

She snorted — a noise like the gutter of a solar flare, momentarily drowning out the slam of marching feet below us. "Failure and insults. My oh my, you are a spicy one. Don't you see I'm giving you what you want—"

"What I wanted was you, crying beneath me," I spat. "But you can't even cry for a dead child."

Briar stepped back again, her dress wafting like the fog. "You mean you don't want me anymore?"

'No' would have been a lie — but 'yes' wasn't true either. I wanted her in ways that made me angrier.

Our Lady of the Forded Briar turned and walked away, long dress hugging her hips and swishing around her ankles. She gestured with one hand over her shoulder. The golden hooks in my gut loosened their pull.

"Besides," she sighed, "you were wrong."

A laboured wheeze came from inside Muadhnait's armour.

I dropped back into a squat, put down the sword and the knife, and tapped on Muadhnait's helmet with one fingertip. "Hey. Hey. Hey. Muadhnait. Muadhnait. Are you alive in there? Alive and awake, or just dead and breathing? Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey."

When I glanced up, Briar was gone.

(Stay that way.)

Muadhnait took about thirty seconds to come around. At first I thought she might be in a coma, which was actually worse than dead, because then I would have to leave her there to die slowly. When she started to moan and groan, I assumed she had broken something, which was equally worse because there was no way I could carry her in all that armour. But then she snorted like a sleepwalker slapped awake, and sat bolt upright, gauntlets clutching at the smooth black tiles as if trying to anchor herself to the ground.

"Muadhnait," I said. "Muadhnait. Muadhnait."

She ignored me. She staggered and clanked to her feet, swaying and lurching, until she put both hands on her knees and doubled over. She opened the little port in the front of her armour that she'd used for eating and drinking; from the blackness inside she drooled a long sticky string of bloody bile.

Muadhnait heaved and wheezed, coughed several times, then — "You—"

The voice came from inside the hatch. Low and rich, shot through with panic and pain, a weird little croak like she'd been strangled rather than fallen.

"Yes," I said. "Me."

"You … " She spat more blood, heaved as if she had something stuck in her throat, then went quiet for a bit.

"Me," I agreed. "And you."

"You … " she wheezed. "You jumped after me. I … did you … did you … "

"What happened to your vow of silence?" I asked. "Or has a fall silenced that vow?"

Muadhnait gestured, trying and failing to sign.

"Save it," I said. "Until you're safe to breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Best not to stop."

Muadhnait stayed like that for a few minutes, doubled over, spitting blood. The procession was still marching onward somewhere beneath us, wood drumming on stone. I retrieved my knife and the tea towel with the little maids, wrapped it up just in case, then picked up Muadhnait's cold iron sword.

Eventually Muadhnait straightened up, slowly and carefully, as if she was covered in bruises, which she probably was. She closed the little port in the front of her armour, then ran her hands over herself, checking for leaks.

"Bruises?" I said. "Broken bones? Battered pride? Or just bluffing?"

Muadhnait signed — slowly. "Not sure. Ribs hurt. Legs and arms work okay. Head isn't pounding, means probably no skull fracture. Thought I was dead."

"I think you were."

Muadhnait looked at me, helmet rotating to face me with that blank black slot. Her hands hovered. She signed an empty question.

"Dead," I said. "You were dead. Not breathing. I'm glad you're not, though." I held out her sword. "Take it, it doesn't agree with me. We might have an argument."

Muadhnait accepted the sword. Then she flinched and raised it. She'd just spotted the frozen doll half-covered by the peach-pink cloak.

"Angry that I disrobed her," I said. "Robed again, no reason for rage. She's cool now."

Muadhnait lowered her sword, shoulders sagging. She signed, "You thought I was attacking you—"

"Momentary confusion, confused by moments only," I said. "You were trying to shove me out of the doll's path."

"And still you jumped after me."

"I can fall very far without breaking. You can't."

Muadhnait hesitated, then signed, "Apparently not. What about you? Are you hurt? There is blood on your scalp and in your hair—"

"Ignore that."

"Your eyes are red, as if you were weeping. You were hurt. Your feet are bloody."

She had a point. Now the excitement had passed, I was feeling my bumps and bruises. My head was fine, just a graze, but my feet hurt a lot. I lifted them up one after the other. I'd cut my soles on the broken glass from the window, when I'd clambered up and leapt off. The right foot wasn't too bad, pretty shallow, but my left foot had a gash so deep that I could see a sliver of truth in metallic grey. The blood was already slowing, because none of it was real.

"Won't stop me," I said. "Ignore it."

Muadhnait signed, "Your feet are wounded. You will not be able to walk for long. We must return you to your companions. I will carry you if I have to. You leapt after me and I will do whatever I can to—"

"To find and rescue your sister," I said. "That's what you're here for. Not for me."

"You will not be able to walk for long," she repeated, hands flicking through the gestures too fast.

"How many times do I have to explain? My flesh doesn't matter. This won't stop me. Stop me if you can, but you won't. So don't."

Muadhnait seemed lost for a moment, then — "No person is made of stone. At least let me bandage your feet."

I nodded sideways, at the ornate stone railing at the edge of the balcony, at the sound of marching feet down below. "They're going to get away."

Muadhnait hesitated. I turned away from her and walked over to the edge of the balcony, so I could peer over the lip. Muadhnait did the same, because what else could she do at that point?

The procession of dolls was about three or four stories down from the balcony now, filling the tangle of streets and open passageways — a wide snaking body made from perhaps a thousand of them, perhaps more. The fog soaked into their black-and-white streamers and banners, washing out the total lack of colour until it turned into the illusion of grey haze, like the fog had thickened above them. They wore all sorts of clothes — masculine, feminine, neither, both — in the same style as the dolls up in the embassy complex, lots of skirts and large shapeless shirts. A thousand faceless, silent, wooden bodies, all stomping and jerking in time with each other.

I felt like a sailor staring into the sea, wondering if I would drown.

The palanquin at the head of the procession was a mass of black and white silk; it was just rounding a curved tower up ahead, vanishing from view. Briar's enemy?

"Who do you think is in there?" I whispered to Muadhnait. "Head fairy? Castellan of the castle? Or your sister, captive? Captivated in luxury?"

Muadhnait didn't reply, probably because I didn't bother to look round at her.

Among the silent mass of marching dolls, seven unique figures stood out, not dolls at all. They marched in the procession — or lurched, skipped, slimed, swaggered, trudged, and tiptoed — but none of them looked happy to be there. I assumed they were fairies, fairy-creatures, fey, whatever, does it matter? The rearmost was my Mimic, my naughty little slut who had somehow become a sideshow, tottering along on her dozens of legs. She looked like she was huffing and puffing with impatience and boredom; she cuffed a doll over the back of the head, but the doll didn't react. (I was going to punish her for that.)

The others looked nothing like her, no two of them alike: a woman made of glass; a green man in robes of moss; a figure who was more slug than human; a young girl in a pink dress with butterfly wings sprouting from elongated shoulder blades, the smile of a torturer on her lips; a dandy in a brocade waistcoat and a top hat, carrying a gold-tipped cane, naked from the waist down, his hips all hung with shaggy fur. The final daylight fairy was the one closest to the palanquin in front — a shadowy mass of ragged grey with a slender waist and hands like scissors, her face a tiny white oval shrouded inside a hood.

I gestured with my knife. "Down onto that rooftop, then onto the next one, then down the windows as handholds. We can be at the rear of the procession in a minute or two. Muadhnait?"

Muadhnait said nothing. She was gripping the stone bannister.

I almost sighed, but I held myself. "You've seen your sister, haven't you?"

Muadhnait turned away from the procession. She signed, "Let me bandage your feet."

"They're going to get away—"

"Let me bandage your feet," she repeated. Her hands were shaking.

"You saw your sister. Which one was it?"

Muadhnait froze up.

Now I sighed. "All right. We can catch up with the rear of the procession in a minute. Rear-end them in miniature. We can hear them a mile away, anyway. They won't get far. Bandage my feet."

Muadhnait seemed like she knew what she was doing; I have no idea if that's accurate or not, because my blood isn't real and my flesh cannot be infected, so it didn't matter if she bandaged me up correctly or slathered toxic mud onto the cuts in my feet, the result would be the same. And I didn't submit to her attention because I needed it — I did it because she needed it. I sat on the floor and watched as she pulled a roll of cloth out of her pack, followed by some little stoppered bottles. She had me stretch out one leg, then the other. She washed the wounds with something that smelled like alcohol, wiped off the worst of the blood, then covered them with a thick, dark paste that looked and smelled like tar. She bandaged my feet, cut the bandage with her sword, then tied them tight.

The bandages would get torn to ribbons by an hour of walking, and I didn't need them anyway, but by the end of the process Muadhnait's hands weren't shaking anymore, (good girl). I stood up and flexed my feet. The pain sucked, but whatever. Muadhnait shoved her stuff back into her pack.

"Thank you," I said, because she probably needed it.

"Thank you for jumping after me," she signed. "And thank you for … "

I didn't say anything. Muadhnait finished putting her things away, then looked up at me before rising.

"What are you?" she signed.

"Just a girl."

"No, you're not. You brought me back from—"

"Then I have no idea. I don't know what I am. Drop the subject."

Muadhnait nodded and rose to her feet. She signed, "Yes, I may have seen my sister among that crowd, but I'm not certain. We should descend and follow them. If I can approach her alone … "

"Dolls can still be people," I said. "You can people your world with dolls. Including her."

Muadhnait didn't reply. She just settled her sword-belt and nodded.

That probably meant the other option.

Oh well.

"One thing before we move," I said. "Take a deep breath, then look up. Tell me what you see."

Muadhnait nodded. I heard the deep breath. (Good girl). When she looked up at the sides of the vast pit the castle had become, she didn't flinch or falter, (very good girl). She signed slowly, "We are very far down."

"Did you expect this?" I asked. "Expected or extemporaneous?"

She signed, "It was one of several possibilities I prepared for."

"What were the others?"

"Bad air. Lightless space. Overcrowding. Cold. Plague. Plants—"

"Okay," I said. "What else do you see?"

Muadhnait glanced back down at me. "Nothing?"

"Nothing. No things. You're sure?"

She looked again, then pointed. I followed her finger, but she hadn't seen what I saw, she couldn't see the faces; I hadn't expected her to, but hope is not rational. She was pointing at a spec of black which hung against the thick grey clouds, in the little circle of sky beyond the well-pit of the castle walls.

A black spec, sides blurring with motion. It was so far away I couldn't be certain.

Tenny, aloft above the castle, wings whirring.

One of the pattern-wrought faces in one of the tallest towers turned its gaze away from me and Muadhnait. One set of windows ceased to be eyes while another became new ones. The brickwork and the lines between stones reconfigured themselves into a different set of wrinkles, without ever moving.

It looked at Tenny.

The wind picked up, a distant whistle beyond the tallest tower tips. The black speck bobbed and weaved.

Muadhnait waved a hand in front of my face. I rounded on her. She signed quickly, "You were breathing very hard and sudden. Are you all right?"

I was heaving like a bull. My hand was so tight on my kitchen knife I was concerned I would break my flesh around my carbon fibre finger bones.

There was no way to get back to the courtyard, not from this deep, not in a reasonable amount of time. If Kimberly and Casma and Tenny had run into a problem, then I could not help them by trying to return.

I had to keep the eyes of this world off Tenny, and on me.

(So keep watching.)

"I'm fine," I said. "Let's go catch your sister."

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