The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Three: The Sable Masque

Conveyer Publishing was a regular publishing house. They primarily published shorter fiction, of quite a wide range of genre but with a clear preference for sci-fi and horror (if you examined their output over any significant length of time), from smaller authors located right here in the city. They hadn’t heard of any Stolen Tome. They hadn’t heard of anybody by the name of Doctor Otto Matic, and if she didn’t leave right this instant they were going to call the police.

Phere left. It didn’t do any good to press further. She knew this from experience. She’d been coming here maybe once a week for what felt like years now. It was a tactical dead end. They couldn’t give her the information she wanted because they didn’t have the information she wanted. Maybe the information she wanted wasn’t even real. That’s what her therapist said.

No other options were immediately forthcoming so it was back to walking through the backstreets surrounding Conveyer. This was where the Tome had fell. It had to be around here somewhere. All of a sudden it occurred to her to just use her fucking hollow already. With a thought she was directing her vision to the Stolen Tome and there it was lodged between a small stone wall and a chain link fence in a car park just a street or two away. All this time she couldn’t believe she’d never thought to do something so simple.

It was the work of minutes to reclaim the Tome now she knew where it was, and then minutes more to find a little cafe out of the way, order a cup of hot chocolate and open it up. It was remarkably undamaged for something that had spent more than a year outdoors. A little grimy on the covers but she wiped it clean with a napkin, and there were a couple of fallen leaves that had found their way inside, but overall everything was in tact.

She went back up to the counter to ask if she could get a pen, she hadn’t thought to bring one out with her. The clerk gave her a leaky biro. It was fine. It didn’t matter, she only needed to make one small adjustment. She opened it up to the title page and amongst the list of names there she crossed one out and -

Jake Scalavera awoke in bed.

“Fuck.” He said.

He was always dreaming as Phere nowadays. Recontextualizing his own struggles with this incorrect reality through her. All the stuff about Conveyer was real enough, they had called the police on him once but he’d left before they’d arrived. Most times that he visited he just stood outside and stared at the building. It was like the world’s largest loosest tooth and he couldn’t stop prodding at it.

He’d long since abandoned any realistic expectation of just finding the Tome lost but conveniently preserved in some hidden nook or cranny in the surrounding streets, but that didn’t mean that he’d stopped looking for it.

It was the middle of the night but after tossing and turning for a couple of hours he was forced to accept that he wasn’t getting back to sleep. Reluctantly he got out of bed and made his way to the kitchen, ignoring both the flashing light of the answering machine and the package casually thrown on the dining table. He put on a kettle of water, threw a teabag and two teaspoons of sugar into a cup and waited.

Samuel had left messages on his answering machine, but after the first one Jake hadn’t been able to bring himself to listen to them. Samuel didn’t understand. Nobody else really understood. Samuel seemed to think that what they’d done was immoral in some way. That it was somehow their fault for Jennie and Macy and… But it wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the Tome that was wrong, it was the world that was wrong. It was Jake that was wrong.

But if he was anxious about the messages his friend had left, it was nothing compared to how he felt about the package. He forced himself to look at it, lying there, untouched for days. He reached a hand towards it, and then the kettle finished boiling and he stopped and poured the cup of tea he so clearly needed.

As he was leaving the kitchen, the phone rang and he stopped short. Samuel again? Probably not. It had been days since he’d last called. He let the phone ring until the machine picked it up.

“Jake?” It was Jack. “It’s Jack… Jake if you’re there could you pick up? Jake? It’s… It’s Jennie… it’s… well… I don’t think I can tell you this via message. Call me back please as soon as you can.” The message clicked off but Jake hadn’t moved.

Enough. He walked back to his dining table and put down his cup of tea. He picked up the package, felt the weight of it in his hands. He found the tear strip and he pulled it open, depositing the slim self-published volume on the table.

The Violent Dispute

It was stupid. He knew it was. His therapist told him that it wasn’t healthy, it wasn’t real, all the effort he had put in to replicate his work and it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. He was going to be disappointed. He was sick of it. He was sick of living half in denial. It was exhausting. She was exhausted.

She grabbed a pen and flipped open to the title page

The Violent Dispute
By ████ Scalavera

She crossed it out and again and again until the name wasn’t legible any more and then underneath she wrote her name.

Beatrix

And she breathed a sigh of relief. Of course it did nothing. It was just a self-published half-remembered recreation of the events of the first round. Due to her own memory it mostly fixated around Phere and in essence turned her into the main character. It wasn’t the Tome. The Tome wasn’t really real.

But it made her feel better. It made her feel like herself for once, and that was nice if nothing else.

Then the phone rang and she flinched at the thought of hearing that name again. She grabbed the cup of tea, left the Violent Dispute where it lay, and hurried towards the bedroom before the machine could kick in.

“Beatrix???” Jack’s voice called out to the empty room. “Beatrix what the fuck did you just do?”

—

Phere was hiding in a closet. It contained shelves upon shelves of neatly folded linens in seemingly every shade of green, from lime to jade to the shades of green that were almost completely black. And it also contained Phere, slumped against the wall and attempting to rethink her entire strategy.

Do whatever it takes to stay in this palace and stay close to the action. That had been pretty much her motto since she arrived here. But it turns out maids don’t really get to be close to the action. They’re kind of too busy running around refilling drinks, cleaning up spills, fornicating with guests…

It was absolutely out of the question. Even if she was somehow who did that she definitely wasn’t someone who could do that with just any random partygoer. Going back out there in a maid’s outfit was impossible. Even if she wasn’t stopped and propositioned and forced to wheedle out of it and probably receive some sort of reprimand and then get banished from the palace entirely, again. Even if none of that happened and the worst of it was that people were just seeing her and knowing what her uniform really meant. Unacceptable. It made her stomach turn just a little to think she’d been out there parading around in it for as long as she had.

So if all of that was off the board what was on the board. Make a new dress from these linens. It would look a little shabby in comparison to everyone else but it wouldn’t be the worst. She would need a new mask though, one that didn’t immediately indicate her position as a maid. It seemed unlikely that one had been misplaced in here.

Perhaps she could use the unstated role of her current position to lure someone into seclusion and then take their mask and outfit. She wasn’t sure she could successfully pull of seductive if she was actually trying though.

What about the mask she’d been brought here in. She’d threw it off in the purple room. What were the odds that it was still there, knocked off to one side from general foot traffic? Could she get there and find it and then find a spot to change without being approached?

Maybe Klendel or Ivan could acquire a new outfit for her. At a thought she cast her gaze to find her subordinates. Ivan was clinging onto Sir Cedric. Klendel was indistinct, out of focus. He was still in the palace, she was sure of that, but something was blocking her vision of him. If she pressed harder she thought she’d be able to break through but not without whatever was shielding him knowing about it. Well, that was worrying.

“Meredith?”

Phere snapped back to the here and now, and right now there was a maid standing in the doorway with an expression of concern on her face. Without any prompting she closed the door and hurried to Phere’s side, sliding herself down the wall to bring herself level with the Empress.

“First day jitters?” she asked.

“Sort of.” Phere said.

“The first one is the worst.” The maid said. “If you wanted I could help you out. Get you a little drink to help lower your inhibitions. Or… I could get you started, prime the pump so to speak.”

Involuntarily Phere scrunched her face up. “Ew, no thank you.”

The maid stiffened and got back up to her feet. “Well, there’s no need to be rude about it. I could have reported you to Mrs. Lazuli for loitering on the job, except for how us girls are supposed to stick together.” Something inside Phere screamed at her, she clenched her fists and averted her gaze and as she heard the maid walking back to the door to leave, she stopped her.

“I, um, I’m sorry.” she said, voice barely above a murmur. “I, um, I didn’t mean it like that.” The maid stopped in her tracks and turned and looked down at Phere.

“How did you mean it then?” she asked, still audibly sore.

“Well… you like it right?” Phere said, a vulnerability in her voice that she loathed even as she spoke it out loud. “People tend to like it. They say it’s an enjoyable thing. They seek it out. I’ve seen them do it. I’ve… never done it. I’ve never wanted to do it.”

The maid looked at her for a moment and then returned to her first position, slumped down beside Phere.

“I’m sorry.” Phere said quickly, almost tripping over her words. “I shouldn’t have told you any of that. Forget all of that. It was all lies, I was trying to gain your sympathy but in fact I’m normal. I’d like to have… sex… just not in these circumstances. Just not here or now.” Phere’s voice was getting more and more strained with every word. She couldn’t believe she’d said those things, thought those things. Volunteered a weakness to a stranger. It was pathetic. She was supposed to be better than this. She was supposed to be in perfect control at all times.

The maid shushed her soothingly, even though she’d stopped speaking already. She reached across and took Phere’s hand. “It’s okay. It’s uncommon but its not unheard of and you’re not abnormal for being like that.”

“Oh fuck.” Phere could feel tears springing unbidden from her eye. This shouldn’t have been happening. This couldn’t be happening. She needed to keep things together. She was the formidable Empress Phere, not some pathetic broken girl. “No. I need to go. I need to leave and go somewhere else.” The maid interlocked her fingers with Phere’s hand and simply told her:

“You’re safe.”

—-

The valets, or moppets as they were colloquially known, required little (but not no) maintenance after their initial vivification and as such the Mistress of the Cloth Agate was always on hand to make any necessary adjustments.

She was considered to be a minor Talent and despite her impressive title she received little respect from front of house. Backstage she was perhaps more revered than the Head Housekeeper herself.

Right now Mistress Agate had been called to the Stones’ Parlor. A dim and functional room lit primarily by the quietly cycling spells, and located uncomfortably close to the awful rotting tapestries that gazed down upon the bloated bodies of the Spinel Kings. Hematite and Malachite were busy with whatever task they had been assigned, Opal on the other hand, the only one who ever deigned to speak to her (and clearly only from obligation) was approaching her.

“Their majesties want five uninvited guests located. The Tireless Men no doubt have it well in hand, but in the case that your moppets might serve some function here is the data on the individuals in question.” He handed over a sheet with basic physical descriptions of the five intruders, as Klendel had presented that information to the Kings, printed on it. “If found hand them over to the nearest Tireless Men or bring them to us and we’ll take them from there.”

“If-” she started to ask but was cut off.

“You are dismissed Miss Agate.”

And so she left, her irritation sending ripples through the beautiful golden fabrics lining the walls of the surrounding corridors. She walked until she was far away enough from the chamber of the Kings that she couldn’t feel their rot eating at the wall hangings like it was a tumor inside her own body, and then finally she stopped and read through the sheet she had been given. Then, with those descriptions fresh in mind, she let herself sink into the cloth.

The wall hanging in the emerald wing ballroom whispered that the ones identified as Sir Cedric and Ivan Norst were there mingling with the guests. The fabric of a fainting couch in a small room between Jade and Sapphire confided that Dr Harmon was at this moment resting upon it. The voice that informed her that Cascala was being sheltered in one of the private rooms in Pearl was muted, almost inaudible amongst the endless fabrics of the Resplendent Palace but once she had tuned into that voice she lingered a moment to hear more about the group that had taken up residence within that room.

Finally the voice of a simple black suit piped up that its wearer (a butler named Silas, serving at the Resplendent Palace for four years, currently tending to the needs of a guest in a private suite in the Ruby wing) had seen the Empress Phere and brought her to Mrs Lazuli to offer her a position as a maid. It was the work of a moment to find the voice of her uniform which told her that ‘Meredith’ was in a small linen closet in Emerald, crying in a pretty undignified manner, accompanied by a more senior maid.

With her search complete Mistress Agate returned her consciousness to the physical world, in time to see a pair of maids walking past.

“Mistress Agate.” The maids gave a reverent curtsey as they passed.

“Good evening Cecilia, Lavinia,” their uniforms had whispered their names to her, “are either of you girls presently occupied?” They shook their heads. “In that case could you aid your newest sister Meredith in the Emerald linen closet. Isobel is also there lending the girl some compassion.”

“Yes, Mistress Agate.” The maids replied, picking up their pace as they hurried off on their way.

Mistress Agate was considered a minor Talent simply because her field of specialization was so narrow and perceived as so domestic. For that reason despite her incredible textilourgical skill she’d been viewed as nothing more than staff. In the beginning of her tenure she had taken out this frustration on those below her in the hierarchy of the house, and she’d been feared for it. But over time her resentment had grown towards those in power and she’d grown gradually more compassionate for all those who served backstage. It was difficult not to see them as people when their clothing constantly whispered their lives to her.

Once she would have eagerly surrendered the locations of the uninvited guests in hopes of some social advancement, but that time was long past. Opal and the rest of the Stones, too good to even speak to her, would not find ‘Meredith’, even if they should learn she had re-entered the palace.

—-

Finally Phere had calmed down again and recomposed herself, at least to an extent. She was clamping down hard on the urge to apologize for her breakdown.

“I’m sorry about that.” she said, her resilience cracking almost immediately, “Putting all that on you and I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Isobel.” Isobel said. “Izzy to my friends.” With her free hand she removed her mask, revealing her face beneath, pale skinned and freckled.

Phere had already taken her own mask off, when she’d been doing the thing she trying not to acknowledge. After all an Empress never lost her composure like that.

“Thank you Isobel.” Phere said. “I should be okay from now.” But Isobel wasn’t going anywhere.

“Mhm.” Isobel said softly. “I just wanted to say that, well, while I’m not asexual like -” she saw Phere tense at the word and pivoted, “some people are, I’m well… I’m not a nympho either. It’s just a job. It’s not what I would want to be doing if I had the full freedom to choose every aspect of my life… but it keeps food on the table and it pays the medical bills for my family.”

Phere was quiet for a moment. “If this isn’t what you want, surely there’s a job you’d be more suited for.”

“Well… I used to dream about being an engineer. Making little gadgets, putting things together. The things they can do these days.” Isobel said. “But its a difficult area to break into especially if you have a family to support. I don’t enjoy this exactly, but it pays better than anything else. What choice do I have?”

“You revolt of course.” Phere said maybe a little too quickly.

“I what?” Isobel repeated back dumbfounded by the abruptness of the comment.

“Maybe revolt is the wrong word, but you shouldn’t have to put up with conditions like that.” Phere said.

“No. Don’t be silly. I don’t have it worse off than any of the other girls, and honestly it’s not all that bad really.” The tone Isobel’s voice was dismissive and she averted her gaze as though she was suddenly fascinated by a shelf of linen in the far corner. “There’s no way I could stand up to Mrs. Lazuli. Not a chance.”

“Not by yourself.” Phere agreed. “But if this is more than just you, if the rest of the staff are feeling like this as well, then shouldn’t you stick together as you said? Demand better for each other?”

“We can’t!” Isobel shook her head in disbelief. “We’re lucky to have these jobs. We’re instantly replaceable. If we all stand together the absolute most we achieve is to give everyone a pretty shitty night before we’re all replaced in the morning.”

The door opened and a group of three maids hurried in, closing the door quickly behind them.

“Mistress Agate sent us to aid the new girl.” The first one said. After a quick glance from Isobel to Meredith, she pulled off her mask to match. She had tan skin, gaunt features, faint scarring from some condition Phere wasn’t familiar with. As she took off her mask, one of her companions followed suit.

“Aid me?” Phere asked. “Aid me how?”

“She didn’t say.” The second one replied. Her skin had a slight grey twinge to it, her features severe but her icy blue eyes radiated compassion.

Isobel side-eyed Phere. “Not like that.” she said making a gesture as if to wave the thought away. “Meredith this is Cecilia,” the first maid, “Levinia,” the second maid, “and is that you Lucretia?” The third maid, the only one still wearing her mask, just nodded. “Lucretia is shy.” She added by way of explanation.

“Not like what?” Cecilia asked.

“I was just observing that if you all strongly dislike the… work forced upon you by this position, then the way to change that is to band together.” Phere said.

“And I was just saying that if we try we’re all fired and probably blacklisted.” Isobel said. “If it gets out that I even talked about this I’m fired and that can’t happen. My sister relies on me.”

“I’m sorry Izzy, but she’s got a point.” Cecilia said. Isobel looked at her like she’d been stabbed in the back. “This palace is nauseating. In my first five minutes on my first day I’d seen more money, more value in just trash and decorations than in my entire life living just an hour’s walk away. I felt sick. We live in squalor Izzy. You and Nat living in that tiny box of a house and every day you come out to this? To whore yourself out to pay for a sickness they caused but won’t treat.”

“Cecy stop it!” Isobel pulled back, as if stung, a tear streaking down her face. “I need to go I can’t be here in this room any more.” She slipped her mask back on and hurried past the new arrivals.

“Izzy!” Cecilia slipped her own mask back on and hurried after her.

“It’s not impossible.” Levinia said simply, ignoring the scene that Cecilia and Isobel had made. “If you got every single maid and butler, and the kitchen staff too, all of them to stand firm together. Maybe they could replace us all eventually but not for a while, and not without ruining the most important night of the year.”

“If the pair of you go out and start dropping some hints, working out who is up to standing together, who needs some convincing, we could actually do this.” Phere said. Levinia nodded thoughtfully.

“Why are you provoking this?” Lucretia finally spoke up, her gaze seemingly fixed upon Phere.

“I…” Phere hesitated. Why was she doing this? She wasn’t sure this counted as destroying the local power structure and reforming it with her at the head, not unless she pivoted hard. Maybe it was spite against this world and its nobles and unfortunate circumstance all leading to her becoming an unwitting prostitute? But spite for its own sake was seldom useful.

It wasn’t really a stepping stone in her goal to take control of the battle, or the Network, or a step along the process of going from worm to god.

“I think maybe I’m doing this because it’s not very often that someone is nice to me.” she said. “Not without wanting something. And Isobel… Izzy was.”

—

There was a real frisson in the air, Mistress Agate observed. Amongst the guests it was the build up towards the coronation. It was only a matter of hours before the ceremony would begin. Amongst the staff however there were whispers of standing together and sometimes even unionization.

Nobody had approached Mistress Agate to tell her directly but they didn’t really have to. If you whispered a secret in this palace you shared it not only with the recipient but with her as well sooner or later. Those who worked in the back knew this, those who celebrated in the front, perhaps but probably not.

When she first heard these whispers it was between a pair of butlers, and she’d had to listen to the cloth, trace it back from one person to the next at least a couple of steps. Until finally she was listening to the linens of the emerald wing linen closet repeating Meredith’s lapse of composure and the tactless conversation that followed.

She agreed with Isobel. Such talk was dangerous. This ‘Empress Phere’ was in danger of getting her girls not just fired but made a painful example of. Certainly she saw the appeal. It wasn’t as if she didn’t dream of choking the life out of the Stones at least once a day, but this was nothing but a hopeless pipe dream.

As she made her way through the palace she couldn’t help but notice nervous maids and butlers whispering to each other in discreet corners and each time she gave a swipe of her hand; a ruffle of the nearby fabrics, just a reminder that she was listening. Invariably the staff in question would take the hint and hurry back off on their duties. It was only about an hour earlier that she was mentally vowing to protect this woman from whatever schemes the Stones might have in mind for her, but she hadn’t known she was signing off on the revolution, and so she hurried on towards Mrs Lazuli’s room.

A distant sound, but an anticipated one was relayed through the cloth and it made her stop short. She closed her eyes and sank and there was the voice of Opal whimpering with fear in one of private rooms over in the far reaches of Topaz. Now what was Opal, normally lingering so close to the Stones’ Parlour and the Throne Room doing all the way over there? And who was this being in the black dress? An outsider, the dress whispered, and not one that the Stones had deigned to mention to her.

Oh, and Opal with his precious Tireless Men doing nothing to intervene. She allowed a smile to creep onto her physical body. If only someone could give their outfits a sharp tug, surely that would spring them into motion and they could arrest this outsider. What a shame poor Opal hd nobody to help him. But her eavesdropping here was only catharsis for her own grudge against Opal until the shadowy figure said “tell the Kings you’re a double agent”, and then her interest was piqued.

A simple whisper from Opal’s suit told her what she wanted to know and immediately she felt quietly deflated. Sure. Whatever. She held no great affection for the kings. But the thought of Opal wheedling his way into more power irked her.

She let the rest of Klendel’s interrogation play out in the distant background clamour of the cloth, and she continued on her way. She was going to need to speak to Phere herself.

—

Empress Phere walked through the stark empty corridor, a harsh contrast to the main rooms of the palace above. The basement was only intended for use by staff and so it was mostly undecorated. The walls and floor were the dull grey of the plaster or the concrete they were made of. Here and there a picture was hung; amateur artworks of landscapes or small animals or staff members smiling together. Likely created with the express purpose of bringing some life to these empty halls.

By her side walked Levinia, and behind them followed a whole group of maids, a not inconsiderable number of butlers and one member of the kitchen staff who had ventured upstairs for a discreet cigarette break. They were whispering to one another excitedly but the sheer number of them and the clacking of their heels on the concrete ensured their efforts to be quiet were in vain.

Phere was still dressed as a maid, despite her distaste. The solidarity now implicit within the uniform was too great to abandon it at this point. She was going without the mask though, a move which had been echoed by many others in the group.

Phere walked with confidence, pushing open the door into the enormous palace kitchens. It was a hive of activity; chopping and stirring and the heat of the ovens, off in one corner numerous chefs carefully plating meals and adding the delightful little flourishes that the upper class had come to expect. Though with that said, things had already slowed in pace as Head Housekeeper Mrs Lazuli and Head Chef Citrine were embroiled in some kind of argument.

Of course both the argument and the kitchen as a whole came to a swift stop as numerous maids and butlers began to file into the room.

“Levinia, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

“We demand fair compensation for our work.” Levinia stated her position with a firm confident voice, and behind her the maids and butlers cheered and whooped and shouted ‘yeah!’ even as they still filed into the room.

“You can’t be serious.” Mrs Lazuli muttered, her gaze running across the entire group until her focus seemed to fix onto Phere. “You, new girl. You’re the disruptive element here, right? Well, you’re fired and I’m going to make sure you’ll never work in this city again.” A glance around. “Can someone who can still see sense fetch a valet to take her away?”

Levinia cut in. “Meredith is one of us. Maybe she’s the reason we stopped being afraid to talk to each other about this, but she hasn’t tricked us. We’re seeing clearly here that united together we have the power to make demands, to change our conditions.”

“If you do this now… oh Kings you’re going to ruin the coronation.” Mrs Lazuli’s voice fell as she realized the consequences of the situation. “Oh no this is a disaster. Girls you have to stop all this talk right now.”

Head Chef Citrine tutted to themself. “Well this certainly is embarrassing Laz. Can’t keep your girls in control on the most important night of the year. It’d never happen under my watch.” and then moments later: “Clarissa!” they exclaimed as the one member of kitchen staff who had joined the unofficial union finally entered the kitchen. “You can’t be doing this to me…”

“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m standing up for myself. I mean we’re standing up for ourselves!” The group cheered. “We’re going on strike!” The group cheered again. “We’re protesting for better pay and working conditions.” Another cheer. “We’re sick of living in poverty while the Talents and Stones and Nobles and Kings live like this.” More cheering, scattered applause. Even some of it coming from the rest of the kitchen staff now.

“I need to sit down.” Mrs Lazuli said faintly. “Why aren’t there any chairs in here? And where is that valet?”

The door slammed open and Mistress Agate marched through, a pair of valet following behind her. As the door opened she was already talking. “Fuck all of you. It’s too late to pretend this never happened now. Guests are beginning to notice. I don’t think it’s long before the Stones are demanding answers and once they hear of this coordinated and willful insubordination…” she faltered for words. “It’s not going to be amicable. They can’t risk the failure of the coronation and I can’t understate the importance of this ceremony. Unless everyone is willing to recant their newfound beliefs and perform your duties voluntarily, they will do whatever it takes to force you.”

“This is exactly what we’re talking about.” Levinia said her enthusiasm only increased by Mistress Agate’s speech.

“No it’s not.” Mistress Agate snapped. “You still think they won’t have any choice but to buckle to your demands. They’ll kill you and puppet your corpses if it’s necessary.”

The gathered crowd hushed. “You’re not serious?” Citrine asked.

“Unfortunately I am.” Mistress Agate replied. “So we all have a decision to make. Back down or fight? It’s as simple as that. The Stones have their Tireless Men guarding the doors, they’ll notice very quickly if their servants start leaving en masse.”

“We should fight.” Phere spoke up in the nervous quiet that followed. “If we ever want any hope of things getting better we need to stand together and fight.”

“Oh, you.” Mistress Agate snarled. Phere felt her maid outfit seem to stiffen in place and squeeze tightly on her body. “Oh, I ought to choke the life out of you for what you’ve done to this place, but maybe you can convince those friends of yours to lend us some assistance.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Phere said, struggling to affect her best display of innocence.

“I’m not in the mood to be messed around ‘Empress’.” Mistress Agate snapped. “Go and have a word with your Sir Cedric and see if you can’t convince him to fight alongside us, and in the meantime the people who actually work in this Palace will have a discussion.”

Phere, momentarily taken aback by Mistress Agate’s knowledge of her, found herself walking very stiffly towards one of the Valets, as her uniform seemed to puppet her. “Hey stop this.” she called out. Amongst the group some of the staff were whispering to each other saying ‘did you know she could do that?’ and saying that they hoped they didn’t get on Mistress Agate’s bad side.

Ahead of Phere one of the two Valets unfolded its tuxedo torso into just a tall rectangle of black cloth and pressed itself up against the wall. For some reason her clothes were piloting her right towards it and then into it and suddenly she was plunging through it and emerging elsewhere. A corridor full of broken automaton parts.

Ahead of her was an iron door, partially melted, hanging open and beyond that Doctor Harmon and Sir Cedric, engaged with something that looked very technical. Behind her was a hanging black fabric, much the same as she’d seen throughout the palace. She placed one hand against it and found it was perfectly, completely solid, no longer a secret gateway between here and the kitchens. After a moment of contemplation she sparked a flame within herself and let it flow out and into the hanging fabric.

—

In the kitchen Mistress Agate gritted her teeth and clenched her fist and-

—

Phere felt her uniform fling her backwards to the ground. Above her, the burning fabric thrashed for a moment before tearing itself from the wall and scrunching itself together into one contained burning mound, no longer in danger of spreading throughout the palace.

“Hark! Who goes there?” Sir Cedric was at the door behind her, Sigrar in hand. Moments later Doctor Harmon was behind him eyeing the fallen Empress suspiciously. “Are you under attack? Some cowardly invisible monster?” His gaze lingered on the incongruous pile of burning black cloth. “A shapegark?”

Phere pushed herself up from the ground and turned to face Harmon and Cedric. “Nothing as simple as that I’m afraid. Some kind of crazy bitch with dominion over cloth.” As she spoke she was untying her apron and discarding it on the floor.

Cedric made a noise of disappointment. “Hardly a challenge fitting of my skills.”

Harmon was tactically silent, wary of the Empress but taking a moment to work out how to best approach the situation. As Phere took a step towards them she flinched backwards slightly. She wasn’t going to let Phere ruin everything as she had in the city, not when she was this close.

“Relax. I’m not interested in whatever you’re up to this time.” Phere said, unbuttoning the top buttons of her dress. “The cloth lady really wanted Sir Cedric to help…” a pause for thought, “a peasant’s revolution against an unjust monarchy? I think that’s a reasonable approximation.” She attempted to pull her maid dress up from the bottom and over her head but it was seemingly resisting her.

“We should be going.” Harmon said. “We have work still to do.” She attempted to step away but stopped when she noticed Cedric wasn’t following her.

“Sorry Princess, but the people need me.” Cedric said regretfully. “When their fight is won I vow I will once again aid you in whatever it is we were doing.”

Phere had finally managed to pull off her maid’s dress and kick it away from herself. “Avert your eyes both of you.” Neither Harmon or Cedric were looking at her at that point, but as she insisted they look away they couldn’t help but reflexively glance towards her. She was still wearing lingerie but not for long. “I want you both to know this is extremely out of character and I wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t a psychotic clothomancer with a grudge against me specifically, for some reason.”

Harmon scowled. This was what Phere did. Showing up when things were settled and within her grasp and moving the goalposts, putting another little extra obstacle in there that would never be reasonably surmounted. But it wasn’t as though she could just head off on her own. With the Tireless Men, and whatever other forces the Kings might have at their disposal, after her she needed Cedric’s help right now. Which meant sticking with him long enough to get him out of Phere’s earshot and then offering him some reason he should abandon this latest wild goose chase.

“Fine. I’ll come with you.” Harmon said. “Maybe I can assist the… what was it? Peasants? Maybe I can help.”

“Huzzah!” Cedric cheered. “And Lady Phere. If you would lead the way? When your modesty is restored, of course.”

Phere had managed to tear away the lingerie and slipped past both Harmon and Cedric to the storage room behind them. “Gods I really hope there’s a full suit of armour in here.”