Page 109 of Confounding Oaths
The creature struck. The bayonet, sharp in that deceptive fragmenting way that only glass can be, bit into Captain James’s breast. And then the blade shattered, and the creature shattered, and the world shattered.
As I said. She’s showy.
It said something—not necessarily something good or something bad, but something distinctly notable—about Mr. Caesar’s priorities that as reality tumbled in fragments around him he ran first and fastest to the side of Captain James, who staggered into his arms from shock.
The uniformed creature was gone, as was the corridor, and in their place was the Dancing Hall. Contrary to the sometimes whimsical naming conventions of my species it was not a hall that itself danced (we have those also, but they go by different names). It was a wide, gilded space and it was filled with dancers, each alone, each glass, each a mortal who had bargained for the Beauty Incomparable.
And they were beautiful by any objective standard, exquisitely crafted and delicately detailed. The light shone through and in and off of their bodies, and even in their imperfections—the places in which they had cracked or splintered, or where they were missing fingers or in some cases whole limbs—they possessed a kind of chaotic wonder.
They were each and every one of them masked, and they danced a perpetual spiral for the pleasure of the Queen of Elsewhere.
The queen, I should add, was very much present, enthroned on a dais at one end of the hall. Her seat was wrought of silver minedby spirits of the deep earth, her gown was sewn from moonbeams by pixies with deft needles, her crown had been spun from gold and gossamer by the finest goblin-smiths. And she watched now with detached beneficence.
Still bleeding from a wound above his heart, but active and alert for all of that, Captain James steadied himself, although Mr. Caesar continued to stand close in case he should stumble again.
Keeping his eyes on the queen, he spoke to his men. “Fan out. Find the girl.”
The Irregulars needed no further instruction, although the process proved more taxing than they had expected. The dancers did not deign to stop for identification, many of them were sharp at the edges, and, en masse, they were nigh impossible to distinguish from one another.
While the gentlemen in the group were searching the crowd for one flawless masked dancer amongst a hundred, Miss Bickle walked slowly but purposefully towards the throne, carrying me with her.
Since I was technically a spy from a rival court, I was not wholly comfortable at being drawn so close to the Queen of Sun and Storms. In theory, chroniclers such as myself enjoy certain privileges much as mortal diplomats might, but in practice our rulers, like yours, can be a little testy. Reasoning that my best hope lay in openness, I took the shape of a fly, left Miss Bickle’s hair, then became a bird once more and alighted on the queen’s hand.
She glanced down at me. “Ill met by moonlight, emissary.”
I trilled my own greeting and let her return her attention to Miss Bickle.
“Approach, child.” Titania’s voice was fire in winter and rain in summer.
With more caution than she normally displayed, but still lessthan the situation warranted, Miss Bickle approached. “If it please your majesty,” she said with a pretty curtsey, “I am looking for my friend.”
“Your friend is where she wishes to be.” Titania’s voice was promises and secrets and two truths and a lie.
“I don’t think she is,” Miss Bickle hazarded. “She seemed quite adamant at the ball.”
Titania smiled. “Girls are fickle.”
A contemplative expression crossed Miss Bickle’s face and her brow furrowed sceptically. “I’m not sure that’s true. My friend Miss Mitchelmore, for example, has always been quite devoted to her family and to her lover, and I account myself extremely constant in my affections. My affection for the anonymous lady author ofSense and Sensibility,for example, is abiding and—”
“Nonetheless,” Titania interrupted. As Queen of the Other Court she was not accustomed to people, especially mortals, speaking at such length to her. “She may leave whenever she wishes.”
“And she is definitelyhere,” Miss Bickle persisted—and this was a good question, one that many mortals would have forgotten to ask. “In this room?”
The smile had never left Titania’s lips, but now it broadened just a fraction. “Oh yes.”
“And she isn’t the room itself? Or otherwise transformed in any way? She still appears as she did when we last saw her?”
We do not, as a rule, like it when mortals are exhaustive in their questioning. But the Queen of Both Evers gave a slow, grudging nod. “She does.”
Miss Bickle turned to look out over the dance floor, where Mr. Caesar and the Irregulars were searching every dancer and getting precisely nowhere. There was, she felt certain, a solution. Thequeen herself, after all, had told her that Miss Caesar was in the room, and this was not the kind of thing she would lie about.
She looked up.
Suspended from the ceiling, impossibly high above the ground, was a silver hoop twined with white flowers, and reclining, impossibly balanced, within that hoop was a figure. From this distance and at this angle it was impossible to know who that figurewas,but Miss Bickle had a strong sense of narrative fitness, and in this place narrative fitness was a surer law than gravity.
“John,” she called across the hall, “I think it very likely that she’s upthere.”
Mr. Caesar, Captain James, and the rest of the Irregulars stopped and stared upwards. And as they did, the dancers—responding to some imperceptible signal—moved into a wide circle with the suspended figure at the exact centre. From everywhere and nowhere, violins played a sweeping crescendo, and the silver hoop, along with its occupant, descended to the floor.
