Page 60 of Confounding Oaths
“It is not the milk,” the Lady replied.
While this exchange was taking place, Mr. Caesar and the captain were just entering the square from the house-side, and Sal was sidling around in the other direction, her hands straying to her skirts where a long yellow ribbon was artfully concealed.
My kind are swift in our actions, and attacking us relies on swift execution and precise timing. Timing that the Irregularsalmostmissed. But right on cue, Kumar lined up his shot, and fired.
The musket-ball caught the Lady in the temple, a shot that would have been fatal to any mortal and even to a creature of the Other Court was a distraction and an impediment. Her blood, a deep indigo blue like a spilled inkwell, trickled down the side of her face, arcing across her cheekbones and staining her lips.
Being shot in the head threw the Lady off for just long enough that the captain could advance upon her, sword drawn, Barryson could begin whatever incantations he felt would be helpful in this situation, and Sal could position herself for the complex operation of binding a resisting supernatural being at the throat and wrists with a single length of cord not at all designed for the purpose.
It was not, however, long enough that the Lady was unable to shift to a space orthogonal to the garden and conceal herself, or so she thought, from mortal sight.
The captain could see nothing any longer, but if the Lady had thought herself safe from the other Irregulars she was to be proven quite, quite wrong. Unfortunately if the Irregulars thought themselves to have an insurmountable advantage they were quite, quite wronger.
From his position in the tree, Kumar was in no place to take a safe shot with Miss Bickle and the others so close, while Barryson’s words of binding, chanted as he walked widdershins around the melee, were proving similarly ineffective. Jackson’s sword, meanwhile, came alive in his hands, twisted out of his grip, and levelled against his throat. All around the square, faces were appearing in windows, and from the door of Lady Etheridge’s residence, guests were beginning to spill outside to investigate the commotion.
Choosing her moment, Sal extended a length of ribbon between her hands like a garrotte and moved forwards with impressive swiftness, for a mortal.
Between the ribbon taking hold and whatever sorcery Barryson was weaving, the Lady dropped back into visibility. Her animation of other people’s swords, however, remained resolutely intact.
Keeping his grip on his own weapon, Captain James did his best to neutralise Jackson’s but found it a losing endeavour since a blade moving under its own power had nothing to incapacitate. Still, repeated strikes against the metal sufficed to keep it distracted long enough for Jackson himself to join Sal and a finally emergent Boy William in piling onto the Lady in the hopes of restraining her long enough to tie her hands as well as her throat.
I, in this situation, would have been shape-shifting. But the Lady was not that sort. She travelled as a fair woman in blue, or aslight, and nothing else. And the light option was curtailed by the band at her throat.
Steadfastly neutral in the conflict as I was—I ordinarily favour my own over mortals, but Titania’s court is an enemy of my master and thus an enemy to me also—I watched through the dispassionate eyes of a carrion bird and judged this particular conflict to be a win for humanity. Unprepared for runecraft, overly reliant on enchantments, and with a ball of lead still lodged somewhere where, had she been mortal, her brain would have been, the Lady had a number of disadvantages any one of which could have proved critical.
Of course, she had also a single, crucial trump card.
Miss Caesar broke free from the ever-expanding crowd of onlookers and raced past both her brother and the captain in an effort to pry the other Irregulars from her patroness. Although she was beyond biological limitations, her new body had been built for beauty rather than strength, and so her capacity to overpower was limited. But glass had its own dangers, and the leaves that wound through her hair cut deep into Jackson and Boy William as they tried to pull her away. And for a moment I quite lost track of the combatants in a mess of blue and yellow and blood and mirrors and—
“Mary.” Mr. Caesar tried to address his sister with a tone of command, but he lacked his father’s gravitas. He was also deeply conscious that he had, despite the warnings, come out wearing a cravat. “Step away and let us finish this.”
In the tangle of limbs and multicoloured bloods, Sal managed to tie one of the Lady’s wrists to her throat, restricting her enough that Jackson’s sword fell lifeless to the floor and Mr. Caesar’s imminent fears for his airway were at least somewhat abated.
“There is nothingtofinish,” Miss Caesar pleaded. “Except thisterrible scene that you and your new friends are making in front of half the ton.”
Materialising like an unwelcome spirit, Mr. Ellersley drifted to the front of the crowd. “This is more than a scene,” he said, and Mr. Caesar had the unwelcome impression that he was saying it to a very general audience. “This is a criminal disturbance.”
Whether from a distaste for civilian interruption or lingering resentment from earlier run-ins, Captain James glared at the newcomer. “Don’t recall asking you.”
Her strength recovering rapidly and the new presence of Miss Caesar vastly restricting the Irregulars’ capacity for violence, the Lady shook Sal off at last, though ritual and old compacts forbade her from unbinding herself. “My protégé did not ask your assistance either,” she pointed out, her voice just a fraction weaker and more mortal than it was when she was untied. “Yet you interfered.”
“Respectfully,” the captain told her, “shut up.”
With a decorous cough, the Lady expectorated the musket ball into her palm, spattering it with bright blue blood drops. Then she turned to Miss Caesar. “Be a dear,” she said, “and untie these.”
While the literal undoing of all their hard work was the source of some concern for Mr. Caesar, his attention was caught by something differently disturbing. Fine cracks spiderwebbed up from his sister’s ankles and midway up her calves, visible through and in the strange fabric of her dress. “Mary,” he said again, but more gently now, “you are not well.”
One knot undone, Mary turned. “I shall be the judge of whether I am well, John. You are my brother, not my keeper.”
“Let usstop this.” Far from authoritative, Mr. Caesar’s tone was imploring now. He had not, perhaps, quite understood until now how close he was to losing one of his sisters.
Paying him no mind, Miss Caesar hooked her delicate glassfingernails into the knot at the Lady’s throat and tugged the ribbon free.
Stepping back a little, although not, I couldn’t help but notice, so far that she could be shot without risk of hitting Miss Caesar, the Lady gave a satisfied nod. “Well, hasn’t this been a wonderful evening. I believe it is best that I bid you all adieu.”
And then, unbound, she did indeed become starlight. As did her carriage, her coachmen, and the last wisps of enchantment that had fallen over the evening, save those that still lingered within Miss Caesar.
For a moment, the glass girl stood staring at her brother and his companions, wearing an expression of rank betrayal. And then, before he or anybody else could make apology or explanation, she turned and fled weeping into the night.
