Page 66 of Confounding Oaths
Of course, that was before he decided todrawsaid sword and point it at the hostess of the temple.
“Unhand her,” he demanded despite the fact that Amenirdis’s hands were nowhere near Miss Caesar.
“Or?” asked Amenirdis, staring down the blade with commendable apathy. “Will you murder me in cold blood?”
“It is no murder to rescue a lady from a …” He stumbled, his list of pejoratives running short in the circumstances.
Amenirdis walked slowly forward and put one fingertip on the point of Mr. Bygrave’s sword. “Set this aside. You will have no need of it here.”
Faced with running through an unarmed woman (albeit one who likely had defences of her own the like of which Mr. Bygrave could not possibly comprehend) or sheathing his weapon, Mr. Bygrave chose peace. Miss Caesar, however, hurried to his side.
“I have come to find you,” he explicated quite unnecessarily. “Your family will want to know that you are safe.”
“She was quite safe,” Amenirdis told him. “And she will be better if she stays.”
Raucous laughter at some unrelated joke echoed around the hall, and Miss Caesar slipped her arm into Mr. Bygrave’s. “If I am not a prisoner,” she said, “then I shall leave.”
With that enigmatic smile common to all witches, Amenirdis nodded. “You are not a prisoner. Go if you will. You know where to find me.”
Without waiting for any further discussion, Mr. Bygrave drew Miss Caesar back into the streets, and I was about to follow, but I was checked by the voice of the witch.
“And what do you want, aboatia?”
I turned. “A story. And for what it’s worth the mmoatia are not quite the same as my—”
Amenirdis shrugged. “You live in forests, disguise yourselves as animals, and play tricks on people. What kind of story?”
“One that pleases my master and vexes Titania, who Isincerelyhope you aren’t going to tell me is one of the ten thousand names of Isis.”
“Do I need to?”
One of the more complicated things about taking one of my extremely true and directly personally experienced narratives and wrangling them into linear shape for mortal consumption is that it is not only time but identity itself that works fundamentally differently for our people. In the play that I once gave an otherwise talentless glover’s son I am calledRobin Goodfellowamongst other things. But that is as much a name for a species as an individual and may be used plurally for all of my kind just ashobgoblinmay (though not, please, to my face). We are ideas as much as people and people as much as ideas, which makes keeping track of the relationships between us and then communicating those relationships to three-dimensional beings an utter chore.
“Is this going to make things difficult?” I asked her. “I’m just a dispassionate observer. Whatever purposes you and the Lady have in mind, I’m more than happy for you to fight it out amongst yourselves.”
With a studied casualness, Amenirdis picked up a deck of playing cards from a table nearby. She cut the deck and turned over the top card to reveal the seven of spades. “For some reason,” she told me, “I do not consider you trustworthy.”
“I would offer to swear oaths to the effect that I am here only to observe, but I doubt that you would trust those either.”
Amenirdis nodded. “Never trust the word of a shape-shifter. Oaths mean nothing to a creature that can say ‘I’ and mean a hundred different things.”
“I do sohate itwhen mortals work that out.”
“I’ve had a long time to study.” She turned another card. The two of clubs. “Continue watching, spirit. But interfere with me or this place, and it will end badly for you.”
To which I responded with my most winning smile. “I am eternal, little witch. I have no endings, good or bad.”
In hindsight, it was probably an unfortunate thing to have said. The gods have such a pissing awful sense of irony.
Chapter Fourteen
The Irregulars were making theirway back towards the Folly in ones and twos, reporting on their failure to locate the elusive Miss Caesar. How they missed somebody who literally glowed, I am not certain, but then the army has never been the most selective of employers and I suppose that Londonisrather large.
Having discharged their duties as they saw them, the soldiers retired to their own various nighttime activities, which for the most part meant either drinking, fucking, or sleeping, although Kumar retired rather pointedly with a book instead. By the small hours only Mr. Caesar and Captain James were left propping up the bar, Mr. Caesar staring disconsolately into a mug of weak beer and speaking little.
“She’ll be found,” Captain James told him. “If the men don’t then the family will.”
For a long time, Mr. Caesar made no reply. Then at last he responded with a morose, if accurate: “People disappear in this city every day.”
