Page 94 of Confounding Oaths
Mr. Caesar cast a weary glance at Captain James. “Does she always talk like this?”
“Always did,” the captain replied, “but I think she’s got worse.”
Doing her best to rise above the bickering, Miss Caesar looked at the witch almost pleadingly. “You said that if I needed you, I could come back.”
“What I said,” Amenirdis replied, “was that you would do well to stay, and could come back when you wished. I made no offer of aid.”
“Then you will not help me?”
A patron, stumbling away from a hazard table, took two steps towards Miss Caesar with an expression on his face that could be best described as hovering between covetous and lascivious. He reached out a hand and had that hand immediately caught by Captain James, who twisted it at a sharp angle and turned the man away.
Amenirdis shook her head. “No.”
A tension began in Mr. Caesar’s fingertips and ran up his arms to his spine. “So we have entirely wasted our time.”
She shook her head again.
“Look here, miss,” Barryson tried. “I know how this all works, but it’s crowded and we’ve been on a fuck of a walk, so what do yousay we find somewhere to sit down and we can have a proper talk with slightly less riddles.”
“If nothing else,” I told Amenirdis, “it will make itfareasier for me to follow what everybody is saying.”
Staunchly refusing to react to that particular point, Amenirdis reached out and took Miss Caesar by the hand, leading her through the crowds and the tables and the statues of ancient gods to a narrow staircase and up to a set of rooms far dingier and far less conducive to raucousness than the halls below. They were cluttered with the prosaic necessities of life—cooking pans stacked higgledy-piggledy in a basin and clothes scattered over most surfaces. Only a tiny shrine in one corner of the room suggested its occupier had any tie to the old gods.
Captain James looked around at the chaos. “Fuck me, Nell.”
“Amenirdis.”
“Fuck me, Amenirdis. You havenotchanged.”
Without waiting for permission, Barryson plonked himself down onto the bed that was the only free item of furniture in the room. “Right, let’s get down to business. She’s falling apart”—he pointed at Miss Caesar—“my gods don’t want to do much about it. Yours might. Go.”
The bluntness of the common soldier was still unfamiliar to Miss Caesar. “I don’t believe we need to be so curt. We are guests here.”
Amenirdis knelt with her back to her makeshift shrine and bid the others make themselves comfortable, which led to Miss Caesar perching on the end of the bed while her brother and Captain James spread out somewhat awkwardly on the floor. “You are guests in the house of a goddess, child,” she told her. “And goddesses, as a rule, are not patient beings. It is better we speak quickly.”
“Even though you’ve already said you’re not going to help?” asked Mr. Caesar.
“You want a quicker answer than no?” Although I mislike mortals, I will confess that Amenirdis, like most witches, had a style I found acceptable.
“I want a quicker answer than ‘No, but keep talking,’” Mr. Caesar clarified.
The shrine was lit by candles, and the candlelight framed Amenirdis like a halo. “Then try this. I will not help her, but she will help herself.”
The light inside Miss Caesar glimmered. “How?”
“There is to be a ball,” Amenirdis began, “and before you ask, I know this because everybody with an eye to otherworlds knows it.”
“She’s right,” confirmed Barryson. “The elf-court makes a fucking racket. They aren’t subtle people.”
Captain James stretched out his legs and crossed one boot across the other. “We know about the ball. What we don’t know is how to play it.”
“Like every queen,” Amenirdis replied, a little gnomically, “and every goddess.”
“But what does that mean?” asked Miss Caesar, half-plaintive half-hopeful.
“If it means anything,” added her brother, rather more guarded.
Barryson made a what-can-you-do gesture. “She’s a witch, you don’t come to a witch for an easy answer.”
