The hare stopped by Emily’s room later in the day. She’d read through the contract twice and still felt unsure about it.
“It seems pretty straightforward.” He nibbled on his lip. “If you kill the queen, those exiled after the civil war will be allowed to return via the gate you used to enter the Sidhe, There’s some legal fancy talk in there, but nothing looks off.”
In a burst of inspiration, Emily took a picture of the contract while the hare held it flat. She watched anxiously as it developed.
“There’s symbols on it like what showed up on the walls of the monastery, I mean, the institute.” She wrinkled her nose. “Do they mean anything to you?”
The hare tapped on each symbol with a nail as he described them. “Wards against tampering, binding sigils, and the king’s seal. All above board.” He looked at Emily, his round eyes showing concern. “You’ve just got to sign it now.”
“I don’t want to kill the queen. This is crap.”
“Yes.”
Emily sighed, her pen hovering above the contract. “Well, fuck it. It’s what I was made for.” She scrawled her full name above the king’s careful script and found herself back in the throne room.
The queen was sitting on the edge of the dais, the fingers of her bound hands tapping impatiently. In front of Emily sat a tall chunk of wood with a curved depression hollowed into the top. It was, she realised, a chopping block.
“I’m so glad you agreed.” The king settled more comfortably on the throne. “I don’t know what we’d have done with you if you hadn’t. You could have found a place in the kitchens, I suppose; you seemed to enjoy the company. It certainly would have been embarrassing to go back to the mundane world a failure.” Emily couldn’t tell if he was gloating or just naturally a prick.
The guard brought the queen to the block and made her kneel facing away from it.
“Let’s get this done then.” The king sounded bored, as though having his wife killed was one more bit of everyday business. “I hear you have a sword, which is convenient. I hope, for my wife’s sake, that it is sharp.” The guard laid the queen back, her spine arched as the back of her neck rested against the hollow of the chopping block.
With shaking steps, Emily drew her sword and approached the queen. The glow of the blade lit the queen’s face.
“Do I get any last words, hateful husband of mine?” Her voice was soft and strong.
“Of course.”
The queen locked her eyes on Emily and held her gaze by force of will. “Child, I pity you.” Her laugh was strained by the awkward way she’d been forced to lay backward. “Do you know why those people of yours were exiled?”
Emily shook her head slowly and the queen laughed again.
“Because they were my agents provocateur. They helped me start the war and win my place by the throne. But you can’t trust people like that” —she attempted a shrug—“so, I banished them to a place where they could do me no harm. Your silly aunt trusted them to the end, promising she’d guide them through the hell they were being sent to.” She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “Fat lot of good that did me.”
“Are you done?” The king’s voice startled Emily from the sinking realisation of what the queen had said.
“Yes, I’ve said my piece.” The queen smiled wickedly at Emily. “Kill me any time, child.”
Emily looked at the sword in her hand. She was about to kill a person she didn’t know because of a bunch of other people’s manipulations and lies. People like that didn’t deserve to return to the Sidhe.
The king spoke quietly. “You signed a contract.”
Emily thought of Janice and the children, people unknowingly locked into the whole stupid thing along with her. The life she could have had if everything hadn’t been manipulated to bring her to exactly this point. Before she could think about it more, Emily brought the sword down.
Even though she wanted to, Emily couldn’t bring herself to vomit. The queen’s head bounced once and rolled, her neck tracing curving lines of blood along the marble floor of the throne room.
“You’ll have to find your own way back,” the king said as the guard scooped up the queen’s limp body and caught the head by the hair. “While you’re there, pick up some of that film for the hare. I think I’ll support his further research.”
Sheathing her sword, Emily bowed stiffly and left, wandering down the hall of portraits back to her room. Of course she’d have to find her own way back: it hadn’t been something she’d thought to request as part of the deal and it was perfectly in character for the king to spite her.
She was packing when the hare knocked lightly on her open door and padded in. He handed her a fat envelope full of US currency.
“Thank you.” Emily riffled through it, eyebrows raised. “This should be plenty to set you guys up with cameras and film.”
“Do you know how you’re getting back?”
“No, I was hoping you might have an idea.”
The hare scratched his head. “I don’t, but someone at the institute might.”
“Well, after I drop off your things I’ll start asking around. Maybe the panther knows.”
The panther didn’t know, and as Emily inquired with other residents of the institute, she learned that it was no longer the easiest thing to just pop into the mundane world where you wished, especially if your existence as Folk lay in the grey area Emily’s did.
She felt at home as soon as they’d stepped through the gate back to the curving halls of the monastery. They even installed her in the room she’d stayed in before. She decided to give herself a week to leisurely figure out how to return. That way she could attempt to sift through all the information she’d picked up at the castle without the added stress of trying to manipulate forces she didn’t understand. She also knew that she needed to process killing the queen but was reluctant to even think about thinking about it. If, after a week, she hadn’t been able to figure out some way to get back on her own, Emily figured she’d have to make a deal with someone—anyone—who might have the ability to send her. She very much did not want to make any more deals.
She found some dryads in the spring garden and asked them if they knew of a grove with an oak tree near a jump point to the mundane world. They laughed, creakingly, and shook their heads.
“There are so many magnificent oaks, how could we know of all of them?” The petite Japanese maple tossed their flaming dark hair.
“Besides,” a craggy old cottonwood added, “gates made during a solstice aren’t stable. They’re transient things you cobble together for holidays.”
Seeing her disappointment, the dryads were kind to Emily and tried to cheer her with stories about oak trees they’d known.
“Well, there was this one oak who learned about distilleries from a human. They were horrified when they learned that whiskey was aged in oaken barrels.” The dryad shuddered. “But the oak liked the taste of the stuff. So they hollowed out a part of themselves—not too much, but just enough—let that bit dry out, and aged spirits inside.” The dryad started giggling. “So, for five years they stumbled around, drunk, but they were determined to see it through! When they finally tapped themselves—”
“Like a stupid maple!” A young birch squealed, then blushed, cowering under the glare of the Japanese maple.
The pine rolled their eyes and continued. “Right, for midsummer. And we all tried some and it wasn’t too bad. But it took nearly half a century for the oak to dry out.” They slapped Emily’s knee lightly, grinning.
“Wait, so you drank from stuff the oak had kept inside them?” Emily wrinkled her nose. “That’s kind of gross.”
The dryad shook their head and the canopy above rustled. “It’s better than drinking from something stored in dead, what is this called?” —It brushed Emily’s arm— “Skin.”
“Good point.”
“Besides, people drink from cows, who keep fluids in their living skin.”
“That—that is true and also kind of gross, when you put it that way.”
The dryad shrugged. “Every living thing is disgusting when you think about it too much.”
Everyone was kind to her, treating Emily like something between a pet and a mascot, trying to think of how to help any way they could. The spider down the hall made her her a weird dream web.
“You’ll be able to remember your dreams, and the unconscious brain has so many ideas!” She waved several arms empathetically.
“But I don’t sleep anymore.” Emily kicked her feet as she swung gently in a hammock chair the spider had made for her bipedal guests. “I’ve tried a couple of times and no luck.”
“That’s a pity. Well, it might help anyhow.”
After hanging the web above the bed, Emily took a picture of it. If there were emanations, they were obscured by the runes in the walls. She made a face as she tossed the photo into the writing desk. It was stupid to waste film.
She hadn’t written her aunt since the brief note before seeing the king. She didn’t know what to say. On a whim, she photographed the letter slot and stared at the dream web while she waited impatiently for it to develop.
Most of the desk appeared obscured by a shining funnel leading to the letter slot. It had the same qualities, reflecting hints of infinity, that the djinn’s jar had in the photo the hare had taken. The slot itself showed a sliver of something, but it was so narrow a glimpse she couldn’t make it out.
Emily sat cross-legged on the bed for a while, staring at the writing desk. Finally, with a determined nod, she began taking everything out of it. The desk was still heavy when empty, the dark wood solid and unyielding. Holding it so the letter slot faced her, Emily slipped off the bed and moved to the middle of the floor. She firmed her mouth, planted her feet, and threw the desk to the floor with all her might.
The pieces scattered in a splashing pattern, leaving a clear space in the middle. Solemnly, Emily took a picture. There, surrounded by bits of the destroyed desk, she saw a painfully clear view of her aunt’s front door.
Emily wrote a short note and slipped it and the two photos of the desk into an envelope, then pinned it to the door of her room. She changed into the clothes she’d arrived in before packing what she’d been wearing into her backpack. The fabric felt strange and looking down at her arms and legs was like seeing out of someone else’s eyes.
With a deep breath, Emily stepped into the middle of the debris.
This post is part of The Audacity Gambit – Serialised. Learn more about when the book was first published here, see the archive and overall content warnings here, and find more of my writing here. I’m over on both Comradery and Patreon, if you feel like supporting my creative endeavours. If you’d like to subscribe to this story, here’s a handy email box for you: