Simmer: Or, The Second Life of Callis Wardwell, Witch

PART 3: AT WIT'S END

Tᴡɪᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏ ᴍᴏʀᴇ.

Oғғ ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏ, ᴄʜɪʟᴅ; ᴡᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ᴀɢᴀɪɴ ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ɪs ʀɪɢʜᴛ.

---

It struck the sky and shot it through gold, knocked the Spellcast into silence and black, shook the earth to rattle the bones of every person in the Woods. In Camelot, statues cracked and fell, the people in the square screamed, clutched neighbours, fell to their knees, prayed, resurrected piety and superstition. Witches across the Woods, wiser and better knowing, came out onto streets, shook their heads, clicked their tongues, grudging. The reflection of the sky in the sea blinded and burned.

At the School for Good, Clarissa Dovey pushed her students aside and ran onto a balcony in Purity. She knew what this was.

Everboys ran after her as the balcony trembled, but she stood quite still, quite firm.

In Netherwood, Guinevere looked up, and was quiet.

A hand receded.

Agatha woke up to find everyone else on the ground, too.

She struggled to lift her head, feeling leaden and unsteady. She could hear the others getting up, vague questions. She thought Callis had gone to Iphigenia, maybe, or perhaps the other way around–

Then Hester was behind her, pushing her upwards. Off balance, Agatha fell forwards, and Callis caught her, instead. She didn't say anything, just clutched her against her chest, but Dot was saying something. What was she–

"I can't believe it, but you... he..." Dot spluttered, lost for words. "Just–"

Agatha looked up, saw Sophie–

"Your face," croaked Agatha. Sophie snorted, and crimped a bit of limp white hair with a wizened, liver-spotted hand.

"Got a little upset, darling. I'll be beautiful old me again in no time, don't fret. My varicose veins are already gone."

"You... who did you..." Agatha managed.

Sophie grinned horribly, exposing blackened and missing teeth.

"I ought to take up axe-throwing. I got him right in the chest. Poor thing..."

Through bleary eyes, Agatha looked over.

Nearby was Rhian, sitting in the mud, a look of pure animal horror on his face. Japeth– or Japeth's body– was in front of him, seeping blood, the axe embedded in his chest.

And in front of them, on the ground, Tedros was moving.

Agatha felt vaguely as if she was watching from very far away. Tedros clawed his way up to his knees, took up his head in his hands, put it right. He bent double, vomited a grisly stream of blood into the sand.

Then he started laughing.

Spluttering, dripping with strings of blood and saliva and gunk, he hunched over and cackled, staring into Rhian's horrified face. He heaved and spat and yet he still laughed, almost convulsing.

"Every god preserve me," said Callis hoarsely, clutching Agatha so tightly it was nearly painful. "You actually managed it. Agatha..."

She'd... managed it. Tedros was alive, he'd... he'd picked up... there was so much blood...

Agatha copied him– doubled over and threw up in the sand. Callis, never-fazed, pulled her hair back, though Sophie grimaced. As if she wasn't a toothless hag at this moment.

"You'll never be able to cast that again," said Hester from behind them, in clear awe. "Jesus, Agatha..."

Agatha was too breathless to even manage a response, not that anyone was really looking for one. Callis kissed her filthy head fiercely, and Agatha slumped in a heap in her mother's lap. She wanted to go to Tedros, but she wasn't sure she even had the strength to sit up.

Iphigenia stooped over them, touching Agatha's back briefly.

"Get Rhian," she said to Callis. "This isn't over."

Agatha felt herself transplanted from Callis to Sophie, and her mother and the Coven retreating, but only vaguely registered it. Sophie wasn't saying much, which was out of character, and Agatha was about to ask her about it, when she registered staggering footsteps, and the hot stench of blood–

Unsteady hands landed on her waist, and made a very poor job of hauling her off of Sophie. Agatha fell on him, and he fell over, and when she got her bearings again–

Agatha started crying, and immediately found she couldn't stop. They lay in a bloodied, filthy heap, clutching each other, the King and Queen of Camelot in the mire. Tedros's blood was everywhere, and Agatha had to roll over to escape the smell of it, trying to stabilise her shaking breaths–

When she looked back, Tedros had leant over her, propped himself up on violently shaking arms, and smiled, with slick, red teeth. He looked horrifying and handsome, dripping with gore, one of the vampires from those horror-romance novels she loved to torment Sophie with.

"I'm not kissing you like that." choked Agatha, snot running into her mouth and down her chin. There was mud and sand in her teeth, blood clotted in Tedros's.

"I thought maybe you were into the vampire aesthetic."

His voice was fucked. There was no way around it, and it just made Agatha cry harder.

"You sound horrible." she sobbed.

"It'll sort itself out." said Tedros, with surprising authority, considering he had no prior experience with being beheaded. He tried to smooth her blood-crusted hair and mostly failed. "Come on, you like horrible gory things. Isn't this like Dismemberment in Drupathi?"

"No." said Callis from somewhere nearby.

"Oh.Well, I never did read it, just read the blurb after I saw it on the table, then got scared and put it down. But don't cry, my love, it worked." he shook her gently. "We knew it was going to work. Because you're clever and did the spell."

"I couldn't do it." sobbed Agatha. "I couldn't get it to work like we planned–"

Tedros must have looked confused, because Sophie interjected;

"There was a delay, maybe a minute–""

"Oh, god, Sophie–"

"Yes, Teddy, don't stare so– even though I know you do like your girls as spindly hags–"

Agatha tried to kick her, even through her tears. Sophie grabbed her foot and went on;

"She was panicking about not being able to do it– and then she started screaming, and the spell hit so hard that it knocked everyone out. I think maybe... maybe you granted your own wish, Aggie?"

Agatha thought back to her jumble of panicked thoughts before the spell.

"I think–" she coughed, tried again. "I think I might have..."

"I worded it so you would." said Tedros. Agatha and Sophie stared at him. He smiled, then frowned, and spat a blood clot onto the floor.

"Sorry. Ew." he paused. "I'm prescient, you know."

Sophie groaned.

"What, did you realise what was going to happen as you were led to the block? Was that why you were so serene?"

"More or less."

Agatha put her hands over her face, exhausted..

"Some wish," murmured Sophie. "Can't imagine the extent you have to feel that, to be able to grant your own. You must have upset some higher powers, darling. Expect some dirty looks in the next life."

"Is it even possible?" said Tedros. "To grant your own wish?"

"Well," said Sophie. "You thought she was going to do it, so you tell me."

"Yeah, but I'd never heard of it happening before. Kind of a last-ditch attempt."

"And yet you're alive. You look terrible, but you're alive. Perhaps it's a one-time thing."

"I'm ok." said Tedros, in a very unconvincing way. Agatha knew his game, knew he was trying to project bravado for her benefit and it was deeply insincere, but it was working anyway, because she could breathe again, slightly. Tedros pinched her hip playfully.

"Ah, look, it's just blood. And maybe your snot. We can be vampires. Like that horrible vampire romance novel under your bed in Gavaldon."

Agatha looked at him, briefly distracted.

"What? How did you find that?"

Tedros kissed her to avoid answering– her hand, and then her jaw, and then her neck–

Then bit her neck, mostly just to wind her up. Agatha whacked him, then immediately felt guilty considering he'd just died, and started crying again–

"Right, I'll save vampire jokes for later. Come on, normal girl–" Tedros sat up and pulled her with him, let her cry into his sodden shirt. His hands were still trembling.

"That's both of us." said Sophie weakly.

"What?" croaked Agatha.

"You've brought both me and Teddy back, now."

That was right. She had...

Agatha sat there to process that, for a minute, but found she didn't know what to make of it.

She sensed Sophie and Tedros were having some sort of silent conversation, but when she looked up, Sophie was examining the liver-spots on her hands, and Tedros was engrossed in picking gravel out of her hair.

"Oh, stop, you're like a chimp," muttered Agatha, scrabbling to try and sit upright. "...I want really good birthday presents. Every year. From both of you. Amazing ones."

"I buy you good presents!" said Sophie indignantly.

"What you think are good presents, and what I think are good presents, are two very different things."

"I'm making you Queen!" protested Tedros.

"Does Queen come with a bar of chocolate longer than my arm?"

"...maybe?"

"It better." said Agatha.

There was the crunch of footsteps, and Iphigenia came up behind them.

"You warned us," said Tedros wryly.

"It did work," said Iphigenia, eyebrows raising at the mess of his voice. "But yes. I warned you." She looked down at the three straggly heaps that now represented three immense Endless Woods powers. "Get up and get in the carriage, we're going back. None of you can ride like that."

"What about Rhian?" demanded Tedros, pushing Agatha to her feet. ("Don't push me by the rump like I'm a sheep stuck in a gate–!" "Oh, fabulous," scoffed Sophie. "You're back to your normal dynamic...")

"The Coven have him," said Iphigenia. "We'll put him in the dungeons until you've decided what to do with him. He didn't put up much of a fight. I think he was rather shocked."

"Right," said Tedros, nobly pretending it wasn't taking both Agatha and Sophie to haul him to his feet. "Yes. Rhian. I..."

"Have no idea what to do with him?" Agatha suggested.

Tedros shook his head slowly. He exhaled, and it rattled slightly.

"I'm tired," he said.

Agatha put her arm around his waist, and they went off towards the carriage.

----

Callis and Sophie had noticed, even if Tedros and Agatha hadn't.

They had hung back as everyone else left, and now...

Sophie kicked him in the hip, and his eyes snapped open. As they'd thought.

"Coo-ee, darling." said Sophie, planting her boot on his chest and getting her hands around the axe handle. "Guess your scims aren't quite as good as you thought. They don't do much, do they?"

Japeth snarled, black goo running down his face.

"Still alive. Does... plenty more than–" he coughed wetly. "Anything... Rhian can do... I controlled Tedros... made him... abdicate..."

"Oh, that's right." Sophie tapped her gnarled chin ponderously. "You did, didn't you? Put these damned things in through the ear, and they control thoughts. Words. You were the big force behind that abdication. And now look. All for naught. Rhian's left you to bleed out, and Tedros isn't even dead. Woe is Japeth."

Japeth bared black-bloodied teeth.

"You know that's... not my real... name."

"Well, it would get confusing to call you Rafal too," said Sophie. "Besides, they're all ridiculous names."

Callis glanced at the Spellcast orb, the one she and Iphigenia had reactivated. With any luck, people were still watching; and Japeth had just confessed to controlling Tedros into abdicating. Sophie really could talk for all she was worth.

"Well, it was lovely contending with you," said Sophie, "But I think that's really all we have left to say. How is it you kill a snake? Burning and beheading? Well, Callis here is quite good at fires."

Japeth took a shallow, foaming breath–

Sophie had enough, and wrenched the axe from his chest with a horrible snap.

"Turrah, darling. When you get to Hell, tell your wretched father that Callis and Sophie hope he's burning extra painfully, down there." said Sophie.

For someone so small, she handled the axe with plenty of competence, and with almost as much force as Japeth had used on Tedros.

Callis lit a fire in her palm, and looked sideways at Sophie.

"Father used to make me chop wood," she said, shaking blood from the blade and leaning casually on it. "Always upset he didn't have a son to do those things with."

She patted the handle of the axe happily. Callis shook her head, and set the Snake's body alight.

"You're incredibly lucky he wasn't paying attention." she said, as the few remaining scims squealed and shrieked. "If he'd expected you to throw it, he might have had time to defend himself."

Sophie smoothed her hand over her scraggly hair. She really was awful, in her hag guise.

"I'm a surprising woman." she said lightly.

"You're a girl."

"And you're a nitpicking old bat, Callis."

---

"You ought to wash." Callis said, as she and Sophie got back to the carriage. Tedros, sitting in a heap by the wheel, looked at her.

"In that?" he croaked, gesturing at the river running nearby.

"It's clean enough. I don't want to deliver you back to your mother looking like you do now."

Tedros didn't even argue, just scraped to his feet and sloshed straight in, waded up to his waist and stripped off his shirt. It didn't make much difference, since his chest was covered in blood as well.

Callis turned, noticed Agatha.

"You too. My god..."

Agatha smiled ruefully and stumbled after him, and between the two of them, they managed to make a distinct mess of the water and the bank. Tedros went under completely for a few seconds, then came back up, running with rivulets of diluted pink and muttering something about can't hold my breath properly, going back to bad-temperedly beating his destroyed shirt on a rock. He wasn't really achieving anything.

"Wring it out, boy, for god's sake." said Callis, and didn't even get any backtalk. She crouched to wash her hands and arms off, but left her clothes. She didn't mind looking like a crime scene, but they couldn't very well present Tedros and Agatha like that.

Agatha wrung out her skirt, and grimaced at the blossom of muddy red that it produced.

"Need to apologise to your mother for ruining her dress."

"Oh, she won't care." said Tedros, sloshing back to the bank with Agatha following him

Tedros turned and found Callis offering him a hand out. To her surprise, he accepted it.

Sophie, who had semi-blasphemously been wearing the cloak Tedros had given her before he'd gone to the block, finally handed it back. Tedros gave it to Agatha and put his wrecked shirt back on.

"Least my mother's still got two children," he said.
Everyone's heads snapped around in horror. Tedros smiled flatly.

"I'm not thick."

"You are, actually." said Callis, opening the carriage door for him. "But she is starting to show, and it would be hard not to realise, since Lancelot is following her everywhere, and she isn't drinking... and because Mother read her tea-leaves last week, to check. Who told you?"

Tedros shrugged, hauling himself up the steps in a vaguely precarious manner– "Alright, Agatha, you just had a go at me for that, don't just shove my arse through the door– um, no one did." He looked at them, and grinned. "Just had a feeling..."

Callis groaned, and went to go and retrieve their horses.

At least, she reasoned to herself, he was still alive to be a nuisance.

----

The bench with Tedros, Agatha, and Sophie on it devolved into a puppy-pile nap relatively quickly, given the early start, magic exertion, and massive trauma. Callis wedged her foot in place to stop Sophie sliding off the end.

Since Eris was leading the horses, and Ismene and the Coven were responsible for Rhian in the second carriage, Callis and Iphigenia were left as the only ones awake. Callis watched Sophie's face slowly restore itself to its normal state, and bruising start to crawl up Tedros's throat. Agatha's fingerglow hand was massively inflamed.

"How did we let it get this far?" she said miserably.

Iphigenia leant forward and checked Tedros's veins silently, for a minute.

"He ideally needs a transfusion," added Callis. "But he'll probably be kept alive by sheer impossible magic intervention."

As if she'd not heard the second part, Iphigenia said;

"...after a point, interference in the Storian's will is impossible."

"You did it." said Callis. "With Rafal."

"No," said Iphigenia, sitting back. "You did. If you hadn't managed to get into the non-magical Woods Beyond, Rafal would have eventually caught you anyway. The only way of escaping your fate is by stopping a tale from reaching its conclusion, which is why the Storian is defended so avidly. You went out of the Storian's sight. Tedros, then Evelyn Sader, caught and physically restrained it from writing The End. Several tales have been abandoned by the sudden appearance of a more engaging story that snatches the Storian's attention."

"I'd love to ask Tedros how he managed to catch the wretched thing." muttered Callis.

"It's unwise to interfere, of course," said Iphigenia. "And ultimately, it's impossible. I went out to head off Rafal with the expectation that I should probably die in the attempt. I confess myself quite surprised that he left me alive. Ultimately to his detriment, I suppose."

Callis turned sharply to her, blindsided by the sudden admission. Iphigenia went on, eyes narrowed.

"I warned my sister. There were signs, rumours. I told her to keep an eye on her children, to remain wary. But they died anyway, and so did Niobe. Stronger intervention than a warning was necessary in your case, but I didn't suppose it would work any better."

She sat with her arms folded, looking down at the three of them.

"Can he breathe?" she said, finally, looking at Tedros.

"Probably," said Callis. "Agatha's not that heavy. More concerned about the blood flow in her foot, where Sophie's elbow is. Mother–"

"She was always going to manage it." said Iphigenia.

"What?"

"The spell. If it came to it, one way or another, Agatha always would have been able to do it. I realised it as he stepped up to the block. I suspect Tedros realised it before I did."

Callis had nothing to say to that, so didn't respond. She and Iphigenia sat in a terse silence, carriage rattling over the cobbles. Callis peered sideways at her mother, but Iphigenia was silent as ever. She was looking at Agatha. Callis looked, too, checked to make sure she was breathing, like she had hundreds of times when she was an infant...

Finally, with her eyes fixed on Agatha, she said;

"I wrote to you, while I was in Gavaldon. Couldn't send them, of course, but it helped to organise my thoughts. I kept them in a box under my bed."

She wasn't looking at her mother, but she was sure Iphigenia was looking at her.

"I brought them back with me, actually. Tied them into a pile and shoved them in my cloak. Not sure why. I reread them, and they were just a lot of maddened rambling."

Iphigenia was still quiet. Finally, Callis said.

"They're in my desk drawer."

She risked a glance over at her. Iphigenia nodded slowly. She didn't comment, but Callis knew she understood.

She sighed and looked back at the heap of kids.

"You're going to have so much fun playing political glove puppets, for the next few weeks."

"I hear Tedros is appointing a Lord Protector."

"Do you?" snorted Callis.

"It would be wise if he did so."

"You can't seriously want to be Camelot's Lord Protector, Mother."

"No. I just need someone who is relatively pliant to my suggestions. And Tedros's, I suppose. Someone who's more invested in the boy than they pretend." Iphigenia shrugged. "Perhaps a stepfather type...?"

Callis would have laughed, if it wasn't running the risk of waking the kids up.

----

For her many failures, there was still something to be said for Guinevere loving her son.

No one at the Wardwell base had watched the Spellcast, but they'd clearly been waiting for the carriages to come back, because the second they arrived, the doors were shoved open, and a flood of witches (and assorted others) rushed out. Callis had never seen Guinevere move faster than a sort of matronly trot before, but now she darted down the stairs, elbowing people out of the way, and rushed across the grass, face wretched. Lancelot ran after her, clearly trying to get her to slow down, but to no avail.

Callis thought of the dead Good student in the Woods, who she'd tried to tidy up for his hypothetical mother's sake...

She exhaled and shoved the door open, stepped down, and held her hand out for Tedros. She'd done her best. He wasn't presentable, but he was alive, and not as much of an utter nightmare to look at as he had been. She was quite sure she was never going to forget how much blood had been in the sawdust, today.

Someone still inside (probably Iphigenia) must have noticed what was going on, because Tedros got shunted to the front, and haphazardly let Callis help him down.

Callis looked at Guinevere, who had stopped, frozen. She supposed she'd promised to bring him back, but she'd not said in what state; and short of dead, this was a sorry state indeed.

The witches made a low sort of hiss of relief, but no one cheered outright, which was probably appropriate. He wasn't particularly triumphant looking.

Tedros propped his arm on the side of the carriage in a way that was clearly meant to look nonchalant, but mostly looked fumbling and tired.

"Told you it'd be fine, Mother..."

The ruined croak of his voice was the final straw; Guinevere burst into tears and flung her arms around him, mercifully avoiding his neck, Lancelot following her in a doomed attempt to keep her calm.

Callis sighed, handing Agatha and Sophie down as well, then having her proffered hand be ignored by Iphigenia. Tedros looked grey and confused, and didn't seem to entirely know if he was holding Guinevere up, or if she was trying to hold him up.

Lancelot, who had been pulled in by Guinevere, shot Callis a pleading look over Tedros's shoulder. It was starting to rain, and Guinevere wasn't showing any signs of regaining herself. Callis took it upon herself to go and break this up.

"Gwenhwyfar. Come on." She cut around the side of her old classmate, and took her arm. "He needs a transfusion. Can you–"

Guinevere seemed to pull herself together a bit, and seized Tedros's hand to pull him along with her. Nearby, Hester and Sophie were towing off a protesting Agatha, but Tedros caught her eye and flapped a go on dismissal with his free hand, and she went, albeit reluctantly.

Callis left Iphigenia to deal with Lancelot, and went off with Guinevere, towing Tedros like a puppy on a leash, barraging them both with questions as they went upstairs.

"Callis, how much blood is he going to need? Should he be up and about like this?"

"Will it mean anything to you if I tell you?" said Callis snippily. "He's fine to get to the infirmary, if that's what you mean."

Guinevere didn't seem so sure, and turned desperately on Tedros–

"We could stay downstairs, if that's easier?"

But Tedros was already shambling up the stairs in pursuit of Callis, apparently not daunted. Guinevere rushed after him.

"Do you want anything? Something to drink? A blanket? Say something, sweetheart–"

The hysterical note of desperation that had been slowly building in her voice finally reached its peak, and made Tedros exert the effort to respond;

"Maybe, um– some water–"

"Water! Yes, I'll–" Guinevere fumbled, turned in a weak circle, then kissed the side of his head and scampered off down a side passage. Callis rolled her eyes and hauled Tedros into their infirmary.

"Come on, poppet. Sit there."

"Sitting..."

He really did sound awful. Shaking her head, Callis rifled about in drawers and boxes, while Tedros sat and picked bits of blood out of his hair.

"Not had a good few weeks, have you?" said Callis heavily. Tedros scratched his bruised jaw.

"Not really. C'est la vie..."

"No, boy, do not say c'est la vie about your beheading." snapped Callis, worried he was in shock. "How are you so calm?"

Tedros shucked off his disgusting boots.

"Knew it was coming. Don't remember much of it, to be honest. And I spent so much time fascinated by the Green Knight as a kid, that somehow it doesn't seem all that bad, in the end..." He threw his boots on the floor. "Just tired."

"Ruddy Camelot socialisation." muttered Callis. "God, that knight culture messes you up. Roll up your sleeve. It'll be a sharp pinch–"

"More weirded out by the Japeth thing, in some ways," said Tedros, doing as he was told, and heroically not cringing as Callis found a vein. "Least I knew he was going to swing a great bloody axe at my head. Just have a big blank patch, from the scims..."

"Well, you seemed to have at least kept a bit of your own will in there, somewhere, else you'd have gone for Agatha." said Callis.

Tedros frowned.

"What? Why would I have done that?"

Shit. Damn it, had no one–

"Did no one tell you?" said Callis incredulously. "That Japeth commanded you to kill Agatha?"

They stared at each other.

"NO?" Tedros tried to stand up, and was barged back down by a firm shove of Callis's hip. "What? What do you mean you–"

"Sit down, I've got a tube in your arm–"

"No one told me!"

"Wonder why!" said Callis, forcing him back fully into the chair. "It's the one thing I commend you for, frankly– your resistance to it! They got you to abdicate, but they couldn't get you to so much as take one swing at her–"

Tedros smiled, slowly and ironically. One of his teeth was a little chipped. Callis didn't want to think too much about why that was.

"...Well, you can't say I didn't learn my damn lesson about trying to go after Agatha and Sophie. I learned it so hard that even my sub-sub-sub-conscious, apparently, said fuck no! and all my capillaries exploded."

"One way of putting it..."

"I should say sorry..."

"Don't milk it, you bastard."

"Might get a trophy," said Tedros thoughtfully. "Or a kiss–"

Callis banged him in the chest with a roll of bandages, not exactly gently.

"Ow! I was joking..."

"In front of her mother, you wretched cad?"

"We got married!"

Callis scowled. "Speaking of mothers, where's your blasted mother gone? Is she going to bring you water in the Holy Grail?"

Tedros snorted weakly. Callis pretended to not notice the blood that came out with the exhale.

"She's probably gone to have a cry somewhere, first. She thinks I won't notice. Think in her head, I'm still nine, sometimes..."

Callis shook her head and kept her comment on that to herself–

"You have to at least pretend to get on," Tedros told her.

"What?" snapped Callis.

"You and my mother."

Callis curled her lip.

"I don't have to pretend to get on with anyone. I don't even have to get on with you."

"You do. You're stuck with me." said Tedros.

"So sure, are you?" said Callis. "Stop wriggling about– alright, alright, just a moment–"

She'd seen him go grey, and shoved his head in-between his knees before he could fully pass out. He cringed, and she withdrew her hand quickly.

"Sorry– move from the waist, not from the neck and shoulders, and once you feel slightly better, put your feet up there." she exhaled. "I'm not actually going to get rid of you, brat, calm down–"

"'S' 'cause I looked..."

"I told you not to look at what I was doing. Bravado does nothing for anyone. Where's your damned–" she stuck her head out of the door and bellowed; "GUINEVERE! HURRY UP!"

Ismene, down the corridor, laughed.

"Guinevere?" said Tedros, muffled, as Callis leant back in.

"What about it?"

"You never call her that..."

"I thought it might get her attention faster," said Callis.

"Right..." said Tedros.

"But since we're having bonding time, listen."

"Oh, no."

"I can, and will, get rid of you."

"Mm."

"At any time."

"Yeah, so I hear."

"It would be really easy."

"Oh no, yeah... I bet..."

Callis ignored the fact that he was clearly being ironic.

"So easy."

"I'm sure it would... so many ways..."

"So many. My mother has lots of resources."

"I'm sure Iphigenia's resources are unfathomable."

"I'm going to use every opportunity to undermine you. I'm going to turn up late to your heir's christening and curse the dratted thing."

Tedros peered sideways at her. He'd gotten a bit of colour back.

"Won't you be there anyway?"

"That's why I specified late, boy."

"I think any child of Agatha's would probably thrive under those conditions. You'd get some kind of super mega goth magic baby." Tedros stuck his fingers into the holes in his socks. He sniffed. "B'sides, you'll have to fight Sophie for the first Maleficent recreation slot, she's already staked the same claim."

Callis pursed her lips to hide her amusement.

"You'll need more than one child for succession purposes, she can do the second one."

Tedros squinted.

"I suppose. But I don't have any siblings."

"Not yet." muttered Callis. Tedros winced, apparently having forgotten about his stepsibling until now. Callis sighed.

"Not to worry. I'm making your mother come with me to an emergency Kingdom Council meeting tomorrow, so you don't have to discuss it with her for a few days if you play your cards right–"

"What? Shouldn't I come?

"No." said Callis.

"What?" croaked Tedros.

"I said no. The adults are going."

This didn't seem to compute with Tedros.

"...but I'm King? So I have to go?"

"But you're seventeen?" repeated Callis, in the same tone. He looked uncomprehending and she frowned. "Maybe you're used to having to deal with things you're too young for, but that's done. Your poor decision making and lack of help from anyone backed you into a corner so badly that you had to hurl yourself under the axe to escape it. I nearly died, you did die, Lancelot went missing, Sophie nearly married Rafal, Agatha had to go on the run... you see my point. You're staying here."

"But–"

"You can come in a few days, there's bound to be a lot of meeting and arguing. Go and sit and look haggard, and Agatha can come with and cry a lot, and you can make the Ever leaders feel awful, between you. Guinevere's coming to do the crying and the my baby-ing for now. Mother will see to it that you get a decent deal and the abdication gets annulled."

"But–"

"Don't worry, your Lord Protector will be there, too."

"...I don't have a Lord Protector."

"You do now," said Callis. "And you will until you're twenty one."

"What? Who? Callis–"

"It's Lancelot."

"...oh." Tedros seemed to try to think of a way to argue, and failed. "...that's...er..."

"If you're thinking isn't Lord Protector Lancelot a bad idea, didn't he cuckold my father, you'd not be wrong, but Lancelot looks like a Saint compared to everything else that just happened, and he's about the only member of the original Round Table left now. He'll be reluctant, but it's for the best. No one will complain. And it was either him, or my mother, and no one wants it to be her. Except Mother herself, probably."

"...that's fine, then..."

"And do you know what else is fine?" Callis let go of his arm. "That I annoyed and distracted you so much, that you didn't notice I've finished, and bound your arm."

Tedros looked down in surprise.

"Oh!"

"Thank you, Callis, for making sure I have the right amount of blood in me. You're welcome, brat."

"Thank you..."

"Mm." Callis stood and went to wash her hands. "Anyway, you're all staying here. Tough luck. There's soup from last night in the icebox, and Issy made some bread if any of you want it."

"Does the soup have lizards in it?" said Tedros.

"It's a surprise."

The answer was no, but she couldn't let him off too easily.

Tedros smiled shakily.

"...okay."

"Get some rest."

"Mm." Tedros hugged his knees to his chest. Callis suspected he wouldn't unless he was made to, and resolved to drug him if he kept resisting. "...can you grab Sophie, if you see her?"

"Sophie?"

Tedros shrugged.

"I need to ask her something, but I figure Agatha will come with her anyway."
Well, he wasn't wrong.

"I'll send her up if I see her." said Callis, heading for the door. "If I hear you've gone wandering, exercising, excessively talking, or otherwise doing something stupid in your condition, you'll be sorry."

"I'm not dying." said Tedros.

"Not anymore." said Callis, wrenching the door open–

Guinevere blinked at her, finally back with the dratted water. She'd forgotten she was even meant to be doing that. Wretched woman.

Callis was halfway to telling her something along the lines of took you long enough, before she noticed her son watching. She took a deep breath, and held the door open for Tedros's mother.

"After you."

Guinevere shot her a deeply suspicious look.

Tedros smiled, just a bit.

Callis shook her head and cut out into the corridor, once Guinevere had gone in.

Their work was not done.

---

"I'd prefer to negotiate directly with Tedros," said the False King.

"We don't care," said Callis. "He's a mess. Shut up and listen."

Rhian exhaled, and put his head against the high back of the chair they'd tied him to. Callis wasn't sure what Iphigenia was playing at, keeping him out of the dungeons, but she seemed to have a horrible cat-and-mouse fascination with Rhian...

She watched him dubiously. Iphigenia, however, was wearing her equivalent of intense interest, which meant she looked mildly engaged instead of completely blank.

"What is there to listen to?" Rhian said. "My brother is dead, and Tedros has heroically, but gruesomely, managed to pass the test I set. I'm not foolish. I don't doubt the Kingdom Council will annul the abdication. I don't exactly envy Tedros, having watched all that..."

"Rafal put you up to this." cut in Callis, forgoing niceties or meandering conversations.

Rhian's gaze became quite disengaged.

"I never particularly knew my father."

"Then Evelyn–" Callis began.

Iphigenia unfurled, suddenly– simply leant forward and started talking. Callis backed off immediately, recognising the sudden flare of purpose.

"I have heard or read transcripts of every one of your speeches, and I believe you spoke truth. I want to know why an Arbed House foundling made a play for the Camelot throne."

"Haven't you answered your question?" said Rhian, apathetic. "You seem to know my parents were involved. And Arbed House is a simple explanation for all of it."

"How unimaginative, for an intelligent boy," said Iphigenia softly. Rhian frowned, then leant forward to mirror her, best he could with his torso bound to the chair.

"What do you want from me?"

"Call it curiosity." Iphigenia rested her chin on her interlocked fingers– a usually childish gesture that she made look chilling. She was never relaxed, which meant she was pretending... "Say you were talked into making a play for the throne by your mother, the Mistral Sisters, and your brother. Say you honestly believed that Camelot was unstable in Tedros's hands, thought yourself a better candidate, the people's King. What made you believe you could truly do it? Once Rafal was dead, you could have taken the opportunity and backed out. You aren't so unintelligent that you couldn't have gotten away from the Mistral Sisters, given they were still imprisoned. Or you could have installed yourself as an advisor and made Tedros reliant on you. But you had to have the crown. Why?"

"I couldn't have made him reliant on me." said Rhian dismissively.

"Oh?"

"Agatha is awfully good at being in the way. She never would have made it possible. There was no other way. I had to replace him."

He stared long and hard at Iphigenia. Iphigenia seemed to look into his very soul.

Finally, he turned his head away.

"Not quite true, is it?" said Iphigenia.

"You people are something else."

"You were a puppet of higher powers." pressed Iphigenia.

"I was King. I was making a difference."

"I suppose that's what you said to Agatha, isn't it?" Iphigenia shook her head. "Arbed House is very harsh on its students. Gives them very extreme ideas. The particular petty misogyny ensured I could escape that fate..."

"Your mother wanted to send you?" said Rhian, glancing back.

"Mad, ambitious, unsettling, overly pragmatic..." said Iphigenia. "As a girl, I was a textbook candidate. It's a shame; an alternative school to Evil could be quite the trailblazer, if it weren't just a brutal training camp for hired thugs. Would that I could get rid of the current administration..."

"Alright, I get it." said Rhian tightly, returning his attention to them. "You want to channel my mad ambition into something productive and useful. You want to send me back to Arbed House and get me to improve it."

"I should think you're quite sick of being told what to do by witches," said Iphigenia. "But it's certainly an idea. I will put it to Tedros as an option for you."

"You'd force me to do it?"

"I don't have the final say on what happens to you." said Iphigenia. Rhian looked dubious.

"I don't think I believe that."

"You are astute." Iphigenia said, almost happily. Callis, who was getting a bad feeling about Iphigenia's fascination with Rhian, shot her a sidelong glance. She didn't notice.

"What will Tedros do?" said Rhian glumly, looking between them. "Will he have me killed, do you suppose?"

"I think Tedros is done with executions, for a while." said Iphigenia softly. Rhian put his head down.

"Do they not want to deal with me?"

"Tedros and Agatha are heroes. Heroes don't do the talking." said Callis. "Meddling old bints like us do all the ironing out, behind the scenes."

"I told Japeth to feint the blow." persisted Rhian. "Does he know that?"

"Maybe you did, but you must have known there was a chance he'd ignore you." said Iphigenia. "But it was a win-win, wasn't it? Tedros alive or Tedros dead, you still had the moral high ground. Either you got rid of him, or scared him off for good."

"That's a very cynical perspective."

"I don't find I live in a climate that accommodates optimism," said Iphigenia.

She'd stolen Callis's line. Callis, not sure whether to be wary of why, or faintly touched, leant on the back of her mother's chair and said nothing.

"I want to talk to Tedros," Rhian insisted again.

"If he wants to speak with you, he will." said Iphigenia, standing up and gesturing to the witches on the door. She looked hard at Rhian. "...do you think he will?"

Rhian, wisely, didn't respond. He stared back, and remained quiet as Iris and Nadja came to take him away.

----

"You were suspiciously fair, with Rhian," said Callis, as they paced back through the halls.

"There's no hope of manipulating a boy like that," said Iphigenia. "Infuriatingly clever, and with nothing left to lose? No entry point. I just wanted the measure of him..."

"Do you think Tedros will let him go back to Arbed?"

"He might," said Iphigenia. "It will keep him out of the way. But he'll have him spied on, I don't doubt. To make sure he's staying in line."

"It seems dangerous to keep him alive at all."

"Tedros won't think to have him killed."

"No." sighed Callis. "Not now."

They went up to Iphigenia's office together, where they found...

Laundry. Apparently.

Callis frowned.

"You don't have to do that, Mother."

Iphigenia ignored her, going over to one of the tables and ironing out Agatha's cloak. Callis shook her head, poking around in the cauldrons. The samovar was hot, as usual, and there was a tea-tray out.

"I don't even recognise some of these." she said, staring into the cauldrons. "Are you making up your own?"

"A few are traditional potions which I have altered. Others are completely original." said Iphigenia, folding Tedros's mostly-destroyed shirt. "Don't touch that," she added, without turning around or looking up. Callis muttered a curse and removed her hand from where she'd been about to pick up something decanting into a jar.

"They can at least iron their own clothes, Mother, even if it's unkind to make them scour all of Tedros's blood out. They ought to do menial stupid tasks now, before they're waited on for the rest of their lives."

Iphigenia tossed the shirt down.

"I have told them they're to help Eris with my garden tomorrow."

"What, so Tedros can dig a big hole or something?"

"He's good at them, I hear. Sit down, won't you?"

Callis did.

"I should go and check on Agatha." she admitted, but Iphigenia shrugged.

"Isn't Reaper with her? He's not here, and I find he's usually with one or the other."

Callis hadn't told her mother what she'd needed the potion ingredients she'd taken for, but it was unsurprising that Iphigenia had guessed she'd made him her familiar. Callis dug about in the back of her mind...

I brought her a nice present.

"You didn't seriously bring her a dead animal. Not today..."

I brought her an alive animal.

Callis shoved his consciousness away.

"Mother, there's a live rabbit in Eris's sitting room."

Iphigenia came around from the table and sat down opposite her, depositing a tea-tray between them.

"Unfortunate rabbit. If it's sensible, it will fling itself on the mercy of the Princess. An interesting distraction, to be sure, but perhaps it might work..."

Callis drummed her hands restlessly on the arms of the chair, wanting to take advantage of Iphigenia's unusual mood, to finally be able to interrogate her, but feeling as if she should go back to check on Agatha and Tedros–

"It is difficult to be peripheral in fairy tales." Iphigenia said, topically.

Callis looked sideways at her.

"Are you telepathic, as well as prescient? Or are they one and the same?"

Iphigenia continued as if she hadn't spoken. "Attempting involvement while knowing that you can make no real difference, if the Storian does not permit it, tests one's composure." She put her head slightly to one side. "...but I find you get used to it."

Callis stopped fidgeting. Was she actually willing to talk? Finally?

Slowly, Callis counted them up; Hermod and Hadvor, Esben and the Witch, Callis and Vanessa, Agatha and Sophie...

"Is that why you like to interfere in courts?" she said. "For a sense of influence you've never been able to get, in fairytales?"

"I interfere because I am intelligent and others are not. I despair to see Never kingdoms run into the ground by the hamfisted tactics of the dull-witted." Iphigenia hit her teaspoon on the edge of her teacup to punctuate the point, and raised it to her lips.

"...forty years, and I've never learned to tell when you're joking." Callis told her.

"And that is exactly how I like it. I amuse myself from time to time, but I do not jest for the amusement of others, and I assure you, I am not in the habit of being facetious."

"Think I knew that much." said Callis, putting her cup and saucer down. "Surely you weren't that peripheral, in this one?"

"I shan't be a main player in this one, when it's written down. We do what we can. I got them out of Camelot, told Tedros to pay attention to his subconscious, stopped Agatha from seeing the beheading happen, and orchestrated a panic wedding–"

"So you did do that on purpose." interrupted Callis. Iphigenia came as close as she ever came to looking reproving.

"Callis, you know I did. It was effective from multiple perspectives, but of course I knew what I was saying, and how they'd respond to it. And, frankly, I felt it meant you should be less resistant about the real royal wedding, when that comes about..."

Callis stared at her. Not only had Iphigenia played Tedros and Agatha, and the Woods at large...

"You played me."

"Mm."

"Mother!" said Callis. "You're pushing overindulgent grandmother! You sided with Agatha, instead of me?"

"I promise you I operate on a case-by-case basis." said Iphigenia drolly. "Never mind, now. I left them plenty to do. We didn't even have rings commissioned, though sometimes we have done, in the past..."

Callis, who did not like the never mind, was about to interrupt, but Iphigenia went on;

"I believe the other witches were under the impression I was going to reuse the rings my mother had commissioned for myself and your father, since they went unused."

"...don't think that would be a good omen." said Callis, suddenly finding them on the ground she'd been hoping to broach.

"Nor did I." said Iphigenia. "Though I'm sure if Agatha were to–"

Someone stepped on the loose floorboard outside and it creaked. Callis, knowing Iphigenia had kept it that way on purpose, turned in her chair. She and her sisters knew to avoid it, which probably meant it was one of the kids...

"Agatha," said Iphigenia, because of course she knew, "Is there something you need, dear?"

Callis went over and pulled the door open a bit. Agatha hovered just outside, looking spooked to have been caught out, in that half-awake, half-bemused way. She was wearing a shirt that clearly wasn't hers over the top of one of her old frayed nightdresses, and her stockings were falling down around her calves. They'd done that ever since she was a little girl, and probably would forever.

"No? No, I was just after a drink..."

"There's tea in the kitchen." Callis told her.

"There's also spiced wine in a pan on the stove." Iphigenia added.

"Mother, she's seventeen and it's midnight."

Iphigenia didn't seem to see why that was a problem. Callis rolled her eyes.

"Don't take that, Issy overdid it once and made herself sick, it's much stronger than it tastes. Only Mother and Eris have a taste for it anyway, I think it's foul."

"I'll get the tea," said Agatha sleepily. "Tedros d'snt like wine."

Of course it wasn't a solo mission, and of course she'd immediately defected back to sharing a bed with him. Callis supposed they were technically married, at least by the standards of this clan.

"Can't he walk to get it for himself?" muttered Callis. There was no real heat in it, and Agatha wasn't really listening anyway, sloping off down the hall;

"G'night Mom, Grandmamma..."

"Night, dear. Don't scald yourself."

"Won't..."

Callis turned back and found Iphigenia watching her, an odd, unreadable expression on her face.

"What?" she said, returning to the window seat, and turfing out one of the cats that had made a bid for it. Iphigenia watched her, and Callis looked hard back at her. "...you're weighing up whether to tell me about what happened to Deo, aren't you?"
At least, she hoped she was.

Iphigenia got up and finished folding the remaining clothes. It felt strange to watch her do something so mundane, even though Callis had seen her do it a million times during her childhood. She leant forward, refusing to let this strange mood of her mother's go unexploited.

"What happened to him? Eris and Ismene won't tell me anything about it. When'd he die?"

"Are you so sure he's dead?"

"Fairly," said Callis tightly.

"Hmm." Iphigenia paused, then, still with her back to Callis, said; "Well, you're right. Deo died on the day before the Ides of May, almost nineteen years ago."

Callis was so surprised she'd answered the question, that she struggled with the maths for a second. She'd been– wait.

"Isn't that the–"

"The day you fled to Gavaldon? It is."

"Mother–"

Iphigenia started talking and cut her off; her words were clipped, and there was some sort of undertone that Callis couldn't parse.

"The day prior, I had argued with Deo and he had left in a temper. He witnessed me send you the letter which confirmed the plan to kill Rafal, and deduced correctly that we were attempting to murder someone at the School. I persistently refused to tell him any more, hence the argument. He always felt I was leaving him out of operations, and he felt it more strongly than the three of you."

"Think I noticed that." murmured Callis. Iphigenia didn't seem to hear her.

"He went to a tavern on the border. There, he met a strange man, who he drunkenly aired his grievances to. He discussed our daughters, who Deo dismissed as mostly mine. He told the man what he had gleaned about our plan, which was not much... but enough." She turned around and cut Callis a sharp glance. "I wonder who could have been in a Never tavern, a day before you fled the Woods, asking about Callis Wardwell?"

Callis's stomach was a black pit.

"It was Rafal. He told Rafal enough for him to guess what we were doing."

"I suspect Rafal resolved then to test you with the ring, and it coincided neatly with our own plans."

Callis slumped back in her seat, against the cold windowpane. Of course it had been Deo. Of course.

"Rafal killed him. Of course he–"

"No." said Iphigenia. "But it might have been a small mercy if he had."

Callis looked tiredly at her...

Then sat up, suddenly alert.

"Rafal let him go?"

"He let him go." affirmed Iphigenia. "Deo realised his mistake and tried to plead with him, but it was far too late."

Of course he had. He was always too late, a couple of steps behind while Iphigenia was three ahead, struggling along in some mangled danse macabre that only Iphigenia knew the proper steps to. It served you better just to walk alongside, but he'd never given up trying to partner her. His mistake.

"...and?" said Callis.

"He came running back here, to tell me, which is how I managed to reach you in time when you fled."

"And?" Callis pressed furiously, seeing the possibilities for what had happened to him narrowing violently. Would Iphigenia tell her? Directly? For once in her life, would she speak outright? It didn't matter what had happened, what horrible accident had befallen him. It just mattered that Iphigenia told her.

Iphigenia did not say anything. She was staring at her in that odd, full-on way she had...

"Say it." said Callis. At the prolonged lack of response, she finally lost her temper, hauled herself to her feet. "Mother, tell me–!"

"I killed him."

Callis stopped where she stood.

"...you."

Iphigenia's face was a complete mask,

"I killed Deo." she reiterated.

Slowly, Callis sat back down. Iphigenia remained standing, hands folded on her hip.

"...how?" said Callis. Iphigenia's eyes narrowed the tiniest bit.

"As I said, he came crying to me. He intended to tell me everything, but I already knew what he'd done by the time he got to me. I murdered him with a quadruple dosage of a poison made from Hamelin-bred foxglove. It only gets more potent when the temperature is increased, and I put it in tea."

"But–" Callis felt as if all her thoughts were somewhat belated, a half-beat or so behind. "Mother, a single dose of that is by far enough–"

How brutal had his death been? A double dose of that was considered unkind, let alone four doses...

"He died in five minutes. Right there, clawing at my skirts and begging me to help him. I didn't even look at him."

Callis looked down at the flagstones to her right, heart pounding. He'd died here.

"And you–"

"I was standing more or less where you're sitting," said Iphigenia, detachedly. She paced over to test it, standing by Callis's shoulder. "Maybe a little to the right..."

"But– the deal with the Onasis Clan– you loved him, the older witches said. And you just..." she looked up at Iphigenia, stunned. "Do you regret it?"

Iphigenia looked down at her.

"He was a liability."

This seemed maddened, to Callis. The damage had already been done; it wasn't truly preventing anything in the future, not really. It was a revenge killing, and to her knowledge Iphigenia had never once done that. Callis couldn't think of anything that would incite something so illogical in her...

Except one thing.

"You killed the man you loved... because he put me in danger."

"No," snapped Iphigenia, then seemed to realise she'd taken the wrong tone. "...no. I didn't love Deo. I liked and tolerated him well enough, and I thought I loved him when I was a girl, but I was wrong." She bent down and took Callis's face in her hands. "But I love you. And I thought he'd killed you."

It was the first time Callis had ever heard her mother's voice break.

Agatha had been right, and she had been wrong. In her grim, calculating way, Iphigenia had been on her side all along.

Iphigenia's hands were cold along her cheeks and jaw, as they always had been, a trait memorised from years of sulking while her mother did her hair. Callis could feel the old burns and calluses on her palms and fingers, from potions made years, decades ago.

Callis stood up abruptly and hugged her very tightly, feeling slightly shaky. She didn't often touch her mother; no one did. Something about Iphigenia and her long, remote stares seemed to discourage it. She'd held their hands and carried them and let them sit in her lap when Callis and her sisters were children, but even then, she'd been far less obviously affectionate than the other witches that had children. The other Wardwell girls had muttered that their mamma was strange, but Callis had always insisted it didn't matter, because Iphigenia brought them presents from Elias's court trips to Ravenswood and Hamelin and Maidenvale, and took them to market and let them buy pastries, and carried them home when they got tired. She tirelessly read the same storybooks and played the same games a million times each, as each of her daughters aged in and out of them. Iphgenia said little and was even less forthcoming, but it didn't matter. Sooner or later, she'd do something to show that she loved them, even if she seldom said it.

Like murdering her father in a revenge killing...

"I've been hard on you." Callis muttered.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Iphigenia instantly, which was such a characteristic thing to say that Callis had to bite back a laugh. She'd placed her hands fairly awkwardly on Callis's back, but her grip was tight.

Callis pulled back, and said;

"I see you're not intending on admitting to the Rafal-induced injury, though?"

"What injury?" said Iphigenia, straight-faced. Callis let go of her, shaking her head.

"Ismene snitched on you, Mamma."

"I suspected she would, eventually." muttered Iphigenia. "Inconsequential. It was nothing our healers couldn't fix."

"You should have said something."

"What would that have achieved?" said Iphigenia, returning to her place on the old sofa. After a pause, Callis followed her. Admittedly, nothing practical, but she dodged the answer by changing the subject;

"What did the Onasis clan do?"

"I told them what I had done, but they did nothing in retaliation, besides taking his body and informing me our agreement was at an end. I suspect their apathy can be attributed to the fact they valued Deo relatively little, since he was never a real man-wolf."

Callis doubted that was the reason. There was something horribly unsettling in a direct act from Iphigenia, let alone one she confessed to. She didn't blame the Onasis manwolves for deciding to let it go, even if it proved they had just as little moral backbone as Deo.

Callis paused, trying to find a smidgen of sympathy for her father, but not much came. Everyone had known that his continued involvement with the Wardwells would eventually spell his end. Everyone except him, apparently.

"Do you regret it?" she asked, again.

"I don't see why you think that's important," said Iphigenia softly.

Callis sometimes wondered if there was stock in the theory that her mother was mad, after all. There was a certain lapse, in the way she saw the world.

"I don't want you to be unhappy over something you did for me... that turned out not to be necessary," said Callis slowly. "That's all."

"It was very necessary." said Iphigenia, examining a miniscule chip in her tea saucer. She paused. "And, frankly, Callis, the absence of one inattentive man has not been the root of my unhappiness for the past twenty years." Before Callis had the chance to respond to that, Iphigenia added; "Do you know what the first thing he ever said to me was?"

"Who, Deo?"

"Mm."

"What did he say?"

"Father told me I'd get one of the pretty ones." said Iphigenia, in a faintly savage tone. Callis's jaw dropped, and she went on; "He had been promised Niobe or Eudocia, but my mother had other plans..."

"I would have killed him too!" Callis said in horror. "I'd have killed him that day! Why on earth did you put up with him for so long?"

"He faintly entertained me, from time to time..."

"Mother. You can't be serious."

"I think he was being asked the same question from the Onasis Clan," said Iphigenia, unmoved. "Though I'm not too sure what his reasoning would have been. Power, I suppose. Misplaced affection..."

"If any of us had brought a man like that home, you'd have killed him." insisted Callis. "Immediately."

"As I just told you, I very much did kill him."

"After twenty years, and not because of that!"

"We all have our blind spots."

Callis rubbed her temple, sure that there was some factor here that her mother was ignoring. It seemed ridiculous to think she'd tolerate the attention of a deeply pathetic man for so long, but Callis suspected digging out the explanation for it would be much further than Iphigenia was willing to go. Maybe something to do with the apparent disdain Deianira had held for Iphigenia, maybe loneliness, maybe–

"Please don't try to psychoanalyse me, Callis." said Iphigenia evenly.

"...tell me that you would eventually confess to it, if you were telepathic." said Callis wearily.

"One might think that was something I would have brought up alongside the prescience."

"One might hope." muttered Callis–

"I read your Gavaldon letters," said Iphigenia, abruptly.

Callis jerked. "Already?" Her head swivelled to Iphigenia's desk, where the letters were sat in a neat stack.

Almost every vaguely embarrassing sentiment that was contained in them passed through her brain in one wave. The sleep deprivation from Agatha's infancy had a strong presence. "...my god, they can barely have been coherent..."

"They had moments of delirium, but they were on the whole mostly lucid."

"Thank you for the review..."

"But I confess myself surprised," said Iphigenia slowly.

"By what?"

Iphigenia kept her eyes on the letters.

"That you apparently missed me just as much as I missed you."

Callis looked hard at her for a minute, throat suddenly painful.

"...you shouldn't be surprised by that, Mamma."

"Maybe not." said Iphigenia musingly. "Maybe not..."

Callis sighed and propped her head on Iphigenia's shoulder, watching steam rise from the row of simmering cauldrons.

"What are you brewing?"

"Do you actually care to know what's in every single one?"

"Anything specifically interesting, then..."

"That one," said Iphigenia, gesturing to the poison in the middle, "Is derived from Fly Agaric."

"The fungi? I thought that was expensive."

It only grew in Thicket Tumble, and Callis knew it fetched an eye-watering price on the Never black markets.

"I find it's usually worth the money."

Which would be because, Callis imagined, it presented symptoms similar to dysentery, food poisoning or general ill health and fevers. Which meant it was incredibly easy to get away with using it. And Iphigenia, as she damn well knew, didn't really like being confronted.

Callis said;

"Eris wants to induct Hester into the clan."

"I know." Of course she did... "I have given her what she needs to do so."

"I thought you might have reservations," admitted Callis. "She's very... upfront, in her talents."

"I like to be flexible, in the execution of my ideas."

Callis glanced at the flagstones near the window.

"Apparently so."

----

It had made perfect sense, in Tedros's mind.

He wasn't going to bother Agatha, or her mother, or his mother, and he didn't want to be stared at with the morbid interest that Iphigenia seemed to reserve for him– not so late in the day, anyway. Reaper didn't have thumbs, he didn't know Eris or Ismene like that, the Coven would have laughed, and Sophie was an absolutely useless bastard for other people's blood that she hadn't spilt. That, therefore, left one option. So, the dubious honour of witnessing his mild unravelling was saved for his shiny new Lord Protector.

Tedros probably shouldn't have just stood over him in the third floor sitting room until he woke up, he granted, but he knew better than to shake awake any of his father's knights, let alone Sir Lancelot. So, he stood there, dripping blood down his front, until Lancelot rolled over, and–

"Blessed Virgin Mary–!" Lancelot's hand was halfway to his sword before he recognised him. "...Tedros. How long have you been there?"

Tedros shrugged. Lancelot sat up, squinting.

"You look like that crazy little bastard from the second Dismemberment in Drupathi book, the one that goes around and vomits blood on people–"

"Godda nosebleed." said Tedros primly, or as primly as he could manage around all the blood in his nose and throat.

"What?"

Apparently he still sounded fairly incoherent. Tedros demonstratively removed the originally green, now mostly red, handkerchief that he'd palmed from Agatha's coat pocket, and let blood splatter pathetically onto the floor.

"Oh, nosebleed. Fuck me, sure you have," said Lancelot, dabbing at the spots on the floor. "Did you ice it?"

"Tried. D'nt work."

"Mm. I don't think we want you to lose even more blood." Lancelot yanked him down to sit on the sofa. "Did you lean forwards?"

"No." said Tedros tersely. Lancelot winced.

"...right. Let's see–"

Vaguely, Tedros had also supposed that Lancelot might have been the best option, to go to... to go to, with a nosebleed. If not for his mother's sake, he'd have taken him with them to the parley. Lancelot had seen more than ten lifetimes of gore and violence. He had broken noses and staunched the resulting nosebleeds every day of his life.

But, to his great horror, Lancelot got up, instead.

"I bet Iphigenia will have something for it. She's got all that scary witchy stuff and she'll definitely still be awake, don't think the mad old bat ever sleeps–"

"But–"

"I won't be a second, bet this floor has seen more blood than you'd think, they won't mind..."

"Lance," Tedros said, and didn't even really care when his voice cracked.

He didn't know why he bothered– sentiment for Guinevere's son had never made Lancelot turn back before– but now Lancelot turned around and stared at him.

"...'s not about the nosebleed is it?"

Tedros pulled his knees up to his chest.

"Jus' fix it, you crass bastard..."

Lancelot raised his eyes to heaven, but came loping back across the floor and seized the bridge of Tedros's nose in his thumb and fingerglow finger. There was a sharp burn of pain, and Tedros cringed back, but the bleeding had stopped.

"Might not last," said Lancelot. "Doesn't always work on magical injuries."

"It's not magical," said Tedros tightly.

"...s'pose it's not."

"Thanks." muttered Tedros, aware he was still being stared at, and started trying to wipe the blood off his face with the handkerchief. He got about five seconds in before Lancelot plucked it out of his hand.

"Don't be dumb, that's already disgusting and you can't see what you're doing. Hang on..."

He went to get a basin and a clean cloth, Tedros watching him dubiously.

"You're not my dad." he said as he returned. Lancelot shot him a long suffering look.

"You can't see what you're doing, you pillock. Stay still..."

He made a brisk, not very gentle, but fairly effective pass at getting all the blood off of Tedros's mouth and chin. Tedros, not particularly enjoying how evocative this was of all the times he'd fallen on his face as a child, fidgeted the whole time–

Lancelot's hand moved down.

"It's all down your neck, look–"

Tedros seized his wrist so hard his nails scratched Lancelot's arm. Lancelot looked down at Tedros's hand for a moment, then back at him.

"Do you want to do it?"

Tedros very much didn't want to do it, so he didn't say anything.

"I'll be careful," said Lance.

Slowly, Tedros let go of his wrist. Admittedly, if anyone knew how to negotiate wounds, it was Lancelot.

"I should have gone with you." muttered Lancelot, tilting Tedros's head slowly to the side to get under his jaw. "Your mother's very... upset. She's with Ismene at the moment, and she was fine when I left her, but–"

"'s why I didn't let either of you go," said Tedros, digging his fingers into his knees, hating the nasty, numb feeling around his neck and shoulders and the cold probe of the cloth. "Even if it was just you, it could have gotten horrible, and she needs you more than she needs me..."

Lancelot stared at him. Tedros waited resentfully for him to try and argue with that, chest burning. Everyone knew it was true, else she'd not have run off with him in the first place.

"I think it got pretty horrible as it was, Tedros." Lancelot said quietly, wringing out the cloth.

Tedros ignored him, starting to wonder if the reason his chest hurt was not because he was annoyed, but because he couldn't take deep breaths. Distantly, he considered this was probably a bad thing that he ought to be paying attention to.

"Look at this bruising, goes all the way down..." said Lancelot, peeling back the sweaty collar of his shirt. "...shit, Tedros, did the maniac miss?"

It was really more of a rhetorical question, since Lancelot could see the mark across his shoulders, so Tedros didn't say anything. Not that he could have done anyway, since he now found he couldn't breathe.

"Guess Agatha's a massive talent, but not actually a healer, so you're going to look pretty messed up for– ohh, you're really not okay. Alright. Alright–"

Tedros tried to double over, but Lancelot kept him upright, and gathered him up into an incoherent heap when he started shaking.

"I know, I know–"

He did know. He'd seen knights ten times better than both of them with heads cleaved off in one blow.

"Alright, listen," said Lancelot, over Tedros's hysterical half-breathing. "Come on, I'm going to talk you through all the stuff that I'm gonna do as your Lord Protector..." He misread the look that Tedros shot him, and took it for hostility. "Candidly, Tedros, I don't really want to do it either, but you know what I want to do less? Go and argue with Iphigenia about it. Do you want to do it instead? No. No one does." Lancelot seemed to think about that, for a minute. "Worded that wrong. It's not that I don't want to. What I mean is... I don't think it's very productive for us... to go back to Camelot, long-term..."

He kept peeking out of the corner of his eye at Tedros, as if trying to glean his reaction. Tedros found, to his distant dismay, that in the vague haze of breathlessness and nausea, this was probably the worst thing Lancelot could have brought up.

"Oh god, don't cry– shit, alright, sorry, I'm really not... articulating this well... no, sit up straight..."

He trapped Tedros in a bizarre pseudo-hug, with his front jammed against Lancelot's side, after which he didn't really have a choice on how he was sitting, since he was stuck.

"I'll do it," Lancelot rambled desperately over Tedros's hiccuping, "I just think it's good that it's not for too long, you're nearly eighteen and it'll only last until you're twenty-one–" His face creased, a little, in some expression Tedros didn't understand, but he shook it off quickly. "Because I think we've certainly had our time, and it feels... bad, for us to still be kicking around when you need to shed all that implication..."

Just say it, thought Tedros miserably, nose running. Say that you and my mother never wanted me to find you in the first place... say that you don't want to follow me back to Camelot and you hate being stuck with me again...

But Lancelot didn't say it, or even come close to it. He was desperately petting Tedros's head in the manner one would pet a small animal.

"The main issues are that I am... who I am, and the court certainly isn't going to have forgotten that... and that Iphigenia and Callis seem to think I know more about politics than I actually do, but I'll do my best, I s'pose... could do with a few more councillors, but I suppose they're all fled or traitors, now. I've had a look at the state of things and it's really not as bad as all that. Rhian's been liberal with the coffers– god knows how Iphigenia got hold of the report, but I don't even question her anymore– you're not even really listening, are you?"

Tedros didn't say anything, since it was true. He'd slumped down so his forehead was propped against Lancelot's shoulder. Lancelot prodded his bruised jaw with a long finger.

"You'll strain your neck like that."

Tedros ignored him, past caring.

"...did you see him?" said Lancelot, suddenly. He'd moved his hand from Tedros's head to his back.

Him, being...

Oh. Psh. Most of them, with the likely exception of Agatha, who wouldn't care to know, and Sophie, who knew, were probably just dying (ha ha; he made a mental note to avoid crass jokes in front of Agatha, who would get irritated at him) – yes, dying to know about the finer points of his... experience today. But of course all Lancelot would ask about was his old King. Once and Future, forever...

Tedros shook his aching head.

"Probably best, to be honest." mumbled Lancelot. "I can't see him being very impressed with the condition you would have turned up in." He hauled his voice into a startlingly good impression; "What's this? What have you done to my son? Whose fault is this, I'll have them, I will–"

Tedros, too tired to get annoyed, put his head up and stared blankly at him.

"...it's not funny when it's me doing it, is it?" said Lancelot.

Tedros propped his head back down on his shoulder and went back to ignoring him...

"Lance." he said, presently.

"Yeah?"

"Stop patting me like you're trying to burp a baby."

"Sorry." said Lancelot, Tedros still trapped under his burly arm like a parcel. He had clearly not quite figured out the finer points of paternal-style affection. He needed to work on that one. The old knight took a deep breath. "Look... just look, alright? I know I'm not your dad. I know I'm the sorry sob that cuckolded your dad. But–"

Tedros cleared his snotty, bloody throat, and said, as bitingly as he could possibly manage;

"But what? You can't even manage me. What are you going to do with your horrible little ogre baby? Are you going to clamp the little bastard under your elbow like a vice and consider it a job well done? Carry it around by one leg like you used to do to me? You have no idea how to parent anything. You could kill a dead plant a second time."

Lancelot laughed uproariously and patted him far too hard on the cheek, more or less slapping him. Tedros, not liking how affectionate he was feeling he could be, tried to look as hateful as possible. Maybe he should puke on him.

"Ahh, that's the spirit! You've been scaring me, you little shit, you were out of it for a bit. But come on, tell me how bad you hate me and how horrible I am, go on–"

"I feel so bad for your bastard baby." muttered Tedros.

"Ah, that's a classic."

"I'm serious. It's doomed."

It was delivered slightly more bitterly than he'd meant it to be, but Lancelot either didn't notice, or blanked it.

"Uh-huh, yep, and what else?"

"What else? You're a pathetic excuse for chivalry. Your name is forever synonymous with betrayal and cowardice. I know you think you're my dad, but you're not my dad, you hear me, you miserable git?" Tedros twisted his head to try and look at him, found it hurt, and gave up. "You're not my goddamn dad," he repeated, feebly attempting to hammer the point home. As if he hadn't actively come seeking him out.

"I know I'm not your dad," said Lancelot reasonably. "Even if some people are less sure." But, just to make Tedros's attempt even more feeble, he grinned, and added; "But, Tedros," he said with merry emphasis, swaying him slightly from side to side. "Do you know what I'm going to say? To all that? Every accusation you have levelled against me, both fair and unfair? The two words that will destroy your argument?"

"What." grumbled Tedros.

Lancelot took a deep breath, beamed at him, and said, with great relish;

"Yer mum."

He was not smiling about a second later, when Tedros's fist connected with his temple and knocked him off the sofa onto the floor with a gloriously satisfying crash.

"Shit! God, Tedros, ow..." he popped back up like a demented hand puppet, clutching his head. "...to be fair, I really deserved that," he said. "But I was expecting a shove, damn it, not to be knocked for six! How have you even got enough energy for that?"

Below them, someone banged on the ceiling with a broom.

"SHUT UP!" bellowed Eris.

"On that nice note," said Lancelot, still on the floor, "You should probably go back to bed, or Agatha's gonna flip her shit when she inevitably wakes up and clocks that you've wandered off."

"Left her a note," said Tedros.

"Husband of the year, aren't you?"

"At least I'm married," said Tedros, then got up and lunged for the door before Lancelot could get his hand around his ankle.

----

"It's not really as bad as all that, darling..."

Sophie's voice came floating down the corridor as he approached, and Tedros sighed. Of course she had inexplicably manifested in the half an hour he'd been gone.

Agatha responded with something, but it was too low for him to hear.

Ordinarily, Tedros would have grabbed Sophie by the back of her frilly nightgown and dragged her out of his bed, but physical scraps with the Witch of Woods Beyond would have to wait for a better time. Besides, he knew what she was talking about.

Was she lying? He struggled to think if she was, found he didn't want to try to discern.

He shunted the door open with his hip, still holding the mangled handkerchief. Agatha and Sophie's heads turned.

"Got your note," said Agatha semi-casually, but the note of relief was obvious. "Almost illegible."

"Almost is key," said Tedros, eyeing the tea-tray between Agatha and Sophie. "...midnight tea-party?"

"Something like that," said Agatha.

"Is it going to make you wake up at 5am and elbow me in the face trying to go to the bathroom?"

"Probably," said Agatha. "I got biscuits, though."

Tedros didn't care for biscuits, especially not with the state his throat was in right now, but at least she was happy. He burrowed back under the covers and put his head on Agatha's thigh, tired and unsettled. Agatha bent down to kiss him, and Sophie sighed theatrically, rather spoiling the moment.

"Fie on thee, then, damned witch," muttered Tedros, considering pushing Sophie off the bed with his foot after all. "What are you even doing here, anyway? Why can't I get rid of you?"

"A question I hope will always plague you, darling." said Sophie. "But I was actually proposing an idea, to Agatha..."

No, she wasn't, and they both knew it. Tedros stared at her. Sophie waited til Agatha went back to the biscuits, then winked at him.

Yes, she knew.

Fie on her, always, but she did have her moments.

Tedros looked back down at the handkerchief still clamped in his fist.

Or several...

----

"If you're really so desperate to understand, then let me lay it out in a way you'll understand. As Readers..."

Sophie looked at Agatha, unimpressed.

"Do you think your grandmother would mind if we killed him?"

"Yes." said Agatha. She turned back to the captive. "Make it quick, Rhian."

They'd waited until everyone had gone out to the Kingdom Council meeting, then snuck downstairs to the dungeon where they were keeping the pretender. It was disappointingly normal, for a witch's dungeon. It didn't even have obvious spiders. Agatha was a bit underwhelmed.

Rhian crossed his ankles, attempting to project indifference. They'd taken the crown from him, but Agatha didn't know where they'd put it. For all she knew, Iphigenia was making a convincing copy and handing them back a fake. It probably made her a slightly worse Queen for the fact that she found the idea deeply comedic. But it was only a bit of metal...

"Once upon a time..." Rhian said, "There was an Evil sorcerer."

"Oh, spare me." Sophie sneered. She took to pacing, but Agatha stayed still, eyes on Rhian.

"The sorcerer had a plan to take over the Woods and set about the dominance of Evil, forever," said Rhian. "But it hinged on a girl who he couldn't be quite sure of, and he was a clever sorcerer. He made provision for a plan that could continue beyond his death, if she betrayed him."

Sophie curled her lip, but kept quiet. Rhian went on;

"The sorcerer had sons, raised in Foxwood by an old flame. He told them that they would be the centre of a grand plot to seize Camelot. The older boy, the charming orator, would be the King. His mercenary brother would be his liege and his spymaster. It would all be done in the service of their father; it would be a great plot." His eyes narrowed a little. "The older boy didn't care to do the dirty work of an aloof and delusional father he had never met, but he wasn't fool enough to ever say so. He had no magical gift of his own, and the rest of his family did. He had only his wits. So, he consoled himself, he would do as he was told– but only because he knew he could do it better than anyone else. Once he was King, he would have control, and he would have no need for Arbed Houses, mercenary brothers, meddling aunts, aloof mothers, or spectral fathers. It would all be better when he was King. He would not have to live in fear of his brother, or in desperate appeals to his mother. He would be King." He sneered, a little. "His aunts were imprisoned shortly after Arthur's death. His mother died, and then his father. The older twin became solely responsible for carrying out the plan. He could have abandoned it. He was clever enough to get away with it. But he did not. He rose to the challenge exceptionally."

He looked between them, eyes distant.

"He observed the weakness and the uncertainty in the current crown, and the current heir. He knew how best to exploit it. He saw a way in, and sent his murderer brother after the original liege, with deliberately vague instructions; deal with him. He knew it would probably spell his end, but comforted himself in knowing that he had never explicitly given the order."

Agatha looked at him, feeling quite sick. She had been right, when she'd thought he had a maniacal sort of persistence; power and agency at any cost. Any cost at all.

See what Rafal did. How far his influence reached. How deeply the roots were poisoned.

She cut Sophie a sideways glance, but Sophie still had her eyes on Rhian unblinkingly.

"But I told myself, again– I would make it all better when I was King," said Rhian. "I would send condolences and support to his family. I would make sure it was worth it."

"You're just as mad as Iphigenia." muttered Sophie. Rhian's head tilted.

"Do you think so? I really find–"

"Get on with it," said Agatha, voice tight with disgust. Rhian shrugged.

"He got to Camelot. He took on a knight's role. He excelled, became relied upon. But there was an... issue." He leant forward. "The peasant Reader princess, suddenly in the way."

"My heart bleeds for you," sneered Agatha.

"Oh, it never did. Which worried him, because it meant you were onto him. Emphatically empathetic and self-sacrificing, but you snapped like an attack dog every time he got too close. He had to get rid of you. And he would have done, too, if Tedros hadn't hurled himself opportunistically in the way." he shook his head. "He should have let them shoot you, perhaps, but then the Grand Duchess would have acted, on behalf of her daughter. And then where would everyone have been?" He put his head back. "It became difficult. He had gotten somewhat attached to Tedros, in a bizarre way. The madness was a pity. It would have been easier to kill him, but he gave him every chance to give up. Eventually, it came to the parley. We assumed he would back down. In the event that he did not, he told his brother to miss, and catch his sword arm, but not kill him. Instead..." He tilted his head back down. "Well. He consoled himself. Death to Tedros and suffering to Agatha, but..."

His sentence was finished for him.

"But it would all be better, when you were King."

The binds on Rhian's chair meant he couldn't turn around far enough to see Tedros, but he'd certainly heard him.

"Oh!" said Sophie, turning and peering critically at him. "It fits, then. Very good..."

"It fits," said Tedros, staying where he was, and not moving around into Rhian's line of sight. He had come in the back way, right at the start of Rhian's story, but he'd stayed quite still until now, and neither Sophie or Rhian had noticed. Agatha, uninterested in his outfit, scanned his face slowly, but he looked quite calm. Rhian stayed staring straight ahead.

"Familiar sentiment," Tedros added. "I find, anyway..."

"It's nice to know we shared delusions," said Rhian blankly.

"Not all of them."

"No. I suppose not. Prescience is a pretty talent."

"It wasn't so pretty the other day."

Rhian's expression tensed, slightly.

"We have an offer for you," said Tedros, coming around the side, so Rhian could see him. Rhian looked at him, then looked away.

"Don't bother. The Grand Duchess already brought it up. Arbed House. Reforming the suffering of my youth. Lucky me, to be given such a task..."

"I don't think it's lucky at all," said Tedros. "But you'll be useful."

"To you?"

"To the kids there. It's best if you stop this kind of thing happening again, you see?"

"Coups happen all the time." muttered Rhian. "I'd rather you just killed me."

"One hears it's overrated, as a punishment," said Tedros. "You'll go back, and you can take that wretched little guard of yours with you."

Rhian glared at him.

"And you'll have me spied on, no doubt?"

"See?" said Tedros, unlocking the door. "You're already getting the hang of it. Top marks."

"Don't be facetious with me, Tedros."

Tedros held the door open for Agatha and Sophie, then turned back to Rhian. He didn't say anything, but a look must have passed between them, because Rhian's expression struggled... then he dropped his head, and didn't look at them again.

Tedros slammed the door and locked it behind them.

----

"You don't have to stay here," said Eris, that night in the great hall.

Hester watched, eyes moving constantly between all of them. Eris went on;

"You can still go off with your Coven and do whatever you want. Mother won't send you on missions unless there's something you want to do. Think of it as a... membership. Somewhere to fall back to."

Callis watched as Hester pricked her finger slowly on the hook of the earring, eyes landing and fixing on the silver eagle crest. She didn't look back at Eris, or Iphigenia, who was lurking by the hearth, or at either of her covenmates, in an uneven huddle next to one of the tables.

It was never a formal process; the only formalities they had were for deaths. Inductions consisted of an offer from a sponsor witch and handing over some sort of token. They were held wherever they were held, whenever it was convenient. The only stipulation was the presence of the Grand Duchess, but it wasn't so hard to get that.

"And I suppose, in return for bed and board and blood of the covenant, you'll need my specific talents, for whatever purpose the Grand Duchess wants them." said Hester sardonically, turning the earring over and over.

She was no man's fool, or woman's. She knew that Callis and Eris were deeply invested in how her talent worked, and that even the more reserved Ismene and Iphigenia were interested. Could you blame them? Callis rarely saw witches the likes of Hester. Her teachers should have been ecstatic to have a girl like that, just handed over to them. It was a damned shame she'd had such a fragmented education. They would have to remedy that.

"And you're adverse to that?" said Eris innocently. Hester's eyes narrowed.

"Suppose not..."

"You know we don't fight wars, and we don't go into battle." said Iphigenia, from by the fireplace.

"Not anymore." muttered Eris.

"Not since I've been Grand Duchess," Iphigenia said slowly. "And my successor will not resume the practice."

Callis, who had given the thought of who would succeed their mother precisely zero thought, looked at Eris, who shrugged at her. It was a reasonable response; even if Iphigenia had someone in mind, the likelihood was that they wouldn't find out for another thirty years. Iphigenia would be long-lived to a spiteful extent, Callis was sure.

"I'm not in the habit of wasting girls' talents for my own ends." added Iphigenia.

Hester rolled her eyes and cracked her neck, projecting unconvincing indifference. Her grip on the earring was so tight that it had turned her knuckles pale and jutting. She wasn't fooling anyone, as she probably well knew, but that was fine. Everyone wanted to maintain their dignity, especially coven leaders.

Dot piped up nervously, from near the table.

"It would make sense, Hester... you know..." she fiddled with a loose thread on her sleeve. "I'm a de Rainhault, even if everyone forgets that, and Ani's mother is a Countess. If you were a Wardwell, we could get in anywhere... do pretty much anything. My dad's an embarrassment and Anadil's mum is scary–" ("Don't need to tell me," muttered Callis) "...but Wardwells are actually respected. Agatha could invite us to tea, and we could get away with it. We could get into archives and dinners and go anywhere we wanted. You'd basically be Agatha's cousin..."

Hester glanced over at the far table at the other end of the room, where the others were sitting; Sophie sewing furiously at a heap of some fabric, Tedros sitting awkwardly with his mother, Agatha and Lancelot playing one of Tisiphone's games (Ravenous Rattlesnakes, where you had to kill the most of the tiny mouse-shaped pieces, complete with convincing rodent death screams, though Agatha had muted the sound when they'd realised they were kind of ruining the moment).

Hester looked back at Eris and Iphigenia.

"...alright." she said. "But I'm not leaving my Coven."

"Done and done," said Eris. "Dark greetings and libations to the Grand Duchess Unspeakable."

They leant across the gap and shook hands, Eris grinning, Hester straight-faced, or trying to stay that way. And that was that; done and done, as Eris said. It didn't take much.

Agatha came sloping across the hall, ducked under Callis's arm, and Reaper moved from Callis's shoulders to hers.

She doesn't look so bad today, thought Reaper. Lower blood pressure, as well.

That's something.

Agatha had come and crawled into bed with Callis and the cat a few times, but she didn't look as hollow or anxious as she had the first day. Whatever Tedros and Sophie had said to her, it had clearly worked. But Callis suspected she wouldn't get to hear it. Some things stayed between the three of them. Tedros had died, Sophie had died, and Agatha had earned the knowledge of it by being the means by which they had come back to tell the tale.

"So we're cousins, now?" Agatha said to Hester.

"Don't try your luck," said Hester, standing and ramming the hook of the earring through one of her mangled piercings. "You're still a bleeding-heart Ever brat, no matter how much you wipe your nose on your sleeve, or how many bats and toads you eat in your mother's soups, you hear?"

Agatha yawned widely, theatrically unconvinced. "So that means you're gonna come to my second wedding, too, right?"

"In you and your zombie boyfriend's dreams." scoffed Hester.

"I hear his dreams can be quite prophetic. You can be a bridesmaid."

"I would rather be dragged across hot coals."

"That's the spirit."

They went off to Anadil and Dot, and Callis watched as Iphigenia crossed the hall to pass Tedros a note. Sophie peeked over his shoulder as he unfolded it...

He read it, screwed it up in his fist, and turned to Iphigenia.

"I don't need to tell you anything, do I?"

"I'd expect the patrol to come back in at the back gate, near the distillery." said Iphigenia.

"You have a distillery?"

"We have two."

Tedros got up and went after her as she departed, frowning, and Sophie followed him, surprisingly, and Agatha went after them, leaving the Coven in a little huddle near the table. Hester must have been secretly pleased, because she hadn't even thumped Dot for trying to hug her.

Callis took Agatha's vacated seat opposite Lancelot and impaled a mouse piece with the snake pointer. It made a sad squeal.

"Has Tedros braved the topic with you, yet?" she asked Guinevere, who had remained sitting where she was. Guinevere's mouth pinched.

"He says he's happy for me, but I don't believe him."

Callis snorted and put her feet on the table.

"Sounds about right. What happened to your face, Sir Knight?"

She hadn't seen Lancelot much, the last few days, since he was consistently off arguing with Camelot and Ever nobles. Arthur's old liege smiled wryly, examining a mouse piece.

"Tedros punched me in the head."

"He did?" said Callis, surprised. "I didn't think he'd ever go that far, you know. Was it an accident?"

"No. It was very purposeful."

"Some hit," said Callis, grudgingly impressed. "Why did he finally snap on you?"

"Well. He'd died earlier in the day, and I may have... mostly brought it on myself." muttered Lancelot. Callis stared at him.

"...what did you say to him?" she said. Guinevere's head turned.

"You said you just wound him up."

"I did." said Lancelot weakly. "But I may have left off... the specific trigger." He looked between them, and his expression became pleading. "I've been holding it in for over a year, Callis. There's been so many opportunities... so many chances..."

Callis stared at him. "...no. No way."

"I thought he was too out of it to care–"

"Lancelot, you didn't..."

"What?" demanded Guinevere. "Lance, what did you say to him?"

Lancelot put his head in his hands. Callis leant forward, dog to the scent.

"There's no way. No way did you say that, to the just-dead child-King of Camelot. You know he has an entire complex!"

"I couldn't help it, it just came out! It was a last ditch attempt to distract him, he looked so sad–"

"Lancelot," said Guinevere tightly. "Spit it out, dear..."

Lancelot looked up, trapped between mirth and horror.

"Gwen," he said, "I'm so sorry. I looked your son in the face, after letting him rant at me for ten minutes... and I said yer mum. To the kid with a mother complex. And he punched me in the head so hard I couldn't see out of my right eye for two hours."

"Lance!" Guinevere cried, but it was somewhat ruined by Callis laughing over her.

---

Callis was still laughing about it two days later, at the meeting Tedros was allowed to go to.

It was good to have something to amuse her, at any rate; the previous few meetings had been a lot of obfuscation and empty sentiment. We're very sorry... see what can be done... unprecedented... unusual situation...

But tears were the best weapon of Ever women, and Guinevere had wept, and Iphigenia had stared, and between them, they had managed to wrangle up the terms. The Kingdom Council accepted Rhian had gotten onto the throne by false means– who didn't?– but they needed something concrete. They wanted two people to vouch for Tedros, to corroborate the claim back onto the throne; an Ever noble, preferably a kinsman... and Tedros himself.

Well. Vouch was the wrong word, for what they wanted from Tedros. Callis doubted if the Kingdom Council would give a single fig about what he said. What they wanted was for him to come himself to one of these meetings, and prove that he was alive. Himself was key; no one was quite sure what they'd seen on the Spellcast– not quite confident Iphigenia hadn't just added necromancy to her long list of transgressions, and wasn't just piloting around the corpse of a dead boy-King. Had anyone seen him? Was he actually in a passable state?

The kinsman caveat, however, had triggered a lot of arguments. Tedros's aunt, Queen Morgause of Orkney, was dead, and his grandmother, Queen Igraine (or, as Callis had known her, Eigr) was unsound of mind, and Guinevere didn't want to upset her by hauling her into a situation that had hopefully bypassed her. Anyone else was missing, dead, or uninterested. Guinevere's giant father, Ogrfan Gawr, was still alive, but would not vouch for a grandson he had never met. King Leodegrance, her foster father, was not blood related to Tedros, a technicality the Wardwells and the Never leaders had scoffed at, but the Ever leaders had insisted. No; a blood relation. After all the scuffle with Rhian, Callis supposed it made sense. They wanted someone they knew was loyal to the Camelot crown. Unfortunately, they came in short supply. Iphigenia claimed to have a solution, but she hadn't been very liberal in sharing the information. Callis knew it, though, because she wasn't a complete fool, and because she'd bullied it out of Tedros in the kitchen, last night–

"He's late, is what he is." said Queen Jacinda of Jaunt Jolie, not for the first time. Guinevere wrung her hands and kept quiet, but Lancelot shrugged.

"A little patience never killed anyone, Jacinda."

"If I have to be subject to some ridiculous Wardwell stunt–" began the King of Foxwood, but Iphigenia looked sideways at him and he went quiet.

"The Grand Duchess has promised me she has no interest in interfering in this meeting," said King Elias of Netherwood.

The Ever leaders muttered dubiously. The Nevers kept quiet. Besides the fact that a political promise from Iphigenia meant precisely nothing, if she truly wasn't interested in pulling strings, it meant it was already going her way.

The King of Foxwood sighed.

"Let's just send a messenger for Tedros– again– and then we can–"

"No need."

Like Callis had said; they'd resolved it.

The Kingdom Council would have done well to remember, Callis thought, that between Tedros, Sophie, and Agatha, there were three crucial things.

One, the innate egotistical ability to make one hell of an entrance.

Two, a frustratingly impressive talent for tailoring.

And three, an encyclopaedic memory of every fairytale ever published.

And Callis remembered reading this one to Agatha very well indeed.

All green bedight that knight, and green his garments fair.

Tedros slunk down the side staircase, notably still slightly unsteady on his feet– but no one was looking at how he was walking.

The neckline of the emerald green doublet was slit so low that it exposed the bruising all the way from the top of his neck to his torso, a horrible dappling of purple and black and red that all the green– the doublet, the jade rings and earrings, the fur-lined cloak– was made ugly and stark. He didn't wear the crown; he didn't need the crown. Sophie and Agatha and Tedros, hunched in a corner with a needle and thread and an ancient sewing machine, had invoked the unkillable Green Knight, head hewn off to no avail, who had laughed and picked it up, terrorising Arthur's court. Who'd been assisted in his cheating of death... by the magical meddling of a sorceress. It had all been a test, you see. Just a game. Proof of chivalry, proof of suitability...

It was the final part of Iphigenia and Tedros's shared vision, the one Callis had assumed was fulfilled by Tedros's gory non-death.

Well. Nearly the final part.

Just behind Tedros, walked an older knight; not Lancelot's age, not a teenager, but perhaps late 20s or early 30s. His face was unremarkable, not particularly recognisable; the Readers knew it, probably. What mattered, though, was that people recognised what he was wearing.

Iphigenia had sent out long-distance scouts before the parlay, on a matter of urgency. Now everyone knew what for.

Or rather, who for.

Tedros stopped at the head of the table and looked at them. He did not smile.

"I apologise for the delay."

He didn't bother to make an excuse, but he didn't need to, because the still-damaged snarl of his voice was making people cringe and struggle to keep eye contact. Callis could see Iphigenia watching; looking to see who had turned away, who had winced. She pulled at strands of weakness like loose threads, and she was clearly finding new ones to tug on.

"I believe it was asked that I find a kinsman other than my mother to advocate for me." Tedros said. "I have done so, and I will speak with you. I believe that now there's nothing further required of me. Come to what conclusion you may."

He limped over to sit with Agatha, eyes tracking him the whole way. Agatha was also wearing green, a detail which had no doubt seemed innocuous until now.

"Are you sure you should have come?" asked the Maharani of Mahadeva in the tone of voice one used for the extremely sick or the extremely young, clearly trying to wrest some control back. "You still look... hurt."

Hurt? Callis thought sardonically. He'd been maimed.

"I'm quite well," said Tedros softly. Gods and saints, had Iphigenia been giving him lessons? Or was this the sort of pointed deflection that all court-raised children knew how to do? Callis had never seen Tedros act in a court setting until now, and found herself slightly surprised. But perhaps he'd had to learn quickly. Boy-kings either learned to act like adults, or stayed childish and suffered for it. There was no winning.

Still at the head of the table, Sir Gawain– infamously missing, inexplicably tracked down in the nick of time– bowed to the Kingdom Council. He adjusted his sword, and disturbed the famous green girdle, just a little. Lancelot had muttered that he probably bathed in it, but Callis didn't care what he did with it, just as long as he wore it today.

"Since my aunt's word is apparently not enough, I would be happy to advocate for my cousin."

"Sir Gawain," said Queen Jacinda, not bothering to hide her surprise. "You haven't been seen at court for... a long time."

Understatement of the eon. Tedros, sat with Agatha's hand in his, leant on the table and looked for all the world as if he was unperturbed to see the sudden return of his long-missing cousin.

"I'm afraid I quite lost my way in uncharted parts of the Woods," said Gawain. The shield slung over his back had the Virgin Mary painted on the inside of it; she stared out at them, face a little obscured. It was deeply off-putting. Callis, who had always assumed Gawain was a pious ninny, didn't find much to dispute it, but at least he was being useful.

"The issue at hand is a pity," continued Gawain. "I would I could have had a hand in stopping it. I knew nothing of it until Tedros's scouts reached me, but days ago. I lend myself in service to my cousin and King, now, by advocating for his reinstatement upon the throne."

He was such a relic of an older time, Callis thought, and he wasn't even old in himself; just raised in an older court, an older tradition. Even Lancelot didn't talk like that. Then again, Lancelot was a walking transgression. Queen-stealing Lancelot. She'd grown quite fond of him, again, even if he still had the same brain power as a rock.

Speaking of Lancelot, he had leant forward to look past Callis and Agatha, and was staring at Iphigenia incredulously. Iphigenia looked at him, blinked, then ignored him.

"After all," said Gawain, a little pointedly. "I find it rather familiar. As a situation."

The Kingdom Council stared at him.

Then, they turned to look at Tedros.

----

"HOW DID YOU FIND HIM!" Lancelot was demanding of Iphigenia in the hallway, the second they all emerged, holding Gawain by the scruff of the neck like a puppy. "WHERE?"

Iphigenia sniffed disinterestedly.

"Nearly-uncharted parts of the Woods. East of Ladelflop, my scouts tell me."

"You could have gone to retrieve Merlin and it'd have been easier, you know that?" said Lancelot, Gawain still dangling placidly in his grip.

"I didn't want Merlin." said Iphigenia, the hint of a sneer crossing her face. "Merlin is meddlesome and untrustworthy. It will do him good to be trapped somewhere unpleasant for a while."

"So he's like you?"

"The difference between Merlin and I, is that I am useful." said Iphigenia. "The same could not be claimed for him." She brushed past them and made her way down the hall, flicking through her notes.

"YOU'RE USEFUL WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE IT!" Lancelot shouted after her. He was blanked, naturally. He looked at Callis. "You know she's exerting no effort to rescue him on purpose."

"I know," said Callis.

"Lance–" began Gawain.

"No." said Lancelot, clearly anticipating the request. "What have you been doing for the past... nearly ten years?"

"I lost track of time!" Gawain protested, trying to pick Lancelot's fingers off his collar. "I got into The Wandering Wood and killed the gryphon like I was intending to, but it's so odd about time, I really did think I'd only been in there for about a month, but turns out it was six years. I got out, and then a lady in Caerbannog asked me to find out what was killing her chickens, and I found out– it was a Killer Rabbit, but then I fell down its den and I had to use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch to escape it, then I had to go and find Gringolet, and then I lost my way like three times, and the–"

"I get the gist." Lancelot let him go abruptly and he staggered to right himself. "You were always good at bungling up well-meant quests. Did you not read newspapers, in any of that time?"

Gawain turned, tucking his thumbs into his swordbelt.

"No papers in the Wandering Wood. But I suppose I shouldn't ask you where you've been?"

"Avalon," said Lancelot shortly. "Until Merlin deliberately led Tedros to us, last year."

Gawain looked as if he had a comment on that he was suppressing. Callis wondered if she might get along with him a little better than the older generation of Knights–

His attention shifted.

"Ahh, no! No no, cousin, we haven't discussed any of this yet, I haven't been introduced to the lady–"

He trotted after Tedros and Agatha, who had clearly been trying to get out without him noticing them, and pursued them relentlessly down the hall as Tedros tried to escape, cutting them off halfway down. Guinevere had been trailing after them, and Lancelot went after her, leaving Callis alone, besides a few straggling Kingdom Council aides. She sighed and put her head back. Finally. Was that everything? Had they, between them, finally ironed things out?

She watched the Camelot contingent flit about, unsettled and trying to cover it with jibes; heard the word baby, and saw Gawain's head snap around, and the droll curl of Tedros's expression. Then Lord Protector and split responsibility floated back to her, and Lancelot said 'oh thank god', far too loudly and got jabbed in the kidney by Tedros, and Gawain shrugged, as if he felt it was a perfectly reasonable idea.

"A better solution, I think."
Callis turned to find Sophie standing behind her, watching Tedros and Agatha, and the rest of them.

"Do you think so?"

"Gawain's presence in the Lord Protectorate dilutes the implication of Lancelot's," said Sophie. "And an actual relative of Arthur's, that has avoided scandal, will surely go down better..."

"Very true," said Callis, wishing she wasn't agreeing with Sophie.

"And then there's the... symbolism." said Sophie, watching Gawain scratching the back of his neck absently.

Wasn't there always....

Callis turned to Sophie.

"What do you want?"

Sophie toyed with a flawless curl of hair, in a way she was attempting to make look idle. Callis, who had caught her in curlers numerous times, thought wryly that Sophie certainly knew the value of hard work and forward-thinking, just not where she needed to know it...

"I'm going back to Evil next week. Once I've seen Aggie back to Camelot."

Callis would have liked Sophie back to Evil immediately, but she had to admit that she had no objection to keeping Sophie by Agatha's side for a little bit longer, given the circumstances.

"Are you going to actually teach, this time?"

"Yes, thank you very much, Callis." Sophie tugged on her cuffs. "In fact, I'm going to be very radical. A whole new scheme of learning, a new start... staffing changes."

Resign resign resign resign please resign, Reaper was chanting in the back of Callis's head. Callis tried her level best to ignore him.

"Staffing changes," said Callis, unmoved. Sophie fluffed her skirts self-importantly.

"Yes. As Dean of the School for Evil, a role bestowed upon me by the incomparable judgement of the late Lady Leonora Lesso, peerless in her wisdom..."

"Doubt that." murmured Callis. Sophie, halted mid-monologue, frowned.

"You didn't know her, Callis."

"I know she appointed a seventeen year old as Dean," said Callis–

"I'm offering you a teaching position back, you horrible old bat!" snapped Sophie.

Callis stared at her.

Down the corridor, she saw movement, and realised Iphigenia hadn't left, like she'd thought. She was lurking in an alcove at the opposite end, watching them silently.

Callis looked back at Sophie.

"...Uglification, then?"

"Oh, gosh, no. Manley would rather die than be usurped–"

"That could be arranged," said Callis meaningfully.

"I'd rather you not plan another faculty homicide, Callis." muttered Sophie. "No, no– I thought we could have you on as a sort of supervising professor. Covering lessons, teaching specialised courses to the older students, dealing with student issues... a sort of pastoral role..."

"Pastoral," said Callis, whose idea of pastoral was gingham and cows.

"Student wellbeing and general supervision, darling, not fields. My staff don't..." she looked, briefly, like a spurned child. "Always listen to me. Or my vision."

Callis rolled her eyes, but she saw how it was. Sophie didn't just want an older Evil professor on her side, she needed one. They both knew that Evil needed reform and revitalising; just saw it from completely different angles, Sophie focused from the new, post-fairytale side, and Callis focused from the old, brutal side. And Callis hadn't ever intended to take on some nonsense Queen Mother role, like people had been assuming... she wanted Evil purpose just as much as Sophie did. Not that she'd been back in the Woods for long. Who knew how things worked, these days.

Callis folded her arms, weighing it up...

"It's a lot closer to Camelot." Reaper said hopefully.

"Glorious Saints," Callis murmured. "Will we have to visit for dinner every weekend?"

"Free food is free food, and we can probably ignore Dull Gwen..."

"As if she'll stay there. She's going to be packed back off to that country house to do her confinement, I guarantee it."

You'll probably end up Dean by proxy, where you do all of Sophie's paperwork and she makes unreasonable demands, Reaper-Callis thought.

No use making unreasonable demands if I ignore them, Callis-Reaper returned.

"So," said Sophie, "Will you do it?"

Callis could see, in her peripheral vision, that her mother wasn't looking at her anymore, but she was clearly listening.

That you apparently missed me just as much as I missed you...

"Not yet," Callis said. Iphigenia's head turned slightly. "When there's a new cohort of first years, I'll take it. For the next two years, I'll consult, if you write to me... but I'm staying at home."

Sophie looked somewhere between relieved and annoyed.

"Oh! Well–"

"Because you need to do some actual work, before you start to palm it off on everyone else." Callis told her. Sophie's eyebrows came down. "I've known you since you were in pigtails, Dean Sophie, and I know you love to offload anything that requires effort onto everyone else. You are going to properly earn your position. Then I'll help you."

"I find it presumptuous you assume I need your help, Callis–"

"Then why did I hear you asking Agatha if I'd do your paperwork for you?" said Reaper.

Sophie opened her mouth, then shut it again. Callis snorted and went off down the corridor towards her mother, calling behind her; "Two years, illustrious Dean!"

"What if I don't keep the offer open?"

"You will."

She didn't hear Sophie's response, if she made one, but she knew she was right. Sophie would keep it open. She needed Callis's help much more than Callis needed the position, and she knew that Callis had already wrangled herself a teaching position by force, once before. For the safety of her current staff, it was best she kept the offer out there...

Iphigenia had already started leaving by the time Callis caught her.

"Did you foresee that, Cassandra?"

"I've told you before I'm not a Seer, Callis." said Iphigenia, but there wasn't so much as a hint of reprimand in her voice.

"So you have," said Callis. She held her arm out to her, and they went off after the Camelot contingent arm-in-arm. "Good trick with Gawain, by the way..."

"I try, dear."