(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 27 minutes)

The Rules for a Trip to Jerusalem

Independence Hall was locked tight for several days, nary a Founder coming or going, with many of the young staying in private rooms or the barracks left with nothing to do but keep their ear to the wall, pointlessly so considering that the rooms in which those men debated and drafted were so heavily posted with their own authority that no sound could escape them.

What they debated was without question. How would the mission plan be affected by this unexpected invitation to the very same event they might attempt to infiltrate? Could they afford to let the opportunity simply pass by? And whether or not he would be accompanied by a full company of soldiers, would a Founder be in attendance?

Turning the Bickyplots down would make them suspicious. However, sending any portion of what they considered their most precious asset, themselves, was unacceptable to some of them, no matter the terms. Eventually it would come to a vote, and the junior Committee of Five had no desire to be blindsided by the result, so they went to the quiet work of predicting the outcome, which had been successfully attempted in a few prior instances.

Something like a seance, though they had not stories of such things to compare it to, it took the form of several key Founder-heirs gathered in the barracks, seated as close as they could come to a circular arrangement in the narrow bed-filled chamber.

Spirits were to be called upon, or emulated, but not from the afterlife. These spirits were still present, and in that very building no less. The crucial subject of the exercise was family resemblance. All but Hart were of mixed parentage, but this was not a measure of appearance, but of resemblance in personality and processes of thought.

In this ritual a Founder-heir would insist they were like their parent in this regard, an echo of their morals, and would sign a statement to that fact, to be pinned to their breasts when they began. Their closest friends and associates signed their confidence to the statement as well. With each earnest signature the drafting grew stronger, and when pinned they would act as much like the Founders as they ever would, hopefully mirroring the discussion happening a few walls behind them.

Each Founder was represented by only one of their children, to avoid conflicting and unnecessary influences, though an exception was made for the twin Hancock girls, with their natural bond allowing them to mimic separate parts of their flamboyant father’s persona; Lydia White Smoke Hancock would handle his strategizing statements while Chelsea Dragonfly Hancock would make emotional appeals and outbursts.

Among those available for the mock debate, only those descended from the most powerful of the other room were selected, with the exception of the Master of Sciences, who had not had any children in his life in Pursuitia.

Unless he did, and abandoned me for his research, Blueberry thought as she sat on one of the higher beds and watched the others assemble the circle. A hollowness crumpled her, like a pillow with insufficient stuffing. Everyone beneath her had at least one invisible line attached, on which they could tug and expect some response from the parent on the other end.

The only tug she felt was the spiraling grip of Wagner around her bicep, and spirals were not webs, just single strings that never touched anything else. So disconnected was she that she briefly did not see her friends shuffling below as people, but as white fireflies blinking on and off. In their off state they were not gone, merely touching the part of the world she could not touch, dabbling in history so they could be more sure of their footing the next time they landed.

In a moment they would all debate, leave her in the dark, with nothing at all to say about how accurate the proceeding might be. At least Mustard joined her, for his own Founder father was long dead, and with his spat with Bonfire still blazing they had spent much time together of late.

Wordlessly, Kidd rolled up her sleeve. Wagner felt the warmth of Muster’s arm next to hers and slithered across, eliminating what was already a minuscule gap. It tied them together for the duration so it could never be reasonably said that they were alone.

“Gentlemen, contain yourselves,” insisted Robert Windstorm Jefferson, in a manner most reminiscent of his father Thomas. What the others had to contain was actually rather quiet, as the barracks were not immune to the leaking of sound. “Your anger is from excessive restraint; I know as I feel it myself. Our flesh is red from the leash, and so we should let it go. We cannot hunt without the dangers of bolting into the woods!”

“Bully!” seconded Edward Rutledge II. He was one of the few without a Lenape-memory, which he would’ve been offered if his father ever allowed him significant time away from Independence Hall. The boy was kept sequestered, no doubt to minimize corruption, and in his place in military matters went the elder Rutledge himself.

Blueberry saw the effect of the drafting pinned to him, almost holding him down. His eyes shown with that particular scowling hatred she knew so well from his father. Edward II even looked up at her during the simulated debate, gave her a subtle but vicious grimace, and this was the only way she was acknowledged by those of the circle for the entirety of the affair.

She knew it wasn’t really him. They had no discord. In fact, the real Edward II, when not possessed by an echo of the elder, often look at her longingly, a desire for freedom jumbled up in his heart, falling over in a fashion rather like infatuation. Neither of them spoke a word to each other about it, or wrote it down, for the Founder-father would kill her if he suspected, and perhaps him too.

“If any of us goes it must be someone eager, and someone still capable of fighting for his own freedom,” White Smoke Hancock reasoned. Her open hand limply pointed to Rutledge, but referred to the original.

“Yes, I will go. I’ve mountains to say to them.”

“Absolutely not,” a lesser Founder argued through their child, and the way it was said suggested there were several voices not present that supported the assertion. “You are the youngest of us. If we should all perish here only you can carry on the work to its fullest. Without us, and without you, our children, despite what they may promise, will settle into the only lives they’ve ever known. They will think they are already free, and we will never get to return to real history and make the mark for which we were so ready to bleed! The blood we spill here stains nothing! It dissipates like dew, forgotten by day’s end!”

“I consent to nothing that would have me forgotten!” Dragonfly Hancock practically screamed. Someone, monitoring from outside the circle without another person pinned to their shirt, reached in and put a hand over her mouth to minimize the risk she would be heard.

Please, anyone but Rutledge. If a fight breaks out he might ‘accidentally’ catch me in the crossfire. Any evidence contradicting him would be swallowed by a Bickyplot, and no one would ever try to reclaim me from that world. Blueberry’s grip on the bed frame tightened, as did Wagner’s coils. With skin pressed so close she could nearly hear what young master Hart was thinking.

If they send someone and I lose them… It’ll be over. They won’t want my signature on the Second Declaration. That space will have to be left blank in memorial to whomever I fail to save on November seventh. I have to get them out alive; it must be my top priority. Above capturing or killing any of the thirteen. Above my soldiers. I’m fighting for their collective fate.

This Founder is worth more than a handful of them, for he must live for any of them to. And what should I do if Bonfire is in that handful? Or Blueberry? They are pieces of my heart, and they could even be the pieces that do the beating. Without them I will die.

And should I die they all die. Only I can sign the Carve-Out. Why is my heart not allowed to escape this vice? I have it in at least three pieces, but all are cornered. For once I envy the Bickyplot anatomy. Theirs can escape, and even fight back. Who is it that gifted evil the most resilient of hearts? I have heard the silence of the good heart gone still, felt it. Frequent are its lapses into living death, while evil always thumps. Thumps at night when I’m trying to sleep. Thumps over Bonfire’s voice when she’s telling me how much she loves me. Thumps to emphasize her absence. I must be rid of it. I must be rid of them.

Muster and Blueberry made each other nervous, their deep dives into future problems still detectable through Wagner’s connection, but they refused to separate. That was often their relationship’s strongest dimension. Without interacting they could feel the other’s presence, like they stood back to back, handling whatever problem they faced so the other wouldn’t have to in the long run.

Friends of correspondence across the shortest of distances. Drafted to be incredible companions, but rarely behaving that way openly. Sometimes they wondered if some third party had made them a reality, or inserted one into the other’s life as an act of sabotage so insidious they couldn’t yet see the goal. As far as they knew the Mad Letterman wrote only leaflets, and not people.

The seance drew to a close, the children hoarse through their father’s words. Despite the croak, they spoke as clearly as they could when final details were agreed upon, and made it understood that a great deal of simmering anger, frustration, and uncertainty remained among the Founders.

All at once they ripped off the drafted spells, burned them to destroy the evidence of their clandestine channeling. With their voices shot they could do little but listen as the rest discussed what was, most likely, the Founders’ decision:

The raid on Godswallop’s string-snapping would go forward as originally planned. A company of thirty-five would march to Bickering Hall and infiltrate the vomit sluice via Emperor. From there they would sneak to the festivities underway, spring the assault, and slaughter as much of the Bickyplot establishment as possible.

Simultaneously, the Founder John Witherspoon would be escorted, with much pomp and circumstance to serve as distraction, to the front gates of the enemy compound. He would enter alone, doing his best to occupy their foe as completely as possible, until the arrival of the entire invading company. Once the battle had begun, he was to make his escape under armed guard, informing his escorts, who would still be waiting at the gate, that most of them could then charge in and join the assault.

So it is to be Witherspoon, both Muster and Blueberry thought as Wagner finally took its leave of Hart’s arm so he could lead in the planning as President. True confirmation would not be had until it was publicly announced the following day, but in the end their confidence would be warranted.

Witherspoon, like all of them, brought complications with his various entitlements. The sole clergyman among the signers, he bore a deep connection to a god the young knew only through the rote requirements of institutionalized worship. His hymns were sung in Pilgrim’s Anchor, but they resonated only in a few breasts.

Most Founders eventually learned it was pointless to force this single distant deity upon their children, not only because they learned pagan practices in the night from the Lenape, but because it wasted time that could be spent sharpening them to greater efficiency as hunters and soldiers. Their immortal souls were of little concern, for when the second signing occurred they would be folded back into the noble spirits from whence they came, and be ushered into heaven with their revolutionary forebears.

Not so with Witherspoon. Those who still suffered under Christian instruction suffered under him, and that included the seven children bearing his surname. Not quite as cloistered and miserable as Rutledge II, they were nonetheless sad, burdened by a judgmental god and his much more stern representative.

Two of Witherspoon’s were five and seven years, among the youngest in all Pilgrim’s Anchor, and could not participate in the mission, but a few of the others could. Rather cynically, Muster made note of assigning someone else to be the clergyman’s immediate guards, assuming his own children would not protect him as doggedly as they might, simply to break the bridge between themselves and the kingdom of an earthly god.

His efforts were futile, no matter the form they took. If the young had any gods at all they were composed of Pursuitia’s nature scraped together into a divine image, and they were all too busy for prayers, that time spent writing their hopes and ideas to each other across a very real and very tangible network of pages. Every loving line in a friendly recognized hand was scripture.

Yet the young saw the logic in Witherspoon as the Founders’ emissary, if one was required. He could be boisterous, jovial, and lead others in revelry, so long as he wasn’t challenged in that position. The man was well-liked amongst his peers, and would have sufficient time to both formulate his strategies and find the resolve to stick to them even when seated at a putrefied Bickyplot banquet table.

With that matter settled, everyone moved on to consider the soldiery and their armaments. Thirty-five numbered the infiltration force, with an additional fifteen to escort the Founder, eleven of whom would enter the battle after Witherspoon’s extraction, four remaining with him as his guard who would hastily retreat to Pilgrim’s Anchor.

As for equipment, standard weaponry for infantry would include a Franklin musket with rotary-capable bayonet, a Franklin pistol, two Franklin hatchets, and a parrying knife with retractable guard forks. All but the musket were too small for significant enhancement via drafting, but the long weapons would have lacquered notices along both barrel and stock. On them all was a standard declaration, signed by all that remained of the original Committee of Five:

So it is that this weapon has been tested rigorously, and in those tests failed at no task, so it is logically extended to the future that it shall never fail in these so long as it is held in the hands of a citizen of Pilgrim’s Anchor, operated in the spirit of the Founders, and under an earnest interpretation of their orders:

– This firearm shall remain accurate at a hundred paces.

– This firearm shall not malfunction.

– This firearm does not break when dropped and can withstand mighty blows.

– This firearm does not strike allies unintended.

– This firearm does not fire without intent.

– This firearm inflicts the most grievous wounds imaginable upon its targets.

– This firearm causes great pain and distress in the hands of a Bickyplot, and will malfunction in their care, as it was not designed to accommodate such hands.

Some room remained for each soldier to attach notices of their own with anatimal-hide glue, which could bind strongly enough for a single lengthy battle. If they knew what they were going up against they would tailor those drafted statements to the most specific advantages they could, but most of the time greater confidence in the gun and its performance came from writing something of themselves on it, as if they wrote in their journals. A random sampling would not return standardized military drafting language, but wisps of youthful daring:

– This firearm only hits between Bickyplot eyes; the fact that their eyes are in all sorts of places and this shot could land in a troublesome location indeed is none of my business.

– I will feel the lightning in my arms when I fire, and when it hits, and when it slays.

– No ball or bolt shall ever hit Oakes Newtown, my truest love in all the worlds.

– Franklin made no mistakes in assembling this musket. Franklin made no mistakes in attaching the bayonet. Benjamin Franklin does not tell the lightning how to behave. Benjamin Franklin does not have a grudge against me in particular.

– Whoever holds this shall get to ride a tin horse, to acquire a high vantage point of course.

– Whosoever wields this will not die, suffer injury, suffer tripping, suffer humiliation, or be the victim of any jape or jest, especially those involving the anatimals of slapping beaver tails, beaver musk glands, or anything else to do with the animal!

– May these shots ring as righteously as our Liberty Bell, no matter the hour.

The company would not be made up entirely of foot soldiers. Scudder Hart would serve as corporal in command of the operation, flanked by two lieutenants who could rise to the authority should he be incapacitated.

Honey Whipple, in her first official military outing, would be temporarily granted the rank of specialist, as only she could handle the key anatimal which, as far as they knew, was not to receive a rank despite its contributions.

In addition the company would contain three drummers, with music the least of their duties, and battlefield signaling still lower than the primary function of a Franklin drum: to charge and launch a Franklin kite. Two of them would march with the infiltrators, and have a difficult time of it if they were to remain stealthy, as the items were both unwieldy and heavy, as well as prone to loud bangs should they bump into anything. Meanwhile the third would remain with Witherspoon, to deploy the larger model that would hopefully cover their retreat in the likelihood of Bickyplot pursuit.

A great deal of equipment would be concealed within the innocent-looking carriage transporting Witherspoon, so there was little choice but to have it drawn by two tin horses: Praytheday and Workhenry. These two were most accustomed to Witherspoon as rider, and it was assumed they would obey his reins just as much if he acted as coachman instead.

And thus equipped, in the early afternoon of November the seventh, fifty young men and women, one founding father, one gargantuan pig-ear butterfly, and two tin horses began their hours-long march toward the territory of their mortal enemies the Bickyplots, the drummers alternately banging out a dedicated rhythm and fifing its spirited embellishments, for those were two of the functions of the brass sticks in their hands.

Most of the parents among the Lenape and the Freed were there to see them off, many with tears in their eyes. Gladly they would have taken their place, and some were still young and strong enough to do so, but without drafted permission to use the advanced weaponry they would stand little chance against the menaces from the unseen world, and no permission to do so was forthcoming from the ever-suspicious men of Independence Hall.

Pursuitia’s autumnal bite was of a similar character to Earth’s, perhaps sharper but less persistent, as if a stitch in the side originated outside the body and sporadically tried to get back in. Their layered uniforms kept it at bay.

An overcoat of darkest blue trailed below the knees. Sturdy boots. Tricorns lined in orange, to match the Lenape bead work scaling just under the waistcoat, almost like chain mail. Replete with diamond patterns that were mostly hidden, the bead work was matched with pins of carved anatimal antler and bone, sometimes on the hat and sometimes on the lapel, various symbols signaling talents to their fellows in a scuffle.

On a strap over their shoulder they carried their muskets, with their other weapons mostly hidden on their belts. Witherspoon carried nothing but a ceremonial saber, as a token of good faith, which was in a sense earnest, for if everything went well he would never draw a weapon.

Halfway to their destination, with the Pursuitian sun already beginning to set, dancing about in the process a touch more than Earth’s, the orange of the air flickering on papery leaves like candlelight, the company split in two, with Witherspoon and his escorts continuing straight on. The Founder had never gone that far from Anchor, and so did not recognize the signs they were entering the Bickering realm.

It was quieter, as the thirteen evils had drafted a resolution that all wildlife should not disturb them while they slept, displaying an utter lack of concern for how that might affect the creatures. Bonfire Paine, who was in Witherspoon’s guard, could have explained to him that at least one native animal, the violet dangledrifter, perished from internal pressure if it was prevented from performing its evening mating songs, but the man did not ask after the silence.

He was reading from his bible most of the way, a heavy tome that looked almost like stone which he had deliberately never brought drafting implements near. Best not to taint it with witchcraft; he knew his one god would recognize the vandalism the moment he returned to his master’s world.

Also separating the realms of Bickering and Anchor were the more frequent signs of the Silhouettes, who never had reason to cover their tracks. Their bodies, especially when contorted into the unnatural upright shapes their slavers’ decorum insisted on, tended to grab and manipulate objects on their own, independent of will.

Thus the ground was littered with items idly snatched, fondled, and dropped, everything from sticks and stones to broken bottles and bent nails. Though scattered unintentionally, the shards of glass made it all the more difficult for the thirty-five, with their cloaks and their daggers fully deployed, to silently approach Bickering Hall.

First they had wait along the outer fencing of stacked stones, with blue flames ever-licking at the uneven spaces between in the Bickyplot drafting equivalent of a no trespassers signpost. It had been agreed they would allow a half-hour for Witherspoon to be received, for the festivities to begin, before Emperor would go to work lifting them one at a time over the barrier.

The delay was utterly miserable, as none of them risked a single spoken word. All the planning had been handled in complete safety, so now their feet dangled over the gap in the rope bridge, the one moment where their fears might get the best of them. All they could do was check that their guns were loaded, their blade hinges oiled, and their notices not smudged or ripped.

Each piece of equipment had been inspected an average of seven times when the terrible delay finally ended, marked by the stilling of the candle-flame effect on the surrounding canopy. Now Honey could go to work.

She’s nervous, Blueberry noted as she watched her friend fiddle with Emperor’s harness, tightening straps here and there so it couldn’t slip off in flight. The girl looked keenly aware that this was the first time her anatimal tinkering might result in a broken leg, and if it wasn’t it was certainly the first time it might be someone else’s leg. Such notions dripped down the side of her temple and chewed at her lower lip between her teeth.

Speaking still seemed unwise, even without any guards yet in sight, a Silhouette shirker could be napping wrapped around a tree branch after all, so Blueberry maneuvered close to her friend and lightly tapped, soft enough to get her to turn without startling her. All she did was point at Wagner, encircled about her neck comfortably, then tap her heart in a rhythm so gentle compared to the earlier drums that it barely existed.

No words, but it communicated much, which was the ultimate strength of this second generation in this land ruptured twice by blundering authority. Kidd told Honey that she was providing everything Emperor lacked. That was the nature of the bond; they were the body for those without.

Emperor needed its owner’s breath to be even, so it could stay calm. It needed her heart to move methodically so its own behavior would not be erratic. She gave it its will, its determination, and the physical follow-through that was the muscle memory of duty. Honey’s response was an equally informative nod.

Not a minute later the first soldier had grabbed the handles hanging beneath Emperor, taken a few running steps as instructed, and been elegantly lifted over the tall fence. Landing quietly was far more difficult, but they managed. As did the next one, and the next five, and the next ten after that.

Once they were all over, Emperor resting briefly on Honey’s hunched back, its wings trembling with exertion, the greater portion of the company moved with both haste and care, stopping only when they’d fully crossed the uneven mounds and misbehaving shrubbery that was the work of Pumpwine Cult-on-Sea. There it stood: Bickering Hall.

Cut off from Earth, the young had precious few examples of its architecture, but still understood there could be a great deal of variety in form since they knew both colonist buildings and Lenape. Bickering Hall was not an equally valid third option. Bickering Hall was an abomination of sickly green brick and black mortar that sparkled only the way spittle could sparkle.

It bore hundreds of windows, and none of them were exactly the same shape, nor was their glass uniformly flat, sometimes convex and sometimes concave. The webs of cracks were possibly intentional, perhaps even made one by one with a tiny hammer and chisel.

The oppressive roof was a mouth perpetually closing on the manor, crushing it, drooling over the idea of its pressure shattering all that messy glass outward at once: an occurrence that would’ve shredded and killed the entire company if it were to come about just then, as the structure was built on the scale of the Bickyplots, who stood thirteen feet tall.

Dark shingles had been arranged neatly at one point, but each was being used as the upper carapace of a creature the pilgrims had never managed to capture and dissect. It was unclear if it came from the unseen world or Pursuitia; all they knew was that they had seven green legs and they didn’t like staying in one position too long. Thus the roof’s pattern was constantly rearranged, and there was much traffic that evening, perhaps indicating they joined in the festivities beneath them.

A single circular chimney of immense girth emerged off-center, forever belched gray smoke occasionally hit with thunder-flickers of much stranger color. Clouds did not gather in its wake. Whatever furnace or hearth powered it was quiet compared to the endless groaning of the manor, like it snored. No board in its floors ever settled. No wind broke against it without filing a vocal grievance. Every inner bang and clang echoed throughout several times, and could reoccur hours later.

Yet, when all congealed together, these phenomena lent a grotesque opulence to the whole structure: festering dung delivered on a silver platter. It drew the eye, then repelled it. In looking away they found themselves thinking about its form more and more, disgusted at the afterimage present when they blinked, like it was grown from the veins of the inner eyelid while they refused to pay attention.

To defer these feelings the company narrowed their focus to their entry point: the vomit sluice. Descriptions of it had failed to impress upon those who hadn’t seen it the scale, and the likewise underestimated odor. The shape of its metal undulated for no clear reason, widening at the end as it descended into a square pit full of vats on a rusty track, meant to rotate to an empty whenever one overflowed.

The latest container was quite full, the level high enough that they could see the contents bubbling, though none popped while they watched, so it was more like the skin atop the sludge had a bad case of blisters.

To escape this sight their eyes climbed in a way the rest of them thankfully wouldn’t have to. Muster had seen it before, but never so close. He made his estimation. Why, we could never make it up this regardless of our tracks being spied. Does it ever stop flowing? And that stench! Like the tannery at the bottom of a swamp.

If it ever stopped flowing, it was not on November the seventh. Atop the sluice, on a clam-shaped balcony, were two Silhouette chairs, shaped more like a human coat rack. Draped across their arms were two resting guards, the loops of their bodies hidden by nasty stained cloaks, with no way to tell which stain was actually a glimpse through the layers to the true color.

Liquid owl eyes of green turned to the open window behind them, where one of their fellows pulled a cart full of fresh lubrication for the sluice. All three had to work together to turn the crank that spilled the mounted bucket. Only one drop was lost to splashing, but it was the size of an armadillo, and was just as defensive about keeping its rolled-up shape even after it bounced across the ground several times. Only then, like an exhalation, did it break and spread.

What should have been a tide was more like an avalanche; it slowed to a crawl about halfway down. On this unfurled carpet of ruminated expectoration much was painted, but examining it closely would be at best a distraction and at worst a diagnostic feature of insanity, so it was time to rely upon Emperor once again, which, despite the difficult work ahead, was the luckiest of them all for lacking both eyes and nose.

As expected, The Silhouettes were watching. The natives were daydreamers, inactive intellectually, or as the young mostly understood it, active in a different fashion that was all too easy for hasty humans to overlook. None could conceive of living things that made for worse guards, but that was why they were set to watch such a narrow opening. If there was something to see they would see it, and an invisible bond of servitude would rouse them enough to report it with fearful frantic hollering.

For now, the entire company was invisible to them. Honey had to go first, to demonstrate the technique Emperor knew how to respond to, which meant she would be the first of their entire generation to step foot inside Bickering Hall, less than a day out from donning her first uniform.

Technically that meant there was some possibility she could run afoul of a Bickyplot ordinance targeting the offspring of the Founders, perhaps making them explode or rot into skeletons upon trespassing contact, and the fear of it was all over her. But bravery persisted. It had to, so her fear wouldn’t infect Emperor with spasms of panic. That’s it, Blueberry silently assured her, shared body. Shared fate. The muscle memory of duty. You can do it because it has already been written in the flesh of the past. Trace the scar in new muscle.

Together Honey and Emperor launched, the former making it very clear to the rest of them that without a running start they would have to crouch down and spring up with all their strength, the upward lift indicating to Emperor that it was time to flap a specific distance up and forward. She disappeared over the balcony seconds later, without an accompanying sound.

After an agonizing ten seconds of clear sky Emperor reemerged, drifting back down on an arc, where it was caught by two soldiers on either side and repositioned. Its second passenger mimicked Honey, and off they went. Again there was no sound of landing sufficiently louder than the hall itself to even turn the heads of the Silhouette guards as they rested on their slim seats. Four eyes of green kept surveying the crowded grounds, found them unpopulated.

Corporal Hart went up fifth, with their order being one of many details planned out well in advance. As with surmounting the fence, excluding Honey and her demonstrations, the heaviest went first, the order descending to the lightest. As Emperor tired it would have lighter and lighter loads, with the side effect of most of the young men being first to reach the balcony.

Their broad shoulders gave them little room in the narrow passage, so they had to disperse into the hallway, where many of them immediately grew antsy, having nearly collided with an object upon landing.

The cart. What had transported the latest batch in need of slow filtering was still there: a man-sized mounted bucket on a lever. Wheeling it out of the way would have been simple, except it was close enough to the guards that they might see. Long past was the time they could move objects and have the Silhouettes assume it was friendly ghosts finishing their chores for them.

Leaning out over the balcony was a similar risk, so each landing soldier was required to assess the situation as soon as they were high enough, swing with sufficient force to land on the strip of spongy wood behind the cart that would cushion and quiet their impact. After the first few there were others in position to catch them, ease them down, but the more crowded the hallway the more the stress of the stacking maneuver built up in them all.

Other Silhouettes were using the passages. Each one that wandered by, often humming a non-melody to themselves, was unknowingly crossing through a tunnel where each wall was made of soldiers holding their breath.

Private Kidd was one of the last ten to ascend, and had spent too much of her worry on those going before. If anyone was going to make a sound it was one of them, as they’d never had their ear to as many Founders’ doors as she had, never managed to sleep under an unapproved bed with the breath of something long dead.

She was so stealthy she’d even slipped free of her family tree accidentally, and now had all the pedigree of a shadow with the lights out. All the same, she didn’t expect the bucket to be there. Emperor descended. Instinctively her legs contracted when they should’ve started swinging. Kidd was overly sensitive to anatimal mannerisms, and the sudden looseness in Emperor’s cartilage felt like it was about to fall out of the sky.

It was more important, there were still more it had to move, so she released it. Only the bucket could catch her; the others were struck by bolts of terror as she fell the short distance. And latched. And jostled. And tilted. And squeaked.

The rattled bucket’s tilt nearly dumped her onto the sluice. Only all ten fingers rapidly whitening on its lip saved her, but her thighs and biceps immediately burned with the effort of staying suspended. All the odor left in the item rose to greet her, then sank, but somewhere new, having found her lungs very cozy.

All the while the rattle and tilt drew the attention of the flanking Silhouettes. Both their heads extended like snakes bridging the gap between trees, languidly circled the bucket, inadvertently creating a barrier the soldiers could not cross. Kidd was on her own, but could still take all of them down with her. One splash and the alarm would be raised.

“Did you see that?” one Silhouette asked the other, voice cushion soft.

“No I heard it, then I saw it,” their companion answered. No Founder had ever actually signed an agreement to make their languages mutually intelligible, but they had done so with the Bickyplots, who already had the Silhouettes in their nefarious employ at the time, which had extended the effect to them. “You think there’s still a little stuck to the bottom?”

“I do think that friend. Thank you for guessing right. But now I think we should get what’s in there out of there. It’s not our job-“

“-No we only need to watch.”

“-But it’s someone’s. We don’t want Lord Dudgewhistle treating them like a whip over a little stuck to the bottom, not when we can unstick it.”

“Too true, too true. Shall I take the side closer to me, and you the one closer to you?”

“I may not be a wise worm, but I think that’s what a wise worm would do.”

Together they dismounted their chairs like coils of rope knocked loose, but rather than crumple their cloaks stood stiff as tents. While their heads retracted on their serpentine necks all the way to a hunchback’s posture, new coils emerged, looped into vague sets of flexible fingers, and wrapped around the bucket’s metal handles.

The Silhouettes tilted the bucket further, started smacking the bottom, both of which added strain to Kidd’s fingers. She felt her left boot slipping. The exertion was about to burst through her clenched teeth as a growl, but she fought it back. Fought every sensation back. There was no leverage or angle open to her; she was to hang on or slide disruptively all the way into the nastiest dunk any world ever did know.

When fully turned the bucket would drop her, no matter her strength, as only a spider could’ve clung to so inhospitable and moist an edge. So survival hinged on it not turning fully. The instinct-idea, a flashing spring-snap of intelligent desperation, moved on from the whole creature to the quarter-creature, which did its best to move with the same haste.

Wagner launched from her neck and wrapped itself about one of the handles and the wheel it turned, tightening to prevent it from going any further. The poor anatimal audibly strained like a leather cord.

“It goes further than that,” one of the Silhouettes said, trying to force it.

“This is becoming a lot of trouble for something that isn’t our job,” the other commented as they put their best effort in to shake the mechanism free. Kidd’s breath popped inside her mouth; her fingernails felt loose and screamed about it. Damn these long-winded know-nothings!

“If you stop and think about it,” the first Silhouette said, removing their coils. The other didn’t stop though, probed around Wagner for the problem, forcing it to shimmy and bend out of the way even as it held. “-it would still be kindness on our part to remove this broken item into the open, so that its proper attendant may find it and address the issue more directly.”

“I tell you, I was thinking the same thing. Let’s move it where we can’t see it, be done with the matter, and feel good about it.”

“All while not forgetting to keep our eyes open, and aimed out there, just in case any of those human things get funny ideas.”

“Ahh, yes, I’d almost forgotten.”

As discussion devolved into idle humming, the sound of two different waltzes stepping on each other’s feet as they both tried to lead, the Silhouettes wheeled the bucket off the balcony and into the hall, with the pilgrims giving them a wide berth all the while, Kidd feeling every judging eye even as her nail beds continued to howl.

All she could hear at that point was internal tears and snaps, so Kidd could not predict what would happen when she finally let go, which both hands did against her will. Other less taxed hands caught and lowered her, made sure her feet were draped across the carpet like a pair of wet leaves.

Once her senses returned to her, a process quickened by the return of a trembling Wagner to its place about her neck, Blueberry first saw the two Silhouettes sitting back at their post, completely ignorant of Emperor and its next rider as they passed between. She couldn’t bring herself to look at anyone directly, but that served only to convince them she was now taxed out of usefulness, thus their hands lingered on her longer than they needed to, infantilized her all the way to a wall she could lean against to catch her breath.

This was my only chance to show everyone, all at once, why I should’ve been on the committee. That’s blown up. The only way I could possibly recover my whole reputation is to single-handedly capture a Bickyplot. So that is what I will do. She glanced at Unmarked Rodney, who was one of their drummers.

Slung heavily on his hip was the Franklin drum, its accompanying stick-fife-lever tucked away in his coat for now to prevent it banging the skin during the brief flight. Beneath the skin it became much more complex: two rows of brass and copper rods concealing its inner mechanism, which was to be deployed from the side once properly charged.

And Rodney’s was more complex still, for hidden underneath the kite, accessible only after its launch, was the device he’d been instructed to build by incremental thievery for some time now. So secret it was that it had not even been given a name in writing, and was only whispered as ‘the capsule’, ‘the cage’, or ‘the lock box’. all of which could be explained away as references to other disparate items.

Its sole purpose was to capture and contain the heart of a Bickyplot, without destroying it or allowing it to destroy itself in attempts to escape. A Bickyplot signature would massively improve the likelihood of the Carve-Out’s success, but not one towering demon could be wholly taken without the Founders knowing. Only one of their hearts could be concealed, and from a heart could come a signature, given enough time and mastery of the situation.

Orders from President Mustard are to acquire the cage from Rodney only upon opportunity to use it discreetly, out of sight of Witherspoon. I shall create that opportunity. By hatchet.

To her chagrin, everyone else made it into Bickering Hall without incident, allowing them to progress on schedule. All that remained was to find the dining hall, where the celebration presumably occurred, and wait for Witherspoon’s signal to begin the attack. They left the cart right where the Silhouettes had, even adjusting the bucket to its last angle before Kidd detached, though it was unlikely a Silhouette would be capable of noticing such a discrepancy.

In fact, not long after the humans had left, another Silhouette, a maid this time, wandered through and blundered right into the cart, despite it being directly in their path. Their whole body tumbled into the bucket and hit the bottom.

“Excuse me?” one of those on guard asked, having turned at the sound and seen the back half of the incident.

“Yes?”

“Would you mind telling us if there’s anything stuck to the bottom of that bucket?”

“No I would not mind at all, thank you for asking. It’s clean as a whistle down here.”

“Huh. Funny thing that.” Their eyes returned to the lumpy landscaping. Still no humans. Good. They were doing a good job, worthy of extra dessert after lights out. Silhouettes were simple and honest creatures, at least by the heinous standards of their twin colonizers. If one asked for extra dessert they felt they deserved it, and would receive it.

Down in the banquet hall, the meal was about to commence. Founder Witherspoon had suffered through a tour of the foyer and all other ground floor rooms that had already been witnessed through window and spyglass, since there were obviously no secrets to be found there. Everywhere under the lacquered green molding, and the black mold that had been painted on it to sharpen its many lines, he was surrounded by three more of his enemies.

So tall they stood that he felt like a child once more, lost at an adult party, looking for a skirt to tug on so he could ask where to stand out of the way. The Bickyplots had dressed up in spiny collars like toothy sand dollars and cobweb frills and warty lichen lace, their gowns and overcoats thick as theater curtains.

Lady Impestle Hissmidge, her wilting mop of a head casting its shadow over his constantly, was the one to busy his ear with jabbering during the tour; she was the decorator after all. Her terrible voice, a thousand horse flies trapped in tiny cages, was automatically too loud.

“And over there you’ll see the smoking room, mhmm. We don’t smoke as you smoke but it’s connected to the kitchen so there’s always smoke going in there, mhmm. Look, on the ceiling, a whole quilt of it! Supper’s almost ready Mr. Witherspoon, mhmm. Oh here’s a treat; you’ll see I’ve arranged…”

The man swallowed his revulsion, hopefully the worst tasting thing he would have to swallow that evening, as he did not need her explanation for the arrangement. The items sat in a large vase almost as tall as him, and what looked like a bouquet of dried reeds through a haze of kitchen smoke was actually dead Silhouettes.

The dried appearance wasn’t misleading, as the poor creatures expired much like the worms of Earth when left on rock in summer sun. Stiffened into staffs, giant eyes hollowed into gutted gourds, small mouths contorted into a clam’s surfacing agony, the arrangement was probably the noblest grave the Bickyplots would ever provide. They must have liked these walking worms the most.

It was a relief to be taken to the banquet hall, suffering only a guiding hand on his shoulder. He knew it had the strength to pick him up and break his collarbone with one squeeze, but if they were going to kill him they could’ve dropped the pretense as soon as the front door creaked and crinkled closed.

The short walk to the long table, which snaked all the way into a massive fireplace for an unknown purpose, was punctuated by the gritty crackle of gravel under his shoes. While the floor was somewhat cleaner on their scale, Witherspoon suffered their magnified dust, as if they left the doors thrown open most nights and allowed all manner of animal to traipse through.

As their guest he was seated at the head of the table, the one not currently ablaze, and was barely able to straighten his posture enough for his chest to be visible over it. Already it had been sawed off and dropped a few inches, but not enough to be comfortable.

All sorts of utensil, cast from something transparent, green, and flecked with popcorn husk imperfections, were laid out in circles around ceramic plates riddled with glazed-over cracks. Founder Witherspoon deemed eye contact respectful, and so maintained it as much as he could, no matter where he found the eyes, but if he had instead averted his gaze and closely examined the cracks in the dishes he would’ve seen tiny vermin pulsing through them like tunnels, kept out of the food only by the glaze.

Given enough time he could guess where each Bickyplot would be seated going only by the unique shape of each glass and flagon present, all tailored to the individual closet rubbish chimeras that were their lolling heads. Such a diversion was not necessary, for all those that had not yet greeted him entered in a procession from some of the hall’s many side doors and came to take their seats.

Two leapt down from the second floor overlooking the hall, rather than take the nearby stairs, and their impacts shook them more than anything else. Always it looked as if their heads were false, like costume pieces about to break loose, but Witherspoon had seen weapons taken to them and blood drawn. They might have been false, blasphemies discarded in another world, but they were false all the way through.

“Make way for the string-snapper himself,” Lord Incontible Bludgehaven declared out the side of his metal cupboard-door mouth as he walked behind the subject of the celebration: Licketysplit Godswallop. How he found his way without any eyes apparent on his misshapen organ of a cranium was unknown, but he was getting to his chair just fine until Bludgehaven capped off his announcement with a nasty kick to Godswallop’s backside.

The Bickyplot tumbled forward, head bouncing on his seat. His neighbors pulled him up into it, hardly more gentle that Bludgehaven. Witherspoon said nothing, observed almost as much from Godswallop, whose only recognition of the abuse was a muffled sound from somewhere deep in his flesh. It would have to be twice as loud before the Founder could confirm it was a confused sob.

“Congratulations on snapping what I assume was the appropriate number of strings,” Witherspoon said, raising a glass in the crimson head’s direction. It wasn’t filled yet, but he suspected he wouldn’t want to do a toast properly when it was.

“Yes we’re all very proud of what we’ve done to him,” Lord Hamishand Glazemouth said. “He’ll never recover.” The monster turned in his seat and looked at the door nearest the kitchen, performing an unrecognizable scowl when he saw the food wasn’t in the process of arriving. He’d supervised the cooking up until the last possible moment, but when unattended Silhouettes could easily stretch a minute’s task into ten.

To both wash and season his hands, Glazemouth rubbed them all over the hammy exterior of his scalp, then rubbed them together until they glistened with meaty grease. Witherspoon was so disgusted he almost didn’t hear what Lord Oolbook Dudgewhistle was saying, having used his head-arms to pull open a mouth between his pages.

“We know his progress is invisible to you,” he said breathily, expelling some tan dust, “and would not expect some charade of pride or joy. You’re here so that we might find some common ground in a civilized meal-“

“-and games!” Xylofont Phanny-upon-Twone added, clapping metal talons together like two whisks.

“To see if we can’t put an end to this silly conflict of ours,” Chattelpool concluded. “We’re all conquerors after all. We know you’re not the same as the worm-people.” At their mention, but purely by coincidence, they appeared, pushing open the kitchen door and wheeling out cart after cart after cart of steaming, bubbling, collapsing, twitching, reproducing, fruiting, and flaming delicacies of Bickering Hall.

A lumpy white smock waddled over to Witherspoon and presented him with a single platter, providing him the single largest relief of his life. The Bickyplots had attempted to give food proper for a human, and did not expect him to choke down any of their rot, likely because that would violate the drafted promise in their invitation that he would not be harmed.

They understood just enough of the principles of the human diet to make it tolerable: a plate of undressed wild greens held down by two lung-fillets of the native inchscooter. Devoid of sauce, dressed only with flaky salt, it was at least thoroughly cooked and would taste like plain overdone chicken. The head was still attached to the spine and lung-fillets, but he assumed its gaping death expression was purely decorative.

All of the difficulty in consuming it would come from doing so while the Bickyplots gorged on their putrescent refuse, the mingled smells of which clawed at Witherspoon’s nostrils and almost hoisted him out of his seat.

“Politics later,” Pumpwine said gruffly, the tines of his head scraping out a larger mouth so he could take bigger bites, “first we feast!” There was no blessing, another relief to the clergyman, who would die before seeking the favor of whatever entity shaped, or more likely violently expelled, the Bickyplots. He tried to close his eyes, clasp his hands, and silently pray for himself, but the feasting had already begun, and distracting flecks of black, brown, and gray food hit his cheeks like the spittle of a rabid dog.

An earthen jug was passed around, the end result of the refining done by the sluice. Once tipped it poured a stream of uniformly lumpy regurgitated gravy the mingled color of cinnamon mustard. Apparently it went with every dish, was drizzled generously on salads of flexible transparent fish bones, inside-out skin dumplings, vermicelli veins in two colors, and gelatinous towers of terrine full of plucked eyeballs and boiled cutlets of roof of mouth.

The process of ingestion was equally terrible. Most of the utensils were just for emergencies, morsels too stubborn to dig out of shells and intestinal casings with finger alone, so they ate with their hands and with the force of their faces against the table, like herons trying to get at minnows encased in a block of ice.

Whether or not he wanted, Witherspoon was forced to learn through which orifice, or orifices, all thirteen Bickyplots took their food and drink. Lady Hissmidge sopped hers up with her hanging hair. Bludgehaven released the scrabbling half-dog from his door of a face and let it scoop with fangs and spray with jowls. The tentacles of Blacknib Bileby just dropped entire plates into his glass cauldron of a head, pieces seen drifting in the ink between his eyes.

Neatest was the architect Wighthall, but only through necessity, as he needed long skewers to feed small pieces into the double doors that were his mouth. During one of Witherspoon’s regrettable glances he looked straight down Cadavawing’s gullet-foyer, saw a uvula all but identical to the chandelier he’d passed on the way in.

Most of what they ate was so altered by time, native spores, and humid condition that it was not recognizable to the Founder, even when it was first unveiled with the prettiest possible plating. And the unveiling was constant. No sooner had a dish been flattened by a massive face smeared across it than a new one appeared and was placed over top. Silhouette chefs and servers moved in and out of the door unceasingly, empty carts shoved away, left to wheel themselves into a corner with their loitering brethren. If the Bickyplots had manners at all they occurred at some time other than the evening meal.

Only one dish, in a line of fifty or so, caught Witherspoon’s eye and kept it before it could escape. It was treated with the greatest pomp, one serving for each Bickyplot coming out all at once, the rest of the traffic slowing to make way.

“You may not be eating it, but it’s a treat to even see it,” Glazemouth said of his efforts. “This is opera worm souffle.” The candles atop his head head sputtered and belched with anticipation. “The resources required are extreme: multiple whole segments just to make a single serving. They must be stacked atop one another, stored in our dankest cellar, injected with seeding rot via hollow needle, left to age, marinated in caustic solutions without the skin peeling away from overexposure, and then delicately baked without collapsing for two full days.”

He rose as he spoke, giddily making his way over to the first serving cart taken up entirely by a stack of three segments. Witherspoon made a note, now that he’d discovered exactly where all the opera worm had gone after instigating the assault that was soon to begin.

Glazemouth insisted on carving the achievements himself, which was done with a rust serrated knife large enough for human limb amputations. The Bickyplot appeared to consider the place of the cut, and the force, rather carefully, yet as soon as one tooth of it touched the spongy purple exterior the entire tower deflated, leaking a violet solution all over the floor as it went.

That was expected, and with his free hand the head chef reached into the carcass souffle, dug around, and extracted one ring of flesh from around the brittle central cord. The ring was nearly transparent, light as a soap bubble, and the color of an infected cloud. A single breath could’ve sent it drifting to the high ceiling, so he moved very slowly, taking it to Licketysplit’s plate and setting it down.

“The snapper gets the first one,” Questinking explained to the Founder, having sat himself as near as possible. Normally the black Bickyplot betrayed no emotion, but Witherspoon thought he detected a hint of jealousy in the monster’s twinned tone. More souffles were brought forth, and Glazemouth went to work harvesting the single edible portion from each of them.

Struck by the incredible amount of waste, the deflated souffles were all but thrown aside on their carts, still trailing violet, Witherspoon could barely contain his criticism, until he recalled that the Bickyplots had taken much while leaving the worm alive, and it was Edward Rutledge who had slain it.

Godswallop’s top-heavy head swung down to the plate, where his tubes siphoned up the serving instantly. As each Bickyplot took their portion they muttered or squealed in delight, banged on the table, stomped their feet. It almost made the man curious enough to try a bite. Almost.

He felt something against his foot, and saw a Silhouette slithering out of their smock and under the table. Others joined, using their unfurling bodies to corral piles of discarded food out. Cleaning had begun, which would hopefully clear out all the smells, but he wasn’t particularly fond of the natives writhing around against his legs either.

When the custodial serpents had cleared, quiet settled in, but it was the Bickering Hall version, so it was still full of their bodily creaking and bloated moaning. Still, there would be no better opportunity for Witherspoon to begin. The company should have been fully in position, hiding, just waiting for the signal to unleash the storm.

Their ears would be pressed against most of the doors surrounding him, and if it sounded like he was being attacked in any fashion they would spring forth, but they’d all discussed the best version of the plan, which involved distracting the Bickyplots as much as possible, putting them in awkward and uncoordinated positions before activating the troops with a shouted phrase: proclaim liberty. Their foes’ opening comments had already laid the groundwork for him.

“You mentioned something about party games,” Witherspoon reminded in the space between a belch and the cracking of a mystery joint.

“Mhmm,” Hissmidge hummed. “I’ve lined up a few rounds of Kick the Decanter and Fingerpot.” No matter what, Witherspoon had to keep Fingerpot from starting up. Over the years their spying had gleaned the rules of that one: like a card game with gambling, except digits were waged instead of money, where failure to have enough remaining to hold up your cards meant you had lost. The Bickyplots might not have understood that not only did human fingers not regenerate as quickly, they did not regenerate at all.

“Pardon me if this is an imposition,” the Founder said, and though he spoke softly he had all their attention, “but in the spirit of the evening I brought with me one of our games for you to try… if you’d like.” He reached into a pocket and extracted a card bearing a name and rules. Pursuitia knew it only through Pilgrim’s Anchor, but back on Earth it was a staple of every sort of party small to large and young to old, and would eventually be called Musical Chairs. The pilgrims knew it as

Trip to Jerusalem

Rule the 1st: Set out a number of chairs equal to the number of participants, subtracting one, in a circular arrangement, their seats facing out.

Rule the 2nd: Play music and instruct the participants to walk in an orderly circle around the chairs.

Rule the 3rd: The musician will cease playing at a random interval, where participants may then seek a seat as quickly as possible. The one left without is eliminated. Remove a chair and repeat until a winner is crowned.

“And that is how it’s played,” Witherspoon concluded. As his eyes came away from the card he was taken aback by the angle most of the Bickyplots had achieved in leaning over the table to listen. One of Wighthall’s wings was losing shingles to an unused skewer.

“On the way to the chairs,” Lady Flaywood posed, “what methods may be used to stall competitors?” One of her botanical hound mouths licked its lobed lips.

“Any methods you’d like,” Witherspoon said to both appease their blood lust and increase the chances they might incapacitate each other when the assault began.

“That settles it then!” Cult-on-Sea bellowed, lurching to his feet along with all the others. They grabbed their chairs and dragged them across the floor in a cacophony of squealing.

“How did we not think of this one!?” Eggnonce wondered aloud once they’d reached the empty center of the hall. They wanted even more room for the game, so he squawked at all of the empty food carts piled nearby, kicked at one of them. The items started moving on their own on wobbly wheels, back to the kitchen, and only Witherspoon’s low stature allowed him to see the metallic-yet-living mechanism under each of them, like gargoyle feet on spinning pedals, that made it happen.

“Who makes the music?” Xylofont asked his fellows, only to receive a shove from Bludgehaven that sent his whole wire-sapling head swaying.

“You, you stupid louse!”

“But I want to play!”

“And you will, play the music that is! Worms! Sharpsychord! Now!” Dudgewhistle shouted. Moments later two servants burst in, wheeling something like an organ between them, if an organ was shallower, its keys were like pins in a cushion, and there were two unidentified animals snaking around the pipes rising at its corners.

A grumbling Xylofont, which he could do through multiple mouths at once, stomped off to the side and put himself behind the instrument, grabbing one of the fleeing food carts and using it as a chair. Then he went about slapping the keys as if they had insulted his honor, producing a melody the Founder only recognized as an undercurrent to its groaning honks.

The two creatures took turns placing their mouths over the pipes, letting the air inflate sections of their bodies until it was forced out as ventral flatulence with a unique sound of its own. Witherspoon stood as far away from it as he could, close to the doors, where he almost escaped notice.

“Are you not joining us?” Spywulph asked. “It’s your game.”

“As I am the only impartial party I think it best for me to officiate.”

“Right! If the human says you’re out, you’re out,” Flaywood said, tone slavering with competitiveness. “Everybody walk!” The Bickyplots all, save their court musician, lifted one leg like a drawbridge, brought them down with needless force. Step by step they completed an entire circle, then two, hitting two and a half before they screamed reminders at Xylofont that he was supposed to stop playing randomly, and not just at the end of what passed as a song in the Bickyplot realm of queasy artistry.

The Sharpsychord quieted, the attached animals catching their breath out their backsides. Like the contents of a stuffed closet, all the Bickyplots collapsed toward the center of their circle, bumbling for open seats. Witherspoon watched them slam into each other with a force that could kill any man trapped between.

They grabbed at loose clothes, bit wherever teeth and target flesh met, and brought their fists down on each other’s heads, but the chairs still filled quickly. The last one came down to Blacknib and Voluptogast, which wasn’t settled with a scuffle. Instead the Lady Devalming snatched the ink warlock by his collar and pulled him close, enclosing his whole head in a grotesque kiss with the massive lips framing her face.

With practiced passion she sucked on his black tentacles, almost swallowing them, and when he escape enough to breathe he was too overcome by the gesture to stop her from sitting down primly and properly while he, dazed, fell backward and spilled inky cranial fluid all over the gravel-sanded tile.

“Blacknib has been eliminated!” Witherspoon declared. His enemies laughed uproariously, bounced without leaving their chairs. One round was all it took to whip them into a frenzy, so they launched into the next all on their own, throwing the removed chair all the way up to the second floor to get it permanently out of the way.

It landed out of sight, which for all the Founder knew meant it had crushed one of his soldiers, possibly even one of his children. Was it yet time to spring the snare? It seemed so. Xylofont was lost in music, and Bileby was also separate, throwing a tantrum near the fireplace and picking at table scraps. The rest were oblivious and loud, caught up in the game.

Those eliminated would come back to their senses faster, so now that only one had split off Witherspoon resolved to shout the signal the next time the sharpsychord’s wailing ceased. The strategy was contingent on the young all being in their places, weapons at the ready, Franklin kites charged, but that was only partly accurate.

The distance to cross from the vomit sluice to the first floor banquet hall was not extraordinary, but none of them had been able to account for the puzzling layout of Bickering Hall. Staircases ended without reaching floors, earthen root cellars below which Silhouettes were simply expected to fall into. Certain rooms had been closed off permanently once they’d become too cluttered with disorganized skeletons.

Worse, a few living things that were not Silhouettes patrolled the halls, and by the suspicious waving of their snouts, might have been fully capable of detecting the invaders. All of this slowed their progress, made them unsure they were even close enough to separate into several parties when they did.

It felt like they were converging on the banquet hall, the ruckus was getting nearer, so teams split away in order to give their first charge more angles of attack. Both Muster and Blueberry found themselves unlucky when their group, crouched and sore from it already, found their way into the kitchen.

Silhouettes were everywhere, sidling past each other in narrow aisles between brick ovens lining the walls and pipe-fed stoves in the center. The natives could get caught on anything except themselves, so none of them wound up knotted as they moved through their dense brethren. Kitchen implements were not spared however, and the coils of their bodies, peeking out through smock seams, regularly and involuntarily exchanged ladles, spatulas, rolling pins, and knives brandished without thought.

And in order to progress the intruders would have to wade through it. There was no time to pick another route; the signal phrase was expected imminently. Eager to wipe away her earlier blunder with the vomit pot, Kidd took the lead so that the others might follow any path she was able to cut through them.

It was her hope that with such constant jostling, and with no overhead view, the Silhouettes would not sense the bubbles of empty space formed in their midst. It was prudent too that the humans keep away from the columns of steam rising from various pots, to prevent outlining of their shape, but otherwise their invisibility theoretically allowed them passage.

With held breath she moved straight into them, looking for the way of least resistance. Their smocks touched her uniform, pushed past. They were jabbering. None of it about the human among them.

“What are they playing out there?” Muster dove in.

“I’ve not a clue. We filled their stomachs and now they’re walking it off. Sillies are wasting it all.” Honey Whipple followed, Emperor having been instructed to wait for her voice on an outer awning.

“We could have us a sit and keep that food going all winter.”

“Yes we could. Don’t tell that to the masters though; I think that would make them feel bad. They’re out there right now arguing over chairs. They can’t even figure out how to sit down.”

“Shame.” Rush Paca held his breath when squeezing into the crowd.

“Poor blighters.”

Blueberry reached for the door. She’d already caught a glimpse of what lay beyond: the banquet hall. Her ears were sharpened for the signal, but then they were bombarded with the sound of a cart bashing the door. In it came, a train of like behind it, propelled mysteriously but loudly by something squeaking underneath. They all would’ve stopped and piled up if she didn’t react quickly, so Kidd climbed atop the first one, let it carry her a ways back into the kitchen, into the disturbed lanes of Silhouette cooks and servers.

Without looking back she recognized that those following would face the same problem. If she didn’t vacate the cart there would be nothing for them to climb onto, and they’d be forced back, perhaps even run over. All she could do was leap to the next cart in sequence, hope that the clang of her landing was equal to or lesser than the squeaky wheels of the entire train.

Except the platforms weren’t so polite as to make the process neat and tidy. Some still held demolished dishes, practically labeled ‘slippery’, even jiggling along with the slight rock of their conveyance. When one of those came by Kidd was forced to jump instead, just over the Silhouettes’ heads, to the stoves where she tiptoed between stock pots and spouts of flame.

The others followed her lead. Up. Jump. Check progress. Ignore backsliding. Jump again. In the chaos they handled themselves admirably, but not perfectly. A mistake went unnoticed for many seconds, until one of the Silhouettes, wise to nothing, went to stir a simmering stew of mass-grave mud and black vegetables.

Rather than look around for a spoon they took a moment to experience themselves, to feel if any of their coils was holding something already. One of them was. Up it came through the center, as under the smock was nothing but a rope of a body arranged into two feet and two hands.

The loop holding the item became a new hand as the old one disappeared back into a more natural shape. Down the object went, into the soup, and it did an excellent job of stirring. The Silhouette had no idea who they had snagged it from, and it was so good for stirring that they felt the need to give it back in case it was still needed.

“What’s this?” they asked themselves when they lifted it out and saw it take shape through the foul muck running down it. From a big spoon to something flatter. Sharper. Meaner. Crafted. Silhouettes never invented the ax, wood could be chewed well enough, but they’d picked them up and made firewood on the orders of their masters for many years now.

Only this one was too small. One thought struck another. The Silhouette stared at it. Did the soup make the ax? No. Soup only ever produced more or less soup. Who was it that made small axes? They were supposed to remember something about that… Silhouette eyes couldn’t widen from their natural state, so their mouth flew open instead.

“Ohoooh! Ohh! Oooh! Humans! Humans are here!” The other cooks picked up the alarm without understanding it until they were all howling at the ceiling, the same word over and over again: humans. There was no point to the shenanigans with the carts now, so Kidd sprinted across them, kicked their plates out of the way, all of it practice for slamming her foot against a Bickyplot door and landing in their banquet hall.

Xylofont Phanny-Upon-Twone froze in shock, and with him the sharpsychord. Music halted. Other doors on two floors flew open, issued soldiers that filled out the available space, trained their muskets on the main mass of Bickyplots in an orderly line. The two drummers barreled to the forefront, inserted their sticks into the rim of their instrument and cranked them all the way around several times.

Blue sparks cascaded internally, bringing the device to life, spinning the blades that would keep the kites aloft. A skittering electric hum raced inside the drums, awaited the order that would come in the form of reporting muskets.

Only Xylofont and Blacknib took notice at first, as the music had ceased. The rest of the Bickyplots focused on the chairs, growled at each other, pulled at extremities and knocked their fellows over. There was no better target.

“Open fire!” Founder John Witherspoon roared, foregoing the signal. The divinest fire he would ever know exploded inside the barrels of their company, propelled a barrage of pellets trailing pure white smoke.

Before it could clear the drummers stepped forward, depressed levers, and launched from the sides of their drums large brass discus. Both of them stalled near enough the vaunted ceiling to touch, but continued to spin at high speed, extending propelling blades that would keep them airborne until their charge of bottled lightning, reignited by the mechanical turbine friction of the drummers’ practiced muscle, ran dry.

Their kindled fluid generated an invisible field, that field perfectly willing to explode into perception should any viable piece of metal come within reach, as thirty some did right after they’d fired their first shots.

All the soldiers’ muskets were raised as Franklin taught them, like lightning rods, the bayonets hungry fledglings calling down a hot evening meal from the heavens. Righteous bolts of blue-white emerged from the kites, connecting the lofted mechanisms to each and every weapon for the briefest moment, still plenty of time to imbue them with their second shot.

The barrel and bayonet of each Franklin musket could hold the charge for some time, unleashing it only when a secondary trigger was squeezed. Witherspoon ordered them to fire again, to fire at will, and this time the smoke came not from the barrels, but the flesh of all the Bickyplots in the midst of the struggle for seats.

Licked by lightning, two of their outfits already ignited, the fiends could not be given time to react. The kites’ high perch meant there was very little chance of a friendly target coming between a weapon and its reload, so each young warrior could draw from the sky without a care, and redistribute the resulting energies, along with healthy doses of hatred and grit, to the misshapen monstrosity of their choice.

Their assault was efficient, not a single ball or bolt missed in the first several volleys, due in part to the Bickyplots making themselves into a stationary mound, with the only waste of firepower being the loss of a bolt to one skewer accidentally catapulted into the air by a startled flailing tentacle off Blacknib Bileby’s head.

Despite their skill, their strength, their dogged accuracy, the superficial injuries produced failed to draw the attention of any Bickyplot that was still involved in the scramble for a chair. A flaming Lady Hissmidge claimed hers, then took note of her condition. Lord Spywulph, first among the seated, third to be aware of the assault, kicked himself away from the rest as they drew fire, sliding in his chair, before spinning and taking up said seat, crouching to brandish its back as a shield.

One by one the Bickyplots made sure they’d won their way to the next station in Jerusalem, knowing of the place only that somewhere within its territory was their victory. Then they felt the holes and burns across their flesh, looked around to see droves of humans, along and above, assailing with impunity.

“Is this part of the game?” the Lady Devalming asked, giant lips puckering curiously about her wet filthy mask.

“Of course not!” Flaywood barked with multiple mouths, first to draw a weapon in the form of a toothed file-knife off the table. “They’re betraying our hospitality!”

“We know you demons had your own treachery up your sleeves!” John Witherspoon proclaimed, taking a Franklin pistol and rapier handed to him so that he might assist. He fired his sole ball shot, and it was caught in the palm flesh of Bludgehaven, who protested as he shook it loose.

“Yes, but you didn’t let us get to it! We’re the hosts; that’s very rude!”

“Unsporting,” Cult-on-Sea agreed as he dragged his seat out of the tussle. Already his gourd-head leaked glossy brown juice thick with seeds knotted in sauerkraut flesh. He was less distraught over the charade of civility than he was his lack of weapon, so he poked a new eye hole in his rind and looked around for something to wield.

As did all the other Bickyplots emerging from Jerusalem who thought chair legs insufficient. All of them approached their enemies now, save Glazemouth and Dudgewhistle, who still did battle with each other over which bottom would be crowned into the next round. Giant footsteps closed the distance between the two groups. Swung Bickyplot arms threatened to sweep five young men and women off their feet, perhaps slide one down the table and into the gnashing hearth.

Those on the second floor sought to prevent this, so they vaulted over the railing and threw themselves onto the Bickyplots like spiders descending from the ceiling on lines of silk. Once they had purchase they brought out their hatchets and viciously hacked at any protuberance of the head that looked vulnerable, ignoring whether it drew blood, slime, splinter, or spark.

Chaos joined the fray. Lightning struck wherever it was needed, and before long the rot wafting off their mostly-finished meal was overtaken by the twin acrid stenches of singed cloth and tissue. A haze of gray smoke hung and swirled about the flapping of the Bickyplots’ robes and dresses. Each monster was already a collage of minor injuries added to their abstract faces, but the glee with which they fought, and the fury with which it mingled so carnally, was clear on every demonic eye and in every stretched grin even as its fangs and whetstone molars came loose and fell.

Letting them keep those offensive bodies intact was the greatest sin the young pilgrims could commit, so they doubled their efforts, treated each shambling tower as a pillar of marble desperately in need of their sculptors’ tools. The treasure within would be uncovered, be it by stabbing chisel or peeling gouge.

Blueberry chose her hatchets, an easy choice once her bayonet had caught in Godswallop’s thigh and been pulled out of her hands. She drew them from her belt, but before selecting a new quarry she raised them above her head, handles crossed in an X, a gesture which the nearest kite immediately took note of.

It sent her a bolt, which caught on the heads of her blades and traveled down into the weapons, empowering them. Hatchets did not shoot; they hacked. So the electric fluid went to work, flooding every carefully cast and machined pathway, making the heads of her hatchets spin on their oiled joints, through the empty slat in the handle immediately below the blade.

Now she wielded whining saws, though to her it was a song. Wagner squeezed along with the tempo on her arm, letting her feel tiny rushes of racing blood as they escaped the pressure. Whoever my father is, he must have wanted his revolution so badly it hurt. Oh look. There‘s Bludgehaven.

The block-headed Bickyplot was turned away, retreating toward a case up against one of the walls, its doors panels of glass. Behind them, through the flapping sleeves and coats of her friends’ uniforms, she spied an advantage none of them wanted the Bickyplots to acquire: proper weapons of their own.

The case contained three blunderbusses, their rusty iron mouths jagged like flowers of shrapnel, each barrel big enough around to swallow a human’s arm. The case contained no shot of any kind, but that couldn’t have mattered less to the creatures that rode piles of refuse as steeds and drank their own sick.

A Bickyplot gun could be loaded with any old thing and it would make it into a fine projectile. The many sharp utensils left on the table were good shot. So were the chunks of wood from the smashed chairs. So were the shards of bone and antler shed in the battle already.

First Incontible had to open the case, and then the breech, but as his hand faltered near the knob he opened only his door of a mouth, the inner half-dog yowling in pain as Blueberry’s twin singing saws sliced into the flesh of his lower back, spraying her with sticky purple blood.

Technically, though her skin was not yet broken, her bones still sound, this splash was her first injury of the battle. Bickyplot blood was no trifling material to rouge one’s cheeks with, for it seeped into the skin, into the blood, and dealt a most toxic effect. Never intended by nature or whatever vile cobbler they called god as a venom, the blood’s hazardous nature was likely just the result of it coursing with the putrid elements they took in as food.

A light spray, as Kidd had just suffered, would only cause an unpleasant sensation of clammy cold, and only some minutes later, but the consequences compounded in higher and prolonged doses. A man who received several lashes of the liquid across the back would, after fifteen minutes without removing it, suffer a brief but total paralysis of the limbs coupled with insufferable itching like slugs polishing the floor of his bones and the ceiling of his skin.

Those drenched and left in it for ten minutes would die, after a full hour of conscious paralysis, when, presumably, for they could not talk in that advanced stage, one of the slug-sensations reached the heart, an itch that no living thing had ever managed to scratch.

Rather than turn to meet Kidd, Bludgehaven first forced a fist through the front of the case, shattering the glass. He successfully drew out a blunderbuss, but he faced a second blade in the hands of Bonfire Paine. The girl charged forward with her musket, its bayonet spinning as a boring cone, one of its two possible orientations, the other a flat discus. The impact of her electric horn nearly extracted the cap from one of the Bickyplot’s knees, and in the process caused him to fling the blunderbuss far across the room and out of the immediate equation.

“I’ll have you runts in cages before- Auughh! Orforf orf! Orf!” Bludgehaven’s threats were overcome by the yapping of his inner blind bulldog when three more attackers charged him with whining bayonets. He was split from his legs below the knee and toppled, his foes then scrabbling atop him to hold him down, switching to their hatchets so they could break him open and take their prize.

His wounds would close in minutes if left alone, all because a Bickyplot wasn’t really a Bickyplot. It was difficult for the humans to define, even their textbooks sounded unsure after countless revisions, but the creatures were broken up into two components, one far more vital than the other.

What they saw was merely the outer shell and its accompanying flesh and simulacra. Somewhere within was the heart, and the heart was the Bickyplot. Bearing a strong resemblance to a human heart, hardly larger, its most distinguishing features were its many writhing tubes and the curious toothy mouth squealing right in the middle of it, generously spaced triangular teeth still fully capable of lopping off one to all of the fingers on a hand.

With its tendril tubes it was believed to navigate the hollow of the outer shell with ease, hanging where it pleased like a spiderweb in a corner, be it a hand, the rear, the head, or anywhere else out of sight. No other organ occupied the shell; from whence their immense strength came was a mystery. Each of them was mostly empty space, which Kidd and the other carvers saw for themselves when they opened up Bludgehaven to search out his caverns and hidey-holes for his hideous heart.

Like starfish, a Bickyplot could lose a limb and have it back over time. Same with even the head, no brain inside. Though their heads contained the intellect, they did not have the spirit or the will to survive. That was in the heart alone, it was believed. When too injured the heart would abandon the shell, scramble away, defending itself the way any cornered vermin would, gnashing and thrashing until it could find a narrow opening in which to squeeze and effect an escape.

Most of this information was gleaned from a tragic encounter many years prior, before any of the second generation would even touch a weapon. Founders, Lenape, free blacks, as united as they would ever be in the afterglow of the settled politics that saw many of the women with child, had cornered Middlebitch Flaywood after interrupting one of her hunts and incapacitated her.

But the Bickyplot played dead, and when Founder Franklin attempted a heavily-attended dissection there was a belch of foul air from the unexpected hollow of Flaywood’s ugly shell. Riding it out was the heart, moving like an octopus buoyed by malice. None around had the presence of mind to stop its escape into the forest.

They kept the shell, and learned there was some process by which the heart could completely generate a new one, as within days the huntress was spotted once again among her peers, snacking in Bickering Hall’s lumpy back gardens as if nothing had transpired.

Blueberry now looked like her Lenape-memory torn open, dyed shocking purple by several more spurts of Bludgehaven’s fluids. There was too much fire in her blood to feel any cold, and she would not let it die until the heart was in her custody or crushed in her grip. The toxin could always be wiped off to stunt its poisonous influence. She could even swim in it, as long as she was out and wiped dry within a minute.

“Where is it!?” she snarled, casting aside one singing hatchet to probe inside his twitching body with a hand that ventured bravely.

“Not the legs!” Bonfire yelled back despite being only a belt away; she diligently watched the holes where he’d been cut from his feet in case the heart should come shooting out like a meaty musket ball.

The rattling silver leaves of Xylofont Phanny-upon-Twone popped up over the sharpsychord he’d been hiding behind. He hadn’t found his courage, there was just a fire spreading under his feet, so he clambered over his instrument and, failing in his search for any obvious path out of the fray, chose instead to barrel forward into the nest of humans messily disassembling the jailer.

“I was in the middle of a concert!” he screeched, about to lunge and grab Kidd, but he then took a lightning bolt directly to the trunk, and with its outer coating being metallic, suffered greatly for it. His collapse gave the girl, purple with obsession, the space to climb mostly into the cavity.

She took up all the room, and the heart was forced out. It emerged from a slice along the clavicle, nearly tangled itself in knots when it perceived a looming Kidd. Its own beating bounced back to it, like a bat hearing its surroundings, and the heart, despite lacking the intellect that would call itself Lord Incontible Bludgehaven, knew exactly what the crags of her hostile and unyielding expression meant: it was no longer the advancing power, and had to turn and become the retreating wretch.

Like a cockroach it fled, squeezing out of the diving grips of several of its shell’s sloppy butchers. Private Blueberry Kidd’s stomping boots sounded behind it as she gave chase. It was leaving the battlefield, and so would she, but with the others having already broken away to assist with Bickyplots not yet felled, she needed an edge. That edge was carried, concealed, by Unmarked Rodney.

He was nearby, having inched closer as he saw Bludgehaven topple. Anyone might have need of his secret cargo, but only to capture the smaller truer Bickyplot. There was still the matter of the Founder however, who was not supposed to see or hear any sign of the younger generation’s secret invention.

Before she requested it Kidd threw a glance over her shoulder, got lucky in spotting Witherspoon as he headed for the hallway he’d entered from so that he might escape the front doors and send in the waiting reinforcements. His back was turned, and he was surely plenty distracted. That has to be good enough.

“Rodney, the cage!” she snapped at him; he responded without delay. Into his drum plunged his right hand, nimbly unlocking the small belts that held the item in place. He tossed it to her just as she reached the door Bludgehaven’s heart had squeezed under. A catch became a shoulder shove, then she was gone from the battlefield.

Unmarked was quick to find Muster and inform him. With the cage in use they could all shift their focus, to simply killing any Bickyplots they could. All of their signatures would have been the best outcome, but one would be enough to undo significant effects upon Pursuitia, at least by the pilgrims’ estimates.

He scanned the state of things, rifle in hand. How did they fare? Several Bickyplots were toppled, but those still standing were rampaging around, kicking off those who might carve large enough holes to force out their hearts. And there was another problem.

Glazemouth sat down. Oolbook was eliminated. Now that was settled, and the last two players could finally grasp what was happening around them, effectively adding two reinforcements to the Bickyplot army. The company would be overwhelmed, unless… Yes! What fortuitous timing!

A wave of shouts heralded the arrival of the company’s reinforcements. The stern pop of musket fire, like an angry seal on a writing desk. White smoke. A loom of lightning. A charge of many silver spinning teeth.

But where should we stop? After one prisoner? One kill? Or do we go as long as we can, reduce them to nothing here and now? If we try there might be few of us left to celebrate. No lonely soul will have need of the Carve-Out. There’s no need to declare anything when there’s no opposition. The world never objects.

The speculation was ripped away by the bobbing reality of Flaywood’s head on rapid approach. She was no haphazard brawler, but a huntress, clever as flint, shrewd as shrew snout, so her choice of target had to be deliberate. Muster was known to her as the leader, so he had become her prey, and for him she needed a proper weapon.

Her forearm absorbed the bolt he fired at her, and while he cast his bayonet to the sky to recharge she rushed past him to take up the blunderbuss that had gone astray and landed on the banquet table. Once she had it in her malevolent grip there was no need to search for ammunition; all the leftovers from gorging would do nicely.

Lady Flaywood popped the breech and began jamming it with wet compressed handfuls of table scraps: utensils, bone, dish shards, an entire goblet full of yet more useful chunks and shreds, and even a metal leaf that had shaken loose from Xylofont’s head. What powder or spark created the force was unknown, but the effect was incredibly easy to understand once its constituent pieces were embedded in the flesh. The realization was suffered by poor Rush Paca, who was blown off his feet and thrown near the fireplace.

There was no one to attend to his injuries, not as the momentum swung against them, even with their reinforcements. As time wore on the Bickyplots’ rapid regeneration closed and overcame the edge of surprise. The first shots they’d suffered were gone, now nothing but loose pebbles rolling around in the hollow shoes of their feet.

Meanwhile the sprays and splashes of pomegranate blood that had resulted were being absorbed into pilgrim skin, stiffening their muscles, phantom slug trails plowing intensified burning sensations throughout their musculature. If this continued for ten minutes more soldiers would start falling, shock-mummified by exposure.

We need a clear victory. He’d seen Kidd disappear with the capsule. In case she fails we must secure at least one Bickyplot before we retreat. Who? A volunteer reared her head: Flaywood again. Her gun must have been loaded anew, which felt all too soon given that the last boom still rang in his ears, and she was aiming it square at his head.

Muster moved to shoot first, but a sense of doom struck quickest, for he knew there was no spot on Middlebitch where a single hit would sway her from blasting away. It took a new, more pressing target to do that.

“Over here! Haah!” The blunderbuss shifted, to Honey Whipple, caught up in her friends’ commitment, refusing to cower in the corners. She charged Flaywood with a singing blur of a bayonet, caught her in the gut. No stomach had ever been present, masticated food just pooling in the empty legs for the heart to later feed from like grain silos, so the flesh of Middlebitch’s middle was turned into dry shreds and cast off a dark hollow, crumpling her forward.

The huntress no longer had the balance to fire on Honey, instead using the gun as a cane until she could throw her torso back enough to see the room, so she attacked the girl with her many mutt mouths, biting her shoulder. She screamed, dropped her weapon. All of this was heard by her other, stronger weapon.

Glass broke again, this time on one of the many tall windows looking out into the front of the property. Emperor swooped in, flapping furiously, dove straight at the Bickyplot trying to swallow its master. Flaywood had enough excess eyes to see it coming, and so released her mouthful of Honey.

The Bickyplot’s head swung back, as did the gun. It fired. Like a swarm of sparrows breaking their necks against a hanging hide at top speed. Emperor was riddled with holes; the anatimal lost its momentum and drifted down. Honey caught it, arms passing through fresh fissures. I must move in. She’ll be too grief-stricken to fight any longer.

Corporal Hart surged forward to act on his plan; the Lady Flaywood’s weapon was empty and she was ripped open, off balance. He could take her heart, catch it in an upside down goblet perhaps, then he could reasonably sound the retreat and call the day won, especially if Kidd caught up with them covertly, hiding away a second heart that would eventually sign in the interest of the Carve-Out only.

It was as good a plan as any, except Flaywood wasn’t advancing to meet him. Instead she reeled backward as Voluptogast wrestled with her over use of the blunderbuss, as the other two in the case were still under heavy human guard.

The commanding officer was left standing there uselessly, filled up with determination, with no one to fight, until Cadavawing Wighthall made the mistake of bumping into him when backing away from the kitchen. It caused the young man to drop his rifle, but he drew his hatchets just as swiftly. No electricity was necessary to scale Wighthall Mountain, just a few good footholds. Muster hacked, and hacked higher, and put his feet where he hacked last, until he had summited the uncivilized beast and found the meaty, bony, leathery mansion built atop the peak.

Fully prepared to invade Bickering Hall for the second time that day, Muster chose his next point of attack carefully. Wighthall’s facial features were scrambled, seen behind windows, but several of them were translucent enough for him to spy the empty space behind. And the shadow. The shadow that moved between them. The shadow shaped like a shrieking heart.

“Don’t scratch my paint!” Cadavawing bellowed at him, bulging tongue flicking out of his doorway mouth, spittle on his front steps.

“I’ll scratch more than that!” Muster answered defiantly. One hatchet chopped, cleaved right between the right wing of the house-head and its meatier additions. He stared, confirmed that the heart’s shadow was blocked by the blade from going into the head’s extremities on that side. Wighthall went for the handle rather than his attacker, tried to yank it loose, but before he could the same thing had happened to the left wing, and his true self was caught in the main body of the Bickering Hall model.

“Nobody asked you to renovate!” the Bickyplot snapped, still managing to take more offense at an implied slight against his craft than the injuries they technically were. Rather than answer back with another retort, Muster instead grabbed the architect’s collar and yanked with all his weight in an attempt to bring him down to the human level.

In a specific spot no less. Wighthall’s head would make a decent improvised cage, seeing as Blueberry had already employed the one properly engineered for the task. Other Bickyplot heads were far too disorganized; there was no telling where a heart might open a trapdoor nostril or dive into a murky pool of snot. But Cadavawing’s head was more or less a box, with its middle section now isolated from its softer, more exploitable side tissues, and only one entrance or exit big enough for the heart to squeeze through: the door of a mouth.

All of it had to come off the architect’s shoulders, and with his rifle lost in the stomp and shuffle, and his axes setting the terms of the heart’s house arrest, Muster needed a new weapon. He chose the edge of the banquet table, pulled the Bickyplot over as close to it as he could. Wighthall struck it on the way down, the whole structure of his head bending back and wobbling, as if someone had roughly dropped a dollhouse onto the table.

His body slumped between floor and furnishing, allowing Hart to dismount. Like Flaywood before him he checked the table for useful implements. Another file-knife. The sawing was quick work. Once the house was separated the curtains in the eye-windows closed unevenly; the body didn’t so much as twitch.

Reaching around, Muster slammed the mouth door shut, knowing the heart wouldn’t have the presence of mind to turn its tiny knob and let itself out. It knew only flight and bite. There was still an avenue of escape, now that the basement was a hole in the neck, but he quickly covered it with the bottom of his coat.

Now the heart was trapped, and now they could go. Their escape started with a miscalculation, as he was too eager to get his people out of there and tried to pull Cadavawing’s head off the table and carry it himself, but it was too unwieldy. All throughout his mountaineering venture he’d been watched, from the corners of many concerned eyes, and they moved in to help as soon as they were able, catching Bickering Hall before it could hit the floor of Bickering Hall.

Working together they took it from him, kept the neck hole covered and the heart trapped. He didn’t have to issue the order for them to begin retreating, but he issued it anyway as soon as he had enough breath to shout it. Pilgrims broke away, rolled away, leapt away, doubled their squirming until Bickyplots were forced to drop them.

All electric fire was redirected to any Bickyplots that wouldn’t stand down in the face of the retreat. Twenty some bolts fried the entire front of Spywulph, brought him down on a knee that cracked into charcoal. His cyclopean eye hung loose in its web, cut from its moorings on one side. His brothers and sisters showed many similar injuries, but almost as soon as the front doors were slammed they would be healed. All except Wighthall. And, hopefully, Bludgehaven.

Muskets were kept trained on their foes as they retreated, but not all, as some arms had to drag the bodies of the fallen, be they unconscious or dead. Hart counted three, his chest skipping a beat for each one. Did he lose so many in a battle that couldn’t have lasted more than seven minutes? And it was more, four, if Kidd did not escape on her own.

We can’t stay, he reasoned as he felt the freshness of open air on his cheeks, big doors of Bickering Hall groaning as they swung. The Franklin kites had already gotten low, and would’ve dropped out of the air like dead flies if they’d taken from them their last five or so charges of electric fluid. As it stood the two in the banquet hall would have to be left behind for the Bickyplots to tinker with.

The loss of some equipment was always planned as an acceptable sacrifice. Just in case they had attached drafting ordering them to self-destruct when they fell into alien hands, but such orders likely wouldn’t take in enemy territory, superseded by the landowner’s authority, posted in a root cellar somewhere underneath them.

There was one more Franklin kite they were going to sacrifice, and it was the largest of the three. The company had hoped not to launch it at all, vowing only to do so if the Bickyplots attempted to pursue beyond the building itself. For a moment it seemed they were free and clear, the front doors stayed shut, yet a Bickyplot was a creature that always took the path of least and messiest resistance.

Several of the windows Emperor had left alone now found themselves just as destroyed, this time by their own makers leaping out of them, landing with grassy thuds and immediately sprinting to catch up to the fleeing company, which sought to place its wounded on the wagon that had brought Witherspoon.

They couldn’t be allowed to engage once more, so the third drummer, standing at the ready, primed and fired the largest Franklin kite from its hidden compartment underneath the wagon. It launched with an aggressive chugging buzz, somewhere between gurgling crocodile and hounding horsefly.

Upon spreading its blades far above the grass it did what it was specifically engineered to do: strike the tallest structures in range, be they metal or not. Here that was the Bickyplots, specifically Lady Flaywood, Pumpwine, Oolbook, and Impestle. These strikes were far more powerful than those fired from bayonets. The first made them stumble. The second set them on fire. None of them could persist after the third.

By that time the company had mounted up, wagons and tin horses for the injured, for the dead, deep breaths and overtaxed legs for the rest. We did it though. We have Wighthall’s heart. The Second Declaration will have a Bickyplot signature. Our fathers are closer to home, and now furthest from us. I am the signal fire that must span the gap.

Come back to us Blueberry. We don’t need you on the committee. We need you in these woods thick with intent. We need you making all the elders angry at the Stoking Dramas. I can’t make it an entire winter without Bonfire or you by my side.

Back in the banquet hall, Licketysplit was helped to his feet by Xylofont, then kicked back over. Glazemouth checked what tableware was irreparably ruined, tossed what was into the fire with the force to break it further.

“Shall we finish our trip to Jerusalem?” Lady Devalming asked, setting up what chairs were still intact.

“Of course,” Eggnonce said, clapping his hands, straightening out a few fingers in the process. Only after another round would they take note of the two bodies that had not recovered.

(continued in part four)