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Chapter Text

Your name is JOHN EGBERT. You have a passion for PENNY DREADFULS of the WORST VARIETY. You enjoy tinkering with far-fetched and futuristic inventions but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE, and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN. You also like to play GAMES sometimes.

 You blink and miss the last moment of direct sunlight on your face as the water sinks into the shadows cast by the first gate of the Cumaean Canal, taking your boat with it. The machinery groans and cranks and, for a moment, you're terribly afraid, and then you take a deep breath and remember that hundreds of ships pass this way each year and the gates never fail. You turn, look at your best friend standing beside you. She's grinning, eyes wide and delighted as she watches the workers turn the enormous handle that opens the lock.

 Gradually the water evens out and there's a shout from the wheel as you very slowly creep forward towards the second gate.

 “We're on our way,” Jade whispers, turning to look at her. Her cheeks are stained pink, lips bitten red raw, she's almost breathless with excitement. It's catching, your own smile starts to grow.

 “We're going to finally meet them,” you say, and an airy little laugh escapes before you can stop it, all fear forgotten. There's still blue sky above you but you're sailing down from Lake Avernus, already you can't claim to be on the surface any more. This is Neath territory now. Slowly, slowly, the iron behemoth that Jade's grandfather has charted inches forwards, until you pass through the gate and settle in to wait for the third to open. You watch as the blue sky slowly disappears, hidden above the ceiling of the cave you've entered.

 “Jade,” you say, very quietly, and she turns to look at you.

 “John?” she asks, voice falsely deep, mocking you, but she pauses when she sees that your smile has vanished again. “You're not about to tell me that you're claustrophobic, are you? Because that would be jolly unfortunate.”

 You're not, but your eyes took a moment to acclimatise to the darkness beneath the world. There is a fear in you that you have never spoken aloud. You've been writing to Dave and Rose for years, you both have, you can almost, almost hear their voices. You've seen pictures – crude drawings from Dave and eerie, almost anatomical sketches from Rose, one carefully posed photograph of the two of them with Rose's mother and Dave's older brother. You've shared everything with the two of them. You've never met them.

 “What if we don't get along?”

 Your voice is quiet, almost a whisper, but Jade hears. The railing around the prow of the boat is cold beneath your bare arms. You're wearing short sleeves because you've been walking through Naples in high summer, it had never occurred to you that it would be so cold when you left the sunlight behind you that would break out into goose pimples. The soft sound of water splashing echoes in the cave as the water beneath your boat sinks and you descend further towards the Neath, towards London.

 Jade bumps against your shoulder, laughing, warm and solid. “Of course we will, silly, they're basically family.”

 The lock-keeper of this gate is watching you. He's a strange-looking, pallid fellow, and your insides wriggle uncomfortably for the few seconds that your gazes are locked. He looks away as something heavy lands on your shoulder and you jump.

 “Hello, chaps,” Jade's grandfather, Jake English, says, slinging an arm around each of your shoulders and positioning himself between you, “spiffing, isn't it?”

 He's staring around at the workers milling around the edge of the lock, opening the gate, checking all kinds of gauges and levers that you don't even pretend to understand. He's a large man, easily a head taller than you, with an incredibly impressive moustache that almost obscures his expression of intense fascination. Jake has been around the world almost three times now, he's taken Jade with him on all kinds of zany adventures, but he's never ventured below the surface before. You know that he actively encouraged Jade's friendship with Rose and Dave. You know that he's spoken to Rose's mother, Roxy, although he's never let on how they met. When he organised this expedition and Jade asked if you could come along he was delighted. Three weeks in the world under the surface, the Neath, three weeks in Fallen London.

 “It's excellent,” Jade says, throwing her curtain of dark hair back over her shoulder and smiling up at him, all bright green eyes and big teeth. He laughs and pats her shoulder, then turns to you.

 “Er, yeah,” you say, voice tight as you pass through the fourth gate. It is taking much, much less time than you had anticipated. There are only seven gates in total and then you'll be floating on the zee, deeper and darker and blacker than anything you've ever seen. You try to focus on the things you've heard from Dave, all bright jokes, and not from Rose who's a little morbid and tends to assume that you share her fascination with anything slimy and unpleasant. “Yeah, it's good.”

 There's another worker staring at you. His eyes are red. You swallow and blink and when you open your eyes again after the fraction of a second that they were closed he's gone. There's a disturbance in the water at the edge of the canal. Did he fall in? Did he jump? You almost raise the alarm, but then you see him again. He's standing a hundred feet away staring in the opposite direction. You try to swallow again but your mouth's dry. Where's your father? He's on the boat somewhere but you haven't seen him in a few hours.

 Jake grins wider and pats you, too, then turns back to the sailors on the deck and starts issuing orders that they mostly ignore. He's already demanded that they refer to him as “Captain English” despite the fact that the actual captain of the ship is a rather reedy man in his late forties who doesn't seem to be able to move his face at all, which makes it difficult to tell whether he objects to it or not. Either way, most of the sailors aren't paying any attention to him. You don't blame them. He exudes an intense air of excitement but he's bandying about a lot of ship-related words and you're not entirely certain that he's using them right.

 Jade throws you a little half smile. “He's always like this,” she says softly, leaning in a little closer and adjusting her button-up skirt, “he'll calm down when we're there. He's gets dreadfully excited, you know. Great-aunt Jane thinks it's sweet, that's why she keeps bankrolling him.”

 The fourth gate opens. You're shivering hard now. If Jade notices she doesn't say anything, she's too busy staring wide-eyed at the workers on the docks. You're deeper in the earth now, and they're growing stranger. A man there has yellowing bandages covering the entirety of his torso and face, there a woman in trousers is bellowing orders in a voice that echoes like a tolling bell, there a young boy has something yellow and glittering growing from beneath his eyes. There are four statues standing silently beside the canal and you squint at them, wondering whether they've been offloaded from a trading vessel for some reason, before one of them suddenly moves and starts turning a crank. His joints creak as he moves. He doesn't seem to mind you staring. One of his fellows turns to look at you, you think, but his grey eyes are blank and it's difficult to tell. Jade whoops in glee when she sees them.

 “Oh, clay men, how wonderful!”

 “You've seen them before?” you ask, wondering, watching another one of the statues walk away from the others and start hauling boxes.

 “Well, no,” she says, “but I've read about them. Real living stone golems. Perfect workers. No food needed, no sleep.”

 The one that's looking at you opens his grey mouth. “We like it when it is quiet,” he says, in a voice that sounds like a rockfall formed into words. Jade claps her hand over her mouth.

“Was he talking to us?” she whispers, and you shrug again, thoroughly unnerved.

 The fifth gate opens and you chug through. The people working here look rather neater than the ones higher up, there's an Admiralty presence all standing around wearing stiff blue uniforms. Jake reappears and cheerfully salutes. One young woman replies in kind, smiling as he grins jovially across, still looking around in fascination, and her fellows roll their eyes.

The sixth gate opens. The lights here aren't electric lights and they aren't flame, they're some kind of glowing rock that casts something akin to moonlight across the whole area, blue-tinted and eerie. Jade reaches across and takes your hand. There's an odd smell, like a room gone to mould when no-one was caring for it, and it makes you wrinkle your nose and fight off a sneeze.

The seventh gate opens. There's a shout from the foredeck, a babble of voices from beyond, and the ship sails forwards out of the lock and into the zee, towards the docks. There are several men in Admiralty uniforms directing you with waving lights towards one of the docks and you drift in slowly and carefully. The captain strides forwards as the ramp is lowered, followed by Jake, who waves across you and Jade. There's a party waiting for you on the dock.

 “Captain Erik Donn?” The woman in the neatest uniform asks, checking the clipboard she's gripping.

 “That's right,” the captain says, passing across a handful of paperwork that she shuffles through quickly and efficiently.

 “Right, that's all in order,” she says, making a mark on her clipboard, “we'll need to do a quick look in the cargo hold, just to make certain, I'm sure you understand.”

 Before he can reply two of her men have strode past your group and up the gangplank. The captain does not look concerned.

 “Seventeen passengers bound for London, correct?” she asks, and he nods his head.

 “All with correct passports,” he says, “they were checked before we entered the first lock.”

 She nods. “Yes, that's all fine.”

 Jake is peering around past her, squinting into the half-dark as she makes tidy notes on her clipboard. She notices.

 “Sir, are you alright?”

 He smiles, wide and bright. “Dear lady, I am smashing.”

 She eyes him for a long moment, comes to a conclusion that she keeps to herself, then goes back to writing on her clipboard.

 “Right, Captain Donn,” she says, as her two men reappear and nod to her, “that's all fine. London awaits.”

 He nods and takes the papers she hands back to him. She keeps some, tucks them into her clipboard and then looks up at Jake.

 “Enjoy your visit, sir,” she says, voice unreadable, face expressionless, and it gives you the shivers. There is a tidy line of stitches completely circling her wrist, it looks almost like her hand has been cut off and then tidily reattached. She smooths down her uniform, nods to you and Jade with a half-smile that doesn't reach her eyes, then turns sharply on her heel and strides away.

 You glance at Jade and then swallow. She, Jake, and you're certain you as well, stand out somewhat. There's a glow beneath her skin that the workers on the docks do not posses – they are pale and pasty, even the dark-skinned have a sort of grey porridgy look to them.

 “Ho!”

 A voice to you left is calling to you. Captain Donn turns and then raises a hand in greeting. Another ship is docked beside yours, smaller and sleeker than the iron monster you rode down the canal in. The woman who called out is skipping down the gangplank towards you, hand extended.

“Donn,” she says when she reaches you, and Captain Donn nods.

 “Flins,” he says, equally shortly, and they shake hands. She is as sun-browned as you are, and looks just as incongruous in this drab place, “news?”

 She nods, once. “Came from London. Caught sight of you just as we were about to head back up, in fact. Fog's very thick up to the docks. Unusual amount of neddy-men.” She leans in a little closer, licks her lips, shoots a nervous glance at the three of you who are all listening in with as little subtlety as any of you ever possess. “Alternian ship pulled in to trade.”

 Captain Donn's eyebrows twitch slightly at the same moment that Jade gasps and then claps a hand across her mouth. The captains don't hear it over the noise from the docks, which seems to be growing louder and more hectic the longer you stand here. The mould smell is getting stronger too, you think it might be coming from a stack of crates piled high over by a door marked “Customs Office”. One of them is leaking a suspicious blue-grey fluid onto the cobbles, although upon closer inspection the blue could just come from the glittering shard-lights set into the walls.

 Jade is trying to catch your eye but you've just caught sight of a man with tentacles instead of limbs or a face stuffed haphazardly into a three-piece suit and top hat, and you doubt that anything she could have to say would be more interesting than watching him head slowly and uncomfortably sinuously to one of the smaller ships docked and head up the gangplank. No-one else watches him – or her, you suppose, or neither – or even looks in his direction.

 Jade's grabbing at your arm now, biting her lip with excitement, and she pulls you a few steps backwards as Jake finally loses his self-control and steps around the captains to get a better look at the dockyard.

 “Did you hear that?” she asks, and you shrug half-heartedly. One of the crates by the customs office has just got up and walked away.

 “A troll ship,” she says wonderingly, “in London. I thought they hated Londoners.”

 “Yes,” you say with what you hope is an air of certainty. You have no idea what she's talking about. She is still almost bouncing on the balls of her feet when you're finally ushered back aboard and the two of you are left hanging over the railing looking out at the zee as you leave behind the cool blue lights of the Canal and are left with nothing but the prow-light to light they way.

 The journey from the dockyard at the Cumaean Canal to Wolfstack Docks, to London, is only a few hours long. Your eyes are growing accustomed to the dark, you can see glittering flecks in what must be the roof of the cavern now, almost like stars. The water rolling in waves beneath the ship is black as pitch, glittering green where the prow-light hits it. Occasionally you see something slimy floating on the surface and on each occasion Jade grabs your arm, points, makes certain that you haven't missed the patch of seaweed or driftwood or something unnameable floating along beside the boat. When you finally pull into London you've grown thoroughly sick of it, you're cold and miserable and you're already longing for a good hot day and some decent sun.

 Captain Flins wasn't lying. The fogs around London are so thick that you feel like you could reach out and pull a handful down out of the air like candyfloss. It is freezing now, your shirt wet and sticking to you from a mixture of water from the air and sea-spray, but as soon as you catch the first glitter of light in the distance you stop caring. More wink into existence as you approach the docks, a mixture of the strange blue, glittering stones that lit the docks at the canal and warmer yellow gas-light. Soon you grow close enough that you can see the dark humps of buildings clustered together on the land ahead. Jade's knuckles are white on the railing, she's leaning forwards so far that you're afraid she's going to fall into the water.

 You hear voices, now, shouting and hollering on the shore. Urchin children scrabble around the legs of the dockworkers, the dockworkers clamour and shove past one another, overseers shout and give incomprehensible directions. A tentacled monstrosity like the one you saw at the Cumaean Canal is slumped up against a wall, dressed in rags instead of a suit, a hat clutched in its slimy grasp.

 Two figures are standing at the edge of the docks, pale as porcelain, unmolested by the crowd which seems to be giving them a wide berth.

 Rose is just as beautiful as she was in her pictures, her face is bleached white and tinted moonlight blue in the prow-light as it shines on the docks. She's wrapped in a fur coat, platinum blonde hair falling to her shoulders just so, carefully arranged with a headband keeping it back off of her face. She's the picture of her mother, standing beside her, equally fair, dressed in a white coat with buttons down the front. They are both smiling, Roxy – Ms. Lalonde – is beaming, wide and bright, and as you watch she raises a hand and waves serenely at you. A corner of Rose's mouth is tilted up in a smirk, but it broadens when you catch her eye. Jade, beside you, begins to wave enthusiastically.

 “Oh, John, isn't it marvellous,” she says, grabbing her arm with both of her hands and bouncing on the balls of her feet, “we're really here, they're really here.”

 You strain your eyes staring into the crowd but there's no sign of Dave or his brother. Disappointment flares in your gut, and something else... Offense? You had thought he would be here to welcome you.

 Jake is behind you again, a hand on your shoulder, positively thrumming with excitement. He's smoking a pipe but you don't notice until you look directly at him – the smoke melted into the fog seamlessly and the smell can't overcome the sweat-and-rotten-fish smell that's getting stronger the closer you get to the docks.

 The ship comes to a halt. The gangplank slides down. The crew begins to disembark. You are politely escorted down, your luggage is brought out and left beside you on the docks.

 Roxy and Rose step forwards, finally, finally. Rose keeps her straight face until she is feet away from you, apparently immune to Jade bouncing up and down in place or your own broad grin. She goes to extend one slim-fingered hand and then barks out a sudden laugh, losing her mask, and reaches out to pull the two of you into a hug. You laugh as well and wrap your arms around both of them, lifting the two girls off the ground and making Jade yell.

 “John,” Rose says, “Jade.” Her voice is as carefully enunciated as you expected, if raspier.

 Roxy smiles at you, her eyes crinkling at the corners, and then extends one hand to Jake.

 “Mr English, Jade, John,” she says, and smiles wider, “welcome to London.”

Chapter Text

Your name is ROSE LALONDE. You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for RATHER OBSCURE LITERATURE. You enjoy creative writing and are SOMEWHAT SECRETIVE ABOUT IT. You have a fondness for the BESTIALLY STRANGE AND FICTITIOUS, and sometimes dabble in PSYCHOANALYSIS. You also like to KNIT. And on occasion, if just the right one strikes your fancy, you like to play GAMES with your friends.

John looks as though he is several minutes away from freezing to death. You almost feel bad for him, you think, swaddling yourself tighter in the fur coat that you're wearing, but he really should have known better that to come to London in nothing but a shirt. Jade's wrapped more securely in a heavily starched floor-length skirt and a travelling coat, and Mr. English is wearing full explorer's paraphernalia. All of them are sunlight-glowing. They're dark-skinned, cheeks full and red-tinted, eyes green and blue and glittering. You suck in your own hollow cheeks and turn away, stepping back from Jade and John and glancing over your shoulder at the docks. Dave is late.

“Oh, I can barely believe it!” Jade is gripping at your hands, pulling you back around to face her. Her palms are warm and dry. You hoist your smile back on. Dave wouldn't have missed this for the world, as much as he pretends he doesn't care.

“This is wonderful, darlings,” says your mother, turning away from Jake English and bending down a little to kiss Jade and then John on their cheeks. She's tall, your mother; tall, thin, and beautiful. She's left a smear of lipstick on Mr. English's cheek, but he doesn't seem to have noticed.

“Yes, marvellous, marvellous,” Jake English says, and your mother's smile grows slightly broader, “now, I tried to book a few rooms in a stay house but I had some trouble with the mail system-”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous,” your mother replies, rearranging her scarf and her gloves, pulling herself up even straighter, and turning towards the road beyond the docks. She raises one slim-fingered hand into the air and clicks her fingers and a number of grubby urchin boys appear as if from thin air and stand to attention. “You'll be staying with us, dears, it's no trouble. You boys, summon a hansom and take the luggage to the road.”

Two of them start picking up trunks and carry-cases but the third is watching your mother with his eyes narrowed. He tilts his head to one side, weighing up his options, but before he can decide whether he's got the nerve to be cheeky your mother bends down and whispers something into his ear. Her gloves are white silk but she places one on his muddy shoulder as she speaks and when she pulls back it's still clean. His face has paled a little. One of her cat-whispered secrets, no doubt, for an urchin who'll only work for more than a penny. He hesitates for a moment, but payment's been made now whether he liked it or not, and he scrapes a nervous little bow before grabbing a box and hurrying after his friends. Jade and John watch this happen with an air of slight bemusement.

Jake isn't looking, he's squinting across at another ship pulling into the docks, eyes unused to the dark, and he starts a little as your mother takes Jade by the arm and starts to lead her away, motioning for you to follow.

“How was your trip, darlings?” she asks, eyes on Jade and John. Both immediately start babbling, absolutely charmed.

“Oh, it was wonderful-”

“I've never been to Italy before-”

“The Canal was so fascinating to see in action-”

“Does it ever get any warmer, do you know-”

“I've already seen so much I want to make notes on-”

You turn your head a little to survey Jade's grandfather as you reach the road and the hansom cab waiting there, driver tapping his fingers against the seat impatiently. Jake's hanging back a little, eyes wide with something that might be boyish wonder and might be fear, it's difficult to tell with surfacers. Sometimes it's the same thing.

“Mr English,” you begin, but he cuts across you.

“Oh, no need for that, Rose, dear, just call me Jake.”

You force on a pinched little smile at the unexpected familiarity. You've never spoken with Jake English before and you're starting to wish that you'd made the effort. Your mother is keeping your friends well entertained as she helps them into the cab and Jake is still lingering some feet back, staring longingly at the docks.

“Mr English,” you prompt, then catch yourself, “Jake, the hansom.”

He looks past you and startles back to life, strange melancholy immediately disappearing beneath charm and bluster. He pats you on the shoulder as he climbs the two steps into the dark interior, turning his head to look out of the window on the other side. The urchins have deposited the bags at the driver's feet and he stands and hauls them onto the top. You peer around the back of the cab, into the darker alleys.

“Rose?” Your mother pokes her head out of the vehicle. “Do hurry, dear.”

Does she know something that you don't? Dave should be here, his brother should be here, but Dirk and your mother have a bond that they don't often speak of and that you don't understand. Perhaps something has happened. If Dave was in trouble she would be worried, surely. Besides, it's been a while since Dave's been in danger of winding up in the tomb-colonies. Some quick stitches and a few sips of wine are often enough to cure whatever scrapes he collects.

He's almost your brother, though, and you take one last, quick glance out into the dark between the warehouses before you take your mother's dainty hand and climb up into the cab yourself, sitting back on the cracked red leather with your side pressed against Jade's.

“You must tell us where you want to visit first,” your mother says, drawing everyone's attention but yours, “of course we must take you to Veilgarden, the society there is wonderful. I suppose you'll want to visit the Carnival, of course, everybody does, and the University, I would imagine, with your interests...”

She carries on, voice clear as mirror-glass as the dim light of the street lamps flashes across her face. The fog from the docks is blowing further inland now, heavy and cold. It smells, very faintly, of thunder, and for a moment you're concerned that a storm has fallen from the ceiling and found itself stranded and helpless. You blink the notion away.

Jade has asked a question you didn't hear, but your mother is talking about the prevalence of clay men in the city. She does not mention the Warrens, you notice, the Loamsprach-speaking slums that wind beneath the city streets. She does not mention the Unfinished. You see a rubbery man begging from the gutter out of the corner of your eye, try to make quick eye contact with him, but you have turned a corner and he doesn't even look up from his own legs. Or, leg-like appendages, you suppose. You think about the piece of paper tightly folded in the inner pocket of your coat, pressed hard against your ribcage by your primly folded arms. Not yet.

You catch a flash of white hair on the street ahead and sit straighter in your seat, only vaguely aware that John is now chattering at you. Not Dave, you think, but perhaps the older Strider. Gone, anyway, lost in the crowd. You're approaching the market. The air smells more like coal smoke and less like fish guts and tanning leather. John is looking at you.

“I'm sorry, John,” you said primly, “I didn't hear what you said.”

He looks faintly put out, so you hoist your most appealing smile onto your face and reach out to wrap his cold hands in your own gloved ones.

“I was wondering where my father got to,” he said, “he didn't get off the boat with us.”

“Ah, he'll be alright,” Mr English, Jake, says, grinning, “Captain Dunn will send him our way.”

John still doesn't look convinced, but minor questioning at the docks will get his father where he needs to go. Everyone knows who your mother is, everyone knows where you live. Your real home is much further north, the manor and mad scientist laboratory on the very edges of the Prickfinger Wastes, only a misstep away from the glittering, razor-sharp stones to the north of London. That isn't where you're going, though, your mother has a town house only a short distance from the Bazaar. You have never asked her how she obtained the deed. You don't think that you ever will.

John is still making uncomfortable eye contact with you as you make your slow way through the roads that run around the Bazaar. Jade is staring gleefully out at the alien delights on show, but John is worrying delicately at his bottom lip, staring directly at you.

“Is something wrong, John?”

He blinks and startles, almost as though he hadn't realised that he had been doing it. “Ah, I was...” He breaks, looks out of the window instead, and his face contorts in confusion as he glimpses something out of the ordinary. You turn to look but whatever it was it's gone in the crowd. “I was just wondering where Dave is?”

His voice is all curled up in the question and with a pang you realise that there's hurt in it. You sit up a little straighter in the hard seat and smooth your skirt down, carefully inspecting the flawless white leather of your gloves – smaller than your mother's but identical in every other aspect.

“I'm...” you start, and try to shoot your mother a plea for help. She is not looking at you, she is still expositing delightfully for Jade and her grandfather, who remain enchanted. “I'm not sure,” you say after a moment, looking at John's left shoulder. “He was supposed to meet us at the docks with his brother. He must have been held up.”

You have never thought of John as particularly intelligent – certainly, very little of your communication has ever given you that impression – but he is peering at you narrowly in a way that you came thoroughly unprepared for. For a fraction of a moment you feel as though you're talking to Strider, that brief uncomfortable knowing that the man in front of you knows exactly what you're thinking and is going to use it against you later, before John's mouth twists and his eyes lose all their sharpness and he looks at the street instead.

You breathe out and try not to think about Dave as your townhouse comes into view, a narrow terraced building, and then your breath catches again as the tall, pale man leaning nonchalantly behind the pillar by the doorway comes into view. Dirk's arms are crossed, face expressionless as he watches your carriage pull up. There's muck on the hem of his shirt, he tucks the dirty edge into his trousers as your mother leans her head out of the window. You get this impression, though, that he had been looking at you. He is alone.

He steps forwards and opens the carriage door like he's a footman, not an infamous thug and swordsman, and graciously extends a hand to help your mother disembark. She places her white glove in his scarred, calloused hand, and as soon as she's stepped down onto the cobblestone he reaches for you. You stare at him for what feels like a very long time but is actually only a moment, trying to get some kind of read off of him. He is as inscrutable as ever, face expressionless except for what might have been a very, very faint smirk. His glasses glint in the lamplight like the flames are in his eyes and it sends a shiver down your spine, but you think you do an admirable job of hiding it. With only the slightest hesitation you delicately place your hand in his palm and let him help you down.

Dirk offers the same assistance to Jade, then the smirk grows fractionally and his head falls into an almost imperceptible tilt as he extends his hand, palm up, for John, who stares at him in open bafflement. It rapidly turns into concern, and then discomfort. Dirk is still as surface stone, eyes burning, barely breathing. John looks over his shoulder at you and you rapidly look away, smoothing down your skirt again. Better for him just to do it and get it over with.

He does, looking more than a little put out as he slowly, unhappily, places his hand in Dirk's and Dirk helps him down with a sarcastic little bow. This is something that you've watched play out dozens of times, now, and something that your mother pretends not to notice: Dirk likes to put people off balance around him, he likes to make people uncomfortable.

He turns back to the door of the carriage and raises his hand again, and is immediately knocked out of the way as Jade's grandfather bounces jovially down the little steps at the carriage door.

“Sorry, old chap,” he blusters, clapping Dirk on the back and then brushing some imaginary dirt off of the older Strider's shoulder. Dirk is still standing with one hand extended as though he hasn't quite realised what's happened yet. His glasses have been knocked slightly askew. You are suddenly much, much more warmly disposed to Jake English. Dirk discombobulated is one of your favourite sights, and you see it so very rarely.

Your mother is standing at the doorway, looking backwards over her shoulder with her own faint smirk in place.

“Come along, darlings, you must be hungry. I imagine you want to wash up, too, after a trip like that. Don't worry about the bags, Dirk will handle it.”

Dirk's jaw tightens a fraction of a inch and there is a second of intense, silent communication between him and your mother, before he smiles and sweeps a theatrical bow, turning to help the carriage driver with the trunk and the bags. Your mother smiles thinly and steps over the threshold after your friends, her leather boots sinking into plush, red carpet.

Chapter Text

Your name is DAVE STRIDER. You have a penchant for spinning out UNBELIEVABLY ILL JAMS with your TURNTABLES AND MIXING GEAR. You like to rave about MUSICIANS NO ONE'S EVER HEARD OF BUT YOU. You collect WEIRD DEAD THINGS PRESERVED IN VARIOUS WAYS. You are an AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER and operate your own MAKESHIFT DARKROOM. You maintain a number of IRONICALLY HUMOROUS PUBLICATIONS. And if the inspiration strikes, you won't hesitate to drop some PHAT RHYMES on a mofo and REPRESENT.

You duck into an alleyway between two leaning shacks and desperately catch your breath, pressing your hand against the bleeding rent in your stomach. It's a souvenir from a strife with your bro a couple of days ago and normally it wouldn't inconvenience you too much, but you've ripped your stitches and torn the wound open again and it's leaving a sticky red trail from the street to your temporary hiding place, as well as thoroughly ruining your previously suave outfit.

You glance out into the street - nothing there yet - and you shrug off your jacket, roll it up, and press down against the wound. You're already colder than usual and you're turning lightheaded. How much blood have you lost? The very last thing that you need is to expire in a dingy alleyway with mysterious pursuers desperate on turning your insides into your outsides and no-one to nurse you back to health when your miserable corpse inevitably stands up and starts walking around again.

To add insult to injury you've lost your sword. It's not a great loss, Dirk has over a hundred, but you would feel a lot better if you were holding it right now.

A shout sounds out in the street and you suck your breath in through your teeth, pressing further back against the wall, and try to sink back into the darkness, desperately will yourself invisible.

"Where's he gone?"

You wince, sidestep down closer to the dead end of this clearly poorly chosen escape route, check your stomach. It's still weeping blood but it's slowed significantly and it's starting to feel tight in the way that means it's scabbing closed again. Grimly, you put your jacket back on, leaning back against the wall in a way that looks cool and nonchalant and definitely isn't because you're starting to struggle to stay upright. Striders don't faint in alleyways. There is a broken brick behind you that's scratching at you even through your shirt and jacket and you shift a little, then huff a completely unpanicked breath when your knees threaten to go.

This is not how you thought you would end up being shipped off to the tomb colonies. You pause that thought - from what you've seen of your new friends so far they might not be willing to leave you in peices big enough to bandage back together.

A dark figure looms at the entrance of the alleyway. You will her not to see you, press closer against the wall. It's dark here, the light from the street beyond is already dim and you're shrouded in shadow.

"Hello, pretty," she says, and you curse your stupid complexion. She's holding a long, long knife and she raises it to point at you. You reach one of your hands up behind you and stumble a little, feeling at the wall for the jagged edge prodding you in the back. It's loose, half the brick comes away in your hand and now at least you're not completely unarmed.

"Hey, babe," you reply, and you're pretty pleased when your voice doesn't shake. She's maybe in her forties, broader than you across the shoulder and the hips, maybe a few inches taller. Normally you would definitely be faster than her and your first plan is to dodge under her outstretched arms, dance past the knife and out into the street. The only problem with the plan is that you're not sure you can walk properly, let alone run, and there are others out there. She hasn't shouted for them, though. What does that make you, then, a glory kill? Maybe there's a price on your head and she wants it all for herself. Maybe she just doesn't think that a skinny, half dead sixteen year old with no real weapon is enough of a problem to need back up for.

As much as it pains you to admit it, she might be right. There are a lot of examples in your past of adults underestimating you and ending up regretting it, but you wrap your fingers a little tighter around your brick and suddenly you remember that to some people you really are just a dumb kid who likes to get in over his head.

What rankles most about the whole thing is that you're pretty sure you've missed the boat arriving.

She takes another step forward, tilts her head to one side to assess you. Thoughtful, that's unfortunate. No wild swings to dodge under.

The last time you heard the clock chime you had an hour to get to the docks. That was almost certainly more than an hour ago, and instead of standing watching a boat pull in and waving at your lifelong pals for the first time, getting ready to show them around your horrible city, you're about to be gutted in an alleyway by some thug who hasn't even had the decency to explain why. The thought makes you grit your teeth and, to your surprise, it turns out that you do have some adrenaline left after all.

She reaches out to slam you back against the wall, raising her knife, but her hand smashes against brick instead as you manage one flash step a foot to the side. You stagger and bite your tongue but you don't fall, raising your brick and bringing it down with as much force as you can muster.

"You little shit!"

She's quicker than you gave her credit for, your brick cracks down on her shoulder instead of the back of her skull and she jabs at you with the knife. You wheel backwards and the knife tears the fabric of your jacket, goes straight through your shirt to split your skin. It's a white line of pain but it's not got anything on what you've got going on in the stomach region already so you ignore it and ram into her, putting all of your weight into shoving her back and trying to grab for the arm weilding the knife. She's also stronger than you gave her credit for and she doesn't even wobble, snorting as you grab for her wrist. Pissed off by your failure, you sink your teeth into her shoulder and this time she shrieks, shoves you back and comes at you with the knife again, swinging down to plunge the blade into the spot where your shoulder meets your neck.

There's blood in your mouth and you manage to dodge and block, her knife runs down your arm instead, scraping across your jacket. Your vision is going blurry. You step and step again, shove her in the ribcage, and suddenly the way out of the alleyway is clear. You take a chance and run, covered in blood and trembling like something newborn. She's still faster, grabs for the back of your jacket but you don't need it, you shrug it off and bolt out onto the uneven cobbles of the street. You're breathing so heavily and your heart is thundering so loud that you almost don't hear the shout behind you.

"He's here!"

You try to dodge and weave but it makes your head spin so you just go straight instead, stumbling a little over protruding cobbles and desperately trying to ignore the pounding footfalls behind you from more than one pair of feet. If you can keep going a little longer you'll be in the Forgotten Quarter and they might not follow you there, into the ruins. There are no gaslamps here any more, all the light comes from the glimmering false stars and the occassional glim light set into the side of some poor person's home. There, up ahead, the tall, crumbling wall that might save you.

A hand grabs for the back of your shirt and the two of you go down in a heap. You slam into the hard ground and can't stop yourself from shouting as your ribs, your hips, your thighs all get badly bruised by the uneven stones. Something blinding hot slides between your ribs and you realise with a sort of dull horror that it's that long knife, she's stabbed you in the back. The wound hurts significantly more when she yanks the blade free of you with a noise that might be enough to make you sick if you had enough energy left to heave, it leaves a hole straight through you where no hole is supposed to be. You can't think of anything clever to say as your vision goes blank at the edges, there's nothing left but pain and shame - Dirk is going to be so disappointed in you when he finds out.

There are more figures crowding around you now, three of them in total, you can't make their faces out in the gloom, you can't do much of anything. You try to push yourself up onto your elbows but you might actually have run out of blood completely and you can't move at all, you're lying on the ground like something dead. You might actually be dead, it might be time for a pile of bandages and a one-way ticket. She raises her knife again, the wicked edge of it glints as brightly as her bared teeth do as light flares up behind you. Your three assaillants - all broad and heavily muscled, dockside scum for hire - all look up at the same time, squinting in the sudden glare, and all of their faces contort in horror as they see something outside your line of vision. There is something ice cold creeping up your spine, and it doesn't feel like corpse chill.

"This looks like a riotous motherfucking party," says a slow, uneven voice from somewhere you can't see and the woman with your blood on her hands takes one shaky step backwards.

"What the hell..."

A heavy footfall beside your ear and suddenly there's an extremely large person standing with one foot either side of your head. You can't do anything, you're skirting the edge of dead and from the feel of it you're going to need to stay almost dead for quite a while before you'll be up and about and being awesome again. The person above you is weilding something that isn't a blade in his right hand and holding a lamp in his left, the flame casting long, shifting shadows across the street. You manage to suck in one shallow breath but your heart is going so slowly it's almost stopped and you're on the verge of losing consciousness.

"Seems like little brother on the floor down here might not be having such a bitchtits time, though," the slow voice continues, and he carries on walking slowy and calmly towards the other three, "weeping all that red everywhere like that."

There's something hypnotic about his voice, even going uneven and blurry at all your edges that voice cuts straight through and you hear every word. It feels like something icy and horrible is trying to claw its way out of you. This, right here, might be the most afraid you have ever been. You wish your brain wasn't still clinging so desperately to consciousness, you want to run and hide, you want to really die, not the false way that people do under the surface of the world. The woman who stabbed you is on her knees, clutching at her head, and your saviour is still advancing, still carrying that awful chill with him, and then he's raising his... pipe? Board? No, it's a juggling club, one like a jester would have at the Carnival. He swings down, there's a sick crunch, and she falls foward onto the cobbles with the top of her skull caved in. The other two are gone, vanished into the darkness.

He turns around, ignoring the corpse at his feet - she really will be going to the tomb colonies when she wakes up, half her head gone like that - and hitches up his trousers so that he can kneel down by your shoulder, the knees of his pinstripe trousers settling into the puddle of your blood that's oozing out between the cobblestones. The awful, inexplicable terror is gone and now you're just embarassed. You still can't move, when you try you just black out for a moment.

"You're still alive," he says, in his slow, deep voice, and you want to burst out laughing. He's enormous, at least six and a half feet tall and, more bafflingly, he's got horns. He's got face paint on, chalk white against skin that might be grey, it's hard to tell as he puts the light on the ground to prod at your face, and it's unsettlingly skull-like. Your own personal grim reaper, you think, and then you want to hit yourself as you sink closer to unconsciousness.

"Motherfucking miracle, brother," he carries on, and you black out.

Chapter Text

Your name is JADE HARLEY. You are an avid follower of CARTOON COMIC STRIPS OF CONSIDERABLE NOSTALGIC APPEAL. You have a profound zeal for marvelous and fantastical FAUNA OF AN ANTHROPOMORPHOLOGICAL PERSUASION. You have an uncanny knack for NEWFANGLED SCIENTIFICS, and not infrequently can be found dabbling in RATHER ADVANCED GADGETRY. You enjoy sporadic fits of NARCOLEPSY and your love of GARDENING transcends the glass confines of your ATRIUM.

You have never been more fascinated in your life and that is saying rather a lot as generally you are fascinated by everything! There are three notebooks hidden in your skirt and you are itching to pull them out, start sketching and scribbling down everything in your line of vision. The streets leading up to the townhouse had been magical enough - dim as dusk, the glittering in what you know is a ceiling emulating stars almost to perfection, the crowds of men and women in all manner of dress, rubbery men, clay men, devils, things you haven't yet had time to file away in your head - but the Lalonde townhouse has already exceeded your expectations marvellously.

You shoot a delighted grin back at your grandfather, who smiles jovially back, and then take a step closer to the shelves in the dining room.

"Those are fourth city relics," Ms. Lalonde explains, following your eyeline to the row of statuettes on the shelf in front of you, and you turn your most blinding smile on her.

"They're wonderful. We've planned for a trip to the Forgotten Quarter, you know, in a few days," you say, and she inclines her head, lips curving up.

"I do know, your grandfather has requested that I introduce you to a number of scholars in the University before you begin."

Behind her mother, Rose is rolling her eyes and shrugging off her coat, folding it neatly over her arm and then hanging it on the stand by the door. She takes her mother's, as well, and you turn back to the shelves. It's an odd collection of statuettes, tablets propped up on glass stands, papers and parchments in protective cases, and books - shelves and shelves of beautiful, leather-bound books. You want to grab every single one, you already know that three weeks is not going to be enough.

Ms. Lalonde puts her hand on your shoulder and smiles. "Give Rose your coat, dear, and then if you like you can all get washed up before dinner."

She turns her blinding smile on John and Jake, who each return it with slightly less enthusiasm, and the front door opens as Dave's brother steps through with the first of your grandfather's heavy trunks held effortlessly in front of him. You try not to stare as he casually hauls what is definitely a two man trunk up the stairs without even breaking a sweat. Rose rolls her eyes again and loops an arm through yours, holds her other out for John to take.

"Ignore him, come on," she says, and leads the two of you back out into the hallway and up the staircase there. It is wide enough that all three of you can walk side by side, but you jump when someone clears their throat behind you. You and John turn and your eyebrows shoot up. Dave's brother - Dirk, you remember - is back at the bottom of the stairs, tapping one foot, with your own full solid oak trunk casually held atop one shoulder. He is inspecting the fingernails of his other hand with feigned interest. You think he might be staring at you, but it is extremely difficult to tell through the glasses he is wearing. Baffled, you look from the top of the staircase back down to the bottom. Rose heaves a dramatic sigh and steps to one side, waves him past, and just like that he vanishes. You think you feel the air moving in front of you as though the door has been left open.

"Wha-" you start, and Rose cuts you off with a wave of her hand and another impressive eye roll.

"Ignore him, he does love showing off and it's not so often he gets to do it for surfacers."

She starts up the stairs again and you share a look with John behind her back. He looks as confused as you do, mouth hanging open, a slight crease between his brows. He actually seems to have forgotten how cold and miserable he is supposed to be, although the fog from the street outside has soaked through his shirt and stuck sections of it to his skin and he is still thoroughly goose pimpled from the chill.

"Come along," Rose says from the top of the stairs, and then she takes a pack of matches from a table in the hallway and lights a candelabra, holding it in front of herself and turning back to the corridor, ignoring the perfectly serviceable gas lamps lining the walls. You have known Rose for a long time and this sort of unnecessarily grim behaviour is exactly what you have been looking forward to so much!

"You can have the room beside mine," she says, turning back to you, "and John you can have the one next to Dave's. It's got an excellent view, you'll love it."

The walls are panelled with dark wood, the floors are lushly carpeted, the lamps are polished brass. It reminds you of your great-aunt's house, although it is somewhat dimmer. There are very few windows. When one does appear it is covered with a lush velvet curtain that blocks the view of the street beyond.

"Do you keep any retainers?" you ask, eyeing the gleaming quality of the wood panelling on the walls and the sparkle that hits the lamps as you pass them. You're certain they're hard workers but you really can't imagine Rose or her mother polishing the silverware, and Dirk doesn't strike you as the type. They've never mentioned any servants in their letters, though. Another strange breeze wafts past you and you shiver.

"Only the clay man," Rose says, waving a hand carelessly, and you feel yourself buoy immediately.

"Oh, you actually have a clay man?" You've read several books on the subject, all of which have been written by travellers from the surface and are subsequently not terribly trustworthy.

"We saw some at the docks," John says, and you turn your grin on him and nod.

"I think they're fascinating," you continue, and Rose gives you a little smile and glances down the way you've come. You can hear her mother and your grandfather talking in the dining room, still, a muffled hum of voices. Your grandfather laughs and then so does Ms. Lalonde, a tinkly little sound. You hear the clink of glasses and Rose's expression goes dark.

"Wonderful," she says, very quietly and with her voice pressed flat, and then she starts walking more purposefully forwards again. It smells very faintly of cats up here.

"Of course I will introduce you to the clay man," she says, "although in all honesty he isn't very interesting, he mainly just likes tidying up and ignoring every-OW!"

She stumbles and nearly falls forwards but John catches her arm as she starts to curse, louder and more colourfully than you would have expected from her composed, delicate exterior. John catches your eye and stifles a laugh, turning his head to one side.

"Are you alright?"

She turns to look at you, mouth pinched, and then hauls her smile back on. You look down and see what tripped her up - it's your trunk, left directly in the middle of the hallway. She reaches down to rub at her shins and mumbles something derogatory about Dirk before grabbing one of the handles and lifting the candelabra.

"John, would you mind assisting me?"

He takes the other handle gamely even as you wave your hands and make a lot of noise about how they shouldn't, you could handle it, it's your trunk after all, but it turns out she was only taking you past another two doors and then you have reached your room.

"That one is mine," Rose says, gently putting your trunk down and gesturing to the door before, "John, you will be opposite."

She points and he opens the door to his room.

"Good lord!"

The open glee in his voice is too beguiling to resist and so you shoot a glance at Rose and then don't, almost jump over your trunk and bolt into John's room behind him. He is standing at the window with his back to you, face pressed up against the glass, glasses pressing into the bridge of his nose.

"Mrs. Plenty's," Rose supplies from the doorway as you go and join him staring out at the spectacle. It is a carnival, bigger than any you have seen on the surface, and in the darkness it shines like a beacon - vibrantly coloured tents in every hue of the rainbow, glimmering lights.

"We're on the edge of Veilgarden," Rose offers, and you nod eagerly, "up on a hill, just high enough to see it from so far away. I know that you and your grandfather are rather set on your academic exploits but mother and I thought it might be nice tomorrow, since it's your first day, to spend it at the carnival together."

You grin, press one hand against the window and look out at the distant lights, and then turn back to her. Beside you John is wearing his biggest, goofiest grin, nose still pressed to the glass.

"That sounds wonderful," you say, and beside you John nods. "Oh, I'm so glad we're here!"

Rose smiles back, glances away, and then walks forwards and takes your hands.

"We can be like real friends," you say, and she scoffs.

"We are real friends."

"No, I mean... Normal friends. I love grandfather but all the travelling and... when we're not travelling we're on the island. I do get rather lonely, is all. But now I'm here! And you're here!" You turn to John. "And you're here, too!"

"I'm your cousin, silly," he says, "you see me."

You elbow him in the side. "Only on special occasions. It's so wonderful getting everyone's letters, but it's so much better meeting you in person."

Rose grins. "Yes, it is," she says, and squeezes your hands. "Now then, shall we wash up for dinner? John, you look like you need to get changed."

She turns and frowns. At some point while you have been talking John's trunk has appeared at the foot of his bed as if from thin air.

"So... Dave's brother-" you start, and Rose cuts you off with a scoff and a sharp motion with one of her hands.

"Just ignore Dirk," she says, "the easiest way to deal with him is just to pretend he isn't there. Otherwise he just gets more obnoxious."

"Right," John says from her other shoulder, shooting you a quick glance and then hitting Rose with his goofiest grin. Your cousin is a goober and you love him. "But... the disappearing thing?"

"Is nothing," Rose says, ushering you out of John's room and back towards your own, "you will need to get used to much stranger things than a little flashstepping down here."

She shuts John's door behind her and then hesitates outside her own door, opening it very slowly and cautiously and peering into her room before opening it fully and stepping inside. She shuts it behind her and you are left standing outside your own door. Behind you, very quietly, John opens his door again and jerks his head back inside his room a few times. You nod, glance down the corridor and then at Rose's door, and open and close your own door loudly before tiptoeing past John back into his room. He closes the door behind him very slowly.

"Rose is acting strangely, right?" he says under his breath. "It's not just me?"

You tilt your head to one side, grimace, and then shrug. "Maybe she's always like this," you say in reply, your own voice a careful whisper. John shakes his head.

"Maybe, I guess. She seems a bit..."

"Scared," you hazard, and his mouth sets into a grim line as his eyebrows drop.

"Yeah."

He sighs, leans down to his trunk and drags out a set of clean clothes. You turn your back to him as he changes, stare out of the window instead. There is a line of mould along the edge of the windowsill beside the glass and you prod it with your finger until your fingertip is black with it, then you regret your decision and rub it away on your shirt, leaving a dark smear that you can barely see in the dim light.

"I'm decent," he says, and you turn around again and lean your behind against the windowsill.

"Do you think it has something to do with why Dave isn't here?" he asks, and you are struck silent at the fact that you had not noticed.

"Oh, of course, he was supposed to meet us at the docks!"

John raises his eyebrows at you and you wince.

"I was just so excited, I suppose I didn't... Do you really think that might be it?"

His mouth twists. "What if something bad's happened?"

"I don't think that can be it," you said, and shake your head, "Dave's brother is here, and Ms. Lalonde seems perfectly happy. If something was wrong then we would know."

"Then why is Rose so jumpy?"

"Maybe she is just nervous," you say, and sling an arm around his shoulders, "I am, about meeting her and Dave for the first time. If it was at my house then I would be panicking! I would want everything to be perfect for them."

"You live on an island paradise," John says, and you laugh.

"That isn't the point!"

He rolls his eyes at you and gestures to the door. You actually would have like to have a quick wash before dinner, but you make do with dabbling your hands in the porcelain bowl on water on the washstand by the door and splashing a little on your face before stepping back out into the hallway. Rose is either still in her room or still downstairs so you straighten your skirt and then open and close your door again just in case. John offers you his arm and walks you down the stairs.

It smells like food and your stomach grumbles restlessly as John leads you back into the dining room. Ms. Lalonde is still standing by the bookshelves but now she is holding a glass of wine so dark that it almost looks black, only the faintest hint of something red-brown showing through the glass. Your grandfather is holding a smaller glass of some sort of spirit, sipping it thoughtfully.

"Oh, good," Ms Lalonde says as she spies the two of you through the doorway, "we may as well sit down, I'm sure Rose won't be long." She takes the seat at the head of the table - dark, polished wood - and smooths down her skirt, then takes another sip of her wine.

"Would either of you like a drink?" she asks, and your grandfather shifts a little restlessly in his own seat but does not intervene. She notices and laughs - that bright, tinkling noise again. "Now, now, Jake, they're old enough, surely?"

"I don't suppose that it would do any harm," you grandfather says, and nodding at the both of you, "just one glass each."

Ms. Lalonde stands from the table, vanishes through into what you assume is the kitchen, and then reappears holding a dark bottle. She tips a little into the glasses already set on the table, just half a glass each, and then fills her own back up almost to the brim.

"To adventure," she says, and she shoots a knowing smile at your grandfather. He smiles back and taps his glass against hers, and when she holds her glass out to you and John you quickly grab the stem of yours and do the same, then take a sip.

It is vile.

You do not let your smile drop. John does, you watch his expression sour out of the corner of your eye and stifle a laugh, then force yourself to swallow. You have had wine before, of course, you are not a child, you have even grown your own grapes in your greenhouses and made an attempt at brewing your own that went very badly and still tasted much, much better than the flat, earthy, sour liquid in your glass now. You take another sip as John puts his glass down on the table, glaring at it as though it has wronged him personally with his mouth bunched up in protest. Ms. Lalonde does not appear to notice, just sighs and purses her lips, staring out into the lobby.

"What is taking Rosie so long? I will just be a moment."

"Do you think Dirk's joining us?" you ask John in an undertone, counting the number of place setting. Eight, Enough for all of you, including the Striders and John's father, all of whom are absent. It makes your eyebrows pull together in concern.

"Yes, he's an odd chap, isn't he?" your grandfather asks, shooting a quick glance in the direction Ms. Lalonde had gone and leaning in towards you conspiratorially. "Can't say I've spoken to him much, before now, what have Rose and Dave said to you two about the fellow?"

You shake your head. "Not much."

"Dave just says that he's 'cool'," John says, picking up his glass and taking another sip before he remembers what's in it and scrunches his face up again. "This is awful, how is she drinking it?"

"Now now, John," your grandfather says, wagging a finger and pulling out his pipe, "don't be rude to the hostess." He puts the pipe in his mouth but doesn't light it, which is an immense relief. The tobacco he smokes smells worse than the wine tastes, and being stuck in a room as it slowly fills with choking vapours is something that you had quite enough of on the journey here.

Something shifts in the corner of your eye and you almost jump out of your seat. Dirk has appeared in the seat at the other end of the table. The three of you stare at him in blank surprise for a moment before your grandfather laughs awkwardly, forced joviality obvious in his voice.

"Didn't see you come in there, old sport," he says, and Dirk's head tilts towards him, birdlike. It is impossible to tell where he is looking, he is still wearing his glasses.

"How was your journey?" Dirk asks the table at large, and it makes you jump again because this is the first time that you have heard him speak. His sharp jaw is tense, his expression unreadable. Has hands are folded on the table in front of him. It does not make you feel any safer.

"Spiffing," your grandfather says, "fine sailing from England, and a quick journey down through the Canal."

"No trouble at the docks?"

"None at all, dear fellow," your grandfather says, wilting a little under Strider's unfaltering attention. He is still as a statue, he barely even seems to be breathing. Abruptly, he turns to look at you, and you sputter on your wine a little, but he just turns back to your grandfather and opens his mouth to speak again. He is thankfully interrupted by the reappearance of Ms. Lalonde and Rose, who looks both composed and lovely and, at the same time, very angry. It is a difficult combination and you are not sure it is one that you would be able to pull off. She grins when she sees you and sits down opposite, beside your grandfather, carefully smoothing down her skirt exactly as her mother had done and frowning a little at the wine glasses in front of you.

"Well, now," she says, glancing at the empty places, "perhaps we should wait for Dave to arrive?"

She is looking directly at Dirk, who turns his face towards her.

"He should learn to be on time," he says, voice devoid of any emotion, and she tenses fractionally.

"Now, then," Ms. Lalonde says, voice chiding, and they both look at her instead. "Dirk is right, Dave is being very tardy, and today of all days." She shakes her head at her place mat, lips pursed, and then her expression clears. "Well, never mind. I, for one, am famished."

The door behind her swings open as she speaks and a hulking behemoth of a clay man appears. He is dressed in a sharp suit and an apron and carrying a steaming casserole dish in his bare hands. Of course, this should not surprise you, because he is made of stone and earth and would therefore be fairly impervious to the damaging effects of high temperatures. He places the dish down in the centre of the table, removes the lid to reveal a dull, grey, lumpy casserole, and then disappears back into the kitchen and reappears a moment later with another dish, this time full of potatoes. The happens several times until the table is full of dishes of varying shades of beige, brown and grey.

"Sorry, Ms. Lalonde," John interrupts, and he sounds as though he doesn't want to, "it's just that my father-"

"Oh, your father had an errand he needed to run, dear," Roxy says, and she takes another sip of her wine as the clay man reappears with a handful of spoons and a pile of steaming plates, "did he not tell you?"

John's mouth stays slackly open as the clay man places a hot plate down in front of him. "No," he says, and Roxy nods and reaches for one of the spoons, starts doling food out onto your plate even as you protest.

"I wouldn't worry, he knows where he's going. He's been here before, after all."

John's mouth opens wider, and this time yours does to. "My father's been to London before?"

Roxy's eyebrows shoot upwards as she slops some casserole onto John's plate. "Oh, yes. It was a long time ago, but he came here with your great aunt, dear. He was a young man at the time," she says, "and we weren't much older than you are."

She smiles across at Dirk, who does not smile back.

"You two were just babies then, I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn't have known."

"Some sort of business venture," your grandfather offers, investigating the casserole with the same gusto he investigates alien rainforests, "you know Janey, she's a go-getter. Actually, she's sent some documents down with me to give to you, Roxy."

"Oh, really? Marvellous."

The casserole is better than it looks, some sort of creamy stroganoff concoction, and the potatoes are crisp and earthy even if all the vegetables are colourless and bland. You find your mood lifting despite Dave's absence, despite the confusion on John's face.

"How marvellous," you say, "I was terribly concerned about getting lost, you know, but this means there's one more person who knows where they're going."

"Quite," Rose says, but she's watching her mother narrowly. "You never mentioned you were in business with the Crocker Corporation, mother."

Roxy turns her head to one side. "It's uncouth to over share about one's business ventures, darling. Besides, it never seemed terribly relevant, I didn't want you to think I was using your delightful, youthful friendships for my own selfish gain."

Rose tenses, then smiles, wide and bright. "I would never think that, mother, you know I think most highly of all your business ventures, no matter what."

"Oh, darling, it is so heartening to hear you say so. You know how I hope one day you will follow in my footsteps."

"I would be so delighted," Rose says, eyes twinkling, "you know that you are my role model, mother, after all our tutor had me write that essay on the subject."

Roxy reaches up to wipe at the corner of her eye. "I know, and I still have it framed in the parlour. I am so blessed to have such an eloquent and respectful child."

Things go on in this vein for quite some time. You are almost glad when the meal is over and the adults retreat to the parlour. Rose's mother has gone through an astonishing amount of alcohol and your grandfather is a little tipsy himself. There was food on Dirk's plate and then it was clean but you are quite certain you never saw him eat anything.

"Well, that was tedious," Rose said, and then she grins and leans forwards across the table. "Let me show you the games room."

Chapter Text

You come back to consciousness slowly and unwillingly. There is a throbbing in the back of your skull that feels as though your brain has been liquefied and is sloshing around in there, there's a phenomenal pain underneath your breastbone through to your lower back, your arms hurt, your legs hurt, your throat hurts...

"Makara, what the everloving fuck is this?"

Whoever's speaking, and your fear spikes up as you realise that you don't recognise the owner of the voice, either has a dreadful lisp or something in his mouth.

"Err..."

That voice you recognise and you are suddenly terrified. That creeping cold up your spine, the tip of a knife coming out through the skin of your chest, your attacker with her brain spilling out across the cobblestones, and an unreasonably large figure with a juggling club - it all comes back to you in a rush and you remember the reason that you're barely awake is that you bled out in the street. You open your eyes, slowly and painfully. They feel crusted shut, your eyeballs are dry, itchy and sore, and your view of the room is blurry almost to the point of blindness. Your mouth feels as though someone's sheared a dirty sheep and then stuffed the worst bits of the wool straight in there. You're breathing, though, that's always a plus, and you're lying on something soft and clean, that's another one.

Right in front of you is the back of someone's head. Their hair is wild and tangled, and he raises a hand to rub idly through the snarls as his shoulders hunch up around his ears. His hand is an even grey colour, the colour of London smog. The other figure is standing in a doorway, possibly just as tall as your new best friend but painfully thin, thinner than Dirk and without the muscle, although he's wearing similarly douchey shades on his grey face. You blink a few more times and your vision starts to clear. The man in the doorway is the same grey as your rescuer, lips pulled back in a very impressive sneer that you're not sure you could replicate if you tried, a set of double horns poking out through his limp hair.

"'Err' isn't enough in this situation, you pan-addled juggalo freak, explain what the hell that thing is doing in here."

He makes a short sharp gesture in your direction and blue and red sparks crackle around his fingers. All of your hair stands on end and your headache ratchets up a few notches as you smell thunder. He doesn't have anything stuck in his mouth, he's just got an awful lisp that combines with his strong Alternian accent and twists half of what he's saying up into something almost unintelligible. It might have something to do with the mouthful of wicked looking fangs he's sporting. A troll, your pain-drunk brain finally supplies, putting the pieces together. Your saviour in the street and whoever this new douchebag is, they're trolls. In London.

The one in the doorway raises his eyebrows and throws his hands in the air while he waits for an answer. Your friend on the floor hunches further in on himself until he looks almost small enough to be a regular person, tugging hard at the back of his own hair in obvious distress.

"I ain't..." he starts, and then he stops again, and then he swallows audibly a few times. "I ain't rightly sure why I gone and did what I did, Sol, but it sure is done now and can't go and be undone."

"You weren't even supposed to leave this block, you grubfisting moron, we're not supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves, why are you keeping a new pet human in a pile? Hang on." He turns sharply on his heel, gestures to someone out in the street.

"KK, we got a situation in here, can you come and deal with your clown, please?"

Two more figures appear behind the stranger in the doorway - Sol? The first one shoulders his way past and you get a good look at him before his face contorts in rage and he immediately storms back out again. He's a reasonable size, unlike the others, maybe half a head shorter than you, stocky, and bundled up in woolens like a zailor might wear but several sizes too big.

"KK," the tall, snide one says, calling out into the street with his voice strained and low, "I'm fucking serious, can you do something about your maniac moirail before he gets us all culled?"

The troll sat on the floor in front of you makes a whining noise low in his throat, high and upset, and Sol whips back around to look at him, the sparks flaring back to life and dancing between his fingers like he's the world's most festive lightning rod. You work your throat, manage one long, painful swallow, and then try to decide whether it's worth attempting to move. Eventually you decide that it's a worthy risk and try to move your arm and push yourself up, but all you manage to do is flop your arm off of your side and onto the floor. The big clown jumps a little at the motion and the skinny one narrows his eyes.

"For the love of the Sufferer, Makara, what did you do to it?"

The other stranger is a troll girl, maybe a little older than you, with a wild mop of black hair and lips painted a deep maroon colour. She peers at you through her eyelashes and you are deeply uncomfortable with the eye contact. As you watch her she starts to smile, lips spreading wide to expose very, very sharp teeth, and it just keeps getting wider until you're not sure how the top half of her head is staying on. You are no longer afraid of your new best clown friend because you're pretty sure nothing that he could do would be more offputting than this girl attempting to be friendly.

"Sollux," she says chidingly is a surprisingly soft voice, "do you think it might be worth minding your manners? We have a... houseguest." She hesitates before the words as though she's never used it before and she needs to taste it before she can say it. She tilts her head so that she's at the same angle at you and lets the smile drop a little.

"Hello," she says, and you want to say hello but you manage a pained grunt instead. "My name's Aradia, who are you?"

You're Dave Strider, the coolest motherfucker who's ever existed, the original badass, the second most feared swordsman in the whole of this damp cavern under the world, she should already know who you goddamn are, they should hand out little cards on arrival with your face and name on and a little warning that reads "This motherfucker will rock your goddamn world."

You manage a pained little "Uh..." and cringe internally. You would cringe externally, as well, but you can't. Her smile falls even further.

"Oh dear, it really is in rather a bad way."

The door has drifted closed while this foxy wench has been hassling you but the short one in the oversized jumper kicks it open from outside, face flushed red with anger as he glares at the clown sprawled on the floor.

"Listen up bulgemuncher," he starts, and ow, the boy is obnoxiously loud, "when we tell you to stay in the goddamn block we mean stay in the goddamn block. We don't need you losing your infamously sturdy grip on your shit and murdering some humans. And if that's something that you need to do can you at least finish the job properly and not drag them home again like my lusus tenderly leaving me dead things at the opening of my repuceracoon for me to accidently put my hand on when I'm just trying to wake the fuck up? Gamzee, I am not feeling up for this right now, can we be on the same page about this for once you nook chafing imbecile?"

"I didn't go and do this to him, brother, don't you get all up and worried about that," your clown friend on the floor says miserably, picking at his scraggly nails. You manage to flop your arm back onto the pile of fabric you're lying on and get the palm flat against the surface, but when you try to push yourself upright your head spins so badly that you flop the inch back down and close your eyes again.

At first you thought the strange smell in the room might have been you, coming back from the dead as you are, but you're changing your mind about that. It's strange, musty and sharp, and when your clown friend shifts you get a stronger sense of it. He's idly playing with his club, which is stained with something dark and sticky, rubbing his hands restlessly against the worn handle.

The other three look at him in surprise.

"Wait," tall, dark, and unpleasant says, his lip recurling from where it had briefly relaxed, "you didn't do this?"

Your clown friend shrugs his shoulders in a rolling motion that makes you sort of seasick to look at. You can see the sharp bones of his shoulders through his shirt, the dip of his clavicle, the sharp lines of his jaw. He's young, you suddenly realise, not much older than you. They all are.

Small and shouty puts down the bag he's holding on a table by the door, shoots an unhappy glance at tall and snarky, and then steps hesitantly over towards you as though he's scared of the clown. He lowers himself down and sits back on his heels at the other boy's side, then gently reaches out and cups the clown's cheek in his hand, rubbing a soothing line across his cheekbone with his thumb.

"Come on Gamz," he says, much more quietly than before, and the clown uncoils like it's what he was waiting for. More than anything you wish this was happening somewhere other than a foot away from your unresponsive face.

"I been sat here hearing them yell," the clown says, "out in the street, and I just had to go peep out through the window, see what mad motherfuckery was going on, and little brother back here was just lying on the ground, all up and trying to crawl away, and three on one ain't never been fair, but I was all up and going to close the curtain without interfering, like what you all said, but her knife was so... and it was spreading everywhere, out through all those little miracle stones, and couldn't go and see the white of his shirt even any more, not with all the... Not through all the... He was bleeding all that..."

His breathing has gone ragged with little hiccupy gasps and short and shouty's eyes have gone wide with horrified understanding.

"Red," supplies the girl, Aradia, her voice low and monotone, and short and shouty lets out a breath that sounds painful and then drops his head onto Gamzee's shoulder.

"Oh, Gamz, you idiot," he mumbles into the fabric of his shirt.

"Just kept thinking what if it was you, that was all," the clown says back, voice high and wild but muffled through shouty's unkempt hair.

They stay like that for a second, and when shouty finally sits up his eyes are suspiciously wet with pink-tinged tears.

"That's a real touching fucking story," the tall one snarls, "but it doesn't deal with the current problem which is that I don't want any human corpses stinking up my new hive, it's miserable enough as it is, and yet here we are."

You manage to get your palm flat on the surface you're lying on again and this time when you push you manage a little movement, use the momentum to force yourself upright, flop back against the conveniently placed wall that's behind you, and manage two wet, hacking coughs before wincing at the blinding pain in your chest. There's blood in your mouth now, but that's good, it means there's blood in your body.

All four of them stare at you and you slowly raise your right arm and throw the most sarcastic salute you can muster, which is limp and doesn't make it all the way to your head but you still think you've done pretty well.

"Hey," you croak out, and your mouth tastes absolutely atrocious.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, KK will you cull this thing and we can dump it in the river, make it someone else's problem."

"Why do I have to do it?"

"You're the only one who uses a bladekind, hook its head off with a sickle unless you want me doing some messy redecorating."

Now hold the fuck on, you want to say, don't these freaks know who you are? Except you know that they don't - actually, very few people do - and your throat seems to have swollen shut, you can barely move your tongue in your mouth.

"Perhaps," the girl interjects, "we should get it some water."

The two boys turn to stare at her in disbelief while the clown stares miserably at the floor.

"Aradia, don't pity the thing, it was dumb enough to get itself killed in the street, we're doing it a disservice by it not being properly dead already."

"I think maybe it might be a better idea," she replies, brushing the back of her hand against Sol's as she passes him by and kneels down beside you, "to make some... friends."

She does the weird pause thing again and having her face this close makes your stomach churn even though she isn't smiling any more. She's wearing practical clothing, loose enough to move in but not loose enough to snag on anything, a grey man's shirt and brown trousers, and there's what looks like a whip coiled into a strap on her belt. She reaches up and prods at your face, pulls a faintly disgusted expression, and then stands up and heads out of a door at the back of the room. When the door opens you can hear a low, thrumming buzz from the darkness outside that makes your brain itch.

"You want me to do it while she's outside?" short and shouty says, looking back over his shoulder. You blink and there's a sickle in his steady hand, he's turning back to look at you with an assessing eye, raising the weapon and tilting his head to one side. The clown pushes himself upright, stands unsteadily off to one side with his gaze averted as the sickle comes up to throat height.

"Oh, come on," you manage to force out, and you try and throw yourself to one side but you just sort of tumble back down into lying position.

"That's the most pathetic thing I've ever seen anything do," short and shouty says and then the sickle is wrenched out of his hands and clatters to the ground.

"I meant it, Karkat," Aradia says, flicking her whip to disentangle it from his sickle, which skitters off into the corner as he throws his hands up and sighs. She's holding a pitcher in her other hand and she comes and kneels down beside you again, waits for you to sit back up. You're a little bit concerned that if you swallow anything the raging nausea in your belly will make itself very known very quickly, but on the other hand you're desperately thirsty. You push yourself upright again, head spinning, take the pitcher in shaking hands. She has to help you hold it up, one of her clawed hands balancing it from underneath as you raise it to your mouth and sip. She watches you the entire time, face unreadable. Once the first few sips are down and the terrible dryness in your throat has eased you grab it with steadier hands and swallow down mouthfuls. It's gritty and sour but it's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted, you're going to write sonnets about this broad's pitcher of river water, you'll perform them in Veilgarden for crowds of adoring fans, make Aradia the troll's jugs the most sought after items in the whole of London... Wait, what?

Against your better judgement you snort with laughter, choke a little, desperately avoid making eye contact with her, and try to forget the last few lines of your incorrigible internal monologue. She frowns, reaches out to take the pitcher back, and you try to school your face back into something resembling its usual passive state. It's then that you realise that something's wrong - your glasses are gone. Probably broken to pieces in the street somewhere and there's nothing that you can do about that but the loss feels like a cramp in your gut, you suddenly can't look any of them in the eye, let alone Aradia.

"Well, delightful as it is to watch you pet some loser, AA, I'm exhausted and I'm going to sleep," tall and snarky says, and she watches him storm off to a corner and slump down in another pile of fabric, dragging the blanket up and over his head, with her lips pursed and a little line between her eyebrows.

"I'm with Sollux," short and shouty says, "Gamzee dragged it in and you're feeding it, I guess, that's your problem now."

He curls up, small and scowling, in a ratty old armchair by the door. There's a hole in the side of it, it looks like something lives in there, it looks like they pulled it out of a refuse heap.

Aradia sighs and disappears for a moment, leaving you temporarily bereft, but she's just refilling the pitcher and she places it down at your side, looks at you sidelong for a long time, and then goes and settles down next to Sollux. You can see her eyes glittering as she extinguishes the candle on the little table next to her, plunging the room into darkness. You stay sitting by the wall, and as your eyes get used to the darkness again you can still see her eyes, faintly reflective like a cat's, staring in your direction. A flash in the corner of your eye, you turn, and you can see Karkat watching you, too. You turn your head, search around in the darkness, catch a quick glimpse of long, twisting horns, but nothing else - apparently the clown is perfectly content to fall asleep with you there, even if the others aren't.

Eventually the eyes close and you finally feel like you can breathe again. The dreadful pain in your chest is making itself known again and you reach up to prod at the wounds underneath your shirt - the clown apparently felt the need to bandage you up, although he's done a sloppy job and the fabric feels rough and crusted with dirt instead of being clean bandages. You don't think that you're bleeding any more, at least, and after a while you feel almost strong enough to stand up. Almost has always been good enough in the past so you shove yourself to your feet, stand swaying for a few minutes with your palm against the wall to steady you, and then take a couple of tottering steps towards the doorway. You need something else to grab on to or you're going to fall again so you stagger to the doorway and fall forwards, freeze with horror when instead of hitting solid wall you hit something wooly and warm instead - short and shouty (Karkat, your brain supplies) - is standing there, in the darkness, and he delicately takes hold of your wrists and pushes you off of him where he's moved to block the door.

"Let me out," you whisper, and he reaches behind him and unlatches the door. The glim lights in the street cast everything a sickly blue-green, even shorter than you he's terrifying with his fangs sparkling and half his glowering face cast in shadow.

"Be my guest," he says, voice loud even in whisper form. When you glance back into the room all four of them are awake and watching you, tense and ready to spring. You swallow and step out into the night, grabbing onto the low garden wall running up the side of the house to steady yourself.

"What's your name?" Aradia calls out, voice rough - seems like at least she was actually sleeping, in the end.

You swallow, work moisture around your mouth. "Strider," you say, and she quirks her lips up in a half smile as Karkat's scowl deepens and he slams the door closed.

"Nice to meet you," you call out, and you think you hear her laugh before Karkat rumbles something and you turn into the street, avoid the puddle of your blood that's congealed on the ground, and start the long walk back home.

Chapter Text

You are not as tired as you expected when Ms. Lalonde finally demands that you all make you way back to bed - in fact you are still brimming with vigour! Rose, however, is starting to droop at all her edges and John has been yawning conspicuously for over an hour so you trudge upstairs after the others, pull off your clothes and drop them to the floor, and pull on your nightgown after a hasty wash. A sleepless night, you find, is often best assisted by either a book or a gun and you do not have a gun. You have a lot more sleepless nights than you think the average person does, this is mostly due to your annoyingly regular habit of nodding off during the day at odd and inconvenient times like when you are gardening and you wake up with compost in your hair or when your grandfather is training you in the use of firearms and you wake up cuddling your rifle. This stopped alarming him quite a while ago, he just carries on shooting while you doze.

Today, however, your wakefulness is not because of that. In fact, you were sleeping rather badly on the boat, getting rather more of those odd light-filled dreams than usual that left you sweating and aching strangely for hours afterwards. You should, by all rights, be thoroughly tuckered out, but what John said earlier about Rose being jumpy and Dave's conspicuous absence has left you fretful. You pull a book out of your trunk but struggle to parse the words and wind up staring listlessly out of the window into the dark. You braid and unbraid your hair several times before sighing, throwing your arms up, and stepping off of your bed and into your slippers then padding out into the hallway.

You are as quiet as humanly possible when opening and closing your door, nothing more than a faint click heralds your exit and you look up and down a few times before deciding that the known territory of downstairs is likely to be more fulfilling than creeping around up here. There is a strip of light coming from below one of the doors down the hall, but you do not know who the room belongs to so you do not investigate. No light comes from under John's door - you can hear him snoring very faintly through the thick wood - and Rose's is equally dark. Hers is also silent, it seems as though she is as subtle when asleep as she is when awake.

You tread quietly down the stairs, head for the dining room, intending to investigate those shelves of artifacts, but there is a light coming through the doorway and you freeze with your hand on the banister.

"You look a fright," says Rose's voice, very faintly, from somewhere further away - the kitchen, perhaps? You pad closer. The lights are on in the dining room and there is one glass sitting on the table, one chair slightly askew, as though someone has very recently moved. There is a line of lipstick on the brim of the glass that tells you that it was Rose.

"I look fine as hell like always, Lalonde," says a second voice and your breath catches in your throat.

"Dave-"

"Don't."

Dave's voice is strange, monotone, but there is a catch in it that sounds like pain. This is backed up when you hear a grunt and a long hiss of discomfort.

"Good lord, Dave, where did the bandages come from?"

"You would not believe me," he replies, and then he hisses again.

"They're filthy, it would have been better to leave it open."

"You just going to stand there staring or are you going to help?"

This time Rose hisses. They go silent. You should leave, wait for the morning, wait to see him when he is expecting you and is not, apparently, gruesomely injured and poorly bandaged. You have never been very good at waiting.

You push the kitchen door open.

They turn to look at you, Rose with an expression of naked surprise that flares quickly into irritation and is then thoroughly smothered into blank concern. Dave's face doesn't move at all. Like his brother, he is wiry and pale. Unlike his brother, he appears to have been put through a meat grinder.

You are not squeamish. You regularly go hunting with your grandfather, know how to skin and fillet all manner of animals. Dave, propped against a worktop with his shirt off, makes your stomach shiver slightly. He is filthy, covered in mud and blood and, you imagine, worse. There is a long strip of dirty fabric stuck to his side where blood has clotted and they haven't ripped it away yet. A long cut runs below his belly button, from hip to hip, bearing the telltale marks of torn stitches, and there is a wound that looks even worse below his clavicle, gaping and bleeding sluggishly down his chest.

"Jade," he says, flat voice gone hoarse, and he turns to grab for his shirt. You swallow down a lump of something hard and unpleasant, eyes gone wide - there is a matching wound halfway down his back. You know more about guns than about knives but it looks as though it goes straight through. That is, of course, impossible, you think. No-one could get stabbed like that and live.

You have always been rather fascinated by the concept of tomb-colonists, in a sort of detached, wondering way that came safe with the assumption that you would never meet one. That rug has just been pulled out from under you and you are left sitting on the floor of your mind with a sore behind being forced to re-evaluate some things. No-one dies in London, not really, you had been told. You had been told it, it did not necessarily follow that you believed it. No-one died, but occassionally someone grew so injured or so decrepit that they could not function in civilised society any more, and so they were stuffed on a boat with a one-way ticket to the tomb-colonies, dusty places filled with the half-dead, all bandaged over to keep them in one peice or to keep them from scaring anyone.

Dave has apparently been stabbed right through the chest and he is standing in the kitchen of this nice London home looking more embarassed than concerned, if you are reading the twist of his mouth correctly (you may not be). What on - or under - earth would it take to leave someone in such a state that they would be counted among the dead?

The shiver in your stomach has turned to nausea.

"Jade," he says again, and pulls his shirt on. Beneath the dirt there is a glimmer of old scars on his pale skin and you feel sicker. He is no older than you.

"Everything is fine," Rose says, "Jade, you should go back to bed."

You turn to look at her somewhat incredulously.

"That does not look very fine to me!" you say, planting your hands firmly on your hips. Indignation, it turns out, is extremely good at washing you clean of dawning horror. "Besides, I can help, I'm quite good at stitches."

Dave looks suddenly mortified. "No, it's okay, you don't need to-"

"Don't be ridiculous," you say firmly, and you stride over, turn on the big brass taps, and wash your hands. "You look like you could do with all the help you can get, honestly, no offense meant."

"I would have meant offense," Rose mutters to herself, eyeing you critically and then turning her hawk's gaze back on Dave. They look strikingly alike, you think, which is not something that showed very well in the pictures. They have never mentioned being related, but they could easily pass for it. The line of the nose is the same, the curve to their eyebrows.

Rose is pulling a towel out of a drawer and she shoos you out of the way to run it underneath the tap, then she douses it with alcohol and passes it to Dave who starts wiping the grime away from his own torso. He has divested himself of his shirt again but there is a very faint flush high on his cheeks that tells you that he isn't happy about it.

"Are you planning on explaining what happened?" Rose asks, voice sharp and angry, and Dave's mouth grows thinner and harder.

"Got jumped on my way to the docks by some scum is all, Rose, it's fine."

"What breed of scum?"

Dave sighs. "The kind with big knives."

"Dave!"

"I don't know, alright?"

You thread a needle out of Rose's well-stocked medical bag.

"No, it is not alright, if you are being targeted-"

Dave stinks like sweat and blood and worse. You put a steadying hand on his shoulder without flinching and he shoots you a look, all wide-eyed and unguarded. He usually wears sunglasses, like his brother, in every picture you have seen he has had them obscuring his face. You wonder what happened to them. Dave flicks his eyes - red, you never knew they were red - back to Rose.

"I don't... They were dockside muscle for hire."

"So you were being targeted?"

Rose watches your first stitch with assessing eyes and then nods slightly and turns her full attention back to Dave. His teeth have gritted with the pull and the pain but you keep your breathing steady and even and he breathes along with you. This is not the first time that someone has done this for him. Your jaw tightens.

"I don't know, they didn't say. I don't think they were a gang, but... I don't know what they wanted."

"No marks, tattoos, indications of uniform?"

"I'm not a moron, Rose."

"Debateable. How did you get away?"

His face is back to flat and unreadable but he swallows, flicks his gaze down to your hands against his chest.

"Being incredibly attractive and amazing, that's how."

Rose narrows her eyes. "Where's your sword?"

"Sacrificed for the cause," he answers without hesitation.

"Where are your glasses?"

He flinches. Rose smiles. It isn't a particularly nice smile.

"Alright, fine, I had some help. A little help. Very little."

"Stop the presses," Rose says silkily, "Strider admits he needed help. Who? I might send them a thank you gift. Some spiders, perhaps?"

"Ha ha," Dave says, sarcastic, and you tie off your tidy little line of stitches and move to the wound lower down. He shifts unconfortably. When you glance upwards he is very intently not looking at you. "You... really might not believe me."

Rose's eyebrows flick up and she crosses her arms, tilts her head back so that she is surveying him down her nose.

"They were trolls."

Rose's arms drop to her sides as you gasp and just about stop yourself from clapping your hands, mindful of the bloodied needle that you are holding.

"Don't be absurd," Rose says, sighing and raking a hand through her hair, "if I thought you were going to make fun of me I wouldn't have asked."

"I'm serious," Dave says, "trolls: angry, grey, horned trolls. Fangs and everything, the whole shebang."

"There are not any trolls in London," Rose says, and you clear your throat. They both look down at you.

"Actually a zee captain at the dock said that there was a troll ship here!" you say brightly, and they both blink at you in unison.

Rose shakes her head. "You must have misheard, Jade, trolls do not come here."

"They seemed pretty here to me," Dave says, and you shoot him a quick smile. Rose looks between the two of you, then shakes her head and turns smartly on her heel.

"It seems that you are in perfectly good hands, Dave, so I shall be going to bed. Goodnight."

She stalks out without waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, she doesn't believe us," Dave says flatly, and then he quirks up a corner of his mouth at you as you finish off your seconds set of stitches. "Don't mind her, she gets mean when she's worried."

"Oh, gosh darn it," you say, standing up straight and wiping your hands off on the antiseptic cloth, "I didn't actually introduce myself properly."

You stick your hand out to shake, grinning, and one of his eyebrows shoots up marginally.

"You are exactly as weird as I expected, Harley," he says, gripping your hand and giving it a firm pump up and down. His fingers are cold and you suppress a shiver.

"And you are... significantly bloodier than I expected, Mr. Strider," you say, and immediately regret it as he turns red again. "Sorry, I-"

"No, this isn't how I..."

"I'm sorry, you must have had a terrible day-"

"You don't need to apologise!" he interrupts, waving a hand in front of him as though he is swatting away flies. "I'm sorry, I'm the one who's sorry, I missed you arriving."

You gape. "You've been stabbed, I think that counts as mitigating circumstances."

"Nah, happens all the time," he says with a shrug, and your horror must show on your face because he starts stammering like he is trying to find a way to retract the statement.

"Turn around," you say decisively, "so I can do the other one."

He salutes lazily. "Yes, ma'am."

He turns and you wipe the muck off of his back for him. He flinches every time you touch him and is pretending that he doesn't. The sick feeling in your stomach is turning into something hard and cold. There is already a long, jagged scar running over one shoulder blade, now it will have a friend a few inches away. You rethread your needle.

"So, trolls?" you say, and some of the tension leeches away.

"Yeah," he says, and beneath the monotone there is relief, "saved my bacon, although I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone, Harley, I am a guy who has a reputation to maintain and getting rescued from some muscular grunts by a weird clown is not something I need spreading around."

"Duly noted, Mr. Strider," you say, and you can't stop yourself from smiling, "I will tell anyone who asks that you got yourself out of your nasty scrape with your mad skills."

His shoulder is warming up under your hand. "Your chivalrous willingness to lie for a gent in need is noted, Harley... Miss Harley."

"I prefer Ms."

"Apologies, Ms. Harley."

"I've read about trolls," you say, "although there isn't much information to go round. They say they're violent cannibals, that they eat their young and paint with their innards."

Dave snorts. "I mean, maybe, I guess? That sounds like something the home office would say. They mainly just seemed kind of grumpy."

"And that they're hermaphroditic insects with a physical caste system that manifests primarily in the colour of their blood."

Dave shoots you a baffled look over his shoulder. "Where are you getting this from? They were just, like... grey, toothy humans."

You try not to be disappointed. It is not that you came to London on a monster hunt it is just that you were rather hoping to find some monsters on the way.

"I am starting to suspect that children's literature is not a valuable source of information," you say, and Dave laughs for real this time.

"There were three guys and a girl. I'm not going to lie, they did all seem sort of murdery."

"Did they say what they were doing in London?"

You finish your final set of stitches and survey your handiwork. It is not bad, the wounds shouldn't scar too much, not like some of the other gruesome war wounds he's sporting. You bite your lip to stop yourself from asking him where they have come from. In your letters he mentioned training with his brother, swordplay and fighting with short knives, but he never mentioned actually fighting other people, he never mentioned getting seriously hurt. Of course, your definition of seriously hurt and Dave's definition are probably not in alignment.

"No, they just yelled at each other and then glared at me until I got up and left."

He tugs his shirt back on and you wince, eyeing up the questionable stains it is covered with, but he seems to barely mind.

"I, er..." he starts, then he fiddles with the edge of his shirt and stares down at the glossy tiles of the floor. "It's really nice to meet you, Harley... Jade. I..."

You smile, wide and bright. "Yeah," you say, and you stand and stare at each other like idiots for a few moments too long. Your face heats up to match his.

"This is ridiculous," you say, and then you throw your arms around his shoulders, mindful of his wounds. He staggers, gulps, then pats you awkwardly on the back before managing to hug you back properly.

"Oh, John will be so glad to see that you're okay," you say into his shoulder, ignoring the stale sweat smell rolling off of him. It isn't such a bad trade to make, hugging one of your best friends in exchange for a little olfactory discomfort. "He was so worried when you weren't here."

Dave takes in a shaky breath and lets out a weak little laugh into your hair. When you pull back he is poker-faced but puce and you grin at him.

"We should get some sleep," he says, "I'm sorry you got woken up."

You wave his apology away. "I was still awake," you say, watching him pack away the medical kit and tuck it neatly into a cupboard. He looks at you sharply.

"You want a different room? Some of the beds are kind of lumpy, I know-"

"No, the room is fine," you assure him, "I just... sometimes I just can't sleep, is all."

He nods and then holds and arm out for you.

"Well then, Ms. Harley, may I escort you back upstairs?"

You grin again and loop your arm through his. "Mr Strider, I would be honoured."

Chapter Text

The morning dawns, as it always does, grim and dark. You awaken very suddenly from a confusing mess of dreams, fleeting images of castles and chess pieces and something that you think might be the sun still flashing behind your eyelids, and rub the palms of your hands into your eye sockets until you can see flickering like false stars instead. Last night had been something of a chore, as it always is with Dave. You love him dearly, of course, you've lived together for a long as you can remember, since your mother took him as a ward, but it doesn't make his dreadful mannerisms or his perpetual ability to get himself into grave danger any more tolerable.

You swing your feet out from beneath your blankets and hiss at the cold of the floor, bundling your covers around your shoulders as you head for the wardrobe. Something light, you think, squinting towards the sliver of dim light leaking in from between your curtains. It has that grey, foggish quality that suggests it will be humid today. The black, you think, and the purple. Bare arms and chiffon skirts will suit. You drop your nightclothes onto the floor, leave the blankets in a heap at the end of the bed, and dress quickly. When you've managed to wrangle your hair into some semblance of order you wash your face and apply your make-up, the same rouge, kohl, and lipstick that you've been wearing every day since you were eleven.

The house is silent. You swing open your curtains and glare down at the city beyond, then turn on your heel and march out into the corridor. You make no effort not to kick a cat, but there are none there that you can see. Which, of course, does not mean that there are none there. Every other doorway in the hall is tight closed and you head for the staircase. Your shoes are silent on the plush carpet as you head into the dining room, then further into the kitchen, where you take Dirk by surprise.

He is leaning against one of the worktops, shoving slices of pale apple into his mouth, with his glasses pushed up into his hairline. He spots you, flat, dead eyes going expressionless for a moment, before you blink and his glasses are back on his face.

"Rosie," he says by way of greeting, and you sniff at him and head for the kettle, filling it from the tap and placing it on the stove, which is still hot. The clay man does a decent job of keeping the house running.

"How was your evening?" Dirk continues, and you tense as you stare at the shining brass of the kettle.

"Pleasant," you say shortly, listening to the crunch of fruit and watching his reflection in the kettle, the hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention.

"Thought I heard a commotion," he says, and you lift a shoulder.

"I woulnd't know anything about that," you say, keeping your voice as imperious as possible. He 'hmm's thoughtfully and hooks the step stool with one ankle, pulling it towards himself and then sitting down. You eye his reflection, regretting your decision to come downstairs.

"Figured it might have been Dave."

Your eyebrows rise and you turn involuntarily to survey him. "I didn't think you were capable of caring."

He sits a little straighter on the stool and presses one hand to his chest.

"Rose, you wound me!" The effect is ruined somewhat by the fact that he is smirking. "I would have been horribly upset if he hadn't made it back. Would have made a mockery of all that training."

You continue to stare at him, eyes very wide, as a suspicion takes root in your mind and refuses to let go. You close your mouth, straighten your shoulders, and conspicously turn back to the kettle. He is a psychopath. Give him no ammunition.

"It sounds as though you know where he was," you say, because you incapable of not picking at wounds, and you watch as his reflection shifts forwards, leans its elbows on its knees, and grins right back at you.

"Course I did, Rosie. I always know."

His teeth are very white, and his smile is unusually sharp.

"It seems rather unsporting that you wouldn't go and help him, then," you test.

"Why would I ever do that? He has to learn how to get out of these scrapes on his own."

"They were dockside muscle for hire" plays through your brain again, Dave's voice taught and rough with pain, and you clench your hands in front of you.

"You hired them," you say, voice very certain, and try not to let it shake. In front of you, the kettle begins to whistle, and you carefully remove it from the heat, place it on the wooden block by the cooker. He doesn't reply, and with the kettle moved you can't see his reflection any more so you force yourself to turn around again, one hand on the worktop for balance.

He is still sitting on the step stool, one leg stretched out in front of him, his chin resting in his palm as he surverys you. He looks sort of proud, and you feel slightly sick.

"You're a monster," you say, shaking your head, and then he is very close to your face.

"I'm doing what's best for him," he says, and you flinch backwards. Your hip hits the worktop and you grab behind you for something, anything. From this close you can see his eyes through his glasses. They are cold, and cruel. His jaw is tensed, lips thinned, as he looks you up and down. This is not the first time that you have been afraid of him. Your hand hits the hot kettle and you wince, then grab the handle and swing it wildly in front of you, splashing hot water out across the floor. He vanishes, leaving you breathing heavily alone in the kitchen, the kettle a heavy weight in your hand.

Your mother swans in, perfectly put together, and eyes you and the wet floor.

"What happened in here?"

You clench your teeth, stare at her, try to will away the burning in your eyes as adrenaline fades.

"Rose, what's wrong?"

She's coming towards you with her arms outstretched, and you can't bear the thought of one of her too-tight, too-perfumed hugs, so you step sharply out of the way and put the kettle down, too hard, on the worktop. Slowly, her hands drop back to her sides as she blinks at you.

"Dirk hired thugs to attack Dave," you say, as firmly and as simply as you are able, and she stares at you with her mouth open for a moment, before she laughs, bright and tinkling.

"Oh, darling, that's a little dark for one of your jokes, don't you think?"

You hiss your breath out through your teeth, stare at her baffled face, and try to will her to believe you.

"I am not joking, mother. He hired a gang of thugs to attack Dave. That is why he wasn't present at the docks or at dinner last night, he was fighting off mercenaries."

"That's enough," your mother says, and you close your eyes, wondering why you even bothered trying to tell her. "I'll have no more of this, Rose."

"Why will you never hear anything against him?"

Your mother reaches up and fixes her hair, then pushes past you over to the pantry.

"Where is that clay man? We need some decent breakfast cooked up for our guests."

You stare at her back. "Mother!"

She whips around, brandishing a jar of pickled eggs. "Stop this now, Rose."

"He's insane, and you let him live in our home."

"Dirk is my oldest friend," she snaps, face contorting, "and he's Dave's family. He loves him. Why are you saying such terrible things?"

"Because they are true!" You just barely resist the urge to stamp your foot like a petulant child. You smooth down your skirt, taking deep breaths, and look down at a spot on the floor. She huffs and turns away from you again, shaking her head, and something small and malnourished inside of you wilts a little more. Your mother's heels on the kitchen floor sound like war drums, and you whirl and almost run for the stairs, bump hard into someone warm and solid in the dining room doorway, and step back a little.

Dark hair, dark skin, goofy grin - it's John. He stammers something at you but you grab his wrist and drag him back up the stairs, bang hard on Jade's door, then Daves.

"Rose, what on earth-"

"We're going out for breakfast," you say primly, still gripping his wrist. You can feel the points of his bones through the skin and the fast flicker of his pulse against your fingertips.

Dave emerges, breathing heavily, and then throws the sword in his hand behind him back into his room when he sees you and John, like he's hoping that you didn't notice. He's already dressed but at least it's in clean clothes, this time, and he's clearly had a good scrub. The circles under his eyes are indigo blue, but he seems awake enough. John gasps a little behind you and then flings himself at Dave, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and lifting him off his feet, which makes you wince and Dave's face pale even further with pain. John doesn't seem to notice, holds Dave out at arms' length to get a good look at him.

"Good grief," he says, and he pats Dave on the shoulders, "look at you, real and in the flesh!"

Dave, whose smile is somewhat strained, pats the back of his hand and carefully steps out of his grasp.

"Egbert," he says, voice careful and controlled, and Jade peers out of her room and spots the rest of you, before making a small 'Oh!' sound and vanishing back into her room.

"Where were you last night? We missed you, man. I have to say, bit of offence taken that you weren't there to meet us."

Dave catches your gaze over his shoulder, and then forces a small, fake smile. "Sorry, man, I had business to attend to. You know how it is, life of a Strider's a busy one."

John laughs and moves to pick him up again but Dave manages to dodge out of the way, nearly getting smacked in the face by Jade opening her door and reappearing, still adjusting her dress.

"Thought we could go out for breakfast," you say, and you're already pulling John back towards the stairs before anyone else can offer an opinion.

"Slow down, Rose," Jade calls, ducking back into her room and reappearing wearing a wide-brimmed hat as Dave pads down the stairs behind you. You grab your purse from the coat rack beside the door and sling it over your shoulder, almost smacking John in the face.

"You kids need a ride?"

You freeze, one hand on the door latch, and then turn to survey Dirk frostily over your shoulder.

"We are perfectly fine, Mr. Strider," you say, "I'm sure the air will do us some good."

He smiles at you, and you turn back and finish unlocking the door, trying to quell the tremor in your hands. You can feel his eyes on your back, and you despise both him and knowing that there is nothing to do that will stop him.

You were correct, the air outside bears all the markers of the beginning of a humid day, and you stroll out into the street. John once again looks as though he regrets not wearing a coat, and Jade pulls hers a little tighter around herself, and you make yourself smile wickedly at them before looping an arm through one of theirs each, setting off at a fine clip. Dave trails behind, but you're not certain he isn't grateful. If he's lifted off the ground too many time his stitches are going to tear.

"I thought the Only Way Café, Dave, what do you think?" you call back over your shoulder, and when you turn to look at him he just shrugs, hands loose at his side. He is wearing a jacket, and he is favouring one side slightly in the way that tells you he's carrying a blade underneath it. You tighten your lips again, and wonder whether or not you should tell him. It is, you think, very possible that he already knows.

The twisting, stunted shapes of trees line the boulevard ahead of you as you head with your friends down the hill through swirling fog. As you reach the end of the street and turn towards Daughtry's Passage. You can meet your mother and Jade's peculiar grandfather at the University when you are finished, which hopefully will take a good and long time.

The Only Way Café is one of your favourite haunts, mainly because it always seems to be open whenever you have need of it, but also because it attracts a rather less offensive class of poet than other establishments in the area. There is a still a great deal of sighing and staring folornly into cold cups of coffee, but at least most of them have the decency to do it almost silently. The townhouses stretching either side of you give way to smaller shops and offices, one printing press, and then Veilgarden proper, the taverns and smaller eateries taking up the centre of the district, topped with flats for rent.

It is still early, so the streets are relatively quiet. Above you the gas lamps flicker, warm and yellow, obscuring the light from the false stars in the cavern ceiling, and from somewhere a faint breeze runs past to play with your skirts. The Only Way is tucked down a narrow side-street between two red brick terraces, the door and windowframes painted a cheerful, glossy blue. On either side of the doorway a vibrant fungal basket hangs, long fronds of lions mane hanging down over the sides. You gently extract your arms fro, Jade and John and reach out to push open the door. To your satisfaction it swings open, the little bell tinkling to announce your presence.

"Miss Rose!"

You are the first patron, and Pollyanna comes bustling over, adjusting her little frilled hat. She is a few years younger than you but is taller, all lanky limbs sticking out of her heavily starched sleeves, a few inches of bony ankle on view.

"What a please, miss. And Mr. Strider, and you've brought companions."

Her gaze lingers on Jade and John's sun-flushed faces for a moment too long, and you watch as she bites her lip. She gestures to her left, stepping back out of the doorway.

"Come and sit beside the window, best seat in the house."

"Thank you, Pollyanna. These are our friends, Mr. Egbert and Ms. Harley, come to pay a visit from the surface."

"How wonderful," she says, beaming and pulling out a chair, first for Jade, and then for you.

"We'll have breakfast, if that suits," you say, sitting down and rearranging your skirts, "and a pot of tea."

"Of course, right away," she says, and you smile as she leaves.

"She seems nice," Jade says, before glancing at John who is staring at the faded damask wallpaper. For the first time you realise that it is starting to peel away near the ceiling, and that there is a moisture stain seeping across as well. You grit your teeth at it. The room isn't very large, it's enough to seat perhaps twenty people.

"This is one of my favourites," you say, "although I'm sure we'll all wind up in the tourist traps sometime soon."

You laugh. It is high and fake, and Dave has already quirked an eyebrow at you at the use of "tourist traps".

"Rose, are you..." John starts, and then he tilts his head to one side to get a better look at you, blue eyes very bright. "Are you alright?"

You laugh again. "Of course I am, why would I not be?"

Jade taps her short, neat nails against the painted wood of the table. "You seem a little anxious."

Not for the first time you wish you had your mother's ability to drink hard liquor for breakfast. You swallow, keeping your expression firmly neutral and looking blandly across at John and Jade.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you excited to head to the University later?"

John and Jade look at each other, and both of them nod.

"No," they say in unison, staring at you, and then Jade rests her hands on the table.

"We know that something is wrong. You've been strange since we arrived."

"Rose," John says, "are you afraid of something?"

Pollyanna reappears holding a tray with a large teapot, a jug of milk, a small dish of sugar, and four cups, and balances it skillfully on her hip while she doles all of it out onto the table. You smile stiffly until she leaves.

"Because if you are," Jade says, "we can help."

You begin to pour the tea and add two spoonfuls of sugar to your own, leaving it black before sipping it, carefully so as to not burn yourself. When you put it back down it clatters on the saucer, and you force yourself to still your hands. Dave has been silent throughout, looking between Jade and John in what might be confusion, but it is difficult to tell because his expression is as neutral as yours.

"It's nothing," you say, and Jade sighs. She looks as though she is going to keep pressing, so you amend your answer. "You can't help."

Her face softens and she reaches out over the table to wrap your pale fingers in her own, which are much warmer.

"We can try," she says, at the same time as John says: "Of course we can!"

You suddenly feel much warmer, filled with affection for your friends, and you purse your lips to stop yourself from crying again.

Dave has already downed his drink. He must still be dehydrated, you think, from all the blood loss. You grit your teeth against the unfairness of it.

"Let's talk about something else," you say, and the pleading note in your voice finally forces a change in topic, Jade sitting back in her chair looking defeated.

"Of course," she says, and you smile weakly.

"We can have a wander around after breakfast, if you want, see some of the sights. We're not that far from Benthic, it shouldn't take us too long to get there. I'm sure all that paperwork your grandfather's going to have to do is going to take up most of the morning, anyway, if not more."

"I'm sure! It took us a great deal of time to gather all those rumours up on the surface, I do hope at least some of them turn out to be true."

"I'm certain they will. There's all sorts hiding in the Forgotten Quarter. Also, Dave, your brother hired those thugs to attack you yesterday."

It falls out of your mouth before you can stop it, and you click your mouth closed and fold your hands primly on the table as Jade and John both turn to gape at you. Behind you the door to the kitchen swings open and Pollyanna appears with another tray, this one heaped with eggs, bacon, and buttered toast. She lays these down in front of you and hesitates at the atmosphere, her gaze flickering to your face nervously, before she dips a little curtsey and disappears back into the kitchen.

"Breakfast, anyone?" you ask, reaching for the salt and salting your eggs.

"Figures," Dave mumbles, taking another swig of tea like he's hoping it'll have turned to something stronger. His mouth has twisted bitterly, and he leans forwards and takes some toast before piling bacon onto his place.

"Excuse me, what?" Jade asks, her voice very loud and very shrill. Her eyes are wide, flickering between the two of you as though she can't decide who to interrogate first.

"It's not the first time," Dave says, shoving a forkful of food into his mouth and chewing slowly, and you sit a little straighter in your chair. You hadn't known that.

"What are we talking about?" John asks, and you remember that he wasn't present last night.

"Last night," Jade says, before you can reply, "Dave came in very badly injured. You're saying your brother arranged that?"

Dave shrugs one shoulder. "He likes to do stuff like that. Says it makes me stronger." His hands are clenched very tightly on his knife and fork, his eyes fixed firmly on his plate. You know he wishes that he was still wearing his glasses.

"Stronger for what?" Jade asks, as though that is the important thing, and he just shrugs again.

"Who knows, man's an eternal mystery. It doesn't matter, anyway, it all came out alright in the end."

Jade swells in her chair, eyes gone comically wide. "I would not say that it turned out alright," she spits out, and Dave flinches back in his chair a little. She deflates immediately, looking a little regretful.

"We should tell my dad," John says, frowning over at Dave, "that's mad. I always thought your brother was cool."

"He is," Dave says reflexively, pushing a piece of egg white around his plate with his knife.

"He's insane," you correct, and Dave's face twitches in irritation.

"Well, what else does he do?" Jade asks, and you open your mouth.

"Can we fucking not?" Dave snaps across the table, spearing the piece of egg and jamming it into his mouth, glaring at the teapot. You lapse into silence.

Chapter Text

You are still horribly off-kilter after Rose's reveal at breakfast, so you let Jade and Rose drag you limply towards the University with minimal complaints even though you are still cold and Dave is lagging behind. Every now and then you turn to look, to check that he's still there, and every time he deftly avoids your eyes as though it's something he's very practised at. There is a cold, hard lump in the pit of your stomach the size of your fist. How could your best bro be living like this, and you have no idea? How is he walking along with his hands by his sides pretending that nothing's bothering him?

There is a white bird perched on a wrought iron fence. It watches you with its black eyes as you walk past, and takes you by surprise by opening its beak and singing a few warbling notes in a surprisingly sweet voice. You'd thought that it was a mutated crow. Rose's hand on your arm is very cold.

The streets leading up to the University are broad and lined with trees, twisted and sickly looking but undeniably still alive. A flock of bats peers at you as you pass below one of the largest ones, a dark morass of glittering eyes and teeth barely illuminated by the street lights. You try to imagine living with someone who injures you on purpose, who drops you into dangerous situations and leaves you there. You can't do it. You are suddenly, horrible reminded of all the times that you have complained to Dave about how your father is such a bore, the fuss you've made over being given too much cake, and you cringe back into yourself, then glance back again to check that he is still following. He is. His jacket has fallen open as he walks and you can see the hilt of something strapped to his side. He notices you looking and pulls his jacket closed, and you ball your hands into fists at your sides.

How could he never have told you? How could Rose never have told you? You would have done something! Then there's Ms. Lalonde... Surely she must know. If Dave's getting hurt on the regular, if Rose is visibly frightened enough that even you noticed, there's no way that she can't know. Rose has never given the impression that her mother doesn't care about them. If anything, she's accused her of being too overbearing, too elaborate in her displays of affection.

"Miss Lalonde," an individual in a glossy top hat and full-length skirt says, doffing their hat to Rose.

"Professor," she says, dipping her own head forward but carrying on pulling John along at the same rate. "Fine day to you," she calls over her shoulder, leaving the stranger looking a little perplexed in the street, before they raise their eyebrows and carry onwards.

A hansom carriage clatters past, fine dark horses prancing past you and splattering gunk up onto the raised pavement. You watch it go, sort of numbly. The buildings are growing more elaborate, and suddenly you can see the University itself up ahead, a grand building with a delicate white facade. Scholars of all varieties are swilling around the grounds, young men in gowns carrying papers, women in practical clothing. You pass a young woman with her hair in an elborate updo, and you flinch when she meets your eyes. Hers are yellow and slitted, and she smirks at you before striding past, a bundle of papers rolled beneath her arm. They are smoking faintly.

Rose marches you straight towards Benthic College. There is a motto in Latin suspended over the gateway arch - "Omnes adsint, quamvis dementi, quamvis nefasti" - and you raise your eyebrows at Jade when you read it but she just shakes her head at you.

The pathways are well-tended and the trees here look a little healthier than the ones on the streets, but there is a faint smell of rotten eggs lingering over the entire place that makes you wrinkle your nose. There is a fascinating mixture of people here: older professors with greying hair and strange affectations, a mixture of students who look like they come from all walks of life. A window in a building up ahead of you explodes outwards, scattering glass across the grass and expelling foul-smelling black smoke. A young woman leans out of the window, coughing and sputtering, then raises a hand.

"Sorry, sorry!" she calls, and then she vanishes back inside the room as the smoke begins to clear. A single, singed bat flies drunkenly out of the broken window.

Rose drags you towards the main entrance of Benthic College, strides through the door as though she owns the place, and navigates you through the corridors as though she has been here a million times before. Her mother works here, you suppose, it's not that strange. The walls are walnut-panelled, the floor glossy but marred by the occasional mysterious stain.

"Wait, where are we going?" Dave asks from behind you, looking down a corridor that you haven't taken, "Roxy's office is down there."

Rose rolls her eyes at him. "She'll be in Cryptospelunking with Mr. English," she says, and Dave just sighs and stuffs his hands into his pockets. He looks much less at ease here than she does, hunched over a little smaller in himself in the high-ceilinged hallway.

Rose drags you down a few more corridors, most of which are unpleasantly scented, and then knocks on a door with a bronze nameplate reading "Professor Benjamin Horgan", and the door is pulled open after a moment by an ebullient man in a rich purple waistcoat. He is very round-faced, his cheeks very ruddy.

"Ahh, the Perspicacious Psychoanalyst," he says, loudly and confusingly, and Rose smiles and dips her head.

"Hello, professor. Is my mother and her companion with you?"

"Indeed they are, young lady, come in."

He steps back and Rose swans gracefully through the doorway. Beyond is a smaller room than you were expecting, it's going to be cramped by the time you've all crammed in. Ms. Lalonde is standing beside a broad, dark wood desk, one hip at a jaunty angle as she leans against the edge. Jake is sitting in a large chair, and he is smoking his pipe. You wrinkle your nose and then step inside anyway, wondering if the Professor will be offended if you open a window. Or just smash one, since apparently that's a thing that you can do here.

"Hello, darling," Ms. Lalonde says, reaching out a hand and pulling Rose towards her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. Rose stays stiff and unresponsive, steps away as soon as she is able.

Beside you Jade has begun to vibrate, and you follow her gaze to the shelves along the wall and their contents. Most of them look like bits of rock, but she is visibly fascinated and takes a step forwards, holding her hands very carefully by her sides. You suspect that she desperately wants to grab things and start turning them about in her hands. Possibly she also wants to start stuffing her pockets.

"As I was saying," the Professor says, lowering himself down into the great armchair behind the desk with a groan, "most of the groundwork's been put in place, and the dear Tipsy Thaumaturge here has already arranged a crew for you. I know you want to make it to the palace, but I'll be honest with you, dear fellow, you don't stand a chance, not in a three week timeframe. The place is a dreadful maze, and maps are as treacherous there as they are on the zee. Even if you make it the place has been gutted by looters and the lot who survived when London fell, of course. I've got a few other leads for you, though, bless the rumour mill."

Ms. Lalonde's face twitches a little, before she raises a glass that you hadn't noticed that she was holding to her painted lips and sips at the dark brown liquid. Rose follows the path of the glass with her eyes narrowed, and then turns away and joins Jade at the shelves. You shuffle to stand awkwardly next to Dave, who looks like he doesn't know what to do with himself either.

"Do you know what's happening?" you whisper to him, and he smirks before forcing his expression back into neutral.

"Roxy's got it all arranged, is what's happening," he mutters out of the side of his mouth, "as per usual. Don't know what all the fuss is about. Wander around the Forgotten Quarter for a few weeks, find some treasures no-one else has already run off with, don't die. Doesn't seem that complicated."

Rose makes a quiet noise and he stops talking, shoots her a look as she raises her eyebrows at him. She is standing very still and very composed, with her hands folded delicately together in front of her.

"Found you some agreeable enough fellows to go along with you," Professor Horgan continues, "familiar with the Quarter, good enough for hired muscle and security, and they've got a decent reputation for seeing jobs through to the end. Call themselves the Felt, led by a gentleman named, ah, Crowbar."

Jade is shuffling slowly towards the shelves. She's made it a good foot and a half without you noticing.

Jake is ruffling through a folder of papers, still puffing on his pipe, and nodding to himself. "Well, I have to say, old chap, this is all absolutely marvellous. Bang up job you've done getting this sorted for us." He pulls out a map of what you recognise as London, the twisting curves of the Stolen River visible in the crease of the paper, and folds it over to stare intently at a large brown section labelled "Forgotten Quarter". Vast sections of it are blurred out or blank.

"Smashing! What an adventure, eh, Jade?" he asks, turning in his chair, and Jade guiltily puts down the palm-sized statuette she's been examining and smiles brightly, nods.

"Absolutely!"

Professor Horgan slaps the leather-topped table with a podgy hand and grins, leans back in his chair with a creak. "If you want better information than that you'd have to head to the Khanate, and good look to you if you try it. Now, sir, and young madam, my door's always open to you if you have any questions. And it wasn't part of the deal, but if you do find anything delightful please feel free to bring it back here and let me have a look at it."

"Of course, dear sir," Jake says, carefully putting the papers back into the packet and tucking it under his arm, standing up and reaching out to shake Professor Horgan's hand. "No doubt we'll be back, no doubt about it. Now then, Roxy, I believe you offered to walk us through the library?"

Roxy smiles and puts down her glass, opens her mouth to speak, but Jade interrupts before she can say anything.

"Actually, grandfather, we were hoping we might get a chance to explore on our own? Rose knows her way around, I'm sure we'll be alright."

Roxy's face has fallen slightly. Jade elbows you in the side as her grandfather looks at you and you do your best to nod hopefully. This is news to you.

He laughs and pats Roxy's elbow. "Well, you made it here on your own, I don't see what harm could come of it."

Rose is smiling impassively at her mother. who is staring equally neutrally back at her.

"Thank you, grandfather," Jade says quickly, and she grabs you and Dave by your wrists and drags you out of the office back into the corridor. The door swings closed behind you and then opens again to admit Rose, who gestures down the hallway the opposite way to the way you came.

"This way," she says, and takes the lead as you and Dave are dragged behind Jade. Eventually you reach a narrower side corridor and Rose dips into it, then turns to look at Jade.

"What's going on?" she asks. "I thought you were desperately excited to delve into the library." She's smirking a little, but it drops as she looks a little longer at Jade's face.

Jade stands a little straighter. She drops your wrist but she keeps hold of Dave's, turns to look at the two of them.

"Come back with us," she says, like it's a question. "Both of you, if you want, but..." she trails off and looks at Dave, who seems to have turned to stone in front of her. He doesn't even seem to be breathing. "You can stay with grandfather and I, we can tell him what's been happening. He's a bit of an idiot sometimes, but he'd never stand for it, Dave, not what's being done to you."

"We can't," Rose whispers, and her eyes are fixed on Dave's still, emotionless face.

"Don't be absurd, of course you can. We have a huge, empty mansion and we can certainly afford tickets for you. We can smuggle you onto the boat if we have to, what are they going to do about it once we've set off?" Jade's eyes are glittering in the lamplight, huge and hopeful.

"No, Jade," Rose's voice has gone thick with something that makes your chest hurt, "we can't."

"Why on earth not? You can't live like this." She gestures vaguely to Dave, and you're left wondering exactly how bad his injuries had been.

"Because I've died," Dave says, voice stiff and flat. His jaw is flexing, his eyes are cold and staring somewhere over Jade's left shoulder, out a window onto the dark green beyond.

"What?" Jade asks, and you start to silently pray that he won't answer. He doesn't. Rose does.

"If you're killed," she says, her voice still a whisper, "down here, if you're killed... Even if you come back, that's it. You can't set foot on the surface, not ever. Or..." She trails off. You don't really need her to continue.

"And I've taken a lot of trips on the slow boat. You could go," Dave says to Rose, voice hoarse, and she scoffs.

"Don't be stupid."

"The slow boat?" Jade asks, eyebrows tilted downwards, and Dave's face flickers before he shrugs.

"It's just an expression," he says, but he doesn't look her in the eye.

Jade visibly wilts, like one of her plants that's been left in the dark for too long, and she lets her hand drop away from Dave's wrist. They stand there stiffly, staring at each other.

"We'll stay then," you say, seeing as it's the next logical option.

All three of them turn and blink at you.

"I'll tell my father, we'll find a place down here, and you can come and live with us. If dad knew about this he'd go absolutely mad, your brother wouldn't stand a chance."

Dave opens his mouth to reply, his stoicism falling away into grim humour, and you shake your head at him.

"I'm not joking, I don't care how scary he is, my dad'd find a way to get rid of him."

Dave's gone pink on his cheekbones and he's very intently not looking at any of you.

"Well, this has been a real treat," he forces out in a fast mumble after a few silent seconds, "just top-of-the-notch brohood, I am warmed all the way to my core. The handsome tectonic plates of my irresistible face are shifting, cool and collected, over the gooshy hot innards of all my incomparable feelings. You're all making a huge deal over nothing. It's fine. Everything's fine. Better than fine. Cool as the freezing, crushing depths of the deep green sea."

"Dave..." Jade says, and he flinches backwards away from the three of you, takes one stumbling step into the main corridor and then vanishes. You try to follow him, but you can see neither hide nor hair of him in either direction.

"We won't catch up to him," Rose says, her voice quiet and resigned, then she looks between the two of you. Her eyebrows are scrunched together over her eyes, which are frighteningly wet. "Would you... would you really do that?"

"Of course," Jade says, and you nod along.

"Wouldn't hesitate," you say, and then you huff as Rose flings herself at you and wraps her arms around your neck, dragging Jade in close against you and pushing all the breath out of your body. When she pulls away again she is sniffling slightly but otherwise completely composed, and she loops one arm through yours and the other through Jade's and steers you away down the corridor.

"Come on, let's get to the library. You can't... If you push him too hard he pushes back." She's quiet for a moment. "Dirk's the only family he's got. He's a maniac, but he's still Dave's big brother."

"He belongs in prison," you say, and she nods.

"Yes, he does."

Your steps falter. You hadn't expected her to agree with you.

"I don't know the half of what he gets up to, but I do know that most of it is neither legal nor moral. But you can't... You can't just stop loving somebody, even if they deserve it. Even if you want to."

You all fall silent as a tall woman with Oriental features wearing workman's clothes and an elaborate, mushroom-covered hat nears you, peering at you inquisitively. She passes by you without comment, and Rose steers you through sections that seem to be entirely offices, through a space with wider corridors where you spy some empty lecture halls through open doors, and eventually into a large, grand room with a broad desk in the centre and what appears to be endless shelves of books.

"Now then, where was it that you wanted to start?" Rose asks, and Jade grins.

Chapter Text

The clay man rise from the dirt in Polythreme already walking and talking! The cats can talk! You have tentatively identified the terrible brew that Roxy served you at dinner as mushroom wine, and you would regret drinking it except it seems like most of the beverages down here contain mushrooms in some capacity. And most of the food, and the décor. You have nineteen recently published journals open in front of you and you would have more, but the table is too small to support them. You fully intended to read about Karakorum since the fall but you have become terribly distracted by the intricacies of London life!

You lost Rose and John in the stacks at some point but you are perfectly confident in your ability to find them again, you have an uncanny knack for direction that has often served you well. The library has been fairly lively so far, anyway, a steady stream of students of all walks of life passing your chair, muttering between themselves. One young woman walked past talking to something hidden in her coat, but you didn't manage to get a good look at what was in there before she'd grabbed what she needed and moved on.

No-one has questioned your presence. This has made you feel very studious and mature. You started off making careful notes and sketching horse-head amulets ready for your excursion, but this has devolved into frantically consuming every piece of literature you can find, regardless of relevance or virtue. Your grandfather has his own rather extensive library and you are a conscientious student, but you have mainly been schooled in things relevant to the surface of the earth, where everything makes a rather tedious amount of sense and conforms to things like logic, linear time, and natural physical laws. You have mastered a great deal of it. In contrast the natural systems in the Neath, if any can be said to exist, are confounding.

You are reading a treatise concerning the occasional rearrangement of the islands in the Unterzee, referred to here as "the Treachery of Maps", a term which is not explained, when there is a bang and a high-pitched shout somewhere off in the shelves. This gains your attention and you peer off into the darkness, suddenly aware both of how hungry you are and that the gas lamps have dimmed somewhat since earlier. It must be getting late, you conclude.

"Hello?" you call out, at a library-appropriate volume. That does not elicit a response so you do it again at a volume that you would not usually use in a library, especially one where the lamps are starting to burn low and it has suddenly become eerily quiet. You could certainly not be described as a coward, though, so you break the silence by snapping your current book closed and sliding your chair out from under the table, sweeping your skirt around your ankles as you stand up.

"Hello, is everything alright?"

You peer between the shelves, moving at a steady pace with a light tread.

"Is someone there?"

"Couldn't lend a hand, could you, guv?" The voice is squeaky and Cockney-accented.

You jump and peer around. You are standing in between a number of books on engineering, which you have not yet explored, and it appears to be empty.

"No, down here, love."

You look down. A large rat is lying trapped beneath a large, leather-bound book with "Clock Making and Mechanical Motion" embossed on the cover in bold, golden letters.

"Oh," you say, hiding your surprise, "of course."

You bend down, lift the book gently off of his rear end, and extend one finger to help him up. He wraps a little ratty paw around your fingertip and scrambles to his feet, wriggling his toes and tail and heaving a deep sigh as he brushes down his tiny overalls. He bends down and reaches a paw under the shelves, pulls out a slightly battered hat and jams it down over his ears. He is wearing a satchel half his size which drags against the floor as he walks.

"Much obliged to you," he says in his squeaky voice, and dips you a polite little bow. "Scarpers, at your service, miss."

"Oh," you say, pleased, "I'm Jade, it's lovely to meet you." You reach out one finger again and he gives it a gentlemanly shake, doffing his hat to you. He then bends down and begins pushing the book slowly down the aisle.

"Would you like me to help you?" You ask, and he shakes his head.

"Wouldn't dream of imposing, miss," he says, voice a little strained as he and the tome make their way towards the staircase.

"Oh, alright then," you say, and you turn back to your own table and start closing your reference materials and transporting them back to their relevant shelves. Fortunately you are skilled in the library sciences and the books are well-labelled so this does not take you very long. It has occurred to you that the rumble of hunger you are experiencing may mean that it is time to locate Rose and John and decide on a place where you can find dinner, as you haven't eaten since breakfast this morning. When you make your way over to the staircase back down to the front desk you discover Scarpers stubbornly pushing the book across the floor, scooting it slowly closer to the same staircase that you are headed towards.

"Are you certain that you wouldn't like any help?" You ask, and he jumps with a squeak, then turns and slumps his shoulders.

"Ah, perhaps you might have the right idea of it after all," he says, and you smile and reach down to pick up the book for him. You tuck it under your arm and then, after a moment of hesitation, lean down and lay your hand on the floor for him to clamber on to. You are not certain what proper manners dictates you do in this situation, but he does not seem offended, just clambers into your palm and dangles his legs down between your fingers. His tail wraps around your wrist and he turns to blink at you.

"Front desk, miss, if you'd be so kind."

"Of course," you say, and you start down the stairs, keeping Scarpers balanced carefully on your hand. "I've never met a talking rat before," you say after a moment, and he turns on your hand to blink his eyes at you.

"New to London are you, Miss Jade?" he asks, giving you another once over. You nod and grin and he tilts his head to one side in what you think is a friendly fashion.

"You'll find us all over," he says, "they call us rattus faber, them up above. Big lot of us at the docks, fixing the ships up what come in from around the zee."

"How exciting!" you say, with genuine enthusiasm, and he puffs his chest up a little. "We just came in through the docks from the surface."

"If you're back there, miss, ask for the Congruity Crew, that's me and my boys, we'll set you up properly."

You've reached the front desk. A bored librarian with a snake curled around her shoulders peers up at you as you gently put Scarpers down on the polished table and he pushes his book towards her.

"Lovely to meet you, Scarpers," you say, and he gives you another bow and a little wave before turning back to the librarian, eyeing the snake warily. You peer around and purse your lips. John will either be following Rose or will have wandered off on his own and gotten lost. Rose is a smarter choice, and she will either be in psychology or zoology. Psychology is closer, so you follow the carefully numbered shelves until you catch a glimpse of white-blonde hair and hurry towards it. Your instincts remain excellent and you find her flicking through a journal. She looks up as you approach and smiles.

"Oh good, found you," she says, which strikes you as a little presumptuous as it was, in fact, you who found her. "I think John's fallen asleep in a chair somewhere."

"I don't suppose you fancy a bite to eat, do you?" you ask, and her smile gets wider.

"That's a marvellous idea," she says, and you loop your arm through hers as she leads you towards the last place that she saw John. He is not asleep, he has his head buried in a rather heavy book of jokes and is chuckling to himself in a heavily-padded armchair. There is a black cat sat by his ankles, peering up at him curiously with its head tilted to one side. When it sees you approaching it vanishes into the stacks and you find yourself hoping that the talking rats are wily enough to avoid the talking cats. Presumably with the ability to speak comes a significantly improved intellect, and Scarpers was wearing overalls and a bag where the cat was naked, so you console yourself that all will probably be well.

John lowers his book. His glasses have slid down his nose and he shoves them back into place, then bounces to his feet, dropping the book onto the table by the chair.

"Are you ready to move on?" Rose asks, and he joins your group. "We can get a hansom over to the Carnival, I think that there are fireworks on tonight. If we're lucky Dave might turn up, too."

"Shouldn't we look for him?" you ask, scrunching your forehead and pulling your jacket closer around yourself as you all head out into the London fog. The University grounds are a little quieter now, you can smell something deep and rich coming from somewhere nearby, good gravy and roasting potatoes. The students are, presumably, sitting down for dinner in their respective Houses. Your own stomach complains again, and you catch yourself wondering if you can sneak into the kitchens and stuff your pockets with something. Rose's stride is too strong and fast, and soon you're pulled back out onto the streets on the hunt for a hansom cab.

Chapter Text

John is hanging half out of the window of the hansom carriage, peering at the lights of the carnival growing closer. After a moment's deliberation you mirror him, lean the entire top half of your body out of the opposite window, and then wave gaily, laughing, at a scandalised-looking elderly gent wearing a glittering monocle. Your hat flies off and vanishes into the crowd bustling through the streets, one last glimpse of the bright green ribbon being tugged out of the air by a small girl in a ragged dress before you turn a corner. You turn back to the approaching gates of the carnival.

"Oh, Rose, it's marvellous!" you call back into the cab. "I've never been to a carnival before."

Rose is bouncing a pouch of something on her knee. It clatters like marbles. She turns and smiles at you, then slumps back into her seat and grins at John's behind, which is waggling around unattractively as he tries to see further past the fencing without falling out of the window and into the muck in the road. When you catch her eye she snorts with laughter, and you fall back into your seat and attempt to rearrange your hair, which has gone somewhat wild. If her face is anything to go by you do not do a very good job.

There is tinkling music drifting in through the air towards you, like a huge music box booming out across the streets of London town. Floodlights shine up towards the roof of the cavern, bright in the fog. Colourful tents glow from the inside, and you hear laughter.

"We should be well in time to make the show," Rose says as your carriage pulls to a halt and you open the door. She pays the driver, a scowling man in a heavy-looking, oddly metallic top hat, and comes jogging after you and John as you peer through the tidy queue of people to the ticket booths. Iron railings surround the place, ensuring no-one misses the entry fee. A man in pinstripe trousers on fantastically tall stilts goes swaying past as you watch, pointing at members of the public below and mocking their outfits in a nasally voice.

When you've made it to the front, which does not take particularly long, Rose pushes ahead of you and begins counting out small, silvery pearls on the palm of her hand. They glitter in the light of the gas-lamps, uneven in size and colour. There is a urchin in the ticket booth, sullen and with dirt smeared across her forehead beneath her cap. She takes the pearls carefully tips them into a funnel on top of a machine, which spits out a neat line of yellow paper tickets. She tears them off and hands them to Rose. Rose steps through the gates and you follow, your face splitting into a grin as you catch sight of a man wearing a red wig wobbling about through the crowds on a unicycle. He looks as if he is going to fall, until a little girl with a red ribbon in her hair comes running to close to his wheel and he expertly steadies and wheels backwards, carefully watches to make sure she is out of range again, and then begins pretending that he is going to tumble to the ground at any moment. You laugh and he shoots you a cheeky wink and raises a finger, presses it to his lips, then vanishes into the crowd.

"This should see us through," Rose says, handing a line of tickets to you and John each. He jams his carelessly into his pocket and continues peering out at the crowd.

"This way to food," Rose says, grabbing your hand and pulling you towards a red tent which John tries to peer at a path that leads to what it labelled, sinisterly, as "Most Educational Anatomy Exhibition". The path here smells of hot oil, something sickly sweet, and the unmistakable scent of mulled wine. Rose drags you forward through the tent flap and you almost sneeze as someone pushes past you wielding a cup of hot, dark liquid that smells very strongly of nutmeg and clove. Stalls are set up in ranks through the tent, but Rose leads you off to one side where a jovial-looking chap stands behind a counter, a smaller and less friendly sort mans the vats of frying... something behind him.

"Three lumps, please," she says to the smiling man.

"Ahh, a lady of discerning taste," he says, and his voice is loud and booming. Behind him his companion starts scooping golden-battered chunks of mystery into thick sheafs of newspaper, dripping hot oil down onto the ground where it sinks into the packed earth, Rose hands over three of her tickets and passes the first parcel to you with a grin. It is hot in your hands, like something living.

"What... is it?" John asks, peering down at your dinner in consternation.

"Lumps! Rubbery lumps!" says the man as he tucks Rose's tickets into a a lockbox. "Pride of the Neath."

"It's fish," Rose says, passing a package to John, and then grimacing slightly. "Sort of." She adds this much more quietly, and you are quite certain that John doesn't hear her.

You take a little wooden fork from the counter and spear a lump, inspect it briefly before blowing on it as you turn to survey the rest of the tent. A laughing child pushes past your skirts with his hands sticky with melting toffee as he jams it into his mouth. A stall across the way is selling little cakes with glittering mushroom decorations. Over in the corner a man is popping what looks to be corn, until you get a little closer and realise that you can't identify what it is at all, even though it smells oddly familiar. In the centre of the pavilion a man is doling rich, almost orange honey into little cups and passing out small packets of long, thin biscuits to dunk into it.

You put the lump into your mouth and chew it. It is not particularly pleasant. You shoot a glance at Rose, who is chewing hers with apparently delight, and try another one. It isn't so bad, you suppose. It is a little like cod and chewy like squid. Something pops in your mouth, salty and strong, and you stop walking in surprise so that you have to jog to keep up with Rose, who is striding off somewhere else. Actually, it might be quite nice. You are beginning to feel really rather good. You jam a larger piece into your mouth and chew enthusiastically, oil running down your chin and dripping onto the bodice of your dress. Your fingers are slippery with it. You seem to have lost your little fork. It tastes like standing on the beach below your house after cold midnight, long after you should have gone to bed, staring out at the dark line where the glittering ocean met the sky. The winds blow in your face: salty and sharp. You have always been rather fond of the sea. You could walk out. It would be terribly easy, to walk out until the tides take you in. The water would fill the dreadful void in you where your lungs are.

"Do you want to watch the fireworks?" Rose asks.

"Oh, that sounds fun," you say, peering out again at the colourful tents of the carnival. Your newspaper bundle is empty and your hands are covered with grease. Rose takes the paper from you and disposes of it, then does the same for John, who looks oddly queasy. You feel wonderful.

The next hour or so is a blur. You bet on a weasel in the fighting pit, watch John lose a game of chess with an old man, laugh at a braying mechanical donkey surrounded by rubbery men who scuttle away as you approach. Rose rolls her eyes when you suggest the anatomy exhibit ("We can, but the tomb colonist isn't real and the announcer is always a little... too enthusiastic.") and outright balks when John points to the ferris wheel that appears to take people into a chasm below the Neath ("We don't have time, I'm afraid, or we'll miss the big top show. Let's move on. Quickly."). Rose leads you back to the refreshments tent and you all walk out holding large cups of hot, spiced wine. You suspect that cold it wouldn't be any good at all, but hot it's lovely and comforting.

The big top is a huge, striped, blue tent. The show hasn't started when you enter but the tiered seats around the ring are already mostly full with gaggles of people talking amongst themselves, beautiful women in elaborate gowns sitting a little way away from a group of pale and unsmiling men who are, in turn, three rows up from a group of cackling girls whose eyes glitter yellow in the lights. There is a band playing beside the stage, a brightly painted calliope piping notes out over the crash of drums and the tubas. The drummer is a clay man, keeping perfect rhythm.

Rose hushes you and grabs for you hand as the curtain behind the ring sweeps open and a parade of white horses appear, their heads feathered, each ridden by a young girl in stockings and short skirts. They ride a tidy circle then stop, pose, and prance towards each other and away again like they are dancing, tossing their manes. Beside you Rose gasps in delight, and when you turn to look at her her eyes are shining and she is grinning. You hide a laugh and turn back to the show. Behind the dancing girls comes the ringleader and a group of clowns who hassle the audience, handing out sweets to children and performing pratfalls around the edges of the stage and on the first few rows of seats. You laugh when a lady with a white-painted face tweaks your nose, and clap when she cartwheels back down to the ring. A lion tamer does tricks with his beast while fire-breathers shoot plumes of flame out over the crowd. A strong-woman lifts enormous weights and you cheer each time. Sword-swallowers perform and wolves march in parade. A duo of trapeze artists swing above the crowd which the band goes silent, only a drumroll sounding before each time the acrobats let go.

All in all, it's a jolly affair. At some point one of the clowns passed you a handful of boiled sweets and the three of you are still munching on them when the lights go dark and the crown begins to file out.

"That was good," John says cheerfully, crunching what's left of his sweet between his teeth in a very rude manner. You do the same and Rose sniffs at the two of you.

"Oh!" you say, pointing to a corner of the grounds that you hadn't seen before. "Shall we have our fortunes told?"

"Ah, Madame Shoshona," Rose says, waving her fingers in front of her face, "the greatest prognosticator in the Neath, nay, the world!"

You burst into giggles at her dramatics and head for the little tent. It is tucked away, almost invisible behind a large one labelled "House of Mirrors". As you pass the entrance you hesitate, certain that you heard a voice calling out from inside, but Rose loops her arm through yours and pulls you towards the fortune-teller.

When you duck your head through the tent flap you discover a woman with long, grey hair sitting behind an unexpectedly large table. She is reading from a pamphlet but stuffs it under the table as you enter, quickly swallows a mouthful of tea.

"Ah, come in, dears," she says, waving you towards the circular table. There are enough seats for a séance, all mismatched, and you choose a green velvet armchair and sit down. Rose sits primly on the dining chair beside you, and John sinks into a squashy, overstuffed striped piece on her other side. It smells strongly of incense, and the fragranced smoke burns at your eyes a little, but you blink it away and peer around. The tent is a deep burgundy, and the lights from outside shine through the canvas and bathe you all in a warm, red light.

"Who's for the reading, then, loves?" she asks, and you all sit in silence before Rose speaks up.

"Sounds like it's me first," she says, and Madame Shoshona smiles and leans forward in her chair, tapping the palm of her hand. Rose passes her a ticket.

"Pick your poison, dear - tea leaves, crystal ball, palm reading, or the cards?"

Rose considers this, taps her bottom lip with her finger. "Let us try the crystal ball. I've always been a fan of good, old-fashioned scrying."

Madame Shoshona smiles then reaches beneath the table and retrieves a crystal ball from somewhere below. She sets it on a small indent in the centre of the table and it sits there benignly.

"Now then," she says, "clear your mind, dear. Consider what you want to know. Do you need advice? Do you seek knowledge? Do you simply want to know your future?"

Rose purses her lips. "I seek the future, Madame. Am I to meet a tall, dark stranger?"

Madame Shoshona laughs, a surprisingly bright and tinkling sound, and then gestures for Rose to lean forwards. "Breathe in with me, and out. Clear your mind and focus on the crystal ball. It is a conduit for forces beyond our ken."

That last bit is a bit too much for you, but Rose has leaned forwards with her eyes fixed firmly on the crystal (glass, it is definitely glass) ball. Madame Shoshona waves her hands over the crystal ball and leans forwards herself, breathing deeply and narrowing her eyes. The candles flickering around the edges of the tent cast strange, dancing shadows across the table.

"I see a river, a bright light... You are about to go through a great change, or on a great journey," Madame Shoshona says, frowning into the crystal ball, "it will be dangerous, but the rewards may outweigh the risks. You will suffer a terrible loss. The images aren't clear... So much green." She leans closer to the ball. "Green, for great fortune. Green for..."

It may be your imagination playing tricks on you due to the flickering candlelight and the eerie monotone that Madame Shoshona has taken on, but you think you can see a green glow at the centre of the crystal ball as well. You lean forwards, squint at it. If she was clever she could rig a projector under her table with a pinhole in the centre where the ball sits and send pictures and colours refracting in the glass. Operated by foot pedal, perhaps, you think as the green glows brighter. It's taken on a strange swirling, dancing quality. Madame Shoshona's face is cast half in red from the light through the canvas, and half in acid green from the ball. Her eyebrows have drawing together.

"I don't think-" she starts, and then there is an awful rumbling, roaring sound, like a fire burning out of control, a flare of green so bright that you have to close your eyes and raise your hand in front of your eyes to guard against it, a cracking sound, and then silence. When you open your eyes again the tent is only lit by ordinary candlelight, and the crystal ball has broken into two halves which sit in an accusing fashion on the surface of the table. Madame Shoshona looks baffled.

"What does that mean?" Rose asks. She's sat back in her chair and is staring, perturbed, at the two halves of the crystal ball.

"What under the earth are you going to do?" Madame Shoshona asks, her tone grim. Rose sits straighter in her chair, looking offended, and John grabs for her arm.

"Perhaps we should leave." He struggles out of his chair and you stand up primly, then place the rest of your tickets down on the table top as an apology for the broken crystal ball. You're moderately certain it shouldn't cost much to replace.

"Thank you for your time," you say, somewhat awkwardly, and you both steer Rose out of the tent between you.

"I've certainly never seen that before," Rose says, "she must be losing her touch." She smooths down her skirt and reaches up to rearrange her hair.

"Take it you didn't get the future you wanted?" Dave asks from over your shoulder and all three of you jump out of your skins. He cracks a half-smile when you whirl around to glare at him, then pops some sort of sticky mushroom into his mouth and chews for a long time.

"Rose's future exploded the crystal ball," John says, and Dave chokes on his mushroom and has to double over coughing. When he straightens up again his face is beetroot red.

"I'm surprised that hasn't happened before, to be honest," he says, his voice still rough, "Rose is an enigma."

She tosses her head like this is high praise and hoists her smile back on.

"Shall we move on? It's getting rather late, mother might start to worry soon, and in theory we're starting our expedition tomorrow." She huffs like she does not consider this very likely.

Dave shoves the last of his sweet into his mouth and then stretches. His shirt rides up, exposing a pale line of skin above his belt. Your eye catches on his hips and before you can even be embarrassed about it you have stopped, blinking and staring. The terrible gash along his stomach is completely gone, only a new scar remains. He catches you staring and you flush.

"Spore-toffee," he says, waving his empty paper bag at you. "It's ever so good for cuts and scrapes."

He throws the bag into the shadows and waggles his eyebrows at you, then turns to catch up to John and Rose, who have forged ahead. You pick up your skirts to follow him and then hesitate again outside the House of Mirrors. That voice, you can hear it again, like someone calling from very far away. You glance back at the others. It wouldn't hurt to look, surely?

You reach out, open the tent flap, and step inside.

Chapter Text

It is dark inside the tent, and strangely echoey as your boots click against the floor. As your eyes adjust you make out the frames of dozens of mirrors of different sizes. Your reflection is repeated back to you in shadow tens of times, stretched and warped, and you muffle a laugh at the one that makes you appear about two feet tall and round as a bobbin. You can't hear the voice any more, but you proceed anyway. It was feminine, and very far away. You have already lost track of the exit, but that is fine.

Turning a corner you flinch back from a mirror set immediately in front of you and trace the designs on the frame instead. Lizards and cats. Not that one. It is growing a little easier to see, and you examine another one a few feet back. It is not showing any reflection at all, and when you take a step closer you catch a sudden, sharp scent of fresh blood. Not that one either, you think, stepping away again and turning another corner. You turn in a slow circle and survey your options. Only half of the mirrors are reflecting anything at all now, which is terribly queer. And exciting! Somewhat exciting. Somewhat frightening, as well, but that has never stopped you before.

A gust of fresh air plays with the strands of hair by your face and you gasp, lean into it. It smells like wet earth, like plant life, and you head in that direction almost by instinct. As you step towards the large, gleaming mirror you think you can hear fragments of birdsong, rushing water, and – there! Someone is singing, although the voice is muddled and hard to hear. Your reflection appears very fine, surrounded by carved, winding tree roots in the frame. You lean a little closer, peer at yourself, try to hear the voice again. The little tent is diffused by a deep, amber light, and you can see the points of your own face perfectly clearly. Behind you your reflection repeats itself over and over again in other mirrors, and you hear, clear as day, the deep call of a bird, before you tumble forwards onto your hands and knees into wet mud.

You gasp, blink at the sudden brightness, and then push yourself upwards on wobbling legs and whirl around. Your eyes are stinging and you dash away sudden tears impatiently - you have grown used to the darkness of the Neath, and suddenly you find yourself standing in sunlight! It is warm, diffuse, like it is shining down on you through yellow glass. You are ankle-deep in thick mud and there are green, leafy vines trailing around you. There is a mirror-frame behind you, warped and bent with the water, but it is a mirror-frame only. You reach out and wave your arm through the carved wood. There is nothing there.

"Oh." You place your hands on your hips and make a more intensive survey of the area. Thick foliage coats the moist ground, you will need to carefully watch where you step or you will twist an ankle. A thick rainforest stretches away from you in each direction, and you catch a glimpse of a glittering bird of paradise preening itself on one of the low branches of a tree, its feathers glittering like jewels. There is something familiar about the place.

"This is not very convenient," you say, more for the comfort of hearing a voice than for any sensible reason. You are not hungry, and although you did not sleep terribly well last night and it is almost time to be back in bed you feel remarkably alert. You purse your lips and then bend down and take hold of your skirt, pull the back of it up between your legs and tuck it into the waistband to make yourself a pair of emergency shorts, and then set off into the woods. You are quite sad about the loss of your hat now, as sweat begins to bead on your forehead and drip down the back of your neck.

There are more mirror-frames dotted around the foliage – here, a polished silver one, there one of wood that has almost completely rotted away. It was a mirror that got you into this mess so you determinedly stay away from the lot of them, instead trudging stubbornly towards the sound of running water. A landmark is the sort of thing one needs in this situation, something to anchor oneself in one's surroundings to avoid becoming further lost. That, and all you have had to drink all day is some tea at breakfast and a cup of mulled wine. It would be clever to head off your need for water before it becomes a problem.

A large, striped snake curls around a tree trunk and wags its tongue lazily at you as you pass, then puts its head back down and continues dozing. You struggle onwards through the plant life, pushing aside vines and stems and leaves which seem determined to entangle you before, gasping, you emerge on a riverbank. The buzz of insects and the calls of birds are drowned out by the sound of rushing water, and you fall forwards onto your knees gratefully, cupping cool handfuls and splashing your face and neck before drinking greedily. Some sort of flask or water-skin would serve you well at this juncture, but as you have neither you will simply need to stay close to the stream.

Now that your first, most immediate problem has been resolved you sit down on the riverbank, letting the mud ruin your clothes, and glare up at the sky. It isn't quite right. There is a sun up there of some sort, but it is much too big and too dim to be the proper sun, the one that you are used to. The sky is pale amber, dimming to dark blue at the horizon. The sun does not appear to have moved at all during your trek, and you squint at it for as long as you can before you have to avert your eyes. With a sigh you take off your boots and dabble your feet in the cool water, then prop them up on a mouldering log to dry before you put your shoes back on and lean back on a drier patch of ground.

"You seem lost," says a deep, velvety voice from the undergrowth, and you jump and almost knock your shoes into the stream. You squint into the shadows, adjust your spectacles, and then hold your breath as you catch sight of two glittering lamp-light eyes watching you steadily. When they see that you have seen them they move, and a great black panther comes padding out of the green. She tilts her head to one side as she surveys you, then stretches in a leisurely fashion, enormous claws raking gouges into the mud as you try to stay as still as you possibly can.

"Don't panic," the panther says, lying down on the ground so that she is eye-level with you, "I am not particularly hungry."

"Oh, that's excellent news," you say, and you pull off your glasses and polish them on your shirt while you think of what to say to a talking panther. "Do you... do you know where I am, exactly?"

She tilts her head, then closes her eyes and lies her head down on her massive forepaws. "It was very silly of you, to wander off and get lost like this. You are in the mirror-marches."

You frown a little at her, but you are not inclined to argue with a large, talking panther. "And where is that?"

"Parabola," she says, and she huffs a little, "on the edges of dream. Did your friend not warn you against looking too long in mirrors?"

You frown, hitch your skirts a little closer, and then pull your boots back on. "My friend?"

"The pretty blonde girl from the library. It was very remiss of her not to."

You blink at the enormous beast. "How do you know about..." A memory, of John sitting in a chair with a black cat at his ankles. "Wait..."

She rumbles, deep in her chest, and cracks her amber eyes to look at you. "You're a quick one."

"The edges of dream... Are you dreaming that you're here?"

"One could say that." An insect lands on the curve of her ear and she flicks it to dislodge it. "But you aren't. I would very carefully avoid snakes, if I was you."

"How do I get back? I didn't mean to come here, and my friends are probably very worried. I hope they don't tell grandfather."

She looks at you. "It's a bit of a chore, I'm afraid. If I know what I'm talking about, which I often do, you will need to push your way back through another mirror, and it will leave you either mad or dead. Dead is often preferable, it is much easier to cure."

You blink at her. "Those can't be the only two options."

"Why not?" she asks, rolling over onto her side and stretching all four legs out. "Two options is better than one option, which is better than no options at all. I would count yourself lucky and take what you can get."

A cloud of buzzing insects has descended on you, and you wave your arms to try to scare them off. One of them stings your arm as a parting gift and you slap your hand down on it, then wince and rinse both you hand and your arm off in the stream. She rumbles at you again in what you suspect is amusement, and you stand up with some difficulty, try to brush mud off of your legs and your behind without success.

"Thank you very much for your help," you says, because it is good form to be polite in general, but probably more so when you are talking to a panther. "Before I came here, I thought I heard a voice. Do you know which direction it might have been coming from?"

The panther ignores you. Either she has fallen asleep or she has lost all interest in the conversation, but either way you are not going to poke her and possibly upset a large carnivore. You take a few hesitant steps downstream, and then some more confident ones when nothing dreadful happens.

Maintaining your balance on the uneven, slippery bank is something of a challenge, but you manage it quite well until you catch your toe on something solid hidden in the mud and go tumbling forwards into the water. You bite out a curse and drag yourself back out onto the bank, ignoring the repetitive cry of a large, green bird that sounds like it is laughing at you, and brush the mud away from the block that tripped you. It is a large, grey brick, clearly worked into shape and carved at the edges, and when you lean forwards and push away some of the undergrowth you can see more set into the mud, slowly being pulled out of place by the water. It is, most certainly, what is left of a path. You bite your lip and glance back at the sun. It still doesn't appear to have moved.

You pick up a large, pointed rock and head back into the forest, shivering as water drips down off of leaves and then down your neck. There, ahead, part of a wall. You run your hand over the mossy stones as you pass. The path is growing smoother.

"...and drown the girls at zee."

You pause, tilt your head to listen. Someone is singing. It's who you heard from outside the tent in the carnival.

"Neath fathoms of dark water, waits your drownie girl for you. Jump in, my dear, breathe deep the zee, soon you'll be drownie, too."

"Hullo?" You call out, and the voice falls silent. There is a splash and a scuffle from not very far away, and then a pair of grey hands with yellowed, pointed nails pushes through the plants ahead of you. The girl who emerges is very tall, and very beautiful.

"Oh!" she says, and her face breaks into a grin. Her teeth are needle-sharp and long in her mouth, but when she closes her lips over them again you could almost forget they were there, she looks so friendly. A troll! Her skin is grey as ashes, the schlera of her eyes yellow and the irises a bright fuscia. Her hair is long and tangled, black and coarse and wild. She is wearing a pair of pink goggles and a skirt made of sheets of brightly coloured silks. She is soaking wet.

"Hello!" she says brightly, and you smile at her. She takes a step forwards and peers at you cautiously. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jade Harley," you say, because it's true, and you extend your hand for her to shake. She stares at it until you take it back, but she looks more confused than anything else. She dips you a polite little curtsey, then turns to look back the way she came.

"Would you like to come and sit down?" she asks, and you smile and nod an acceptance. She reaches out to part the vines and reaches out a hand to help you up onto the step beyond. Her hand is as cold as ice. You avoid the urge to wipe your newly cold, wet hand on your skirt, and then step up again into a small, circular paved area with a bubbling fountain on the other side. Spread over the lip of the fountain is what looks like a small picnic. She passes you as you perch on the edge of the fountain and lifts her skirts, then climbs over the lip and submerges herself up to her shoulders. You raise your eyebrows in surprise as she dips herself completely under the water, but when she resurfaces her hair has slicked back and you can see the sides of her neck, below her finned ears, where three gill slits gush water back to splash on the surface of the water.

"You're amphibious!" you say, delighted, and she tilts her head to look at you. There is an odd glubbing sound as she takes a deep breath of air - her gills sealing shut, her body preparing to breathe air again - and then she leans forward and takes a small, brightly coloured cake and shoves it into her mouth.

"I'm a seatroll," she says, playing self-consciously with the fuscia beads at her slender throat and leaning her forearms on the lip of the fountain. You frown at the water.

"Isn't this freshwater?" you ask, reaching out to dabble your fingers in it.

She shrugs. "It doesn't really matter to us."

You lean forwards excitedly. "I've never met a troll before," you say, and something in her expression goes a little sad.

"Did you come here from London?" she asks, and you nod.

"And according to a panther I met I'm going to have to either go mad or die to get back, neither of which appeals very much."

"And you haven't seen any other trolls?" she asks, ignoring most of what you've just said. Her eyes are focused on your face as you shake you head.

"No, I heard a boat docked, though, and my friend Dave met some."

She gasps, surges up out of the water, and grips one of your shoulders. She is immensely strong.

"Really? What were their names?"

You sputter and try to free your shoulder before she breaks your bones. "I... I don't know, he didn't say! He just said that they were angry and shouted at each other a lot."

She relaxes a little, staring into space, chest heaving, then she looks back at you. "Anything else? Did he say anything else, please?"

You wrack your brains, try to think of Dave's babbling in the night. "He said... one of them was a weird clown."

She gasps, slams her eyes closed, and sinks back down beneath the surface with her hands covering her face. She is briefly invisible beneath the cloud of bubbles she exhales and then she surfaces again, grinning and bright-eyed.

"That's them. They made it, oh, they made it!" She throws her arms around you and almost pulls you down into the fountain, steadies you when you shriek and flail. You are once again very wet.

"Who made it?" you ask as she spins in the water.

"My friends. Oh, this is great glubbing news! We haven't had any news since they left Khan's Shadow. I thought for shore they were dead!"

You are quite certain that she says 'shore' and not 'sure' but are not entirely certain why.

"I'm Feferi Peixes," she says, and she dips another little curtsey in the water.

"I don't mean to be rude, but how did you get here?" you ask. "I fell through a mirror."

"Oh," Feferi says, "I'm always back and forth. There's a sort of knack to it, once you can do it it's easy. And the Condesce can't find me here."

"The Condesce?" you ask, and she tosses her head.

"Don't worry about it. Of course, the easiest way is just to fall asleep, and one of the safest. You'll need to be careful while you're here like this, the fingerkings are always looking for people to escape inside of."

You pull a face.

"They wield humans like puppets. Not trolls so much, they don't seem to like us as much. You smell like saltwater."

You blink down at her, then resettle your skirts around your legs and smile. "We had a long journey over the sea, I suppose it must have got into my clothes."

She grins again, dips below the water and blows bubbles at the surface, does a little twirl. "I've not met very many humans," she says, resting her elbows back on the edge of the fountain and then pouring herself a drink out of a large pitcher that seems to be made from some sort of yellow flower. "They're afraid of me, sometimes. I think most of them remember the flagship arriving."

You tilt your head to one side. Your hair is itching terribly at the back of your neck, and you scratch at it absent-mindedly, then try to sweep it all up and away to let the cooler breeze down the back of your shirt.

"The flagship?"

She blinks at you. "Yes, when it crashed in the zee."

You gape at her like a fish. "Crashed?"

"Yes," she says, nodding at you and smiling gently like you are a particularly slow child. "When it flew through the gate and crashed in the Unterzee. That's how we ended up here."

"Huh," you say, "I didn't know that, I thought you were just like devils and you originated down here."

She shoots you a confused look, shaking her head. "What's London like?"

"I don't really know," you say, "I've only been here for a couple of days. I'm gonna find out, though!"

Feferi grins at you. "You have to come back, then! I get lonely, sometimes, it's nice to have someone to talk to!"

Something rustles in the undergrowth and you turn to peer at it, but you can't see anything through the foliage.

"Well, I'm only down here for three weeks, and then we're supposed to be going back to the surface."

Her face falls and she sinks a little in the water, blows bubbles up to splash against her goggles. She twists her expression up as though she is thinking about something particularly hard, and then looks at you sideways through her lashes.

"Would you... Could you possible do me a favour then, instead?"

You nod.

"Would you deliver a message to my friends? Only if you get a chance, obviously."

This doesn't seem an unreasonable request. "Yes, of course."

She nods and disappears back underwater, reappears holding what looks like a large ink-pen, but no ink. She gestures for you to extend your arm to her and you do, and she grips your hand and writes on your skin in tidy handwriting. The ink is violently fuscia, and doesn't move when she slicks her wet fingers across what she's written.

6f 70 68 69 75 63 68 75 73 20 68 61 73 20 63 6f 6d 65

"What does it mean?" you ask, and she grins.

"It's an imperial code. It'll only work for a few more days, but if you can get it to Sollux then he should be able to communicate with us through the Condesce's hives. It would be lovely to hear how everyone's getting on. We miss them."

You frown down at the back of your hand. "Why did they come? My friend Rose was determined that trolls never come to London."

Her mouth twists and she looks away, reaching up to brush wet hair out of her face and then hauling herself up onto the edge of the fountain to sit beside you. The water from her clothes starts to soak through your skirts.

"Do you know anything about trolls?" she asks, still not looking at you. She is playing with her golden bangles. Something rustles in the bushes again.

"Not really," you say, shaking your head, "there aren't any on the surface. I know you've got a tenuous alliance with the Khanate. That's about it."

She takes a deep breath. "We're a highly stratified society. The upper classes can be... unkind, if you don't have the qualities they value. Or if you do. Sollux, Aradia, and Karkat wouldn't be allowed to carry on living freely once they reached adulthood."

You blink at her as she shoves another little cake into her mouth. You would be offended that she hadn't offered you one, but they are extremely vibrantly coloured and not very appealing, and you aren't certain that you would be able to eat troll food anyway.

"If everything goes well for them we might be able to sneak Terezi and Tavros over as well," she says, a little more brightly, "Terezi's blind and Tavros is paralysed from the waist down, so they'd both be culled as unfit once they were called to service. Although Terezi's in denial about it."

"Well that doesn't seem very moral," you say indignantly, "surely they be should be cared for, in that case."

She laughs a little. "That's what I think, too! It's an awful waste of life just to execute undesirables and recycle the bodies, or to plug them into ships as psionic batteries. Everyone's got something to offer that-"

She gasps, grabs you roughly by the throat and shoves you bodily backwards into the fountain. Before you submerge you catch a glimpse of something small and slender streaking through the air where you head just was. You emerge, coughing and spluttering, just in time to see Feferi twist the head from a small snake and throw it to the ground, then swivel and survey the surrounding area. You are just making moves to start climbing out of the pond when a roiling, seething mass of serpentine bodies comes swarming out of the undergrowth and Feferi turns to look at you with panic. You automatically reach for your rifle, but you are unarmed.

"Time to go," Feferi says, and plunges into the fountain atop you. Her unnaturally strong arms grab your shoulders and push you down as your last breath streams from your mouth and you start to fight her instinctively. Her figure is willowy but she's far stronger and far heavier than you, and you watch with increasing panic as the light flickering through the surface of the water grows further away. Your first, uncontrollable breath of water burns terribly in your nose, your throat, your chest, and you thrash and claw out at her, but she drags you inexorably downwards. You can barely see through the darkness but you catch a flash of light on her goggles, her teeth, and then on something huge, tentacled and glistening in the water behind her. You slam your eyes closed as your body forces you to suck in another chestful of water, desperately flailing and fighting as you try to both breathe and expel the lungfuls of liquid.

Her long nails – talons – claws? Dig into your shoulders as she pushes you further downwards as you fight her, and then you can feel your consciousness fading.

"Remember," she burbles at you through the water, "give the code to Sollux if you can!"

You are propelled upwards at alarming speed. You have a mouthful of grit. The water has gone from clear and fresh to bitter and unclean in your mouth. A cold hand grips you and pulls you to the surface, and you are fully prepared to yell at Feferi with all your might once you have regained the use of your lungs, but the face peering dully down at you as you hack lungfuls of cold, dirty water down onto the stinking mud you are crawling upwards through is pale and swollen, the eyes milky, and one side of the face marred by huge slices in the skin which are not bleeding. It's a man, tall and broad, and he sinks back down into the water - the river - to peer at you through the water as you desperately back-pedal away from him. Soft mud squelches beneath your hands and you blink in the darkness, up at the false stars of the Neath. Behind you there is carnival music playing.

You drag yourself upwards to firmer ground and retch onto the riverbank. Above you you can see the iron railing surrounding the carnival.

"She's here! She's here!"

There is a sudden thundering of feet and then your grandfather's unlaced boots are slipping down the riverbank towards you. They contain your grandfather.

"Jade, Jade," he gasps desperately as he pulls you up and into a bone-crushing hug. When he pulls back you notice that he has completely ruined his dressing gown, which he has pulled on over his nightclothes. "Oh, thank heavens."

Ms. Lalonde comes slithering down the bank next, utterly ruining her white coat, and she reaches out to hold your face, peering at you. "Oh, sweetheart, what on earth happened?"

You still cannot talk because your lungs are burning, but you try to gesture that you are fine. John is standing on the drier ground above, looking very pale and very relived, and Rose and Dave pop up behind him a few seconds later. They sag against each other when they see you, and then Rose is slipping down to join the three of you. They are still wearing the clothes they wore at the carnival.

"You went into the House of Mirrors and vanished," Rose gasps, flinging her arms around you, "we thought something awful had happened."

Your mouth tastes like the Stolen River, which is quite awful enough for you to be getting on with.

"I'm... fine..." you manage to rasp out between terrible, hacking coughs.

"We need to get you inside and into some dry clothes," your grandfather says, standing up on wobbly legs and pulling you up with him. His voice is thick and he is sniffling to himself, which everyone very politely pretends not to notice as you all scramble back up the bank. When you get close enough John and Dave pull you the final stretch, up onto the path, and Dave slings his jacket across your shoulders. It is warm, but you quickly wet it through and it doesn't help very much. There is a great deal of fussing and faffing as you are loaded into another hansom cab and you set off at full tilt for Roxy's town house, your grandfather rubbing your back as you cough the entire way back.

Chapter Text

There is river mud flaking off the palms of your hands as you flex them and stare into the mug of hot tea that Roxy has placed in front of you. Across the table Rose nibbles at her thumbnail and Dave is tracing the grain of the wood with his fingertip. Jake is sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, staring vacantly into the flames and mechanically smoking his pipe. Up the stairs a door opens and you all shift in your seats, train your eyes on the doorframe leading through to the hallway. Footsteps down the stairs, and then the doctor appears at the same moment that Roxy pokes her head through the door from the kitchen.

"She'll be fine," the doctor says, glancing at the grandfather clock by the dining table as it bongs for two o' clock in the morning. "Lungs are clear and there's no sign of any infection, keep her warm and keep her dry." He rummages in his carpet bag and pulls out a small bottle of liquid. "In case of chills, give her a few drops of this, and let me know if she shows any signs of illness."

"Thank you, doctor," Roxy says as Jake sags in his armchair, and she gently guides him to the front door. There is the clink of coins being exchanged and then the doctor steps out into the street. You hear Roxy sigh as she closes the door with a soft click.

"Well, this was an eventful night," she says with a shaky smile as she steps back through the doorway, and Jake huffs out a laugh, taps his pipe out into the fireplace and wearily smoothing down his hair. "I think we'd all better turn in and see how we're feeling in the morning." She lays a hand gently on Jake's shoulder and he pats it with his own trembling fingers. He is still very pale. Roxy gestures for the rest of you to head upstairs and you pad across the red carpet with Dave and Rose pressed close on either side. Rose has been almost silent since you first lost track of Jade, hours ago. Dave has been whispering to himself, too fast for you to understand, although he has clammed right up now that you are shoulder to shoulder.

"Sleep in late in the morning if you need to," Roxy says, extinguishing the lamps in the hallway. The dancing light from the fireplace in the dining room spills through onto the stairs. "We can delay plans, we need to keep you all safe and healthy first."

You see Rose's mouth twist out of the corner of your eye. Dave goes stiff against your arm. Neither of them turn around.

There is the quiet sound of glass chinking in the kitchen followed by the rumble of Jake's voice, then a forced little laugh from Roxy.

"We should let her rest, right?" Dave asks, and you realise that the three of you have stopped outside of Jade's room.

"Absolutely," Rose whispers back, with a firm little nod, "she must feel dreadful, taking a dip in the river like that. She's probably asleep."

Jade wrenches the door open, her nightgown swirling around her legs, her hair tangled and wet, and all three of you jump.

"Come in, then, before they come upstairs," Jade hisses at you, and grabs Rose's arm to pull her bodily inside before shutting the door behind her.

"How are you feeling now?" Rose asks, perching herself on the dressing table, and Jade waves her away. She looks slightly manic.

"Bugger that. Dave, can you take me to where you met those trolls?"

Dave blinks at her, sitting down on the little stool in front of Rose.

"Look, I know you were excited about them but I don't think that's a very good idea."

"What trolls?" you ask. Jade ignores you.

"No, look!" She pulls up one of her sleeves and shoves her hand in Dave's face. He goes cross-eyed trying to focus on it. "I met another one, in the mirror, she wanted me to pass this message along-"

"In the mirror?" Rose interrupts, grabbing Jade's outstretched arm, narrowly missing punching Dave in the side of the head. "What do you mean, in the mirror?"

"Oh, that's how I wound up in the river," Jade said, "I fell through one of the mirrors, and then a talking panther gave me some very unhelpful advice, and then I met a troll and she drowned me in a fountain so that I wouldn't get possessed by those little snakes."

You stare at her, open-mouthed, and she blinks at you as though she has said nothing out of the ordinary.

"What?" you interject.

Rose drops Jade's arm like she's been burned. She looks confounded. "You... You said you slipped! Why did you lie to mother?"

Jade looks away guiltily, tucks her hair behind an ear. "Well, I... Don't take this the wrong way but I'm not certain that I trust her to make very good decisions, not after what you said to us this morning. And I didn't want to frighten grandfather, he gets ever so worried. A little slip down the riverbank is much easier to pardon with an 'It won't happen again!' than 'Whoops, I looked too long in the wrong mirror and fell into some sort of dream dimension!' Anyway, I said that I would pass the message along, and she said it would only work for a few days so it needs to be quick-smart."

"Yeah, I can take you there," Dave says, with a little shrug, and Rose turns to glare at him.

"No, absolutely not. Even if I believe that there are trolls in London we have no idea why they're here or what they want, and Jade..." She stops, stands up and instead sits on the corner of the bed, the emerald bedspread slithering to pool around her hips as the mattress dips.

"Everyone shut up," Dave says, very quietly, and you all fall silent. After a few seconds you hear a floorboard creak. Quiet footsteps head down the hallway, muffled by the carpet, and then you hear a door open and close. A few moments later another door clicks shut.

"How did you hear that?" Jade asks, and Dave shrugs one shoulder, mouth tight. She frowns at him, eyes big, but he looks at Rose instead.

"We can get there and back on foot in a few hours, two if we're quick. We're free to sleep as late as we want in the morning, if we're quiet enough getting out they'll never know we were gone."

"I still don't know what's happening," you say.

Rose throws her hands in the air. "You've both lost your minds. We are not going gallivanting across London in the middle of the night. Jade, you need to get some rest, you took a dip in the Stolen River. There could be all sorts of horrible diseases brewing in you as we speak."

Jade twists her hands together, her fingers rubbing across the code written on the back of her hand.

"Look, I was in some real trouble, I really wasn't dressed for tropical exploring. Feferi got me back here with really very little fuss, that panther led me to believe that it would be much more difficult. She only asked me to do one thing, and it was so that she knows that her friends are still alive. It didn't seem so much to ask."

"Tropical exploring?" you ask, and Jade rolls her eyes.

"Yes, the dream world was a rainforest, John, do keep up."

"I'm still stuck on you falling through a mirror," you say, eyeing the one on the vanity table uneasily.

"It happens sometimes," Rose says quietly, "very rarely, and the consequences are usually moderately fatal. I've never met anyone who's set foot in Parabola before. It's... it's not advised."

Dave snorts. "No kidding. You wanna drop a couple echoes and go on a tour of the Labyrinth? Half of the exhibits are just people who got possessed by fingerkings."

"By what?" you ask.

"Creepy little snakes," he says, twisting his mouth up in disgust.

"They live on the other side of mirrors, which apparently they find distasteful, because if they find someone wandering around they try to possess them and steal their body," Rose explains, and you edge a little further away from the vanity. "Oh, stop it, it won't bite you," she adds sharply, and you hunch your shoulders guiltily.

Jade stands up and starts to unbutton her nightgown, Dave turns violently red and swivels around on the stool.

"What are you doing?" you ask as she starts to rummage in her wardrobe, and Rose's shoulders slump.

"We might as well get on with it," she says, pulling on a slip and her petticoats. "The night isn't getting any younger."

"Has it occured to you that your new friends might not be delighted about having you drop in on them in the middle of the night?"

Jade starts buttoning up her skirt. "We'll be putting them back in contact with their friends, I'm sure they'll be grateful.."

"Will you help me talk some sense into them?" Rose wheels around, arms waving wildly. The blanket slithers off the bed and onto the floor. "This is absolute madness."

"It'll be an adventure," Jade says in counterpoint, and you stare stolidly at the side of Dave's head so that you don't have to make eye contact with either of them. Now that Jade is dressed again he looks a lot more relaxed, leaning back against the vanity with his poker face in place.

"Damn right it will be," he says, and holds out one fisted hand for Jade to bump their knuckles together. Rose heaves a heavy sigh and rubs her hands over her face.

"Think of it this way," Dave says, knocking the toe of his muddy boot against Rose's, "Roxy will be really disappointed in you if she finds out."

This seems to give Rose pause. She purses her lips and reaches up to fix the smudged edge of her lipstick.

"That's a fair point, David," she says, and Dave heaves dramatically, you can only assume at the use of his full name.

"I'm sold," she says, "let me get my coat. John, you should get something else on as well, it gets cold at night."

You don't say what you want to say, which is that it's bloody freezing all the time, instead you pass as quietly back to your room as you can and change out of your mud-caked clothing into something cleaner, wrapping yourself up in your woollens and your cost. When you emerge Jade is waiting outside of your door, tapping the tip of her boot impatiently while Dave leans against the wall and Rose examines her kohl in a folding mirror.

"Come on," Dave whispers, taking point and turning to the top of the stairs, and then as one you freeze in place. Standing at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the dim light coming in through the stained glass of the front door, is your father.

"Dad!" You briefly forget that you are attempting stealth as you fling yourself forwards into a fatherly hug, and your dad chuckles, but quietly.

"What do you all think you're doing?" he murmurs. He is radiating stern fatherly disapproval, but he is also smiling very slightly and his eyes are crinkling beneath the brim of his hat. He is carrying a large file of papers under one arm and shuffles it carefully closer to his body as you let go.

"Where have you been?" you ask in whispered counterpoint as Jade hushes you. He grimaces and ruffles your hair, then reaches out an arm to pat Jade on the shoulder and nods at Dave and Rose.

"I had some things to take care of, that's all," he says quietly, "your grandmother gave me a few errands to run while we were down here. Now what are you all doing up out of bed? Jade, is that mud in your hair?"

Jade reaches up and tries to fix her damp hair self-consciously.

"I took a bit of a tumble at the carnival, I thought I'd rinsed it all out," she says.

"Mr Egbert, it's lovely to meet you," Rose extends her hand, pushing herself forwards, and he shakes it with some bemusement. "Please don't tell mother, I was taking Jade back to the university so that she could have a closer look at some of the professor's artefacts, take some rubbings and so on. We're not really supposed to be touching them and I thought we might not get another chance. Dave and John heard us moving about and wouldn't let us go alone."

"Quite right," he says, "safety in numbers and all that."

"Please?" Jade says imploringly, clasping her hands in front of her. "We'll be back quick-smart, no one needs to know that we were gone."

"I'll make sure everyone's safe, sir, my brother doesn't mind me going out at night." Dave interjects.

The girls smile guilelessly up at your dad. He quirks up an eyebrow and looks between them then sighs.

"I suppose if I tell you to get back into bed you'll just have another go at sneaking out once I've gone," he whispers, and you suppress a grin. "I shall meet you two properly in the morning, then," he says, winking at Dave and Rose, and Rose grins and steps out of the way so that he can continue down the corridor.

He is limping slightly, like his left ankle doesn't quite want to bear his weight, and you open your mouth to comment but Rose has you by the arm and he vanishes into the dark corridor as you all pad down the stairs.

You don't head for the front door, instead Rose and Dave have some sort of silent conversation using only grimaces and shrugs and Dave leads you down the entry hall to what looks like a servants doorway beneath the stairs. You creep behind him as the door slides open soundlessly.

There are stairs going down here, presumably to a wine cellar or coal store, but there's also a narrow corridor leading towards the back of the house, lit by that glowing blue stone you've seen used as street lights around the city. A cobweb brushes your forehead and you reach up to push it away, shudder when something skitters over your fingers. There is a sound behind you, very quiet, like an engine rumbling. You turn to look and choke on your breath as dozens of cats' eyes reflect back at you out of the darkness, glittering green in the dim light. They are piled on top of each other at the top of the stairs, and every one of them is looking directly at you.

"Good luck," one of them whispers, rolling over, and the purring stops. You press closer to Jade, breath coming very fast, as Dave pulls open a narrow door at the side of the house and ushers you all out into an alleyway.

Chapter Text

You're doing much better with your coat on. It is still dim and cold, pearly mist swirling around your legs in the lamplight, but Dave starts off at a trot and you are quickly warm enough not to complain.

"Where exactly is it that we're headed?" Rose asks, easily keeping up with Dave with her skirts held up to keep them out of the filth in the street.

"Down between the Bazaar and the Forgotten Quarter, the side streets there."

Rose wrinkles her nose. "That's a shantytown."

"Yeah, they didn't exactly strike me as well off," Dave says. He shoots a glance back up the hill as you exit the neighbourhood. Apparently satisfied, he leads you down towards the river. In the distance the clock strikes 3am.

You cross at a large, elegant bridge, but movement underneath catches your eye and you glance down to see a small group of those tentacled men you've seen with their heads bent together in the shadows of the bridge. You jog to catch up to Rose. Now that you're away from the house you're moving at a slightly more leisurely pace.

"So… what's the deal with the…" you hold your hands up to your face, wiggle your fingers. Rose squints at you before her face clears in understanding.

"The rubbery men?"

You shrug. "I guess?"

Dave turns to listen to the two of you, takes a few steps backwards before dropping back to walk beside you. Jade listens in, drawing her attention back from a stalagmite high above.

"They live here, in the Neath. They're not popular, you won't find many people of class engaging with them, but I've never found them particularly unpleasant."

"No, I…" you trail off, wondering what it is that you even want to know. "What are they? What happened to them?"

Rose blinks at you, then furrows her brow thoughtfully. "I don't really know. I don't think that anyone does. They just… they just live here." She shrugs and pulls her coat closer around herself, presses her palm against her chest for a moment before slipping her hands into the pockets hidden in her skirt.

"Do you know if one has ever gone up to the surface?" Jade asks. "I've never heard of it."

Rose shakes her head. "I don't know how I would hear about it, but I don't think so. Maybe they can't. Most things that spend too long down here can't."

Jade scrunches her face up. "I wonder why. It's like…something down here is fundamentally incompatible with the surface."

"I think a lot of things down here fit that description," Dave chimes in, "you got your walking corpses, the clay men, the drownies," he counts them off on his fingers, "the rubbery men, the tigers, the devils, not to mention half the animals. You take a London cat up to the surface, see how long it lasts. Not very, would be my guess."

"But why?" Jade asks. "I couldn't find an answer in the library, either. What is it that's here that makes things function so differently?"

"Our what is it that's not here?" Rose adds with a little shrug. "Perhaps it's magic."

"Magic doesn't exist," Jade says, scrunching her face up, "there's always an explanation, even if it's complicated or difficult to find."

You crest a rise and catch a glimpse in the distance of ruined walls, immense crumbling structures swarmed on all sides with the sprawl of London. Jade slows.

"Is that Karakorum?" She asks quietly, standing on her tiptoes to try and get a better look.

"That's the Forgotten Quarter," Dave says, and she nods.

"Karakorum, before London was stolen and crushed it."

Rose leans against a wall. "I never knew its name. It's just the Forgotten Quarter. No one really talks about it except to warn you not to go there."

"Why?" You ask. You are about to spend several days digging through its mysteries and you feel like you ought to know. Something about the broken silhouette of it makes you shiver. Very faintly you hear the sound of a hunting horn.

Rose shrugs again. "Devils, squatters. It's very easy to get lost in there. The ruins are dangerous, unstable. Sinkholes sometimes open up to the other cities below. The ones from before."

Jade nods and recites the names. "Uruk of Sumeria, Amarna of Egypt, Calakmul of the Maya, Karakorum of the Mongols, and London of the British Empire."

Dave has stopped in his tracks and is staring at her. "How do you… I've never heard those names before."

"It's in every history book," you say, "every now and then the most powerful, advanced city in the world gets stolen by bats and plonked underground? It's sort of a huge deal." Your grandmother has told you about living through the upheaval when London fell. A chunk of the British Isles vanished overnight, taking Parliament and the Empress with it. The empire fractured into the states you're familiar with but there's been unrest as long as you can remember. It's the same thing that's happened every time a city's been taken - rapid dissolution of a previously mighty political power and a vast amount of political infighting as the remaining factions battle to come out on top. Your grandmother's involvement in the industrial revolution put your family comfortably near the apex.

Rose and Dave are both staring at you.

"What?" you ask.

"We don't… It doesn't get talked about, down here. I've never even… why haven't I thought about it? What happened above and what happened before?" Rose starts walking again, face pensive.

"Things are pretty… It can be kind of difficult to get information," Dave says, grimacing. "We probably shouldn't be talking about this, not out here."

You all fall silent and head off at a fair clip. You get closer to those ruins and you narrow your eyes at the silhouette, which seems to have changed while you weren't looking.

You're shivering again by the time Dave slows down, staring at a spot on the ground and then looking around at the houses surrounding you. They're miserable, squat little things, running into each other with some of them built up a few stories too high and groaning under the weight. The whole street is lit by those blue stones, making all of you look grey as corpses. Dave turns, heads for one of the buildings with only one floor and an alley down either side.

"This is the one," he says quietly, running his hand across a low wall running beside the path to the door. Jade squares her shoulders and marches up the path.

"Wait, Jade," Dave hisses, but she raps smartly on the door with her knuckles. There is murky water dripping from the sagging roof, a drop hits the back of your neck as you step up beside her. There's silence from inside.

Rose steps over a sad, dead-looking plant and tries to peer through the dirty little window set into the wall.

"There's a light inside," she whispers, and Jade nods and knocks again. This time there's a bang and a curse.

"Oh my FUCKING-" the door is wrenched open so hard that it bangs against the wall, sending echoes resonating around the street.

"What the FUCK could you possibly want? What kind of uncivilised nook-sniffing CRETIN comes knocking on someone's door at this time?"

He is small, with a wild mop of coarse looking hair and teeth like a dog's. His jumper is far too big for him. There is a smear of what looks like ink across his cheek.

“Alright, I take it back,” you hear Rose whisper to Dave.

"Hi!" Jade says brightly, and this seems to infuriate him further. He bristles in his cable-knit jumper.

"I am VERY BUSY so whatever it is that you noxious IMBECILES want can wait until a REASONABLE time."

"KK, what the hell?" asks a sleepy voice from inside the house. Across the street a window bangs open and an angry woman screams for you to be quiet.

"GO FUCK YOURSELF WITH YOUR SHITTY BROOM HANDLE, URSA," your new friend shouts back.

A new figure looms in the doorway, tall, gangly, and painted like a clown.

"What's going down, Kar-bro?" he asks, and reaches around the short one to pat at his face like a blind man trying to get a good look at him. The shouting dies down to mumbles.

"Oh, hey," the tall one says, peering past you to where Dave is lurking, "it's you. That one. Little red brother. Karkat, look who it is." His voice is slow and sleepy. Karkat bats his hands away and points an accusing finger towards Dave.

"I knew you would be a problem. Why didn't we kill you? It's like a shitty pathetic little animal, you've come back with your little human friends to beg. We're not feeding you."

Dave just stares at him. It is difficult to tell but he might be trying not to laugh. Jade waits for a moment.

"Are you done?"

He glares at her furiously.

"If you mean yelling inappropriately, then no, he's never done," says a new voice, lisping and creaky with sleep. A pair of mismatching eyes - one red, one blue - peer out at you from over the clown's shoulder.

"I have a message for you from Feferi," Jade says, and the one with the mismatching eyes flings the clown out of the way to shove his way towards her.

"What did you just say?" he asks, eyes wide, and Karkat pops up behind him looking equally stunned.

"Feferi," Jade says again, "she gave me a message to pass on to you."

She holds out her arm and he grabs her wrist with a long-fingered hand, drags her forwards to get a good look at the writing there, then looks up at Karkat in shock.

"Holy shit," he says quietly, and then he drags Jade forwards into the house.

"Hey!" you shout and shove your way in, trying to catch hold of her other hand, but he's pulled her through the room towards a back door, which he shoves roughly open and drags her through.

"Get off of her!" Rose commands from behind you, shoving past the short one to storm after Jade and you. You tumble out into a back garden which ends at a stale-looking tributary of the river. The troll is dragging Jade towards a tumble-down structure pressed against the back wall of the house. It is buzzing.

"Hey, you're hurting me," Jade says and you scowl, but he lets go of her and pulls off a board from the lean-to. A bee lazily drifts out. Another one follows and settles in Jade's hair. He was holding her arm so tightly that there are now white finger-marks ringing her wrist.

"Where do you think you get off-" you start angrily, before another bee comes to investigate your face and you have to stop talking in case it goes in your mouth.

Jade is peering over his shoulder now, crowding close behind him, and the other two trolls come out, following Dave.

"What is…?" Jade's voice drifts off to nothing. You peer over their shoulders.

The cobbled together structure is covering a crammed-together nest of beehives, expanding sloppily out of the boxes they originally lived in. There is honey dripping to the floor, dripping over Jade's shoes, tinged strangely green in the light.

"Sollux?" Karkat asks quietly from behind you. He has his arms wrapped around himself, his teeth pressing into his bottom lip. "Is it working?"

Sollux is tapping on what looks like a typewriter, but as you look you can see that occasionally a key will move on its own. The apparatus is slowly swelling and shrinking to some unheard beat, like it's breathing.

"Give me a second, KK, I wasn't exactly set up for this."

A bee lands on your arm and you flinch, shake it off. It heads for Rose instead and she lets it land on the back of her fingers, raises her arm to look at it while it investigates her.

"Why are these bees purple?" she asks. Sollux briefly glances at her over his shoulder but doesn't answer.

To your very great surprise a second later a voice emanates from the beehives, sharp and surprised.

"Sollux? Is… is that you?"

Behind you Karkat makes a little pained nose and then surges forwards.

"Kanaya?!"

"Yes! How, how have you gotten through the network lock?"

Sollux cuts in. "Fef passed on the code through… shenanigans I guess?"

He glances at Jade questioningly. She shrugs. You suppose that does about sum it up.

"Did you make it to London?" the Voice asks, and Karkat and Sollux reply in the affirmative with delight. You hear a splash from behind you and turn. The one with his face painted like a clown is standing ankle-deep in the water, face baffled.

"Are you alright?" you ask, stepping down onto the muddy bank and staring in distrust at the sluggishly flowing water.

"I am excellent, my guy," he says dreamily, kicking his feet in the mud. Behind you the other trolls are still talking with the mystery voice. Dave and Rose have huddled close to Jade.

"You've seen the sun," the clown says, still looking down into the water.

"Yeah," you say, fiddling awkwardly with the cuffs off your jacket, "how'd you know?"

He grins. Karkat's teeth are a little blunt, but the clowns are tipped with razor points beneath his greasepaint.

"You got that sweet sky blue all over you, brother. You know, they worship that shit in the Khanate."

"Really?" You don't know what the Khanate is.

"Damn right. Hella sky temples scattered all over that place. They got that electric light shit, light you up so bright you'll never see again." He looks at you, grins. The greasepaint cracks at the corners of his mouth. "I ain't never seen a colour like it. Little miracle, brother."

"I suppose it's nice," you say, trying to think if you've ever been astonished by the sky. You don't think that you have. It's just there. Maybe you would be if you'd never seen it before.

"You seen the sun, too," he carries on, voice factual, "got that golden splayed out all over you like a moirail, nice and safe."

There is a trickle of fear running up your spine. You would like to return to the others but you don't seem to be able to move your feet, or even to look away from his grin. His eyes are cold.

"What's it like, having that touch on you?" He leans closer, too close, the stink of his breath on your face. Your stomach has dropped, every hair on you is standing up on end, every part of you is screaming at you to run but you still can't move.

"Wanna be careful," he says, quiet, like a secret, "'cause that shit don't last forever, and little sister over there, she downright reeks of green ."

His eyes are fathomless as the ocean. You're falling.

"Gamzee, what the fuck are you doing?"

He looks away and you're free, you stumble backwards, fall onto the cold ground and keep crawling.

Karkat storms past you, shoves him further into the water.

"Don't do that shit, you feculent moron. Not on anyone, we've had this conversation."

Gamzee shrugs and turns his head away, twists his mouth like a child being told off.

"John," Rose's hand is warm through the layers of your coat, "are you alright? What happened?" Your teeth are chattering, so you don't answer.

"Just a little dose of the voodoos, best bro, just to see what he was made of."

"No! I'm not kidding around!" Karkat's hands are on his hips, he briefly turns to look at you. "Sorry about this pan-addled, piece of shit moron, he shouldn't be messing around in your head. Gamzee, have you been sucking the sopor out of the sleep patches again?"

"KK, I told you this would be a problem," Sollux says from beside the hive. The mystery voice is gone.

"Nah, I'm clean as clean can be, little brother," he says, looping a long arm around Karkat's shoulders.

"Gamzee, it's been like four nights, can you not put the fear into literally everyone we meet?" Karkat sounds vaguely desperate. You rub your frozen hands together. It doesn't help. Rose hoists you upright and Dave comes to stand at your other shoulder. That doesn't help either, there's a ghost of something primal and afraid screeching in the back of your head.

"Yo, where's my girl at?" Dave asks. "Aradia. She around?"

Karkat's eyes narrow into a glare and you hear a crackling behind you. There is a flash of blue and red luminescence from the beehives.

"How about mind your own business, Strider?" Sollux chimes in, and Dave raises his hands in surrender.

"Just checking in, man, she's cool."

"Yeah, she's cool as shit," Sollux spits at him, face darkening. Dave's eyebrows furrow.

"We haven't actually done introductions," Rose says loudly, stepping between them and shoving her hand out at Sollux. "I'm Rose, that's Dave, Jade, and John."

"I don't give a shit what your names are," Sollux says before looking vaguely ashamed of himself and tilting his head towards Jade. "Thanks, I guess. For bringing Fef's message. That was cool of you. The rest of you can piss off, though."

Rose's face goes sour, like she's sucked on a lemon, and she pulls her hand back.

"Noted," she says, "shall we be going, then?"

Jade looks like she wants to complain. She's staring at Sollux's horns like she wants to take a sketch. You desperately want to leave.

"Actually, yeah, we need to start heading back sort of now if we want to get back in before everyone starts waking up," Dave says. Jade glances down at her hands with a mixture of disgust and fascination, tapping her fingertips together like they’re sticky. You look at the bees clambering through her hair and the greenish honey oozing out of the hive and make the connection just before she shrugs and puts her fingers in her mouth.

“No!” Sollux yells a moment too late, and she turns to look at him, wide-eyed and confused. He moves to grab at her wrist but he hesitates, panicked expression turning pensive as she slowly removes her fingers from her mouth.

“What?” she asks nervously, “it’s not poisonous is it? It just tastes like honey.”

“It’s a… it’s a pretty intense stimulant,” he says sheepishly, and Jade presses her lips together. Your snort.

Jade thinks about it for a second, then shrugs. “It’s not like I was going to sleep tonight, anyway,” she says cheerfully, and she leans forwards on the balls of her feet, “do you… Do you suppose that we could write to each other? It’s just that I’ve got rather a lot of questions that I’d like to ask about you, and your species, and your lifestyles, and your culture, and… oh, and everything.” She grins, and Sollux’s head tilts as though he’s rolling his eyes.

“I think it’s a marvellous idea,” Rose says, although she’s still eyeing Gamzee, expression neutral. It occurs to you that she might just want to leave faster.

“If it’ll get you to leave,” Karkat snaps, and he gestures for all of you to follow him back into the shack. The furniture is all dirty and worn, but Karkat heads for a corner where an old crate has been set up as a sort of desk, with tidy piles of paper strewn out across the surface. He inks a pen and scrawls something across one of the blank sheets, pushes it at Jade, and then scowls when she peers over his shoulder at the papers.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Mind your business,” he retorts, lip curled up in a snarl, and you return your attention to the ink on his face. Whatever he’s been doing he’s been doing it with great gusto.

“Come on, Harley,” Dave says quietly, grabbing for the back of her jacket and pulling towards the front door. Gamzee is looming in the back one. The room gets a little colder.

“I just-” Jade starts, before scrunching her face up, “I just wish I had more time,” she finishes, and Dave’s mouth twists a little in sympathy.

“Don’t we all.”

She eyes his face and sighs, shoulders dropping, then steps past Rose to the front door and opens it, blinks as warm candlelight streams across the mucky floor, highlighting the dust and dirt accumulated there.

“What-” Rose starts, and you all stare through the shack’s front doorway, where instead of the street it appears to open directly into Rose’s kitchen. A clay man, expression blank, watches you from the stove.

“What the fuck?” Karkat asks from behind you at the same time as Rose goes, “Huh.”

Jade slams the door closed and then opens it again, revealing the dim, blue-tinged street. She repeats this several times, gets the same result.

In the distance you hear a clock chime.

“Okay, ignoring whatever that was, we seriously need to get a move on,” Dave says, and shoves you all out into the miserable little front garden.

“See you around,” Sollux says from the doorway, and inside the shack you hear Karkat start to rant.

“What was-” Jade starts, and Dave interrupts her by grabbing her arm and starting off down the street at a jog. Rose follows along, but her brow is creased in deep thought.

Chapter Text

Even at the moderately punishing pace that Dave sets you reach your townhouse faster than you would have anticipated. This could have multiple explanations, of course, beginning with London’s irritating habit of rearranging itself without warning or consideration for people who might have important things to do. Unrelated to that, your friend just ate a small amount of a mysterious substance and then opened a door halfway across the city. Once the initial hostility had worn off the trolls seemed friendly enough, it’s not impossible that they would let you take a jar or two of that honey to experiment with. You file that knowledge away for later. For now, you are slightly concerned about Jade.

Dave and John get her upstairs with one of her arms around each of their shoulders, her toes dragging along the carpet as she snoozes between them. Either Sollux was lying about the honey working as a stimulant or it causes a powerful downswing, because you weren’t halfway home before Jade lost the ability to keep her eyes open. The three of you get her shoes and coat off and manoeuvre her onto her bed. John slumps down, sits by her feet.

“That was strange, right?” he asks, “That wasn’t just normal London stuff?”

“No, that was weird,” Dave says, shoving his hands into his pockets and staring at Jade’s sleeping face.

“Okay, good,” John says, before heaving a deep breath. “I’m going to bed,” he says.”

“That seems very sensible,” you say, shooting a quick glare at Dave and heading for your own room, keeping your footsteps quiet on the hall carpet. You wait for the boys’ doors to click closed before you close your own, and you light the candle on your dresser and then hesitate, eyes narrowed as you sweep your gaze across the mess of your belongings. Something’s wrong. Something’s changed.

You are going to blame the length of time it takes you to figure it out on sleep deprivation. Your bed has been made. You go to great lengths to keep your room in as much disarray as possible, because you know that it irritates mother, but your bed has now been neatly made, hospital corners and all. You squint at it, do a little circle around to the other side of the room to look at it from a different perspective, and then throw the cover back and back up to the window, waiting for something to leap out at you. Nothing happens, but you realise that your sheet has been doubled over on itself so that you can’t climb in. It’s an apple pie bed. Someone has apple-pied your bed.

There is a note below your pillow. You pull it out and glare at it for longer than you will ever be willing to admit to anyone.

I write this with stern fatherly disapproval, young lady. Well-behaved women do not sneak out at night. Let this be a lesson to you. - Mr. J. Egbert, Esq.

You are one hundred percent certain that John’s father is not a member of the gentry. You crumple the note up and toss it onto the floor, yanking your sheet free and throwing your shoes into a corner before dropping your coat on the floor and falling forwards into bed, quietly furious.

When you next open your eyes you are drooling face-down into your pillow, unpleasantly hot and sweaty in your dress. You groan, shove yourself upright and wash in the stale water on your dressing table. You are wiping your face dry when something crashes from the top of your wardrobe, making you jump. You knock the water jug with your elbow, it tumbles to the floor and soaks both your ankles and your violin case.

You curse and whip around, glare furiously at the smug-looking cat that’s licking its back leg on the top of your wardrobe. Lying on the ground is the remnants of an ugly statuette your mother had gifted to you. Your bedroom door bangs open and Dave stumbles through, sword drawn, his hair tousled and his face puffy with exhaustion. You drag on your dressing robe, scowling. His eyes do a full survey of the room before his breathing starts to slow down and his shaking sword-arm lowers.

“You alright?”

You roll your eyes at him and immediately feel guilty. “I’m fine. It was the cat.” You point at the top of your wardrobe and discover that the cat has vanished.

He nods, disappears for a moment, then reappears with his hands empty. “Quick question,” he says, and you fold your hands in front of you and wait, quirking one eyebrow up. “Did Dad Egbert fill your pillow with potatoes?”

You snort. “No, he apple-pied my bed.”

He chews on his bottom lip a little.

"Is that normal dad behaviour? Is that a thing that dads do?"

"I don't know how you expect me to know, I've never had one," you say lightly. He scrunches his brow up a little then pulls his stoic face back on.

"Thought that was your area of expertise, Lalonde," he says, "human behaviour. Got that mad hankering for understanding the inner workings of the mind, all that-"

This might be about to turn into a rap. You interrupt before he can fall into a rhythm. "Shall we head downstairs?"

"I need to get changed," he says, and you nod slightly in acknowledgement. He clearly did the same thing that you did, fell into bed in his clothes, and he's still caked with grime. You cinch your dressing gown more tightly around your waste and follow him out into the hallway. Jade is still snoring, you can hear her through the door.

You can smell stale coffee and your stomach grumbles at you, a clear rebuke for missing breakfast. The low rumble of voices comes from downstairs, Jake and the bright tinkling laugh of your mother, as well as someone unfamiliar.

"-no problems with a little delay," the unfamiliar voice says, "me and my boys have got everything ready for when your girl's recovered from her ordeal." The stranger speaks with the threatening drawl of someone who spends a lot of time around Watchmaker's Hill. You peek through the doorway, loathe to enter into another painful interaction with mother, and eye the fellow who's sitting at the dining room table. He has his back to you, arms laid casually out along the backs of the chairs either side of him, the front two legs of his chair off the ground. He is wearing a hat indoors, which is terribly uncouth. It is an attractive shade of maroon.

Opposite him is Jake, puffing on his pipe beneath his glossy, freshly-waxed moustache. Your mother sits at the head of the table sipping from a dark wine glass. There is a tell-tale flush down the column of her throat that tells you she has already had a decent amount to drink. You jump and swallow down a shriek as a hand lands on your shoulder.

“Rose,” Dirk says from behind you, crowding too close and pushing you forwards slightly into the dining room. He takes a seat beside Jake, slouching backwards in his chair to match the stranger, and sips from a half-drunk glass of water waiting for him at the place setting.

“Oh, Rosie,” your mother says, clapping her hands together, “how delightful, do come and meet Mister Seven.”

The stranger turns. His face is all sharp angles, skin Neath-pallid, and his eyes are a startling shade of acid green. His dark, thin eyebrows shoot up when he sees you standing there in your dressing gown but he still doffs his hat, stands, extends a hand to you.

“Just Crowbar’s fine,” he says as you shake it, and he pulls out a chair for you besides your mother, who looks slightly smitten. His hand is very cold. You take an uncomfortable seat. “You must be Miss Lalonde, I’ve been hearing all sorts about you. All good things.” He forces a little chuckle that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just been telling the boss here about the preparations my crew’s made for your expedition.” He nods to Jake, who grins back.

You can’t figure out what Crowbar’s suit is made of. It might be wool, dyed green. His cufflinks match his hat, little enamel circles with the number “7” inscribed in gold. One of his canines glitters to match.

“We’ll be taking good care of you,” he says, in a tone that you suspect is meant to be comforting.

“We were just telling Mr. Crowbar about Jade’s little incident last night,” Jake says, and Crowbar nods.

“You fellows from the surface need to be careful, down here,” he says, “lots of little things around to trip you up that you aren’t used to.”

“Have you been to the surface, Crowbar?” you ask, clipping your vowels. The clay man puts a cut of tea in front of you, as well as a little plate of sandwiches. When you take a bite of one it is stale and hard. Leftovers from an early lunch that you’ve missed.

He turns his attention back to you and nods. “Once, a long time ago. It wasn’t for me. We’ve sorted you a promising dig site on the good Professor’s orders, we’ve set up a base camp, and we’re your muscle. We’ll keep the riff-raff away.”

Dave appears at the doorway of the dining room, gestures for you to follow him, and then vanishes again.

“Apologies, I think I shall go and get dressed,” you say, finishing your tea and leaving the sad little sandwiches where they are. You dip a little curtsey to Crowbar. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir,” you say, and he tilts his head at you.

“Charming daughter you got,” he says to your mother as you leave, hurry up the stairs to where Dave is waiting at the top.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, and he grabs your wrist to pull you along.

“Jade,” he says shortly, and you both half-run to the doorway of her room.

It is a disaster. Jade looks uninjured but her face is screwed up in a pained, frightened grimace. She is sweat-soaked and so tangled in her sheets that she can’t move, but her limbs are twitching and straining in a way that suggests she would be flailing if she could. Every item in the room has been tossed, upended, or otherwise put out of place. The water pitcher has soaked half of the bed, her clothes are strewn about the room, her chest upside down on the floor. When you look upwards you discover a rifle wedged in the arms of the chandelier. The curtains on both the bed and the window have been torn down, the wardrobe rests at an alarming angle against the tops of the bedposts, and the drawers from the chest look to have been flung haphazardly around the room.

John has one knee on the bed, hands at Jade’s shoulders, shaking her.

“Jade, wake up, for God’s sake,” he sounds like this isn’t the first time he’s entreated her to return to consciousness.

“What…” you start, before ducking under the wardrobe to check that the window is still latched. It is.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Dave says, stupefied, and rights the little stool by the dressing table so that he can sit down. You take up the opposite side of Jade to John, peer down at her face. She is streaming with sweat, teeth bared.

“I think we ought to get her grandfather,” you say, just before she sits bolt upright, headbutting John in the face, and opens her eyes.

Chapter Text

One moment you are walking across a bridge over the Stolen River and the next moment you are tripping into a glittering fountain amidst a choir of birdsong. Given the last couple of days you decide that being surprised by this would be a waste of time. You right yourself and surface, coughing and spluttering, and squint up into the yellow sky. A quick look around tells you that you are back at Feferi’s fountain.

Something brushes your ankle as your tread water and you kick reflexively but it evades you, and then you are being grabbed from behind by a strong, cold pair of arms and hoisted out of the water.

“Oh, you did it!” Feferi says, keeping hold of you but sitting beside you on the tiled brim of the water. “I wasn’t shore if you actually would, but you did!” She lets you go and splashes her feet in the water.

You hear a monkey shriek in the jungle and you turn so that you are facing outwards, remembering the sudden, alarming snake downpour that happened a few hours ago.

“I didn’t think I would sea you again so soon,” Feferi says.

“No, neither did I,” you say, rearranging your clothes around you. They are dry. You blink down at yourself. Thinking about it, they’re not the clothes that you were just wearing. “I didn’t even look in any mirrors, this time, I think I just fell asleep.”

Feferi nods sagely. “That’ll happen. I’m glad you’re back, though, I’m having a pretty crabby day.” She drops her chin into her hand and glares out into the underbrush.

“Oh no! How come?”

She sighs and pokes at one of the plates she was eating little cakes from earlier with her toe. They are stacked up beside the fountain and on top is a pile of uneaten food.

“My friend was supposed to be coming to visit me but she never turned up. It’s been a whale since I’ve seen her. I thought maybe she’d seen you and got scared but even after you left she didn’t come. Plus, I…”

She stops, digs her needle teeth into her bottom lip. Whatever troll skin is made of it’s a lot tougher than human skin because the pinprick points don’t draw blood.

“Sorry,” she says, “this isn’t your problem. I’m being inappropriate, I’m not trying to solicit you or anyfin, I promise.”

You screw your face up in confusion. “You can tell me, maybe I can help. We’re friends now, right?”

She fiddles with one of her rings. “If you’re shore. I don’t want to overstep, and it’s not like I want to hurt him! It’s just…”

She drops her face into her hands and groans through her fingers.

“Why does everything have to be so difficult and complicated? It’s hard, you know? And he’s the one who’s meant to understand but he never glubbin’ bothers, it’s just all a-boat him all the time! I’m so tired and I’m bored of his stupid crab.”

You feel like now isn’t the appropriate time to be asking about all the fish puns. “I’m a bit lost at sea,” you say, and she sits up and smiles at you weakly, “I don’t even know who we’re talking about?”

“Sorry,” she says, and she sweeps her wet hair back over her shoulders and turns to face you, sitting cross legged on the tiles. She suddenly looks quite small, hunched over her own legs on the edge of the fountain, silk skirts drenched. The trees around you rustle and quiver in a hot gust of wind and you tense, but nothing appears out of the shadows.

“Sorry,” she says again, and sits up straighter, “I’m talking about my moirail. I think I need to break up with him.”

This isn’t as enlightening as you were hoping it would be. “Moirail?”

You stare at each other for a moment in increasing confusion.

“Yeah,” she says eventually, eyeing your baffled face, “is that, like… Oh, do humans have a different word for it or somefin?”

“What does it mean?” you ask, and she goes back to chewing on her lip.

“I don’t really know how to explain it. Ha, we need Karcrab, he’d explain it better! It’s like… the person who knows you best in the whole world, who looks out for you and kelps you make good choices. Keeps you calm, which is pretty important for highbloods. And Eridan’s been my moirail for sweeps and sweeps, it’s just… he just kind of sucks at it.”

“I don’t think humans have a word for that,” you say, and her eyebrows shoot upwards, “I guess it sounds like a best friend or, like a sibling you’re really close to or something.”

“What’s a sibling?” she asks, and you return to staring at each other in bemusement. You don’t need to explain, though, she answers her own question. “Oh! Like a littermate. I guess? It’s pretty much our most important relationship so it’s important to get it right. And I don’t think we’re getting it right.”

“What’s he doing wrong?”

“He’s just… He’s just shellfish. He’s got so much drama all the time and all we do is talk about him and there’s never any time left for me. I’ve got stuff I need to jam about, too! It’s like he thinks that just because we’re both royalty he’s entitled to me or somefin, and he never even thinks that maybe it doesn’t work like that. Plus all the genocide stuff is getting reel-y boring.”

Your brain catches so much on “royalty” that it takes you a second or two to catch up to “genocide”.

“What?” you ask. It is concise and applies to both points.

“Like, we get it, Eridan, you hate landdwellers. Maybe you could chum up with somefin new for once? Being a bigot isn’t a personality, and no-one cares about your stupid doomsday machines that never work!” Feferi’s voice is rising in both pitch and volume. “I’m so glubbin bored of having to sit there and pat him on the back whale he complains that no-one cares about him! Guess what, Eridan, I’ve been trying to care about you since we were grubs and you make it pretty damn difficult!” She stabs her finger into the tiles a few times, which crack under the onslaught, and then she wilts and groans, slides off the tiles back into the water.

“Sorry about that,” she says, popping back up again, “I shouldn’t have laid all that out on you. I just… I just feel like he’s not giving me an otter options.”

“You… what?”

“A lot of,” she corrects, “yeah, sorry, that one was kind of a stretch.”

You think about it for a second. This is not a problem that you have ever had. Your life is full of awesome people! John is your cousin and he’s super fun, and your grandfather takes you on awesome adventures and he’s always looking out for you even if he is kind of a doofus sometimes. Great Aunt Jane is kind of scary but she’s always been nice to you, and she makes the best food in the whole world. On top of that whenever you’ve needed to talk about something but you haven’t wanted to do it in person you’ve always had Rose or Dave to write letters to. A lot of the time you get halfway through your letter and discover you’ve figured out your own problem while you were telling them about it!

“That sounds really hard,” you say, fiddling with your skirt and staring out into the trees with your face screwed up in thought. “Sorry, I mean reel-y hard.”

She glubs and laughs, dips back under the water. When she surfaces her face has flushed a dark pink colour.

“It sounds like something that’s meant to make you happy is making you miserable,” you say tentatively, and she rests her head against the edge of the fountain, hair fanning out behind her in a dark cloud.

“I’m just tired,” she says eventually, words bubbling up at you through a few inches of water.

“I don’t think that’s how people who love you are supposed to make you feel,” you say, “not all the time, anyway. Maybe every now and then.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She heaves herself back out of the water. “I know what I need to do, I need to finish it, I just… It’s going to be bad.” She smiles across at you. “Hey, I’m reel-y glad that I met you.”

You grin. “Me too. I’ll try and come back, I guess. I don’t really know how I got here this time. Or the first time, to be honest. Sorry your friend didn’t show up, too.”

She shrugs. “At least I know Karkrab and Sollux are okay, thanks to you.” She nudges you with her shoulder, smiling brightly. “I’m going to owe you for a whale. Hey, do you think you could look out for them, as shell?”

You translate “shell” to “well” and scuffle the tips of your dream-boots in the weeds growing through the tiles.

“I’ll try! Karkra… Karkat gave me their address so that we could write to them. Plus we should be starting our expedition to Karakorum tomorrow so we might be able to sneak across and visit them. They weren’t very keen on us, though.”

Feferi laughs, a glittery little noise that hangs in the hot, heavy air. “They don’t mean it. That’s just them being trolls. When you grow up like we do you get used to people wanting to krill you all the time. It makes it kind of hard to trust new people. They’re reel-y nice underneath, I promise.”

You mull this over for a moment. “Are you really royalty?”

The smile slides off her face and her shoulders slump. You instantly regret asking.

“Yeah,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate. You are trying to think of a polite way of steering the conversation back to the genocide thing and whether that is likely to be a problem when the sky over your heads turns dark. Feferi’s head snaps upwards and she snarls, a low, angry noise that makes all of your hairs stand on end. It’s the warning snarl of an apex predator, and you were not expecting it to come out of her pretty face.

“You need to wake up,” she says urgently, and you gape at her.

“I don’t know how.”

She grimaces and glances up at the sky again. A wind is picking up around you, pulling mouldering sticks and bits of wet leaf litter into the air and whipping it into your faces. She stands and extends an arm and is suddenly holding a golden, double-ended trident, which she pulls back and aims directly at you. Without thinking you fling yourself out of the way, but instead of hitting the ground you keep

falling

and

falling

and

falling

and

You flail madly, trying to find something, anything to hold on to as you plummet down into nothing. The jungle has gone, the sound of birdsong and tinkling water has vanished and been replaced by a thick, threatening silence. In the distance you can see little pinpricks of light, like faraway stars.

You slow to a stop, suspended in the darkness. When you squint your eyes you think you can make out shapes, immense and still. Dead , says a little voice at the back of your head, and you close your eyes to block your view. When you open your eyes again frost has formed on your eyelashes and is stinging the tip of your nose. Your breaths are coming very fast, and you aren’t sure what it is that you’re breathing.

Your eyes acclimate a little more and you stare down at two titans orbiting each other in the void, blackened and empty.

WHO THE FuCK. ARE YOu.

What? You ask, or you try to. No sound comes out of you. Something wraps around your chest, a terrible, crushing pressure.

THE FISH BITCH. HAS TRICKED ME.

You are choking, your ribs cracking under the pressure as you desperately try to scrabble against whatever force is holding you. You can’t move. You can’t breathe.

AT LEAST. I GET TO KILL YOu.

You die.

Chapter Text

You bolt upright in your bed and headbutt John in the face, cracking your forehead against his and yelping in pain. He tumbles back off your bed as you gasp for breath, desperately trying to untangle your arms from your sheets and gulping down huge lungfuls of air. When you finally free yourself you wrap your arms around your chest, feel the solid lines of your uncracked ribs beneath your skin. It takes you a moment to calm down and notice the mess of your room.

John pokes his head up over your mattress, groaning and pressing his fingers to his forehead. Twin pale faces look at you in the dim light and after a second or two you recognise them as Rose and Dave.

"Are you alright? What happened?" Rose asks, and you squint around at the ruin of your borrowed bedroom in confused horror.

"I… I was talking to Feferi again, and… I think I just had a nightmare," you say, shaking your head. Fragments of the dream are already slipping away. You wonder if you really did speak to Feferi or if this time she was just a fragment of your subconscious. "What happened in here?"

John stares at you, resting his elbows on your mattress. There's a red blob on his head where you smashed into him. "It was like this when I came to wake you up a few minutes ago," he says. There's a nervous quaver to his voice that makes you feel terrible.

You look around at the toppled furniture, your belongings scattered around the room, and haul yourself out of bed to do a quick inventory. Dave rights the wardrobe as Rose starts putting the drawers back into the dressing table. John helps you gather your things.

"Nothing's missing," you say, when you've piled all of your belongings into a heap on the bed.

"We didn't hear anything, either, not even with the furniture being thrown about," Dave says flatly from beside the door, and you frown.

"I don't understand," you say. There is still something cold lingering beneath your lungs, an unpleasant, freezing pressure that makes you want to run, run all the way back home.

All four of you jump as Ms. Lalonde calls from downstairs.

"What are you all doing up there? You're making a terrible racket. Come down and have something to eat, you must all be starving."

Rose heaves a displeased sigh, mouth pinched.

"Do you think we should say something?" you ask, picking up a crumpled notebook and smoothing the pages down.

"Say what?" Rose asks. "Nothing's been stolen, the window's still locked. If anything it'll raise questions about what you were doing last night. It definitely wasn't like this when we put you to bed."

You gnaw on your bottom lip and then your stomach grumbles. You feel as though you have forgotten something terribly important, or like you glimpsed something crucial but weren't paying enough attention.

"Let me just get changed," you say, pulling on a smile, and the other three share a worried look. "I'm alright, really. Let's just carry on with the day."

John carries on frowning at you and Dave’s mouth is pressed into a thin line, but Rose nods and smoothes down her skirt, tucks her hair behind her ears.

“Let’s not keep mother waiting,” she says primly, and sweeps out of the door. John follows, but Dave hesitates in the doorway.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks, and you nod and force a little smile. That seems to mollify him and he heads off after them.

You are not completely certain that you want to go downstairs. Grandfather is always so fussy, and a look in the mirror tells you that you don’t look very healthy, there is no colour in your cheeks and your eyes are ringed by dark circles. You are so certain that you have forgotten something. Feferi, you think, it was something to do with Feferi. She was sad about something. You nibble on your bottom lip as you drag a brush through your hair, dislodging the last few flakes of dirt.

You wouldn't usually tie up your hair, but it might make you look a little more put together. You lack ribbons and clips, and your luggage is now terribly unorganised. Rose knits, you remember, thinking of the numerous gifts you’ve received through the years, and you head for the corridor, glance quickly up and down, and then slip through her door. She won’t mind.

You immediately regret your decision. It is incredibly messy, clothes, papers, pens, bits of rubbish strewn around all over the place. You blink, briefly bamboozled, and then step over the violin case on the floor and pick your way over to a pile of dyed wool in the corner, a full rainbow of colours. There are multiple sets of knitting needles with half-finished projects hanging from them, so you carefully pick up a ball that isn’t in use. It is blue. You reconsider, and instead grab a dark fuschia. You cut a length, snip it with your pen knife, then stare at the strand for a minute. Feferi, you think.

You whip your hair up into a quick plait and tie the end off with your stolen wool, then cut another, smaller piece and tie it around the little finger on your left hand. Something to do with Feferi, you think, and then you grimace as your head begins to ache. There are voices coming from downstairs, Rose’s mother laughing at something Dave’s droning, Rose saying something sardonic in return and your grandfather guffawing. You scrub your hands down your face and then pinch at your cheeks to try to force some colour into them.

Something soft and warm brushes against your ankles as you try to close Rose’s door and you jump, then watch the little black and white cat wiggle through the gap and make his way inside. Fretfully, you leave her door open a crack so that he can get out again, and then you go and have a quick wash. You drag some clean clothes on, a sensible green pair of trousers and a shirt, then a thick woollen jacket and one of the scarves that Rose has made for you. Hopefully this will make grandfather worry less. Your chest feels fine after your jaunt in the river, you are just tired and fretful after a busy night and a bad dream.

Dave and John are picking unenthusiastically at some little sandwiches when you finally descend as the clock strikes three in the afternoon. Your grandfather looks up from the piles of maps and papers he is making notes on and beams, and Roxy immediately pushes her chair back and comes to press her hand to your forehead. Her fingers are very, very cold.

“Jade! I’m so happy to see you up and about,” she says, and once she’s satisfied with your forehead she moves her hand to press against your cheek instead. “How are you feeling, my darling?”

You smile, as big and bright as possible. “I feel absolutely fine, Ms. Lalonde, I really am terribly sorry to have worried everyone!”

Dave’s brother isn’t present, which you find yourself grateful for, and you sit down next to Dave and let Roxy serve you some tea with too much milk and sugar.

“I’ve had the chaps we’ve hired grab our supplies from the ship,” your grandfather tells you as you force your drink down. It is, at least, hot. “Everything’s ready to go when we are, apparently.”

This buoys you up significantly. “I’m ready!” you say, excitement clearing away the last of your weariness. “I just need to grab some of my notebooks from upstairs!”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” your grandfather says, and you wilt in your chair. “It’s nearly evening, it might be better to wait until tomorrow.”

“We could spend tonight getting everything ready in camp, then tomorrow get straight on with digging for treasure,” Dave says, and your grandfather pauses thoughtfully. You grin over at Dave, then blow him a kiss when your grandfather and Roxy are looking at one another consideringly. He turns pink and Rose snorts into her teacup.

“It isn’t a bad idea,” Roxy says, and your grandfather starts gathering together his notes, moustache bristling with excitement. He wants to set out as badly as you do. “Are you all finished with lunch?” Roxy asks, and Dave and John nod. You aren’t hungry, so you nod along, and she doesn’t notice that you haven’t eaten anything. Beaming, she claps her hands together. “Excellent! Right, get a bag together, you two, and Jade grab whatever you need. I’ll arrange a carriage. Wear sensible shoes, all of you.”

With that she vanishes off into the hallway with a waft of perfume, and you bounce to your feet and head back upstairs to grab your notebooks. You’ve brought a fairly hefty selection with you. The physical sciences come rather naturally to you, but your grandfather goes on dozens of digs a year around the globe and he started taking you with him when you could barely walk, so you’re a fair hand at archaeology. You’ve brought everything you have on the Mongols, the silk road, and the period just before the fall. You also have a long list of things to grab should you find them.

When you make your way back downstairs, bag slung over your shoulders, your grandfather is standing distractedly in the doorway to the dining room, puffing on his pipe and staring down at the crumpled papers in his hand. When he sees you he gestures you over.

“Here’s the camp, look,” he says, gesturing with the end of his pipe at a black mark on the map in an unfamiliar hand. “That Mr. Seven fellow who was here this morning said there were rumours of some sort of unearthed temple around there that the good doctor passed onto his team on our behalf.”

You look at the curve of the river, identify the trolls’ house just outside the Forgotten Quarter. A few streets away there is another mark. The writing is cramped and spiky, it’s almost impossible to read. Grandfather sees you squinting and prods it with his finger.

“Some sort of trade station, the fellow said. Couple of shops and stalls, a cafe. Supplies people going delving. Nice to know we won’t have to come all the way back here if we need to make a purchase. There’s an office of the university out there, as well, although I haven’t got it marked down.”

You nod, wondering how accurate the map is. You are fairly certain that at some point Rose or Dave told you it was impossible to accurately map London and its surroundings for any length of time, as things sometimes moved around. Grandfather doesn’t seem concerned though, so his sources must be good.

Rose descends, a small travelling pack by her side. She’s tucked a pair of knitting needles into the belt of her skirt, charmingly, although you can’t see that she’s bringing a project with her. Next appears John, who also had a separate chest to be taken to the campsite, and doesn’t need to bring anything with him. He isn’t empty-handed, though, he’s brought a bag as well. When Dave appears he’s armed with a sword hanging sheathed from his belt, and you briefly think of the wound through his chest that he must still be recovering from, but he shoots you a wry half-smile and you put the thought away.

The clay man appears and hands a lidded basket over to your grandfather, which he inspects briefly. You see cheeses, bread, dried fruits and meats, and then he closes the lid again. It clinks when he lifts it, like there are bottles in there as well. Clean water or juice, you hope, thinking back to the mushroom wine with distaste.

Rose knocks you with her shoulder and then smiles, small and secretive.

“Ready?” she asks, and you bounce on your toes again.

Without much delay you are sitting in another carriage, John pressed to one side and Rose to the other. Dave is squashed against the window by Roxy, who is chatting to your grandfather about some public house she’s visited recently and the poet she met there. It isn’t very interesting, so you spend most of your time staring out of the window again, peering at London’s denizens. It’s strange, how quickly things can begin to seem normal when you are surrounded by them. You are no longer hit with a quick flash of surprise when you see a rubbery man or a woman covered in bandages shuffling along. The white crows caw at you from atop wrought iron fences as your carriage splashes through the sludge in the streets.

The crowds lessen and then vanish almost entirely as you approach the Forgotten Quarter. You don’t head for the same neighbourhood you visited at midnight, you stay on a wider road that, despite the slightly nicer buildings rising up on each side, is still shabby and potholed. A trio of rubbery men watch you pass, their black eyes glittering in their moist faces, and you look away before you can help it. A woman with sleek hair and vibrant yellow eyes grins at you from a bright doorway which spills music out onto the street. Her dress is cut immodestly low and her teeth are very sharp.

“End of the line, missus,” the driver of the carriage calls after another few minutes, pulling to a stop at the end of a crumbling street, “horses won’t go any further.”

You hang out of the window. The horses look unbothered, but the driver is shifting fretfully in his seat. Roxy doesn't seem concerned, simply steps out into the road, passes him his payment, and gestures for the rest of you to follow.

“Come on, chaps,” Roxy says with a sharp grin, and she helps you down out of the carriage. It’s warmer here, and the air is wetter. You briefly regret your scarf, but when you tug it off there is still a chill that creeps down the back of your neck, so you wind it back on tighter.

“What are these lights made of?” you ask Roxy, gesturing to the glowing blue stones set into the walls here. She purses her lips.

“It’s glim,” she says, “same thing that’s set into the cavern ceiling, looks a bit like stars. It doesn’t stop shining, so it’s cheaper than gaslight, although I’ve heard that petty thieves come and pry it out of your walls if you’re not careful, so I’ll stick with the lamps I’ve got.”

She laughs, bright and tinkling, and it echoes strangely in the silence. You hesitate. The street here changes, the rough, unsealed cobbles breaking up and revealing packed earth instead. When you look up the buildings are ruins.

“Here we are,” Rose says quietly, and she shuffles you forwards. You glance behind to find John trailing you, and Dave even further back. He’s walking confidently, but he’s carefully checking the area every few seconds, and he’s got his hand on the hilt of his sword. Roxy and your grandfather are surging ahead. The strange, heavy atmosphere that comes over you doesn't seem to be affecting them, they are still talking and laughing.

The path here is well-trodden and clearly regularly used. After a few minutes of walking in silence you encounter another group of young adults, who cheerfully greet Roxy. She introduces them as students at the university. They have a brief, pleasant conversation with Rose before carrying on, heavy bags slung over their shoulders. Something feels very wrong. You glance back at John, who is starting to relax, and he speeds up to walk with you and Rose.

“Does something feel… off?” you ask, and Rose lifts an eyebrow at you.

“What do you mean?” she asks, but John is nodding.

“I know what you mean,” he says, “it feels like when you walk into somewhere you’re not supposed to be and everyone turns to look at you.”

You tilt your head to one side, assessing, and then decide that he’s close enough and nod.

“Don’t be silly,” says Rose, “there’s always people in and out of the Forgotten Quarter.”

“Karakorum,” you say, very quietly, and then you click your teeth together as a chill shoots through you. The toe of your boot hits something which goes skittering across the ground. Rose bends to pick it up.

“There you go,” she says, holding it out to you, “first find.”

It’s a small amulet, no bigger than your thumb, shaped like a horse’s head.

“Horsehead amulet,” Rose says, gesturing for you to get moving again. “They’re everywhere.”

“A wind horse,” you correct, turning it over in your hands, and she looks across at you questioningly. “For good luck, protection against evil. Different animals had different meanings.”

You tuck your new token into the breast pocket of your jacket and briskly rub your hands together, jogging a little to catch up with Roxy and your grandfather. After a little while he pulls out the map and they consult it together, then gesture off into the mess of crumbling buildings scattered around. Your grandfather turns to check that you are all still following.

“Right then, off we go,” he says, and leads you down a side-street. You have to scrabble and clamber a little now, you’re obviously heading off the beaten path, and you cast a slightly nervous glance up at the towering pillars and walls around you. The streets are wide, at least, much wider than the avenues of London. A glittering pair of eyes watches you from within one of the decrepit buildings and you glare back, forcing yourself back to confidence. Of course you feel a little frightened, you are deep underground making your way through a mostly abandoned city. You straighten your shoulders and your spine, breathe deep, and hurry to catch up to your grandfather.

By the time you hear voices ahead it is becoming difficult to navigate the labyrinthine ruins. Streets are blocked off by fallen statues, unsteady ground shifts under your feet as something white, like salt, crunches underneath the soles of your boots.

“Cans, I swear to everything holy, if you don’t put those where I goddamn told you to put them twenty minutes ago I will - Oh, hey, boss.”

“Mr Crowbar,” Roxy says, surging forwards and shaking his hand, “you must meet the rest of our little party. This is Jade and John, Rose you met this morning, and this is my ward Dave.”

He nods at you, smiles in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes, and shoots a venomous look at the enormous man standing a few feet away, who shuffles off looking chastised. The campsite is a large, flat area that’s obviously recently been emptied of rubbish. Seven large, green tents have been erected in a circle around a clumsily made fire pit.

“Got everything set up for you, ma’am. Mr. English, your belongings are in the tent over there. One set up for you, Ms. Lalonde, as well as one for your boys to share and one for the girls. Got supplies all packed away in the old house over there.”

He gestures to a compact building opposite. There is another man sitting on a chair by the door looking menacing. You smile at him and, although his expression doesn't change, he tips his hat to you.