Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

2009

attamen consulite / per voster honur

Of the many guises and roles Stricklander had donned throughout his long and unusual life, being a teacher had always come somewhat naturally -- at least where humans were concerned. Subterfuge and skullduggery might have been his first languages, but his skill with instruction was a fluency that surprised him. It was hard to say why it seemed important to ensure that those entrusted to him received a good education -- often a mission required a veneer of competence, of course, but over the years he had found himself investing perhaps a little too much thought into lesson plans. Then again, enkindling the spark of comprehension in a young mind through patience and persistence was a rare and heady delight that he'd never been able to resist.

When it came to training up future operatives for the Janus Order, he found his faith was often tested more than it was rewarded. Hard-won insights bestowed upon promising protégés too often yielded filthy little traitors who would sink the knife at the first opportunity -- or more accurately, would try to sink the knife and fail, usually fatally.

One didn't stay alive this long by accident. Being a teacher of men, by contrast, was considerably lower stakes.

Jim bit his lip, drumming his small fingers against the side of the table. "How does the horse move, again?"

"It's a knight, actually." Walter tapped a few potential routes for the aforementioned piece onto the board. "There, there, or there -- but think carefully before you move. I might have countermeasures planned."

"What do you mean?"

Walter rolled his eyes in gentle resignation. "I'm your opponent, Jim. You'd hardly expect me not to look out for my own interests, would you?"

Jim steepled his hands, his expression one of furious concentration; Walter attempted and failed yet again to not be charmed. "So . . . hmm. If I make a wrong move, can I take it back?"

Walter shook his head. "Absolutely not." One of the innumerable pigeons that clustered around the gazebo landed on a nearby table, pecking at the remnants of their after-school snacks. "We play for keeps."

"But Gran-Gran lets me do that in checkers."

"Checkers is just a game. Chess is war." He swatted the bird away from the half-eaten taco, tamping down the urge to forgive the boy a blunder or two; principles had to be upheld. The bird relocated itself to the rafters of the gazebo, drawing his attention to the overhanging eaves. Speaking of strategic placements . . .

"But I'm a kid," Jim wheedled.

"Children have no business fighting wars, wouldn't you agree?" Walter steepled his own hands in an echo of his small adversary, wondering if his aunt -- his familiar's aunt -- would ever have made such a concession to him during their idle games; likely not. "As a wise woman once said, don't pick up a sword unless you mean to wield it."

Jim scratched his chin, gesturing to the pieces on the board with his free hand. "These guys don't have swords."

"Metaphorically," Walter clarified.

The boy hadn't been remotely interested in chess until a recent episode of Gun Robot where it had factored into the plot. Walter -- who did not watch Gun Robot, whatever anyone else believed -- had made the mistake of critiquing Sally Go-Back's play-style, citing her reticence towards sacrificing her pawns, her under-utilization of her bishops, and also the questionable legitimacy of using a giant battle mechanoid as a queen.

As was increasingly the case in Walter Strickler's life, he had been blindsided by unforeseen consequences; specifically, Jim Lake's noted desire to emulate activities portrayed in cartoons. Thursday afternoons after classes now involved a detour to the town square, trying desperately to impart chess strategies before the attention span of a nine-year-old boy gave out and reverted to a fascination with running around with sticks. Barbara mentioned it would be a good bonding ritual to have in place before . . . upheavals began.

"Do I gotta change my name?" Jim asked.

Walter blinked as the boy boarded his train of thought. "What? No."

The boy scratched his neck meditatively. "I don't want to be Jim Strickler."

"I just said you didn't need to change your name, Jim." Walter castled, less out of necessity than in the interest of delaying the inevitable. "Frankly, I'm not letting your mother change hers to mine, either."

Jim regarded his own surviving rook, rolling it in his hands. "How come?" He put it back down.

Walter snapped his fingers. "Ah-ah. You picked that piece up, which means you have to play it."

"But I don't want to?"

"Those are the rules." Walter leant forward, watching the boy deliberate on the placement of his castle. "Besides, your mother has worked far too hard for those impressive diplomas that say 'Barbara Lake, M.D.'; you must admit that's a far more musical and soothing combination of words than 'Barbara Strickler'." To say nothing of other, less aesthetically-motivated reasons for keeping their names separate.

Jim nodded, cautiously depositing the rook in front of Walter's knight; the boy always had difficulty remembering their range. "So does that mean you're changing your name to Lake?"

"Not generally how that works, no."

"So -- I'm gonna be Jim Lake, Junior, and Mom's gonna be Barbara Lake, and you're gonna stay Walter Strickler?" Jim frowned. "Is that allowed?"

Walter glanced up from his pieces and smiled in spite of himself. "There's quite a few alterations due, Jim, but not as many as you think. Also?" He slid his bishop into position, surveying the kill with satisfaction. "Checkmate."

Jim looked down, biting his lip. After several moments, he complained, "Why can't I ever beat you?" He folded his arms, pouting.

"I've been playing chess for longer than you'd believe, Younger Atlas," Walter replied with a smirk. "Still. You're getting better -- "

"I'm not." Jim flicked his king over in defeat. "You always win."

Walter shrugged, scooping the pieces off the board and into their carrying case. "It's a hard game, Jim. A duel of minds; a weighing of chance and probability . . ." Sensing his young companion's dejection, he added in an undertone, ". . . and considering that Phil and Jerry can't beat me either, you're in good company."

"I heard that!" yelled Jerry from the neighboring table, waving an accusatory finger. "Don't listen to your stepdad; he wouldn't know the Catalan Opening from a can opener!"

Walter tried not to notice how the word 'stepdad' sent a tremor across the boy's face. "Pay him no mind, Jim. He thinks that the Nimzowitsch Defence is a law firm."

Phil -- seated across from Jerry -- cackled madly at his riposte. "Gotcha good there, didn't he?" He lunged over and slapped Walter on the arm in a convivial manner. "And don't you worry, I'll make sure we're cleared out of here on the big day -- just don't run overtime, you hear?"

"I shan't let my nuptials interfere with your games, gentlemen," Walter assured them. "After all, I have every intent of accepting my queen's gambit. Grab your taco, Jim; it's time to get you back home."

"So I really don't gotta change my name?" Jim asked yet again as they walked out of the plaza. "And Mom's really not gonna, either?"

Walter glanced down at his charge, annoyance and concern co-mingling. "You're very preoccupied with this, aren't you?"

Jim shrugged, rolling up his taco. "It's weird that you're gonna have a different name then us."

"People in the same family unit often have different surnames. We'll all get used to it, in time." Assuming, he added silently, that he would able to get used to any of this in any amount of time. "Your mother's working tonight, so I presume Gran-Gran will be at the house?"

"Yeah. You could stay and have dinner?" Jim ventured, trying to balance on the curb as though he were a tightrope walker. "I'm making French spaghetti."

"That's kind of you, but unfortunately I've got some things I have to work on. What's French about this spaghetti?"

"I'm gonna put anchovies in it."

"Ah." Walter pursed his lips. "I don't quite follow. Adding fish makes it French?"

"You know, like bouillabaisse." Jim lost his balance and collided with Walter's leg, nearly knocking him over; there was more of the boy than there was this time last year. "And there's gonna be crispy bread, too."

"Crispy bread. Well. Perhaps I can spare a little time, but only an hour or so." Walter shifted the board to his other side. "But then I've got to go."

"Why?"

Even if he could never quite manage to lie to the boy, there were easy enough dodges. "Oh, I couldn't tell you. Secret reasons."

"Wedding stuff?"

Walter smiled cryptically. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

obumbrata / et velata

"I had expected your call earlier," came Otto's voice across the line, echoing faintly in the enclosed space of Stricklander's sanctum. "Perhaps I miscalculated the time difference?"

It was a deliberately snide remark, given that both Changelings were currently in the same state. "I had other business to attend to, Otto. I trust you made it through Customs without incident?"

"Ja, ja. Es ging gut." A faint pause, and then a note of concern seeped into his voice. "There is nothing . . . wrong?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary. I'll tell you more about it in person, but I'd prefer us to meet in a neutral location all the same." He glanced at the world map again, seizing on an idea. "I have to meet Howard in Borrego Springs on Saturday -- why don't we meet up for lunch near Oceanside? You're not that far away, are you?"

"Whose turn is it to choose the restaurant?" Otto finally responded, dread evident in his voice.

"Mine." It probably wasn't, but the online guide Walter was perusing on his laptop indicated a few too many Olive Groves in the area and he'd be dammed if he was going to watch Otto put away plates of mediocre rigatoni to the sound of mandolin renditions of elevator music. "Ah, I've found a likely candidate. Looks new."

He heard Otto inhale sharply. "I ask please that you have not picked the place because of -- because of -- ach, was ist das Wort dafür -- Wortspiele?"

"I don't know what you mean," Walter lied. "Bis später, Otto." He hung up the call, smirk fading from his face as he contemplated the object he'd been rolling between his fingers the entire call: a silver band.

ut utantur / premio Cupidinis

It had been an interesting meal. They usually were.

Jim's enthusiasm for experimentation in the kitchen didn't always yield the best results, but at least he was competent where technique was concerned. Thus, while anchovies in store-bought red sauce heaped with ample helpings of fried sage leaves was nothing Walter would have ever made for himself, it was a satisfactory dinner nonetheless, if dubiously Gallic. The bread, as promised, was crispy.

Walter would have preferred Barbara's presence at table, but Jim and Gran-Gr -- Evelyn made for pleasant enough substitutes. Toby was rarely a welcome addition, but keeping him away from Jim or food was impossible.

After dinner -- aware that he would be late for his call with Otto, but unwilling to leave a mess in the sink -- Walter had set to work on the pans used in the night's culinary adventure, quietly running though his checklist and calming his nerves. He'd been doing that rather a lot lately, given the unexpected and subversive nature of what he'd been plotting --

"You would think it would get easier," Evelyn said, an odd tone in her voice. "It doesn't."

Walter glanced up from his reveries, realizing that the old woman was still seated at the table. "Hmm?" The telltale whine of her hearing aid flared up for a moment, but lapsed into a low hum.

She was staring at the entryway's framed photograph featuring herself and Jacob. "I keep waiting for it to stop hurting. Sometimes I think it has. But then, Barb and Jimmy leave, and it's just me in the house, and he's not here."

This wasn't quite what Walter expected. "I . . . you two had been married for some time, of course." He wiped a plate dry, hesitant to continue.

"Fifty-one years," Evelyn remarked, dabbing at the corner of her eye. "And -- oh, but we'd been sweethearts all through school, so we'd been together longer than just that." She pulled a tissue out of the sleeve of her blouse, looking abashed.

Walter folded the dishtowel over his arm. "A truly enviable life, having each other for so long."

"If it wasn't for Barbie and Jimmy, I think I would have just laid down and died the same day," Evelyn replied, and blew her nose. An awkward silence ensued, broken only by the sound of two boys running around in the yard, playing Gun Robot. Walter had centuries of experience with diplomacy, very little of it pertaining to the interpersonal realm; thus he retreated to the act of drying spoons.

Finally, Evelyn seemed to surface again. "I have something I've been meaning to show to you, Walter." Rising a bit unsteadily, she shuffled off to the other room and returned with a worn, flocked black box. "You don't have a wedding band for yourself yet, do you?"

Walter shook his head. He'd assumed that he'd select a serviceable ring from his past lives' collection of old jewelry, or that Barbara would want to pick something out for him. Centuries of so many competing customs regarding engagements tended to make it difficult to remember what the done thing currently was. "Not yet, no."

"This was Jacob's," she said, opening the box and placing a thin silver ring -- cut in one section -- upon the table. "We were poor, starting out. I said he should get a better one later, but I don't think either of us really minded."

Walter picked it up. "Quite worn down. I expect it's seen a lot of life."

Evelyn smiled, though a shadow was in her eye. "Lots of things." She attempted to blot her eyes in an inconspicuous manner. "He wanted it to go to Jimmy, for when he gets married. Has to be a gift."

"A good idea," Walter agreed.

"At least it didn't go to James; good gracious but that man was a mess. You couldn't tell Barbie that either, too young." She gave him a significant look. "It's yours if you want it, Walter."

He glanced down at the broken link in his hand, unsure of what emotion he was currently subject to. "Should be simple enough to repair and resize. I . . . I should be quite honored, Gran-Gr -- Evelyn." His fingers closed around it. "And I'll make sure Jim gets it in due time."

"I know, honey." She patted his arm, seeming oddly buoyant for a moment. "I feel better knowing it's in good hands."

Walter smiled benignly, the silver ring crackling with magic against his false skin.

Si puer cum puellula / moraretur in cellula / felix coniunctio

"As you can clearly see," Stricklander said, tapping the wall with a ruler, "Arcadia is situated across a convergence of leylines. Doubtless these had something to do with the emergence of the Trollmarket Heartstone, but that's irrelevant to our current line of discussion. What is known is that the activation of magic or enchantments near or on these channels of energy can trigger a host of unforeseen side effects, which is why it is important not to --"

A peal of snarls drew his attention away from the topographical map of the town and towards his audience. Of the seven goblins in attendance, six were squatting on the floor of his apartment, fighting over a box of pizza and Craz-E Stiks. Fragwa, hunkered next to the projector and operating the laptop (read: mashing the spacebar whenever Stricklander needed a slide transition), was cheering them on.

Stricklander had purchased neither pizza or Craz-E Stiks, but had the unpleasant suspicion they had been recently liberated from the car of a careless deliveryman. "Excuse me? Eyes to the front?" A disc of pepperoni whirled past his left ear, leaving a greasy mark behind the phantasmal location of the Arcadia Oaks Water Treatment Facility.

Knowing what Stricklander did, there were moments that he felt almost guilty about what was going to happen to the brutes. Behavior such as this went a long way towards assuaging that theoretical guilt.

"As I was saying," he growled, letting his other voice seep through and his eyes flare, "The magical material I've instructed you to bring to the building site must be moved with extreme caution. Use the routes I've indicated on the map -- "

One of the goblins managed to wedge an entire Craz-E Stik into its mouth and was drooling like a rabid chipmunk. Its fellow took umbrage at this and began pummeling it with a visor branded with the Pizza Shack logo. "Waka chaka!"

Incensed, Stricklander changed forms, ripping the stabilizer brooch off his shoulder and letting his wings unfurl for emphasis. "Stop this idiocy at once," he roared, baring his fangs.

As one, the wretches scrabbled backwards, scattering grease and red sauce over the carpet. "This isn't just any operation," Stricklander hissed, advancing on them with a handful of wingknives drawn. The goblins cowered in his shadow, backing further away. "This is the single most important thing your worthless little lives could ever aspire to be part of; is it too much to hope for even an ounce of professionalism?" They huddled in a pile, misshapen mouths gaping in apprehension.

His phone rang. It took him a moment to register whose ringtone it was. "Stay quiet," he barked, lunging for the table and retreating to the kitchenette, clawed fingers fumbling with the unlock screen. "Er. Hello?"

"Hi!"

Walter shifted the phone to his other ear, wincing at both the tinny reception and its awkward angle against his horn. "Barbara?" He coughed, modulating his voice to a friendlier, plummier tone. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Hiii," came her voice, loose and bright. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"No, guess."

"What am I guessing, Barbara?"

"Guess what I'm doing?" The sound of whooping and a turn signal indicator were faintly discernible in the background.

"What are you doing? I thought your shift would be over by now. Shouldn't you be at home?" He raised a wing as a privacy screen, the other inelegantly hooking on the handle of the silverware drawer.

"Bachelorette party! Wanda and a bunch of the girls from work surprised me." There was a hiccup, followed by a chastened apology. "We did karaoke!"

"I thought you said you didn't want a hen night," Walter remarked, glancing nervously back over his shoulder at the goblins clustering in the living room, where they were sullenly picking over the remnants of the pizza.

"They kinda sprung it on me, got me a sash and everything. Necklaces, too. Probably -- probably shouldn't take these home, actually -- " Another hiccup. "Oof. Been a while since I've had tequila."

"Well, I hope you're having fun?" Walter retreated further into his kitchenette, paranoid that the goblins might be listening. "I assume they let your grandmother know -- "

"Oh, she's good. Wanda -- Wanda, you didn't really ask her to come, did you?" Whatever Wanda's response was, it was sufficiently garbled that he couldn't make it out. "Really? I can't believe Gran-Gran even knows what a Jager Bomb is -- "

"Enjoy yourself, dearest," Walter said, trying to pitch his voice higher in a fashion that wouldn't draw any attention from his houseguests. "Last big night of freedom and all that -- "

"Oh, I'm actually in the car. Theresa's car, I mean. She's the designated driver -- thanks, I love you too, doll -- yeah. Anyway, I'm just a block away -- "

"Have a good night, my -- "

"-- so if you can let me in -- "

Walter's equivalent of blood ran cold. "Wha -- let you in?"

"Yeah, I shouldn't let Jim see me like this." Another hiccup. "That okay? Sorry. Oh, we just pulled up -- "

After a few seconds of his mandible moving silently up-and-down, Walter managed to trill, "I'll be right down!" before rounding on the goblins, arms and wings spread wide. "OUT! EVERYONE OUT! NOW!"

Seven goblins attempting to simultaneously exit through one window would have normally made for excellent farce, but Walter was hardly in the mood to appreciate it. He threw the pizza box out behind them -- raining congealed cheese and olives onto the dumpsters three stories below -- before quickly slamming the laptop shut, turning off the projector, and running down the hall. Luckily, he regained enough presence of mind to change skins just before reaching the stairwell.

She was there waiting for him, face flushed, wearing a sparkly tiara wedged haphazardly in her auburn waves and a satin sash with 'Dr. Mrs.' spelled out in silver sequins. "There's my guy!"

Wanda, steadying her on one side, flashed Walter a slightly conspiratorial grin. "Hey there -- sorry we didn't clue you in either, but it was a surprise." Brent, on the other side of Barbara and maybe a little too invested in holding onto her, merely gave him a somewhat confrontational look.

Walter 's peripheral vision clocked small, green shapes scurrying across the parking lot towards the cover of the trees and he began chit-chatting to buy the goblins time. "What charming accoutrements you're wearing! As ever, you're the picture of loveliness, my darling."

"Aww, babe." Barbara lurched into his arms, mashing her face into the side of his neck; he was annoyed to feel less annoyed. "Hey, show him the bouquet you made me!"

Wanda passed him something with a large and gaudy bow tied around it. It was emphatically not floral, unless one opted to consider the reproductive role of flowers and their equivalencies in the animal kingdom. "Ah. I see it vibrates."

Barbara was pulling some lollipops out of the pockets of her scrubs, dropping some on the lobby floor. "These are definitely not coming home. Don't wanna explain 'em to Jim or Gran-Gran." Over her shoulder, Walter could just see the last goblin scrabble into the underbrush.

"Well, thank your friends for a lovely time and let's get you inside," he chirped, steering her towards the door. An interminable amount of time later, they actually managed to shake off the drunken goodbyes and stagger upstairs.

"Ohhh," she moaned, flopping down into his armchair. "That's the problem with med school; you forget all the stuff you learned about drinking in college. I don't know how to pace myself, anymore."

"Are you feeling ill?" Walter surreptitiously began clearing away any evidence of recent goblin activity. "Glass of water, perhaps?"

"I'm good, I'm good." She sniffed the air. "Did you have pizza?"

Walter coughed. "No -- " He scrabbled to find some paper towels to throw over the sauce stains on the carpet.

Her gaze fell to the floor. "You had Craz-E Stiks, but no pizza?"

"I had a hankering," he said, smiling weakly. "Secret urges, you know." He kicked the Pizza Shack hat behind the nearest bookcase.

Barbara giggled, falling backwards into the chair. "Ooh, you're so mysterious."

"In vino, veritas. Here. Water." He slapped her hand away from the cheese-encrusted breadsticks. "Careful, you don't know where that's been."

"Uh, on your floor."

"Exactly." Walter began mopping up the mess. "I'm afraid I'll have to be calling it a night; my first class is at eight tomorrow -- "

"Were you watching movies?" Barbara tapped the digital projector. "Anything good we could watch?"

Walter froze. "Er -- no. No, I was just preparing a lecture -- " To his everlasting horror, Barbara had opened the Janus Order's laptop and was randomly clicking on icons. "Barbara, no -- "

"Or were you watching a different kind of movie?" she drawled, giving him an suddenly accusatory look. "Because if you were -- "

"Why would I --"

But she had -- somehow -- managed to find the Initiative's web portal and was typing something into the searchbar, "Check this out!" The address she entered took nearly ten seconds to load, in defiance of whatever narrative expectations she'd intended. "Ta-da!"

Confounded, Walter beheld the image of a scantily-clad model with bedroom eyes now projected upon his living room wall. She was on all fours, glistening and pouting, fixing the viewer with a smoldering look that could have possibly induced a faint reaction from him, if not for the polyester and lace abomination that barely constrained her. His attention strayed instead towards the pepperoni that was still greasily trailing down to the floor.

"Well?" Barbara demanded.

There wasn't a polite way of saying that if she considered that to be racy, she obviously hadn't encountered much in the way of pornography. "She's very . . . almost-naked, I suppose -- "

She threw up her hands. "Lingerie! As in, wedding night lingerie! Do you like it?"

"Ah," he said, vaguely relieved but determining to clear the browser's cache at the earliest opportunity. "Well. I suspect that's not a functional corset, given that the stays -- "

"Walt. Walt. Honey. Shh. Shut up with the functional talk." Barbara put an unsteady finger across his lips, slumping towards him with an odd intensity. "Is it something you'd want to see me wearing?"

Millennia of sartorial convictions cried out at once from within him. "That -- that hot pink abomination --"

"No, in white. Obviously." She paused, face scrunching up. "I mean, it doesn't have to be white. Second marriage. Though, my dress is white -- do you wear it under the dress, though? No. Probably not? It's not real underwear, right?"

"I wouldn't know. What did you do the first time around?" Walter asked, quietly moving to shut the window and pull the blinds lest goblins return.

Barbara sighed. "Dunno. Didn't have a wedding dress then; just a white prom dress I found at a thrift store. Hemmed it with a stapler." She took a swig of water and spilled most of it down her shirt; Jim was definitely her child. "Umph. And James got me a novelty bikini from someplace in a mall that sold blacklight posters."

Walter paused in the act of flipping the latch shut, regarding her with sudden and saddened understanding. "Oh."

"Yeah," Barbara drawled, sagging back in the chair. "Woof. 'Spontaneous' really isn't the same thing as 'fun'. Or 'good'. Or 'real'." She snorted, then looked up at him, momentarily lucid. "I wasn't even that young; that's the worst part. Just stupid. Stupid and in love. Maybe a little desperate." She sighed, then rallied with a smile that rippled over him like sunlight. "But I learned it's okay to want things, didn't I?"

"Yes," he said with great feeling. "It certainly is." He quickly shut the lid of the laptop, image disappearing. "And I want you to have what you want. Pick out something that strikes your fancy; I'll be more than happy to tear it off of you." He reached out for her hand and bestowed a fond kiss upon it.

She waved the other hand at the wall for emphasis. "But tell me not to get body glitter."

"Don't get body glitter." He paused, contemplating the idea of Barbara's body coated in the same iridescent mineral sheen as the lingerie model; the concept was strangely intriguing. "Actually . . . if it were something subtle, not that disgusting holographic residue the kids these days are always coating themselves with . . ?"

"Oh, c'mon."

"I think the effect could be quite . . . intriguing."

But Barbara's mind seemed to have wandered somewhere else. "Were you really serious about not wearing a tux?" She set her now-empty glass on the edge of the side table; Walter caught it just as it started to tip over. "You were joking, right?"

"Dead serious."

"Aww, c'mon!" She batted her eyelashes at him. He would never understand why that charmed him so, nor did he wish to know why. Still, he had his convictions.

"The tuxedo is vulgarity personified. I shall be wed as a gentleman or not at all."

"But I bet you'd look so good in one," she wheedled, swinging their linked hands back-and-forth.

"Death first. My good suit is much better suited for this, Barbara; you'll see. Trust me." Walter sat down on the edge of the couch closest to her chair, gently disentangling their fingers from one another. "Which reminds me: I'll be picking it up and running a few other errands out-of-town tomorrow night. Will you be all right talking to the realtor by yourself?"

"You're going to be gone?" Barbara moaned with exaggerated petulance. "I like it better when you're here."

"Presumably that's why you're marrying me, dear," he responded lightly, as though his heart hadn't lurched loose in his chest from her simple affirmation. "Anyway, I should be back by Sunday --"

"But that's too long." Barbara lurched unsteadily out of the chair and over to Walter's lap, enveloping his mouth in a warm, intoxicating-and-intoxicated kiss that slowed his thoughts to a crawl. "You couldn't stick around for a bit?" Her clever quicksilver fingers sped their secret currents through his hair, slowly moving lower to the sides of his neck, the small of his back, and stopping by his hips to make mischievous forays between fabric and skin.

It was nearly enough to distract him from a faint rustling by the window.

"Now, now," Walter attempted to object, voice slightly higher than seemed dignified. "You'll want to sleep this off, and just because you don't work tomorrow, doesn't . . .doesn't . . . "

"Doesn't what?" Barbara's lips paused in their tender survey of the underside of his jaw. One of her hands removed her tiara to nestle it in Walter's pompadour; the other tucked itself under the waistband of his briefs and was wriggling in an insufferably distracting fashion. "You were saying?"

"That's . . . this is not behavior conducive to getting a good night's sleep," he managed, eyes desperately straining to see if the blinds were fully closed. This became more difficult as the rest of Barbara slid deliberately down off his chest, scrutinizing his lap instead of sitting upon it. "Barbara. You've had too much to drink and your judgment is impaired -- "

"My judgment's fine. Problem here is dexterity; woulda had you out of these sooner, otherwise." She finally managed to unhitch his belt, fingers wandering to his fly. "There we go . . ."

"This is not a good idea," Walter said, unconvinced by his own statement. "This," he reiterated, "is really not a good idea."

She responded with a challenging look, which she rather impressively maintained for about fifteen sublime seconds before turning her full attention to the task at hand. Even if Stricklander's libidinous preferences skewed heavily trollish, some activities just didn't lend themselves to stoneflesh; humans really were so very, very, very very very very clever about this sort of thing, and Barbara most of all.

He eventually managed to look towards the window; it seemed he and Barbara were obscured by the blinds. And even if they weren't, it soon wouldn't matter in any case. Plans had been made.

Walter let his head loll back against the back of the couch -- dislodging his newly-appointed crown in the process -- and allowed himself to be preoccupied with one small death instead of a host of them.

stetit puella

"You didn't come home last night."

Walter -- carefully supporting Barbara on one arm, a carton of fresh donuts occupying the other -- sighed. "Good morning, Jim. Could you," he gestured vaguely, "Open the door a bit wider?"

The boy's eyes narrowed. "You had a sleepover."

"Hi, kiddo," Barbara managed. "I . . . it was a party."

Jim's eyes became mere slits. "A bachelorette party?"

Walter -- still trying to stay balanced -- glanced down in surprise. "You know about those?"

This warranted a disgusted sigh from the child. "I'm almost ten. I watch T.V.," Jim added, shooting Walter his worldliest look. "Mom, did you ride a mechanical bull?"

"Jim, really now -- "

"No, it was broken," Barbara admitted. "Just karaoke." She slouched into the entryway, messenger bag flopping over and spilling problematically-shaped lollipops under the hall table. "Don't pick those up! Also, Jim, never drink tequila."

He rolled his eyes. "Okay."

"At least not tequila shots." She squeezed her son's shoulder. "And don't -- uh -- peer pressure is bad, and drinking doesn't make you cool -- "

"Mom."

" -- most alcohol doesn't even really taste that good, really, so just . . . uh . . . don't drink, I guess. Not in excess." She swayed, walking into the kitchen. "I'm going to sit down, okay? Is Gran-Gran up yet?"

"She says she wants to talk to you about something," Jim responded, glowering at the box of donuts that Walter proffered. "You know, I already made french toast."

Walter sighed. "Teacher's lounge it is, then. Coffee?"

"No, I'm good."

"Very funny, kiddo," Barbara said, leaning hard against the kitchen island. "Yes, please." She tried to maneuver herself into one of the stools, gave up, and began fumbling with a bottle of ibuprofen. "Ugh. Stupid child-proof caps -- "

The sudden squeal of a hearing aid announced Gran-Gran's entrance into the kitchen. "Oh, did you have a good time, Barbie? Listen, I was looking over your registry -- you really need to add more than just those towels, people are going to want to -- "

Barbara fairly convulsed. "Gran-Gran, turn it down!"

"What?"

Realizing that the front door was still ajar, Walter quickly dashed back to the entryway and began shoveling the lollipops into his jacket pockets while he had the chance to avoid comment. It was only after a few moments that he noticed the little girl.

"Er. Hello?" She flinched, huge eyes wide behind glasses almost again as large. Walter slowly took in the signifiers: red sash, beanie, worn backpack full of cookie boxes clutched tightly to her chest. "Can I . . . are you selling something?"

The child took a deep breath. "Hello my name is Shannon Longhannon of Scout Troop 241 our organization promotes teaching girls valuable life skills like leadership self-confidence resourcefulness and unterpr -- anderpr -- enteredpraneurship -- "

Walter blinked, slowly rising as the rehearsed spiel continued with no apparent pauses or sense of punctuation. " -- which is why Scout Girl troops attend yearly jamborees at our Lake Wannagogo Retreat to learn fun and useful ways of making it as a girl in today's changing world while networking with other girls to celebrate girlhood we are selling our famous cookies as part of our fundraising if you buy cookies from me it will sponsor -- sponsoring -- I -- " She squeaked, voice faltering, and blinked in obvious panic.

"I . . . see. Well, Shannon, I think there was a Scout Girl here just the other day -- "

The girl's already despondent face collapsed, a grim line settling underneath chubby cheeks. "Oh."

Walter took in her slightly-dingy clothes, unsold bag of foodstuffs, and tremulous expression and wondered when exactly he'd started going so soft on human whelps; doubtless all those drippy Victorian melodramas were to blame. "I don't suppose you have any of those little coconut-flaked ones?"

Shannon visibly quivered. "You . . . you're gonna buy a box?" Her jaw hung open; apparently this was unfamiliar territory.

"Yes -- " Walter rifled though his jacket pocket and inadvertently dislodged several obscene sweets onto the floor. "Don't pick those up! How much do I owe you?"

Eventually, Shannon managed to indicate that four dollars needed to be placed into the palm of her hot little hand, and Walter had a package of Samoa Joe's CoCo-Oh's to put atop his box of donuts. "Well. Thank you, Ms. Longhannon. Word to the wise?"

She tore her eyes off the creased bills in her hand. "Huh?"

Walter pointed across the street at the Domzalski house. "Try them. I have a feeling you'll strike gold."

"First donuts, now cookies?" Jim howled theatrically as he drifted back into the orbit of the kitchen. "While I'm slaving over a hot stove making breakfast!"

"Not so loud, kiddo." Barbara passed her son still-unopened bottle of ibuprofen. "Here. Get this for me."

"Mom, for gosh sakes." Jim passed it to Walter, who obligingly unscrewed the top, and passed it back. "Here. I'm a kid, I'm not allowed." He returned to sternly rotating sausage links on the skillet, muttering something about how adults had no taste.

Walter turned his attention to his allotment of french toast. It was perfectly seasoned -- Jim sometimes had a heavy hand with spices -- but the ratio of cinnamon to nutmeg was exquisitely balanced this time. The batter was perfectly eggy yet slightly crisp; the toast thick and generous. He couldn't blame the boy for turning his nose up at mere donuts.

Happily preoccupied, he didn't quite register the nature of the conversation his tablemates were engaged in until Barbara's strangled whisper of "But Gran-Gran, you can't just leave!"

"Barbie, sweetie, I've been thinking about this for a while, now. I think it's time."

"I'm not kicking you out of your own house!"

"No, you're not." Evelyn reached out and took Barbara's hand. "I'm kicking myself out."

"Walt -- " Barbara's reddened eyes locked with his, "-- she's -- she wants us to move in here."

"Ah," Walter said diplomatically, weighing how this could affect his other plans. "Well. That seems a little unfair to you, Evelyn, and we've already found a realtor -- "

"Now, I know you've found a realtor," interrupted Gran-Gran, hearing aid likely having obscured most of Walter's statement. "But all the houses around here are so expensive -- "

"We budgeted for this, Gran-Gran -- "

" -- and you're still paying off your student loans, and Jimmy will need a college fund, and dear Walter, well, he's a teacher. You should save money where you can." Evelyn pushed a sheet towards them; in neat if shaky handwriting Walter could make out a breakdown of costs. "Here. I worked out how much your monthly rent would be -- "

Barbara groaned. "Gran-Gran, I can tell this isn't adjusted for inflation and I'm still hungover." She pushed her glasses off her face. "I'm not -- this is yours and Grampy's home, you've always been here -- "

"I can't stay here, Barbie," the older woman said, voice quiet but firm. "Not forever. This house is meant for a family. I don't want you taking Jimmy out of it and away from his school and from Toby just to move all the way across town while I putter around in here by myself."

"Nonetheless -- " Walter began, mind racing with possibilities.

"And I don't want to putter around here by myself, even if I don't want to sell this place. I love it too much, but I'm tired of being here without your Grampy." She folded her arms. "It's past time for me to move on and move out. All this . . . " She waved a hand in the air in some vague gesture of conveyance, "All this wedding talk made me realize it that with you and Jimmy, I never had to learn how to be on my own again."

"I don't want you to be alone, Gran-Gran," Barbara replied, voice cracking. "Ever."

"We're all alone, at the end," Evelyn replied sternly yet gently. "And I have to know who I am without Grampy. We had so many years, sweetie, but it's time to live for myself again." She reached out to take Barbara's hand. "You don't have to say anything now, mind. And if you and Walter decide to go ahead and move to a new house, that's perfectly fine. Just think about it, all right?"

"I . . ." Barbara glanced over at Walter, bloodshot eyes imploring. "I . . . we'll talk about it."

"We'll talk about it," echoed Walter, resolving to think it over on the long car ride. "Alas, the blackboard is calling; I must bid you all adieu until Sunday." He planted a kiss on Barbara's hand, reminding himself not to let it linger too long in front of Jim.

The boy clearly had other things on his mind. "Hey. Weren't you gonna make coffee?"

Octies pro fratribus perversis / nonies pro monachis dispersis

It was a long drive out of Arcadia, but fortunately the new Spanish teacher -- Uhl? -- brewed an unusually-strong pot. One could always tell when he'd been in the teachers' lounge: the eyes watered, papers yellowed at the edges. Walter was still buzzing from the cup he'd snagged while depositing his baked goods, and the subsequent two doses continued antagonizing his synapses long after he'd hit the freeway.

At least he'd been able to leave the goblins behind. He winced slightly as a twinge of heartburn flicked acid into his throat; bad enough that conversations with Otto invariably laced his tongue with the same.

-- Not invariably, he chided himself, shifting on the seat to better accommodate his slowly-dissolving gut. It had been fine for years, except sometime around the Industrial Revolution their focuses diverged, with Stricklander trying to consolidate his power in ways that would stabilize the Initiative, and Otto fretting around the margins, so fixated on the bigger picture that he somehow became incapable of perceiving it with any accuracy.

This preference of Scaarbach's for defensive strategies meant he'd never defeated Stricklander at chess, but thanks to their long years of association (not friendship, never friendship), he was similarly hard to beat. Stalemates abounded whenever they took up the pastime of kings. Walter could pick off pieces and lay traps with ruthless precision, but Otto would never be pinned down decisively enough to capture, reducing play into nothing more than interminable rearrangements of pawns until one or both of them upturned the board.

Stricklander sighed through his nose. And that was just a game.

Not for the first time, his thoughts strayed to Korshas: that round, fleshy face always beaded with a faint sheen of perspiration and graced with a lazy smile. Their games had been -- well. Games. No subtext, no subterfuge, just a means of passing the time between the next bit of skulduggery. No ambitions for Andrei; he wanted to collect his treasures, drink his wine, and vacillate between monkish propriety and monkish depravity.

He'd have laughed at you, if he knew what you were planning. He might well have helped, for that matter. But Bular's blade had rendered that line of thought moot.

Stricklander scowled. Bular. A rather large and unaccounted-for variable in his machinations. He increasingly regretted his decision to let Nomura resume her hunt for the misplaced Bridge stones instead of tracking down her ward, who could be anywhere. Too much to hope he'd have incurred a fatal wound and died somewhere in Turkey --

-- no. The Underlord would never forgive that. His fingers tightened around the wheel, knuckles white. And given what was sacrificed to save Bular the first time --

Walter counted to ten, then fifteen, until the metallic tang in the air finally subsided, leaving the comparatively mundane aftertaste of bad coffee in its place. "Focus on what you can control, old monster," he said aloud, and turned on the radio to drown out the ghosts.

propinat me nunc dapifer

Despite a restless night on a spongy motel mattress, the morning had been agreeable enough. A decent breakfast, a pleasant conversation with the tailor as he'd picked up his freshly-altered suit, and an idle hour or two in an antique shop had largely restored his good humor, which was more than necessary for the task at hand.

Walter would be the first to admit that he had a weakness for wordplay -- good, bad, contemptible -- and as such, his selection of restaurant had been entirely dependent on its name being "Tempeh Tantrum". The venue itself did not inspire much confidence in the quality of its cuisine, and Otto -- lurking inside in the farthest booth, posters of local noise bands and neon figurines of kaiju decorating the walls around him -- looked more miserable than Walter had seen him in centuries. Vegan eating had never been his style.

"Eclectic, isn't it?" Walter said brightly. "So many interesting things being done these days with plant proteins -- "

"It's all tofu," hissed the other Changeling. "No meat, no cheese -- "

"Well, my stomach's been touchy of late. Healthy eating never hurt anyone."

Otto made a noise of despair. "I hate California."

"Vast swathes of the human world subside on this stuff; don't take it out on the Golden State." Walter opened up the menu in the hopes of discovering something worthwhile in the way of libations and was unsurprised to encounter kombucha. "Hmm. Not quite the fermentation I was looking for -- "

They were interrupted by an bubbly girl with purple hair and an impressive array of metal in her face asking if they needed more time or had any questions about the specials. Walter responded with a dazzling smile, and after complimenting her t-shirt depicting Durer's Melancholia and a brief discussion on the Arch of Maximillian, a pitcher of water and some poppadoms mysteriously found their way to the table, unordered.

"He wasn't even that good an artist," muttered Otto, glaring at the wafer as though it were about to bite him back. "And he never paid me back those twenty guilders."

"Well, no one's at their best during their Wanderjahre," Walter responded, helping himself to chutney. "Goodness knows we weren't; all those disreputable nights carousing with clerks, writing terrible songs about carousing with clerks --"

"That was much earlier."

"All a bit of a blur, really." Walter carefully surveyed his opponent, waiting. "Boozing amidst intermittent plagues, pretending to be students, stabbing Papal legates -- "

"Nothing was ever proved," snapped Otto, ears turning red. Walter smirked, softening the expression as Jessie returned to take their sandwich orders: a Get Thee Behind Me, Seitan for Walter, a Tophuck-Yourself for Otto (possibly commentary), and two orders of the draft of the day.

"I had wanted to tour the construction site at some point," Otto resumed, once she was out of earshot. "Naturally, Logistics wants to know how long the move will have to take -- so much coordination will be needed -- "

"We're a few years out yet," Walter responded evenly. "But yes, you'll want to start convening a planning council. Doubtless Yeung will want a look-in where the server rooms are concerned."

"I doubt our Kaiser cares much for digital archives," scoffed Otto.

Walter felt his temper flare, in spite of himself. "It's not for him; it's for us. Once our illustrious patron is loosed upon the world, we get our promised patch of earth. As such, we'll want to be able to access supplemental information unrelated to the Initiative -- "

"I would have thought our other patron would be happy to provide you with that kind of knowledge," Otto said, flicking an imaginary crumb off his placemat and leveling a penetrating look at Walter.

"I must say, you seem rather preoccupied with Her as of late," Walter remarked, affecting a smug smile while his stomach boiled over with residual acid. "Poor Otto; are you still sneaking off to whisper sweet nothings into that phonograph? Should I be jealous?"

"She has only ever spoken to you," was Otto's curt reply, opening his napkin with more than a hint of bad grace.

They were interrupted by Jessie's reappearance, depositing craft beer, extra poppadoms, and light flirtations. Walter made sparkling conversation, took generous swigs of Any Porter In a Storm, and watched his opponent fret and fidget.

"The apartment complex above the headquarters," Otto said, after her departure. "I assume it will be finished in the next few years?"

Walter made a point of sighing heavily. "One hopes. The plumbing installation alone . . ."

Otto snorted in what seemed like actual amusement. "It's to be housing for the Order, isn't it? We've managed with far worse."

"Mmm. Possibly. We might want to consider renting some of it out to the local populace -- "

"You -- you are joking," Otto spluttered, mouth half-full of porter.

"Oh, for God's sake, Otto; of course I'm joking." Walter shook his head, readying himself to lay the bait. "Obviously. Although, it won't do to have so many of our brethren concentrated in just one location within Arcadia," Walter responded evenly. "Bad enough that the help have been slipping up lately." He focused idly on the poster on the side of the wall, but marked the involuntary flicker of Otto's eye.

The round head slowly tilted upward from his plate. "Oh?"

Walter affected a slight grimace and a distracted expression, casting his bait a little further out. "Mmmph. This beer doesn't seem quite carbonated enough, does it -- "

Otto leant forward, voice pitched just low enough that Walter could make it out. "Has . . . has the Trollhunter seen -- "

Walter set his glass abruptly onto the table as though annoyed. "That's a sub rosa line of discussion, don't you think? Honestly, Otto, I have it well in hand." He threaded his fingers together, daring a peek into his comrade's eyes. "After you've made an example of enough Fragwas, the rank-and-file begins to cover their tracks a little better."

The other Changeling's expression darkened. "We can't risk detection!"

Walter rolled his eyes, concealing an inner smirk of satisfaction. "Oh, we can't? Thank you for the observation, learned Herr; it would never have occurred to me." Seeing Jessie heading towards them with plates in hand, he unrolled his napkin with a flourish. "'We'll talk more about that situation when we're at the grove. Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind; In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind.'"

"'In seinen Armen das Kind war tot,'" muttered Otto.

nimus exaltatus / rex sedet in vertice

The sea of lemon trees shivered in the faint breeze, leaves shining in the afternoon sun. For a moment, Stricklander felt pleasantly unmoored in time; warm earth and citrus flooding his nose alongside centuries' worth of memories.

Behind him, Otto sneezed. "It's too bright out here."

The mood dispelled, Walter sighed. "I can't think how you're going to function normally once the Initiative moves to Arcadia, Otto." He inspected the blossoms on the nearest tree with mild interest, wondering if it would smell of lemon; it did not. Odd. "Sunshine is good for the soul, you know."

A disgusted snort. "But bad for the skin. Especially for such as us." He materialized in the left quadrant of Walter's line of sight, face glistening with perspiration as he moved into the shade underneath the tree. "A troll who loves sunlight? Stricklander, you've gone mad."

"Merely compensating for the rest of you lot." Walter removed his trilby and fanned himself with it, pondering his next moves. "It pays to adopt a few human vices; puts you above scrutiny. You can't just ape the apes, or the game's up. It's been my opinion that precious few Changelings ever bother to get the nuances right."

"Sometimes I think you're only nuances," Otto replied.

"Meaning?"

"You and Andrei." The other Changeling moved further into the shadow, wiping his face down with a handkerchief. "Surely you know of your own reputation, speaking of vices?"

Fixing an Archaic smile upon his lips, Stricklander turned to face him. Otto was fidgeting with a caterpillar unlucky enough to have fallen onto his sleeve, doubtless attempting to avoid eye contact. He had enough ice in his veins to wait him out, however, and Otto finally broke. "Still, as for the -- "

"What reputation would this be, Otto?"

"It was the heat. I misspoke."

A feint, or a misplaced pawn? "I doubt it. What does the body politic of the Janus Order feel in regard to their long-suffering Director?"

Otto sighed, and seemed to force himself to make eye contact. "The brethren look to you for guidance, as always." He coughed. "But -- "

"'But'?"

The portlier man waved a hand about irritably. "Some say you are too easily distracted by human concerns."

"'Some'?"

"I am not naming names," snapped Otto. "I merely noticed the sentiment when I attempted to salvage the planning conference -- "

"While you were impersonating me, you mean?" Stricklander advanced another step, the memory of grave sand hissing in his blood. "Unbidden?"

Otto flinched slightly, but the brow he began to mop with the disheveled handkerchief was set in defiance. "Someone had to salvage things! Dueling? With mere lieutenants? If word got out -- "

"Authority never suited you, Otto." Stricklander flicked a nearby lemon blossom into nothingness, its petals already beginning to scatter and disperse. "Think twice before you try to wear my mask. You wouldn't enjoy dealing with Bular day in, day out; he'd eat you alive. Possibly not just figuratively."

"I have no aspirations in this regard," snapped Otto. "My ultimate concern is for the well-being of the Initiative."

"Didn't keep you from lousing up that delivery, did it now?" Walter brushed petals off his lapels. "That set us back years. And poor Andrei; all those years of dodging fire, riot and ruin, then killed because Otto trusted a goblin to post mail -- "

"Korshas died because was stupid," snarled his confederate, eyes flaring. "Antagonizing gangsters? Making the shop a target? Not storing the stones at the warehouse? Stupid, stupid, absolut und völlig dumm!"

"But then, you've never shown much loyalty towards your brethren, have you," continued Walter evenly. "I never told Bular why those Bridge stones ended up with Andrei, you know. Not that he's ever had much interest in operating procedure, but why should I jeopardize another Changeling?" He fixed Otto with a pointed glare. "Even one who didn't do the same for me?"

Once again he felt unmoored in time, but a very different place now, without flowers or sunlight.

The other man's fists clenched and unclenched. Finally, he said in an undertone, "The Tribunal had already made up its mind. Any testimony in the defendant's favor would have been discarded -- "

"'The defendant'? Oh, twist the knife." Walter's laughter sounded alarmingly bitter, even to himself. "Your brother-in-arms of centuries, your companion of old, your Director who saw fit to elevate you to a loftier position than a catspaw tracking down baubles for inbred lunatics, me, and the instant the wind changes -- "

"The wind had been shifting for years," Otto interjected, finger drawn. "You were too involved with your esoteric scheming to notice."

"And yet none of you saw the War coming." Walter fixed his attention on a point on the horizon, willing away the trenches. "All those years I tried to stabilize Europe -- you all thought it was a joke, didn't you? Until the fighting broke out and we lost almost everything?" He hoped the bile in his voice tamped down the rising hysteria. "Remind me, how did the Tribunal Council intend for us to replenish our depleted ranks once the Fetch was lost?"

"The Tribunal is dead," Otto responded, voice strained. "You aren't. Your trial was almost a century ago. Stop making war on corpses."

Stricklander spat, then stalked to the edge of the tree's shade, setting his hat back atop his head. This opening was nothing but prisoner exchanges; the rest of the board was still waiting. "Why don't we stroll down to the arbor and see if they've looked after my climbing roses?"

Otto groaned. "But the walk there is too hot -- "

"It's a more private location." Bitterly, Walter allowed himself a laugh. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

The lemon grove had once belonged -- somewhat obliquely -- to the Order, sold off to an enterprising farmer eighty-odd years ago. A stipulation of the land's sale had been that the roses growing up around a trellis by the garden remain in place; they were a French cultivar that Stricklander had grown fond of whilst waiting out the Napoleonic Wars and had brought to the New World in a fit of sentimentality. Their heady fragrance once again jostled his memory of better times: ascendancy and recognition. He inhaled deeply, centering himself within the present moment, regarding the state of play with a calmer eye.

"I've had to discipline the goblins more than usual," Walter resumed, taking off his hat and fanning himself with it. "They've been getting too dammed sloppy, even by their usual low standards. Nothing I've seen suggests Trollmarket is aware of them, but I don't want to take any risks."

Otto's mouth was set in a grim line, doubtless recalling his own mistake in entrusting goblins with specialized tasks. "Perhaps we should phase them out, start bringing in more Changelings into Arcadia?"

"I've been thinking that's the best solution," lied Walter. "Good to get some of the brethren acclimated, after all. I've spent too long being alone there; couldn't hurt to have a friendly face or two about." Not that anyone in the Initiative currently met any definition of 'friend'.

His closest equivalent of the word plucked a beetle off the leaves of the nearest of the rose canes, peering at its slow-motion writhing; Walter knew better than to ask what had become of the caterpillar. "They would oversee the building process much more efficiently than mere humans, to say nothing of discretion."

"Arcadia's a small town; we'll need to introduce our people carefully and in stages. But yes, I think Bifrons Construction is due for a hiring spree." Walter stroked the edge of a velvet petal, twisting it between his fingers. "I've begun laying runework on-site, but only the rudimentary stuff. Mustn't jostle the venerable Vendel's elbow . . ."

Otto said nothing in response to this, though Walter suspected he was emphatically not returning to the worn subject of the travel agency and its optimized leylines. The soft crunching sound might also have had something to do with his lack of speech.

" . . . so what I'll need from you, preferably towards the end of the month, is an estimate on how soon we can get a Phase Two team into Arcadia. You'll want to coordinate with the Mexico City division, naturally, and we'll need to get our collection of phurba knives in from Moscow to set some proper wards. See if you can't get them here by next week; I'll want to make sure they're primed before laying telesma."

"I will have the estimates as soon as possible," responded Otto, drawing his heels together with a sharp click, relief writ large upon his face. "And I shall contact the Yakimanka Division myself. The foundation's magical fields will be stabilized in no time."

"Excellent," drawled Walter, suppressing a look of satisfaction that ran far deeper than the cursory one appropriate for the situation. "I'll be glad to be rid of the goblins. Terrible conversationalists."

factus de materia, cinis elementi

Transitive Properties, LLC -- yet another possession of the Janus Order -- consisted of a cozy little bungalow at the lonely desert edge of Borrego Springs, staffed by one operative and the occasional unwitting human. As Walter had wanted the place to himself for the weekend, he'd exerted some influence to get Howard out of the vicinity, citing his exemplary service to the cause and gifting him with a flight to Las Vegas. Ade would doubtless call with questions at some point, but for now the house was his.

Or, more accurately, the foundry was his. Howard occasionally rented out the Quonset hut in the backyard to welders and jewelry-makers and while no one was currently using the space, it still maintained all the necessary equipment for Walter's next venture.

He twirled the silver ring between forefinger and thumb, squinting speculatively. Thoroughly ordinary in origin, yet the faintest trace of magic lingered.

"Oh, Jacob was something else," Evelyn had supplied, after Walter asked some leading questions. "There were musicians in his family, though most were doctors, but whatever he played always sounded so alive. He could have gone professional, but he wanted a quieter life for us."

And, when pressed further that evening, she had been only too happy to dig out some old diaries and documents from the attic, nattering on about the relation of Cousin X to Maternal Ancestor Y while Walter poured over yellowing papers dating back to the days when there had still been Hapsburgs, tracing various peregrinations and perturbations of Steiners and noting the recurrent theme of how -- once or twice a generation -- a son or daughter would seem graced with an exceptional gift for embroidery, or carpentry, or cooking, or orating, or something that defied mere talent.

It made sense, of course. It wasn't just the biased eye of love that insisted that Barbara already possessed the drive and intelligence to be a superb doctor, just as her grandfather no doubt would always have been an excellent musician -- but a subtlety ran through the Steiner bloodline, a shiver-spark that had skipped its way down the generations and enhanced the native abilities of its hosts. He'd first seen the glimmer of it in Barbara's eyes years ago: the night of the freeway accident, when she'd sprung into action and the Universe itself seemed as though it was trying to get out of her way. And after so many years on Jacob's finger, the memory of that ancestral electricity embedded itself into the silver.

Very faint, and yet: present. Walter held it up to his eye and marveled at the glint it gave off. A human would only have seen the metal, but anyone with his ken for seeking out magical artifacts would have glanced a moment longer. He let his fingers close around it. He'd worn rings before; trinkets of varying potency. Nothing so plain as this, he reflected, and yet its history weighed heavy in the hand.

He sighed and took another pull of the tea he'd made, shivering slightly as a chill entered his bones. The sun had disappeared behind the mesa hours ago, yellows and reds of the landscape cooling to heavy indigo hues. Deserts were fickle, Walter reflected; one thing entirely until seen in another light. Not unlike Changelings, really. He shrugged off his jacket and set to work.

Although Stricklander had crafted or amended many magical amulets throughout his long and unusual life, the problem presented by Jacob's ring was a new one. He'd considered imbuing it with a spell to disguise it from troll eyes, but the indirect and accidental nature of its existing enchantment meant weaving any other spells into its surface was going to be tricky, if not impossible. Not to mention he was a troll himself; presumably if the spell took he'd have a ring he'd never be able to find. That could lead to some rather awkward conversations.

He phased into his second skin, Changeling sight better acclimated to darkness, stone less sensitive to the cool of the evening. The silver ring in his now-green palm was still warm with the memory of his human hands. He set it down, then -- expertly if without relish -- took a highly-specialized chisel from his toolkit and gingerly worked it into an fissure on his torso, where an old wound had left his surface brittle. Two quick and discerning jabs yielded enough flakes of his stone for the task at hand -- at least, he hoped.

Wincing, Stricklander unlatched the box he'd dug out of storage and rifled through its contents, looking for anything silver that could be re-purposed for this subtle work. After picking out and melting down some likely culprits -- a Roman hair pin, an anonymous length of chain -- he turned his attention to the modification.

No, cloaking the ring would prove too difficult; the effort that went into making something invisible was largely above his skillset (much as it pained him to admit it) and would only disrupt the magical atmosphere enough to draw attention. Assuming that Fate permitted his plans for the next few years to succeed, he would have need of both of his forms, and despite having unusually long and articulated fingers for a troll, they were thicker than their human equivalents. It was a simple piece of metal in any case, fragile and without ornament; it would be easy enough to conceal in mundane ways.

As the night wore on and his tea went cold, Stricklander cursed and hissed and held his breath while he worked metal and enchantment together, tortuously layering and shaping his will into its red-hot surface. More than a few times, he threw down his tools with a snarl; more than once, he stalked outside and flew furious laps above the moonlight-stippled ground, whipping dust in his wake. Ultimately, his patience returned, and at last the first rays of dawn gleamed on a freshly-cooling ring of unbroken silver.

"Let's see how clever you really are, old monster," he muttered, and placed it on his finger. Shifting back to the form that Barbara loved, Walter held his breath in anticipation of disaster -- but the ring altered with him, its width snugly matching the now-smaller circumference. He shifted again; it scaled flawlessly, no cracking or straining.

He returned to human shape and pocketed the ring with a deep sigh of relief. After a moment's reflection, he lifted the hem of his sweater and regarded the indigo bruise forming under his illusory ribs with an unexpected mixture of satisfaction and horror. The memory of much darker magics and sacrifices surfaced; he counted to ten.

Walter exhaled, tucking his sweater back down as he turned to regard the other projects he'd brought to the forge. These were not unrelated to the next phase of his life, but would require even more concentration and skill to alter towards their new purpose.

Barbara would never know how much he was giving up -- temporarily, of course, not permanently, never permanently -- nor how dangerously she had forced Walter to play this game.

Fortunately, Stricklander played to win.

Sed eligo quod video

Walter returned to Arcadia in the darkling hours of the next evening, after sleeping off the forge-work and attending to some other, less romantically-adjacent errands. Perhaps the sensible thing would have been to go directly to his apartment, but it had been a weekend that left him feeling a little too solitary for his liking.

Barbara was more than pleased to take a break and meet him in the parking lot, drawing him close for a long, sweet kiss that banished the ache in his side. "Missed you, babe." Her upturned face was luminous in the moonlight, lazurite eyes gleaming with the depths of distant galaxies.

"And I, you. How was the showing?" He allowed himself to be led to a nearby bench overlooking the hospital donors' memorial garden. "Anything likely?"

"I was going to text you pictures, but . . ." Barbara folded her arms and blew a wayward strand of hair out of her face. "I dunno, Walt. Gran-Gran has a point; the housing market here is slim pickings. If they ever get around to finishing that stupid condominium or whatever in downtown, maybe that would get more people to think about selling. But who knows if or when that will be?"

"Indeed." Walter kept his face serenely neutral, and tucked the auburn strand behind her ear. "So, no winners? Not even that three-bedroom number with the detached garage?"

Barbara groaned. "The water heater is ancient, that garage had a fire in it two years ago, and the roof hasn't been reshingled since the first Iraq War, which the homeowner will tell you about at great length, as well as the weapons used to fight it. Ask me what an M47 Dragon is?"

"What -- "

"Never intended for civilian ownership, I'm pretty damn sure." She removed her glasses and massaged her temples. "The guy swears that the Colt that fell out of the bathroom vent fan wasn't loaded."

"Oh, good Lord."

"Right." She held her spectacles up to the light, wiping them clean. "And best of all, there's already an offer on the place."

Walter rubbed her arm sympathetically. "I should have been there. I'm sorry you had to go it alone."

"If you were really sorry -- "

This was of course his cue for a much longer, more involved kiss that was only deterred by an ambulance's appreciative horn honking. Chastened, they decamped to the rest of the memorial, strolling behind some hedges where it was darker, at least by human standards.

"I'd be lying if I didn't say part of me wants to take Gran-Gran up on her offer," Barbara confessed. "I mean . . . I know it's not exactly as romantic as getting our own place and starting fresh, but at least we'd know what we were in for." She linked arms with his. "Thoughts?"

Walter had mulled the situation over on the long drive. There were methods of creating housing vacancies -- unsavory methods -- but it had been some time since he'd stooped to murder and he preferred to keep it that way. "Well, I grant you it isn't quite what I had in mind, but it's not a lifelong commitment, Barbara. We can always rent it from your grandmother for a few years; keep our eyes peeled for anything that seems like a better offer . . ."

Barbara seemed relieved, if also guilty. "Yeah. I mean, Jim's school is right here, and it's not too far from the hospital, and we know all the neighbors . . ." She bit her lip. "Problem is, I already promised Daniella we'd look at this other house next week . . ."

"We'll look at it, then." He squeezed her arm. "Maybe it'll be the one; maybe not. Here," he added, digging the worn box out of his pocket and presenting it to her. "See what I've been up to this weekend."

Barbara gamely opened the lid, recognition slowly washing over her lovely face. "Oh, Grampy's ring . . ." She smiled, though her lower lip trembled in doing so. "I haven't seen this since . . . wow, forever. You fixed it?"

"Resized it," Walter corrected and, though he would never understand why, added, "the old-fashioned way."

"What, taking it to a jeweler?"

"No, actually." Her quizzical look made him abruptly self-conscious, uncertain of his own motivation for the disclosure. "I . . . I know how to make jewelry. Little things; basic metallurgy." Perhaps it was the strangeness of not lying to her that prompted him to add, "Nothing too ornate, mind."

"Wow." Awed, she gingerly removed the thin band from its container, turning it over in evident fascination. "Walt, you're one talented man. How do you do it?"

"Sand-casting, usually. Although, to amend an existing ring -- "

"No, I mean -- it's like you have lifetimes worth of this kind of know-how." Barbara held the ring up to the light of the moon; silver on silver. "Maybe Jim's right; are you really seven hundred years old?"

"More than that, surely," he coughed, shifting uncomfortably. "And -- well. One picks things up, dear Atlas. Side effect of all those archaeological pretensions."

Barbara shook her head in response, gently tucking the ring back into its box. Abruptly, she sunk to one knee, fixing him with a solemn expression. "Walter Strickler, will you make me the happiest woman in the world?" She held the box out before her.

Where the sudden terror sprung from, he could not say. He took a step back, pulse pounding in his throat, unable to speak or react, uncertain of what skin he was wearing. Sharp and shining she knelt before him, supplicant, demanding; she who thwarted and made difficult and made perfect and --

"Walt?" A shadow had crept into the corner of her eyes, clouding the moonlight reflected there. "I . . . are you okay? I'm only kidding."

"Erm. Quite. I -- sorry, my darling." He swayed, quickly turning aside to gather his composure. "Just a bit overcome with emotion. Ridiculous, really." He forced himself to turn around, facial muscles twitching in the vague outlines of a smile. "No matter how many lifetimes you attribute to me, Barbara, you have a talent for making me feel quite young and inexperienced, you know."

It was her turn to look bashful, retracting the proffered box. "That I have a hard time believing."

"It's the truth," he replied, and for once, it was. "Rings and kings; I know of these things, but love? Still learning." He gently took the box back, placing the ring onto his finger with more ceremony than intended. "Is it me?"

Barbara's face was so soft, so luminous. "Oh, babe. It's you."

He smiled. Whoever that is.

undecies pro discordaniibus

Waiting was the hardest part.

The less-hard parts involved bidding farewell to Barbara -- though never easy -- and driving to an anonymous side-street twelve blocks away from the Arcadia Oaks Downtown Development Zone, proceeding on foot to the construction site, being careful to keep to shadows and mind one's tread. At a quarter past three in the morning, human activity was almost nonexistent, though Walter had long ago made a casual survey of security cameras in adjoining buildings and structures and had mapped out how to avoid showing up on tape.

Then, they involved gingerly slipping into the excavation pit, forgoing the usual method of elevators and other such noisy apparatuses by shifting forms and tenting his wings about him for a controlled fall. Stone though he was, the landing did his ankles no favors; somehow he managed to hobble noiselessly into the darkness.

There were a few goblins yet around the site, usually doing some after-hours work once the humans had clocked-off for the evening. Stricklander had set strict guidelines for how much noise was allowed -- attracting the attention of townsfolk would be bad, attracting the Trollhunter would be substantially worse -- but, emboldened by their distance from the surface, these guidelines were largely impossible to enforce. Currently, three of the little fiends were joyriding in a backhoe loader; another two were throwing a hard hat back and forth at each other. So much for safety first.

Hidden behind the heavier machinery, Stricklander waited. The bag he'd brought thrummed from time to time; he suppressed a grim smile.

The waiting would be over soon enough.

bibit rudis, bibit magnus

Over the long centuries, Walter had been careful to remain distant towards human confederates and co-workers, and it had been an easy enough rule to follow. Rarely would he ever spend more than a year or two in a station, cultivating a persona of ubiquitous if slightly bland goodwill (assuming the mission did not require otherwise) before fading into the mists of memory.

His stint at Arcadia Oaks High School had been anomalous in more ways than one. After more than a decade of teaching he'd become a known quantity -- for certain values of 'known', of course -- and the rest of the staff had gradually begun expecting a degree of human interaction that he was loath to provide.

To some extent, he only had himself to blame.

"My dear Mr. Strickler, you are an utter godsend," Lenora Janeth trilled, dunking the very last of the Scout Girl cookies into a cup of Uhl's pitch-black coffee. "If you hadn't brought all those sweets in last Friday, I might have perished before 10 A.M." She sighed theatrically.

"Too many carbs," disputed Lawerence, dusting his own mug with some sort of powder before dumping a generous helping of protein shake into its contents, and then topping it off with coffee. "Donuts? Cookies? Empty calories."

The youngest member of the staff cleared his throat in disapproval. "You are diluting your drink that much?"

"Don't want an ulcer, Karl." Walter watched in vague discomfort as the coach tipped back the beige slurry and annihilated it in two-and-a-half gulps. "Straight coffee's bad for you. Too much acid. Science."

"Surely not as bad as that -- "

An unforeseen wrinkle with Walter Strickler's history was that it had always been a minimally-sketched one in terms of family or friends. Normally this wouldn't have been an issue, but now that Stricklander's private life and public persona were fused at the skin, he had to consider how it would look if there was nobody on the groom's side of the aisle.

"Anyway, it's a bit late to be bringing this up, but I just wanted to check on the status of your responses," Walter brightly interrupted, hoping to steer the conversation away from yet another endless litany of Lawerence's gastrointestinal woes. "I know that it's a casual affair, but we're trying to get a final headcount before next week. Did any of you -- "

"Ah, yes!" Lenora brightened. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments, much less delays! I popped mine in the mail yesterday; you should see it any day now." She spun on her heel, nearly clocking Uhl with her mug in the process. "Love, whose month is ever May --"

"I will attempt to have an answer for you by the end of the week," Uhl said gravely. "It appears that your registry only has bath towels listed?"

"We've been meaning to update it, but finding the time has been difficult. Hopefully we'll remember what we need once we get a chance to compare notes, but -- "

Lawerence interrupted with a belch, the smell of whey powder permeating the air. "I think I lost the return envelope thingy. Can you send me a new one?"

Walter suppressed a sigh. "The R.S.V.P. components were postcards -- and you could just tell me now, yes?"

"Nah. Gotta ask the lady friend if she wants to be my plus one." Lawerence poured himself another cup of coffee. "Might need a babysitter for her kid." An idea suddenly seemed to ignite behind his eyes and he fixed Walter with a hopeful look. "Unless we can bring him along, too?"

"Er -- "

"I mean, if Karl here doesn't show, that oughta free up a seat and a meal, plus the runt mostly behaves himself. Hasn't bitten anyone in months."

Uhl scowled. "I may be attending; I am simply determining if my schedule -- "

Lawerence dumped another evil-smelling scoop of what Walter was beginning to suspect was nutritional yeast into his mug. "You know you can't bring that truck of yours as your date, right?"

"I -- that's not -- "

"Or you could go as Janeth's date, and that would make space."

Lenora's eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"Excuse me?" echoed Uhl, face going crimson. "I -- I -- I--"

"I'll check back later," Walter managed, and slunk out of the staff room. "Excuse me, I have to make a call."

michi quoque niteris

"Would my lord prefer the good news or the bad?" Pyotr lit a cigarette, leaning into the camera frame.

Walter sighed, leaning back in his chair, and steepled his hands. "I'm rarely in a mood for these games, Petya. Pick one."

The weedy little man shook his head. "Answer's the same, really. We found Bular." He inhaled with no discernible pleasure, then continued. "Not sure what the story is, but looks like he did get out of Turkey after all. It's patchy, but as far as we can tell he's wandering outside Krasnodar." He made a slightly apologetic gesture. "Hence why we're calling, my lord."

"Oh, for . . ." Stricklander gritted his teeth, forcing himself to remain calm. Now? Of all times? "What's he been doing?"

He heard Zhenya's offscreen voice mutter something about going to the malls, but Pyotr shushed her into silence. "He -- it's hard to tell; we can't track his prior movements. He could just be wandering, or lost -- "

"And no operatives have contacted him yet?"

An awkward cough. "Given . . . given his tendencies, Lord Stricklander, we were wondering if you had any thoughts on the matter." Pyotr fumbled with the cigarette, glancing anxiously at Zhenya. "We were hoping, since Nomura was previously his minder -- "

Typical. "Is it too much to hope that you'd show some initiative and send one of your own operatives?"

Zhenya appeared in view. "Didn't Director Faruk tell you what happened with the last contact team? Lord Stricklander," she added, almost as an afterthought.

Stricklander slowly leant forward. "Go on." He did not miss, nor did he savor, the sidelong glance that was exchanged between his subordinates. "Well? Speak and be dammed!"

Pyotr took a nervous drag. "The, ah . . . well, you know that Bular was wandering the Turkish border for a bit -- "

He had not known this. And that, it seemed, was yet another problem to deal with.

Veni, veni, venias

"It's not just the wedding; it's all the palaver with the end of the school year," Walter griped, holding the fork up to the light for closer inspection. "Obviously I know it was the only slot open that we could reserve the gazebo, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't dreading the prospect of getting married mere days before final exams." He rubbed a speck of particulate off of the cutlery with peevish precision.

Barbara -- seated on the couch in the other room -- glanced up from the pile of mail she was currently sifting through and smirked. "You know when's the best time for a doctor to get married?"

"Retirement?"

"Bingo." She clucked her tongue in resignation. "At least it's mutual inconvenience."

"Well, a good compromise leaves everyone unhappy." Walter determined that the fork was satisfactorily clean, then drained the sink of water. "Speaking of which, I think I might leave the cast iron skillet for later, if that's all right."

Barbara nodded, her gaze slipping past him to fix on Jim and Toby playing in the backyard. "I really wish he wouldn't use that pan. It's so heavy, and he thinks he's stronger than he is . . ."

"I did supervise dinner for that very reason." Through the window, Walter noted that the boys seemed to be playing a highly-modified version of baseball that involved a badminton shuttle and hockey sticks; ah, youth. "Though I've been told that I'm a sub-par sous-chef." He draped the dishtowel over the nearest cabinet handle and ambled into the living room.

"Yeah, reliable sources told me you didn't want to use a hammer to flatten the fillets and just made him use a rolling pin like a boring person. Guess you'd better shape up, quick." She patted the cushion next to her, smiling invitingly. "But I've got something I need help with, too . . ."

Walter sat down next to her, draping an arm across her shoulders. "Certainly." He turned his head to one side, breathing in the scent of her hair: equal parts floral and antiseptic. He let his fingers wander down the side of her arm, smugly pleased by the Braille their light touch induced.

"Hey. C'mon." Barbara swatted his roaming hand away. "Work to do."

"I would, if you'd only let me," he growled into her neck.

"Not that kind of work." She tapped a pen against a notepad full of addresses, gesticulating towards the pile of postcards. "We still need the final headcount. Looks like most of the A-list responded -- huh." Barbara squinted at Lenora Janeth's impressively calligraphic handwriting. "She says she's bringing 'To Be Determined' as her plus one? What the heck does that mean?"

"My sources indicate she's re-entered the dating scene," Walter sighed, the thought of Lenora Janeth's romantic adventures dousing any amorous inclinations of his own.

Barbara arched an eyebrow. "You've been stalking the classifieds again."

He arched one back. "I found wonderful things in the classifieds, didn't I?"

"Got me there." Barbara smiled. "What makes you so sure it's her?"

"Oh, call it a hunch. I doubt that Arcadia is home to more than one individual who uses 'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety' in their personal ad." He glanced at the postcard, inwardly resigned to the prospect of human co-workers in attendance. "Good luck to her."

"Well, we're not exactly hosting this shindig at a five-star restaurant; catering budget should be fine whether or not she brings anyone." Barbara flipped through a few more response cards, then abruptly stopped. "Oh . . . "

Walter caught a brief glimpse of the return address of T. McCoy, Washington and the scrawled words written under the "With Regrets" box: abandoned us so I don't know why you'd. "Your brother's not -- "

Barbara set the postcard down quickly, lips pursed. "No. I guess not." She made a show of trying to focus on the next card, though Walter instantly noticed how it trembled. "Well. It was a long shot. He gets to feel how he feels."

He put a hand on hers, steadying it. "You're not to blame. You reached out -- "

"Which doesn't change how I feel, either." She exhaled. "But it's not like I was ever going to invite my parents, I just thought that Taylor . . ." Her voice trailed off.

Walter kissed her temple, privately unsure of whether he was relieved or disappointed on her behalf. "His loss, my darling."

"Whatever," she responded, briskly re-arranging the pile on the coffeetable. "Plenty of people coming. Did you ever invite Earl?"

"Ah -- no. He's a bit difficult to reach at the moment; some dig on the other side of the planet. I'm sure he'll respond several years after the fact." Once again, Walter cursed Otto's intrusion into the life he'd inadvertently made for himself in Arcadia. "I know it must not seem as though I'm well-represented, but . . . well, Aunt Tillie was the only person I would have invited, and she's no longer with us."

"Babe, you don't have to explain dysfunctional families to me," was Barbara's rueful response. "That reminds me, though -- I've been meaning to talk to you about Jim."

"Jim?"

"Yeah." She set the cards down, then turned to face him. "You know he's nuts about you."

Walter shifted in his seat, uncomfortable and annoyed that he wasn't sure why this was the case. "Does the follow-up sentence to this statement begin with a 'But'?"

A corner of her mouth twitched upward, though Barbara's eyes remained earnest and strangely old. "He's been asking me a lot of questions about what it's going to be like when you join our family. I think -- Walt, I've been talking with him, trying to make sure he knows everything will be okay, even if things are going to change. But I guess -- I guess I wanted to know if you've picked up anything from him?"

Walter leant back against the sofa, exhaling through his nose. "Preoccupations with naming conventions, mostly. He is profoundly uninterested in donning my surname, and I can't blame him." A wounded fragment of himself, hitherto undiscovered, muttered something to the effect of how Stricklander, at least, was a name that ought to be coveted, but he merely added, "I think he's a little worried about the concept of a -- a stepfather." That same mysterious part of his soul writhed and hissed in a perplexing fashion.

"It's those movies that Toby likes, isn't it." Barbara rubbed under her chin. "I swear -- considering how many people get divorced and remarried, why do they keep churning out so many flicks where the world ends once Mom or Dad starts dating again?"

Walter -- like Barbara -- had been subjected to enough of Toby's preferred media to know that it skewed heavily towards family reunions: parents lost to mischance or dread destinies redeemed and reinstated to their appointed place alongside declarations of eternal love. Only knowing the grim circumstances of Toby's orphanhood prevented him from savaging those trite offerings; he suspected that Jim might have proved somewhat susceptible to that messaging as well. "Well, I hope he knows that if I ever abandoned him in the woods, I'd at least try to leave him a sufficient distance from a witch's cottage."

She cupped her chin in her hand and sighed deeply. "We just found out his dad broke up with his girlfriend."

"Ah." Walter thought back to Jim's rather uncharacteristic testiness during dinner preparations, and his relative silence during the meal. "Not that Jim was ever fond of those people, but it must come as a shock."

"I think he doesn't know what to expect." She tapped her fingers against the side of her cheek. "It's not as though James is just going to show up on our doorstep and make some big gesture. Maybe he thinks he should want Dad back in his life, but feels guilty that he doesn't?"

Ever the dutiful child, Walter reflected. "Small boy, big emotions."

"Well, that's the theme for tonight, isn't it." Barbara leaned back with him against the sofa, sighing deeply. "Everybody feels what they're gonna feel."

caveat ruinam!

"Lord Stricklander," Faruk began, a ripple of static flittering over the screen. "I -- was not anticipating your call." He waved away the last smoke trails of a hastily-extinguished cigarette. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Oh, no particular reason," Stricklander drawled, leaning back in his chair. "A bit of a guilty conscience, perhaps. I've not looked in on your office in some time; didn't want you thinking I'd forgotten about you all." He smiled, beaming with sufficient quantities of calculated goodwill to register as unambiguous threat.

Faruk might have once been a rival, but he'd hardly been competition. Despite years of service in both Byzantine and Ottoman courts, he'd never really gained any apparent skill with subterfuge -- which was almost impressive, in its own way. When Stricklander had regained control of the Order, he had summoned Faruk to dinner, served him an exquisite meal with the best vintages still available, and remarked with utmost pleasantness that he remembered what had been said at the Tribunal hearings and that only the disappearance of the Fetch and the lack of trained personnel had kept him from poisoning everything on Faruk's plate. Faruk had subsequently spent the entire evening staring at his wine goblet as though it contained live spiders.

Times like these tended to support the theory that poison solved more problems than it caused.

"I was looking through the Ankara Division's personnel files on a whim the other day," Stricklander casually remarked. "Good to see Steryon has been reassigned to something more his speed." His fingers momentarily itched with the memory of crazed violence; he laced them together. "But so sad to see that Kılıç passed away; never an easy thing to lose one's subordinates. My condolences."

Faruk was far worse at chess than Otto. "He -- yes. Thank you."

Stricklander leant forward. "I assume it was in the line of duty? Or was he ill? The file didn't say." He pursed his lips and shook his head. "Must keep these records for posterity, you know. I trust it didn't involve the Trollhunter?"

The Director of the Ankara Division paled, but somehow kept his expression from cracking. "No. The Trollhunter was not involved. An accident."

"Surely Kılıç's cover was not compromised?"

"No." Faruk's facade seemed about to drop. "No. An accident. Not even related to the Initiative, so naturally the cause of death was not reported."

"And the nature of the accident was . . ."

"A -- an automotive incident. It was very sudden."

Stricklander leant back again. "Bular's been spotted just shy of the Taman Peninsula, you've no doubt heard."

"That is very interesting information," responded Faruk. "Perhaps he has been in Russia the whole -- "

"Were I the suspicious sort, I would have thought the most likely interpretation of events was that you sent poor Kılıç to convince Bular to return to the fold, and Bular ate him by way of response. Of course, if that were the case, it would mean that you'd been sitting on your hands since then -- if not before -- and the Underlord's son had been wandering around in your neck of the woods, unimpeded, for some time now." Stricklander interlaced his fingers, keeping his tone even. "But that would be an uncharitable read, wouldn't it?"

Faruk said nothing, but his irises momentarily flared red as he visibly tamped down a fear response. Pathetic, but also worrying. The other Changeling had been preoccupied with his status within the Order's hierarchy for years, frequently at the expense of his subordinates. If Kılıç had met the same fate as so many who had tried to rein in Bular, it would have been easy enough to lay the blame with him and say as much.

"And I am nothing if not charitable," Stricklander continued at length. "So. Once again, my condolences on the loss of your operative. Başınız sağolsun." He clicked out of the call, cursed, then rose and glowered at the world map tacked on his sanctum's wall. The sticky note with Bular's name and the parenthetical question mark was several years old now, and the adhesive beginning to lose its grip; it fell as he exhaled deeply.

Stricklander bent to pick it up, then glanced at Jim's illustration of the trap for the basement troll. Certainly, that green grinning gentleman about to be crushed by a sixteen-ton weight was undeserving of such a fate? He firmly placed the note over the crayon rendition of himself, then allowed himself a smile at the implausible notion of Jim's trap doing in the Skullcrusher's whelp.

"Other people's sons," he remarked aloud.

Girat, regirat garcifer

"I hate this game," Jim pouted. "I never understand what's going on."

Walter turned his scrutiny away from the rafters of the gazebo and back towards tutelage, leaning over the chessboard to assess the state of play. "Interesting. Are you quite sure that . . ."

"What?" The boy glanced up at him desperately. "Is there a move I can do?"

"Hey!" Phil -- Jim's opponent -- snapped his fingers in warning. "No outside interference, Strickler. Training wheels are off; now the boy's riding with the big dogs."

Jim made a face. "Dogs don't ride bikes." He folded his arms. "Chess stinks."

Walter suppressed a smile -- an easier task than he'd anticipated, as the taco truck parked at the edge of the street suddenly cranked up the volume of its speakers, echoing off the storefronts that ringed the town square. "Well, you did challenge him, Jim."

"Yeah, cause you said he was easier to beat." His small charge blew a raspberry at him. "He's just as tough as you are." Jerry, also observing the match, guffawed at that remark.

Phil pulled out a warning finger and waved it at all present. "Laugh it up, punks, but I placed first in my unit's chess tourney for three consecutive years -- "

This only made Jerry cackle harder. "Only because you were the only jarhead who didn't eat the pieces!"

Phil snorted and turned towards boy. "You wanna know how the Army plays chess, Jimmy?"

"How?"

"They give up and ask for an airstrike."

"C'mon," pleaded Jim to Walter in an undertone, as the perennial topic of inter-forces rivalry distracted the senior citizens. "Just tell me what to move, please? I looked everywhere -- "

Walter winced as yet another round of high, tinny bass erupted from the truck. "Consider your enemy. What does Phil always do when he's playing against Jerry?"

"Makes fun of the Army?"

"Besides that." Walter leant forward. "What does the board look like when they're playing? Try to remember."

"But why can't you just tell me?" Jim looked genuinely angry; Walter was slightly taken aback. "Why do you always do this?"

"'Do' what?"

The boy buried his face in his palms, clearly exasperated. "You never just say where to move! I don't know what to do!"

There was, Stricklander reflected, a distinct irony in the situation; he was usually telling his inferiors exactly what to do and being dismayed by their disastrous forays into the uncharted wilds of initiative. Teaching really was another profession altogether. "Jim, if I tell you what to do, you'll never learn."

"I don't even care about this stupid game," his charge responded, sullen. "I don't wanna do this anymore."

Walter felt a strange twinge somewhere within himself; doubtless an echo thrown from the increasingly annoying music. "We -- we'll go back home. Just wait here for a moment more." He turned, bearing down on the taco truck with grim purpose. Its proprietor -- Stuart, last name irrelevant, allegedly English -- was bobbing to the beat, ridiculous bathrobe flopping open as he rhythmically stirred a pot of beans.

That had to be a health code violation, Walter thought. "Excuse me -- "

"'I get this feeling I'm in motion, a sudden sense of --'" The man suddenly seemed to notice he had an audience. "Oh! Walter, wasn't it? One burrito al pastor, two chicken tacos with extra cheese, coming right up -- "

"No, I'm not ordering anyt -- "

The portly man was already tossing down tortillas onto the griddle, still swaying in time to the music. "'I used to think that the day would never come' -- oh, and did you want extra hot sauce on that?"

"I -- "

Stuart haphazardly flung some shredded cheese over the tortillas, shouting over the music. "It's only that my usual supplier raised prices, so I've had to bash up a bit of a substitute. Still good, but I've had someone say it gave them hives, so -- "

"That's not -- "

But Stuart promptly dumped a handful of pork on the grill, and between the sudden sizzling and the ongoing sonic assault, conversation was now impossible. Walter stalked over to the driver-side window, twisting the volume knob on the stereo down to nothing. The music continued to blare, unabated.

"Oi! What are you doing in there?" Stuart's head emerged from behind the curtain. "A man's truck is his castle -- "

Grimly, Walter yanked at an overhead cord that looked for all the world as though it was plugged into a speaker somewhere; nothing happened. "Turn the stereo down!"

"What?"

"I said -- "

"Hang on, mate; got to turn the stereo down." There was an odd series of beeps from somewhere behind the curtain and then -- mercifully -- no further sounds other than what one would normally encounter from a food truck. Stuart's head reemerged from behind the curtain. "Sorry; love that song. Best one on the album, and that's saying a lot."

"If it were just that song at that volume, I wouldn't be here," responded Walter, and suddenly reeled as a hideous stench pervaded his nostrils. "Faugh -- ! What -- do you have rotting meat in here?"

Stuart looked genuinely appalled. "Of course not!"

The odor passed as quickly as it had arrived and Walter took a clear, composing breath, summoning his powers of diplomacy. "Ergh. Never mind. I have a request, unrelated to burritos?"

"Yeah?"

"Barbara and I are getting married in the gazebo in two weeks," Walter stated. "Understandably, we can't cordon off the entirety of the square -- nor would we wish to -- but given that it is a solemn occasion, we were hoping to achieve a certain . . . ambiance?"

"Blimey," remarked Stuart. "Don't worry, I'll keep to the other side of the square." He cocked finger guns at Walter. "Just kidding! I'll move to the end of the block. You won't see a taco truck in your wedding photos -- might smell one, but that's easier to forget, am I right?"

"Wonderful," replied Walter dourly. "Just how I always pictured my wedding day: blossoms on the tree, birds on the wing, burritos on the wind." Once again, he caught a whiff of something that twinged his senses, something that registered as decidedly unfamiliar. "Where did you say you were from, exactly?"

The shabby man blinked. "I . . . uh . . . didn't." He coughed. "Guildford?"

Walter's eyes narrowed. "Really."

Stuart began fidgeting nervously with a spatula. "Yep! Hey, uh . . . your order's just about up, which means it's time for some New Order, if you don't mind?" There were another series of inexplicable beeps, and then the music came back on, driving Walter back out of the truck's cab in defeat.

A new Order, he thought. Soon enough.

In truitina mentis dubia / fluctuant contraria

Arcadia gleamed. It was a a good city for gleaming.

Away from the long strips of interstate highways, the town nestled in its natural divot in the earth, blissfully unaware that even more glittering beauty lay underneath its soil. The oaks that had given the school its name ringed the edges of the valley, providing deep pockets of darkness for the amber glow of streetlights to pool beneath. Above, the stars blazed in defiance of light pollution from neighboring cities.

Stricklander took a long, speculative look at his current place of residence before pouring himself another cup of wine. Strange, he reflected. It wasn't a particularly unique town by the standards of the region -- bereft of any great architectural features, historical monuments, or exceptional industry -- and yet, something about it . . . compelled one to keep looking.

Of course, he reflected, that might just be bias on his part. He was attuned to the arcane world; Arcadia's human inhabitants likely weren't. Small, mysterious anomalies tended to go unnoticed by homo sapiens, whether a sheen of beauty over a little town or a magical current in a healer's hands.

Stricklander leant back heavily against the hood of his car. He glanced at the package next to him, its innards swaddled in Styrofoam and bubble wrap -- a mode of transport unworthy of artifacts of this lineage, but at least every Changeling between Arcadia and Moscow would have kept a watchful eye on its movement. Even obscured, he was distinctly aware of the magical nature of its contents; a ripple in the ambient background.

He picked up one of the phurba and inspected its handle. Not a knife that he'd ever wielded before -- it belonged to a much more subtle lineage, with more adamant aims. Hopefully his reading was up-to-date, as the plans he was going to set in motion would not leave wide margins for error.

Stricklander set the knife back down and sipped his wine. Normally he would have reserved a vintage as old as this for a more important occasion, but he was trying to make sure there'd be fewer things to pack, to say nothing of explaining them to his future housemates. There was some bitterness in that, as there was in this whole baffling affair.

Marriage was a thing humans did, that other trolls did -- people, not Changelings. It wouldn't have even occurred to him to consider matrimony in any context divorced from his mission, assuming as that would inclinations or privileges completely alien to an Impure's mode of existence. A solitary life was all he was allotted, and for the most part it suited him. He didn't like to share his time or his toys, and marriage entailed losing both.

Maddening, then, how he had placed his own neck in this noose. Barbara had seemed fine with the state of their relationship prior to his panicked proposal: the occasional coffee dates, the odd lunch, him popping in to critique Jim's cooking evey few weeks. All she'd asked for were words, bits of song, heartfelt sympathy. Well-made tea, heavily-edited anecdotes, idle speculation on the nature of the universe. In-jokes. Pet names. Kisses, on her hand, lips, and other places. Horrifying to realize that what he did give seemed to be enough. Horrifying to think that he was enough.

She laughed at his jokes. She knew that place between his shoulderblades that twinged and moved to soothe it without him asking, unaware that she stroked occluded wings. She gave him the second-best donut from the box (first always went to Jim) and pretended to be fine with what was left over. She asked for his opinions and put great stock in his tastes. She made fun of his nose. She sang him ridiculous renditions of love songs in that otherwise-calming voice of hers. And sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Barbara smiling at him as though he were something worth smiling at, something unexpected and wonderful, a unicorn rather than a gargoyle wearing human motley.

She wanted so little, really; it was impossible not to want to give more. He should have challenged a Nyarlagroth to battle and dragged its bleeding head to her doorstep. He should have bedecked her in all the precious things found under the earth and declared her more beautiful than all of them. He should have burned and rebuilt the cities of the world three times over to best suit her fancies.

Stricklander leant against the windshield, surveying the stars above. And yet, he reflected darkly, a marriage could well be something he was incapable of providing.

Oh, Barbara. The subtlest of snares, you are.

He was not a family man -- or for that matter, a man. He was a saboteur, an assassin, a historian, a magician (of modest means), a murderer, and a troll. He was the governing mind of the Janus Order, its rightful leader by dint of cunning and caution, his alabaster visage of authority earned through treachery and blood.

No. He couldn't. Things were owed --

-- Stricklander counted to ten, then fifteen as the smell of mud and metal surged through his synapses. After taking several deep breaths, he reopened his eyes. Arcadia glittered serenely underneath him, waiting.

The Order was everything. He owed too much to -- he owed them that. But, he reminded himself, he was himself owed. He'd given the Order -- not Barbara -- the best years of his life, stabilizing and innovating operations and wrenching the model away from a decentralized morass of would-be warlords towards a streamlined, efficient hierarchy that served a greater cause. He'd been the one who championed the consolidation of knowledge and resources necessary to finding the components of Killahead Bridge, instead of relying on guesswork and hearsay.

And then, after decades of trying to make sure their operations in Europe remained relatively stable and unmolested, Stricklander had been the one they'd turned on, lobbying accusations of corruption or of having too many human interests at him. His work upended and disregarded, bitter vindication arriving in the form of the Great War and incalculable losses. None had dared say a word when he returned to set things in order, and not just because so many of those detractors had already perished.

He was owed. He would not abandon the Initiative, nor would he relinquish the reins of power.

He simply would take a sabbatical.

fides est et probitas / tuum retinere

They sat together in measured silence for about forty-five seconds before Barbara finally ventured, "So."

"So," echoed Walter, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "First impressions?"

Barbara exhaled heavily enough that it turned into a raspberry, and leant back against the passenger car seat as though Walter had slammed his foot on the gas instead of remaining parked in the recently-toured home's driveway. "It's . . . got some upsides, I'll give it that."

He directed his attention back towards the house in front of them, a moldering heap of a midcentury bungalow that desperate stagers had tried to modernize by putting some third-tier Jackson Pollock knockoffs in the living room, after painting every interior surface beige. "It . . . well . . . one should consider . . ." Their realtor tottered past the car with a wave, which he returned with a wan smile. "I mean, room to grow."

"Property taxes would be lower," Barbara conceded diplomatically.

"Lots of sunlight," Walter remarked, glancing around the bleak and treeless block. "Good view of the recycling plant."

"There's a master bathroom."

"And a skylight."

Barbara waited until the realtor had backed out of the driveway before exploding. "I hate it!"

"Oh, thank Heaven." Walter clenched a fist, relief and rage pouring forth in tandem. "I would die before I moved anywhere with that carpet, and that paneling --"

"You know, I never really understood feng shui until walking through a house that had so much absence of harmony in every stinking room," Barbara groaned. "I mean, they managed to louse up every single direction and element simultaneously. Was this place built on a dare?"

"I'm impressed they knew that the skylight was supposed to go into the ceiling," Walter drawled. "Although, given those rather ineptly-concealed water stains, I can't think its installment was entirely flawless."

"So, not this place?"

"Lord, no."

"Agreed." Barbara tossed the fliers into the back seat of his car. "Ugh. Dinner?"

"Also agreed."

"Burgers okay?"

"I can cope."

"Don't steal my onion rings."

"No promises." Walter backed out of the driveway, wheeling his car around and out back towards town. After procuring their orders, he took them to his favorite overlook, reasoning that discussions such as pertained to houses were best approached outside of them, and also because Jim would've resented not getting to go out to eat.

Barbara ordered a Fun Meal for herself, saying that she wasn't that hungry. Walter suspected her motives might have something to do with bridal fittings, or possibly how Jim had nearly collected the entire set of Gun Robot movie promotional tie-in figures. "I don't think he has this one yet," she said, squinting at the plastic-encased doll. "Sally Go-Back?"

"He doesn't." Part of him lamented that he knew this to be a fact. "Although I expect Toby will fight him tooth and nail for it."

"Has Jim been acting weird around you, lately?" She set the figure aside, excavating the Fun Meal's contents with surgical precision. "I noticed you aren't doing after-school chess anymore."

Walter masked a faint sigh with a long pull of his soft drink. "Mmph. He seemed to be frustrated with the process. I assume actual chess is less interesting to a nine-year-old than whatever was going on in that cartoon."

"Oh, right." Barbara nipped an onion ring. "That cartoon which you don't watch."

"I don't, thank you very much." Walter lunged for one of her onions, encountering a flurry of blows. "I'm -- really, Barbara! -- I'm a teacher; naturally my awareness of popular culture is obtained by osmosis, hence -- "

"Hence why you can sing both versions of the song lyrics, right? Osmosis?"

"There's three versions, actually." Triumphant, he popped his prize into his mouth and crunched it with gusto. "Mmm. Theft does lend food savor, does it not?"

"Jerk," she responded, flicking crumbs at him. "Guess I'd better get used to it and just order extra for the rest of my life."

"Presumably." Walter smiled, aware that it did not reach his eyes. "Or just for the rest of mine."

He noted that answer made Barbara's own expression dim. "Yeah . . ." She glanced away. "Walt? Dumb question. How . . . how old do the men in your family get?"

Walter exhaled through his nose, mind racing as he tried to remember the history he'd fabricated. "Er. Well, in the case of my father, he had a series of conditions brought on from unsavory habits, but . . . around sixty. Why, is that . . ."

Barbara shrugged. "Just . . . you know. Greasy food. I know it's stupid, but it's just . . ." She unwrapped her hamburger, pausing in the act of raising it to her mouth. "Wow. Arcadia looks beautiful from up here, tonight."

"Always." He scanned the sides of the canyon walls. "There's that house."

"Ugh." She flinched. "Still looks terrible, even from here."

"Puts the lie to Twain's aphorism that distance lends enchantment, to be sure." He glanced at her, and for once opted to take the initiative. "Your grandmother's house is very nice, you know."

"I know." She took a savage bite of her burger. "Don't I know it."

Walter surveyed her face, a tenderness welling and mixing with the latent frustration that everything related to the business of melding households lately entailed. "Is she proud, my Barbara? Does she feel cheated?"

"You're darn right I feel cheated; look how many of my onion rings you swiped." She winked, then sighed. "Part of me feels . . . responsible for this dumb situation. Like, you're an adult, Barbara; a doctor with a kid. Shouldn't you have your own place by now?" She waved an onion ring around. "I always meant to get an apartment and move out with Jim. But I was worried about Gran-Gran, and I was tired coming home so many nights, and Jim liked it there, and . . ."

"I never got the impression Evelyn minded having you about," Walter said. "The opposite, if anything."

"Not the point, though." She dunked the onion ring in her ketchup, sighing. "Well, you put something off for long enough, you'll still end up dealing with it."

"Darling, it's entirely possible that even if you'd found a place of your own, we'd still be looking for a bigger home." Walter nudged her sternly, also palming several of her onion rings in the process. "Let's be reasonable: your grandmother intends to vacate the house regardless of what we decide. In this instance, we'd be paying her a fair and reasonable rent, Jim would be spared one less upheaval, and at least we know what all the problems with the appliances are."

"Like the washer."

"Like the washer. Which, in spite of having facilitated our happy union, is long overdue to be replaced." Walter bit into one of his purloined onions. "We don't even have to stay in the house forever; we can keep our eyes open in case something better appears on the market in a few years' time."

Barbara seemed to perk up a bit at that. "You know, you're right." She flourished her drink in a salute. "Here's to keeping options open -- one day, we'll have the place we deserve, right?"

"Indeed." He tapped the side of his cup to hers. "To the headquarters we deserve."

quero mihi similes

"I'm . . . sorry?" Ade blinked in obvious confusion, adjusting his thick spectacles. "You want me to . . . what?"

"Tactical misdirection," Stricklander clarified. "Fairly simple, really. I'd have contacted Nairobi, normally, but, well . . ." He rolled his eyes for dramatic effect. "We both know how they operate."

"Horrifically," the Janus Order's chief accountant said automatically. "And yet -- Lord Stricklander, of course I am at your disposal, but I am not a field operative, or that is to say, I have not been for many years . . ."

Stricklander took in the nervous Changeling on the other end of the line: his loose-fitting linen shirt, anxious eyes, a cat's tail twitching underneath his chin. Ade had never possessed a killer's instinct, and if not for his mathematical prowess would likely have been done away with years ago. In spite of his gift, or perhaps because of it, he'd never been much for chess: too methodical, too conservative, and too indecisive.

"Well, if you like, I can always ring up Amelia. She'll make a hash of things, but I suppose it's not fair to expect you to trek all the way out to Olduvai; she is closer, after all." Stricklander sighed theatrically. "Hard to find good operatives, these days. No one answers the call like they used to . . ."

"We live indeed in an Age of Iron," Ade remarked, wiping his spectacles nervously. "Er . . . what was the task?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Don't fret about it -- if anything, I feel bad about saddling you with the Nairobi Division's terrible record-keeping from this excursion. Heaven only knows what they'll try to write off on this little trip." Stricklander leant back in his chair, idly tapping his fingers against the armrest. "Just as long as they don't try to expense another round of cocktails in Business Class --"

That, at least, finally seemed to kindle a spark of resistance in Ade's expression. "They are contemptible about this sort of thing, Lord Stricklander. As I have always said, Director Kamau's lax and permissive leadership -- "

Stricklander waved a hand. "Well, you'll just have to break it all out later in the worksheets."

But Ade had warmed to the subject, and was now ready to be used. "What exactly would you need done in Olduvai Gorge, my Lord? Surely I could attend to it, assuming that it only required basic arcane abilities . . ."

"Well . . ." Stricklander drawled, swiveling his chair away momentarily to indulge in a self-satisfied grin. "Nothing much. I've been trying to start some of the preliminary magical runework around the new headquarters here in Arcadia, but Kanjigar has been underfoot lately. Goblins aren't being as discreet as they should be, don't you know." He swiveled back around.

"Filthy beasts," Ade responded. The cat on his lap butted its head against his chin, purring loud enough to be heard over the speakers. "No, not you, Nadia."

Stricklander arched an eyebrow at this, but decided it would be hypocritical in the extreme to judge Ade's non-gustatory interest in felines in light of his own atypical inclinations. "All I need is for a magical disturbance to get the attention of trolls in the area. Throw a Antamonstrum shell or two about, and they'll be begging the Trollhunter to sort it out for them. That'll give us enough time to get things finished here." He glanced at the sleek grey cat snaking itself around Ade's shoulders. "I'd even be willing to allocate a little extra towards a pet-sitter, if it helps things to go smoothly on your end."

"Oh, er -- Sir, please don't think that --"

"It's quite all right," sighed Stricklander, trying not to let his attention wander towards the bag sitting expectantly on the desk. "We all have our little vices, and between yours and Scaarbach's, I know which I prefer humoring." He leaned in, voice conspiratorial. "Given his radically different appreciation of cats, I must say." There had been a small white Persian kitten that Ade had been inordinately fond of back in Tangiers, and its disappearance -- coinciding with Otto's arrival in town -- had led to decades of vicious audits for the German divisions.

Ade huffed in indignation. "He's a beast, Lord Stricklander, and very insensitive in these matters --"

Stricklander suppressed a triumphant smile at his quarry taking the bait. "Well, don't feel obligated to mention this errand to him, of course."

"I shall not," Ade responded, clutching Nadia closer to him. "No pussycats will be harmed if I have anything to say about it, will they, my darling?"

"Good man," sighed Stricklander. "We'll be in touch." He closed the laptop's lid, turning his full attention to the satchel waiting expectantly upon his desk.

We live indeed in an Age of Iron, he mused.

semper dissolubilis

There was something so . . . pedestrian about getting married in a town square, though it made a degree of practical sense. Stricklander had officiated a few weddings over the years, but had never been called upon to serve as a groom -- not that it would have necessarily been that unusual. Changelings sometimes married to further goals, though those goals usually dovetailed with theft or murder (or both) long before the ink was dry on the certificate. Lasting unions meant heightened risks of slipping up.

He hadn't slipped up -- so far. Not seriously, at any rate; whatever Barbara might think of Walter Strickler, she believed him to be who he claimed to be: a witty, slightly sad Englishman who'd failed at archaeology and was living out a fantasy of being Mr. Chips in a place far removed from his dysfunctional family of origin. Not the worst balancing act he'd ever managed, but sustaining it for a while was going to be difficult.

Especially if the Order were to learn about it. Hence, this nighttime errand.

The gazebo was sparingly lit, making it relatively easy for Walter to slink into its shadowed interior. Arcadia slumbered fitfully in the springtime, with idiot teenagers in the throes of passion or senioritis or both sneaking off in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the gazebo's proximity to the police station meant that few were willing to risk breaking curfew at 3 in the morning. Unfortunately, thanks to that same proximity, Walter would need to be just as careful.

He quietly set the satchel down on one of the empty chess tables and cast a furtive look outside the gazebo. Nothing. He inhaled, then forced himself to put his hand inside the bag. As his fingers touched cold metal, he felt the morphic shift take place.

Contrary to received wisdom, iron was not inherently dangerous to Changeling glamour; it was only deep iron, smelted from the Primordial Ores of the Archean Eon, had that ability. From this rare and arcane metal were gaggletacks forged. Amusing, Stricklander reflected, that such an invaluable tool should be discovered by accident and subsequently be associated with horseshoes when deep iron's applied uses were so much more varied -- especially considering that in the coming weeks, it would serve him in hiding himself rather than risking exposure.

In the dark, his transformed eyes effortlessly located the positions in the rafters that he'd noted during chess lessons with Jim. The nails he'd forged might not appear noteworthy beyond a certain crudeness of construction, but their purpose was not architectural.

Alighting to the rafters, Stricklander began placing the nails in a ring along the interior of the roof -- a process made considerably more difficult by the discovery that pigeons were roosting there.

"Shoo!" he hissed, swatting a particularly-recalcitrant bird from a vital junction. "Haven't you eaten enough of my lunches, to obey a simple --"

"Did you say something?" He froze at the nearby voice, possibly by the statue at the heart of the plaza.

"No, what?"

Stricklander unfurled his wings, sending all the pigeons within the arched rafters into instantaneous panic, streaming out of its confines and into the dark. Somewhere outside, two voices screamed in sudden terror as -- by the sound of it -- they encountered twenty to thirty instances of Columba livia traveling at high speed under night flying conditions.

"Holy --"

"My slushie!"

After the sound of dull thuds and teenaged expletives died down, Stricklander placed the last four nails and -- carefully -- descended, a knife in hand. The humans hadn't stuck around. He rummaged in the bottom of the bag and gingerly removed a series of cameras -- two film, two digital -- and took pictures of a recently-abandoned Blue Razzleberry slushie that was melting on the grass nearby.

The Janus Order had spent years trying to meld technological advancements to existing magical theory, with limited success. After burning several gallons of midnight oil, Stricklander hoped that he might have cracked the method for turning deep iron's illusory dampening field against itself.

He reverted to human form and took a series of portraits, unable to keep from posing. The slushie pictures would serve as the control; the real test was making sure that no images of Walter Strickler -- be they digital or film -- survived proximity to the ring of iron.

A shame how they'd spent nearly three hundred dollars paying for a photographer, considering that no pictures would survive. Well. Presumably they could get a refund.

Walter strolled out of the gazebo, quietly walking back to his car while watching a digital readout on one of the cameras. Two minutes away from the gazebo, the image of himself -- one of himselves -- suddenly scabbed over with static, leaving an incoherent ghost-shape in frame.

He snorted with satisfaction. "The kid doesn't stay in the picture . . ."

nunc per ludum

"Walter?"

He looked up from the page of his planner, which currently read:

* confirm reservation for Dovecote B&B
* resonance of j.o. dugout subspace: 20 Hz or lower, corrective application of wards within blast tolerances?
* Cousin Richard, et al arriving on 12th
* Bular geolocation project - call Nomura
* ADD SOMETHING BESIDES TOWELS TO THE REGISTRY

"Ah, good afternoon." He closed the book and glanced down at Jim, who was hefting a Gun Robot backpack onto his shoulder. "How was school?"

His ward shrugged. "Boring."

"Oh? How so?"

"Just boring."

Walter opted not to pursue the line of inquiry, instead rising from the playground bench. "Well. Let's go home, shall we?"

The boy fell into step behind him, but then stopped. "Where are we going?"

"Back to your house, Jim, as I said."

"Oh." A pause. "What about chess?"

Walter suppressed a sigh. "You indicated last time that you didn't enjoy the game." He tucked the planner back into his pocket. "Far be it from me to foist it upon you."

"But . . ." Something about the faintly lost tone of Jim's voice made him glance back, taking in the boy: his slightly-too-large backpack, chipped tooth, gently-mussed hair, and bright blue eyes -- Barbara's eyes -- just a little too wide, just a little unsteady.

Rituals, Walter thought. Comforting in times of upheaval. "Of course," he drawled, "If one was feeling a bit peckish, there's always time for a taco."

"Yeah," Jim said, perhaps with a note of relief in his voice.

Although Walter would have liked to take a surreptitious peek at the gazebo rafters, it seemed prudent to take their food to a nearby bench, even if that did mean proximity to Stuart's penchant for British New Wave (or post-punk, or whatever genre that wretched synthetic sound belonged to) blaring over the truck's speaker system. At least it was an excuse not to make conversation.

His ward seemed deep in thought, only picking at the tortilla before eventually setting it down and wandering over to the chessboards in the currently-unoccupied gazebo. Walter waited to finish the last of his own food before joining him. "Ready to go?"

Jim was quietly setting up his side of the board. "One game, maybe?"

Walter smiled. "I think there's time." He set up his own pieces, pleased to note that Jim remembered where the king was supposed to go without watching him. "White goes first."

There was a certain ponderous deliberation in the boy's moves, befitting a novice; he couldn't help but notice that the ruminations were more pronounced than usual. "You seem distracted, today."

"Mmm." Jim continued to stare intensely at a slightly-deformed pawn, picking it up to turn it over in his hand. Walter decided he wouldn't enforce the touch rule.

"Something on your mind?"

"Dad . . . Dad doesn't . . . he hasn't said anything about Mom getting married again," Jim said at length, fidgeting with the pawn before placing it down.

"Hmm." Walter carefully avoided eye contact and withdrew a knight to the relative safety of F5. "Your move, Younger Atlas." After the silence persisted with no movement from the other side of the board, he risked a glance at his opponent, who was staring into the middle distance, lost in thought. "Jim?"

"Is my dad going to show up and stop the wedding?" Jim blurted out.

"Saying that he wants to reconcile with your mother, and for you all to be a family again?" he probed, as gently as he dared.

"Yeah," Jim said faintly, rolling a rook back and forth between his fingers. After a few more moments of silence, he took a deep breath, adding, "But he's not gonna, is he."

"Would you feel better if he did?"

"I dunno." Jim bit his lip, staring at the piece he held in his hand with a sudden terrible intensity. "Except . . . except Toby says you have to be my new dad?"

Walter sighed, inwardly ruing the inane narrative conventions of children's programming and its pro forma hostility towards stepparents. "I've never been anyone's father, before. I'm not sure how to do a good job."

Jim blinked, obviously taken aback. "Really?"

"As I said to you before, Jim, parents can be a disappointment. I'd like to think I'd do right by you, but it's a little intimidating."

The boy seemed genuinely unprepared for this. "But -- but you know everything!"

Walter shook his head. "Not nearly enough, Jim. I've never really had a family of my own, and as I believe I told you, my father was not the best role model. Everything I know about life, I learned in spite of him, not because of him." He tapped the board. "Maybe it would be easier for me to tell you the winning moves, but you wouldn't really understand why you'd won until you'd lost often enough."

Jim just stared at the board without seeing it, his small brow deeply furrowed. Not for the first time, Walter marveled that despite of the child's near-identical replication of the senior Jim Lake's features, everything about his expression and energy marked him as Barbara's. Finally, he ventured, "Liam and Tanner . . . my dad liked them. Tanner called him 'Dad' but he wasn't . . ."

Ah, thought Walter. "They liked him too, then?" He noted that Jim's abandoned taco was now completely swarmed with pigeons.

"Yeah, but Mom says he isn't with Cindy any more, and he didn't even say goodbye to them." Jim seemed to be in disbelief of his own words. "I thought . . . I thought Dad liked them better than . . ." He didn't finish the thought, and Walter could hardly blame him. "But he left them, too."

"What good are fathers," Walter said quietly, "when all they do is leave?"

"I don't want another dad," Jim replied in an almost-whisper, as though ashamed of himself. "I don't want you and Mom not to get married. But . . . but I just don't want another dad." He wriggled uncomfortably in his chair, face all misery. "Is that bad?"

It wasn't that strange, really, that Barbara's son could feel such depths of guilt, though disturbing how both she and her boy suffered from it as a result of circumstances where they hadn't been at fault. "Well, then. How would you feel about having a mother, and a Gran-Gran, and a Walter?"

Jim picked at the crown of his king for sufficiently long to be disqualified from tournament play. Finally, he said, "A Walter?"

"Yes. Takes you on shopping trips for exciting vegetables, mangles the odd bedtime story, tells you to listen to your mother. That sort of thing." He smiled as neutrally as he could. "And we'll muddle through the rest as it comes up?"

"Okay." Jim looked up at him, expression almost shy. "I -- yeah. Okay."

"Agreed, then." Walter proffered his hand, which received a solemn shake with only trace amounts of melted cheese remaining. "Now, whose turn was it?"

sedem fundamenti

He was owed. That was the thing to remember.

Stricklander counted to ten, then fifteen as the goblins continued their argument over the remains of a very unfortunate raccoon and reflected grimly that the damage deposit for his apartment was probably long gone anyway. One of the little miscreants had hefted the partially-flayed remnants of the roadkill and was wearing it like a hat, to the delight of the other goblins.

"If you're quite finished," Walter drawled, shooting a murderous look at a cackling Fragwa, "I have several more instructions before we adjourn for the evening." He tapped the projection against his living room wall with renewed emphasis. "The placement of the warding runes in the sub-basement of our Headquarters will require some finesse and a considerable amount of --"

"Waka chaka!" The hat-wearing beast stumbled over its closest companion, instigating a tussle for the ragged carcass that collided with Walter's coffee table and spilled his mug of tea over everything.

Stricklander transformed and whipped a knife mere inches away from the offending goblin's head, further diminishing any hope of salvaging the carpet. "Pay attention!" It screamed in terror, fleeing behind his couch.

Momentarily cowed, the rest of the brutes huddled together in the center of the carpet, their contemptible faces staring up at Stricklander in the manner of freshly-beaten dogs. He felt his gorge rising, but tamped it down.

"Now. In two days' time, Thursday by human reckoning, the night crew is scheduled to be absent. This gives us the perfect opportunity to fine-tune the telesma placements and further stabilize the magical subspace, so we'll need all hands on deck. Every one of you," Stricklander gesticulated lazily with a blade, pleased how their eyes tracked it, "and every goblin stationed in the Trollmarket Operational Region needs to be here. Send word."

"Waka chaka?" Fragwa whined in evident confusion. "Chaka wag grumm -- "

"Yes, all of you. We need to finish this quickly and decisively." It was fortunate that the contours of his fanged mouth could suppress a smile much more effectively than its human counterpart. "Every last goblin must be there. Seven-thirty P.M. sharp, no sooner, no later."

Grumbling and exchanging guttural words with one another, his subordinates filed out of the window and into the night. Stricklander sighed, letting his human facade return -- only to realize that something was moving behind his sofa. "Come out," he barked in irritation.

The goblin that had fled his knife crawled out, a sparkly tiara upon its head. It took Walter several seconds to remember that it was Barbara's, placed haphazardly upon his head prior to her tender ministrations upon the couch following the bridal shower. They'd lost track of it, obviously.

"Take that off," Stricklander snapped, unnerved by reasons he didn't care to enumerate.

The goblin made a face, but removed the crown -- and then peered at it for a long moment, almost as though cognition was happening within its greasy little head. Then it blinked, yellow eyes refocusing on the dead raccoon, and it threw the tiara back behind the sofa in favor of its original prize.

Stricklander managed to get a well-timed kick in as it scrambled to the window, and slammed the sash down with enough vehemence that the glass rattled.

Just two more days of this. He was owed.

quod sua michi munera

"Okay," Barbara said yet again, tucking a pen behind the pen already wedged next to her skull. "Okay. Uh . . . " She rustled around in the papers on the dining room table, then looked up at Walter with a blank expression. "Do you have my checklist?"

Walter glanced up from his laptop -- the one he used for his day-to-day life, obviously -- rifling through various spreadsheets on his side. "Confirmed guestlist . . . photographer's contract . . . invoice from the caterer . . . seating chart . . . " He blinked, momentarily uncertain of what he had been thinking about prior to her question. Possibly it concerned the Initiative, except that he had a vague suspicion that guest bags might have also been involved. "Er. Dear, what were you looking for?"

His betrothed furrowed her brow and moved more papers around. "I . . . okay. Think, Barbara."

"You mentioned a checklist?"

She snapped her fingers. "Yeah!"

He pointed to her mug. "Underneath there, dearest."

"Oh. Right." Barbara sighed, massaging her temples. "Why didn't we hire a wedding planner, again?"

Walter pinched his nose. "Hubris." That was the thing he'd dreaded about getting married: paperwork. Incriminating, easily-detectable paperwork on file. All it would take was for some bored Initiative functionary wasting an afternoon with running their superiors' names through search engines to discover that the head of the Janus Order had been jointly filing on his last three tax returns, and then --

"It's not even a big wedding," Barbara muttered to herself. "Why is this hard . . ."

"I can help!" yelled Jim from the living room, thundering in with excitement. "What can I do?" He craned his neck around to peek at Walter's struggles with paragraph construction. "What's that?"

"I'm trying to write up the programs for the ceremony, but apparently the word processor has taken exception to custom margins," Walter replied. "I don't know that you'd be much use here."

"Like, a computer program?"

"No, a written-out one. Tells you when to sing, when to stand, when to sit, when to start throwing birdseed -- "

"Why's that hard?"

Why indeed, Walter thought. "Perhaps your mother needs assistance?"

"Sorry, kiddo, but I don't think your math grades are up to speed," Barbara said, tapping a calculator. "I'm not so sure about mine, either."

"But I wanna help!" The boy flounced back into the living room and hurled himself onto the couch. "What does the ring bearer get to do? If I get to stand up there, doesn't that mean I'm important?"

"Yes, honey," soothed Barbara. "It's a very big responsibility, which is why we gave it to you."

"You're too responsible; that's your problem," mumbled Walter, and then inspiration struck. "So much so, in fact . . . why don't you have a look at the wedding registry?"

"What's that?" Jim picked at a piece of lint on the couch, expression bored.

Barbara slowly straightened, her eyes locking with Walter's as the thought took root. "What a good idea! Jim, it's like a wish list that people make when they're getting married and need household stuff for starting out. Why don't you add a few things we might need for the kitchen?"

Jim's head whipped around towards her; Walter could have sworn he saw the boy's pupils dilate. "Really?"

"Well, you are the resident chef, after all," remarked Walter, winking at Barbara. "If anyone knows what we're without, it's you." He opened the relevant webpage, lowering his laptop onto the boy's lap. "Just no more towels, please."

Jim's jaw dropped. "Oh my gosh." His little hands feverishly shook as he placed them upon the keyboard. "We -- we could -- Mom, we could get new knives?"

"Pick us out a nice set, honey," Barbara said, absently. "Walt and I will go over it later." To Walter, she added in an undertone, "That was quick thinking, babe. I knew we'd forgotten to do something." She frowned. "Of course, with less than two weeks before the wedding, I bet everyone's given up on presents anyway."

"Well, at least Jim's happy for now," replied Walter. "And we can cross this off the list, so I'm happy in either case."

"Good. What's left?"

"Everything," sighed Walter, glancing back at his pile of notes. "Er. So, the caterer apparently didn't renew her license in time --"

"Oh, great." Barbara threw back her head, dislodging both pens behind her ear. "Ugh. So that's refreshments and dinner that we have to figure out."

"At least we get the deposit back," he responded, and caught her eye, held it for a long, penetrating moment.

Finally, she spoke. "We get Stuart to --"

"Serve tacos; exactly what I was going to say." He kissed her hand. "Great minds, and so forth."

"Great," Barbara said, crossing a line through an entry on her list. "So, that just leaves dessert. We still have the wedding cake, but the guest cupcakes aren't going to be an option . . ."

But Walter, mind enlivened by two successes and aiming for a third, merely grinned. "Leave that to me, my dear. I know just the young lady for the job."

sternit fortem

"Pyotr says you have an assignment for me," Nomura said with obvious reluctance.

"Correct," Stricklander replied. "A confidential one. You're alone?"

"Yes."

"Good. I sent you a link to the relevant files within the Janus directories earlier; I trust you've read them?"

A deep sigh from his subordinate. "Yes."

"Good." He leaned forward in the chair. "It's past time that we dealt with the problem of Bular going AWOL for months on end. We need his whereabouts to be available at all times, for his safety as much as ours. As such, you're going to tag him with a tracker that we can monitor by satellite." He smiled. ""Questions?"

"Why me?" Her tone clearly indicated the question was largely rhetorical. "And why now?"

"Yours not to reason why; yours but to do," Stricklander replied blandly. "And try to avoid dying but: omelettes, eggs, tra-la. Besides, you're an adequate tracker and have a gift for ambushes, so who else would I send?"

Her eye movement indicated that she was re-reading the documentation he'd provided. "I've never used anything like this before -- I'm not a sniper, I'm a swordstroll."

"Fairly simple, really: point and click. The laser sighter will paint a little red dot on your target, and at a thousand-meter range, Bular won't know what hit him." Stricklander snorted in amusement. "Though I might not stick around to clarify matters."

"And a tracking device?" Nomura's face scrunched up in confused distaste. "Why?"

Stricklander was beginning to feel slightly annoyed by her defiance, if only because it was so much less than he'd anticipated. "You were his minder for how long in Siberia? Did you particularly enjoy knowing he was always one bad day away from ripping your arms out of your sockets and beating you to death with them?"

She shuddered. "I see your point." He heard her tapping on her computer's keyboard, her expression growing less guarded. "If Bular's tagged, the Order can keep him out of trouble without having to directly engage with him?"

"Exactly. It's not as though trying to put him in the time-out corner ever worked." Stricklander reclined in his chair. "And Bular doesn't care for our company anyway, so as long as he and Kanjigar don't cross paths, I feel he should be allowed some latitude."

Nomura slowly nodded, but a wary look was creeping back into her expression. "There's only one tracker dart?"

"Yes." Stricklander folded his arms, unable to keep the unease out of his own voice. "Because this has exactly one chance of working -- if you miss, one way or the other, you'll never get another shot. It has to be the fissure in his back, because the wound is still healing and the tracker could only ever lodge there. Bular won't be able to reach it, much less see it."

"Pulling this off won't be easy," Nomura replied, fixing him with a challenging look. He hadn't seen that expression for some time.

"No," he conceded, fixing her digitized eyes with his own. "It won't. Your target moves with terrifying speed, is worryingly alert, and hates us. The area he's in is full of humans, our agents are thin on the ground, and your scent is known to him. It would take every ounce of skill you possess to succeed without being detected by the authorities, the trolls, or Bular himself."

The flare in her eye intensified, that bright combination of defiance, sadism, and eagerness that had caught Stricklander's attention all those years ago. Too reckless, Nomura; too eager for blood to truly excel at complex strategies. She'd only ever deployed queens, reveling in their ruthless gains but inevitably losing the board to basic strategies. As a fighter, she was the most brilliant duelist he'd witnessed in centuries; as a protégé, she'd been an embarrassment. But she did rise to a challenge, and he was counting on her perpetually-wounded pride to give her an edge.

"Of course, if you do pull this off," he mused, "I would be inclined to favorably revisit the circumstances surrounding the incident with the Trollhunter's whelp and conclude that you are worthy of promotion. If you succeed."

"I can do this," she said, green eyes flaring. "You'll see."

Where have I heard that before, he did not say, instead rising to his feet. "Excellent. I need you to report back on the success of your mission as soon as possible."

"What's the hurry?" Nomura asked, her eager expression slowly corroding with skepticism. "It's not like he's --"

Stricklander cut the feed and exhaled slowly. Always a little too sharp for her own good, that one. Well, with any luck there'd be results soon. He steadied himself for a long moment before standing up and exiting the inner sanctum.

Tonight's work was going to be a difficult affair, and had required months of planning and preparations. He'd told Barbara that he'd need to stay late at the school for last-minute grading; she'd been surprisingly understanding about it.

Stricklander placed his keypen back into his jacket pocket and glanced at the wall clock; it was a quarter to five. Plenty of time to go over the last details --

"Ta-DAHHHHHH!"

A party horn blowing coincided with his office door being swung open and Coach Lawrence stampeded in. "There's the guy! You ready, Strickler?"

It would have been something of an understatement to say that this had not factored into Walter's scheme for the evening. "Wha -- What?"

"We're here, good sirrah, to usher you out of bachelorhood!" Lenora Janeth's inexplicable hair floated into view from behind the beefy slab of the coach's body. The new hire -- Karl Uhl -- appeared next to her, uncertainty writ large across his otherwise severe Austrian features. "One last night of debauchery, before the yoke of matrimony is placed upon your shoulders -- "

Lawrence blinked at her in apparent confusion. "What? Thought we were takin' him out for a stag party."

Uhl coughed. "That is exactly what she means." Lenora made a more than slightly ostentatious bow, nearly smacking him in the face.

"That -- that's most kind, but thoroughly unnecessary," Walter responded, trying and failing to edge towards the door. "I'm not carousing sort, really -- "

"Aw, whipped already?"

Janeth's face instantly darkened. "Lawrence, I hardly think -- "

"Marriage is a wonderful institution," Uhl interjected, diplomatically. "Very . . . very important." He shot Walter the frigid smile of one who was interrogating his own reasons for being present and failing to come up with reasonable answers.

"Anyway," Lawrence continued, clapping Walter with a solid thunk between the shoulders that sent him reeling, "if you're worried about the little lady, Lenora cleared it with her first. She said this was the night for it, so -- "

Wheezing, Walter spluttered, "Barbara would never -- "

Janeth tittered. "Technically, I just confirmed that you were free and that no one had already organized a bachelor party, but I feel there was an implicit command in there somewhere." Her grin, always slightly unhinged, became more so. "And as such, Mr. Strickler -- Walter -- we have quite the evening in store!"

Walter was dimly aware that something had been pushed into his hands. It appeared to be a shotglass. "It's -- it's 4:50. On a school night."

"Alcohol is not permitted on school grounds --" began Uhl, looking scandalized.

"Lighten up, Don Juan Buzzkill," scoffed Lawrence, sloshing some kind of brown liquid into Walter's cup from a bottle of indeterminate origin, which he then promptly took a hit from. "Midterms are over, everyone's already checked-out mentally, and besides -- you're in the clear, Mr. Designated Driver."

"What?"

"What?" echoed Walter, the urge to throw himself out the window intensifying. "Listen, I have -- I have things to do -- "

"Yeah. Shots." Lawrence pointed at the glass with a meaty forefinger. "Down the hatch, Stringbean."

Walter set the shotglass down on the edge of the desk and crossed his arms, marshaling his resolve. "You're all too kind, but I have other obligations. Excuse me -- "

"Five shots," Lawrence countered, picking the glass back up and waving it under his nose. "Five shots and we'll take you home."

"No."

"Five shots," insisted Lenora, clapping her hands together. "Come on!"

"I do not feel that teachers should be leveraging peer pressure with regard to alcohol use," Uhl said, glancing worriedly outside into the hall.

"Oh, don't be such a goody-two-shoes, Karl," Lenora countered, seemingly unaware of his pained expression at her reproach. "Our Mr. Strickler is a sufficient paragon of virtue that his reputation could survive a little tarnish."

"Buck-awk," added Lawrence, the glass still dancing under Walter's nose.

"I resent both of your implications," Walter said levelly. "I have nothing to prove."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

bibit ista, bibit ille

"I mean, it's not the poor little mite's fault," Walter heard himself saying. "He's had to put up with so much disappointment from his father, and far too young."

"You are very . . . fond of your stepson?"

He couldn't tell if Uhl was asking or making a statement, but winced at the word. "Ugh. 'Stepson'. That doesn't sit right." He sniffed, glancing down at the football field below them. "Why are we on the roof, again?"

"He will be, though, so it's gotta sit right," insisted Lawrence, who promptly drop-kicked an inflatable ball over the bleachers. "Best to get the peckin' order sorted out. You let him know where he sits on the food chain, and he'll get settled once he knows he's not the boss. Same with dogs."

Walter didn't bother to conceal his look of scorn. "I wasn't aware that dogs routinely ate one another."

Lawrence's mustache bristled. "You know what I mean. Alpha dog." He took a pull off of the bottle of brown liquid.

"He's a boy. One whom I have a reasonably good relationship with already, I might add." Walter glanced at the shotglass in his hand, concerned that it was half-empty. "I don't want to lose that."

Ms. Janeth -- swaying ever so slightly -- clasped a hand around Walter's wrist. "Oh, my poor Lear, 'it is a wise father that knows his own child'." She sank against his side in a fashion which, even if platonic, was far too familiar for his liking, and judging from the microexpression that flitted over Uhl's face, he wasn't alone. "You'll be fine. A Christmas or two to get adjusted, and I was calling my mother's new husband 'Daddy' without reservation." She momentarily sobered. "Awkward when they divorced, actually -- "

Walter could barely control the physical revulsion her words triggered. "'Daddy'? No. Never." Aware that the others were scrutinizing him, he knocked back the last of his drink. "Not Walter Strickler. That's not what Jim and I are to one another, and neither of us want it that way."

"Funny," Coach Lawrence remarked, scratching his perpetually-stubbled chin with an unsteady grin. "Thought you weren't drinking tonight?"

Walter slammed the shotglass down on the top of the closest air-conditioning unit. "I've finished my requisite two shots for the evening. Gentlemen. Lenora. I must bid you adieu --"

"It was five shots, Stringbean."

Ms. Janeth's hand, still on his wrist, jerked him back down as he attempted to rise. "'Dost thou think,'" she trilled, "'because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale'?"

"We did order a cake," Uhl clarified. "It will be ready for pickup at seven."

"I have things to do," snapped Walter. "Important things -- "

"Picking up the tux?"

"It's a suit, and no -- "

"You've got the ring, right?"

"Of course -- "

"Then what?" drawled Lawrence.

Walter nearly said what was on his mind, but even the static overlay of that noxious brown liquid couldn't quite dislodge his wits. "I -- I was going to prepare myself for the future, if you must know. A bit of a . . . a spiritual sojourn, if you will, to right myself before submitting myself to the yoke."

"Like . . . a vision quest?" Lawrence said, obviously confused.

"Something like that," Walter responded with a sigh. "After all, in undertaking the next great adventure, aspects of the current campaign must conclude logically." He rose, only to be accosted by Uhl, whose face was unexpectedly eager.

"I was unaware that you were a fellow games enthusiast, Mr. Strickler," he said. "Which edition do you play, third or fourth?"

Walter blinked. "I -- what?"

Ibi nullus timet mortem / sed pro Baccho mittunt sortem

"You have not killed the troll. If anything, it merely seems confused." Uhl squinted at whatever was written on the other side of the gaming screen. "Er. I believe that next up is -- Ms. Janeth? Are you -- ? "

Walter glanced over at their party's bard, who seemed to be straining the remnants of her homemade Manhattan through one of the orange slices that now littered the back of Uhl's truck. "Mmmph."

"Sorry?"

Walter exhaled slowly, and glanced at the local library's marquee sign for the time; 6:15. This evening was crawling along, and even after imbibing two-and-a-half more shots of that unspecified brown liquid and a gin and tonic, he still didn't quite have the capacity to enjoy wizardry games while parked outside the City Museum. Said game's rather quaint depiction of trolls was not worth mentioning.

"Mmpph flanking. Flanking rules. Attacking. Opportunity."

Uhl thumbed through his manual, brows furrowing. "But you are not a melee fighter -- "

"Dashact. Distraction? No. Dash. Dash action." She attempted and failed to pick up an orange peel.

"They are -- the closest enemy is more than sixty feet away -- "

Lenora slammed her figurine onto the gridded mat, scattering enemy tokens hither and yon. "'Lay on, MacDuff'!"

Uhl -- bedecked in a traffic cone that Coach Lawrence had insisted he wear in place of a wizard hat -- made rather uncomfortable eye contact with Walter. "Er. Waltholomew the Wild, it appears as though your companion has engaged the foe in combat. Do you have an action you want to perform?"

"Presumably I sneak up and stab someone," Walter sighed. "It seems to be working . . ."

"You do -- you do an awful lotta stabbing, Stringbean," Lawrence slurred, hanging halfway out of the truck. "For someone who keeps winning Teacher of the - Teacher of the Year every -- every -- every dang year, you're shank-happy, you know that?"

Walter -- mantled in a more subtle darkness than a mere Cloak of Shadows -- smiled. "Well? It gets the job done."

"I need to roll damage," Lenora mumbled insistently, peering into the empty Solo cups littering the floor. "Where's -- where's the dice? My kingdom for an eight-sider -- "

"You threw some at another car," Walter responded, casting a resigned eye out across the museum parking lot. "Which, judging by the expression on the driver's face, suggests to me that it's high time we take this game elsewhere."

"Nothin' in the Constitution says you can't play nerd games in public," Lawrence yelled at the sky, startling several passing patrons of the arts into dropping their catalogues of Etruscan pottery. "Look it up!"

"Well, no," drawled Walter, thinking quickly if somewhat loosely, "but there is a section of Magna Carta that explicitly deals with this sort of thing, and given that the Framers referenced that document extensively in drawing up the Constitution, I fear the local constabulary might defer to classical precedent when judging our actions."

Lawrence belched, then lurched upwards. "That's -- that's a lot of words . . . so you gotta be right. Punch it, Uhl!" He attempted to close the tailgate, spilling more cups and game pieces onto the pavement in the process. "Gotta split before the guards arrive!"

"Let them come!" screamed Lenora, attempting to stand and nearly slipping out of the truck. "This fire-eyed maid of smoky war is hot and bleeding!"

"Come, Lenora; 'let's march without the noise of threat'ning drum,'" coaxed Walter, guiding her down as safely as he could with his own head already spinning. He glanced again at the time on the marquee, resolving to put his plan in action before it got any later and himself more inebriated. "Why -- why don't we stop in to that nice little sushi place? Sanjuro's? They have a Thursday drinks special, if memory serves."

She blinked, then giggled. "S-sushi? Oh, my dear Lear, make too many fish-meals and you'll - you'll fall into a kind of male green-sickness -- "

"Well, I'm far greener than you know, but Barbara's no wench." Walter gently ushered her into the front seat, hoping Uhl would be able to keep her in check. "Ever the lady, that one."

"Are you two talkin' in code?" mumbled Lawrence, trying and failing to open the passenger door. "Or did I drink too fast? Or . . . did you?"

"Merely quoting the Immortal Bard at our bard."

Lawrence blinked once in a decidedly bovine fashion. "Okay. Still confused?"

Walter patted the coach's beefy arm. "Don't strain yourself, noble warrior. I'll meet you all there after a quick errand -- why don't you go pick up that cake you mentioned, and we'll resume play at the bar?"

Uhl shot Walter a grateful look as he removed his hat and set down the playbook. "I suppose it is for the best. Can you remember whose turn it was?"

"Oh, let's not worry about all that," Walter replied. "Let's just start the Initiative over."

corde pulsum tangite

Stricklander exhaled. The last time his hands had been this unsteady --

No. Not now. Not for such as these. He scowled at the pitted surface of the cement wall until his composure returned, then stalked through the forest of support pillars, rebar jutting out like wayward branches.

Wraithlike, the goblins flitted between and around the angles of shadow cast by the single floodlight dangling next to the entrance to the secret sub-basement, their forms coagulating into a single mass of hateful washed-out green outside the wall. The urge to vomit almost overtook Stricklander as their greasy eyes fixed on his approach, curiosity and impatience evident in their collective expression.

Without a word, he shed his disguise and readied the key. Runes flickered and gleamed in baleful red as he traced the shape of the doorway, carefully detailing each angle with utmost precision so as not to activate the rather unforgiving counter-intrusion magics he'd embedded when installing it. Fortunately, his hand managed to stay steady enough that the color of the forbidding runes faded to an expectant blue glow as the portal winked open.

"Enter," he commanded, and the goblins filed past, muttering and jeering in their slimy little voices. He waited until the last was through, then peered speculatively out at the echoing empty space they had left behind for stragglers.

On the other side of the hidden door was a secret planning room, which would be -- or rather would have been, he corrected himself -- the subspace that would serve as the Initiative headquarters, already half the size of a city block. It brought him no joy to remember how difficult the excavation process had been, dragging the equipment left by human workers through the portal and then trying to keep the goblins from damaging any of it, to say nothing of the difficulty of remembering where everything had been parked the next morning.

Courage, he thought. Aloud, he barked, "Is this everyone?" The mass of goblins grumbled something broadly affirmative, faces turning to Fragwa, who nodded. "All the goblin host? Every one of you stationed in Arcadia is here?"

Fragwa shrugged, then stood up to attention as Stricklander advanced on him. "Nuk chaka."

"Good." Stricklander thrust an insulated pizza carrier -- liberated in a daring and not entirely licit action from the car of a hapless deliveryman -- into the portal. "Here, as a reward for all your hard work. Also, watch the entire video."

Fragwa whooped and lunged after it in excitement, and the last thing Stricklander saw before the hole sealed was the goblin horde fighting over pizza while an AV cart -- also stolen, though this time from his other place of employment -- began playing various infomercials he'd taped for the occasion. Then, blessed silence.

On the other side of the wall, Stricklander launched into action, removing the head from the key of his modified Horngazel and replacing it with the selenite-tipped silver blade. Thus attached, he swept a glowing arc of runes over the surface of the existing ones around the door's borders, forcing himself to be calm, tamping down the panic with the memory of a thousand ruthless acts done with aplomb.

For a moment, the magic around the portal vibrated in a particularly dangerous fashion -- but the new enchantment took hold, anchored in place by the phurba, and the red once again receded into active blue. For now, he thought. But the instant that one of the goblins decided to leave the subspace . .

You are owed. Stricklander exhaled, counted to ten, and resumed his human form.

This called for a celebration.

In taberna quando sumus / non curamus quid sit humus

"She's -- " Walter attempted to clarify for the ninth or tenth time, " -- she's amazing, and she doesn't know it, that's the worst part, of all the humans I've ever known -- "

"Beautiful red hair," Lenora opined. "A natural Regan. Or -- was it Goneril who had the red hair? Or am I thinking of Lady Macbeth?"

"Fairly certain it was Goneril." Walter, with great concentration, managed to pick up a strip of ginger with his chopsticks and transfer it to his mouth. "Temperamentally, though -- "

"Oh, not at all." Lenora slumped momentarily onto Uhl's shoulder. "Oof. Sorry, darling." Uhl flushed, not that she seemed to notice.

Sanjuro's was busy for a Thursday night, but fortunately most of its occupants were clustered in the back of the restaurant. Walter had insisted that they be seated behind a wall, but had been pliable in all other aspects of his colleagues' plans. Unbeknownst to them, it was a waiting game.

However, to the extent that the evening was also a drinking game, he was hopelessly in his cups. Between the five shots of Mystery Liquid and the gin and tonic and the Mai Tai that Lenora insisted on splitting and the three? four? bottles of saké that seemed to litter the tabletop, Walter Strickler was, for lack of a better word, sloshed.

His companions were similarly disadvantaged. Lawrence seemed preoccupied with carefully transferring the contents of one cup full of water into an empty cup, then back. Janeth's hair had lost its trademark shape and now looked decidedly frazzled, as well as occupied by a slice of orange and an eight-sided die. Meanwhile, the look of unease on Uhl's face that had started around 4:50 that afternoon had completely permeated his aspect and he resembled a thundercloud. Walter found that oddly endearing.

"Karl, you really ought to have a little saké; it's good for the constitution."

"The Dungeon Master doesn't require a Constitution stat," retorted Uhl tersely.

"Constitution?" Lawrence seemed to jolt back into the conversation. "Magna Carta?"

Lenora swayed off Uhl's shoulder. "No, Macbeth. Lady. Her hair."

"What?" Water from his cup dribbled down the edge of the counter, pooling onto the floor and causing a server en route delivering some sashimi to a neighboring table to undergo a frantic series of contortions to avoid dropping her tray. "Hair?"

"You're all idiots," remarked Walter from behind a cheery buzz tinged with growing expectation. "Idiots all, but this was just what I needed. Thank you."

"Aww, told ya he'd come around." Lawrence punched Walter convivially in the side of his shoulder -- at least, that seemed to be the idea; Uhl bore the brunt of it. "Stringbean here's no cold fish!"

Lenora sniggered into her drink. "'m sure Lady Macbeth agrees." She attempted to elbow Walter conspiratorially, but missed and knocked her decanter of saké onto her lap instead. "Whoops!" She grabbed a napkin and attempted to clean herself off, scattering several dice and a figurine of a warlock onto the ground. "Out, damned spot!"

"Walk ya to the can," Coach Lawrence offered. "Can't have you fallin' in your state." He then proceeded to lose his footing several times on the wet patch he had inadvertently created, but they managed to hobble away somehow. Walter glanced out the window at the construction site -- still intact -- and wondered just how long it would take for one of the goblins to tire of the video and try to leave the subspace --

"You and Ms. Janeth are certainly . . . friendly," Uhl ventured tentatively.

"Hmm?" Walter glanced at the younger teacher, surprised by the observation. "Well. Good to get along with one's colleagues, of course."

"Of course," conceded Uhl, folding and unfolding his hands. "Of course." He coughed.

"She is single, after a fashion," Walter remarked casually, unsure if he was venturing this information out of a whimsical impulse to play matchmaker or just to distract himself. "You know these theatrical types; wedded to the word. Still, I suspect anyone with a season pass to the Shakespeare Festival would find her willing company."

Uhl coughed again, this time in seeming terror. "I -- that is -- I -- " He paled, then quickly helped himself to some of his hitherto-untouched saké. "It would be unprofessional to suggest this."

"Ah, we're such professionals, aren't we, Otto?"

"Karl."

Cold hells, he was drunk. "Apologies. I was thinking of the wrong German."

"I am Austrian," Uhl responded frostily.

"And I'm Thervingi, but they all think I'm British. There are worse fates." He attempted and failed to pick up a piece of cake with his chopsticks.

The Spanish teacher gave him long, disturbed look. "I'm afraid I do not understand you, Señor Strickler."

"I'm just saying we have more in common than you think," Walter said breezily. "Also, infinitely less. But ask the lady out, Uhl; she doesn't even have a date for the wedding yet." He waved a hand at Janeth's empty seat. "Courage, man."

Uhl turned beet red, ducking his head and looking fixedly out the window. "I . . . I doubt that Lenora would regard me as . . ."

Walter rolled his eyes. "Does the Dungeon Master also lack a Charisma stat, or do we just need to tweak your modifiers?" He poured Uhl another cup of saké. "What's the worst she could say?"

"What's the worst who could say?" interrupted Janeth, unsteadily reclaiming her seat. Uhl nearly choked on his drink.

Lawrence dragged himself back onto his own stool with pronounced difficulty. "Oof. Man, that pufferfish really takes it out on a guy." He belched. "Right. Where were we?"

"Third level of the Tomb of Obliteration," Janeth supplied with a hiccup. "Found the secret door to the hidden lair."

"Er, yes," Uhl said, hastily hiding his blush behind the drinks menu he had appropriated to use as a game screen. "And there was a goblin horde behind it."

"So we should retreat --"

Lawrence pounded the table, rattling dice and glassware. "Never! Let's charge 'em." He began rolling several ice cubes. "What do I need to hit?"

There was a sudden tremor that rattled the floor of the restaurant, and a moment later, all the lights went out. Car alarms began sounding, just as a gout of flame erupted from across the street, with the framework of the Janus Initiative's headquarters -- or, alternately, an upscale mixed-use apartment complex -- collapsed in upon itself.

In the darkness, Stricklander giggled. "I don't think we need to worry about the goblins, anymore."

Venus generosa!

Flying when under the influence was a terrible idea, but exuberance had overridden caution. His adventuring party had dispersed after the block had been evacuated, and it had been easy enough to slip away as the fire and police showed up to investigate yet another strange conflagration.

But the moon was out, and Stricklander was full of song. Arcadia shone beneath him as though it were new, as though all the world were new and he was the first one to ever see it, and there was a little blue house below, and he needed to go there.

Fortunately, he remembered to shift skins just before Barbara reached the door. "Ave formosissima! Gemma pretiosa!"

"Hey, babe." She gently smoothed down the lapels of his jacket, then planted a kiss on the inside of his neck. "Whew! Someone's been enjoying his last night of freedom."

First night, he nearly said aloud, but swayed happily onto her shoulder. "I don't think I've had that good a time since I was at University." Standing upright proved harder than it should have been. "D'you know, I wrote songs? While I was there?"

"Seriously?" Barbara was carefully guiding him to the sofa. "About girls? Against Margaret Thatcher? Or just really detailed historical references that only other archaeology nerds would have gotten?"

Walter held up a hand in protest. "One was about a swan."

"Okay, didn't see that coming." She disappeared into the kitchen, re-emerging with a glass of water and some manner of fizzy tablets. "Here. If recent experience is any indication, this will stave off the worst of the hangover."

The part of Stricklander that was always regrettably sober attempted to persuade the rest of him that this was not, in fact, a completely selfless act that elevated her to bodhisattva status; it failed. "You utter darling. I adore you madly, you know."

"Honey," she replied, eyes crinkling. "Back at you. Now, drink up."

"You're worth the world to me." He attempted to wrangle his thoughts out of the mire of sentiment; it proved difficult. "Didn't care for Thatcher. Usurna without the fashion sense." He hiccoughed. "Wait. Damn. That was classfied information. I didn't say that."

Barbara laughed, tousling his hair. "I think I need to get you drunk more, Walt. Tell me more about these wild college days of yours!" She began stroking the back of his neck, somehow unaware how the slightest motion of those fingers imbued with unearthly grace caused every nerve to dissolve in euphoria. "I promise not to get jealous."

"Jealous? What? Jealous of what?"

"I'm assuming you wrote some mushy love songs for your crushes." She smirked ruefully. "Isn't that why boys go into bands? I've heard you sing; you must've been knee-deep in groupies."

"Pfft," scoffed Walter indignantly. "Andrei wrote the love songs; soppy old fraud. Otto mostly just drank and sang along. I didn't bother with sentimental dreck." He looked at her plaintively, craning his neck into her hands. "You stopped."

"Honestly, you're as bad as a cat," she grumbled fondly, fingers resuming their divine work. "So what was the swan song about?"

He giggled, the sober part of himself hissing in disgust at this complete abdication of dignity. "Just that: a swan song. It was being roasted," he clarified, as Barbara gave him a confused look. "Roasted and eaten. Black from the fire."

"Ah, that figures." She shook her head. "I thought you were a punk, but it turns out you were a Goth."

"That was much earlier," he replied dreamily. "Cities burn, too."

"Mom?" Jim appeared on the staircase, looking over the banister. "Are you gonna sleep down here tonight?" He looked quizzically at Walter, who attempted to straighten up and look in control of himself. "Or can I turn off the light?"

"I'll be up in a bit, kiddo." Barbara rubbed Walter's back soothingly. "Someone's had a rough evening."

Jim narrowed his eyes. "Did you ride a mechanical bull?"

Something about the way the boy crossed his small arms and scowled at him like a disappointed dormitory matron crossed the wrong set of wires and Walter shrieked with unexpected laughter, a ludicrous falsetto brought forth from the combination of nerves and comfort and bizarre permutations of alcohol. He spluttered and giggled and gasped until both mother and son were pounding on his back, and then he promptly deposited rather a lot of sushi upon the floor.

"So you did ride a bull?" Jim asked again, laying a wet washcloth over Walter's forehead while Barbara wrangled a mop. "When do I get to ride it?"

Considerably more sober, Walter let his newly-bleary eyes rest on the boy's face. "You . . . you do know that's not really a wedding tradition, right? Not even a . . . not really a normal . . . Barbara, help me with this . . ."

"Sorry, Jim." Barbara leaned over her boy, kissing him atop his thatch of dark hair. "It's another one of those rides where you've got to be the right height."

"Aww." Jim flounced onto the section of couch cushion unoccupied by Walter's mostly-supine form.

"Honey, a lot of wedding traditions are just dumb excuses for parties," Barbara said, carefully angling the mop under the sofa to collect a partially-digested scallop. "And goofing around. Once you grow up, you don't get to do a lot of that, because you have responsibilities -- "

Jim unexpectedly brightened. "Oh, yeah! Like the registry?" He bounced back up off the sofa and thundered down the hall, returning with the laptop. "Look, we got a bunch of the stuff!"

Walter saw Barbara's face go from a tolerant smile to a somewhat stricken expression within seconds. "Uh -- yeah. Leave that with us, okay kiddo? And go back to bed? Love you."

"Problem?" slurred Walter, making room for her on the couch as the boy darted back upstairs.

"You could say that," drawled Barbara, eyes obscured by the gleam of the computer screen on her glasses. "I think we put the fox in charge of the henhouse, here."

Walter maneuvered himself against her side and nipped her earlobe. "Speaking of things vulpine, you're looking rather . . ." His voice trailed off as his gaze followed hers to the webpage's contents. " . . . I don't remember putting a meat cleaver on the registry."

"Oh, that's only the start, Walter. Fourteen different kinds of knives." Barbara pushed her glasses up to her forehead, rubbing her eyes. "Some kids are obsessed with ninja swords; mine wants a carbon steel santoku."

Walter scrolled down the list in mounting disbelief as sobriety slowly returned. "Good lord. We can't -- someone got us a mandoline? When on earth are we going to use that?"

"Yep. Good thing I already know how to reattach fingers." She took a deep breath before peering back at the screen. "And apparently we've got a fondue set coming. Doesn't he know that no one actually uses those things more than once?"

"Too young," responded Walter, dazed. "Barbara -- Barbara, there's a meat smoker on the list."

"What? Take it off!"

"Someone's already bought it," he said in disbelief. "Barbara, I have no idea how a meat smoker works; we've got to return it." He kept scrolling, attempting and failing to keep his mandible latched. "Either that, or we have to send him to that culinary day camp for children that your grandmother's always on about, tuition costs be dammed. It's the only way to keep him from growing out of this phase and saddling us with a junkyard's worth of unusable kitchenware -- " He stopped. "A butane torch? Oh, Jim, no . . ."

Barbara exhaled deeply, then met his bewildered stare. "Well. On the bright side, I think it's safe to say that Jim's embraced the idea of me getting remarried."

collum iugo prebeo; ad iugum tamen suave transeo

This is insane. This is not you.

"I think we got the stand mixer," Jim whispered conspiratorially, nudging Walter's elbow.

Walter made a noncommittal noise by way of answer, attempting to remain upright. "Mmm."

Somewhere to his immediate left, a friend of Evelyn was making a noble attempt at playing Mussorgsky's Pictures at An Exhibition on an electric keyboard despite a slight breeze wafting balloons tied to the nearest support column into her face. He could just make out Jerry and Phil seated nearby, dressed up for the occasion but eyeing the closest chess table. Stricklander exhaled.

"I dunno if we got the pasta-making attachment, though." Jim squinted at the gift table outside the gazebo. "Or the sausage-maker one."

"Jim, why on earth would you want to make sausage?" He couldn't help but smile blandly, fixedly at the rows of humans within or just outside the structure: Barbara's family (those she was speaking to) and work colleagues mixed with a smattering of individuals Walter had managed to pass off as friends. It seemed as though Lawrence had brought his date's son along in spite of the lack of invitation, and it was unclear whether or not Uhl and Lenora were sitting together or merely next to one another. "You're nine years old."

"I got an idea for filling," Jim replied. "Burrito sausages."

Stricklander and Walter Strickler were both internally hyperventilating for differing same reasons, but this prompted their shared head to glance downward. "What?"

"You know; like a burrito. But sausage."

"Spicy sausage? Like chorizo?"

"No," replied his ring bearer, tolerantly, "like a burrito."

This is insane. Stricklander let his gaze drift outwards to the square, where Stuart -- mercifully not clad in a bathrobe, merely a tuxedo t-shirt -- and Shannon Longhannon were busy arranging tortilla chips and Scout Girl cookies on platters. His eyes flicked back up to the rafters, noting the arrangement of nails. If, he thought, just if he lost his nerve, darted out with wings to the safety of the trees and made a run for it, would the distortion field that was currently destroying the photographer's careful shots also cloak his true form from the guests? Probably not.

This is not you.

You are owed.

He took a ragged breath, the trenches dangerously close, and began to count, but there she was.

Auburn hair braided with small white flowers, a cream-colored dress of lace, the unicorn necklace hanging low on her perfect throat. Barbara, with her eyes echoing colors from a different century, fingers brimming with unknown enchantments, and nothing more or less than herself, taking an eternity to walk to him on Gran-Gran's shaky arm.

And there was never a question of what was going to happen next. Simple, really.

The liturgy, for lack of a better word, wasn't. Some broadly monotheistic assertions about humans being made from dust and ribs, uttered by a celebrant unaware that the groom was a man in name only, and stone throughout.

And then she slipped a silver ring upon his finger, and all he could think was Check and Mate.

et sic erimus egentes

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captus est libidine

"Auggh!" A fresh round of cursing emerged from the bathroom. "How is this -- how--"

Walter Strickler, newly-wed, glanced with some concern at the door as he carried his change of clothes into the bridal suite -- or at least, the Dovecote Bed and Breakfast's closest equivalent; the room seemed a bit smaller than it had appeared on the website. "All right in there?"

From the bathroom, another round of PG-rated expletives. "The heck -- Did this thing grow more straps overnight?"

Lingerie, thought Walter in resignation. Out of deference to Barbara's convictions about doing things properly for her second time around, he had feigned enthusiasm for some odd lace confections that she'd pointed out when shopping several weeks ago. Well, he reflected, it was still her body underneath it all; whatever confluences of love and lust allowed him to find it attractive would no doubt still apply now.

The sound of someone skidding on linoleum and grabbing frantically at a shower curtain roused concern more than anything else, however. "Would you like a hand, darling?" Walter inquired, loosening his tie. The sound of muffled curses and the side of a clawfoot bathtub being impacted repeatedly were his only answer. He winced, then removed his jacket and carefully placed his cufflinks in a pocket. Presumably a greater state of undress was called for, but he settled for rolling up his sleeves and waiting. He helped himself to one of the chocolate-covered strawberries on the table, mindful not to drip anything onto his vest.

"How does a garter belt even work?" Barbara moaned through the door.

"I wouldn't know, dear; I'm only wearing leg garters." He sighed, glancing out at Arcadia's glowing lights from his seat at the bay window.

One day, he told himself, a different consummation, and if he were a more demanding bridegroom than now, his actions would ultimately be justified and beneficial.

Behind him, the bathroom door opened. "Walt? Did you say you were wearing a garter?"

He turned, seeing Barbara half-in, half-out of some manner of dysfunctional corsetry, her coiffed hair starting to come out of its plaits. Without a word, he pulled up his trouser leg to reveal his sock. There was an interesting pause.

"I've never seen those before," she remarked. "Not on a real person, I mean."

Walter shrugged; 'real' was subjective. "Went out of fashion when they started making undergarments with elastic. Still, since I wanted to wear my good socks for today, obviously I needed to dig them out of storage." It occurred to him after a moment that his supposed postwar birthdate would not really explain how he had come into possession of such clothing, but Barbara seemed not to catch that at all.

"Wow," she said, hand moving distractedly to her neck, looking him up and down. "Uh. Walt. You are really rocking this look." She began toying with her necklace, which was oddly pleasant to behold. "Maybe we ought to buy a few more suits for you, just for variety."

Walter smirked, vanity never satisfied where her regard was concerned. "My darling Barbara, I'm but a poor country teacher playing at Edwardian gentleman, however could I expect to -- "

"Pants. Off." She held up a hand. "Leave the socks on."

His eyebrows raised of their own accord, but he obligingly stepped out of his trousers, carefully folding them over the back of the chair. "And the vest?" He rested a foot on the chair's seat, showing off the garter to its best effect.

"Vest stays on, for now."

"'For now'?"

o quam clara species!

"You know," he murmured lazily, "I'm beginning to suspect that this whole escapade with exciting underwear was more for your benefit than mine, dear."

Somewhere in the upturned bedclothes, he heard her snort gently. "Not my fault that you're wearing it better than I did."

"Well," He shifted to make himself more comfortable, as the corset was digging into his ribs, and gazed at her, tousled and glowing in his vest. "I could get used to that."

Barbara stretched languidly, her contours both accentuated and obfuscated enticingly. "Hmm. The dry cleaning bills would kill us." She rubbed its silk against her naked skin. "Guess we broke it in properly, though."

"Hmm." He reached out to pull her closer. "Well done, Mrs. Lake."

"Thank you, Mr. Strickler." She kissed him and oh, he was owed, and he was collecting. "To good beginnings."

"To happy endings," supplied the beast clad in the maiden's girdle, and drew her closer.

O Fortuna / velit luna / statu variabilis

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