The shape of Laplace resolves from among the trees, a long sketch in firelight and shadow, slipping something loosely seen into the recesses of their overcoat. “Wards done?” Harrier asks, voice thick with fatigue. Mairead, crouched beside the fire, watches the sack squirm.
“I would not have come back otherwise,” says Laplace, with the fathomless self-assurance of a hedge magician who has yet to make any serious career mistakes. “Nothing of hers will find us here tonight.”
“You’re certain?”
“You are paying me enough, dear friend, to be very certain.”
"Harry,” Mariead says, still watching the sack, “I want to talk to Ada.”
The fire cracks and spits. Looking over, Mairead sees Harrier weighing it in her head, Maisie’s going to kick off if I don’t let her have this versus Oh, god, not yet. It’s not that it shows on her face; the struggle is played out across the subcutaneous geography of her jaw and neck.
“Alright,” Harrier says, eventually, “alright,” and levers herself up with a hiss of stiffened muscle. The sack’s wriggling stills as she crouches to pick at the knot holding it shut. When she upends it, the contents slither out into the grass corpse-loose and corpse-pale.
Ada - because that is still her name, no matter what she might say about it - lies half in and half out of the flickering ring of firelight, head lolling to the side. It’s not that she could move much before, bound hand and foot as she is, but now she's stopped trying entirely. Amber fire dances across the glassy pools of her eyes, wide and unblinking.
“I’m going to take her gag out,” Mairead says, phrasing it like a statement but glancing to Harrier despite herself. Harrier’s eyes flick across to Laplace. Laplace shrugs.
“If something hears the creature’s squalling, then my wards have already failed, and we’re done for regardless.”
“Don’t call her-”
“Maisie,” Harrier warns, and Mairead subsides, glowering. Harrier’s right, arguing with wizards is a waste of breath or worse, but God does she want to slap them sometimes.
After a little tugging at the knots, she manages to loosen the scarf bound about Ada’s lower face. When she still makes no attempt to clear her mouth, Mairead uses her fingers to tease the wad of packed cloth out from behind her teeth herself.
For the first time since being decanted, Ada actually seems to see her. She blinks, once.
“Hello, Mairead.”
Her voice is wrong. Too soft, too nice, as if she’s been opened up like a piano and retuned. She should be angry with them - they’re helping her, but she doesn’t understand that, does she?
Maybe she does, somewhere deep down. Maybe she’s still in there.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Ada says, and the love bubbling up in Mairead’s chest almost makes her laugh.
“Yeah, it’s- it’s nice to see you too. We’ve missed you, Ada. A lot. I mean both of us, Harrier won’t say it but-”
“If you will forgive the interruption, Mariead, this one’s name is Chrysanthe.”
Somewhere off to her left, Mairead can hear Harrier suck air through her teeth. Ada continues, still in that strange, soft lilt: “If you will please untie this one now, it has to return home. It hasn’t finished its chores for today, and it is sure that its lady will be very worried by its absence.”
“We can’t do that, Ada,” Harrier says, arms folded, saving Mairead the pain of saying no herself. “We’re taking you to Grenmere. I have a contact there. Someone who can help you.”
“No, that’s. That isn’t right at all. It - it has to go back.” A note of panic enters Ada’s voice. “Miss needs it, it was supposed to be home hours ago, please-”
“It will to go on like this until it is stopped,” Laplace says from the other side of the fire, speaking over her. “It cannot listen to reason. If you aren’t going to keep it gagged, at least allow me to make it quiet.”
Ada has begun to thrash again, staining her nice dress with long smears of black dirt. “No, no, please please, it will be good, it will be good-”
“Will that hurt her?” Mariread asks, forcing herself not to listen. It isn’t Ada talking, not really; she would never sound like that. Ada would spit and bite and curse and never ever beg. It’s her, that woman, that thing, speaking through Ada's mouth. Her thoughts aren’t her own. Her wants aren’t her own.
Laplace shakes their head. “A glyph of trivial simplicity, painted upon the exterior of the throat. Dolls are susceptible to such things.”
“... Go on.”
Harrier puts a knee on Ada’s shoulder and pulls her head back. Laplace hunches above her, vulturine in their big coat, producing the witchbone tool of their work from some lightless recess. The begging grows frantic. Mairead looks at the fire.
Ada’s perfect voice cracks into a high, thin whine, and then into nothing at all.
“Done,” says Laplace, with rather less than their usual self-satisfaction. Harrier says nothing.
Ada presses her face into the grass. Soundlessly, she begins to cry.
{ next }
