Sunday was a day of lazy goodbyes, of packing up camp slowly and breaking work often, whenever citizens of other Shires came by to exchange hugs and farewells. Viv found herself getting antsy, again, toward the end of it: she tried to do her fair share of breaking things down and packing them up, but she really, really wanted to check her voicemail.
Finally, well after noon, she was ensconced again in Rob’s back seat. She kept palming her phone open surreptitiously to check the signal. After many miles it managed to find a connection, but she had no new messages. She snapped it shut and pushed back into her seat, staring out the window without seeing anything.
Rob dropped Noah off first, at his apartment on Sutter. Then he made to turn left, towards the Mission, but Viv said suddenly: “Hey, do you mind a detour into the Richmond?”
“Not at all,” Rob said genially, “I live there myself.” So she gave him directions to Auterre’s place, and had him leave her at the curb. It wasn’t until he’d pulled away that she realized she was still wearing the grass-stained princess dress. She gathered fistfuls of pink silk in her hand and went to ring the doorbell.
From the other side of the door she heard voices: one a woman’s, laughing. But it was her boyfriend who answered the door: tall, lean, dark hair flopping over his sparkling eyes. He took the sight of her in with evident astonishment.
“Hey,” Viv said with a smile, but from somewhere within the apartment she heard:
“Auterre? Who is it?”
And she knew the voice, knew it even before Jen rounded the corner of the hallway with her wineglass in hand. Viv stood, stricken, in her ridiculous costume, staring at the two of them, while Auterre’s expression darkened and Jen put down the wineglass to say, almost gently: “Viv. I’m sorry.”
Viveka turned her eyes to Auterre. “We are only celebrating,” he said. “Two old friends.”
“Celebrating what?” The voice came from somewhere outside herself. She was glad that it sounded relatively normal.
“My new job,” Auterre said, and stepped back, gesturing her inside. She went in, because it seemed expected. He closed the door behind her. “The Chronicle has offered me a weekly column.”
The San Francisco Chronicle was the city’s daily newspaper, boasting ten times the readership of the independent weeklies. “That’s—great?” Viv managed. “Are they going to publish your exposé?”
But Auterre’s face darkened, and Jen looked away. “No,” Auterre said after an awkward pause. “This is the price I pay.”
“I don’t...understand,” Viv said. She felt like she ought to say more, just to be polite, but her stomach was in knots and the words came very slowly.
“Oh, Viveka,” Auterre said. “You cannot be so naïve? This position was not just handed to me. It is the price I pay.”
She waited, just looking him full in the eyes. He was the first to break their gaze. “It is a bribe,” he said. “The corporations, they give me this in order to bury the story. But they don’t know, Viveka! I can reach so many more people now. In the end I will do so much more good.”
She stood there, in his hallway, in her absurd and soiled pink dress, just watching his face. Just waiting to understand. “It is the price I pay,” he said again.
And then, to her own great shame, she understood. “You,” she breathed, “are not who I thought you were. Where is my sword?”
His eyes flicked to the side. “Ah. I, uh.”
She pushed past him, suddenly having no time for it. Now she was hard and sharp. “My sword,” she repeated. “Where is it.” She elbowed Jennifer aside and strode into the living room. A quick glance to the left and right showed her it was not there.
Auterre was behind her, but she didn’t care. She pushed his bedroom door open and stepped inside.
The bedclothes were rumpled. A heavy scent lay in the air: spicy and herbal. The scent of thyme. Excalibur wasn’t there. Viv turned on her heel and faced Auterre with white-hot fury. “Morgan,” she hissed.
Surprise crossed his handsome features. “You know Morgan?”
“No,” she said tightly. “You tell me what you know.”
He rubbed a long-fingered palm across his face. “I met her Friday night, at a party. I brought her home. I didn’t mean to tell you this way.”
“Where,” Viv enunciated clearly, “Is. My. Sword.”
“When I woke up it was gone. Her too. I think she stole it.”
She stood for just another minute, staring at his handsome face, at the full scope of her mistake. “You slept with Morgan. And she stole Excalibur.”
A mote of surprised disdain danced behind his eyes. “You called that sword Excalibur?”
She couldn’t stand it. She needed to breathe. “This is it,” she gasped out. “We’re done.” She pushed past Auterre, striding out into the living room and beyond, back into the hallway. She had almost regained the outdoors when Jennifer laid a restraining hand on her arm, saying, “Viv. I need you to understand. It’s not what you think, it wasn’t anything. Just a drink with an old friend.”
Viv stopped, turned, locked eyes with the dark and lovely Jennifer. “No,” she said, finding the words, the truth of it, only as she spoke. “None of this is your fault. It—it’s mine. I thought he was Arthur, but he isn’t. He never was. Somebody told me—I have the power to create patterns where there weren’t any before. You’re caught up in it now just because your name is Jennifer. But you don’t have to be her, do you understand? He isn’t Arthur. You don’t have to be Guinevere. You don’t have to be her. He isn’t even back with you yet and he’s already cheating on you. I’m sorry I did this to you—but you don’t have to go along with it.”
Jennifer’s eyes were deep pools of confusion. Viv gathered her willpower and punched every word as hard as she could. “He isn’t Arthur. You don’t have to be Guinevere,” she repeated, and broke away. This time she made it outside, to the concrete steps and the late afternoon sunlight, with nobody trying to stop her. She gathered her dress up in her fists and ran as fast as she could for the nearest bus shelter.
On Muni she sat shoulder to shoulder with her fellow humanity, most of whom seemed to have unfortunate hygiene problems. Then it slowly dawned on Viv that she’d been camping for a weekend, and the stinky one on the bus seat was probably her.
She laughed a short and mirthless outbreath: “hah!” The people on either side of her shifted away. The bus lurched forward with a recurring arrhythmia: Lost, the wheels seemed to say to her. Lost, lost, lost.
She had lost: Her sword. Her boyfriend. Her power. The battle against Morgan le Fay. The respect of her boss. The ability to do her jobs, both magical and mundane.
Lost, the bus said as it traveled on. Lost, lost, lost.
She had lost the ability to protect her city, the amazing city that had adopted her and taken her in when she had nothing, the beautiful and precious and irreplaceable San Francisco. She had lost the chance to guard its children.
Lost, lost, lost.
She stared, white-faced, into the middle distance. Some part of her brain—the irrepressibly practical part—was still working, calculating. She knew how much she’d lost. But how much did she still have? A few favors to call in, and that was something. She could still count on Noah. She still knew how to whistle.
At least she thought she did. The thought kicked her in the gut, and she responded by immediately pursing her lips and trying to blow the musical notes that were Piper’s true name: but whether because the magic had left her, or only because she was panicked and her mouth was too dry, she could only manage a reedy tuneless note.
Lost, lost, lost.
She fumbled for her cellphone, found Noah’s number, and punched it in. It rang and rang: eventually his voicemail picked up. Viv flipped the phone closed.
She made her way from Muni to BART in a haze of despair. She didn’t care about the strange looks that other people on the subway cast her way. She got to the 24th Street station and disembarked, holding her sodden skirts up so they wouldn’t get caught in the escalator.
Once home, with her back against the alley-facing door, she fully expected to crumple into a puddle of tears. But Silk was there, haranguing her for the absence: she lifted the cat in her arms and buried her face into the ruff of fur behind Silk’s head. Silk let out a harsh and punishingly loud meow right next to her ear, but in the same moment began to purr.
The tears didn’t come. Instead Viv went through the motions of feeding Silk and putting fresh water into her bowl. As the cat scarfed down her tinned “Mariner’s Catch,” Viv tried Noah again. His cell went to voicemail again, and at home his answering machine picked up after the first ring.
She stood for a moment, her mind blank. Then she remembered the phone book she’d stuffed into a kitchen cabinet, with a bag of potatoes. She went to dig it out and found that the potatoes were shriveled and sprouting. She left them on the floor and flipped through the yellow pages: SAT prep, sea cruises, shamans. There he was: Raven Park. She dialed the number listed.
“Hello?”
Hearing another human voice on the phone sent a small wave of relief through Viv’s knotted stomach. “Raven. Hey, it’s Viv. I need to talk to Piper. Is he there?”
“No, honey, we broke up two weeks ago.”
“Crud,” Viv breathed.
“Actually it was a really good thing,” Raven said on the other end of the line. “I did what you suggested—the curse-breaker ritual on myself. And everything just suddenly became very clear to me. I kicked him out, changed the locks, and put up all the protective wards I know. I feel ten times better already. You should be careful if you’re looking for him.”
“I just don’t know who else to call,” Viv said. “Morgan le Fay has my sword.”
Raven’s voice sharpened. “The Queen? She got Excalibur?”
Viv opened her mouth and found she had no words. She gaped into the phone like a fish. As she ground the heel of her left palm into her eyes, trying to force herself back into control, Raven said: “Viv? Where are you?”
“Home,” she managed.
“Where’s home?”
She gave him her address. “I don’t usually make house calls,” he said. “But I’m coming over.”
“Thanks,” she said automatically, and hung up the phone.
She did little tasks around the house, picking things up, changing the litter box: mechanical and repetitive things that kept her hands busy while her mind turned in circles. The sun was going down when Raven knocked at her door.
“Hi,” she said as she let him in. “Thanks for coming. I just—I don’t know what you can do.”
“We’ll think of something,” said reassuringly. He did look better than the last time she’d seen him; he was getting his weight back, and his face was no longer hollow and gaunt. He looked assured and confident in a fitted leather jacket, with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder: Viv felt a little better at the sight of someone who just might know what they were doing.
Raven stepped into her bare kitchen and looked around. As his gaze focused back on her she smiled wanly.
“You look well,” she offered.
“Thanks,” he said. “I feel underdressed.”
“Oh shoot,” Viv said, “I forgot to change.” She brushed uselessly at the voluminous silk skirts. “And I should have showered.”
“You should have,” Raven said cheerfully, “but you have bigger problems. I think you should tell me everything.”
“No time!” a tiny voice piped up. Both Viv and Raven looked over in surprise. It was the plump little tomte, still naked except for her red peaked hat, standing on the kitchen counter just in front of the hole in the wall. “You have no time!”
“What do you know?” Viv demanded.
“You have an elf in your kitchen,” Raven observed.
“I know, she’s been here all along. She was the one who kept stealing my keys.”
“I’m the fairy of this house,” the tomte said self-importantly; but her expression quickly returned to one of anxiety. “And you have no time! They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?” Raven asked, reasonably enough.
The little woman’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The redcaps,” she hissed. “The Queen is sending the redcaps for you! They’ll be here at moonrise. You must flee!”
Raven looked over at Viv. “Redcaps? Like her?”
“Not like her,” Viv said. “They’re bad. But why should we believe her? She’s a fairy. She could be sending us into a trap.”
The tomte glared. “I should let them have you, I should. If the Queen knew—” She wrung her hands, and when she continued her voice was almost pleading. “But I am the fairy of this house! You gave me porridge, you are under my protection. I had to warn you, I had to. Go, go, you have no time!” And with a fearful glance over at the window and the darkening sky, she scuttled back into the wall.
“I believe her,” Raven said quietly. “We should go back to my apartment. It’s on the third floor and I have my wards up.”
Viv wavered a minute, stubbornly unwilling to be kicked out of her home on the say-so of a fairy she didn’t trust anyway. But then she remembered the way they’d swarmed over her, reaching up for her eyes with their twisted yellow nails. She shuddered. “All right. But we’ll have to get my cat into the carrier, I’m not leaving without her.”
“Hurry then,” Raven urged, and she did: she ran to the closet, flinging aside her laundry basket to get to the cat carrier stashed behind it. But when she dragged it out, Silk gave a short heartbreaking cry and disappeared under the futon.
Viv cursed. “Raven, help me move this?” He did, and together they lifted the futon to expose the hunted cat: Silk tried to bolt between Viv’s legs, but Viv managed to catch her around the belly. Then it was only a matter of holding the writhing, clawing cat long enough to wrestle her into the carrier.
“All right,” Viv panted. “Let me find my keys and we’ll go.”
She was answered by the sound of a small voice clearing its throat from inside the wall of her kitchen. The house keys and her Swiss army knife were lying on the counter, just where she’d dropped them. “Good. Thanks,” Viv said grudgingly, palming them as she went to the door. She yanked it open—
—and found herself staring into the malevolent orange eyes of a grinning redcap.