Chapter Text
Nobody warned them, any of them, that their palismen would be confiscated. Nobody but a few of the Emperor’s coven carried staves, but somehow, Raine hadn’t ever realized it until Vivezza was snatched from their grasp, a heavy glove clamped around their still-tender bard coven sigil. Her bright black eyes faded to wood as they lost their grip.
“Now, now,” the coven leader, Mircalus, scolded as someone began to weep, grasping after a staff with a miniature whale breaching atop it. “Palismen are a relic of the savage age. No modern witch worth their salt needs a crutch like that. You are bards. You have the power of the Isles in your bones.”
Raine clamped their teeth shut on the protest burning like acid in their throat. The palisman staves clattered into a barrow with horrifying carelessness. Raine kept their eyes fixed on the flash of wood they knew was Vivezza, ears ringing, even as more staves dropped on top of her. They watched until a coven scout wheeled the barrow away to a transport balloon, the Golden Guard at the helm, and then the balloon until it lifted out of sight.
That night, the doors of the Bardic Collegium were barred against exit.
Raine broke out anyway.
With a sour, clenching stomach, they hummed don’t notice me as they snuck through corridors and climbed out a window and down a decorative frieze. They landed badly when they forgot they couldn't conjure a cushioning mound of grass anymore, leaving their knee protesting. But it wasn’t so far to town and the nearest transport worm station. They needed to go to the Emperor’s castle and the worm would get them close a lot faster than walking.
If any other bardic recruits made the same decision, Raine didn’t run into them. At the transport, they climbed inside, keeping their weakened knee well clear of the stomach lining, sat two rows up from the back, and tried to project calm. It was a sparse night; the humid whiff of digestion kept them company along with a tiny demoness who was mostly nose and bushy red hair, buried in a book and muttering incantations a few seats away. A few stops along there was a pop of displaced air and she suddenly grew three feet taller, the feet stacked one on top of the other under her original feet. She yipped in alarm and Raine buried their face in their hands and cried with laughter, the tension wire inside them snapping finally as the demoness reversed whatever she’d done and popped back down to her original size. The laughter turned to real tears as their worry boiled over.
They had only had Vivezza for a year, the little red fox palisman curling beside Raine while they slept and nesting in their instrument cases during the day so industriously that Raine had given up using them for their intended purpose and worked out a little magical storage space to keep their fiddles and bows in instead. They had mostly left each other to their own devices, but knowing she was taken was far different than knowing she was off exploring.
“Hey.” They looked up…down, at the demoness. “Are you all wight? You’ll get the twansport excited and I don’t want it to thwow up before my stop.”
They sucked in air and scrubbed their face on their cloak. “I’m…all right,” Raine muttered, cleaning salt from their glasses lenses. “Thank you.”
She eyed them narrowly. “If you say so. Are you going to start cwying again?”
“I don’t think so,” they said tightly.
She hopped up onto the seat beside them, her book tucked away somewhere out of sight. “What’s a baby bard doing out here so wate?”
“I’m…going to visit the Emperor’s castle,” they said honestly. “Something of mine is there, I think.”
“Oooh, are you bweaking in?” she asked, perking up.
They stared at her. “Do people actually confess things like that to strangers when asked?”
“You are! I wove bweaking into important pwaces. Can I come?”
Raine sputtered, "You… What?"
"I can get us there fwom the twansport station."
That was more than Raine had planned. "I suppose."
"Yesss! I can gather evidence for my theowy that the Empewor is secwetwy an invader fwom another dimension!" She trailed off, muttering to herself.
Raine composed themself. It wouldn't do Vivezza any good for them to worry themself into uselessness. They clamped their hands between their knees and ran through modal scales under their breath until they could hold their hand outstretched without it shaking. At the stop, they stumbled as the transport worm expelled them, catching at the sign. The little demon hopped neatly out behind them, and whistled sharply with two fingers.
Answering her summons, a young griffin called in the distance, circling down to land beside her. It breathed a stream of spiders affectionately into her hair and she patted it on the knee. "My fwiend, Awexa. Can you dwop us off at the pawace?"
The griffin lay down and she hopped up on its back. "Wooks wike a yes! You coming?"
Raine climbed on behind her and buried their fingers in its fur with a yelp as it leapt into flight. Griffins were agile. They skimmed below the treeline, angling between branches and staying out of sight of anyone watching for an attack from the air. When they stumbled off the griffin's back, they were only a few hundred feet from the walls.
"What's your name?" they asked, belatedly.
"You can call me-" she paused, "the Twuth Tewwer!"
"Ah." Raine considered that. It wasn't a bad idea to use an alias, they supposed. "I'll be the Green Rat, then."
Truth Teller nodded seriously. "Now to bweak in. I don't think you can use constwuction magic?"
"Not anymore," they said, grimly.
"Wet's get thwough that wall then, and you can take it fwom there."
Raine nodded.
Truth Teller, true to her word, opened up a hole in the wall that was big enough for Raine to squeeze through with a little effort. They slid inside, humming don't notice me again, and made their way through the shadows to the main building. Raine had visited on a school tour once and had seen the Emperor's Coven balloon moored to one of the towers. They headed upward. The last time they'd seen the staves, they had been in the Golden Guard's custody. It was as good a place to start as any. Truth Teller padded behind them, shrouded in a cloak she'd pulled out of a tiny rucksack nestled under her hair. They narrowly avoided some scouts who were complaining to each other about the food and their work, and Raine trailed them briefly, hoping for a mention of the bardic recruits or their palismen.
Those scouts had apparently been on pest control somewhere up on the Knee, but they crossed paths with another pair who were headed to oversee a supply drop. Did palismen count as supplies? Raine ducked behind a wall hanging and held their breath until the scouts split up again, and followed the new pair upstairs toward the roof.
If they hadn’t been vibrating with fear and frustration, it would have been boring. Raine snuck around half the castle, peering into store-rooms and ducking patrols until they reached the throne room, where the Titan’s heart beat in ancient ponderous rhythm that stuttered their breath in their lungs. It was beautiful. Seeing it ensnared in Belos’s seat of power wracked Raine’s already-taut emotions, but the glory of it, the weight of it made them shiver.
It took them a moment to look away.
There were nooks and crannies all over the gaudy gold-embellished room. Raine set their shoulders and went to explore them. Finally, finally, a storage closet behind one of the outcroppings had a suspiciously clean lock. Raine pulled out their lockpicks (from Eda, like all of their best/worst gifts) and knelt to get a better angle.
“Can you keep watch?” they asked sotto voce, focusing on the lock.
“You got it.” Truth Teller pattered away.
They were sweating by the time the tumblers clicked into place. Raine opened it gingerly, peering around the edge of the door, and bit back a sob. Piles of palisman staves. An ostrich, a hippocampus, a three-headed pig, a mesmer-frog, a capybara, a bombardier beetle, dozens more beneath them.
“We can’t leave these,” Raine muttered blankly. “We can’t leave any of them.”
“Oh shit,” Truth Teller added. “Nobody coming,” she said when they turned to her. “But we don’t have fowever. Do you have a pwan, Gween Wat?”
“Vivi?” Raine called softly. “Vivezza?” A shifting sounded somewhere off in the corner, and Raine bolted for it. They removed the other staves carefully; they didn’t want to damage anyone, even though their hands shook with desperate hope.
Underneath a familiar whale palisman, Raine’s hand closed around home-good-rightness and they pulled Vivezza’s staff free, cupping her head to their face as she softened into fur at their touch. She licked their cheeks industriously and Raine realized they were crying again. “You’re okay, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” they said, stroking her back.
She barked softly, but urgently, and Raine’s blood went cold.
“He breaks them?” They shuddered down to their bones. “We’ve got to get them all out,” Raine repeated more firmly. Palismen were precious; Dell’s work was a gift to the Isles. How anyone could consider deliberately breaking one… The idea made them nauseated.
“I need plant magic,” Raine said firmly, turning to Truth Teller. “Grasping vines, to gather all the staves into a net that we can carry.” They stroked Vivezza’s head. “You can lift us all, right?”
She clicked her teeth together dubiously, but inclined her head. “I’ll help with the levitation as soon as we’re out of earshot, if you can just hold them until then,” they promised.
Truth Teller drew a spell circle, tongue clenched between her teeth, and ivy vines sprouted through the stone, weaving together into a roughly rectangular mat. Raine scooped up staves, laying them carefully inside it, Vivezza prancing nervously beside them. They couldn’t have much time.
The last three palisman knocked together on the top of the pile as Raine fumbled and dropped them, staring into the impassive mask of the Golden Guard. They flinched at the clatter.
“I’ll pwotect them,” Truth Teller said grimly, jumping forward with yellow fire at her fingertips.
Raine put their fingers to their lips, ready to bring the Golden Guard to his knees, but the man was… holding his hands out, open palmed. “Peace,” he said, voice rough. “I’m not going to stop you. I can’t stop him from taking them, but I won’t stand in your way.”
“You know what he does with them and you won’t stop him?” Raine hissed, going from cold terror to fury in a blink.
“I know it better than you, but I can’t do anything if I’m dead,” the Golden Guard said, voice empty. “I can do a little to mitigate things now.”
Raine closed their eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “Very well. Do you have a recommendation for an exit?”
The Golden Guard’s mask turned toward the ceiling. He observed, “I plan to set extra patrols on the north wall. It’s nearly daybreak.”
“Thank you,” Raine said grudgingly.
The Guard nodded, turned, and left them.
Truth Teller and Raine bundled the staves as quickly as they could, Raine tying them securely to the back of Vivezza’s staff, and both of them climbed on. Vivezza’s eyes lit and she lifted off carefully, her burden gliding just above the floor. She wouldn’t manage the weight for long.
They made it out of the castle unseen. As soon as they were out of easy earshot, Raine sang the strongest levitation dance they knew, focusing joyous weightlessness on the massive bundle of vines and wood behind them.
“The Bat Queen,” Truth Teller shouted behind them. “You know where to find her?”
“I do,” Raine sang back. “Are you leaving?”
“I’m out,” she confirmed. “I wasn’t pwanning to spend the night snooping. I’ve got a thing.”
“Thank you,” they sang, infusing it with all the sincerity of their heart. “Your help was invaluable. I owe you.”
“I’ll wemember that,” she said, patted them on the back, and bailed off the staff, her cloak floating around her.
They didn’t look to see where she landed. She knew her business.
They recognized the Bat Queen’s den from younger ramblings, so they landed just outside her territory proper, whistling the lifting dance with the last dregs of their voice. Dawn painted the sky in bruised yellow and purple.
“What witch disturbs Bat Queen?” The massive, looming menace startled Raine into losing the song and they lunged to catch the drooping bundle and help support it.
“Sorry! I’m… My name is Raine, we met before, this is Vivezza…”
“This I know. She is clever and quick. What-?”
Vivezza lowered their burden to the ground, transformed and leapt to the Bat Queen’s branch, shrieking her distress as she explained what had happened. Raine collapsed, bones aching and head spinning, because they needed to be sitting now. They picked fumble-fingered at the knotted ivy. Raine managed to undo the strand that wove together the top opening, and the wilting mat dropped open, revealing the palismen.
The Bat Queen’s growl raised every hair on Raine’s body. Vivezza darted back to them, perching on their shoulder and gekkering, ears standing up.
“Very well, little palisman. Your witch is not to blame,” the Bat Queen growled. “These others… I will protect these little ones from further danger. The covens will not take them. Emperor scouts will regret if they come looking.” She hopped off her branch, landing with graceful precision beside the staves, and swept her wings over them. The palismen woke at her touch.
They boiled up around her, staves vanishing, scattering into the trees and the gloom around them. They were strangely quiet. Only a few hoots and chitters of distress sounded above the fluttering, rushing hubbub of their escape. Raine wiped their face on a cleanish edge of their cloak.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do when he realizes they’re missing,” they said. “The next ones he steals will be better hidden and guarded, I think.”
“The palismen are my charge,” the Bat Queen rumbled. “Bat Queen considers the matter. There are others with whom I will discuss. Allies. We may not save all. But we will know to look, to protect from this danger now.” She nudged their boot with a claw. “You will warn me, when new bards come, when new palismen are in danger.”
“I will,” Raine swore. Hot tears trickled down their face again. “In return…” They cupped Vivezza close for a moment, until she squirmed. “Vivi, darling, you have to stay here.”
She screamed, an awful tearing noise of distress and territorial anger. Raine clutched her and sobbed. “You have to. I can’t protect you. If you come back to the coven with me, they’ll take you again, and they’ll break you or hide you someplace I won’t be able to find.” Vivezza’s nails scrabbled, raking hot across their arm as she tried to climb into their shirt and she froze, then whined, licking the injury.
“Your witch is right, little palisman,” the Bat Queen said quietly. “I will protect. Maybe things change, they return, you leave together.”
Vivezza rubbed against their chest, and Raine stroked her back and head, damping her fur as they cried. “I love you. I promise I wouldn’t leave you if I could think of another way.”
“You will be missed, little bard.” They looked up and the Bat Queen was watching the sky. “I can put you back where you should be, but unseen will be harder when witches are awake.”
They kissed the top of Vivezza’s head. She bit their collar and shook it, shredding the corner just a little, then slid reluctantly out of their lap. Raine stood and the Bat Queen grasped them in her claws. Their stomach dropped as she trundled into the air with a mighty flap.
Raine watched the red speck of the last unbroken piece of their heart disappear as the Bat Queen carried them off toward the Bardic Collegium.
At least they’d abandoned everyone within a few days. Now they didn’t have anyone left to lose.