Chapter 16:

Anacrusis

...

"Caleb."

He shifted, blinking away his nightmares in a groggy haze. Molly's sleeping form pressed hot into his side while the cold of the room hung on the rest of him like a weight.

Jester hovered over them wearing the uniform of a palace medic, her curly hair tamed back under a bandana wedged beneath her horns.

"Let me look at your shoulder," she whispered into the still morning.

He extracted himself from the pile. Molly's eye cracked open for a brief moment before finding Jester with him. Satisfied, he wrapped his newly free arm around Yasha and returned to sleep.

In the glow of the pale morning light, Jester towed Caleb out into the hall.

With fingers stiff from sleep, he pulled his coat off then unbuckled the top portion of his tunic, exposing his bandaged arm to the biting cold. Brown blood stained the wraps.

She looked at the wounds with a frown. "You should have let me fix this earlier," she chided.

"There… wasn't a good time," he said at last, beginning to unwrap his shoulder.

"That's not a very good excuse."

"I know."

The slice across his neck from the garrote had mutated into a line of patchy scabs, and the tear across his upper arm glowed red and hot with the beginning of infection.

Jester mumbled her incantation, channeling her faith into a tangible crackle of magic between them.

"You know I don't blame you, Caleb," she said, breaking the winter's silence.

Caleb swallowed hard. She could be referring to any number of his trespasses, but he wasn't planning on accepting sympathy for any of them. The lazy shadows of snowflakes drifted down them and across the floor.

"I think… if I were in your position… I would do the same thing…" she said, half to herself. "I love my mama very much."

"You are… a better person than me, Jester. I don't think you would," he said as her magic knit his flesh back together.

"That's only because I haven't had to do anything hard."

"Perhaps," he conceded because her eyes were gentle and her heart was soft, and he couldn't bear to spend his last day here debating her own inherent goodness.

…

All accounted for, they poisoned fifteen people.

There was a local haunt near the palace that staff frequented on their lunch breaks—including the palace doctor and Tomoe's personal chef.

They went in wearing different faces. Beau and Fjord faked a brawl, allowing Nott to slip into the kitchen unnoticed. She met them five minutes later in the snowy alley—glove tips sticky with crocus sap.

"You do the deed?" Fjord asked.

Nott nodded, wiping her hands off on her pants. She looked at the group, her eyes passing over everyone but catching on Caleb like a sweater snagged on a thorn bush. She ripped her gaze away, resting it instead on Beau.

His stomach felt cold at the loss.

They walked back to the Tipsy Seal as a group, discussing the plan in hushed voices while Caleb trailed behind. Runes and spell circles cycled through his head. He'd committed their precise arrangement in all their spiraling complexity to memory over countless late nights until both his candles and mind were spent.

The equations used for his first and upcoming second jump were nearly identical—there was only a 3% variance between them, but that was enough. Even a single misplaced line out of thousands would ruin him.

He ran nose-first into Molly, oblivious to the party's change of pace.

"Woah, steady now," Molly said, righting them both with a too-gentle hand and concern creasing his brow.

"Steady," Caleb repeated to himself like a mantra. "Steady."

...

The cold followed them into the tavern, but the quiet didn't. Thick speculation filled the air as the Mighty Nein made their way to the bar.

Lord someone was going with whom?

Duke so-and-so was wearing what?

Lady such-and-such said what? Oh I can't believe it!

Caleb slid onto an empty barstool, letting the rest of the present Mighty Nein order lunch around him. Chatty patrons mulled about, filling the tavern with restless energy that made Caleb's fingers tap too quickly against the bar.

He barely registered his lunch as he ate it, but it sat poorly in his churning stomach all the same.

The Mighty Nein—minus Jester—lingered in the belly of the Tipsy Seal with nothing to do but burn daylight until it was time for the next stage of their plan.

Caleb spent an hour upstairs, turning his cat into a hummingbird. But when he returned to ground level, it seemed as if no time had passed at all. With an internal groan, he re-anchored himself to the barstool. He ought to be talking with them, squeezing every last ounce of joy and friendship out of today in case he jumped. In case someone died.

But even the thought of having those conversations, pretending nothing was wrong, made him nauseous.

Nott and Fjord started a semi-friendly game of darts that Molly entered and exited after his throw went wide, the dart embedding itself in a bystander's raised tankard with a heavy 'thud'.

"I've been banished," he declared with exaggerated sigh, sliding into the chair next to Caleb.

Caleb mustered a smile. "How are you feeling?" he asked despite himself. "No… lingering effects from yesterday?"

Molly looked him over, his face splitting in a sharp grin as he leaned heavy on the counter, a hand propped under his full cheek. "You're asking if I'm still desperately in love with you?"

Caleb's jaw tightened as he averted his gaze down to the woodgrain. His face went hot. "Ah, yes… that."

"Well, it may disappoint you to know I am, for better or for worse, once again in control of my affections," Molly said with an air of manufactured regret.

Caleb bit his lip as the cool, iron weight of mourning settled in his stomach, followed by a wave of guilt. He wasn't sad Molly had returned to his senses—Caleb was still unsure if he'd ever lost them in the first place—but he mourned for the loss of yesterday. A single, harmless afternoon of playing House and pretending everything was fine. All that was left was the slow, staccato drum beats of the funeral dirge as the noose tightened around his neck. Though in this scenario, he was more like the hangman than the hanged, but the drum beat the same either way.

He picked at a loose splinter in the bar with a fingernail.

"Caleb?"

Caleb blinked, only now realizing Molly had said something he'd missed entirely. "I'm sorry, Mollymauk. What were you saying a moment ago?"

Molly leaned back at that, sucking on his cheek and averting his eyes in… disappointment? Embarrassment? "Oh never mind me," he said, reigning in his features.

Across the floor, Beau collected all the darts, stabbing them into the board to rest before looking around at her companions.

"I believe it's finally time to get ready," Molly said as he watched the rest of the Mighty Nein head up the stairs.

Caleb followed Molly several paces behind, as if he was being dragged by an invisible tether, up the narrow stairs to their— Molly's room.

Fjord side-eyed Caleb as they entered before returning to changing with a series of short, deliberate motions and a tense jaw. He pulled on his ornamental tunic over the palace kitchen uniform Love had procured for him and tied the front closed so tightly that not even a sliver of the pale fabric was visible beneath.

"Stop me if this sounds ridiculous, but I'm beginning to think this just might work," Molly said, his tone honey-warm with good humor.

Fjord gave a dubious hum as he pulled on his fur-lined boots.

Undeterred, Molly grabbed the remaining two parchment-wrapped parcels on the table and tossed Caleb his.

It hit Caleb in the chest, and he just barely managed to throw his hands up in time to keep it from spilling to the floor.

With an easy motion, Molly loosened the twine on his own parcel and revealed a silky garment with more beading than Caleb remembered. Molly rolled his shoulders, letting his rainbow coat slip to the ground in a pool around his feet before sliding an arm out of his vest. He met eyes with Caleb, cocking an eyebrow with a cheeky grin.

"Oh… sorry," Caleb said, woodenly turning around as if his face wasn't burning.

Molly's breathy chuckle behind his back didn't help.

Frumpkin, wearing a hummingbird's body, watched them from atop the bedpost with glassy eyes.

Stiffly, Caleb pulled off his own heavy coat and let the familiar weight fall to the floor. The embroidered sleeve stared back up at him, and the pang of loss struck his chest. He wouldn't be able to take it with him. Of course he wouldn't—the only thing that survived the jump was his mind, it seemed—but the thought of losing the bright, looping daisy embroidery made him ache.

He shed the rest of his clothes without fanfare and squeezed into the blue tunic before the shocking cold could sink in. The tunic and pants had been made for a thinner, taller man, so it pinched under his arms and was tight across his biceps. He stuffed the excess sleeves and pants into the new gloves and boots, hoping he didn't look as much like a child playing dress-up as he felt.

The single benefit of the pinching outfit was the accompanying fencing cape. Concealing the entire left half of his upper body, it provided a convenient place to hide his spellbook and component pouch. He sank into the nearby chair and rummaged through his belongings for a way to jury-rig a single-shoulder book holster.

"This is what you got me? Really?" Fjord mumbled, and Caleb saw him holding his mask in his periphery.

"Well, if the fish mask fits…" Molly trailed off with a grin in his voice.

"Haha, very funny," Fjord replied, putting on the scaled fish mask that, did indeed, fit. The long, fur-lined tunic they had picked out for him suited him well and made him look a couple sizes larger than he actually was. Even with the iridescent fish mask, he might have looked intimidating if he didn't keep slipping back into the posture of someone who was bullied as a child. "I'm going to go check on the girls," he said and shuffled out.

The door clicked behind him, leaving the room in silence save for the rustling of clothes.

"Could I borrow your hands for a moment, Caleb?" Molly asked.

Caleb blinked at the word choice, taking a moment to school his face before looking up. "Sorry—? Oh."

Molly stood with his back to Caleb, the buttons on his dress only half done.

Caleb cleared his throat. "Oh, yeah, sure." Pushing himself out of his chair, he stepped over to Molly, his hands hovering over the small of the tiefling's back for just a moment before taking the first button between his index finger and thumb. It was quickly apparent why Molly had asked for help: the buttons were the size of a fingernail and covered in fabric, making them fussier than they had any right to be.

Abandoning his first attempt, Caleb slid his gloves off and stuffed them under his arm. Mollymauk's bare skin was hot under his knuckles as he began lacing the buttons in earnest. He kept his eyes down on his work, not on the lean expanse of Molly's exposed back. Not on the sculpted edge of his shoulder blades or the dip of his spine, covered in glossy tattoos. And definitely not on the artful arc of his neck disappearing into inky curls.

Caleb laced the last button and stepped back too quickly, stuffing his hands back into his gloves. "Finished."

"Much appreciated," Molly said, turning around and straightening the garment out. To Caleb's dismay, the front of the dress had a V-neck so low it stopped just short of his navel. How terribly on-brand.

The delicate embroidery had small patches where its beads had snagged and been torn out over the years, leaving frayed thread in their wake. Not much to be done about that at this point. Thankfully, the rest of Mollymauk was so distracting that the Ice Haven gentry would likely notice his tattoos or scars before they thought to examine his clothes.

Still, Caleb could at least help a little. "Here," he said, stepping close again despite his stomach's misgivings.

Molly watched him in red-eyed curiosity as Caleb reached a hand out, stopping six inches short of his chest. He murmured an incantation, and prestidigitation rippled the air between them. Makeup stains lifted from the garment, floating around his outstretched hand like water. Caleb let his hand ghost along the neckline, cleaning as it drifted over the fabric.

Outside the window, it began to snow again.

Caleb eyed the "sleeves" of Molly's dress dubiously. They ended where they began at the shoulder, hanging down to his hips in a stretch of loose fabric that was purely decorative. Caleb was beginning to think this garment was typically supposed to be worn with a tunic beneath. Not that Molly would care anyway. "Are you sure you are going to be warm enough?" he asked.

"Of course. That's what the pants are for."

"I know you run hot, but—"

"I'll take that as a compliment," Molly said with a self-satisfied smile.

"You're incorrigible," Caleb grumbled with a good-natured sigh, focusing on his spell and where his hand ghosted over Molly's beaded shoulder.

"Would you have me any other way?" Molly murmured. The air around them stilled.

Caleb's grip on the cantrip faltered, and it flickered out of existence, suspended makeup silently falling to the floor. His breath caught in his throat.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again like a suffocating fish. Saying anything was a commitment. Locking their ambiguous relationship down into something that was or was not when he had already decided to leave Mollymauk Tealeaf as a question. A glimmering 'what-if'.

His chest felt tight.

Molly's self-assured smile slipped, and a flash of worry overtook him, only to be replaced by a creeping embarrassment. A dark flush spread across his nose to the tips of his pointed ears, and he averted his gaze.

Beau's barking laughter from next door broke the silence, and a knock at the door followed it.

"I've got it," Molly and Caleb said simultaneously, both making a move for the door and almost tripping over the other in the process.

The door swung open without their input, revealing Yasha's looming form in the hall. "Oh," she paused, "am I interrupting something?" Her dual-colored gaze slid from a flushing Molly to a very pale Caleb.

Molly mumbled something Caleb couldn't catch before speaking up. "Are the carriages here?"

"No, not yet," she said. "Do you still want to borrow some makeup?" She held up a tiny brush, stained black.

"You know, that actually sounds delightful. Why don't I go do that," Molly replied too quickly, rubbing his neck. He squeezed past her, looking everywhere but at Caleb, grabbed the brush from Yasha's hand, and disappeared into the hall.

Yasha looked to Caleb with a raised eyebrow. "You know, he's a pretty difficult person to embarrass, but it looks like you managed it," she said, sounding somewhere between confused and impressed.

Hot shame washed over him. "I didn't… it wasn't intentional… I just…" the words stuck between his teeth like molasses. Caleb bit the inside of his cheek in frustration. Only a couple hours left in this timeline—hopefully—and he was still managing to bungle his remaining relationships.

She shrugged. "He'll be fine. He's got thick skin."

Caleb wasn't so sure.

"So, uh, did you want to put on makeup with us?" Yasha asked, nodding to the adjacent room.

"No, I—" he cut himself off to recompose himself. "Thank you, but no," he finished more slowly.

"Oh. Okay. No problem," she replied with just the smallest frown. "Fjord, Beau, and Nott are waiting downstairs, if you want to…?"

"Yes," he said, eagerly grasping the lifeline. "I'll go wait with them."

Yasha made her awkward exit, and Caleb gathered his mask and remaining supplies. Frumpkin fluttered onto his shoulder and hopped up to nestle in the space between Caleb's collar and neck, hidden by a mess of red-brown hair.

As Caleb started to flee the second floor, he realized half-way down the stairs that Fjord, Beau, and Nott probably wouldn't give him the warmest reception. He paused on the stairs for the moment, weighing his options. The waiting trio's cold shoulders versus running into Molly without a way to diffuse the awkwardness.

He jogged the rest of the way down the stairs.

The night crowd was thinner than usual, and the remaining patrons eyed the Mighty Nein in their finery with mild curiosity.

Nott, Beau, and Fjord lounged against the bar. Nott's feet dangled from the barstool as she took a steadying drink from her tankard. Her dress was dark, with a single line of orange trim around the collar as garnish. It had several pockets hidden among the side seam. And since the dress was only fitted at the shoulders, they ran deep. That's why he had chosen it for her. He hoped she liked it.

"You're hardly going to be the weirdest thing there," Valentine said to Nott, standing behind the counter and polishing a glass. "Don't worry about it."

"That's easy for you to say. You're an elf," she shot back.

He shrugged. "Tomoe tends to keep weird company. I'm telling you, you'll be fine." His eyes caught on Caleb. "Oh hey, look what the cat—er—bird dragged in. You look like one of those toy soldiers. Those—those—," he snapped his fingers, looking for the word, "nutcrackers!" He slammed his fist on his open palm in triumph. "That's it. One of those nutcrackers."

Caleb cringed. Nutcracker. Delightful.

Wordlessly, he slipped into the seat next to Beau. Nott looked the other way.

"You all look very nice," Caleb said.

Beau gave him an appraising look. "Yeah, you too, nutcracker," she said with a smirk.

Caleb summoned the shadow of a smile at the ribbing before lowering his voice. "Now do you all remember Frumpkin's signals from earlier?"

Quietly, Caleb repeated the list of signals to the trio. Even Nott, who seemed more interested in nursing her drink than anything to do with him, kept her head tilted in such a way that he knew she was listening.

Just as Caleb finished his third round of repetition, Molly and Yasha made their way down the stairs, locked at the elbows and armed with dark lips and smokey eyes.

"Damn," Beau murmured to herself.

Caleb bit back a hum in agreement and instead occupied himself with the patterns in the floorboards.

As Yasha and Molly approached the party, in the first stroke of fortune Caleb had had since, debatably, birth, the awaited coachman pulled open the tavern door. Honing in on them immediately, he introduced himself to the group and announced that the two carriages they'd paid for were indeed outside.

Caleb's stomach lurched, any butterflies he might have had withering. This was it. The beginning of the end. The singular, collective breath before the orchestra would begin to play.

They shuffled after the coachman, stepping out of the Tipsy Seal's warmth and into the blue cold. The falling sun behind them caught on the steam from the lake. Dyed orange, the lake looked like it was burning.

The party stood together, a carriage ahead and a carriage behind them. "Hey, give us a second," Beau shouted to the first coachman before turning to the group. Beau cleared her throat, looking at her gathered companions. "So, uh, does everyone have what they're supposed to have?" she asked, resting a hand over one of her deep pants pockets where her darts rested.

Casual hands drifted over pockets, grazing the buried outlines of swords and daggers. Caleb could feel the familiar press of a leather-bound tome beneath his arm. All he could manage was a stiff nod.

"So we're really doing this, huh?" Fjord said with a sigh.

"Well it wouldn't be very nice of us to leave Jester and Love high and dry, would it?" Molly said, a gentle reminder hidden under his teasing tone.

Caleb stared holes into the dirty snow beneath them.

"Right," Fjord said, sucking his teeth. "Well, if things go south or people get separated, get back here as quick as you can, so we can get out of this—" a chill breeze blew through them, and Fjord's teeth began to chatter, "— goddamn city before shit really hits the fan," he said, shoving his hands beneath his armpits. "This shit ain't worth dyin' for," he added as an afterthought.

Caleb inhaled a beat too quickly, his lungs stinging at the chill, and schooled his face into an impassive mask. This was the only thing worth dying for. This could be the end of any or all of them, but the dominos were already falling. As casually as he could manage, he lifted his gaze off the ground and let it wander over his teammates—no one seemed to have noticed his slip in demeanor.

Beau reached up to fasten her mask behind her head, starting a chain reaction for the rest of the party to follow suit. When Beau withdrew her hands, she had a gold, snarling creature in place of a face. The creature was so intensely stylized Caleb couldn't tell if it was a lion, a dragon, or a monkey, but he wished he had opted for a full face mask as well. The grinning half sun Molly had chosen for him gave him precious little to hide behind.

Beau shifted her weight, about to turn away and head for the first carriage.

His stomach lurched. No, not yet!

"We have—" he spoke up, surprising even himself. All eyes turned to him. "We have prepared for this, yeah? Worked for this," his gaze drifted to Nott. She looked away. "Planned for this. I'm sure everything will go fine, and… I'm sure everything will go fine" he could only repeat. He would see them all after this. They would have a little more time.

Fjord frowned, and Beau gave a stiff nod. She surveyed the party with dead, golden eyes, looking to Molly, Caleb, and Yasha. "Alright, see you guys there," she said with a single nod, and broke away. Fjord and Nott followed, leaving empty footprints in their wake.

Yasha and Molly turned towards the second carriage. "So dour. You'd think we'd been invited to a funeral," Molly said.

Caleb's mouth tasted bitter.

With some effort, the remaining three stuffed themselves and their fancy clothes into the empty carriage. Yasha and Molly sat on one side, while Caleb sat on the opposing bench, making great efforts to neither touch nor look at them more than he had too. It was too hard.

As the carriage surged to life, he pressed his forehead against the milky window, trying to decipher the gloom beyond and forget about guilt and the anxiety warring inside him to see which could tear his guts to shreds first.

Formless shadows passed beyond them with the occasional red blur of a lantern. Every jolt of the carriage sent his knees knocking against Mollymauk's, and each time he woodenly drew them back into place without looking, keeping his gaze locked on the window as if the secrets of the universe were etched into the dirty glass. But the more he looked, the more he could only see his own pale visage reflected at him. Gaunt in the fading light, with dark eye bags, he looked like a drowning man. Maybe he was.

The carriage rocked again. Mollymauk's knee bumped his, but did not leave.

That traitorous corner of Caleb's mind was grateful for the heat.

He heard Yasha and Molly murmuring about the palace out the other window, but couldn't see it himself until they disembarked. While Molly tipped the driver—probably too much—Caleb could only gawk at his first sight of the spectacle this close.

The palace rose from the edge of the crater with only the unforgiving arctic night behind it. Tiered octagonal spires with multiple ornate roofs loomed up to pierce the sky. High enough to be a dare, a challenge, though he did not know if it was directed at the gods above or any revolution-minded peasants below. Perhaps both.

The main body of the building towered nearly as high as its spires, snagging the last of the melting sunset on its white walls and continuing the repetition of spiked, layered roofs. With a shell of ice and snow on every roof, the building was nearly all white except for the gold lamplight pouring out of every window. A monolithic stone staircase demanded visitors prove their determination before entry, and even the party guests were no exception.

Groups of eager party-goers took the stairs' challenge, plodding up them dutifully in their long, snow-dusted cloaks, and laughing while winded behind their masks. Caleb spotted Fjord, Nott, and Beau half-way up, and watched them make it to the top. Beau nonchalantly tripped a noblewoman, causing her to go flying into a nearby guard and giving them enough of a distraction to slip around the side of the palace.

"So far so good," Molly said, watching them disappear. His pale half-mask stood stark against his violet skin, in the shape of a crescent moon on its side so it gave him the appearance of an extra set of horns. The painted leather creased in a permanent smile around the eyes, making him look even more devious than usual.

"Well then, I believe it's our turn," he said, offering both of his arms to Caleb and Yasha.

Caleb stared at the loop of Molly's offered arm for a beat. Which would be more dangerous—accepting or refusing? The question made his gut churn, and the world began to tilt. With a hard swallow followed by a deliberate motion, he took Molly's arm. The most dangerous option was to fall down the stairs and crack his skull open due to a moment of lightheadedness. And while dying was an option, dying like that was not.

Molly gave him a questioning look, and Caleb could only grimace back.

"Presenting, in their first public performance," Mollymauk said under his breath to Caleb and Yasha alone, "The fabulous, Lord Claiborne, the mesmerizing, Baron Mallory, and the astonishing Lady Yancey," he said, "watch them dazzle you with the performance of a lifetime."

Yasha chuckled as they started up the stairs. "Baron Mallory, you should have told me, I would have put an act together."

"Oh, but the improvisation is the fun of it," he said.

Caleb was of the opinion that improvisation was where carefully-crafted plans came to die, but the grin on Molly's face made him keep his cynicism to himself. At least someone would have fun tonight.

In the middle of that thought, Caleb's breath caught in his throat as the toe of his boot scraped along a fissure in the stone step. Something heavy and invisible washed over him like a wave, sticking to his body, like a layer of tar, clogging his magic, and weighing him down.

He froze, yanking Molly and Yasha back in the process. Below him, his boot had unveiled a streak of bare stone in which part of a rune circle had been carved.

"You alright?" Molly asked with a pleasant smile, hiding a question as he pulled Caleb up and back into pace with them.

"Y-yeah," he managed, wary of the pace at which they were quickly approaching the guards. "Just a slip on the ice." He thought for a moment, choosing his words. "Do you find the… ice affects either of you?"

Yasha raised a brow in confusion.

Molly shrugged. "I notice it's there," he said casually, flashing a dazzling smile at an elderly couple they passed.

Sweat beaded at Caleb's temples. His body felt too hot and too cold all at once. He hadn't expected the anti-magic ward to be like this. To feel like this. One of his senses was deafened, the air was too thick, and he was walking into a den of wolves with both hands bound behind his back.

No, that wasn't right, a man with his hands bound had a much better chance with wolves than a wizard who couldn't cast in an imperial stronghold.

Earlier that day, he'd been terrified of succeeding. Now, in light of his own powerlessness, catastrophic failure seemed imminent. He was going to get them all killed.

The sense of impending doom settled on his shoulders like an iron yoke. In success or failure, he'd be miserable by the end of the night, and that was absolute.

The nerves were sinking into his legs now, so he could hardly feel the stone beneath him. Each step up was a step he couldn't take back. His tunic pinched, and the blue-black velvet drank up the night, so he stuck out like a streak of char against the ice. He could feel Frumpkin's tiny heart beating against his neck.

As they approached the guards at the top, Molly drew Caleb and Yasha closer, still wearing his most charming smile.

"Steady," he breathed in Caleb's direction.

Caleb could only clench his jaw in answer.

They joined the glittering crowd clustered around the entrance, where several guards blocked the way forward.

"Invitation?" a hulking dragonborn woman in half-plate asked them.

Untwining his stiff arm from Mollymauk, Caleb reached under his cape and pulled out an open envelope.

The guard took it, eyes roaming over Jester's perfect forgery. She looked back up at them with an acknowledging nod then added a rough, "Welcome to the masquerade."

As they stepped through the mouth of the palace, the guests around them murmured with awe at the spectacle. A large foyer received them where a flurry of servants wove through crowds of gentry, peeling their outerwear off of them and scurrying away to store the expensive furs in a coat closet. Silk screens painted with sharp mountains and snarling dragons ran three stories tall, with gilded clouds that glowed in the lamplight. The bleached wood walls supported the painted ceiling with pillars carved in the shapes of monsters and beasts, each dead-eyed and judging. Beyond the large foyer where the guests were received, an even larger chasm opened in the palace's abdomen, from which dizzyingly fast music spilled. Between the gaps in the opulent crowd before them flashed the spinning skirts and capes of dancers beyond.

"Woah," Yasha murmured.

"How many people do you think they have on a day-to-day basis just polishing the floors?" Molly asked, letting the toe of his boot drift across the patterned marble.

No one answered him as the crowd behind them propelled them forwards into the waiting arms of two maidservants insistent on taking their coats. After several strong refusals—capes and coats were useful for hiding swords after all—the trio paused in front of the ballroom. Molly looked to his companions in question.

Caleb took a deep breath and untangled the knot of plans running through his head. The heist was step one, destroying this timeline and everyone in it was step two. One, two. Simple. All they had to do now was monitor the situation in the ballroom until the Countess fainted. Then as soon as they knew Fjord and Jester had a handle on that situation, they'd have to close in on an unknown amount of gang members and defeat them without attracting the attention of the palace guards.

All without magic.

Simple .

"Ca—I mean, Claiborne?" came Yasha's voice.

Caleb refocused, looking up to her. Her thin mask, made mostly of dangling beads, did nothing to disguise the concern on her face.

"Ya?" he managed, trying to arrange his face into something at least neutral.

Molly and Yasha passed each other a glance, then looked back at him.

"Are you alright?" Molly asked in a tone so soft it was cruel.

The laugh bubbled up, and Caleb only bit down fast enough to turn it into a sickly wheeze. "Ya ya," he breathed, composing himself with a shudder and swallowing a bitter smile. "The… ice outside just has me on edge. Nothing to worry about."

Molly bit the inside of his cheek in dissatisfaction, regarding Caleb for a moment before nodding slowly. He twined his arm around Caleb's again—not giving Caleb a chance to refuse.

"Well then, friends," Molly started in a lighter tone but still low enough so that only his two companions could hear over the noise. "What we are going to do is we are going to go in there and we are going to have a delightful, non-suspicious evening, and we are going to eat delicious food and dance very poorly, while our other friends have to crawl around the cold bushes all night. Sound like a plan?"

Yasha gave an easy nod that Caleb could only poorly imitate.

"Alright, then," Molly announced, raising his forearms higher and pulling the friends he had hooked on either elbow closer. "Shall we?"

The cavernous, octagonal ballroom greeted them with a wave of noise—the combined murmur of a crowd hundreds strong. The space stretched out before them, brilliant and glittering. The domed ceiling held hundreds of ghoulish tableaus, each painted with an exacting sense of drama. A pack of minstrels against the left wall hammered away at a fast piece, choking the necks of instruments Caleb had never seen before. To their right waited a maze of banquet tables, piled high with carved fish and dripping fruit. Guests not brave enough to join the whirlwind of dancers gathered along the back walls, under the shade of the overhanging balconies, where noblewomen watched the spectacle below with shimmering fans to hide their sneers. And in the center of it all, rose an ice sculpture, easily twenty feet tall, of a roaring, coiled wyrm

Mollymauk whistled in amazement. "Amazing what the opium trade will get you," he said cheerily.

"How do you think they got that in here?" Yasha asked, her head slightly cocked as they started to travel around the edge of the room towards the food.

"I couldn't imagine—" Molly started, "Oh, look! A familiar face already," he said, motioning forward with a discreet nod of his head.

After a moment of searching, Caleb saw Jester buried elbow-deep in the dessert table, hunting for pastries and balancing two teetering plates in the other hand. An older, elven woman wearing a similar uniform stood behind her with a skeptical eyebrow raised.

"I don't think we should—" Caleb began under his breath as Molly led them towards Jester.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Lord Claiborne," Molly said innocently, releasing Yasha and Caleb's arms as they reached a table of appetizers.

Molly and Yasha busied themselves with the feast, collecting strips of salted meats that ran purple in the middle, skewered olives, and steamed dumplings. Caleb abstained as they worked their way down the line, positive he'd vomit up anything he even put near his mouth, though it didn't look like he was alone.

As they reached the dessert table, he noticed the elven woman looked quite pale, sweat beading on her forehead.

"Surely that's enough, Miss. Fancypants," she chastised weakly.

As their trio neared, Jester greeted them with the short, obligatory smile used on strangers but with a sparkle of acknowledgment in her eyes. "I'm almost doneee," she called back to the sickly elf in a sing-song voice.

"I'm not sure this is appropriate for a member of the staff, we should—" the woman slammed a hand to her mouth, holding back a wretch as she swayed on her feet.

"Doctor, are you alright? If you're not feeling well maybe you should go home?" Jester suggested, tone soaked in concern as she turned her attention to the doctor, all the while subtly dumping her plates of desserts into her apron's front pocket.

"No, I'm fine I—!" she broke off to hold back another wretch.

"Okay, come on, I'm going to call you a buggy or something to take you home," Jester decided, looping a strong arm around the woman's waist and walking her forward. "Excuse me, very nicely dressed people," she said to them.

"Oh, pardon us," Molly said with a matching grin, stepping aside to clear a path.

The doctor continued her weak protests as Jester led her away. Caleb allowed one or two glances over his shoulder to confirm they'd made it to the exit.

Nott's poison of choice had a delayed reaction—four to six hours—and between the vomiting and diarrhea, it was more than enough for any self-respecting employee to call out for the night. Even if the night was the biggest party of the year. He doubted they'd see any more of the doctor.

The intention behind poisoning the entire bar earlier was to make it appear the bar had served some bad fish and not a deliberate act against key staff members. If the doctor had already succumbed to the effects, the cook shouldn't be far behind. Right then, Nott, Beau, and Fjord should be waiting to ambush him as he left the kitchen.

The trio wandered the east side of the ballroom while Molly and Yasha snacked. Caleb kept his hands laced together behind his back. It kept them steady.

They lingered around the fringes of the masquerade, lazily strolling from one area to another just quickly enough that no chatty guests could draw them into conversation. Across the room, Jester returned alone sometime later, joining a cluster of servants near a covered archway.

Valentine had been correct in telling Nott she wouldn't be the strangest guest in attendance. Giving truth to the rumors, the Countess kept a colorful circle, and humans were a minority. Pale tritons with the fleshy bodies of whales sipped champagne in the corner, a lanky bugbear roamed the banquet tables, and tabaxi with the pelts of snow leopards danced with inhuman vigor. He watched their thin tails whip around behind them like flails.

It was then, through the hurricane of motion, he saw her beneath the wyrm's curling tail. She stood there, pale and still like a broken bone bursting from the palace's flesh, immutable. The immovable axis on which the city rotated, Countess Tomoe Heinai. Her long, white hair was pulled back behind her to fully brandish the dark, fractal-shaped scars running down the left half of her face and under her robes as a warning. Those were lightning scars. She'd faced down casters and won, and the sword at her side said she was willing to do so again. The edges of her billowing cloak fluttered in an absent breeze. Air genasi.

The linchpin of their plan gleamed silver on her opposite hip—the enchanted flask. She took a swig from it, continuing to survey the party as she did. Soon, she would hand it off to be refilled, and it would be returned with a potent dose of Nott's poison. Then the last line of dominos would fall all at once.

The party rolled onwards, and the music picked up speed as it went. The less agile dancers stumbled at the increased tempo, while men in fur-lined overcoats laughed at them from the side, spilling their wine as they did. The room began to heat with the warmth of so many bodies. Drops of sweat rolled down Caleb's back and soaked into the velvet tunic, despite the occasional piercing draft from the door. The guests grew drunker and talked even louder. The dancers in the center spun and spun.

A pressure squeezed his upper arm, and Caleb flinched. Trance broken, he looked up to see Molly watching him with guarded concern, hand still resting on his arm.

"Woah now," he said quietly, "I don't know where you just went, but you need to come back to us, alright? We need that brilliant mind of yours here. This is your plan after all," he said, looking at Caleb, nose ever so slightly creased as he tried to solve a puzzle he didn't have all the pieces for.

"My plan, after all," Caleb repeated with a heavy breath. His mouth tasted like iron.

"Alright, well this isn't working," Molly said with a frown then shot a glance over Caleb's shoulder. "Yancey, can you hold down the fort for a bit?"

Yasha looked down at the entire tray of charcuterie in her arms she'd pilfered from the banquet table, then back up at Molly. "Yeah, I think I'll be okay. Olive?"

Molly bit it straight off the offered skewer then wrapped an arm around one of Caleb's. "Delicious," he said, mouth still full, and plucked Frumpkin straight out from Caleb's collar.

"What are you—?" Caleb started.

"Hold this for a minute, won't you?" Molly asked Yasha, setting Frumpkin in the fur of her shawl. The familiar bristled at the manhandling for a beat before nestling into the soft fur, eyes drifting closed.

"—doing?" Caleb finished.

Yasha nodded easily. "Sure." She offered Frumpkin some cheese crumbs on her fingers. "Cheese?"

Before Caleb could see if his traitorous familiar accepted the bribe, Molly dragged him away.

"See you in a bit," Molly called as he marched Caleb towards the center of the room.

"Molly—Mallory, what are we doing?" Caleb demanded, too tired to even dig in his heels.

"Something even you can't brood while doing. We're dancing!"

...

A/N: Hey guys, so I do have plans to continue this fic to completion however I won't be uploading future chapters here on FFN bc a.) there's still no critical role category in 2020, and b.) FFN makes uploading and formatting an absolute pain. Anyways, it's on AO3 under the same name.