Two weeks ago

"Good morning, m'lady." Piet Goranne slid onto the bench across from Belle with a wink and a smile, setting down a bowl of porridge for himself. He had shown up at Stillehau the day after Hobblefoot had left. "Missing your usual breakfast companion? Please, allow me to join you in his stead."

Belle sighed inwardly, glancing up from her book. "Good morning, Piet. I told you, don't call me that."

"Ah!" Piet held a hand theatrically across his chest. "True nobility shines from the heart, and yours is only brighter for these dark surroundings."

Belle scoffed. She did miss Hobblefoot, not that she would admit any such thing to Piet. But this was her book, in which she could lose herself and find the ghost of her mother's presence, making her solitude a peaceful one — a peace abruptly broken by Piet's arrival. Belle closed the book and put it away, as if protecting it from his prying eyes. She knew that was nonsense: anyone could pick up a copy if they wanted. "They say your nobility was proclaimed in a sprinkle of fairy dust."

"The fairies are a great force for good," Piet proclaimed seriously. "I don't know why Edvard won't accept their aid. He refuses to listen to reason."

"The fairies have their own agenda," Belle murmured. Her mother's ghost had claimed that the clerics had used fairy dust to remove Belle's memory of Colette's death. Perhaps the fairies had not directly approved, but they were the ones who dispensed that magic to those they deemed worthy. "They didn't lift a wand to save Avonlea, which in retrospect was probably because they lacked the power. After all, they haven't dislodged the Dark Lord despite three centuries of opportunities."

Piet tsked. "You misunderstand their role, m'lady. They were never meant to fight on the battlefield, but rather to inspire humans to do the right thing."

"The Avonlean Church would have agreed with you," Belle conceded reluctantly. As for herself, she couldn't agree that erasing her memories or hiding the truth, or treating non-humans as slaves or monsters, was the right thing. And these days, nor could she agree with their deference to bloodlines and the divine right of kings. "But the Avonlean Church is no more."

"It doesn't matter. The royal blood of Avonlea lives on in you, m'lady." He held up a hand before she could argue that point again. "Your humility does you credit, but it is wisdom that we need now. Wisdom to unite all the forces available to us."

"Or not available. You're still after Edvard's secret backer." Belle set her spoon down in the her now-empty bowl but remained where she was. She hadn't slept well and her joints were aching this morning. "You should talk to him about it, not me."

"Edvard is a pig-headed fool who's made a virtue of cowardice," said Piet.

"Ah, of course, insults are bound to persuade him to your point of view," Belle replied lightly. In truth, she knew it was part of his carefully crafted mask, along with calling her "m'lady" rather than "your highness". He presented himself as a straight-talking man of the people, eloquent but not a courtier despite his noble blood.

"It would be different if I could talk to his 'benefactor' directly. I just need to find him. That Hobblefoot knows who it is, I'm sure of it." At Belle's non-commital hmm, Piet continued, "I've tried to follow him, but he's damn slippery for a gimp. But he likes you. If you put your mind to it, you could get him to tell you."

Belle snorted in disgust, half-regretting ever speaking in his favor to Hobblefoot. Piet might not cheat at cards, and he maintained the image of an honorable man, but it seemed he was not above encouraging others to get their hands dirty on his behalf.

He misinterpreted her look and waved his hands in a hasty, apologetic gesture. "Forgive me. I wouldn't dare ask a lady to lower herself so if it were not for the greater good. And there's no need to make any promises. He's only a peasant — a sweet word from you is more than he could hope for in this lifetime."

And if that's true, Belle thought, remembering how surprised Hobblefoot could be at a kind word or touch, it's because people like you have beaten him down to expect nothing better. She hadn't seen him be mistreated here, but something in the way he carried himself hinted at old scars.

"They say you get along well enough, that's all I mean. Was it only gratitude for bringing you here? I heard you were with the rag-pickers before that," said Piet. "Anyone would be grateful. Just a little longer, that's all I'm saying. He knows his place, he knows yours. Give a man the dignity he is due, and he'll not deny you. A small favor, no more than that. Get me the name, an address, whatever you can. I'll take care of the rest."

"He's not here, and he didn't say when he would be coming back," Belle replied flatly. She stood up with an effort, then took her bowl to the sink to wash, turning her back pointedly on Piet.

"Well, just think about it, hmm?" Thankfully, he left shortly after that.


Belle spoke to Edvard later that morning, wanting to warn him about Piet but lacking any solid evidence for her uneasiness.

"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing," Edvard reassured her with a smile.

"It's not a question of what you're doing, it's what is Piet doing?" said Belle. "He already has backers. Why does he need yours?"

"More money is more power."

"Who is he trying to buy with all that money?" wondered Belle. "The fairies don't approve of greed, so isn't he afraid of losing their support?"

"A king is supposed to be generous to his followers," said Edvard. "It's tradition. As long as he can dress it up prettily enough, the fairies won't care." At Belle's look, he sighed. "He does have a point when he says that once the Dark Lord is overthrown, there will likely be a period of chaos, during which whoever controls the legions will have an advantage."

"That's Minister Elatha. He's notoriously loyal to the Dark Lord and would never back Piet no matter how much gold he offers him." Belle had done her research on all of the Council of Five, hoping to find some lever to pry them away from the empire.

"Elatha has ambitious underlings. Some of them..." Edvard shook his head. "Some of them unscrupulous, greedy, and resentful. If they believe Piet's promises, well, then. But they won't believe unless he shows them the gold first."

Belle made a face. It wasn't that she didn't know who he was talking about (she had done her research) but unscrupulous, greedy, and resentful wasn't the foundation she wanted the new order to be built on. Then again... "Maybe he's right, and we're being too idealistic. We'll never get anywhere if we insist everyone has to be perfectly pure of heart."

"He's right in that any plan we make will need to account for the legions. His little ventures, as long as we keep an eye on them, serve as tests of character and give us better information to work from."

"Is that why you keep him around? He has his own network. How much of an eye can you keep on him?" Belle had only met a few of Piet's followers, but he seemed to run a gang of holy beggars who traveled all over the empire.

"As long as he thinks he has something to gain from our cooperation, he'll share. Not too much, only enough to keep our interest, but it gets us a foot in the door with his people, too." Edvard had initially suggested that Belle should infiltrate their organization, since she was relatively new here and her true loyalties uncertain. She had given it a try, but she had never been good at deceit and let slip her former identity as a princess of Avonlea. She couldn't hide her distaste at the way they seized upon that identity, but Piet wouldn't let it go. Hence his visit this morning. Belle wondered if Edvard's other followers had fared better. Not Hobblefoot, obviously, but the others in the city.

"Well, I'll leave these games to you and Piet." Belle had no wish to get entangled between the players. "I'm going to get some fresh air. Clear my head."

The air had a distinct bite to it, but the sky was clear today and the ground dry. Her walk took her around the burial grounds. The graves no longer unnerved her, and there was nothing to fear from ghosts during the day. The wind was more of a threat, causing her to seek shelter by the cluster of trees that also protected the bee hive. Belle found Mags there, checking on her bees.

Belle greeted the ghoul, trying to overcome her instinctive aversion to the woman's discolored, corpse-like complexion. She knew she had subconsciously and unfairly been avoiding Mags for too long, favoring the company of a fellow bookworm in Irgol. She cast around for an ice-breaker, her gaze landing curiously on the hive. "So do they sleep all winter?"

"No, they're awake, just huddled together for warmth." Mags muttered something to the hive, then turned to face Belle. "As long as they're fed, and aren't plagued by mites, they should be fine. Surprised you didn't already read that in some book."

"Ah, well, not much about bees in the Schlaraffenland archive," said Belle with a smile. "You know how it is."

"Suppose so." Mags nodded. "Lot of oral tradition, trade secrets passed master to apprentice. Though the empire's trying to change that and all, putting everything down, black on white and bound up for everyone to know."

"That's good, though, isn't it? More people knowing things means more ideas, more solutions for problems," said Belle. "Speaking of which, I'm told you're the one to go to for discussing magical theory..."

"Maybe. Got something on your mind?" Mags eyed her speculatively.

Belle nodded. She sat down carefully on the edge of the wooden memorial bench set under the trees, bare-branched now but providing a cool green canopy in summer. Before Hobblefoot's comment, Belle had taken Mags for an ordinary hedge witch, practical but limited. She supplied Stillehau Temple with the enchanted incense sticks to ward off ghosts and conducted the rituals for the dead that were sent to these burial grounds. For Mags (and others who shared her faith) the consumption of human corpses was not a matter of randomly digging up graves — Belle had learned that much by now — but a kind of sacred duty, easing the passage of dead souls through the afterlife. Meat was meat, but also something akin to a prayer or a spell.

"Well?" Instead of joining her on the bench, Mags leaned against a tree trunk and toyed with her long-handled shovel. There were runes etched into the wood that Belle hadn't noticed before, and she wondered what they meant.

"Runes on wood," Belle murmured, half to herself. Then she cleared her throat and said, "It's about the Archons. How they're made, how they're controlled, how they do what they do. Whether we could shift their allegiance away from the Dark Lord."

"It's a little bit of this, a little bit of that," Mags began, not very helpfully. Then she elaborated, "Each one is made from an enchanted tree. Think about it, that's a whole tree, and a lot of magic. Now, the enchanted trees are descended from the ones that grow in the Wood Beyond. Heard of that, have you?"

Belle had, but asked Mags to explain it anyway, wanting to check her sources against each other.

"Those trees don't grow from seeds, or to say, the seed is that seed of true love that springs up between two souls, and the tree that grows is the physical embodiment of the magic of true love, which is the most powerful magic there is short of the last dark," said Mags.

Belle nodded. "Yes, I've read a little about that."

"Right, then, the enchanted tree is a tree spawned from true love, but just like a reflection being not so bright as the source, a critter made from enchanted wood's not as powerful as its grandaddy in the Wood Beyond. Still damn strong, though. Strong enough to carry the Dark One's magic without going on some crazy murder rampage."

"But true love, that's light magic, isn't it?" Belle was puzzled about how creatures made from the power of true love could end up serving the Dark Empire. "How can it be compatible with the Dark One's magic?"

"Well, it's not in the Wood anymore, is it? It's out here getting smudged by filth like the rest of us," said Mags. She twirled the handle of the shovel between her hands, showing how the wood had been stained dark by use. "Even fairy magic, which was used to animate the enchanted wood, has its shadows. Ever heard of dark fairy dust?"

"It's even harder to get than normal fairy dust," replied Belle. She had heard rumors that it was traded for high prices on the black market. "Supposedly it can turn people into slugs or insects or whatever..."

"Usually because the person using it is thinking 'small and squishy' when they throw it at someone." Mags waggled a finger at her. "But basically it has the power to change things. So yeah, you could change the Archons. Question is, change them to what? Your pet golems?"

Belle shook her head. "No, no. I don't want to take away their free will."

"They don't got any," Mags pointed out. "No thoughts in their wooden heads except what the Dark Lord put there."

"Well, can't we turn them human, human enough so that we could convince them to help us?"

Mags pursed her lips. "Well... you could do that. But..."

"But what?"

"Why human? Seems to me you got plenty of humans already. Say some miracle happens, and you really have the chance to do whatever," Mags said slowly, thinking it over. "I mean, you could just as well turn them into bees. What's wrong with bees, eh?"

"Why in heaven's name would I turn them into bees?!" Belle regretted her outburst as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She glanced hastily at the hive, muttering an apology and hoping the bees didn't take offense. "Bees are lovely! Nothing wrong with bees. But like you said, we have plenty of bees already."

Mags rolled her eyes. "Right, right. Just don't be narrow-minded about it, is all I'm saying."

"Right," echoed Belle faintly. "I'll think about it some more."

"Well, you have a good think." Mags swung the shovel to balance over her shoulder. "I got work to do." She saluted vaguely and stomped off.

Belle watched her go, still thinking. The next day, she sought Mags out again, this time getting more detailed explanations of how the magic worked. As she had suspected, the shaft of the ghoul's shovel was indeed enchanted wood. The runes on it was to do with bridging the spirit and material worlds.

She also learned more about bees. According to Mags, all the bees in a hive were closely related, sisters born of a single queen. No wonder they were so hard-working and selfless: it was for their family. Human families could envy their devotion. Belle had to admit that Mags had a point. Why not bees? Maybe not literally, but socially — what if the Archons could take the empire as their hive, as their family? Not that she wanted to turn all the citizens into bees, not after all their struggles for freedom and the right to control their own fates. But the Archons were magical constructs. Whether they woke to be a hundred individual creatures or a single mind inhabiting a hundred bodies was a choice still to be made.

She went back to the archives to see if anyone else had made any proposals along those lines.

"It's an interesting thought." Irgol, caught up in Belle's enthusiasm, was helping her search through the stacks. "There are parables regarding ants in the teachings of the Eastern Church. And there are records of people being transformed into insects. Hmm, let's see..."

Reading the records, Belle was surprised that some of the cases involved fairies doing the transforming. "Huh, I would have thought that went against their principles."

Irgol scoffed. "When the fairies do it, it's a lesson, all for the good of the victim, ah, penitent on the wrong end of their wand."

"I don't suppose we have any fairy wands?" Belle raised her eyebrows at Irgol. The Archons were impervious to most mortal weapons, but had anyone tried using a fairy wand on them?

Irgol shook her head. "Even if we did, each wand is only good for one shot before it needs to be recharged."

"Let me guess, with fairy dust."

"For that kind of spell, dark fairy dust," corrected Irgol. "The fairies don't like to admit to it, but they have a hoard of it in their secret vaults."

"If it's secret, how do you know?" Belle gave her a skeptical look.

"When you get to my age, you get a feeling for these things. All the little traces they leave behind, well, it adds up." Irgol tapped her nose. Belle wasn't sure how old she was — "older than dirt" was all she would say — but ogres had a longer natural lifespan than humans. From her wrinkled face, hunched, shrunken posture, and thin wisps of colorless hair, Belle guessed her to be over two hundred years old. She had left her family behind decades ago to become Schlaraffenland's archivist.

Belle sighed. "Suppose we wanted to get our hands on a large supply of dark fairy dust. How would we go about it?"

"Wouldn't be easy. It comes from the Dark Realm, and no one's been to the Dark Realm in centuries. What's in circulation now comes from an ever-dwindling stash originally stolen from the fairies." Irgol scribbled down some references on a paper and handed it to Belle. "Here, see for yourself."

"Oh." Belle looked down at the list and sighed again. "Right, thanks."

For the next few days her thoughts were full of bees, enchanted wood, transformation and binding spells, fairy dust (dark or light), and the nature of family ties. Irgol dug up an old scroll to show her — a painting and a poem.

"Look at this. 'The Blue Star', that's the blue fairy." Irgol pointed at the faded watercolor images. Belle recognized the style and the language of the eastern empire on the far side of the Infinite Forest. "It depicts the defeat of an ancient demon."

"So she gets around," said Belle. She leaned forward, puzzling out the poem. The last two lines caught her attention. "'A waved wand, dark world imprisoned.' Does it mean the Dark Realm?"

Irgol nodded. "Precisely. And there is, or was, a wand that she used to access that realm." Her finger moved to point at the signature stamped in red under the poem. "The name of the poet is recorded in history. He died three hundred and fifty years ago."

Belle let out her breath. "So sometime after that, either the fairies lost the wand or they stopped using it for some reason."

"Good luck prying any answers out of them."

Belle looked at her curiously. "You've tried before?"

Irgol rolled her eyes. "According to the blue menace, my kind are abominations that have no place in this realm. You can imagine how that conversation went."

Belle bit her lip. She had never met Blue, but her family had always held the fairies in high regard. Maybe a little of that regard might go the other way? "I suppose it won't do any good wishing upon a star."

"Not within the borders of the empire," Irgol agreed.

Belle sighed. "I'll see what else I can find about this wand."

She considered asking Piet, who seemed to have Blue's favor, but decided it wasn't worth it except as a last resort. She suspected his help would come with too many strings attached. Her doubts didn't keep him from courting her allegiance. She ducked him as best she could by keeping odd hours and hiding in the archives.

The delivery of Edvard's corpse to the gates of Stillehau shocked her out of her research-obsessed fog. It shocked all of them. When Belle heard the news, the body had already been taken to the underground morgue, the domain of Tomas "Fat Tom" Kessler. The ghoul was shorter than his cousin Mags, but heavily muscled under the fat, as he demonstrated by easily shifting Edvard to the stone table in the morgue. The rectangular slab of Yrktheran frost marble would keep the corpse magically preserved.

For someone who had died under questionable circumstances—

"You'll be doing an autopsy, won't you?" demanded Irgol. A non-citizen, a branded rebel, was not the priority for the regular city watch, but Fat Tom was the coroner attached to the Seventh Precint (known in Sweetport as the 'outlander squad') would push for the questions to be asked.

"Hai, unless you want to take a turn, Archivist?" Fat Tom didn't wait for an answer. He bowed his head to the corpse, putting his hands together and muttering a prayer to the dead under his breath.

"An autopsy? I thought they said he drowned?" Belle's stomach turned at the thought of seeing Edvard cut open in front of her. You don't have to watch, she told herself, but what kind of coward turned her face away from the truth? She owed him that much as a friend.

"They fished him out of the canal this morning," said Fat Tom. And indeed, water had soaked through the sheet wrapping him. "Question is, how he ended up there, was he dead or alive when he hit the water, and so on."

"Oh," Belle whispered. "Did... did anyone see him? He wasn't in the temple last night?"

"He met with Piet and two of his ruffians at the Singing Poppy," Fat Tom told them. "The watch took them in. They're being held at the Seventh Precinct for now."

Belle braced herself as Fat Tom lifted away the covering sheet. Then he paused, frowning, his arm blocking her view. She held her breath. Maybe it isn't Edvard? She felt a moment of hope, but it was immediately extinguished by Irgol's next words.

"That's him, the poor boy."

"Not many with the traitor's penny," said Fat Tom. His arm finally lowered enough for Belle to see the pale, lifeless face. "But this is strange." He indicated the thin black lines emanating from the tattoo, as if the ink had run into Edvard's veins.

"Dark Lord's magic," Mags put in. "Always a bit strange, him and Edvard both."

Fat Tom shot his cousin a sharp look, then continued his examination of the corpse.

"No, but all those nights haunting the ghosts, who knows what magic crawled into him, flesh or soul?" Mags shrugged.

"This wasn't magic. Skull's cracked in the back." He started stripping off the sodden clothes. "Ah! Mags, look at this. This stinks of sorcery."

Belle and Irgol kept a more respectful distance than the ghouls, but they were close enough to see that the black lines extended down Edvard's body, proliferating into a tangle that looked like... writing? Belle stared in shock. "What is that?"

"It's no spell I've heard of," muttered Mags, shaking her head. Her lips moved as she studied the lines. "Names. I think these are names."

"I don't understand," whispered Belle. She glanced at Irgol.

"A spell cast on him, or a spell cast by him," said Irgol. "Can you tell which, Mags?"

Mags shook her head again. "Ask me again after Tom's done."

She moved deeper into the cellar, then returned pushing a wooden trolley containing an assortment of basins, jars, vials, and tools. Both ghouls put on gloves. Mags lit another lamp, hanging it on a hook on a chain over the slab while Fat Tom prepared to cut open the body.

Feeling sick at the sight of a person being reduced to a piece of meat, Belle finally had to turn away.

Irgol took her by the arm and gently led her back upstairs. "You don't have to watch. Those two forget sometimes, not everyone is used to what they do."

Belle breathed carefully, glad when they were back outside. However cold the air, at least it was away from the heavy stench of blood and death. "What are they doing? All those jars and bottles. Taking samples?"

Irgol nodded. She joined Belle in sitting down on the front steps of the temple. "Mags will test for poisons, drugs, alcohol, and so on."

"I understand." Belle closed her eyes for a long moment. It really was too cold to be sitting here. She gathered her willpower and lurched to her feet with a hiss. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

What was new and shocking to Belle was, while still sad, not unfamiliar to Irgol. The archivist directed Belle as they proceeded to hang the white death banners and seal off Edvard's office until his will could be formally read and executed. Normally, the dead were buried after three nights, which was how long it took for the binding between flesh and spirit to be fully severed. At that time, the dead renounced all claims of ownership in the living world. For someone who died under suspicious circumstances, everything was delayed.

"Now that Fat Tom's raised the question, nothing can be settled until the Archon closes the case," explained Irgol. "Tonight is the first night of the vigil. Maybe something will be revealed."

It was necromancy she was talking about, Belle thought uneasily. More of the dark arts forbidden by the Avonlean Church. But she was not sorry to have seen her mother one last time. Her hand went instinctively to her sleeve where she had her mother's book tucked away. Edvard, who had no blood kin left alive, would be attended by his friends and colleagues, those who were here.

The word had spread through the city. Many of Piet's followers joined them for the vigil, but the person Belle was hoping for didn't show.

"No one knows where he is," Irgol said when Belle asked. "A grim welcome for him when he comes back. Edvard was like a son to Hobblefoot, in his heart if not in his mouth."

Sunset came early in the winter. Those who mourned him gathered in the main hall of the temple. Edvard's body was laid out on the slab of frost marble moved upstairs for the occasion. He was covered with a clean linen sheet, presenting an illusion of peaceful slumber. A brass incense pot stood on three legs before the slab. One by one, the mourners paid their respects, lighting incense provided by Mags, bowing and placing a burning stick in the pot. This was not the usual incense they used to ward off ghosts.

This was the mixture called Tranquil Water Mirroring the Soul, enchanted for peace and clarity for both living and dead. Belle breathed in the strange, sweet scent, letting it wash over her. Had Edvard been murdered? Or was it some ill fate that struck him down? What was the meaning of the spell scrawled across his skin? Taking up the far edge of a bench next to the wall, Belle stared blindly at the others, listening without comprehension to murmured condolences and shared anecdotes. If Edvard had had enemies, there was no sign of it now. With death, the petty complaints one always had about anyone took on a tint of fondness. Even his childhood rival, the sole surviving fellow apprentice from their long-defunct guild, claimed him now as a friend.

Belle's throat felt too tight and she had no heart to reminisce aloud. She remembered that he had been an orphan, picked out of the gutter by his master only to be dragged into a war that left him more alone. But he had found a place at Stillehau Temple, found comrades and a community, and a future worth living for in Schlaraffenland. How had it come to this, his frozen corpse on a stone table? She sat in silence with her thoughts, waiting for answers.

Night fell.

The hour of ghosts was upon them.