The Silenced Tale, стр. 107

“I am not the coward! Why do you not show yourself?” I shout back. “Why sneak around us like this?”

Kintyre turns to blink oafishly at me. “Forsyth,” he says. “The Viceroy always sneaks. You know this.”

“He does?” I ask, staring goggle-eyed at my brother, floored by his insight. I shouldn’t be. I keep forgetting that my brother isn’t actually as much of a fool as I have led myself to believe.

“Yes,” Bevel chimes in. “He never steps in himself until he’s certain the day is his.”

“No, that’s not right,” Pip says, face screwing up in confusion. “The first time I was there, he came down the stairs into the Rookery. He showed himself. He fought Forsyth and I in person.”

“Then he only did so because he was certain he had already won,” Kintyre explains. “He’ll never show himself when he thinks there’s a chance he might lose. He waits. He sends others.”

Pip looks down at Ahbni, still unconscious, but breathing.

“Okay,” Pip says, more to herself than to us. “Okay, braniac. You’re the smarty-pants here. Figure it out. Enemy’s weakness revealed. What do we do with it.” She chews on her thumbnail for a moment, nervous, eyes flicking back and forth as she stares at nothing, lost in her own head, in her own internal, mental Excel. Then, suddenly, with a jolt and a gasp, she looks up, and straight into my eyes.

Again, that violet flare passes from the rim of her iris to the pupil, like arcing lightning.

“The Stations!” Pip hisses. “We’re at Station Six, the crisis point and the squeeze on the protagonists. There are seven in an Elgar Reed quest. The Viceroy won’t reveal himself right now, because he hasn’t won yet. We’re not at the end of his game. We’re not at the end of the . . . we’re not at the apex of the plot, the climax.” Pip lays Ahbni’s head against her thigh, and holds her hand slanted upwards in demonstration. “We’re only here.” She points to her knuckles. “He’ll come out here.” She points to the tips of her fingers. “But if we wait that long, we fall into his trap. Into the predictability.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Bevel hisses, and I can see his own mind racing to catch up with her. “We always win in the end.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t a story anymore. And the author is dead,” Pip says softly. “Does this make us free of authorial intent? The Viceroy can die now, because he was always meant to live? Can I finally escape what it means to be a woman in Hain? Is . . . the stasis cracked? Will what worked before work still? Can we rely on Kintyre winning the day because he always wins the day?”

“What do you mean?”

“Forsyth Turn is one of the good guys,” Pip says. “In the books, he has the capacity, the means, the motivation, the intelligence to go dark, but he never does. Why? Because the author wanted him to be a good guy. And yet, the moment Elgar . . . you went for Ahbni like a madman.”

“That’s not the same,” I protest.

“But it’s different enough. The narrative has changed. It’s fractured. You win, but he gets away. Every time. But this isn’t like the other stories,” Pip cautions.

“Isn’t it?” I ask, catching on to where her thinking is leading her. “Are we not still characters in a book? Are we not still beholden to how we were Written?”

“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have attacked . . .” Pip begins, looking up into my face, and swallowing hard on the rest of her sentence at what she sees there.

“Would I not have, bao bei?” I ask softly. “I am a kind man, but I am also a just one.”

“I’m just saying that we can’t rely on this going our way this time,” Pip says with a sour, pinched look on her face, which means my comment will not go unremarked upon or un-discussed later. “This is the third book in the trilogy. We might defeat the Viceroy, yes, but not without someone else dying. Not without one of the heroes falling, to make the narrative more poignant. And you’d do that, wouldn’t you, Elgar?” She looks over at Elgar’s remains, her own body slumped with misery and grief and exhaustion. “We all have heirs. There’s a protagonist to take up our mantel and avenge us. Wyndam, and Alis, and the Lady Gyre, and Lewko Pointe. There’s a new generation ready to step in. Fucking trilogies.” The violet sparks again.

“So, one of us is going to die?” Kintyre asks.

“If we let the narrative play out?” Pip says. “Maybe.”

“What do we do?”

Pip turns to me, grinning. “We hack it.”

The violet has infused the whole of her iris now, like the green did when she was under the Viceroy’s sway. Whose power is this that shines out of her gaze now? Whose magic? Whose intent?

And just like that, I know. Yes, of course!

“Pip, yes,” I say, seizing her shoulders. “Elgar passed the series on to you. You are the Writer. You can change how the story goes.”

Pip blinks for a moment, startled, and then her mouth curls into a wicked, fiendish grin devoid of all joy.

“We get him now,” Pip snarls. “Get him to come out. Get him to break his pattern. Get him to fight for himself. And then we kill the motherfucker.”

“How?” Bevel asks.

“Threes!” Pip says. “Forsyth, it’s a trilogy! The third book!”

“Ah!” I say, understanding what she’s aiming for. “I see!”

“I don’t,” Kintyre grumbles. “What are you on about?”

Pip grins, but it is a knife slice of clever smugness. “His name.”

“Varnet, son of Edvane,” I call into the open air, lacing my command with Words of Compulsion, Words of Obedience, the kind of dark and dangerous Words that only Shadow Hands know. Pip grips my hand, gives my Words power and possibility, sends them into the air with a faint purplish