The Silenced Tale, стр. 111
No, Pip is relaxed, loose-limbed, and grinning.
The Viceroy lands on the concrete with an audible thunk, his short hair whipping around his head and a grimace on his face. He shakes his hands out, flexing his fingers, cracking his knuckles, and glares at Pip from under his eyebrows.
“Yield!” he commands, and Pip actually snorts at him.
“You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Pip says with a malicious grin. “Not quite the appropriate idiom for this situation, but close. I won’t let you puppeteer me a third time. You see, in this world, with the rules that Elgar wrote into it? Third time really is the charm.”
The Viceroy slings a bolt of magic at Kintyre, desperate and wild-eyed, but Kintyre deflects it with Foesmiter. Bevel, his ray-gun gone, draws his own sword. He is grinning, too.
“You don’t understand, do you?” Pip tries again, for she is my wife, no matter how much magic writhes under her skin, and she will always prefer to talk her way out. “ You see a damsel, you put her in distress, I defy your expectations, and you don’t understand why.”
“It does work!” the Viceroy snarls, but he sounds unsure now.
“You’re stupid,” Pip says, but her tone is almost gentle. “Don’t look at me like that. In the end, you’re still just a character. He never fleshed you out, did he? Gave you just enough will to want, but not enough freedom to evolve.”
“I killed him!” the Viceroy seethes. “I am free from the story!”
“No. The one person who could have given you more, given you what you wanted, set you free, Written you love and a family—you had him fucking murdered.”
The Viceroy’s golden eyes widen, horror creeping in at the edges. “You’re wrong!” he howls. “This . . . this isn’t . . . this wasn’t supposed to . . .” The Viceroy casts around, eyes wild and darting, hands clenched in his hair as the revelation that Pip is no longer his to control makes him stumble and stutter. “This is not how it ends!”
He slings exploding spells around, but before I can do much more than duck them, a lasso of bright golden magic whips over his head and pins his arms to his sides.
“This is exactly how it ends, you unbelievable asshole,” says someone with a faint French accent from behind the Viceroy, and from the doors of the ballroom, the man with the cane leads the magic-wielding cosplayers out onto the floor. Among the gathered are all The Tales of Kintyre Turn cosplayers.
Three Kintyres, two Bevels, a Bootknife, and what appears to be a slew of folk in Turn-russet stand with their weapons drawn and their faces grim alongside the young lad dressed as a Magical Girl. The loop of glittery restraining magic holding the Viceroy captive emanates from the lad’s bright pink plastic wand.
“Ichiro was my friend,” the video game cosplayer with the fire-gun sobs, her face splotchy and swollen.
“You yield, Viceroy,” Bevel—our Bevel—challenges, and a worried murmur ripples through the assembled fans, echoes of the villain’s name on the air. The Bootknife cosplayer looks absolutely disgusted.
“Never,” the Viceroy snarls. “I’ll die first!”
“We can arrange that,” Kintyre says with a sharkish, dimpled grin, and the three Kintyres behind the Viceroy step closer, brandish their props-made-real with echoed “Yeah!”s and fist pumps.
“Not easily!” the Viceroy snarls, and with a flex of his arms, he breaks the loop of glittering gold and throws the lad back hard. The Frenchman dives for the boy, and they tumble to the cement floor together in a wheel of limbs and cane; both sit up unharmed at the end of their spin.
Only one of the Kintyre cosplayers has the gumption to lunge at the Viceroy, and the young man certainly has the muscle to pull off my brother’s physique. He whacks the Viceroy hard on the shoulder, amateurish and, unfortunately, with the flat of his blade. Incensed, the Viceroy turns and with another hot pulse of magic, flings the man across the room to land, groaning, amid a jumble of furniture.
“They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re going to get themselves killed,” Bevel says, and then, roaring to pull the Viceroy’s attention off the fans, attacks.
Steel blades flash, the magic-users call spells, and Bevel and Kintyre bob and weave, dodging friendly and malicious fire alike in order to get at their archnemesis. But the Viceroy is swift, his footing fleet, and where he stays on the ground, he leaves acid burns behind. The fans score some hits—with such overwhelming numbers they must be lucky at least some of the time—but not enough to do any real damage. The Viceroy bleeds from a cut on his cheek and another on his forearm, both wounds defensive, and his jeans are charred on one leg.
“Forsyth, the last Word!”
“Buy me time!” I shout, and yank the Shadow’s Mask from my jerkin. But I do not have the time to don it. The Viceroy, watching me, screeches in fury and throws bolts of magic from his hands, intent on stopping me.
I expect Pip to try to manipulate the magic to give me space. What I do not expect is a literal volley of spells to spring from the ballroom door and surge toward the Viceroy. He throws up a quick shield and dodges just as much as he is able. Stunned, I look toward my benefactors.
The magic-users have gathered together, talking rapidly and chanting. Spells pop around the Viceroy’s head, flashbangs and flares of fire that have him distracted and dazed. The Kintyres and Bevels work to cover the gaps my brother and his trothed leave when they duck and weave around the Viceroy’s vicious magical defense. Some