The Jailers. Hot as the daylight only moments ago had been, Serib and Gadail met shivering the cold twilight that had settled around them.

  “Did you gather those?” Serib motioned to a bundle of dry sticks and branches near her feet, arranged fit for a campfire.

  “Two dear friends did.” Gadail answered and with purpose placed one of his totem-hammers among the twigs. “Where are they hiding…” he quizzed himself.

  ∞

  Slow and small was the heat of his making as The Windlord spoke a word and another and from his hammer higher flames had breath and space, as from the nest of twigs a fire was sparked and shadows cast from its ancient gravity. Defensively Serib held her totem-staff, as the fire revealed two souls standing nearby:

  “Who is there?” she stood into a battle stance of Gadail’s teachings, her master calm against the same dark:

  “Will you two come out of your theatrics? You’re frightening her!”

  “Had to make sure.” A Shadow stepped out from Nature’s shadows towards the flame: “Serib-Minim-Syrib one letter, all the small-difference.”

  She was masked and cloaked, quick to kneel by Serib’s side and show she meant no harm. One sword at her hip and the other - a shorter blade - across her back. A second Shadow was sitting by Gadail’s side in a shirt too thin for twilight. The empty sleeve of his shirt reached out as though an arm was there and yet no arm could the old master see as his hand met another's in that steppe-land night:

  “’Ello. Woid. Cheers for keeping her upright.” He introduced himself through chattering teeth.

  “The Prince of Once-ago here with old me?” Gadail marvelled. “If only we had longer for all the questions I have!”

  “I don’t think we’re going anywhere for a while. Ask away and tea while you’re at it.”

  ∞

  The woman kneeling by Serib’s side removed her mask with her bony prosthetic arm. Hidden by mask and cloak had been her eyes, an Indigo dark against the fiery sunset skies, her eyes a halo strange a loop in Time, in Timelessness weirder-than to explain. Under her hood, her own hair rolled and twisted into locks much like Serib’s, being no longer bunched under wigs and other disguises.

  “Shay.” Serib dropped her staff and grabbed her older sister into a hug.

  Though Ehl’yiteth was home, Shay’s cold arms leathered or prosthetic were a deeper kindness. Separated by old, archaic custom since both sisters were far younger, an adventure between, and other forces long keeping them apart.

  “You haven’t lost your strength…” Shay’s voice strained, crushed by Serib’s excitement.

  ∞

  Meanwhile Woid and Gadail discussed things of Before-passed-by that ‘never will again’, The Once-Prince being far from his own age, there when Falsehood fell if half the tales are true.

  “I like your stick.” Woid interrupted the sisters’ embrace. “I bet you can’t hit me with it.”

  “It’s almost night!” Serib huffed and Shay stepped back to set her mask and hood. “You can hide anywhere.”

  Serib blinked and there he was closer to her, laughing, reaching out to shake her hand with his invisible arm.

  “How’ve you been keeping? Anyone giving you trouble? Just say the word.” With another blink of her eyes Woid held his dagger in his back-hand style, sheathing it gone faster than it had appeared.

  She swatted his unseen hand away and held him too. The scent of a bakery on him.

  “The other one has been giving us trouble…” Serib stated blankly, direly, muffled by his shirt. “…Lady Fate.”

  ∞

  Shay stepped in, her mask a frightening visage in the fireside shadows: “I’ve got Lay’d Payn where I need her, and it’s Lady Fate we can’t get to. I know I’m out there somewhen, keeping her away. Just needed to see for myself if you were alright.”

  “This device you slipped to me, it has stopped working.” Gadail leaned over to hand something small to Shay. “The Timelessness, I suppose.”

  Shay nodded and disassembled the device into smaller parts. Its insides were dripping with ink and completely rusted. Woid stretched his neck:

  “We’ve some business in Haven-upon-Arruikikn and you were on our way. Is that near here? Or Kiknsyde? All this Nature looks the same to me.”

  “Haven-upon-Arruikikn, how long since I have heard it named so? You are a pleasure, Once-prince! Blasphemous as I would have expected. ‘All looks the same’ he says!” Gadail got some hot water going over the fire in a pot of his quick making. “Do you three care for any tea? Let us sit while we can. What will rushing through Timelessness do?”

  From her harness Shay added an ingredient to the tea leaves Gadail prepared so nerves could easier surrender into calm. An aromatic spice, helping already hot water warm the night air.

  ∞

  Tea was had by all and in that quaint campfire-light Serib better remembered her adventure with Shay and Woid. Through that looping maze of factories and observatories, shops, a museum and a manor out in space all removed from any sense or clear place, ending with the three of them small on Lay’d Payn’s desk or table, and Serib walked here into her own story, still devout to Payn. From Shay she learned by the fire that her older sister had turned traitorous to Lay’d Payn, and had become her new jailor:

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Gargarensyr thinks he keeps Lay’d Payn outsmarted by-why fussing over his scrolls and checking in on her cell. He can keep the title of jailor. We might just need him.”

  ∞

  Twilight deepened no closer to Night nor retreated back into Day’s arms. Now Serib understood or remembered further - that all the journey through ‘Shadows of Amneshay’ was a trance of her spirit apart from her body:

  “We remember your hair much shorter on one half of your head… maybe even shaved.” Shay explained, and Gadail added:

  “Syrib prefers her hair that way.” He blew and sipped.

  “So are these Syrib’s memories or mine?”

  “You must try to not see The Spring-Sworn and yourself as separate; that’s the old fear in us all.”

  ∞

  “We could use your help, I suppose. Maybe we’ll be fine.” Woid yawned over his steaming cup.

  “We’ll have to be fine - the less you know for now the better.” Shay told Serib. “So you can focus on yourself. On who you are in all this. And you-new can come to us if that is your choice.”

  Shay kept her own hopes to herself as to not steer nor pull her younger sister. Too much of that had been done already by her parents, by Chance cursing her with the gift of shamanism, by Lady Fate’s designs and Payn’s narrate.

  ∞

  The firelight reminded Serib of Argus sitting by a fireplace. Dripping with sweat and rain. His helm broken and body swollen from Gargarensyr’s blows. She sipped her tea quietly until her sharp, sudden tears subsided before they could swell.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, in that moment not wanting to know less, not wanting to turn away.

  “Gargarensyr’s a bit cross.” Woid slurped his tea finished, the formed clay apparently floating by itself until he set his cup aside. “Lovely. A lot cross after Ersecutor protected you and Shay stole his job. Panzjrah’s working with him now. I’m sure a thunderstorm would finish them off… split the ground between their legs so they can share a grave together. That sort of thing.” He winked at Serib, referring to her newfound staff.

  ∞

  “I see - though wouldn’t that mean you’re all on the same side? If you turned on Lady Payn.”

  “Not sure. Can’t have two jailors keeping her locked up, can you?”

  Shay reiterated: “He doesn’t know I stole his job - and it suits our purposes for now if he thinks he’s in control. We’ll need him on side before all this is over.”

  ∞

  “Don’t you mean we, by the way?” Woid raised an eyebrow. “We’re all on the same side?”

  “Dear Tusker here is still torn, Once-Prince.” Master Gadail gently inhaled the vapour of his tea and smiled.

  “Well, I want whatever these two want.” Woid shrugged. “I’ll be there.”

  Shay all the while was quiet, pensive behind her mask. Her tea untouched. In any other scene with any other three souls this surely would mean the tea had been poisoned and she was waiting quietly for its effects to take hold, but a different grief sat in her heart. Her mother’s grief, passed on to the daughters; the grief that life is suffering, the grief had made both daughters susceptible to Lay’d Payn’s fictions, to Lady Fate’s fabrications, to the dreams of both and either.

  ∞

  All Shay had done was to free her sister from Lay’d Payn, that Serib would not need to serve as she had, as both still were serving, out there in Frac’tralien, Amneshay or Syrib their names.

  And all she saw by the campfire flickering was that Serib did not know what to do with her freedom, the sort of fear and grief their mother had; what does one do with the future and all it could be?

  It is in these moments when the older watching the younger have only faith left to comfort them; faith that they have done all they can and youth will find its way.

  ∞

  “Old Limper was telling us you’ve got yourself hexed. Not a clue what it means - but it sounds rubbish.”

  “It feels bruised.” Serib held her wrists, branded by shapes black or white.

  She wanted to test her power in some way and see how the hex was hindrance, then she had not the heart nor will to try in so quiet a moment fireside, hoping she never had to. That all would resolve itself, this fireside forever.

  “So, you’re from here?” Woid asked Serib, his eyes gawping unsure at the greater stars, those that have light enough to shine through Twilight’s veil. “It’s nice; not my kind of thing.”

  As she answered, the young shaman moved closer to her older sister and shoulder to shoulder they sat:

  “I’m not from here, but it’s where I’ve grown up.”

  Gadail was about to drink but listened closely as Woid answered:

  “Where you’re from means nothing.” The Once-Prince smirked. “I’m from Falsehood, and I carry none of that unmerry nonsense with me.”

  “You carry other nonsense instead.” Serib grinned.

  “Yeah, she’s sat next to you.”

  Woid’s joke got them all smiling.

  ∞

  There was more pouring and sipping to fill the solitude between thoughts under those stars which are themselves the progenitors of the same. Woid coughed having tried some farbark having never before. After, he and Gadail returned to their sating of the old master’s curiosity, to learn from The Once-Prince details from Falsehood that few in those moments Once-Ago thought worthy of committing to the eternity of paper or methods more digitised now very much lost in Timelessness. How many libraries, records and diaries gone to fires and sieges or Time's bloody unravelling, details that help avoid such mistakes from occurring again, when measured and patterned by Court-and-Truthdom proper. Or so hope has always been. Though not all their words had such weight; other questions were for Gadail’s comfort alone. What was eaten upon waking or music loudest or phrases untranslatable; what of these things that make a world? When Time still was how was that Time best passed? So it is, when Historians with ghosts may speak.

  ∞

  Even Woid’s hard manner noticed something special about Gada’il; the greater stars of Twilight knew him well and so the darkness knew him, the darkness through which Woid could step at will.

  ∞

  Sitting in quiet safety with her sister, Serib noticed flowers started going to sleep with the sun’s depart, closing their petals having seen only starlight for a while, as Nature always knows without knowing. Seeing flowers sleep, she remembered the throne of craters, of petals each.

  “I’m sorry.” Serib whispered to Shay, not in an attempt to keep it from other’s ears; the words did not come easily.

  Shay turned her hooded head, her masked face.

  “I feel that some of this is my fault.”

  “You’re young - talented - with work you can be anything. That’s what Lay’d Payn is interested in. You can’t be blamed-shamed for any of that.”

  Shay reached out to hold Serib’s hand, placing her now cold tea aside, her stammer seldom:

  “If you must destroy everything to rebuild it all-tall, or if you find something worth salvaging in what Reality already has, you are my sister. We are the survivors of our mother. I did not protest you going with Gadail when we were younger… I saw in his eyes... and knew beyond reason he would love you and guide you-through. Mother always suffocated you with her love. This could be my fault, if anything - when she was poisoned and in need of a cure I went with father in search. I was your age or thereabout. Better if she had died, then, if we had returned without.”

  The depth of what Shay was claiming swallowed Serib. Her staff was by her side and for all her shamanic senses none had any merit or place as Shay spoke of far darker matters:

  “You must be too young to realise, but I see what she has done to us both. I cannot blame her, what could she have known between the ages? Though I cannot love her for her ignorance. I think you get this from me… this strong weakness of ours-powers. Holding on to the right-wrong things. As I get it from her.”

  “You speak of her as though… what happened? Why is she so present to you? Have they not surely passed away since I was gone? When I met you in Payn’s Imirka…”

  “I was mourning. The variations overlapping. In Timelessness some of the dead are not dead. Mother is out there, and her name is Grief, haunting what should be left alone. Death was kindness to her in Time; restless with Worry in Timelessness. Leave that to us, for now. Get through your own journey, your own book of Payn… and if that takes you away then so be it. Let it be your choice.”