He heard them through the floor.

Hathora's voice, low and haughty, and then Hjordis's rolling lilt — the tone of being given a task they can't argue with. Something about a signed note. The curfew's one exception for residents of standing. Grocery provisions. Bertha resting. Back by the second bell. The front door opening and slamming.

Tryggve lay back against the pillow and stared at the lilies on the wall. Waiting for the city gates to open. He kept to his script. Travel to Cora, enlist. Drummed a marching melody on Mads's strong collar bones. Thump-farah thump-thump-thump. Five days now playing this part. Previous day had been its own particular entertainment. Mads had been very busy not meeting Hjordis's eyes over the breakfast table. Very busy finding reasons to be in the other rooms. There were plenty to pick from.

Hjordis's eyes had darkened by the hour with something colder than hurt. Said nothing. The nothing had been enormous.

He rolled his thumbs over Mads's lap. Listened to the house settle. Bertha snoring in the servant's room next door.

His feet were bare on the coverlet. Mads's had strange toes. Round Papa toes. The satchel was under the bed and the gates didn't open until the Zyrellian demon was caught and Hjordis and Hathora never mentioned the satchel again and none seemed that much wiser about the guest they harboured.

Everything was in order. Beautiful state of flux. Merely a matter of waiting for his cue. He'd improvise of course. No need for cue cards.

A knock at the door.

He sat up. Ran both hands through Mads's short hair, which still wasn't his hair and probably never would be. Cleared his throat, settling in Mads's deeper register.

"Lady Helmbane," he started, pulled the door open. "In me own defence — the sounds ye may or may not've heard from upstairs the other evenin', I can explain those entirely, it wasnae what it—"

Hathora raised a hand to stop him. A single sparse gesture that didn't require volume. Her face carried a troubled frown, focusing on something past his left ear.

"Bring the bag," she said simply. "Dining room. Now."

She turned and went. Her footsteps on the stairs remained unhurried, certain he'd obey.

Tryggve sat down on the bed, bare feet on the floor, reached beneath the mattress between his legs, found the satchel, but then his arm locked. He added his second hand to the strap and for three full seconds he and his body held a silent argument about which way the pulling should go. The bag slid out an inch, he hauled it back, gritting his teeth now. It slid out two inches.

"Oh, come on," he said through his teeth.

It came out fully. He stood. His legs took one step toward the door and then locked entirely, the rest of him still carrying forward. He got his hand on the door handle — it pushed open and he went with it, straight to his face, producing a raucous "Oof" and a thump across the landing. Bertha snorted in the room next door. He got to his reclaimed feet and hurried downstairs.

The dining room was warmly lit. The biscuit bowl sat full again between them, the good ones. Hathora was already waiting in her tall chair, hands folded on the table in a burgundy dress designed to give you infallible posture and little room to breathe. Tryggve sat, or rather Mads did, put the satchel in his lap. His hands strayed on the strap. Hathora placed two things on the table between them.

A paper crane first. One of Oskar's dusty old creations, its wing a bit bent, Tryggve tracked at once. Then beside it, a letter opener. Silver. Thin. Sharp.

Hathora said nothing. Tryggve said nothing. The letter opener sat between them and the crane sat beside it and the room was deadly quiet.

His left hand moved. Shot across the table towards the small blade before he could stop it, and his other hand came down on his wrist, hard, and the two of them struggled briefly above the tablecloth, Mads's knuckles whitening until the reaching hand retreated.

"Sorry 'bout that." Tryggve grinned, massaging his hand, like that would make it less odd. "What's this about then, Lady Helmbane?"

Hathora just kept watching him coldly like he was a moderately interesting clock. Then she chuckled. Looked down at the crane.

"Make it come alive," she said pleasantly, "or I'll report you to the Magistracy, Changeling."

Tryggve's stomach dropped. Would it hold anything but cake crumbs he might've gagged.

Busted.

He sat very still. His hands kneading the satchel strap. His eyes on his hands. Waiting for disaster to happen. Again. Always ending with disaster. The pulse thumping hard in his throat.

"Please." The words came out before he really chose it. He wasn't sure which part of him said it. Both perhaps. Neither. "Please don't."

He looked up. Spoke in his regular softer cadence.

"Don't make me do it," he said. "Don't make me kill you too."

Hathora considered this. Her cool expression did not change. Her hands, folded on the table, did not move.

"Not the first death threat I've lived through, honey." Her dark Helmbane eyes shifted from the crane to Mads's face. "If you are who I suspect. Oskar's blond youth, the one he wrote about with rather too much feeling, make the paper move. If not." A small movement of her shoulder. "Well. Let fate choose this day as my last."

He stared at the crane.

The letter opener sat in his peripheral vision and that other part of him fixed on it, fixed hard, hungrily.

Please, just let him do the right thing. No more reckless murderers. No more killing.

He leaned forward, wanting to show her, who he truly was, that it was all a terrible misunderstanding, hands still locked tight around the satchel, and then like a hand unclenching, it let go.

With too much momentum, he snatched the crane, elbow hitting the biscuit bowl making it wobble. Steadied the table with his other hand. Hathora's eyebrows raised at the sudden performance.

"Splendid," he whispered, turned the cold paper over in his hand, adjusted the broken wing with his thumb. Inhaled slowly, then blew across it gently, barely a current. The crane lifted from his palm, circled the dining room in slow rotations, white against the dark wood panelling, looking for somewhere to go.

Hathora breathed out. A long held breath, the first sign that gave anything away. She watched the crane complete its circuit, then looked back at him, nodding at the satchel in his lap.

"Does it contain proof of your identity, Beardaughter?"

"It does." Tryggve watched the crane drift towards the window, seeking light. "Amongst other, less graceful evidence." He made a face at the middle distance, then reached into the biscuit bowl. He deserved a biscuit, holding back the demon this long. He turned it, dropped crumbs on the tablecloth. He looked at Hathora. "Fye." A small laugh. "Am I reading this correctly, or can it be that you're on my side?"

"I am a Helmbane." Her voice was level. "And you, Beardaughter, are my brother's illegitimate apprentice." A short pause where she straightened. "His name shall not be sullied by the deeds of a Zyrellian demon."

There it was. Parts of the truth laid bare, and by Hjordis's aunt of all people.

He turned his head, eyes glancing back at the old woman, put the biscuit in his mouth, chewed slowly.

The crane continued its circuit above them, flying to check another window.

"Yes," he said, smiling. "Of course." Another pause. "His apprentice." He chuckled. Ate the rest of the biscuit. Apprentice.

Any second now, they'd burst in. Attempt their arrest, he'd grab the letter opener and the dining room would be re-decorated in an awful scheme of blue and red. Fine biscuits ruined.

Nothing happened. A grandfather clock somewhere kept ticking gently. Hathora smoothed her sleeve.

"I will tell Hjordis I examined the bag and delivered it to Crowley. She'll accept that." The crane drifted past between them without comment. "She'll figure out the truth regardless. Before she does, you need to leave." She stood, hands flat on the table. "Preferably now, while she's away."

He reached for the satchel strap. Got it over his shoulders. Stood. The dining room swayed a bit, like he was drunk.

He saw his chance, his mouth opened. But the plea he was about to form stopped in Mads's throat and stayed there.

Tryggve smiled instead. Mads's full lips pulling too wide.

"I'll leave at once, Lady Helmbane. Most gracious of you." He bowed deeply, stumbling away from the chair with bare feet. "Just let me collect my boots, and the, uh, rest of my dignity, from upstairs."

Hathora nodded, fingers clutching around a bony wrist. "Just leave and don't ever come near Hjordis again." Her voice grew cold.

Tryggve looked back. Swallowed. She'd heard, oh she heard what they did alright. Darted up the stairs.

He collected his boots from the lilies room, hurried them on with tangled laces. Stopped dead on the landing for a second. Then went up the last set of stairs instead of down.

The attic door was ajar. The sunflowers attended the room, patiently and simply decoratively. The window threw its coloured light across the empty coverlet. He went in.

The sword was gone.

Hjordis had taken it with her. To buy groceries. Under curfew. Of course she had.

"Well," he said. He sat down on the chair facing the door. "Go, the old lady said. She didn't say, turn yourself in you murderous bastard." He chuckled, flew out an arm. "Go be free, don't mind the body count, I couldn't care less who dies because I'm just as corrupted as my f—"

He pulled at Mads's short hair. Let out a growl of frustration. Without the sword there was no reason to stay. This had always been the logic: stay near the sword, stay near the possibility, stay near the one edge in the whole kingdom, sharp enough to end him.

His feet moved. He looked at them.

"Don't start."

They settled. Resentfully. He thought of Hjordis. The last awkward days. He looked at the bed. At the coloured light on the wall above it. 'Ach.' He rubbed his face.

He'd listened to her breathe through the floor below the whole night. Sobbing maybe? Could Helmbanes even cry, or did they just get quieter until they broke?

Hjordis would figure it out. She had the sword and he'd be right here. Waiting. He'd never been particularly good at leaving.

—

It had only gone minutes before he heard her on the stairs. Not the loose-footed sound of a lass in red dress coming home with groceries. Each step placed rather than taken. No hesitation on the landing.

He stayed in the chair, palms growing sweaty against Mads's hay-reeking slacks.

There she was, filling the door with the Demon Slayer levelled at his nose and a crumpled woodcut in her left fist. Dark eyes glossy. Sword arm locked.

"Yer not him," she said. "Yer wearing his face."

He opened his mouth. Mads was right there, ready — the performance of him anyway, northern vowels, the earnest furrow.

He looked at the woodcut instead. The crudely printed face stared back. His current face. Rendered with the hurried quality of a wanted notice.

He let Mads go. Felt a bit sad about that.

"Poopsie." His own accent. His actual vowels bleeding through Mads's rougher vocal cords. "You've been busy."

"Yer a murderer," Hjordis grip tightened, both hands readjusted, small feet planted wide.

"Also true!" He stood, spreading both hands. Too fast — the chair scraped back and hit the wall. "In me defence I've been trying to stop for a while now. Hence the sword. Hence the misunderstanding. Hence this catastrophic holiday in your aunt's lovely house." He laughed, high and a bit wrong as usual. "You don't understand how much—"

"Mads." Her voice didn't break, but the grip around the blade turned less steady. "Ye killed Mads. Ye let me— The fruition ritual. With ye."

That landed. He stopped laughing. Hjordis's mouth moved, she looked sick.

"The demon killed Mads." Quieter now. Unsteady at the edges. "I know that's a distinction that means nothing to you right now, and I'm not going to argue with the sword."

Hjordis's face was stone.

"Who are ye." Not a question but a demand.

"Considered dead by most." He was moving without deciding to, two steps left, one right, like the room had become too small, his hands working against each other. "The paperwork agrees. Which is part of the problem actually, the paperwork and the being dead and the—" He stopped. Let out a cackle. Spun around. "The sword. Your father's sword. He named me his heir. I've been looking for it for ten years, Poopsie, a full decade, and I need you simply to—"

"It's mine."

"It was mine first." He ripped his vest open. Buttons flew across the floorboards, skittering into corners. Pulled the linen wide. "Go on then. Mithril blade, proud Helmbane hand, you mean it, look at that face, you want to, don't you? The only combination that would end this. I'm asking you. No, I'm begging you. Do it!"

She looked at his chest. At Mads's face making this offer. Killing him twice.

"No."

He blinked sheepishly. "No?"

"I dinnae trust ye." She lowered the sword to her side. Deliberately. "I'm not yer instrument. Whatever ye are, whatever ye need, find another way."

The floor came off its hinges below them. Hathora, somewhere beneath, delivering a speech about her china at volume. The clanging of armour. Men's rough voices, boots thundering up the steps.

Tryggve looked at the window.

"This is going to look considerably worse than it is," he said and ran. Three strides across the room and he hit the window shoulder-first.

The glass buckled, clung, grabbed at his arms and his face before it gave and then he was through and he had half a second of nothing — sky, the roof's edge, a pigeon going past — then the cobblestone came up at speed.

The impact cracked through him from feet to skull. His legs folded wrong. His shoulders drove into the stone and something in it gave with a wet snap. He lay flat on his back, the grey sky enormous above him, indifferent to his situation, and he breathed the one breath his body allowed him and waited for the inventory.

It began.

He got his hands under him. Stone cold and gritty against his palm. Got to his knees, winced. Got the rest of him upright in jerky increments. His body knitting itself back together, brick by brick.

He straightened somewhat.

The crowd had made a ring around him. A woman with market baskets, two dock workers, a child pointing with both arms, thrilled. He looked up, popped his neck.

Hjordis Helmbane stood in the shattered window, dark hair loose, sword in hand, colourful frame of broken glass. Three floors above him. Her expression hadn't changed. Flat and cold.

He spread his arms. Bowed from the waist, which cost him something spinal.

"Until next time, Poopsie." He found her face and held it. "You have the sword. You have everything you need. I believe in you considerably more than you believe in yourself, which is your problem, not mine."

He turned and walked into the crowd, listing slightly left, his skeleton still conducting its audit.

He didn't look back.