“How does he seem?” Cecil asked, cradling his phone against his ear as he walked down the path, keeping an eye on Ruby’s body language as she kept trundling along, sniffing with lazy interest along the borders of the stone brick, at the edges of the grass. Some days, she wanted to walk on the grass, but today wasn’t one of them – she was more in the mood, apparently, for the familiar stone under her paws.

“Alright,” said Coshel, sounding like he was shrugging. “He and Penllwynog went out to the arena yesterday, and the two of them came back onto the university campus in a pretty good mood. Deep in their cups, like, bruised in places, but cheerful enough. While Penllwynog’s been in his classes today, Sir Valorous has been doing some work for his uncle, took his break for lunch out here with me, helped muck out the horses.”

“With Heinous?”

“Nah, Indistinguishable King, he’s the Necromancy department head.”

“What’s he like?”

“Bit of a freak,” Coshel said casually, and Cecil huffed out a laugh, walking off the path a bit and tugging Ruby gently with him so that she would sniff around some of the bases of some of the insect hotels, at their wooden posts – promptly, she shoved her face right into a big bunch of yellow flowers, then hopped back, sneezing, with yellow pollen all over her face.

Cecil laughed at her, and she gave a low “boof!”, looking up at him reproachfully around her muzzle, and he had to wrestle with her a bit to wipe the powdered yellow mess off her face, off the tip of her nose.

“All necromancers are,” Coshel went on. “Him a bit more than others – always got his face in the grave dirt a bit, you know. Carries the air of a cemetery around him, too, makes my skin tingle.”

“I’ve never been too at home with necromancy myself,” Cecil murmured, remembering being a young man in Myrddin’s bed or sitting back on a chaise or sofa worth a thousand times more the weight of his own skin, feeling the thickness of the spell work on the air, feeling shudders and trembles run through him at the uncanny sights, smells, sounds that came with an animated corpse – the shaky movement of exposed bone, the distant scent of rot and decay, the sound of bone grinding on bone.

The king regent had enjoyed it, Cecil thought, how unnerved he was by the death magic, had been amused by his instinctive fear and disgust.

“He said something about you helping him with his flat?”

“Yeah,” Cecil said. “Apparently it’s a tip, and he just wants someone there while he cleans it out.”

“Penllwynog’s going to the bank with him today.”

“The bank?”

“Look at his accounts. Penllwynog’s financial planner is meeting them.”

“Oh, right,” Cecil said, taking that in. “Come on, Rubes,” he said, nodding his head, and the dog looked at him disapprovingly before reluctantly beginning to climb up the hill with him, the two of them sinking down on a bench rather than settling near the path.

She’d already barked her head off at one other big dog that came a bit too close, some big malamute that, to her owner’s credit, had looked at most politely baffled at the similarly sized big beast barking her head off nearby before entirely disregarding her.

“What, the lad’s in debt?”

The idea would surprise him, if it was the case – Valorous often bought groceries or paid for takeaways, and while he wasn’t a big spender in general, he’d never asked to borrow money from Cecil, would often pay for dinner or drinks, would buy toys or treats for Ruby whenever he saw them. He rarely seemed to buy new clothes, just wore the same shit he’d worn for years, although he occasionally bought thread or fabric to make repairs to his own clothes or to Cecil’s.

“I only caught the tail end of the conversation,” said Coshel, “but from what I could gather, he hasn’t actually looked at the balance in his bank account since the king regent opened it for him when he was thirteen. As a knight of the crown, even retired, he doesn’t pay income tax, so he’s never had to do any paperwork about it.”

Cecil was quiet, his lips pressed loosely together.

“You’d think he was about to go and open a coffin for his uncle, how fucking pale he was, talking about it. Penllwynog seemed a bit concerned about the whole thing – but hey. He can be scared of strange things, can’t he?”

“Yeah,” Cecil said, watching Ruby’s body tense as someone walked up the hill, and she shrank her body slightly behind Cecil’s as the bench shifted with someone else’s weight, peeking around his leg. “Yeah, he can be.”

“Speaking of money, you look at those jobs I sent you?”

“I can’t go back to teaching, Coshel.”

“One position’s in Einsamal, and it’s for college students, seventeen, eighteen.”

“I look like a fucking viking to you?”

“One’s in Virtue.”

“They don’t do DBS checks?”

“They do, but they disregard non-magical crimes, I checked.”

Coshel knuckled the top of Ruby’s head. “I’ll look at them,” he said, and they said their goodbyes to each other before he dropped his phone aside.

“Hello, Mr Hobbes,” said the girl sitting on the other end of the bench – it was the sickly angel girl from the Majoks’ office, who took her sessions after him with Manute. In the wan sunlight of the afternoon, the silver scales on her cheek shone brightly, and when she smiled faintly at him, he almost thought the expression would be enough to make her thin skin tear.

“Hi,” he said quietly. “You’re, um— I never caught your name.”

“Ava.”

“Ava. Out for a walk?”

“My brother and sister are putting together a piece of flat-pack furniture,” she said. “They get rather loud about it, which doesn’t make them more efficient – I decided some fresh air would do be good.”

Cecil laughed, and he followed the girl’s gaze to Ruby, who was nervously sitting beside him, averting her gaze. Ava didn’t look at her too directly, didn’t stare, but Ruby was still uncertain.

“Is she a foster?” Ava asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Cecil said, although really, he knew that wasn’t true. “I don’t think so. She’s a bit old to rehome, really, and I love her a lot – my, uh…”

“Your knight,” Ava supplied, not without humour, and Cecil exhaled, huffing out a breathless, humourless noise.

“He loves her a lot,” Cecil said. “And I do as well.”

“She’s beautiful,” Ava said. “What’s her name?”

“Ruby.”

“Ruby,” Ava said. Without leaning forward, without craning her head over the dog, in fact while looking straight forward, she said warmly, “Hi, Ruby.”

Ruby’s body was stiff and uncertain, but her tail wagged twice on the floor, and she got to her feet in a slow and lumbering fashion.

“My brother has a Great Pyrenees,” she said, and she put her hands flat in her lap so that as Ruby came forward she could come and sniff them, but politely averted her gaze, looking out over the park as Ruby nudged against her dark skirt-clad knees, then snuffled against her hands.

They, too, had silver white scales over their backs, catching the light, and her fingernails were a dark, thick silver, weren’t the pale pink one would expect from the rest of her skin.

“What do you think she’s crossed with? Not a Newfie, nor a Bernese.”

“I was thinking a Leonberger, before.”

“I could see that,” Ava said softly, and she didn’t move her hands too fast, but didn’t move them too slow, either. When she turned her hands palm up and nudged them forward, Ruby initially skittered back, looking up at her distrustfully around her muzzle, but then she nudged her head into Ava’s palm and wagged her tail, painting quietly, as Ava scratched underneath her ear. “Look at the shape of her tail, though, and I’d say she’s on the big side – some Anatolian Shepherd, maybe, or maybe just a Pyrenean Mastiff, although her head isn’t quite round enough.”

“You know a lot about dog breeds,” Cecil said, and Ava nodded. She was smiling as she rubbed at each of Ruby’s cheeks, rubbing them back and forth and cooing nonsense at her.

Ruby was melting against her lap, getting white hair all over the long, dark fabric of her skirt and on the dark red tights she was wearing underneath, dressed like a fucking Puritan, her skin covered from the jaw down, her hair worn loose and blond, although she did wear a black band of fabric to keep it back from her face.

“I watch dog shows a lot,” she said. “Not in real life – I don’t really do well with noise or crowds. But I watch them online, on the television sometimes.”

“Don’t still have dogs?”

“No – I keep a garden, and I see a lot of the neighbourhood cats, they come and sit with me when I’m working out of doors, purr and solicit attention. I liked to be the one to walk the dog, before, but things have changed somewhat in the intervening years. Where we live used to primarily be green fields behind us, and it’s been developed now, two housing estates, a few blocks of flats, and they’re building a new school. I don’t do very well with strangers approaching me, or with, um… Particularly with being looked at, noticed, people talking about me? There’s no unkindness in it, no cruel intentions, merely that I really can’t cope with it, and I should hate to keep a dog from walking.”

She put out her paw, and instead of giving Ava her paw, Ruby collapsed her cheek into the angel’s palm – when Ava laughed, it was a higher sound than she was used to, maybe, because Cecil could see Ruby stiffen and look uncertain, but then wag her tail all the harder.

“Valorous feels a bit of that,” Cecil said. “Why he dresses so incognito half the time, I think.”

“Yes,” Ava said, inclining her head. “Yes, that makes sense. It’s quite frightening to be under the spotlight all the time – a hood or a habit used to protect you from that, or at least, it felt like it might do. Times have changed.”

“Did you, um, did you used to be a nun?”

“I was a novitiate,” said Ava. “A long time ago. A local man, a justice of the peace, found me to be quite beautiful, said I was too young and too lovely to be assigned to a cloister, and when I refused his sexual advances, he had me convicted of heresy. They burned me alive – it was quite frightening, and very painful.”

Cecil stared at her, was so fucking arrested by how she said it, so straightforward and so unflinching in her wispy, delicate voice, that he didn’t even realise Ruby was trying to demand his attention again until she tried to hop up at him and stood directly on his fucking solar plexus, making him wheeze and nudge her down before she went to rub at her ears and scratch under her muzzle.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Ava said placidly, and then added in very serious tones, with an inclination of her head, “Fuck. Ruby?”

Ruby came back over, wagging her tail more confidently this time, and Cecil smiled at the way she laid her head in Ava’s lap, the way she leaned with such confidence into Ava’s hands. He didn’t know if it was that she was a woman – she’d never shown any particular preference for women over men according to her shelter notes, although children, especially young kids, definitely freaked her out, made her nervous.

She’d been quite quick to warm up to Heinous the other day, although not so quick as this – he wondered if it was that they were out in the open, or maybe if it was something else entirely, if it was the fact that Ava was an angel, she could smell something different in her.

“You’re so beautiful, aren’t you?” Ava asked softly, scrubbing at the dog’s cheeks and making her jowls flap. “Aren’t you such a lovely big girl? Your fur is so soft. Is it difficult? Fostering dogs like her, training them? I saw you while I was walking from the other day, when she was barking. It seemed like you calmed her down very quickly.”

“It’s just about making her feel safe and secure,” Cecil said. “Keeping other dogs, kids, anyone that might make her nervous away from her.”

Ava touched her fingers to Ruby’s lead, which had a patch on it that Valorous had hand-embroidered with text on one side and enchanted on the other: it read DO NOT TOUCH in large letters. The enchantment made Ruby less noticeable to children and teenagers, and dampened her scent somewhat, so that other dogs found her less interesting, less worthy of their curiosity.

“I think that’s something that you’re good at naturally,” said Ava. “Making people feel safe and secure.”

“People with daddy issues and too much faith in old men, maybe,” said Cecil – he said it almost without thinking, wondered as soon as it was out of his mouth if it was the wrong thing to say to her, but it made Ava laugh. It was a very quiet sound, like crumpling paper, coming from the back of her skinny throat.

It was easy to look at her and think that she was just a teenager, that she was as young as she looked, but that wasn’t true, of course – she had to be centuries old, with centuries of pain and centuries of living under her belt.

“You remind me of the monks, perhaps,” Ava said.  

“You think I should shave my head, start making mead and doing gold calligraphy?”

“Better to keep to teaching and fostering, I should think,” Ava said. “I’m given to understand an old dog doesn’t well learn new tricks.”

“Depends on the dog,” Cecil said, shrugging. “And the teacher. I’m trying my best to learn – I’m in therapy, same as you.”

“Same as me,” she repeated softly, her hand stilling on Ruby’s head. She was entirely relaxed now, her head rested in the hammock of Ava’s skirt, her eyes closed, her ears drooped, half-dozing in her place. “It takes great strength and courage to, in the aftermath of unimaginable agony, of terrible brutalisation, to go through the work of healing ourselves. To rend open the messy scars over our wounds, drain the pus that infects them, and work to wash ourselves of our abusers’ contagious decay.”

Cecil, stunned, didn’t immediately know how to reply, didn’t know what he could say, what he should say. After a few seconds, he said faintly, “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, it’s… It’s tough work, it’s hard work. It’s worth doing. We deserve the, uh… I work with rescue dogs like Ruby ‘cause they deserve love and care, after what they’ve experienced. They deserve to be able to learn the world can be safe for them. And we deserve that too.”

“I’m sorry it happened to you,” said Ava. “Whatever it was.”

“Same to you,” said Cecil.

“Would you think me the cruellest woman to ever live were I to nudge your sleeping dog from my knees and walk back home?”

“Crueller than anybody,” Cecil said mildly, and they shared a smile as Ava eased Ruby from her lap. She blinked dopily, looking toward Cecil, and Cecil caught the top of her head and rubbed a thumb down the middle of her neck. “Let’s go home, eh, girl?”

“You would be welcome to visit us, Mr Hobbes,” said Ava as she stood to her feet, and from the little bag that hung from her belt she drew a small notebook and an antique pen, quickly making a note on the page before she tore it out and handed it over.

Ava’s handwriting wasn’t the looping, calligraphic thing he’d been expecting – her handwriting was like chicken scratch, as bad as the worst of the shit he’d ever seen in the teacher’s lounge whilst gloating that he never had to make sense of people’s fucking essays.

“If you’d like to, of course,” she said.

“Bring Ruby along, let her sniff around your garden?”

Ava smiled at him, giving another nod before she turned away and began to walk down the hill as Cecil turned the other direction.

“You did very well there, didn’t you, sweetheart?” Cecil asked, and Ruby looked up at him lovingly, wagging her tail from side to side as they trotted along back home. “Good girl. Good girl.”

* * *

That evening, Cecil went over to the other address he had hand-written on a note in his pocket, because apparently his whole life now was just going to be made up of either ancient beings or old-fashioned freaks like Valorous, and that was just how things were shaking out.

Valorous lived in an apartment, and to Cecil’s surprise, it wasn’t part of a block of flats or even in a house or factory conversion. Instead, when he looked for the marker for 12 Saltpeter Street, he saw that it was over a row of shops, the flat itself over an aquarium supplies shop.

Cecil stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking through the window at the various tanks on low lighting for the night, rows and rows of them, before he looked to Valorous walking down the street toward him. He had his leather jacket on over one of Cecil’s hoodies and a pair of fae-made trousers, and he didn’t say anything as he came past Cecil and nudged open the door Cecil had assumed would be locked, leading the way up the stairs.

“No lift?” Cecil asked.

“It’s out back,” Valorous said. “Where the loading bays are.”

“How was Camelot?”

“Okay.”

“Penllwynog?”

“Kicked his arse in the arena.”

“Your uncle?”

“He’s good. I went to dinner with him and some of his friends, took Cicero. Thought they were going to eat him alive.”

“They wouldn’t prefer to eat him undead?”

Valorous turned back then, shooting a smile over his shoulder, and like this, with the lighting in the stairwell, Cecil could see the healing bruise on one of his cheeks and, even more obviously, the heavy bags under his eyes from not having slept last night.

“It’s gonna be alright, you know,” Cecil said when they got to the landing and Valorous stood there with his keys hanging loosely from his hand, staring at his front door. There were no decorations on the door, no welcome mat, nothing, although it was obvious to Cecil that Valorous did fucking live here – the landing and the post and parcel box beside his door were fucking spotless, looked as if they’d been freshly painted and put together yesterday. “It’s just your flat. If it takes time to tidy it, we’ll take the time to tidy it.”

“Mn,” Valorous said unconvincingly.

He’d seemed nervous as anything the other day, asking the question with his face aimed toward the floor instead of Cecil’s face, gripping tightly at the fabric of his own hoodie, Dot hanging back behind him for moral support.

“Of course I can,” Cecil had said, almost baffled by the question, let alone how fucking scared he seemed to be to ask. “I’ll help as much as you want. Even if you just want me to stand there while you tidy and just be there, lad, I can do that. We can bring Ruby, even, if that’d help – we’re trying to expose her to new environments, right?”

Valorous had been quiet on the walk home, and Cecil had sat in the kitchen and watched him making dinner, making delicate pastry-wrapped parcels of duck before pan-frying them.

“I doubt it’s as bad as you’re worried about,” Cecil said.

Valorous unlocked the door and pushed it open.

On a mannequin directly before the front door was a set of heavy armour, and it clanked loudly when the door made contact with it – balanced on top of several messy stacks of books were a few weapons and other discarded pieces of armour and clothing, and hung on several slapdash hooks on the wall were keys, bracelets and necklaces, a few short blades, a war fan, a few scarves and hats.

For all it was a load of assorted crap right over the threshold, there was barely even any dust, let alone any dirt or muck, but this was the start of a long corridor with at least another set of stairs leading off it, and Cecil could see that there were hoarded piles of similar crap against every wall and around every corner.

“I see what you meant about it not being quite ready for Ruby yet,” Cecil said, giving the lad an encouraging smile, and Valorous didn’t look at him. “That mannequin is going to scare her shitless. It doesn’t move like Penllwynog’s does, does it?”

“No,” Valorous said. “There’s too much stuff here. There’s too much— I have too much. I don’t know what any of it’s for.”

“You don’t know what it’s for?”

“To me. I don’t know what it is to… me. This flat isn’t— Salt sorted it for me, and everything of mine just gets sent here. Gifts. Prizes. Extra gear. All of it, it just… It ends up here, and I don’t know where to put it, and it’s all just…”

“Okay,” Cecil said, putting his hand on the centre of Valorous’ back when his breathing changed sharply in pitch, then gripping the back of his hair and wrenching his head back when he didn’t immediately relax. Like a scruffed cat, Valorous let out a sharp noise and leaned into Cecil’s body, finally looking up at his face with a pleading expression. “No fucking panicking,” he said, making it an order, and he felt Valorous’ body loosen, felt him melt bodily against Cecil’s breast, warm weight under his grip. “We’ll take it one step at a time, and we’ll get through it. You did the right thing, didn’t you? You asked for help – here I am. We’ll get it done.”

Valorous bit his lip, but when Cecil tightened his grip on the lad’s hair, he reluctantly nodded, and Cecil let him go.

“Let’s start in the bedroom,” Cecil said.

“Um,” said Valorous. “Which one?”

“Yours?”

“Never picked one.”

“How many are there?”

“Four.”

Cecil stared at him, at Valorous’ ashamed and overwhelmed expression, resisting the urge to immediately curse under his breath, and then asked in what he hoped was a measured tone, “How many kitchens are there?”

“Just one.”

“Okay,” he said, rallying. “Let’s start there.”

Valorous took him by the wrist and led the way down the corridor.