Woebegone was an idiot.

  Dalliance watched the various considered arguments from the boy flash through his future—all we have to do is stay here, they’ll come for Sterling in the end—I’m not dying for you, what do you think I need the score for?—if I leave they’ll just make me go back inside.

  Not ‘What’s the plan, Dalliance’ or ‘Thanks for coming back for me, Dalliance’, ‘Man, I’m sorry I tried to stab you, Dalliance’.

  Didn't help that he had to nearly shout to be heard at all.

  His eyes were tracking to the left and then flicking back to what he was looking at, but then tracking to the left again. Dalliance wondered if he was going to be okay.

  Looking at him, he’d been in a bad way even before Dalliance had come to get him—circles under his eyes, food and water abandoned, ignored, by the corner. His cheekbones and jawline were sharper, now, and his eyes hollower.

  “You need to get some food in you,” Dalliance said quickly. “And then we have to get to the door. I have a plan.”

  Lackey was lighter than he looked, when he grudgingly took Dalliance’s hand and pulled himself to his feet, but moved lightly, grip very firm. Might stacker, Dalliance reminded himself. It wouldn’t be good to forget that.

  “What is it?” he asked suspiciously. The boy swayed on his feet.

  “Can’t tell you. House is listening.”

  This took some repetitions to get across. It was possible, dungeons could do that.

  Could be.

  “I don’t trust you.”

  Dalliance did roll his eyes this time. “Well, you can’t stay here. No door.” He gestured.

  He should feel guilty for that, he knew. But, at the end of the day: he hadn’t known it would happen. And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.

  The older boy had stopped. "Come on," Dalliance said. He didn’t know how long they had—moments, most likely, until the next attack. Moments of time to spare.

  "You know," he said, "I really think we could’ve avoided getting off on the wrong foot."

  "Huh?"

  "We GOT OFF on the WRONG FOOT!"

  Dalliance was going to leave him behind at this rate.

  Snail trails of sticky blood dripped down the sides of Woebegone's head. He lurched drunkenly.

  "Is that what we did?" Woebegone said, focus seemingly on remaining upright.

  The future seemed safe enough, though Woebegone did consider hitting him a few times: always something small, like a step forward or just out of reach, making the future go away again.

  "Sure, that’s what we did," he said.

  "You saying we would’ve been friends?" asked Woebegone. The irony in his voice was palpable.

  "I doubt it," Dalliance said without thinking. He stepped forward and to the left, and he was on the stairs. The taller boy watched him for a moment. They were all taller, Dalliance realized, a consequence of mainlining Might or Grit.

  Woebegone was moving so slowly that Dalliance couldn’t tell if he felt genuinely bad, because the boy's carriage was healthy enough, but his balance seemed shot and he kept wincing and shielding his eyes from the lights.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "So how'd you do it?" he asked Dalliance conversationally. Dalliance's mind was getting fuzzy; it didn’t make any sense. "Where'd you trap it?”

  “Inside the servants' quarters," Dalliance said absently, prodding at the feeling like a loose tooth. A blank look. He repeated himself.

  "Oh," said Woebegone, "after you blocked off all the servants' passages?"

  [Introspection]: You are being drained.

  Dalliance blinked.

  "Big house like this, they'll run from the servants' quarters to the dining room, maybe the master bedroom."

  The bigger boy had stopped, now. He sounded confident.

  "They always made my mom keep 'out of sight'," Woebegone said, voice bleak. "T'weren't here, though. It was the Talbots."

  He warmed to his theme. "Lady Talbot," said Woebegone, his voice sounding aggrieved and hard, "'The good lady', made her stick to the passageways which was for service staff, because servants don’t show themselves where they’re not welcome."

  No wonder the boy sounded bitter. "When was this?"

  Woebegone didn't seem to have heard him, but answered just the same.

  "She’d have been right about our age, I think," Woebegone continued. Dalliance could sense it when the boy moved, turned, heard him say with deceptive casualness, "You did know about the servants' passages, didn’t you?"

  If Dalliance moved, the bigger boy was going to hit him and then throw him over the rail. "You don’t think it’s trapped," Dalliance said.

  He was watching him closely.

  "No," but it didn’t have any humor in it. "I don’t think it’s trapped."

  No matter what, he was going to lunge.

  "If we’ve been sixteen already, we’d have come to blows over your cowardice," said Dalliance.

  An instant's confusion, then the Lackey boy figured out what he must have said.

  The tension in the room was palpable, like a cheese wire pulled tight. Taut, and quivering.

  "We would," agreed Woebegone, sounding a little uncertain.

  "Why don’t we see how that would’ve gone?"

  Dalliance spun, the bow rising off his back in his left hand between forefinger and thumb while he ducked. It was the only reason he liked the traveler's quiver to begin with: couldn’t get to arrows quickly, not within easy reach. But then, he didn’t need quick: forewarned is forearmed. No, he just wanted somewhere to put a bow, and over the quiver had its conveniences. It was hands-free, the sort of thing one thinks about lacking some of the use of a hand.

  With only two points of contact on the steps, and no good prospects for a third, almost anything he tried would end with him tipping forward and onto the dry rot where he would punch through. Each tiny adjustment of weight showed a different undignified future, but as he brought the bow up along a rising path, he wasn’t going for anything difficult or fancy by his standards. There was a way.

  He poked Woebegone in the eye and then jumped to the other side of the stairs, grabbing hold of the rail with his right hand.

  [Prediction] winked out.

  He cast it again.

  And ducked. Woebegon’s right hook went through where his head had been hard enough to wiff him with the breeze.

  “It’s coming,” Dalliance said, horrified. He lost a point of mana.

  Woebegone saw his fear.

  “I’ve known that since you blew my door out,” said Woebegone.

  His eyes were nearly swollen shut, and tracking right to left several times a second.

  Dalliance feinted, then poked him in the eye again.

  The other eye.

  Prediction faltered, but Dalliance saw what was coming already, and threw himself backwards just as Woebegone kicked the main bannister post clean off the stairs, taking the rail with it.

  It was so loud.

  “I did try,” Dalliance complained.

  [Prediction] failed. And again.

  Woebegone grabbed him by his shoulders and hurled him over the rail, and Dalliance cast [Werewind].

  He exploded into wind, filling the room—and just as suddenly condensed back as a boy, landing hard on the hardwood floor. The spell had failed.

  It was here.

  Dalliance ran for his life.