Chapter Text
She did not come to at four minutes to midnight, right outside the Darlings’ receiving room, about to summon the Guiltghast. She did not come to on Spring’s Eve, even.
She blinked, and breathed.
And promptly breathed in the pristine water of the Splendid canal.
Her arms flailed, and she kicked out, her lungs screaming at her, panic setting in before she could even hope to summon wunder, or try to tread water and try not to die.
It hadn’t worked. Squall had been supposed to send her back to four minutes to midnight, but she was here, and she was drowning, and she had been sure that he wasn’t trying to kill her anymore — least of all, there were far easier ways to do it than whatever this was — but she really wasn’t so sure now, and was she going to drown here?
Something was lifting her though, pulling her through the water, up, and up, and up. Not arms. Not a human being, nor a wunimal, magnificat, centaur, whatever. It was hard, cold metal, and she was being raised in that hideous peach puff pastry event she didn’t feel nearly as obligated to tolerate, having seen exactly how Meredith felt about the monstrosity.
She was gasping and someone was speaking to her calmly. She thought she might know who it was, spotting the blurry outline of his coat and hat, and remembering what he’d told her of his movements, but she couldn’t really make it out. She could barely breathe.
What was she doing here? What was happening?
“I’m fine,” she announced to Bertram and to the device he’d apparently used to pull her out of the water, already collapsing back into something that was neatly fit into a pocket in his coat.
Then she turned onto her front, holding herself up like she was attempting a push up, and vomited right onto the grass. Some of it hit one of the swan boats but she didn’t have time to care about that. Dario might still be alive for now. She had to make sure he remained that way.
“I don’t think you are,” Bertram said. Now that she was listening for it, she could hear an old inflection of a Jackalfax accent, something she heard too in her father and grandmother’s voices. Something that was probably in hers too. His had been sanded off, worn away by decades in a different city, but something of the foundation remained.
“That’s a problem for later,” she said, her mind calculating. Where had Tobias killed Dario exactly? Had it happened already? Could she stop it? What had happened on that night? Where had they all been?
Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered Squall saying that changing the past was a bad idea. But she was here now, and it was his fault, and if she could do anything to stop Tobias driving the tip of the golden dragon boat into Dario’s back again and again and again, she would. There was no other choice.
Her only excuse for not remembering the exact turn of events was somewhere between having not slept a wink in about the past few days. In retrospect, it might have been a decent idea to have taken a nap in the Silk’s cells, when she had had the chance.
Because she was ducking into a boat, and pulling Bertram in alongside her, even as he swore at her, and tried to scramble away.
It probably said something about her relations that this didn’t knock him down any rankings whatsoever. Unfortunately for her, he was still about top five amongst her family members. Top three, really.
Her feet moved before her mind did, already in decision, waiting for Gigi and Dario to draw closer, to not get away before she could intercept them.
“What—” Bertram gasped. “The actual fuck? Did he tell you?”
“Jupiter didn’t tell me anything,” she said. There was probably a better way to have obfuscated out of that, but she wasn’t wasting brain space on it. Whatever hang ups Bertram had, he could deal with it on his own terms “Shh. Something bad is going to happen tonight, and I don’t need you causing any problems.”
“What?” he mouthed at her in the low light. She was struck by the resemblance to his mother, and, momentarily, felt rather homesick for Jackalfax. Or just for Ornella. Some part of her still missed the crotchety old bird of prey.
She had never listened too much when the Darlings attended chapel. She didn’t think they did either, except when the vicar offered condolences to Modestine, or when they were complimented on this, that, or the other by whatever neighbours had come to say hello. It was a social event for them, as much as the whole rest of their lives were, nothing really religious about it.
It suited her just fine. The Crows hadn’t gone in for religion too much either, with the exception of their household staff who had often told Morrigan about the various places she would end up come Eventide.
But a line from one of the gospels, or maybe the homily, she wasn’t quite sure, rang in her ears now. Not the exact words, but the meaning of them. A man who understands what the right thing to do is, and doesn’t do it, commits a sin.
Morrigan’s life was never going to make it into any hagiography collection, but she knew she had a chance at saving the life of Dario Rinaldi tonight. And she was going to commit to that.
Her heart pulsed in her throat, and something curled in her stomach that was probably nausea. Or nerves. Or excitement
Gigi and Dario’s conversation carried on identically to how it had before. She didn’t listen in this time. She didn’t need to, only tuning in here and there to make sure the words matched what she remembered, had recounted far too many times to her friends.
She left in the same way she had before, disappointed in Dario, upset at where they were.
Morrigan’s heart twisted, but she hoped she’d be able to make it up to her, at least soon. There would be no reason for Gigi to go missing now, wherever she had been — would be — for the next months between now and Spring’s Eve. She would be well, and with Dario.
As long as Morrigan got this right.
She waited for Dario to disappear down the canal, but not quite out of earshot, waiting still for the sound of his oars hitting the water every second. Then she moved.
Slowly, and breathing evenly, as she rose up, standing from the boat, and returning to the ground.
Bertram followed after her, “What hare-brained scheme have you cooked up, exactly?”
She didn’t answer, summoning wunder instead, humming under her breath, exactly as she had done last time. But instead of using it to dry her dress off and make herself as presentable as possible to return to the Glade, she did a new trick she had only seen.
The familiar, comforting arms of Weaving reached out with her, pulling a stretch of path taut along the canal where the usual walkway disappeared. She hadn’t the wherewithal to quite work out where Dario had been murdered, but the location was held tightly in her mind’s eye. It was somewhere here, and under a bridge. There were only so many bridges along the way, and at least the work Cadence had put into their investigation could get them this far.
But she had a far simpler route in mind. Simply following Dario.
She dashed as quietly as possible in the direction he’d paddled off in, feet as quiet as possible against the new path, stretching ahead of her with every step she took as she pressed her giant, monstrous hands forward, letting wunder take the lead. Collaborating with it, as it pressed her onwards.
Dario had still made quite a distance though, but she spotted him, in the very distance, beneath the Beauregard Bridge.
A voice groaned beside her, and she almost screamed, flinching away from it.
“Why is he at my house?” Bertram complained quietly. “This is going to put up my insurance rates a hundredfold.”
“I said,” she swallowed thickly, not really caring about what his insurance rates were going to be, not when she had a murder to stop. “I don’t need you causing me any problems.”
“What do you know?”
“What do you mean?” she muttered out the side of her mouth, still watching Dario in the distance, playing with the golden tip of the dragon boat. Something like vomit tried to climb up her throat. His own murder weapon. Just a toy to him right now.
Tobias was probably going to be coming in the other direction, ready to deliver the poison and be utterly humiliated by Dario in response, but she couldn’t quite clock that in her head. Logically it made sense, he had been keeping it in Darling House, after all, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
She pulled Bertram with her, sidestepping onto the actual footpath, now connected to the bit of land where Dario would breathe his last unless she did something.
“What are you doing?”
“Shouldn’t you be off terrorising the Silverborn?” she rolled her eyes at him.
He snickered.
Morrigan swallowed. Dario had been pulled up for a while now. But she could hear the paddle of a kayak’s oars, could almost feel them. Maybe that was something to do with the wundrous act that had created the water filtration system, she didn’t know. But it meant— it meant that from now on she was going to have to tread very carefully.
“Don’t interfere,” she said to Bertram, so quietly that it might have just been her breathing. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
She ignored that. It was probably true but deeply irritating to hear.
Events played out exactly as they had at the ball with the Guiltghast, but even though it had seemed so real there, there was something absolutely chilling about looking at it for a second time and knowing what would happen. Feeling the cool evening air on her skin, the water still dripping from her clothes, listening to the party carry on merrily in the Glade, and just— she couldn’t explain it. There was something just different about it now.
Wunder gathered to her as Dario and Tobias argued, as Dario revealed everything he had on Tobias, and how much worse a state Tobias was in next to him. She felt, rather than heard, Bertram stifle a giggle at hearing how awful the Vulture’s purchase of Clark and Sons was for Tobias, and then pause as Dario… well he didn’t quite sing his praises, but was more decent to him than probably any member of the Silverborn ever had been to him.
“I’ll let you get away with that this one time,” Dario said, and Morrigan surged to her feet as he continued. That was her cue. “Because I think you’ve embarrassed yourself enough for one night.”
He offered his hand, exactly as he had done last time. Tobias refused it again. And Dario turned away, getting into his boat, off to— wherever he’d been planning on being while Vesta flew Alights.
But Tobias didn’t stab Dario. He couldn’t.
Morrigan grit her teeth, forcing the trees to bend around him, the tip of the golden dragon boat in his hand, frozen in a position that was so clear to what he was about to do.
The noise of it, the trees shooting forward, was less of a rustle and more of a crash of leaves and branches. Tobias didn’t say any swear words Morrigan didn’t already know, but she suspected it was more than he’d ever said himself in the last decade, at least in the Greater Circle.
Dario whipped around, finger pointed, but he lost his balance, half in the boat, and, like Morrigan had, already this evening, twisted right into the water.
“Get him out!” she ordered Bertram, but he was already moving, the strange device he’d used earlier, lifting Dario from the water with far more alacrity than he’d bothered for Morrigan.
“What’s happening!” Dario demanded, staring at them.
Morrigan felt awkward. She was sure her face was burning. She hadn’t had time this time to write a script and learn lines from Inspector Gravely, or rehearse the right reactions for the right time. “Sorry, but he was going to try to kill you.”
“Was not!” Tobias screamed. “How dare you?”
“You’re holding a— it’s not a knife, but it is a bladed object, Mr Darling,” Bertram said. Morrigan had the feeling that he was enjoying this immensely. And to think he had objected to her calling him a weirdo. “In front of two witnesses.”
“I— it was a business discussion!”
Dario’s mouth hung open. “I— I have no words. Tobias? I knew you were unhinged, but this is another level. After all I’ve done for your family? Over a book series?”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “This— this isn’t me— I wasn’t trying to kill you— it was h—” A large branch smacked him in the mouth.
Dario shot Morrigan a look of thanks. It was gratifying, she thought, to be able to use her powers for good, but she had seen first hand what happened when Tobias got a conversation going in his direction. She wasn’t out of the woods yet.
There were only too many things about what a wundersmith could and couldn’t do. What had he said again? That she had seduced the Silverborn? That she had tricked them in some way?
Morrigan might not have been one of the Silverborn, but she wasn’t the snake in the grass either, waiting to strike. That title belonged solely to Tobias
“Mr Smithereens,” Dario said. “How nice to see you. I’m glad you came to the wedding.”
Bertram grunted.
“Would you mind awfully calling the Silk? I believe your house is the closest.”