For two days, everything was normal.

It felt like a dream, when you’re just on the edge of waking up. Dally walked around in a daze, noticing things again that he hadn’t in months. Snowmelt trickling off the roof made soft, musical sounds if you stood on the top levels. The kitchen smelled like the deer he caught for Jona, slowly roasting. The tile had tiny circular scratches, from all the scrubbing the homunculi did.

Dally tried talking to Ajdin again, but the homunculus didn’t stop cleaning. He beat Red at serbat for the first time. That made her score about fourteen hundred and twelve to Dally’s one.

“I was thinking about food,” she said, furious.

“That or I learned how to rhyme.”

“Nope. No. We need to go again, you start.”

On the third day the mirrorboy came back. Lyle waved that Dally should let it in, distracted. When Dally tried to it bumped drunkenly against the window pane before blundering through the gap, then crashed, exhausted, on Dally’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Dally whispered, wide-eyed. At least the mirrorboy’s small hands were empty; maybe it made it to the Tribune office after all.

The mirrorboy whirred softly against his ear, sinking on its belly. It curled its knife-thin wings over and over around itself. In another second it had folded them into a silver dome, completely covering its body.

“Oh,” Lyle said. “You can put that back in the cage. Be careful, they’re expensive.”

Dally muttered an apology to the mirrorboy before carefully peeled it off his shoulder, feeling tiny claws snag in his jacket. It just lay in his hand, still and feather-light. Its faint breath rushed against his palm. Before Dally opened the cage he hesitantly rest a fingertip on top of the mirror dome of wings - the closest he could get to giving it a pat on the shoulder. He put the mirrorboy back in the cage.

“I need to get a new homunculus,” Lyle muttered to Dally, “didn’t I say I was going to order one?”

Two days later, Dally was panting and sweating, struggling to haul the biggest stag he ever brought back. It was hotter than winter had any right to be, with the sun beating down on his back. The deer was slung around his shoulders. Its massive crown of antlers jabbed at his chest with each step. As Dally stumbled toward the butcher shed one of the sub-wards stuck his head out the kitchen door.

“Leave that,” the man said, “come with me.”

Dally dropped the deer in an ice puddle under the stoop, just grateful to put the damn thing down. Its broad antlers slowly sank into the mud as he changed shape. The ward tapped his foot as he waited, and then turned up the stairs, muttering to himself.

It felt strange, somehow off. The feeling only got stronger, the deeper they got into the servant passages. Dally dripped sweat and bloody snowmelt on the floor, still waiting for his breathing to slow down. He’d put on the rough-spun shirt and pants he’d left inside the servants door, but no shoes. When the ward opened a door into the real house he stopped.

“Where are we going, boss?”

“Third floor drawing room,” the man said, annoyed, and prod him in the shoulder. “Go on.”

Dally hesitantly put one muddy foot down on the marble tile, then the other. He walked slow enough that the ward nudged him again, cursing.

The house was normal, though. Everything was quiet, the gold fixtures gleaming in the afternoon sun. A homunculus passed them, examining Dally’s footprints with hollow eyes.

The ward opened the drawing room door and waved that Dally should enter. As soon as he had, the man slammed it shut behind him.

“Wait here,” he said, shouting over the clank of the lock.

Dally waited until his footsteps faded, then muttered a curse, pointlessly rattling the door knob. When he’d proved for sure it was locked he dragged a hand back over his hair rocking in place.

This had to be like the barn, right? Locking Dally away somewhere so Lyle could bribe the Deps, and send them off.

Dally was pacing the room, and finally stopped when he thought about Ajdin mopping up his footprints.

This was the barn. Yeah. What if he was wrong, though? His chest itched, and his hand crept on its own to scratch at the scar.

He went to the window, and yanked the plush curtains open. Outside was a three story drop, straight onto the frozen gravel at the side of the house. Beyond that were the manicured gardens, still glittering with damp snow in the shadows.

As Dally considered the fall, though, two men crept around the side of the house.

The two guys were wearing dark wool coats and scarves, but not good ones like Lyle’s men. They had scruffy two-week beards and damp hair stuck to their foreheads. Black, chitinous live-machines were slung over their shoulders on strings. Mostly it was stuff Dally had never seen before. He knew the occuloscope, though. One of the men raised the it to his face; a gleaming gold eye with two dark pupils, encased in a wood shell bristling with levers. The lens twitched as it focused and refocused on the side of the house. When its bright gaze found Dally’s window both pupils suddenly narrowed.

The men froze. One pointed up at him, squinting through the afternoon sun. Slowly Dally raised a hand and waved at them, dazed. They didn’t wave back. The occuloscope flickered dark-light-dark over and over, taking pictures.

Maybe they weren’t meant to be here: a thrall slunk around the side of the house, following, though she stopped a safe distance back from the two humans. Definitely not one Dally knew. Her home form was bad, bristling with spines and jagged teeth, but he cared more about her grey Dep uniform. That was just like in the picture; Governor Tannis Lyle commits his household guard to War Effort.

Dally didn’t think before starting to change shape. It was clumsy and too-fast, enough that he bared his teeth at the empty room. The thin shirt started to tear before he ripped it off over his head. His lashing tail snagged a lounge and flipped it over, spines tearing at velvet cushions. This was it. This was it and he wasn’t going to stay in any damn barn.

His first yank on the doorknob snapped it off. Dally snarled and flung it away before slamming his fist through the lacquered wood instead. It was easy. Gilded splinters dusted the floor as he tore the door off it’s hinges. He tossed it behind him and spilled out into the hall, spines rattling against the doorframe. His bare feet skid on marble as he crashed down the first flight of stairs, fell, then caught himself with claws digging into a portrait of some Lyle ancestor. Somewhere behind him, crystal shattered in a sweet tinkle.

Moving through the house was a lot easier if you weren’t being careful. Some distant part of him was still taking inventory; ‘things to answer for’. Painting torn, bust shattered, marble dust cloud spreading, floor clawed, window shattered — Still he couldn’t stop down, and if he stuck out a hand and dragged it across a shelf for balance, that was too many broken antiques to count. He was grinning, or snarling.

He almost smashed into Ajdin, skidding around a corner too fast. Dally yanked them back upright as he passed, staggering as his spines tangled in a chandelier. He opened his mouth to say something, and all that came out was a dumb happy noise. Instead Dally pat Ajdin’s clay shoulder, as he leapt past down the hall.

Somehow Dally made himself slow down before he reached the front rooms, shuddering as he tried to change shape again. It was never a good idea to surprise humans in major form. His mother beat that into him, and she was right. They got... nervous.

And shit, Dally hadn’t even said goodbye to the others. Could he still find Red...?

It was dark, somehow, near the front of the house. Gradually Dally figured out that all the curtains were drawn, like it was a snowstorm and not the middle of a fine day. As retracting membranes closed over his eyes a blurry silhouette stepped in front of him. Somehow Dally knew it was Lyle before he could even see straight. More shadows surrounded them; flunkies lurking, peering through gaps in the curtains.

The governor reached for his arm, and caught his wrist before he could back away. “Don’t worry,” he hissed, clutching at him. “We just need to get you—“

Dally laughed. It just came out, raw and too loud, crackling through his still-warped throat. “I sent them a letter,” he said, “that’s why they’re here. They’re here for me.”

Lyle stared at him, fingertips making dents in his skin.

“And I’ve been telling Gita everything,” Dally went on, “ever since I got here.”

The other humans had turned to watch him too, wide-eyed. Outside there was a faint clatter of cars, human voices. Lots of voices.

It was easy for Dally to yank his arm away. He did it without stopping to think, and felt Lyle’s nails scrape harmlessly over his skin. The governor didn’t move as Dally sidestepped him. His hands hovered, grasping at nothing. Dallly shoved the door open, and stepped out into the sun.

The front drive was covered with people. Reporters, mostly, swarming around a core of three human Dep officers. Their thralls were scattered around them, easy to spot by armbands and the wide circles of empty space around them. The sharp feet of cars and crawlies had churned up the mud in haphazhard diagonals. The machines themselves made a blockade with waving feelers.

One of the human Deps was right at the top of the stairs, clearly about to come hammer on the door. The man froze, looking him up and down. “I - Are you Dally Harper?”

“Yes I am. Sure am.”

“...Good, alright.” The dep made a quick sign behind him, to where a few thralls stood stiffly waiting.

Two came up and crowded around Dally’s shoulders. Dally had a brief second of relief at being handed off, but the thralls weren’t too gentle either. Their blank eyes met his and slid away again without connecting. They started herding him towards the cars.

The reporters were getting bolder, crowding in. As soon as Dally got close enough they started yelling questions, struggling to aim their occuloscopes over each other’s heads.

“Were you bought after the championship fight? Do you fight in underground rings—?“

“How long have you been dodging the Requisition —?“

“Do you know why the Governor hid you?”

Dally stopped at that one, and found the man asking. A small pale human with a ragged beard, one of the two that had crept around the side of the house. He was looking Dally in the eye.

“Yeah,” Dally said, suddenly, then froze for a long second. “Yeah, he uh, he wanted to sleep with me.”

That sent a ripple through the crowd, and occuloscopes whirred crazily, like they could take pictures of what he just said. It was kind of a joke, them acting upset. Lyle wasn’t meant to be lying with thralls — it was dirty — but humans did that all the damn time. They all just pretended it didn’t happen. Well, shit. It was all shit. This could be Dally’s thank-you gift to the Tribune, for coming to get him. Maybe if he got lucky, it would burn Lyle’s campaign to the ground.

The yelling just got louder and more desperate. Eventually the dep thralls had to actually shove through the crowd, and reporters started cringing to avoid the clawed hands. The Deps dragged Dally to a hauler car; a low, long tank of a body on stubby legs. As he climbed in they even pushed his head down for him, so he wouldn’t hit it on the low roof.

Dally let out a breath as the doors closed, sealing him in. This was the kind of car he used to ride all the time. It was basically a steel tank you could fill up with thralls, bricks, timber, whatever. Or all of those at the same time. It was dark, except for thin beams of light streaming through vents near the front. He was alone. The only sound was the muffled crowd outside, and some kind of weird, loud cackling which he finally figured out was coming from him.

He paced the length of the hauler, grinning, brushing his fingers along the ceiling. Then again, four more times, and then he kicked a side panel. It rang like a gong, satisfying. It took a long time for his heart to slow down, and a bit longer before he hunched over to squint out of the narrow vents.

His smile finally faded as he watched the deps swarming around the steps, into the house. By the time they nudged Kit and Nesette from one of the servant doors Dally was wide eyed, with sweat going cold on his back.