“I’ll fucking kill you!” Clank! Clank! Clank! “Do you fucking hear me!” Clank! Clank! Clank! “And your families too, everyone you love, for each and every one of you miserable fucking cunts!” Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank!

Dahlie cowered in the corner of the cell. Her Mother was scaring her. Several feet away from her stood Anarres Báncourte, who was becoming increasingly incensed the longer she remained locked in the dungeon her own family built. It was not the first time the two of them had been imprisoned in that very row of cells, Dahlie recalled, but Anarres was somehow even more intense than she had been the first time. Mother was a Doll then, but now she was something far angrier.

Clank! Clank! “Let me out you fucking cowards, come and fight me!”

The white-haired daughter had never before seen this side of her Mother, watching with caution and curiosity as the woman in front of her kicked ceaselessly—in vain—at the locked door to the cell that they’d been thrown in. Her desperation was understandable, thought Dahlie, who knew just how important the other daughters, especially the Princess, were to her Mother. She remained in the corner, out of the way, swallowing drily and keeping her hands folded together neatly. Her maidservant’s garb had gotten awfully dirty from the siege, which stressed Dahlie out greatly, but she was placated simply by being in the presence of the Dollmother—even if this bleating mercenary woman barely resembled the maternal figure that forged her and the others from their undeserving flesh.

Dahlie smiled tightly. She was unlike her sisters; she was untouched by the tincture. Hers was a willing servitude, a promise, and that separation was an insecurity that made her grateful to be spending such private time with her Mother again after oh so long. “Mother I… please, rest your voice… save your strength. You’re going to exhaust yourself.” Perhaps if she’d been spaced apart by that infinite blueness, like the others, she would not have spoken out of turn. Perhaps, but she knew that she had her Dollmother’s best interests at heart.

Anarres stopped for just a moment, shoulders hunching. She did not turn back, her face was burning red and all too human. “Don’t interrupt me, daughter. Mama’s got everything under control.” Her voice was terribly strained, quivering with rage that betrayed the put-on calm.

“But…”

“I’ll take care of everything. Like… Like I always do. Okay? Just hush now, okay?” Anarres was close to snapping at her kin, and both of them knew it. Dahlie decided, wisely, to do as she was told. Mother would take care of everything, as she always did.

The dull knife sheathed, and the page regained enough of her senses to think clearly again. Anarres thought about calming down, but the clarity only came with a more tempered rage.

Clank! Clank! Clank! Clank!

“Will you quit that fucking racket, kid?” Croaked a voice from the other side of the hall. Anarres was not all too surprised that the old woman had yet to kick it, she wasn’t one to lay down and die without making a proper feast of it. Across from them, in the opposite cell, laid Tavia Durenburg. Her back was propped up against the cell wall and her entire front was laden with bolts. This time, she was the pincushion, and with some luck those crossbows managed to puncture something vital. Anarres cared not; the blood loss would catch up to the brute eventually, and locked away to rot in a dungeon such as this it was now just a matter of time.

Ignoring the family at her back and at her front, Anarres continued to kick. Her leg was throbbing with intense, shooting pain from the repeated impact but she did not know how to stop. “Please… I… I need to kill them…” Her voice was dying, raspy. Anarres could no longer shout.

“Like you meant to kill me, eh? God, you’re such a fucking disappointment to the end. That bright girl… where did she go?” Tavia sputtered up blood and Ana dared to look, letting that complicated feeling swell in her chest once more.

“Shut up,” she muttered weakly, her throat hurting just as badly as her leg. She considered arguing that if these invaders had indeed come for the Dolls they had rounded up, then she had indirectly made good on her dark promise, but it felt petty in the moment. “Maggie would have slit my throat if I placed a finger on you.”

Tavia nodded, eyes narrowing almost vocally; Anarres could make out the words in that look: “Then you’d have to kill her first, eh? Unless there’s some reason you couldn’t spill the blood of one you claim to hate almost as much as myself.” The taunting was redundant. Obsolete. Anarres had made peace with the fact that she could not hate somebody without loving them too, and vice versa. Ever since the Princess used Ana’s lingering hate, her hidden grief, to cement their bond, she’d been irrevocably damaged in matters of the heart. Anybody else, who she did not love nor hate, Anarres simply did not register as people at all; they were rats, or they were Dolls.

“I’m not going to die here, girl. I’ve got Lady Fate whipped and tamed, you should fucking know that… her damn head’s trapped between my thighs, and she’s eating my cunt like a good little whore. I’m not going to die. Hah. Not without a sword in my hand.” The woman broke one of the crossbow bolts in half and threw it across the cell.

Tavia’s goddaughter was not scared of her in that moment, feeling only pity for the fallen clan leader who spoke like she was attempting to calm her own dancing nerves. Still, she could not forgive the woman for touching her precious Princess, so this seemed a fitting enough end for the legend of The Split Tongues. Dying in your own shit, alone in a dark cell, muttering delusional, childish nonsense about fate. There was no tragedy there, only justice.

Anarres sat. She had expended too much energy, and conceded reluctantly that she needed to recuperate her strength. Dahlie sat behind her mother and worked at gently removing the knots from the woman’s hair with just her softly gliding fingers. It relaxed Anarres whenever somebody touched her hair, which happened so very often.

“I’m sorry I can’t do more, Mother. I owe you so much, and now I can only watch you hurting…” The daughter spoke with love, her touch so very reverent. Despite her body rejecting the tincture, Dahlie was inarguably Anarres’ most devoted daughter. Perhaps her commitment was because of that setback, even, as she let her need to close that rift between herself and her sisters pull her deep into that orbit of routine and dependency. All she lived for was her servitude and she was grateful for it when the alternative was that waiting nothing.

Anarres sighed, leaning back into the Doll’s chest and looking up at her daughter’s pretty, well-kept face through bloodshot eyes. “No, it’s fine. I don’t want any of you involved in matters of violence. You’re being good for mama, I’m proud of you. Besides, I’m not the only one hurting, right? I forget which one it was that you couldn’t be parted from, which of my daughters you said you wished to marry were it not forbade by petty law.”

Dahlie blushed at the praise, cradling her mother’s head like a holy artifact. Then, her head shook slowly at the outdated implication. “I… she’s just a sister now. At first I wanted only to remain by her side, even as something new and, at the time, scary.” The Doll wanted so badly to wrap her arms around Anarres and hold her tight, like the most precious thing in the entire world. Her saviour. “You’re much more important to me now, Mother. Being by your side is all I could ever hope for, truly. Whenever you visit us it makes me so happy I forget about old loves entirely, I…” She paused, careful not to overstep her bounds.

“I love you, Dahlie.” Anarres felt guilty every time she said those words, because while she wanted so dearly to truly love her kin, she could never bring herself to hate them enough. Manipulating Dolls was as easy as posing them. The words made Anarres’ daughter swoon with giddy pride, even though she was more perceptive than her sisters. This was enough for her, it was permission.

“I love you too, Mother! So very much.”

Dahlie was a lanky thing, standing above Ana but falling much shorter of a hulk like Tavia. Her hair was as white as her sisters’ even without the medicine to have turned it such, and it was made stick-straight with a hot comb. She was pretty, though her face wore trauma.

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.

Anarres felt her heart leap as she heard the footsteps descending the dungeon stairs. The last time she was down there the footfalls had been much heavier, having belonged to her Auntie Tav. These were light; they clacked sonorously against the stone and reawakened Anarres’ indignation from its rest. The woman leapt out of Dahlie’s embrace and threw herself against the cell bars violently, ready to spew out more vitriolic cursing before locking eyes with the woman walking their way.

“A pity they didn’t kill you.” Maggie Haine. Anarres stared at that shiny new uniform the woman wore and bit the air fiercely. The leathers were black, but she was seeing red.

“You fucking traitor,” Anarres spat, taking in the sight of the wolf devouring the moon and clenching the bars tight enough to hurt. “You’re the reason they got in so easily… you… why?”

“Do you think I have a better answer than I did it for the money?” The raven haired sellsword, who stood even shorter than Anarres, stared her rival down with a pleading animosity. Ana hated her so much, turning her gaze over to Tavia and twisting her lips. Maggie worshipped the woman who now lay dying; it must have been a real good payout. “They told me nobody would get hurt, that they’d just take the white haired ones and fuck back off to wherever it is they came from. Foreigners, so who knows where that is. Should’ve known the boss wouldn’t just lie down and take it. It’s… a shame.”

Anarres was seething with white hot anger, the thought of her Princess being taken from her had banished any and all other priorities from her mind. “Let me out and I’ll try my damnedest to not fucking kill you… I’d do it with my bare hands… I’d feel the life draining from your traitorous flesh and I’d smile the whole time. You know the smile.”

The woman in foreign imperial garb cocked her head and grinned. “I finally have you beat, huh? Stuck behind bars with your last remaining daughter. I’m not letting you leave, what makes you think I’d ever do that?” She placed her hands on the bars and leaned in close, spitting across Anarres’ face in an empty performance. And bracing, for she knew what came next; her eyes told Anarres everything—shone a light through that pathetic charade of hostility—even if she wanted to maintain the act. Maggie was prideful and stubborn and liked to do everything the hard way, even if she could barely remain upright after the afternoon she’d had. Those imperials really knew how to eat.

Staring at how close Maggie was standing to her, that silently proffered key hanging from her belt, made Anarres feel sick with something. She grabbed the woman’s wrist and pulled that arm until the curly-haired merc was slammed against the bars, relaxing her grip only to slam Maggie against the bars a second time and snatch that key like Maggie wanted her to.

Opening the door with impressive haste, given the trembling in her hands as she worked the lock, Anarres burst out into the dungeon hallway with a readied right hook. Maggie reeled from the punch, only to be kept on her feet by Ana’s firm grip holding her up by that nice new collar. Tavia was almost proud as she watched her goddaughter succumb to violence.

“You want this, huh?” Ana growled, readying her arm for a second blow. Maggie was not so dim-witted as to stand close like that without knowing what would happen, but she insisted she get roughed up some anyway. Anarres’ strikes were truly benevolent, but Maggie’s need for them pissed her off more than anything. She loathed guilt.

“Don’t you have a girl to go and chase, pretty?” Maggie’s smile was drooling red. Her eyes were thankful.

Taking in the sight of her broken little traitor, Anarres deflated. A part of her suspected—no, knew— that those foreign soldiers in all black likely only agreed to spare everyone in their siege should she let them inside. She knew how these things worked. The Split Tongues often worked in a similar manner. She knew that they likely cornered the woman while she was taking a piss and put the fear of god in her. But she didn’t care. She hated Maggie’s inability to tell her this. She hated that pointless pride.

“Fine just… don’t you dare open her cell. She stays.” Anarres locked eyes with her Godmother and the woman smirked. She wondered where The Moon was, which seemed a funny thing to wonder. It would find them soon enough.

With her final goodbyes said to the woman, neither needing to actually exchange a single spoken word, Anarres rushed towards the dungeon’s exit without regard for her own safety in the occupied keep above nor for those she claimed to love—and claimed to hate—behind her.

She pushed open the hefty oaken door and made sure not to let the iron handle rattle as she did. Her head peeked out to find nobody in the corridor and—wasting no time—she leapt into it hastily, whipping her head around like a rabid dog. Where was Princess… it was crushing her heart to think of anybody else laying their hands on Her, taking Her away. Maybe forever? Unthinkable.

It was taking all the strength she had left not to forget her need for stealth and cry out for the girl ripped away from her mama, but Ana knew that such a mistake in that moment would be far too costly. She moved cautiously but quickly, forgetting the daughter and the traitor as her mind became unable to focus on anything but Her. The more Anarres snuck through the halls in her steady crouch, the more she realised that not only had she not spied a single person walking around, she had not heard so much as a cough or a whisper in the entire keep. What she did catch, however, was trace of a scent. It was the stench of death, which made Ana feel a pang in her gut. She did not exactly like her fellows in The Split Tongues, but they were still the people she’d lived with and worked alongside for quite some time now. Maggie had told her they were to be spared, but it was clear she was hiding something. Anarres followed the odour of death to the food hall, her jaw falling slack when she finally reached that wide-open doorway.

They were dead.

Not just the mercenaries of The Split Tongues, but the foreign imperial soldiers in their fancy leathers too. The food hall was their mass grave, as shallow as their loyalties. The corpses of her former fellows were mixed in with those overdressed for dinner, like they had been cooperating and feasting over the contract made. Sellswords were just that: for hire. Anarres figured out that the only member too stubbornly loyal to have seen this mingling as treachery must have poisoned them all as punishment. It must have been a lot of poison, surmised the white-haired Page. Maggie was beginning to scare her.

“Princess!” Anarres called out vainly, before counting the heads and acknowledging there was not a single white head of hair in the foul-smelling room save for her own.

She was too late. Her daughters had been taken elsewhere.

“Mother, wait!” Dahlie exited the cell to chase after Anarres when the woman rushed out of the dungeon, but Anarres’ trancelike urgency made her deaf to her daughter’s cry.

“Hey, you.” Maggie called to the Doll. Her limbs were lightly shaking from the toll of sitting in that dining hall when it happened. She had thought herself more prepared to live out the consequence of her choice, her vengeance, but having to actually live through it had been torturous. Suffice it to say, she had not found the stomach to finish her dinner once the bustle died down. “She’ll be fine, there’s… no threat.”

The good daughter turned and assessed Maggie’s sullen gaze for truth. She was good at reading people, and then some, so could see that the words were not merely an attempt at trickery. With that confirmed, Dahlie made the tough decision to accept that being most helpful to her Mother and being by her side were not always the same thing. Staying behind would mean being able to keep an eye on the traitor and ensure she did not betray Anarres again and open that cell door.

“Not up there, no… but you.” Dahlie’s voice darkened, and by the time Maggie could process the lunge being made in her direction she was already being swung against the wall with surprising strength, pinned against it with a sudden sting against her throat. The Doll coldly pressed her knife against that sweltry skin, applying just enough pressure for it to bite without ripping the traitor’s throat open. “Mother is everything to me. My only reason to exist. You’re a thorn in her side. Give me one reason why I should tolerate you existing alongside a perfect being like her.” The Doll’s eyes became intense, staring into Maggie’s like she was attempting to bore deep holes into the woman’s skull.

“I ah… shit, okay okay, calm down. Mother? Does… she know you carry that around in your…” Maggie’s mind was reeling; it was impossible to trace where the metal now cutting a straight line into her neck even came from. In any case, it was concealed well enough to be overlooked by the soldiers who locked her up. Then there was the way that creepy maid was talking to her, speaking of some infallible figure that Maggie surely never saw in a broken, bitter thing like Anarres.

“Sewn into my sleeve. It was the quickest way I found. In case I need to protect Mother… she doesn’t want any of us to spill blood, least of all for her sake, but I’d face my punishment if the need arose to kill for her. I don’t need to do that right now, though, do I, Miss Haine?” Everything about the Doll was precise and inhuman. She really did fit in with her sisters, except she was that much sharper.

“N-No, fuck. I’m not a risk, okay? I’m nobody, nothing. A vagrant, I suppose, starting today. Let me go and you won’t see me ever again. I’ll be glad to see the back of you and your ‘mother’, rest assured.” Even while pleading for her life, Maggie could not currently give her all. She was still processing, still trembling. “Take your damn knife off my throat for fuck’s sake, or I’ll be sick all over your maid dress.”

Dahlie clicked her tongue and retracted her blade, sheathing it into her long black sleeve and stowing it into that well-sewn hiding spot. The moment Maggie was released she took a few steps towards the entrance to the cell Anarres and Dahlie had occupied, fell to her knees, and hurled up her lunch. She was on her knees for a while afterwards, panting with a cold sweat clinging to her forehead where the dark curls of her hair matted to the skin. A little while later still, Dahlie picked the woman up and, taking pity on her, decided to wipe her mouth and the rest of her face with a clean handkerchief she let the woman keep. “You’re dreadfully pale,” she stated in that same stern voice she never used in her mother’s presence.

“Nothing a little mead can’t fix. Just… not the open casks.” Maggie Haine smiled weakly, gnawing at her lips as the other woman coddled her. It was a treatment that she did her best to downplay her yearning for: being pampered like someone’s darling girl. She told herself that she was not allowed to be jealous of the title Dahlie so brazenly called Anarres by. “I have to ask,” she began, resolving to at least sate her curiosity if her stomach was determined to remain empty. “I mean, we were not allowed to inquire about any of you white haired freaks and it always bothered me. Who… what are you to Ana? Why do you use that word when you look the same age?”

Dahlie seemed content with the question, because it was regarding her favourite subject. She smiled affectionately, like she’d already begun to drift elsewhere—swept away by the strong currents of her past—and spoke in a much softer, worshipful tone. “Oh… well. I cannot speak in detail, there are secrets I’m not permitted to divulge either. But… yes, she’s my Mother. All of ours. She’s a very wonderful woman, really. The thing you call Anarres is just a mask she wears to keep us out of harm.” Maggie did not believe that. She was glad for the fact that the stupid Doll’s fanaticism distracted it from picking up on that slip of speech the merc had made when last referring to the Báncourte girl. “She took me in, a clumsy servant girl too broken to go through the same process as the rest, and she gave me special attention…” Dahlie went flush, recalling the feeling more than she did the memories themselves. Her mind was just like that; it closed things off and told her vague stories, like an oral history between her old memory and her present self. She loved the stories. “Took time out of her day to spend on catching me up to the others, bringing a runt like me up to speed. She didn’t give up on me until I met her standards. She was so, so kind… so caring. She filled my heart with love.”

“Right.”

Dahlie nodded, with her practised Doll smile clicking perfectly into place. It had to be perfect, or she might disappoint Mother. It had to be, it had to be, or she could get in trouble. Her smile was important, her posture was paramount, and her service had no room for compromise.

It had to be perfect.