#gerbil writes

Venigni's brain was still buzzing through ideas, as heady as any alcohol (to say nothing of the wine he’d commandeered from the hotel storerooms tonight, toasting Lady Antonia’s fine taste and memory with it). So, sleep rejected him. And he couldn’t exactly go walking in the dangerous streets at night. Pinocchio might be keeping the area directly around the hotel as clear as he could, but there were still squishy, horrible things sneaking in dark alleys that Venigni thought he’d rather not meet.

He chose to reassemble his factory model, then. Several buildings had clearly defined footprints in them—the bunnies had jumped on the pieces during the attack on the hotel. Alas.

He was scraping glue across a chimney so he could reapply the little bricks when he heard a gentle cough behind him. Not that puppets had throats to clear, but Gemini was making a valiant effort all the same.

“Ah! Welcome to Venigni Works, my friends!” He waved a hand across the crumpled model as a tour guide. “She looks a little ragged, but I work to improve her. Would you like a glue pot? The windows are a little cracked, but surely you could—you seem to be on a mission?”

Pinocchio held a stack of papers. Crumpled in his human-skinned hand. He held the fist of papers out to Venigni, silently, glaring at his shoes like they’d insulted him. Everything was very quiet for a moment, as everyone considered this strange offering. Venigni did not reach out. Suddenly it felt very important that he held the miniature chimney and nothing else.

“Use your words, pal,” Gemini prompted.

“I...I lied,” Pinocchio said, softly. “T-to you.”

“Mm? Oh, I tell lies all the time,” Venigni said, trying to get the puppet to smile back at him. He ignored the papers. “It is no harm, these little lies. I have told the Lady Autumn her dress—ah, but perhaps something else?”

The crumpled papers in a desperate fist. Pinocchio's grip was not steady. It twitched and bounced, and he couldn’t read any of the text. Felt something in his very core whispering that he didn’t want to read the papers at all. Or maybe that was the wine suddenly curdling in his stomach.

Pinocchio kept staring at his shoes.

“Brave words, buddy,” Gemini said. “Like we planned.”

“These are. Yours.”

“Are they? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before. That doesn’t look like my handwriting,” Venigni said, angling slightly to try to read the topmost sheet. It was very old looking, torn on the edges and stained and softened by time and— “No, those...hmm. Master Geppetto’s handwriting?” He was aware of Pulcinella standing at his shoulder, pressing closer.

Venigni glanced up at Pinocchio. The puppet’s face was blank as always, but there was a crinkle around the eyes, the delicate articulations pulling something. Grief. “Oh, compagno, I’m so sorry. I know you worked so hard to save Master Geppetto, and—”

Pinocchio interrupted, and it seemed to take a mountain’s worth of effort to do so. “Before. I said. The static. I couldn’t hear what started the puppet frenzy?” It sounded like a question.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“That. Was the lie.”

“Oh!” Venigni dropped the chimney. Little bricks in half-dried glue scattered across the floor, pinging into the shadows. “You heard? Truly? You know what caused it? If you know, you must tell me! I must be sure the frenzy can never happen again!” He leaned forward, clasping Pinocchio’s hand in his. The papers spilled out of the puppet’s fingers, fallen leaves drifting at their feet.

“It won’t happen again.”

“How can you be sure?” There was desperation scraping in his voice. So many people lost to his puppets, his mechanics. Venigni swallowed hard, trying to compose himself. He pulled his smile back up, gentle, gentle. His shield, his smile. “Pinocchio? What did you hear?”

Pinocchio looked at the papers again.

“Come on, pal, I know you can do it. We practiced, remember?” Gemini glittered green. Pinocchio glanced pleadingly at the lantern, like he was hoping Gemini would take over from here. But the cricket just chirped, “You said this was important to you, to tell him. We practiced. You can do this.”

“Geppetto,” he whispered. “My...father.”

Silence unfurled, crystallizing in the corners. There was surely more to the sentence? But Pinocchio looked about as certain as a deer caught out in the high streets of Rosa Isabelle.

Finally, Venigni couldn’t bear the stillness. “I don’t understand.” He sat back. “Did he find something? Did he learn the secret? Did he take it with him to the stars?”

Pinocchio picked up a paper, offered it to Venigni. “He was the secret.”

“I don’t...” Venigni glanced at the sheet. His name leapt out at him, sharp and slashed on old, old paper. He snatched at it, stared. Mumbled through the line: “’When I learned of Venigni’s brilliant work, I didn’t...want to acknowledge him? How dare he try to outdo me?’”

His breath caught. There was anger in the very way the words had been written, pen pressed too hard into paper, nearly tearing it in the author’s irritation. “But. But this?” He looked up, searching for an answer in reflective blue glass.

Geppetto’s handwriting. His signature at the bottom of the page. But. What?

“I’m sorry, Gemini, I can’t,” Pinocchio was whispering to the little lantern on his belt. “I can’t say it.”

“That’s okay, buddy. You tried. That’s what’s important. We can try again, whenever you want. Hey, uh, Mister Venigni?”

“Yes?” The smile was automatic, now, while his head spun. He felt like he was leaning sideways off his chair, like he was going to fall off and slide along the floor, even though he was pretty sure his shoes were firmly planted on the marble. Pulcinella’s hand was on his shoulder. When had he done that? Venigni kept reading the same line again. “How dare.” But that had never been his intention, he—

“From the minute I arrived,” she said. “You’ll find lots of weapons cached around now. Just in case.”

“Oh. That’s smart. We should have had a tactician in here earlier.”

“Got one now. Everyone take something.” She looked at Lady Antonia. “Begging your pardon, Ma’am.”

“I shall offer moral support,” Lady Antonia said, quite cheerfully under the circumstances. Her hands were folded in her lap, but she looked like she would be just as happy holding an sword as a tea cup.

Eugénie was examining the trove and the quality of the offerings, when she realized someone hadn’t stepped up yet. “Venigni, get over here.”

“Ah. You know I’m a lover, not a fighter,” he said, standing back beside the windows, half hiding behind Pulcinella. His eyes were wide under his glasses.

“Don’t care. Get over here!”

“I’m sure you have it well in hand.”

She twirled a sword, indeed in hand. “Didn’t you tell me you were tired of being the damsel in distress these days? Everyone keeps having to save you.”

“There are worse things to be than the damsel, yes? Maimed, for one,” he said. “What if I lost a nose? You’d want me to replace all the posters I have in town with a new visage?”

“You do have a lot of posters up,” Belle said, scratching her cheek with the tip of her dagger.

“Yes, I know,” he said, striking a pose and pointing at them. “They’re most fetching, aren’t they?”

“Fetching trouble. They know your name and your face. You don’t think that puts you in a slightly more precarious position than the rest of us?”

“I can’t imagine I’d be more stable holding an oversized mallet.”

“Lorenzini Venigni, you take an axe right this moment,” Lady Antonia said, severely, “or I’m cutting you off the holiday card list.”

“Ah.” He hesitated, then stepped forward, muttering curses in Italian, mustache drooping.

“You hold it like this, and stick the pointy end in someone else,” Eugénie said, grinning.

“No, shut up, don’t.” A girl’s voice. A hand pressed hard over his mouth, her other hand holding his achy head still. “Shut up, or they’ll hear you and we’ll be in trouble then! Well, you’ll be in trouble, not me. You wanna get coffined?”

What does that mean? “Nmnm?”

“Shut up or I’ll make you shut up, and it’ll be for your own good.” The girl held a scrap of fabric in front of his foggy eyes. Already felt like he had cotton in his mouth, in his ears, in his brain. The floor appeared to be sharply tilted and he wondered how she could possibly be keeping her feet. “Better this than in a coffin, mate. We can’t let ’em know you’re here.”

Here? Where? He blinked at her. Girl. Mask. Girl. Ears? Not her ears. Tall ears. Rabbit. Rabbit ears. Ohhh, rabbit ears. Black Rabbit. Right, right, rabbit.

...rabbit.

Oh gods. Black Rabbit Brotherhood. He started to yell again, and her hand was back over his mouth. “Do not!” She yanked his hair. He didn’t move much—oh, there was pressure on his shoulders, on his wrists, on his ankles. Tied to a chair? New development. Not great. Nnn.

He twisted, but there was no give at all. His arms were pinned behind him, knots looped between chair slats. The only way he was moving was by taking the whole chair with him as he went. And that was simply not going to happen; he wasn’t sure his wobbly weak arms could lift a book, much less a chair.

Panicky, he flung every wish he’d ever flung at the saints and the stars, begging for someone to appear.

...er, make that someone helpful, not any of her terrible brothers.

No one granted his wish. Maybe it was daytime and there were no stars to be wished on. Hard to tell, in a dark room with curtains drawn tight and just a single hissing candle nearby. Focus, focus.

What had happened. He’d been. Late night snacking in his study as he reviewed paperwork. Alcohol, definitely. Nice bottle of scotch, and then maybe a little more. He’d. Gone for a night walk, yes.

He’d. Not been paying attention to the turns in the dark and the warm haze of alcohol and maybe he’d taken a wrong one? His head. He’d been walking somewhere. Darker. Wrong. Someone had wrapped their fingers in the nape of his coat and dragged and flung him against a wall and pressed against his throat with one hand while the other hand pressed something wet against his mouth and his nose and.

Pulcinella was probably throwing a fit.

“You can’t say a word!” She waggled a finger in front of his nose. ”They might hear you! I mean, they’re supposed to be out, but they could always come home!”

Home. Home. Hideaway? Was in...Black Rabbit Hideout? Not good, not good. He swallowed the squeak this time, and she looked pleased under the mask.

“They’re not supposed to come in my room anyway, I told ’em!”

Her room. He squinted past the headache and the shadows. The walls were painted a scruffy, chipped pink, with lopsided wanted posters pinned up to hide where you could see raw brick beneath. Dolls and bottles lined up on shelves. A bookcase with maybe four picture books on it and a bunch of weapons on the other shelves. Bed, with a ratty canopy hanging over it like a princess in a storybook illustration might have, though the one in the book probably wouldn’t have been tartan. Rumpled blankets.

Bedroom, then. Bedroom? Oh, that. That. He couldn’t stop a keening noise in the back of his throat.

She glanced behind her at the bed, then at him, apparently confused. Then laughed, cold and mean. “Nah, mate. Not that. You ain’t my type.” She flicked his nose.

“I’m everyone’s type!” he rasped, a little offended in spite of himself.

She tapped her upper lip. “Ain’t into the mustache.” She frowned, then tapped his lips. ”And you ain’t supposed to talk.” She brandished the fabric again. “It’d be for your own good, you know. Don’t talk, that’s your only warning, got it?”

He nodded warily, watching her.

“I can upgrade to a dog muzzle if you’d like,” she said, grinning. “Used to have a dog. Probably still got that around. Collar, too?”

Now that was definitely bait. He locked his back teeth together and sulked, glaring at her. The effect was slightly diminished by his general disarray, but at least he tried.

“A’ight fine, let’s get to the point.” She stood back, gesturing at her bedside table. It had assorted junk on it, nothing he could make out in the gloom of the single candle. “You know it’s near Starshine, yeah? Holidays? Gifts?”

Summer solstice, shortest night of the year. People gave each other gifts, because the wishing stars were out for such a short time, and humans had to take up the slack when the saints and gods rested. The parties amongst the elite tended to last a couple days, and every year celebrations seemed to start earlier. Flower crowns were popular attire; he usually ended up shedding petals for days, finding them in clothes he knew he hadn’t even worn.

“So, I wanna give the dopes something nice, right? Only, I dunno what. But you’ve got fancy ideas, I seen your posters and your factory ’n all. You could probably come up with somefin’ neat and build it for ’em, yeah?”

He blinked. His glasses were all smeared. Kidnapped for his...gift giving ideas? What?

“But I dunno what that would be,” she said. “I wanted to hear your thoughts.”

“And you couldn’t just ask—?” She launched herself across him, hands shoved against his mouth, half pressing fabric between his teeth.

“I said shut up!” She glanced at the closed door nervously. “They might hear!”

“You asked me a question!” he said, muffled and flustered, but understandable all the same.

“Oh. Oh, yeah, guess so, huh.” She stepped back again. “Well, keep it down.”

“Dios mio. I did!” he whispered in a huff, irritated. She was being much louder than he was, surely.

She leaned against the bed, plucking at the rumpled blankets nervously. ”So, okay, then I asked you a question, so I guess you can talk. Quiet, though. Whaddya think? What would they like?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, you gotta think of something, or else I’ll coffin you myself.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It ain’t good, buddy.”

“Ah.” He leaned forward, testing the rope around his chest. Nope, no give. His vision swam. She was now three blurry rabbits, all waiting impatiently. “Nngn. What do they like?”

“Mmm. Weapons. Swearing. I guess maybe rabbits.”

I’m not arming them with anything, Venigni thought. And swearing isn’t exactly a gift idea. “Rabbits?”

“Kinda our thing.” She kicked her heels. “We can go back to the weapon thing, maybe something that explodes? I’d sure like that, maybe they’d like it, too. Give people what you want, y’know. That way when they’re sick of it, they’ll gift it back to you and you get to keep it. Yeah, explosiony thingy. What you got in that head of yours for that?”

Definitely nothing. “Let’s talk about rabbits. Why rabbits, hmm?”

“Why not rabbits? Rabbits are awesome.”

Right. He twisted his wrists again. Nothing. No give whatsoever. “You’ll let me leave, after?”

“Yeah, sure.”

And that didn’t sound very positive. Noted. His head screeched for attention. He tentatively shook it, and pain chewed through his eyeballs. Alcohol and whatever she’d given him did not mix. “What did you…?”

“Oh, it’ll wear off eventually,” she said dismissively. “You’ll probably be fine.”

“Your concern is helpful, signorina.”

“Your brain needs to be more helpful. Come on, be my ideas man, let’s go.”

Right. Starshine, right. What was usually given? Pocketwatches. “There’s chocolates, or socks?”

“Bo-ring. Come on, you’ve got better ideas in there. You’re techy, do something techy. An’ hurry up, afore they come home and figure out I’m gonna have the best presents ever and they’re gonna get super jealous that I thought of it first, or they’ll just think there’s a guy in my bedroom and be really mad.”

“A guy tied to your chair,” he pointed out.

“And? Big Bro’s probably into that if you asked him.”

Starshine, Starshine. Stars, his head. Head. Mmm. Everyone always wore flower crowns around Starshine. Hats. She had a hat already, it was part of her mask. Mask, they all wore masks, they wouldn’t want flower crowns. Rabbits. Ears. Ears?

“What if the ears moved?”

“Hmm?”

“On your masks. You’ve all got ears, mm?” He sat up a little straighter, ignoring his sloshy head’s protest. “What if we installed little motors and articulations in them? You could get them to move. Show expressions.” Not that the expressions would ever show anything other than anger, but.

“That’s kinda dumb.”

“You wanted something techy,” he argued with all three of her. He blinked again. She merged back into one Rabbit, lips pursed as she considered his suggestion.

“Mmm, yeah, guess so. They’re wearing theirs tho, I can’t just ask ‘em to fork over their masks. We ain’t dumb enough to let you see nothin’, keepin’ our identities to ourselves ‘n all. ”

“I don’t need to see anything, my dear. I shall estimate based on yours. Which you may keep on, I assure you. You may retrofit the ears without me.” I’m going to be long gone by then. And not in this coffin you keep threatening.

He gave her a list of things he assumed she wouldn’t have and would have to go out to find, but the Rabbit slammed a tool box on the table in front of him hard enough to make the lone candle jump and sputter. “Stole it from my other brother,” she said. “He likes messing around with tech, too. Probably even better’n you, I’d say, but I can’t ask him for ideas or he’d know what I was doing.”

“Right.” Venigni very carefully didn’t roll his eyes—and then he paused, surprised. “Oh, that’s. Actually a nice set. And he knows how to use them?” He tried to envision it, a Black Rabbit crouched over a desk examining an array of gears and levers with jeweler’s precision, and couldn’t quite make the idea fit well in his head.

“Yeah, real good too, he makes all the cool explodey stuff,” she said, and she tapped the little cases with their meticulously cleaned tools lined up perfectly straight inside. “Keep your gloves on. Don’t get your grimy fingerprints on ‘em when you use ‘em.”

“You’re going to have to untie me.”

She hesitated. This was the part of kidnapping an inventor for his hands that she apparently hadn’t thought through. “You’re gonna run.”

“I won’t.” I will.

“I can make it myself.”

“Oh? You know how to construct and then install a self-sustaining motor the size of a thumbnail in an articulated stem, with directional controls and light enough to wear without causing headaches? And then repeat that precisely, seven more times? Why did you need me, then, my dear?”

“You can tell me what to do.”

He just stared at her. She stared back.

“All right, fine, but I’m gonna have a knife at your throat the whole time,” she said, grumpily.

“I shall endeavor not to sneeze, coniglia.”

“Yeah, yeah, hang on.” She disappeared behind him, and he felt the knots binding his wrists behind the chair slats loosen, then fall away. He carefully drew his arms in front, sighing in relief as a strain he hadn’t even noticed in his shoulders eased. He still had a web of ropes binding his chest to the chair back, and his ankles were pinned to the chair legs, but this was a step in a better direction.

The promised knife tickled his ear. She leaned around the chair, chin resting on his shoulder, and whispered. “I’m watching, buddy. Bigger guys’n you have tried to pull one over on me, and I know the layout of these streets a lot better than you. Right?”

“Ah. Right.” He swallowed, then reached forward to begin.

Honestly, if it wasn’t for the terrible company and the miserable room and the single sputtery candle, he would have caught himself enjoying this. It was a lovely little challenge, once he got into it, especially when limited to using the materials he had at hand. She made it very clear she wasn’t leaving to find more supplies for him and all this worked well enough for her brother so it had better work for him.

She’d collected a huge array of wires and cables in preparation for this, and she had a number of little articulated toys on her shelf that she reluctantly allowed him to scrape for parts. As disjointed and silly looking as the flexible rods looked, once they jimmied a sock over one to test it, it didn’t look at all bad. Rather like a rabbit ear, twitching away as he flicked the controls with his thumb.

He held out a hand without glancing away from the piece he was inspecting, and she dropped a screwdriver into it. “Thank you, Pulcin—” he caught himself. “Um.”

“You’re welcome, nerd. You almost done?”

“Close.” He was on the last one. A line of raw, ugly, but definitely mechanically adjustable, inner rabbit ears were lined up on the table. None of them were the same size, and none of them had the same sort of material in them, but they worked, and that was good enough. Once they slipped fabric over them to hide the workings, they could pass muster from a couple feet away, and no one would ever want to get close enough to the rabbits to judge the quality of their ears in any case.

“Hurry up, afore they come home. It’s been ages and I’m booored. Watching you sucks.”

“You know, people have tried to drug me to steal my schematics,” he said distractedly, adhering a cable to a slim wire and testing it. “Someone would probably love to watch this for ideas.”

“Why take your schematics?” she snorted. “Way easier to drug and then take you, I think.”

“Easier? Most people in Krat don’t have dungeons in their manors,” he said.

“Eh, can’t be hard to install one of them. I’m sure I can give some tips.”

“I’d rather you didn’t give my competitors any ideas, my dear.”

“Oh, come on, it could be fun. I got great ideas. Besides, me gettin’ you worked, didn’t it? I’m getting ears out of it.” She picked one up. “Don’t look like much, my brother really does make better stuff than you, but hey, it’s fine. Means it’ll be a surprise n all.”

He very intentionally said nothing. He attached the tiny motor to the wire and flicked on the power, holding it close to his glasses to double check connections.

Somewhere in the hideout, a door slammed into a wall, and riotous yells bounced off the walls. They sounded happy, as yells went. Venigni and the Rabbit froze and stared at each other for a split second, half done ear in his hand, knife in hers.

“Oh no, they’re home! Oh! No! They’re not done yet!” She swore, flitted about from foot to foot, two steps one direction and two steps back, then yanked the topmost blanket off her bed and flung it over Venigni’s head. “Shut up and stay here,” she ordered, and she ran out the door, locking it behind her.

Like that was any sort of way to hide a person. He looked like a child’s ghost illustration. Sitting under a blanket, and this blanket was green with crudely painted rabbits on it. Ridiculous.

“’Shut up and stay here,’” he mimicked under his breath. “I think not.”

There was another knife in the toolbox. He’d very deliberately not looked at it once he realized it was in there, carefully handing her anything that needed a blade to trim or sharpen or otherwise cut. He tugged the blanket off—his hair stood on end, all staticky and crackly.

It was hardly a moment’s work to finally cut the ropes at his chest and ankles, and he swayed to his feet, groaning as his dozy head protested. Sleep, water. Pulcinella. Needed Pulcinella. He could hear voices downstairs. Couldn’t make out what they were saying. Window, for certain.

He started that way, hesitated, glanced at the last mechanical ear discarded on the table. Well, it was almost done. He snapped the last three pieces in place, checked the rotation, flipped it on and off, bent it up and down. Yes, as good as the others.

Which was to say, pretty decent under the circumstances, and she shouldn’t judge a line of rabbit ears built out of toys most definitely stolen from the Lorenzini Arcade and assembled by a groggy inventor. He’d like to see anyone else do better. He gently put it down with the rest.

There was a notepad and pen in the toolbox too, full of half dreamed schematics that weren’t all that bad at a glance. He scribbled, “Thanks for not killing me!” and signed his name with as much flourish as he’d ever signed anything in his life. He shoved the paper under the last ear and wrote “Finito!” with an arrow pointing to it.

He hadn’t noticed her approach. She stood back, behind the corner, watching him to see what he would do. A Krat celebrity, right there. Well!

He examined her weapons, dancing gloved fingers near sharp edges with obvious interest, and that sent a thrill of pleasure down her spine. The man had a reputation for a lot of different things, some of which she did not approve of, but the fact that he was a clever inventor on top of all the rest of his peculiarities and flirty renown was something she’d always appreciated as a technician herself. You couldn’t help but admire him and his genteel—

He gathered up a few of her tools—her screwdriver, a coil of piping, her precision tongs—and hurried away. Her mouth dropped open and she nearly dropped her tea.

She didn’t protest, too startled by the richest man in Krat stealing from her. She kept watching. He didn’t go far, at least, and still didn’t seem to notice her standing there gaping at him.

The space across the hall from hers had been empty. The boxes in there had sheets over them, ghostly storage and supplies set aside just in case when things had started going very wrong in the city. He’d tugged one of the boxes out, like a worktable. It had his company logo on it, like most of the boxes in here. He had his hands in nearly every industry in Krat, if people liked that or not.

There was a body on top of the box, lying on the sheet. Carefully laid out. An arm had rolled free and was dangling limp in the air, fingers loose. Dead. Oh. Her breath caught in her chest. She’d seen death, even before the puppet frenzy had started, but it never got easier. She was glad, now, that she hadn’t yelled, and she stepped back from this clearly private, mournful moment.

Venigni set the tools down on the box and eased the arm back up. He leaned over the body, hands pressed hard to the box edge, and she couldn’t see his face but his shoulders were sagging, stress and exhaustion and sorrow. Grieving the body before him. She would leave, quietly.

Was it a mercy that they hadn’t been dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in and—wait.

She could smell hot ergo in the air. She watched him pick up her screwdriver, watched him press it to the body, watched an access plate pop open with a plume of black smoke that made him cough.

That wasn’t a body at all, that was a puppet.

Oh, she was not going to let that stand! Bringing a puppet in here? And restoring it, after someone had clearly broken it for being insane and attacking like all the others on the streets? Not if she had anything to say about that. She dashed to her workspace, grabbed a sword, swung it high, and screamed, “Back away from that box!” She’d protect this idiot if he was too stupid to protect himself.

Venigni leapt halfway out of his coat. He spun around, his hat flying off, and he pressed himself against the box, crouched, arm flung up in defense, screaming back, “Dios mio, please don’t hurt me!”

They stared at each other. Her, sword over head. He, through his fingers at her. She could see him shaking, the fluff on his collar giving him away. Other than his trembling, they were completely frozen.

Polendina walked between the two of them, casual as only a puppet could be. He held a bucket. “The fresh oil you requested, Master Venigni,” he said, delicately bowing to the man. Not a drop of oil shifted in the bucket as he did so. He set the bucket on the box beside the crumpled puppet, arranging the handle just so. “Good evening, Miss Eugénie,” he said, bowing to her, and then he left again, silent and unruffled.

Venigni coughed, straightened, adjusted his jacket lapels. “Miss Eugénie?” He swallowed, and then that flashy smile that was so familiar on the posters cut across his face. He beamed at her, swept into a deep bow of his own with lots of elaborate flourishes. They may as well have faced each other in a glitzy ballroom with champagne and violins instead of in an empty hotel lobby (lovely as it was), with some recorded song warbling through a gramophone in the corner.

“Charmed, la mia bellissima! I am Lorenzini Venigni, and I am delighted to make these acquaintances with such a...er...talented young woman.” Like she didn’t know who he was already, right. Half the city was wallpapered with his face.

Her heart was rabbiting in her chest. Stars, did he have any sense? She had to quickly reevaluate all her preconceived notions of him, rewriting it in her head, and not at all in his favor.

He held the bow, hand out to her like she was supposed to put her own hand in his grasp. Yeah, I don’t think so. “What are you doing?” she demanded instead, sword lowering slightly but still more than capable of stabbing a frenzied attacker.

Mind, Venigni was standing too close to it to protect himself if that thing somehow found its strength and rose up and grabbed him, but sometimes sacrifices had to be made in the apocalypse. It was his own fault for standing next to a murder machine if it chose to strangle him.

He glanced up, realized she wasn’t going to give her hand, and straightened again with another nervous throat clearing noise. “I was going to do some repair work. It should be quite impressive, if you’d like to watch! You create beautiful pieces, if those blades are yours as I suspect. Perhaps you’d like to see some of my work? I can be most entertaining! People should pay to watch me, ha!” His famous smile faltered. She wasn’t laughing, and his brightness faded. He watched the sword warily.

He was an intruder in her space, her home, and he seemed to know it. And he wanted to bring danger into it. Ruin everything she had grown to love. She stepped forward, sword raised, and he flinched back against the box, hands raised pleadingly. Terror gleamed behind his glasses; he thought she was going to hit him. Well, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t, if he was going to insist on this insanity.

“You are not going to bring that thing back to life.” Eugénie pointed with the sword tip.

Venigni glanced over his shoulder at the crumpled metal sprawled in the general shape of a human. “I’m not?”

“It’ll kill us! Even you, with your head clearly in the clouds, can’t have failed to notice the frenzy going on in the streets? Killing everyone?”

“I see, yes! I mean, no! No, no worries! Pulcinella here is a big softie!”

“He’s made of metal.”

“Ah, we call this a metaphor.” He rapped a knuckle against the metal, and it rang dully. “Perhaps Polendina has a dictionary behind his reception desk?”

“Oh, you definitely want to die, huh?”

“Nnnot especially.” He rolled his shoulders back, resettling himself. “We should begin again, perhaps?” He put one hand behind his back and held the other hand in her direction, cautiously, like she was a skittish cat.

“We can skip the bowing.” She refused to drop the sword, even in the face of his disarming opennness. He felt unpredictable when he opened his mouth, like he could charm a snake into handing over its scales. She did not want to give him any concessions now that she’d decided he was a fool in spite of his reputed cleverness with a screwdriver (heh).

“I do like the bowing, though.” The smile was a little less brilliant, and yet a little warmer. He withdrew his hand. “You are the guard of this castle? You have a beautiful array of weaponry at your fingertips.”

“Hah,” she snorted. “Guard of the castle, sure. And Lady Antonia is the queen?”

“I should never deny the truth of that,” he said.

“Nor should I,” Antonia called out.

The two of them guiltily leaned around the pillars, looking at the reception desk and the room beyond where Antonia rested with her piano and her memories. She wasn’t facing them, but it seemed she could hear them just fine even across the lobby. Eugénie winced, and resolved to lower her voice.

“Miss Eugénie,” he said, softer than before as he’d come to the same conclusions. He held for a moment, apparently waiting for a last name. She didn’t give him one. She hadn’t really wanted him to know her first name yet, for that matter. Polendina.

He pressed on. “Miss Eugénie, I was sent here by a young man. I did not catch his name, but he saved my life. I was, ah, attempting impossibilities, and my butler was grievously injured protecting me from my own importance.”

“Butler.” She glared at the crumpled metal, heat blasted, smoking and spitting ergo like falling stars. She could see now it had pinstripes painted on its sooty exterior, like Venigni’s famous jacket. “That’s a puppet.”

“So is Polendina.”

“Yeah, but, Polendina’s fine. He mostly just stands at the desk, he doesn’t do anything.”

“I shall endeavor not to inform him of that statement.”

“Yeah, he’s a puppet, but he’s all right, as they go, I guess,” she said, begrudgingly. “Lady Antonia says it’s okay. But I won’t let you bring that one back. I don’t trust it. There’s a reason we’ve got security in here; you can’t just sweep in with something like that, no matter how rich you are. You can’t do that!”

“I fail to see what finances have to do with this.”

“Look, it’s a bad idea. We don’t know what started it, right?”

“Unfortunately, all my attempts to learn the cause of the puppet frenzy have ended poorly,” he agreed, a hint of a wince in his words that she was sure he hadn’t meant to let slip.

Before the newspapers had shuttered, before the radio had fizzled into static...the news reels, the company statements. Venigni Works had claimed complete responsibility for everything despite apparently not knowing the cause, promising to find out what had gone wrong and to fix it before it got worse.

It had gotten worse.

The man carried the weight of Krat’s dead on his shoulders. Every innocent man, woman, and child. He wore a haunted look, a grief and loss of hope she was not supposed to see through his showman’s facade. He noticed her looking, shifted. His glasses caught the lights’ gleam, hiding his expression as well as any stalker mask.

Her resolve hardened. He hadn’t fixed anything. His words were useless, weren’t they? She bit out, “You can’t bring it back. It broke for a reason, right?”

“Protecting me, mia amica.” His voice was gentle. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but Pulcinella is not affected by the...frenzy.” Again, a choke on that word. The hell of that weight.

“Can you promise that?” Trust this stranger, and his failures? Unlikely. This was her home, not his.

He looked at her, looked at the sword, looked at the glittering hotel lobby untouched by the chaos and violence outside. He said, without a trace of the showmanship he’d been sporting earlier, “I do promise, on all the stars, and on my savior, and on all the—” his breath caught for just a moment “—people I’ve lost, that this puppet is safe, unaffected by the frenzy, and will cause you no harm. You may watch the restoration if you like, and if you suspect any foul play or distress, you may stop me.

“And I equally promise you will not find cause to protest Pulcinella. I suspect he will like you very much, in fact.” He swallowed hard, waiting for her choice. Letting her have one.

Eugénie had seen nightmares on the streets of Krat. And so had Venigni.

She knew about the rumors and reputation and gossipy newspaper articles that had once come out every other day painting him as flighty and flirty and ridiculous. Which. Yes, he seemed to be all that.

But, too, the strain of loss was heavy on him. In that brief moment of weakness, she had seen how deeply he was affected by it, not even sure if he was the cause of it but blaming himself all the same.

Surely...surely he wouldn’t bring back something deadly, when he already knew the cost intimately. And the way he spoke about this Pulcinella, the way his voice grew gentle, the way he glanced at the mangled metal. The slump to his shoulders and the way he looked like he’d been grieving, before she’d interrupted him. For a puppet? That was the level of sorrow you reserved for family, surely?

She stood for a long time, thinking. No matter her choice, it seemed like he would respect it. Would he haul that corpse outside with him if she refused him? Fix that puppet alone in a bloody alleyway, watching over his shoulder for glowing eyes? Could she chase out a survivor? Or could she trust him, and his frail hopes? Try to restore a little life, when the world was only death?

She had to make a decision.

Finally, she did.

“I’m going to be watching,” she said. If she didn’t like where this was going, if she even suspected this Pulcinella was going to turn into a threat, she could stop Venigni, and easily, too. He seemed kind of pathetic, honestly. And if she needed to defend him from his own folly, she could at least do that.

That smile flashed bright again. “Va bene! I can be quite entertaining, I think! But do be careful not to knock over the bucket there. Polendina should not appreciate oil on his tiles!”