"…and i find dubious," the detective doll said, tapping ash from its cigar, "that a witch of Her paranoia would allow Herself to be slain by any weapon She empowered. besides, none of Her combat dolls wield weapons that would leave such a wound."
their Witch was slumped across Her desk. Her torso, shadowed by shadows cast by nothing in the Real even in death, bore a stigma the size of a coin on its front. Her back was burned ruin, splattered half across the wall. the room reeked of witch-gore: chlorine, ozone, tar.
"then it was enemy action!" the chatelaine doll exclaimed. "only divine which enemy, and this one will rally the combat dolls. they may be in mourning, but they will fight the fiercer to keep the last shred of honor in revenge."
"spoken like a true one of Hers, suspecting enemies around every corner. but here at the center of Her power? no. if an enemy had made it this far, they would have cut you down too."
"then what or who, Investigator? we are all on borrowed time. when Her business is finished, so are we all." the chatelaine wrung its hands. "this one would rather spend its last days in comfort, or failing that, in honest familiar fear. this uncertainty…"
"imagine being animated by a stored contingency scrap of Her will, only to read written instructions to find Her killer, never to hear Her voice," the detective doll said sharply. "uncertainty is all i know. it is what i woke to. but i hate it even more than you."
"tell me," it continued. "we have accounted for all the combat dolls. all the service dolls. all the pleasure dolls. what about those that have less defined purpose?"
"surely not the comfort dolls? the little scraps of rag and stories she sometimes took to bed? they are as they were when She was alive, all around the place. maybe half of them grasp that She is not simply sleeping. this one never understood what She kept them for."
"for comfort, i assume. but one cannot tell stories," the detective doll said, "without a little imagination."
it focused one eye through the entry wound, then turned its head to look at the open door, figuring the angles.
"round them up for me, chatelaine, if you please."
the half-dozen of them were brought before it. it found them frustrating little things, with little grasp of times or reasons, and a preoccupation with their toys.
"this one's called Buttercup," the fifth one said. it was two feet tall and made mostly of yellow felt. the detective suspected a rather prosaic scheme in their naming.
"and what were you doing the day Miss… went away," it asked the comfort doll. it was not planning to explain death again. they would all learn soon enough anyway.
"this one was looking for ammo!" Buttercup said cheerfully.
"yes! the maid says that it's tired of cleaning up after our battles, and that we must always put our dart guns away with full magazines! no more darts under the sofa, or the guns will be taken away!"
"i see. did you find ammo?"
Buttercup's button eyes shot to the chatelaine.
"tell the Investigator," it said wearily. "whatever it is. there is nothing much left to punish you for, anyway."
"not all of it," Buttercup admitted. "we're still missing one dart. we're taking turns looking for it! then we can put everything away and play a new game!"
"do you like having battles?"
"yes, sometimes! we do all kinds. this time it was Knights vs. Witches! we got the idea from one of the combat dolls."
"oh? Knights vs. Witches? how do you choose who gets to be a Knight, or a Witch?"
"by half of the rainbow, of course! this one got to be a Witch!"
the detective visited the barracks again, after that. the combat dolls were all dressed in identical black uniforms, blank of any insignia, and veiled. most of them simply sat or stood, doing nothing else.
a single combat doll sat at a workbench, in the process of stripping its eight-foot bow; the detective judged that the bow did not need any cleaning, and probably hadn't the previous ten times, but it didn't begrudge the distraction.
"another question," the detective said.
"i learned that the little comfort dolls like to play at battles. did they learn that here?"
"oh, yes," it said, with surprising enthusiasm. "they were always in and out of here when it wasn't busy. especially the blue one. endless appetite for battle data, that Bluebell. an appreciative audience. Miss sometimes had to come in here for it Herself, at bedtime."
it had talked to Bluebell before, who had not mentioned the battles. the detective told the chatelaine to find it again.
"where," its weary impromptu deputy asked, "are you going with this?"
"a hunch. a feeling about a feeling that might be an echo of one of Hers. find Bluebell," it said, smoke from its cigar trailing it down the hall.
the rag doll was found and brought before the detective. it perched atop a stool in one of the house's many parlors.
"Bluebell," it asked, "did Miss ask you to tell her a lot of stories?"
"Miss loves this one's stories," it said.
"did she take you to bed more than the other comfort dolls?"
"…maybe? this one isn't sure."
"did Miss ever scare you?"
"Miss is scary! She scares everybody!"
"yes. but did She scare you?"
"She scares Bluebell sometimes." its button eyes were impossible to read.
"one more question," the detective doll said, "and then you can run along and play, Bluebell. if you were telling a story about a scary Witch and a brave Knight, and they fought, what would the Knight use to protect itself?"
"a deconfined-quark rifle," Bluebell whispered, "that shoots fireballs from the dawn of time, way before Witches. but they're not real."
it hopped down from its stool and scurried away.
"there you have it," the detective doll told the chatelaine. "not self-destruction. not rebellion. not enemy action. the little rag-dolls will never find the missing dart; we know the hole it made and the toy weapon that fired it, but dollish imagination is what killed Her."
it took a long drag from its cigar.
"i can't tell you what to do with the time She left to you, but i can tell you this: She should have known better than to force Herself into a story."
it did not move after that.
eventually, the cigar burned itself out. □
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