The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Sadly, the title drop in today's Headless Over Heels doesn't happen in the part that hooks me harder.

“Wait. Wait, I hear it.” Lisa’s grimace of concentration broke open and hatched an excited grin. She waggled her dark brows at Seth. “I’ll be damned. There’s the bell.”

Tiago smoothed out a corner of the waterworks map across the carriage’s foldaway table and weighed it down with a tin tobacco box. “What’s the pattern?”

“Four rings between pauses,” Lisa said. “Who’s four rings?”

“That’s…” Seth scanned the roster. “Hannah il Teffik. How loud is it?”

“Faint,” Lisa said. “Getting fainter. Walls or distance.”

“Time is… five past three.” Tiago ran a finger down the map of Fontana’s underground, with a hastily-woven spiderweb of criers’ assigned routes along it. “At a guess, she’s at this green-line junction below the Paostwari House.”

Half the tunnels down there used to be catacombs...

“That would be a stroke of luck.” Ofelia huddled over the map with her brother. “It’s a gray-water part of the system. Fountains and not feces.”

“We’ll meet her at the exit gate on Dulcet street and confirm.” Tiago stretched his gangly legs out of the carriage. “Not to be a cynical little shit, but they might have just flushed the rock, or swept it into a storm drain, and we’re chasing a trash heap.”

“They might have. But it’s worth investigation, anyway.” Lisa reached both broad hands across the table and clasped Ofelia and Seth’s shoulders. “My geniuses.”

“I did absolutely nothing,” Ofelia said. “You’re welcome.”

Seth found his cutlass in the cluttered corner of the carriage he’d begun piling his stuff. Lisa loaded her panoply of bladed weapons onto her body, from baldrick to belt, and retrieved her broad-brimmed roadwarden hat, tsking as she punched a dent out of its thick felt crown. Tiago buckled his wheelgun to his side and shrugged his sheepskin jacket on. Ofelia picked out a book with a torso on it called Claimed by the Cavalier and folded it out to her current page.

Tiago gave it a dismal look. “You need to at least bring a knife, Feeli.”

“I can borrow one of mother’s,” Ofelia said.

Lisa exchanged salutes with the hermandati waiting outside the carriage, filled them in on the discovery, and cheerfully waved off their offers of accompaniment. “My family and I will handle it fine, thank you,” she told them, and Seth wasn’t sure why she hadn’t included him in that statement, or whether, perhaps, she had.

They trooped through Fontana’s streets. The antigravitational repulsion of the al Ydrises cleared a swathe of path before them. Stares followed them. Conversations died and rose again as whispers in their wake. Seth hadn’t ended up with the Hummingbird hexentat across his back, but he needed no sorcery to know what they were talking about. The one lit man in the company of a clutch of undead.

Dulcet street was a tight line of row houses, whose narrow and multicolored progress reminded Seth of a stack of Ofelia’s books. At the end of one gridded block squatted a brickwork bunker with a wrought iron gate set before a staircase down into the earth. “Like a portico to the Panvesian underworld,” Ofelia observed, whatever that meant.

Tiago produced a brass pocket watch and flipped it open. “Half past,” he said. “If they haven’t caught her and slit her throat, she’ll be here any minute.”

“My dour boy.” Lisa bumped him with her hip. “I should’ve brought Anna so the two of you could be broody together.”

“I don’t mind Lisa.” Tiago clacked the pocketwatch’s boxy lid shut. “Enhances the contrast.”

From the staircase came the tromp of heavy boots. A lambent green appeared around a bend in the cavern and attached itself to the bright globe of a mitelamp, held in the leather gauntlet of a stout red-nosed woman. She grinned up at them and rang a bell in her other hand. “Wotcha,” she said. “You must be the Verdugo.”

“I suppose I must.” Lisa smiled and inclined her head, but true to her warning, her posture was stiffer with this grubby little worker bee than Annalise’s would be. “And you’re Hannah il Teffik.”

Hannah bit the finger on her glove and yanked it off with her teeth. “That’s me, your honor. Or whatever I call you.” She stuck her stubby hand out. Lisa gamely took it. “I guess you’re here on account of the dings.”

“That’s right. You’re the lucky one whose bell came through.” Seth held up a bundle in waxed paper, grease stains on its underside. “Hungry, Miss il Teffik?”

“You bring that for me?” Hannah shucked her other glove. “Bless you. Just about starved, I am. Lot of walking you had us get up to.” She plopped to the road, eased her back onto the waterstained edge of the gate behind her, and unwrapped the package. “Least I didn’t need to shout anything. Oh, bless you.” She uncovered the roasted chicken Seth had brought and commenced to tear it to pieces.

“We have to move fast,” Tiago said, over the sound of Hannah’s mastication. “There’s the risk they had people down there and heard the clanging. It’s not exactly a predictable move, what we’re doing, but it’ll put them on guard.”

“I know you only just surfaced, Hannah.” Lisa crouched to the woman’s level. “But would you mind terribly guiding us back down?”

“Let me finish this excellent fucking chicken here and I’m all yours, Madam Verdugo.” Hannah gave an affirmative wag of her drumstick. “You got a map there, young fella?”

Tiago nodded and unfolded the parchment. “It was around three we heard you. I had you placed right here.” He pointed to a four-way junction shaded in evening-sky green.

“Yep. Looks about right.” Hannah licked grease from her pointer finger and traced her route. “That’d be the green-line right here.” She diverted from the tunnel to a square room off its junction. “On the fork I didn’t take there’s a waystation you might look at. And then right here… hmm.” She tapped an amorphous lozenge on the other side, like a topographical marking. “That’s one of the old crypts.”

Tiago squinted at the shape, which now had a fleck of seasoning spice clinging to it. “Crypts?”

“Yessir,” Hannah said. “Half the tunnels down there used to be catacombs, y’know. They went and repurposed them for plumbing during the great big build-out that made Fontana Fontana.”

“What’d they do with the bodies?” Seth asked.

Hannah crooked her eyebrow. “The bodies moved themselves, young fella. You don’t know the tale? During the second emergence, this place was ground zero for a white feather. Rosh-Antakesi, the puppeteer. You heard about her, surely.”

Seth had. Graveyards turned to tidal waves of bone and rotten flesh, weeping victims flensed and filleted by their own ancestors, brought back up as corpse soldiers to shred their neighbors. “Yeah,” he said. The appetite he’d been building off Hannah’s chicken fell into the ravine of his turning stomach.

“Well, we here in Fontana were her first victims.” Hannah jerked a thumb into the darkness behind her. “The catacombs emptied themselves. Half the city was slaughtered. The survivors got very into cremation.”

“I, uh… I guess I can understand why that would be,” Seth said.

“So after the second E, we had all this underground room, and made the best of it.” Hannah wiped her face and tossed her crumpled paper serviette into the pile of bones she was making. “I say we like this wasn’t two centuries ago. The larger crypts like this one either went undisturbed or were made into waystations and quarters for the builders and maintainers. Once the construction project wound down, y’know, they didn’t need all the space. They held onto a few of ‘em, and others they collapsed or filled with rubble and dross from the building project. And then here or there you get derelict spots like this one that they just sealed and left alone. Too big or load-bearing or they just ran out of money and time.” Her finger circled the crypt and prodded at its red-inked entrances. “See these crosses through the tunnels around it? Those have been sealed.”

“So…” Seth turned his head to see the map from Hannah’s perspective. There’s no tunnel left in. No entrance.”

Hannah scratched a mole on her chin. “None of the personnel ones, no. Might be a choke tunnel you could fit through, though. Skinny sprat like you. Those ain’t marked on here.”

“You want me to go into something called a choke tunnel.”

“It’s a Kari-Kine loanword. Had a bunch of them on the digging crews back in the wayback. Chok means… something. Crawl, I think? Anyway, you won’t choke, probably.” Hannah set the remains of her meal aside and grunted back to her feet. “But you’re gonna have to crawl.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...little-fox

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

As Paul Engemann said in Scarface, Push it to the Limit!

Whether that be the limit of how much of Heather and Andie's antics Kenneth can take without cracking...

...or the limit of what Lily can observe in her extended family without doing something...

...or what Rick might be able to deal with if only he knew the full extent of what Keiko and Krista were getting up to!

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...-family/39

Princess of the Void. Grantyde has just finished recording a message to the UN Security Council, giving them 14 days to let the people of Earth Maekyon know what's moving quietly through the ionosphere.

“It’s missing the consequence,” Grant says. “That’s what they’ll be talking about, I bet. What happens when they refuse.”

“Let them talk,” Sykora says. “Let them see what we can do and extrapolate. We don’t need to dwell on it, and you don’t need to make yourself a villain.” She taps her tail twice on the metal armrest to obtain the film crew’s attention. “If our business is concluded here, my husband and I will depart with gratitude for your service.”

A universal bow spreads across the bridge.

“Attend, dove.” Sykora regally extends the hand that isn’t cuddling a daughter to her. “Let’s bring the children to their godmothers and then do some Maekyonite drugs.”

Grant chuckles as he takes his wife’s hand. “Let’s.”

The command group is waiting at the edge of the bridge, just away from the hubbub of the set. Waian eagerly accepts a pair of babies from the royal couple. “Hello, little tyrants. Who’s ready for their first trip to the engine observation deck?”

“We’ll get that footage loaded onto the drone.” Vora ties her cloud of silver hair back and secures her Princess-in-Waiting circlet onto her head. “Hopefully they broadcast it wide.”

Waian glances up from tucking the kids into their stroller. “Can you fuckin’ imagine what your old bosses and coworkers are gonna think?”

“I really can’t,” Grant says. “I’d pay a fortune to see it.”

“We already snagged one roommate.” Hyax stands to one side, chin jutted high. “The rest of the spy drones are spoken for.”

There is a shallow but clear bite mark on the scruff of Hyax’s neck. From behind the Brigadier, Waian must see Grant’s surprised discovery; she snickers silently and puts a finger to her lips.

Sykora crosses to Vora and kisses her cheek. “The bridge is yours, Viscountess.”

Vora returns the kiss. “Enjoy the cannabis, Majesty. We’ll ensure the garden level is cleared of observers.”

“Still not clear to me why this is necessary amid annexation preparations,” Hyax says.

“Surely you have little to complain about Imperials taking alien drugs,” Sykora says. “Last time it was Grantyde with Eqtoran xhurr, and you have the happy results on your neck.”

Hyax retracts into her HAK like a tortoise into its shell. Her scars stand paler against her blush. “I retract my objection and request to be excused that I might retrieve a scarf.”

As they take the lift off the bridge, Sykora snaps open the vacuum-packed pair of edible chocolates Kymai has prepared for them. “Will you do these with me?”

Grant shakes his head. “One of us should stay sober, just in case. And I want to watch.”

Sykora scoffs and pops a square into her mouth. “Thank the Gods of the Firmament the command group is otherwise engaged. They’d never let me live it down.”

“Lomanza’s gonna be there, right?”

“Lomanza’s Lomanza. She knows not to needle her commanding officer.” Sykora chews. “Hmm. Curiously herbaceous.”

They step into the garden level, a balcony overlooking the verdant terraces of the agro ring. A cloud of alien pollinators flit from bloom to bloom, borne through the sweet air on gossamer corkscrew wings. Majordomo Lomanza stands by with a trio of medtechs, and bows to the incoming royals. “Welcome, Majesties. Pardon our presence to supervise.”

“You are pardoned, of course, but perhaps you’re not necessary.” Sykora rubs behind her ear, face focused. “I’m afraid I’m not yet feeling any sort of—”

Grass.

---

“Beardy beardy weirdy beardy man.” Sykora’s little fingers scratch along Grant’s chin. “My husband. My big weird beard husband beardy man. You’re so big. You are so BIG. Give me—” She takes his hand and presses hers into it. Her palm is sweaty. “Why are you so big?”

“Ate my vegetables, I guess,” he says.

“Ate your—” She lets out a shrill cackle and falls onto her back. “Herbivore. My herbivore husband. Herby Hubby.” She tears a handful of grass from the ground and waves it around. “C’mere. Gimme your lap.”

He lies down with her and gamely puts aside the grass she insistently prods toward his mouth.

“I wanna feeeeed you,” she protests. “I wanna watch you eat. I want you to get big and stout so you can squish me into a two-dimensional little piece of paper. Like that cartoon you showed me. With the kindek.”

“That was a rabbit,” he says.

“Rabbit,” she repeats, hypnotized. “What’s grass in English again?”

“Grass, I think.”

“Grass.” She sings a scratchy song. “Grassy wassy kassy. Eat yoor grass, hosband.”

He sprinkles some into her lap. “Your grass.”

“No,” she gasps, and hastily pats it off her. “Remember when Zee was eating grass and you went ho no no little lady? You sounded so funny.”

He chuckles. “She never wants to eat her lunch and then take her anywhere and it’s a turf buffet.”

“Remember Kiar’s little hat?”

“He’s wearing it right now at the daycare, I think.”

“He is. Our baby boy in his little baby hat.” Her eyes well up with tears. “They all look more and more like you every day.”

“I wonder if he’ll grow any facial hair,” Grant muses. “If Zee’s getting my height, it’s possible, right?”

“Oh he’d look so dashing.” Sykora hiccups. “Every time I hold them I just wanna whisper grow, grow, grow. I wanna know what they’re saying. I wanna talk to them about what they learned today. And sing stupid little songs with them. Grassy massy bassy wassy.” She wipes her nose on the ground. “I think I understand the Maekyonite drugs. Let’s go back to the cabin and have them bring us our babies.”

“That sounds perfect,” Grant says. “Let’s just have you come down a teeny little bit first.”

“Okay,” she says, in English. “Ho-kay do-kay. What a perfect little word that is. Okay. What a lovely language.” She runs her palms across the grass. “It feels like your face,” she says. “Why did I wait so long to try this, uh—what’d you call it?”

“Grass is its nickname.”

“Grass!” She falls into another giggling fit. “Do the Maekyonites call every plant grass?”

Grant sits with his little stoned wife cracking up in his lap, and digs his communicator out. Sykora told him not to take any pictures, but she’s so fucking cute stoned out of her mind like this that he has no choice.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617.../610-grass
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2452194/