"Pardon me," you say for the fifth or sixth time, "what?"

  When Madrigal’s friend Branwen isn't yelling, as it turns out, she's nearly unintelligible. Her handsign is riddled with odd pecks, swoops, and regionalisms, and her speaking voice is worse: she has a thick, lilting accent. A foreigner. From some distant Pillar, no doubt. You struggle to hide your disdain.

  Madrigal has taken the unwanted role of translator. "She said 'look at me. Do I look like I care?'"

  You look at Branwen. After stopping by her hut (you prefer 'shack' or 'lean-to,') she was supposed to show you where her snake used to be. Instead, you've been trudging after her as she mends holes in the wall at the edge of her property. You're not sure Branwen cares about anything.

  But she should, surely? At least about some things. "I mean," you say, "I— I'm royalty."

  Madrigal doesn't need to translate, but you wish she'd stop looking so pleased about all this. Branwen shrugs and lifts a bundle of soggy thatchweed. "So?"

  You open your mouth. You hadn't ever seen this as a thing that needed explaining. "So… I'm your social better? So you ought to listen to me?"

  "Don't got princesses where I'm from."

  "Well, that's hardly my fault, is it?" You toss your head ineffectually and are forced to shove a whole mass of curls off your face. "And I'm not a princess, I'm a regent-in-waiting— it's more important. And it's got more agency…"

  "Don't got regents-in-waiting where I'm from. Killed all the regents-in-waiting, I think. Got a republic."

  You don't know what a republic is, but that doesn't stop you from scowling. Madrigal's pleasure increases in inverse proportion.

  "And now that I'm here, don't got anything. No gov'ment at all. Fen wouldn't stand for it. Doing something with all that agency?"

  "I don't precisely—" You hasten to catch up to Branwen, who's finished on the latest hole and now strides to the next. "I don't precisely know what you mean."

  "You do anything? Patty tells me—" Madrigal pales— "Patty told me you don't do nothing. Told me you jus' leech off everyone's time and energy. And you drove the poor barkeep sectionable. And—"

  Madrigal's cupping her face with both hands. "Bran!" she pleads, muffled.

  "—And you're a spoilt layabout piece of shit who deserves every inch of what's surely coming for your neck any minute now. That's what she'd told me. So I'm jus' wondering if she's wrong."

  Whenever you get the first static-crackle in the back of your head, you tend to flinch. It's not in surprise, though maybe it used to be— it's in anticipation. Richard is not generally a bearer of good news.

  So you flinch, even though Richard relaxes his coil around your left forearm and says silkily:

  ?Of course she's wrong.?

  ?Madrigal is small and narrow-minded. She cannot hope to grasp your methods, much less appreciate them. Do not be discouraged.?

  A sliver of you thinks: what? This isn't what Richard's like. But then you counter with: well, he hasn't been insulting you recently. Maybe he's just different now. He's happy with you. And then everything else is swamped with an upwelling of validation and you don't think at all, only work to keep your face neutral.

  ?Ask about the snake again.?

  Ah. But still! "Branwen," you say brightly.

  Madrigal looks worried.

  "About the snake?"

  Madrigal looks relieved. "Scarpered," Branwen says. “Said that. Patty said she’d pitch in."

  And thus you'd pitch in. Regrettably. "I understand that, yes. But, uh…"

  >[A1] You really ought to be in charge here. *You're* the snake expert. *You're* the one with a stake in the matter. This should be *your* job.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  >[A2] You want no part in this whatsoever, and say so. Branwen should be happy she's rid of the thing. You're leaving.

  >[A3] You want no part in this thing… but nobody needs to know that. You're going to find the snake, and you're gonna strangle the thing to death with your bare hands. Or maybe just stab it. Whatever whim strikes you at the time.

  >[A4] Yeah, you're going along with this, whatever. Would Branwen stop fixing holes and start actually taking you to the right place? God!

  >[A5] Write-in.

  >[B1] Is this a snake, or is it, you know, a *snake*? If Branwen knows what you mean. (Don't elaborate if she doesn't.)

  >[B2] Above, but do elaborate if she doesn't. She's probably faking it. You would.

  >[B3] Size of snake? Color? Is it perhaps made of metal? Talk at all?

  >[B4] What's the big deal that it escaped? Are there big consequences?

  >[B5] Any idea where it went?

  >[B6] Write-in.

  "…How big is it? I don't think you ever said."

  "I said."

  You cough. "Oh. Uh, okay. That's fine. Would you care to repeat—?"

  Branwen adjusts her collar. "Not until you say sorry for not listening."

  Had you not been listening? You must've not been listening. Or Richard was talking, either way. Which isn't your fault, that's Richard's fault, but you can't possibly explain that. Not until Madrigal's gone, at the very least. And you can't just back out, either; that'd be cowardly, and you're not a coward. You're in fact highly daring.

  You cough, again. "Um… my apologies."

  "I was messing with ya. I never said." Madrigal seems to find this amusing, but Branwen's face is blank. She thrusts her arms out to her sides. "Armspan or so. Could be longer."

  You squint. You've never been good at eyeballing measurements.

  ?Sixty-four inches. And a quarter.?

  What, five feet?

  ?Five feet four inches. And a quarter. Charlie.?

  Close enough. Five and a quarter and a quarter feet— that's as tall as you. (?Taller.?) That's longer than Richard, who's a foot long on good days and three feet on bad. What would you do with a five-foot snake? Wear it as a boa? Preposterous.

  ?Correct. Size isn't everything.?

  ?…?

  ?Five feet isn't out of the question. Color.?

  You relay the demand. "'Orangey,'" Madrigal translates. "'Green parts.'"

  ?Inconclusive. Does it speak.?

  You can't ask if it speaks!

  ?You'll ask or I'll ask. Take your pick, Charlie.?

  God, fine. "Strictly hypothetically," you say delicately, "does it perhaps utilize, um, the common tongue, the lingua franca, to communicate—"

  "The what?" Madrigal says. "Lingwah what? Are you asking if it talks? Bran—"

  "Doesn't talk," Branwen says slowly, "does got— pictures and so on. Feelings. Not too uncommon, really. Well—" She smears a gob of mud over the thatch-filled hole, and presses two dock leaves upon the whole thing. "—maybe she talks to the others. Surely hard to say. Does something, anyhow, that's why it's an issue—"

  "What's an issue?"

  "It missing. Can't sell a snake, you know. Can't sell the scales or the eyes or the venom. No market for it." Madrigal nods like this is common knowledge. "So that's not why I've got one. Got one 'cause she kept the rest in line."

  "Wh—" you start.

  "You need a snake for any creature business," Madrigal says. "Calms the other animals. It's like, uh— you ever read about horses? Horse fights?"

  Of course you've read about horses. You loved horses. You pleaded for a horse for your seventh birthday, and had to be told horses didn't really exist, they were just in stories. You got a stuffed one instead, sown by your aunt. It had six legs. You named her Betsy Furlock—

  "No?" Madrigal continues, incorrectly interpreting your silence. "Well, it doesn't really matter, I guess. There were these things called horses, and they got put in cage matches, but they'd get nervous if they were in their pens all alone. So to calm them down, the horse fighters would put goats, which were, uh—"

  "Kind of lizard," Branwen says.

  "—a kind of lizard, in the pen. And the horse'd calm down. So it's like that, but for everything. Even people, kind of— I bring clients up here, you know?"

  "Criminals."

  "Sure, whatever. Sometimes the trip through the Fen jumps them up, you know, so before they do anything crazy like back out— I bring them to the snake, and it gets them thinking straight, you know."

  This does not strike you as particularly ethical, but you've got bigger fish to fry. "Uh, okay. So with it gone—"

  You flinch at a humanlike scream, right on cue.

  "Yeah," Madrigal says. "Might be some containment issues. Probably shouldn't take too long. Bran, can we see where it got out?"

  "Damn." Branwen picks up her supplies. "Hoped you'd forgot."