Sometime in the short of the subsequent, while I stood dumbly floating a pot in a pot and chilling water in the dark, Mister Walton was come out of doors. I only can guess at how fast they’d among them unearthed a half-decade of bitter feelings and short receipts. I was only present after I achieved a sufferable temperature of my cargo, and know only what passed after I returned into their rancor in progress.

“I am no babysitter!” Nick cried out in exasperation. His voice shook and his shoulders were sunk; to an impalpable fraction they had not before. “Not some tutor or minder, though we have long been pressed to it against our ability or preference. I’m abused of my good will in this, sir! I’ll not hold my tongue of it. No, no longer!”

I froze in my footprints, and swallowed.

The Mister stood in a loose velvet evening robe, cinched about the waist. His naked legs were pale, snaked with cyan veins and skinny; at least compared to the heft of his belly.

“Oh! Oh, no longer, eh? Where’ve you conjured this victimized whinnyin’ from out of the blue nothing? Here you come, when I and mine are gracious here, in dark of night’n set to fix y’n your time of need. Here y’are, whinging to me on what I ain’t ever asked you to do.” Spreading his arms broadly, the Mister declared his argument to all of us, for it wasn’t and was never Nick he needed most to convince. He chuckled and shook his head in a synthetic mien of amusement. “What’s next? Will you sweep the prairie with a broom, beggin’ for a peso extra, cryin’ to me for how hard it is to sweep dust off dust? What a cross you bear, boy. Of your own doing!”

Nick clenched his jaw. “So we should stop,” he pronounced coldly. His eyes flicked to Auntie Hektor, and the entry door ajar. “All of us then. Our service to the children here is of no value to you. We have your permission, express and clear to wash our hands of their upkeep and tutelage. Focus on what’s important.”

“No loss to me,” scoffed the Mister. “Wouldn’t even notice-”

But the grin slid off his face – for Ms Anne Hektor had adjusted in the slightest of ways, for Mister Sadiqi’s frown was changed by a millimeter. Momma was frozen in the doorway with a tray of steaming cocoa mugs, and both Ms Vaunda Greene and Mabel Jeminee were appeared in the second story window.

To his credit (or better spake as ‘advantage’ as credit implies merit), the Mister was cleanly able to see the far limit of his authority. He changed attitudes in a bare second, and for his stratagem chose to become outraged instead.

“Honor!” He bellowed, loud enough to inflict all present to flinch. “A man’s got to have honor. Oath and action! Loyalty!”

The House of Ghost Perch unfroze. For as long as their core compact with the Mister was inviolate, they widely considered all other matters to be considerations of financial negotiations. Satisfied and complicit, inconsiderate of moral domains where soft boundary transitions were quantified in the numeric, we would forsake the rest to his judgment.

Flustered by the Mister’s pivot but undeterred, Nick argued on. “Sir, if it’s honor we’re talking about, who’s honor is really at measure here? Who’s heart on the scale against the feather? I -”

He cut off with a grunt of pain as Anne Hektor snatched his arm with pitiless efficiency and gestured me to dispense my charge into her usage. She applied his care in the most violent manifestation that the word rinse is still capable of, shy of transmutation into a verb of harm. Simultaneous to it, Momma delivered a hot cocoa into Nick’s good hand (closing the pincer attack), and Auntie Jeminee called out to me from the window above that I might be indoors and to bed (which I did not do).

So we began to move, a machinery of old habits, in conspiracy to achieve Mister’s interests.

“We have made us here, all together, a sanctuary. Through hard times we’ve filled full larders, and ‘gainst the filthy vecks, we’ve set our iron and raised our gates.” The Mister preached. He manufactured a nod full of aloofly grieved paternal dismissiveness. “We’ve all had to make sacrifices,” said the man who made few to the other who was yet anemic from spillage.

Though Nick might still rightfully have interjected, he was at the disadvantage of being punctured. Auntie Hektor had moved to the needle, and so our Hand stood being sutured and lectured to and stewing angrier.

“If I’m frank about it, and to what I see, it’s my reckoning that Hektor’s eldest and the boy do plenty of work ‘round the ranch anyhow,” the Mister smirked, swelling overbold. “As much as they help? A man might make the argument that y’all boys ought to be paying the kids for how much of your chores they do.”

When the Mister set his hand on my shoulder amiably, the gesture was so unnatural and uncommon that I near flinched. Some times a man might speak words so brazen that it frosts over language entirely. My jaw was at threat of gaping, and even Auntie Hektor coughed slightly. In particular Nick’s eyes looked ready to leap out of his head. I must say, I was in this moment learning volumes in the practice of dishonesty. I even might have thought it would work.

But more fool me, I should have been watching Mr Sadiqi – and the Mister should have known better than I and done so too.

“You know, it’s late. And we’re all... over-agitated,” intervened our first man. I looked over and met Mister Sadiqi’s eyes, to see they were ringed under with knowing resignation. “Nick’s brought his suit, and it deserves proper consideration: where we can see and speak and think clearly,” he offered. “Under the sunlight,” he implored.

“Hoof ‘n Horn, man. It’s just a scratch he’s got!” Scoffed the Mister, letting true exasperation slip. “If every scrape or scab is raised up a tragedy, you couldn’t raise a chain of fence before needin’ a memorial statue to the bruised and ensplintered.”

Mister re-cinched his evening sash against the gravity of his belly and raised his chin towards the residence. Momma took the sign to mean she ought return indoors, while Auntie Hektor lifted an arched brow and refused to be rushed. But the grip was already off the rudder, as they say, for the cocoa we’d shackled him with was spilt out, and the mug gone to bucket.

“My Blessing is ruined, and in your service,” Nick exclaimed at last, for while being knit on had stuttered the man, it couldn’t hold him silent. He certainly hushed the rest of us though, even the Mister was taken aback.

“That can’t be right,” Auntie Hektor stated somewhat careful, then she snatched up her tiny bundle of white yarrow flowers and swatted Nick gently across the cheek and leaned in to stare, uncomfortably goggling into his eyes for a heartbeat. “You’re firm still in the Grace of our Lady,” she concluded. Her glance flicked from the Hand to the First to the Master.

After a confused and suspicious blink at his floral assaulter/physician, Nick turned to glare instead at his employer and softly declared, “Hers’ ain’t the first Grace I came to know, and her Name ain’t the only under Heaven.” He brought his guitar out in front of him on its strap and waving over the snapped string, so to indicate its crippling.

The Argument tickled at the edges of me, delicate as eddies of the pebble in the river. In it (and listening closely), I first heard and came to know the word Revel, which was the edge of the Lady and a stranger.

Auntie Hektor recoiled like a struck possum. Mister bristled like a cat pet backwards. Ashli, who I ought to have guessed to join us sooner, hollered an exhulting expletive from the entryway as Auntie Seung-Hee struggled to drag her back from the door just as fast as we noticed her.

The Mister chewed on his response while the front door was made shut. “Carrying the Argument into my home, a man might interpret it as an affront,” he said heatlessly. “To hold such a contrary Grace without my permission...”

Nick chopped his free palm through the air dismissively, offering the other back to medicament. “Nonetheless to your want, it is mine and I refuse to amputate it from myself. By what right can you deny it? There is no law higher here than to say what a man owns is his,” he flinched as the end of his thread was knotted and snipped. “Ow.”

The Mister had no choice but to nod in resentful agreement. For Grace was a matter of Private Property, and no consideration could be raised above it. To deny the fundament of the Freehold would be to invalidate himself.

“It is not... so uncommon,” murmured Mister Sadiqi after a pause. “Many of our men have come to us from far afield and the protection of the others of the Twelve. It’s just that few had come to the fruit of a lasting Blessing.”

“And even less of us can maintain them, while paying due to our Lady,” our Hand turnt up his lip in a rueful smirk. “She can be a jealous one.”

Auntie Hektor hummed in accession, “She is unyielding.” Then she went on applying a paste to the man. Naturally, the Mister made an attempt to interrogate the name and number of the other men hiding a second benediction, but his united hands invoked the right of privacy and he was denied.

“If it was the Mother I knew, could you deny me here?” Nick posited to us next. It was an arrow-cut question, since the persuasion of my Aunties on the subject of Juno was known and incontrovertible.

But the Mister undercut him. “You could ask the same, to my opposite answer if you named the tyrant or the crooks,” he made clear, though he would not or could not use their truer names.

Instead of being cowed, Nick laughed at that, while Mr. Sadiqi cleared his throat. Neither explained themselves.

“I overstrained my gift against five wild predators. Five deep enough in the purple to be heavy. Strained and I think broke. I fear that, no I know, that I can’t save my music without substantial cargo.”

The Mister threw up his arms and paced a short, furious loop. “Ah, extortion is it at last?” He blustered.

“To the measure of?” Mister Sadiqi requested to stall the momentum of offense.

Nick shrugged, then resolved. “Half a rayle’s worth?” But at Ghost Perch, we had no tradition or instrument for putting numbers to count the weight of our miracles, so we could not directly apprehend the quantity.

I doubt we had expected the ability from our help either. But he was happy to lever our ignorance to suggest his preferred remedy. This is what we call in our language: negotiation.

“I could repair the guitar if I had gut from a prime animal for string, and maybe horn from an elder to replace the panelling…”

I had still been expecting his want to be in currency; the profit from our herd was no small thing to ask for. Though I had kept my tongue diligently to this point, here I sucked in my breath through my teeth. I was frightened briefly to see the Mister remembered I was there, but as purse was at stake, cost forgot him of me quick enough for safety.

“Only tripe for all this fuss?” He snorted, calculation flashing behind his eyes. “If it’s only offal you need, we cast off plenty enough. Fine! But a horn I will not spare –”

Shaking his head firmly, our man refused to be short-changed. “The gut must be first harvest. Has to be the consecrated product of the cut.”

I and my Auntie began to back away. Her bucket was packed up again.

“Rediculous,” Mister growled. “A first cut taken as a loss?”

“A first cut, spent in redress of your man!” Nick exploded. “For his loyalty -”

“For his greed! I see you for what you are!”

“After six years, Sir, please,” Mister Sadiqi implored with all the optimism of the drowned. “That’s not fair.”

“For this ambush? Come at such an inopportune hour, and inconsiderate manners to the author of his employments?”

“I say there’s no hour or conduct under which you’d’ve received me. So I chose now and like so. There is my blood on your stoop, which is mine, and you are presently standing in. If it was that and only that I’d spilt for your house, my suit would be the same: so fucking pay me Quade.”

Mister Sadiqi shut his eyes and whispered, “don’t.”

A glacier is the indominable, it is the absence of warmth, it is the unmoving, and yet it is still momentum.

“Fetch me my side arm,” the Mister said. Inflectionless, he raised up a casual holler towards the indoors. “Ms Park! Fetch up my Retort if you please.”

What a serene expression he wore. I hope I can confide in you that I was particularly frightened that this moment would curve into the grip of violence. We all were. Except for the Mister.

And except for Nick.

“Yea well, you go do that,” he rolled his eyes. Then he turned his back and stalked east into the black of night. “Because I fucking quit.”