Free Silvertongue by Charlie Fletcher

near where I thought we was. That fog come down and we got turned around good.”
    “Well, I’m glad we’re out of it,” said the young one. “As long as we don’t meet that blooming horse.”
    The soldier in front froze and raised a hand. They both stopped and crouched, weapons ready.
    “What?” whispered the young one.
    “Cover me,” said the Old Soldier without looking around. He loped forward through the snow and stopped in front of the cathedral, or at least the corner of it that hadn’t been eaten by the murk. He looked down at something lying in a jumble at his feet. He shook his head, turned to the Young Soldier, put a finger to his lips, and beckoned him forward.
    As the Young Soldier hurried through the snow toward him, he kept alert, gun shouldered, panning around for dangers that might be approaching from any direction.
    He was at a point where the clear avenue in the middle of the murk intersected with four other streets. He was at the center of a star that radiated in ten separate different directions. He checked each one in turn.
    The Young Soldier gagged when he saw what he was standing guard over.
    “I know,” said the Old Soldier. “They went hard.”
    Fragments of bronze bodies lay around them. Something had ripped apart the Blitz memorial that stood in front of the cathedral. Heads in tin helmets lay apart from torsos that were missing arms and legs. The other limbs were spread about in the snow.
    “They was just firemen,” said the Young Soldier. “They wasn’t soldiers.”
    “They was spits. Reckon that’s all that matters now,” said the Old Soldier, gathering up body parts.
    “What you doing?” said his companion.
    “Put ’em back on their plinth. For turn o’day,” said the Old Soldier. “You ain’t got the sense you was made with.”
    “Right,” said the other, reaching for a sightless head. And then he went very still, his eyes widening at something over the Old Soldier’s shoulder.
    The Old Soldier caught the look and froze. “What?” he mouthed.
    The Young Soldier just pointed with his chin. The Old Soldier turned in time to see a huge bronze lion’s body, about the size of a large elephant, as it followed its head into the sheer wall of the murk. Neither spoke until the tip of the lazily twitching tail had been swallowed up.
    “What was that?” breathed the Young Soldier.
    “Dunno,” said the Old Soldier. “But if it’s as happy to walk in the murk as in the light, it’s up to no good.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Red Thread
    E die looked down at the red thread between her fingers. It didn’t seem very magic. It was just thread.
    The Raven jerked and flapped to its feet and then just stood in front of her, pecking and preening its ruffled feathers back into some kind of order, keeping its eyes on Hodge, who was very still, watching from the edge of the drift into which Edie had flung him.
    “Why did you do that, child?” asked the Queen.
    Edie didn’t know why she’d done it, not in a way she could explain. Her mind was still half jumbled with sleep, a tangle of too much exhaustion and too many “maybe”s again: maybe she’d done it because she had to, maybe because it felt like the thing to do. Maybe she knew what it was like to be imprisoned—although maybe she wasn’t kind, maybe she was just clever. Or maybe she’d done it because she knew the moment she felt it that the Walker had placed the thread there, and she instinctively wanted to undo everything he’d ever done. Then again, maybe she just liked birds.
    “A bird saved me,” she said.
    “What bird?” said George.
    “In my dream,” she said, beginning to get irritated. “Look, I don’t know, an owl saved me in my dream, and I didn’t think about it much; it just seemed like the thing to do.”
    “An owl?” said the Queen. “In your dream? An owl watched over you?”
    Edie looked at her in surprise. “Yeah. A gray owl. . . .”
    “Andraste,” said one of her daughters, coming