The moment the direction of everything pivots upon. One might say that it was the decision to sanction the killing, but Hardy, and many others, believed that it was the moment that the bullet struck the target. A decision was nothing without an action following close behind it.Bang: and Blanc’s brain exited the back of his skull in a bloody pulpy mess. Bang: Noir’s kneecap exploded, he dropped and. Bang: Noir’s jaw was ripped clean off and. Bang: straight through Noir’s left eye. Two targets dead – that was a good day’s work in anyone’s book.Hardy smiled – he’d spent too long following these two round. He wondered how much longer he would have been able to contain his temper if the executive order hadn’t come down.So now he had to go in and confirm the kills and if they weren’t properly finished he got to do it nice and close.It was always a bit nerve-wracking walking towards someone that you had just killed – that transformation from a figure in your crosshairs to a flesh and bone being drenched in blood, brain matter, whatever.He knelt down beside Blanc, his eyes still open, and felt for a pulse. He thought he caught some movement out of the corner of his eye. And turned his head slightly to glance in the direction that shadow had moved.’Now, why did you have to go and do that?”But I watched your bloody jaw get blown off; I shot you through the eyeball.”We,’ said Noir tapping the side of his head ‘Were in here making you see what we wanted you to see. All those headaches you have been suffering in the last week? Those came from us. Do you really think that we would let a flat-footed bastard like you get within a stone’s throw of us without our permission? Why did we let you near? So we could find out about you. What have we been doing recently when you’ve been following us? We’ve been on a fact-finding mission, because things around here are going to change and your head is going to be a stepping stone.”Ah, you’re scaring him, Noir, but then that fucking bullet he put through my head hurt like fuck.”He actually hit you?”Yeah.”Damn.”Yes, damn. Now – to business …’

Timon and Serif were at the head of the party by virtue of them having assembled it – it was not a position that either of them relished; they always preferred to be advisors and stand further back. Tonight that was not to be that way – not that there would be much cover in a group of seven. They kept to that number out of superstition – not that ever did anyone much good, because the things that they were dealing with had a whole other set of beliefs that led to them tearing through the systems the people of L’undone had in place. It hadn’t always been so, but then nothing was as it had once been, and most likely it never would be again.Where were those two fools Cairn and Bully? Every noise sounded amplified out here and Timon suspected that had little to do with the acoustics of the place – in fact he knew it had much more to do with the thoughts rattling around in his skull: that was what gave power to things in places like this. He often wondered if the people who lived in L’undone weren’t the midwives of their own horrors? Was it in the fertile soil of their fears that all these creatures grew?They told how the first weaver was not a man but another bird, but what if that were not true? There were shamans out here that wore animal masks; that invoked the spirits of ancient gods said to have dominion over this place. but what if none of it were real? What is they assembled these chimeras out of the colours in the fire? The shapes in the smoke? What if they were nothing but the visions of overactive and feverish minds?And then they heard it – the howl of a wolf nearby. That howl was answered by another and then another. He wondered if the rest of them were thinking the same thing – that Cairn and Bully were not worth risking this many people? Serif looked at him and he saw fear in his eyes.When the first wolf attacked everyone, from the well-trained to the amateur, got too panicked to loose a shot. Three of them were lying dead within ten minutes – their throats ripped out.Timon watched as two of the animals feasted on the carcass of his dead friend and he wondered whether that would be his fate, or whether he would join the pack as one of their number. He felt strange, light headed, could the blood pooling warmly beneath him; he wondered if had wet himself. Tears welled up in his eyes – he offered up a prayer to the Great Bittern, and then he remembered that she was no longer there.

It seemed an age that they had been like this – hung upside down; paralysed; wondering what the thing which had attacked them had in mind.Cairn could hardly credit that they had been trapped, of all things, by a damned shining light. What were they? Children? Stupid animals? Hung upside down, all the blood rushed to his head, hardly able to feel any part of his body, he thought that might be just about right.Bully was crying – a dull sobbing that cut into Cairn’s peace of mind; strange that he thought of having peace of mind at a time like this, but he was sure that it was the only thing that was going to save him. So, this thing that had trapped them was the king of the spiders and, if you believed those who talked of the ancient origins of L’undone he may very well have been the king of the whole place. They were guarding it – protecting the people who lived there, so what could he want with them? Why would he be attacking them? He’d never really thought about it too much but he assumed that everyone had put the attacks by the spiders down to some kind of renegade group, but it appeared that this wasn’t the case. The protectors of the weave were now attacking it. This was just one more insanity heaped upon all the other insanities, so perhaps that made it seem less strange than it truly was.He knew that his comrades would be wondering where he and bully were – they would surely be gathering a search party by now; even if he and Bully weren’t considered important the fact that they, people protecting the village, had gone missing, was important.Cairn had faith that he would be rescued – it seemed as if they were barely any concern of those who had captured them: they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and had needed to be detained as a security measure so that the Spider King, for Cairn was sure that was what he was, could carry out whatever plan he had.The figure of he had pondering on turned in his direction.’Quiet your thoughts, Cairn; it is not my intention for you to die; there are other things going on, of which you need not concern yourself. More change comes, and you are safe here. Young Bully, you need not cry any more. I know my appearance frightens you, but I am truly bound with this place, and no harm shall become anyone who rightfully belongs here.’

An engineer – a worker of miracles. He supposed that apart from the mercenaries he was one of the few people who had come here after the fire. Where most might see a disaster area he saw fertile ground for opportunity. He’d come here before, way back in the day, before the strangeness had totally ousted the normal folk. Now L’undone worked a strange pressure on its denizens – warping them and changing them into something none of them would have, at one time, recognised. What changes had this place effected in him already? He hated to think, and what more changes would come if he did get that contract to rebuild that he envisioned coming to him.Was order likely? At least enough order to allow for someone to claim nominal charge of the place? He had to believe it was a possibility – God knew the Silver Guard were trying their hardest, and there were other groups working to achieve similar goals.He moved freely amongst the different groups; trying not to develop too strong ties to anyone, given how volatile the situation was. Buy a few people a drink; smoke with a few others – keep your options open.How much longer could people abide this chaos? How much longer could some of them stomach living in such squallor? He had the answer to all of their needs. He had gone into places worse than this and he had fixed them up.He looked at the city; looked at the collapsed buildings, the teetering behemoths that barely managed to stand, and he saw the workings of them – the way the heart of this place had once beat and the way that it might once more be made to beat. He could restore greatness to L’undone: he had the ability and he had the vision.’Interesting thoughts spilling out your head, young man.’He turned and looked at a strangely non-descript old fellow.’Sorry, sir, I’m not quite sure I caught the gist of what you just said.”You, sir, have a leaky head. If I were to say that I have some degree of insight into the mechanisms of other’s minds, then, given where it is that we are sat, you might not think me quite mad?”Yes, L’undone is an interesting place.”I think I may have something here that you will find useful, young man, as an illustrative example of how this place works. By the way, what is your name?”Donal, sir, and yours?”I forget. Anyway, observe.’ The old man produced a small glass case about the size of a matchbox, and inside it was a small butterfly.’Observe this butterfly, for this creature is the essence of the Knotlands. As a caterpillar it builds for itself a transformative engine, an architecture within which to dream itself anew, then it emerges bright and beautiful and brief, living in the sun, living off beauty, and then it dies. This is the truth of this place. Any buildings which you build here will have an effect on those who enter them and those who leave them; and of course those who design them and build them.’Donal reached into his inside jacket pocket, removed some papers and a pouch of tobacco, intent on smoking whilst he continued his conversation with this fascinating specimen of local colour. He looked up though from the activity of rolling a smoke and the man had gone, leaving his little glass case behind him. The butterfly within it, which he had assumed to be dead, stirred – it fluttered its wings, and it flew away. Donal sat there smoking and wondering.

Not easy being a streetwalker in a place that had burnt down to the ground and had been taken over by all kinds of insane relgious and magical sects. Not easy being a drug runner in a place that was like a bad acid trip – what drugs could top the shit that you could see with your own eyes? The drugs that most people wanted were downers, sleeping pills – something to let them slip out of consciousness into oblivion. It was hard to get anything here – all kinds of supply lines were down; still, you had to persist, didn’t you?Charen was not dressed in what any of her friends would have called a normal way. She had a jumpsuit with patches on it that were attached by velcro; said patches being removed to reveal various magical words and charms that she had tattooed on her skin to ward off the multiple evils that prowled this place.She’d left her daughter Chelsee’s crib in a circle of salt and the baby had stayed quiet, like the good child she was. Charen wondered if kids sensed that being quiet in this place was somehow key to survival.She knew this place like the back of her hand and whenever she saw someone appear that she didn’t want to be seen by she would duck out of the way. That list of people included more than half the denizens of this place – why? Because all of them were dangerous – and some piece of skirt would be taken as a sex toy without a second thought. Those of her friends who hadn’t been killed in the fires or the attacks by the Scorpions, the spiders, and before that the Cuckoos (or whatever they were calling themselves that day) had succumb to the crooks who rose to fill their place once the first wave of killings were done with.Today she was muling some package that was supposed to be of vital importance to the restoration of this place. Some underground guy going by the name of the Valice had found her somehow and told her that he wanted her to deliver this to the two guys going by the names of Blanc and Noir. She’d heard the rumours, of course she had – that these two were the replacements for Warp and Weft and that they had something even weirder going on with them, but it was a good payment she’d been offered: payment that would keep her and her daughter safe.A wolf suddenly rose up before her, its teeth bared.’Not today, sir, thank you. Little Red Riding Hood will be on her way, thank you very much.’And she tore off the patch that covered the tattoo encapsualting all the power of the Bane. The wolf shrank back, true fear in its eyes – and then it ran. What did half the trouble in this place come from? The fact that everyone wanted to kill someone else – there were ways to deal with the wolves that didn’t necessitate killing them.She’d gotten there quicker than she thought she would – there had to be something more than the burned out husk of Warp and Weft’s home though or she had been duped. She looked at the package and was very tempted to open it.

He knew it – they all knew it: the so-called Silver Guard were out of their depth and they had been from the start. Originally they had been set up just to deal with the wolves because the wolves had seemed the most pressing of the many problems that the inhabitants of L’undone faced, but how could they go after one attacker and, crossing the path of another, ignore that?They were stretched to breaking point though. The things which they fought were possessed of supernatural powers, incredible strength, and what did they have? Silver weapons and determination. Sure, some days it was enough to pull them through, but some days that was barely the case and it seemed that it got more and more difficult as each day passed.It was strange – what had they expected? He thought that perhaps, given how the old order had faded so quickly, that they had believed these new forces would dissipate just as rapidly. It was certain to them now though that this was not to be the case – for each wolf they killed another seemed to rise to take its place. It was not easy to know the size of the enemy forces because no one knew how many people remained in L’undone and the surrounding areas, and thus no one knew how deep ran the reservoir of potential victims or new wolves.The Known were subjects of conflicting reports – people said they had all been rooted out, but the fact that they kept turning up more and more of them meant that just wasn’t true. Those of them that were still local had gone feral, succumbed to some unimaginable madness that infests the heads of stagnant demi-gods. Most of their number had fled and the rumour was that they were working to become something else entirely. In the old order, when they had been Cuckoos they had served the purpose of feeding the stultified dream-selves of the denizens of this place and they had been wired into the early warning system of L’undone – needing the catalyst of a threat to become the Knew, who were designed to be antibodies that would purge the city of alien bodies. Becoming the Known was the necessary part of the process that would drive them to leave and go elsewhere to become what they were required to be in this new version of The Knotlands. The ones who were left behind were anomalies and abominations.Helion, the second-in-command of the Silver Guard; he smiled a bitter and rueful smile, what did such titles mean? Absolutely nothing – giving someone an important sounding job description as if it were some kind of notional armour that would protect him against the very real threat he faced. What good was he really? His men sensed that he did not possess the fervour for which he had once been famous and that meant that he lacked the fanaticism needed to carry out the work – that made him a liability.The locals were assembling a search party because two of their youngsters had disappeared whilst out on hunting duty. he didn’t hold out much hope for them. People didn’t go missing in this place – they were taken; they didn’t get lost, and if anyone truly believed that they were fools.He looked up as a breeze rustled some of his papers and cooled his skin. Someone must have left the window open – who? Sat there on his desk was the largest butterfly he had ever seen. He looked in its obsidian eyes, watched its wings ticking in the heat of his lamp, and then it left.

This place had once been a church, it’s flock scattered, but apparently still at large. They hadn’t returned here since they had removed the sacred artifacts to safe-keeping, and how long ago was that? He wasn’t sure – sometimes the days here were as dark as the nights; stormheads always gathering, touching the denizens below and darkening them in turn. He watched it all with wonder. This place hadn’t officially been desanctified so, even if the worshippers had abandoned it he believed it still held some kind of charge that might protect him. His own home had been one of the first to burn, the roof collapsing in and killing his wife Betha and his son Turmolt; Kindred was all alone except for the many ghosts that brushed past him in the night.
He looked up as he noticed the sun burst from behind the clouds, an incandescent bomb. He shielded his eyes just as someone stepped between him and the all too rare sunlight.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘The sun?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Do you belong to this church?’
‘Well, kind of – no one really comes here anymore; it’s said that the faithful meet in secret – that the head of the church gives sermons at different locations, but I’ve never managed to track him down at all.’
‘Your faith never led you to the right place?’
‘I wouldn’t say that – the way I think of it is this … that I don’t need to be around others to follow the way of the Great Bittern, and if it were meant for me to find them then I would have found them or they would have found me.’
‘Do you think you would know when you had been found?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know – I would hope so.’
‘You know that the Copyists are abroad?’
‘I have heard rumours. Who are you, sir?’
‘A stranger it seems. Perhaps you are not yet ready. Many seem not to recognise me – perhaps I have come too early.’
The stranger held aloft his finger and sat upon it was a small butterfly.
‘You know what this is?”A butterfly’.'What does it come from?”A caterpillar.”Which one am I and which one are you?’Kindred hesitated: ‘I’m the caterpillar and you are the butterfly?”How does one change from one thing to another do you suppose?”I’m not sure.”But are you willing?”I am.”Then step forward.The answer, my friend, is death of the old self.’
The stranger touched Kindred’s forehead with the tip of his index finger and watched as the man’s eyes rolled back into his skull. Kindred felt the life drain out him, felt his last breath leave his body, felt his heart stop.
‘I have planted a seed,’ said the Stranger, and he continued on his path.

The fragrance of the plants was wonderful; it were as if sunlight’s beauty had been condensed into a scent. Butterflies fed on nectar, but they also needed sunlight to heat their wings. Thinking about that smell made her wonder whether in a sense butterflies were made entirely of sunlight.

Her daddy didn’t like her coming out here, but he had to admit that it seemed as if there was something protecting her. Aria had faced down one of the Wolves; had whispered in the ear of one of the Known, and watched as it flew away.

When they first noticed the butterflies swarming around her they had put it down to them being on one of their migratory paths – it was explained as an illusion created by coincidence. The second time was thought to be another fluke, but by the third time and then the fourth, they knew that something strange was occuring. Those rust coloured insects fluttering around her.

‘They are signals of change,’ she said quietly to herself.

‘Yes, they are,’ said the stranger ‘One might say that I sent them.’

‘What are they?’

‘They are butterflies.’

‘What are they?’

‘A rewrite protocol.’

‘What are they?’

‘My followers returning as fragments of poetry. When I reveal myself, so too shall they become what they truly are.’

She looked down at the butterfly which had landed on her finger, she looked up, hoping to gaze into the eyes of the stranger. He had gone.

The Wolves were men taken to the bosom of Silvercoin the huntress of the skies who spent their time, when not in the form of the beasts they became, as broken men – the walking wounded who begged for scraps but received nothing because all knew what they were. The Known had left few of their number behind, most migrating somewhere else to continue their constant path of evolution. The Spiders seemed emissaries of a ruined web; though as he could not see the design he was unsure of the truth of that.

He’d been awake since early this morning; sat there writing all of this down in his moleskine notebook. He closed it, studied the pattern of stains on the cover. He was trapped in the need to write about the place — those studies, once so benign, once carried out from a position  of comfort, now the desperate motions of a man trying to construct an order from what paltry materials the chaos of his life afforded him.

‘Hey, Twinrake, how goes it?’

‘It fares well, Michelmas; it fares well. What is the news today?’

‘Good, bad and middling, as usual. The zoo moves around the human centre and they both strike at each other – same old shit. Some see prophecy and some see nothing. You know what it’s like – this place is a shrine to the eye of the beholder.’

‘Yep, but you still have to wonder who’s throttling the kaleidoscope.’

‘That you do, Twinrake – that you do. Anyway, I must be on my way – they’re putting together a search party and there is the promise of a feed.’

‘Well, good luck with that.’

He’d refused to pay the monies that the Silver Guard and the other groups asked for protection and his business had suffered accordingly. No one trusted that his public house was safe, and it was true – he had been attacked two or three times in recent weeks by the wolves. Some said that he was a Turner: one who joined the pack when the full moon came. It was bullshit, but no one cared. Only he knew about the fight that had taken place between him and one of those animals; these people had heard talk of bane but didn’t credit the stories. He found it strange – the things they would accept and the things they wouldn’t.

Mitchum sighed: a knotted, busted tooth rattle of a sound. He’d have to up sticks and move soon – he barely had anything left. He didn’t really believe that the Bittern was returning. Old positions in this place had been filled by fresh new faces but as far as he could see none of the old order had returned wearing masks to take up the positions they had occupied before the chaos. Chaos had definitely proved to be an agent of change.

How many customers could he look forward to tonight? There were a few freelancers in town; a few guys who thought of themselves as big game hunters and saw this place as some kind of challenge; there were the others who skirted around the human community; and those who knew no better.

He could hear business going on as usual across the street — he went to the door and he opened it. A rush of air and a cloud of butterflies poured through the entrance. They flew around the bar three times and then they settled, covering everything – it was as if the inside of establishment were covered in a simmering breathing skin of copper. What could it mean?