The house sat back from the street, beds of hyacinth and garlands of ivy winding through and around its white picket fence. The branches of the ficus trees that shaded every cottage in the neighborhood seemed thicker here, and looking at the whole lilac-scented scene, Muffet couldn't help thinking of some enchanted dell from an old fairy story.

But then the huge, shiny black spider who squatted among the rhododendrons beside the house with her watering can and floppy yellow sun hat [i]did[/i] have a green thumb. Muffet would never forget the incredible bouquets that had adorned their room more than half a decade ago when they'd decided it was long past time for them both to celebrate their sixteenth birthdays....

"Spiders don't have thumbs," that familiar clickety-clack voice called, and Muffet froze on the sidewalk, the spring morning breeze suddenly too cold against her sweat-dampened neck.
 
Sucking in a shaky breath, Muffet pulled back the hood of her cloak and ran a hand through her close-cropped blonde hair. This was a bad idea, the worst idea in a series of ever worsening ideas, as a matter of fact.

Not that she really had any choice. Reaching for the gate latch, she forced a lightness into her voice. "How do you always know what I'm thinking, Bitsy?"

"No." The spider looked over this time, those eight emerald eyes every bit as piercing as Muffet remembered. "You don't get to call me that anymore." She bent back to her gardening.

The breeze rustled the trees, and Muffet wanted nothing more than to blow away with it. Taking another breath instead, she focused on a nearby hydrangea. "Would it help if I said I was sorry?"

"Try it," came the reply. "Then we'll both find out."

Muffet had to snap her head up again so she could glare at her. "Bitsy—"

"No!" Bitsy sprang clear across the yard, the claws of all eight legs digging so deeply into Muffet from shoulders to waist that she could feel the sharp little tips through her cloak and tunic. The spider's face thrust into Muffet's, those green eyes now slitted, the points of her thumb-sized fangs glistening. "Not after you left me stranded like that! You can't even begin to imagine what I had to do to survive, so you will [i]not[/i] be waltzing back into my life after six years and—!" Most of her eyes widened. "Gloriosky, Muffet! What did you do to your hair?" Her eyes narrowed again. "No! Don't tell me! I don't care, and there's nothing you can say or do that'll make me!"

"Old King Cole." For all that Muffet could barely get the words out past the clench in her throat, she could tell that Bitsy heard them from the way the giant spider went completely still. "He's called for his Fiddlers Three."

[hr]

"I should've bitten you," Bitsy groused from just over Muffet's right shoulder, "soon as I heard you coming up the sidewalk."

Trying not to laugh, Muffet covered her mouth and pretended to cough.

Not that it mattered. With the market open today, both human people and non-human folks of every species were streaming into the capital, and the guards covering the western drawbridge were too busy pointing their check wands at the badges adorning the hats, vests, wristbands, and anklets of the folks to bother her. Muffet kept the hood of her mossy old cloak raised to hide her face, of course, but she'd discovered in the past few years that if she displayed her obviously human hands while staggering phonily under the weight of the peddler's pack she had slung across her back, the guards wouldn't give her a second look.

The mixed crowd of people and folks chattered and laughed together, crowed and clucked and whinnied straight up Market Street toward the city square, but all the activity, Muffet knew, just made it easier for her to slide unnoticed into a side alley. The midday sun cast nice, thick shadows down here, too, so reaching a sewer grating, she undid her pack, slung it off, and let Bitsy clamber out. The spider bent back the grating's steel bars and scuttled into the darkness; Muffet followed, dropped down the shaft on the other side all the way till she splashed into the chunky liquid at the bottom, then she tapped a quick spell over the palm of her left hand, the glow that expanded from it not just showing her the tunnel walls around her but also pushing the muck and the stink away. The handiest piece of magic Blue had ever come up with, she'd always thought.

"I could [i]still[/i] bite you," she heard Bitsy mutter, the spider scurrying from the opening in the ceiling Muffet had just slipped through. "I'm retired now, Muffy. Or decommissioned. Or defrocked. Or whatever word they use to describe the old king's secret operatives when the new king takes over."

"The word you want?" came another familiar voice from ahead, and a tall figure shimmered into being at the edge of Muffet's light bubble. "It's [i]gone rogue[/i]." The figure folded back his own hood to reveal a leathery but still boyish face, a stub of a beard at his chin and more lines on his forehead than when she'd last seen him.

Behind Muffet, Bitsy gave a clicking little snort. "That's two words, Blue. And maybe you recall how one of us got left behind at the end? How one of us had to become a public figure in the new administration and a symbol of King Charming's dedication to continue his father's peace and prosperity into the blah of the blah and the blah blah?" Leaping from the wall, she attached herself to his chest, the young man definitely not a little boy anymore. "I had to do [i]paperwork[/i], Blue! Had to take the rank of commander in the guard and get mustered out after standing there and smiling while the whole agency got folded up! Old King Cole's pipe, his bowl, all of it melted down or locked up in a museum!"

Blue touched a kiss to the shiny black area just above her uppermost eyes. "I've missed you, too, Bitsy."

Something twinged inside Muffet's chest. After growing up with these two and having the entire kingdom at their feet, the last six years had been—

Well, like being in exile. Self-imposed, sure, but still...

"So!" Blue waggled his glowing fingers, and Bitsy rose slowly away from him. "What's going on, Muffet? Why'd you put out that call? Our king's still dead, isn't he?"

Muffet swallowed. "Turns out he's got one last mission for us."

[hr]

Most of the old secret passages hadn't survived the transition—King Charming liked to do things out in the open more that his father had—but poking around, Muffet had discovered three that still wound their ways up from the sewers into the palace. It helped that this particular one ended in Old King Cole's 'black study,' the room he'd kept just for himself and his Fiddlers Three.

"Wow." Blue took the little light spell Muffet had conjured, blew on it till it inflated into something that looked like a chandelier, and sent it drifting up to the ceiling. It made the place look almost like she remembered it: King Cole's desk sat over by the bookshelves exactly where it had always sat, the big map of the kingdom hanging on the wall where it had always hung, the black carpeting still as plush as always been even though it was covered with dust. And now that she had some proper lighting, she could see a few cobwebs she'd missed in the cleaning she'd done after finding that the study still existed two weeks back.
 
Blue grinned, the first trace Muffet had seen on that lean, tanned face of the exuberant boy she'd known so well. "Looks more like a gray study now, doesn't it?"

Up near the rafters, Bitsy was poking at the webs. "Strictly cousin work," she said with a sniff. "I'll bet no one sapient's been in here since the last time we all were." She spun a web of her own and dropped to the floor. "I'm guessing you found something, Muffet?"

She opened her mouth, but Blue cut her off: "Which reminds me." The expression that came over him then, all narrow-eyed and suspicious, was one Muffet was sure she'd never seen him make before. "What exactly are you doing in the capital, anyway? Wasn't the plan that I go west and you go east when His Brand-New Majesty put those thousands of soldiers out in the streets with their sharp and pointed invitations for us to dine with him the evening after Old King Cole's funeral?"

Bitsy gave a growling sort of sigh. "You guys missed an [i]excellent[/i] meal, by the way. Of course, I had four sets of mage cuffs wrapped around my legs, but after I swore fealty to him, His Majesty had the front set taken off so I could eat..."

Her face heating up, Muffet wanted to look away. But she forced her glance to settle first on one of her former partners, then the other. "I know what we agreed to, Blue, and again, I'm really, really sorry we ran out on you, Bitsy—"

"I'm sorry about that, too." Blue rubbed the back of his neck. "Just so you know."

"And I [i]did[/i] go east." Muffet couldn't help smiling at the memories. "When you're impervious to just about everything, it turns out the firefighting crews up in the mountains are so happy to have you join up, they don't ask too many questions. And being an itinerant deputy out along the frontier can get pretty interesting, too. But there was always this prickle, y'know?" She pressed a hand to her stomach. "Always this little clench that told me I wasn't where I was supposed to be. So three or four times a year, I...I'd come back here."

"[i]What[/i]?" Bitsy waved her front legs. "You were probably in the city while I was standing trial in Parliament, weren't you? They nearly voted to have me boiled in unquenchable fire as a traitor to the crown!"

Muffet folded her arms. "They voted 49 - 28 to acquit you on all charges, Bitsy."

"Hmmph!" Being so close to the floor, Bitsy stirred up a minor dust storm when she blew out a breath. "Only because the King's Counsel kept spouting this weird idea that us folks are less sapient than you people! He convinced them I wasn't really any smarter than a human child, so I couldn't be held legally responsible for my actions!"

"Yeah." Blue wiggled his fingers at the two chairs and the big cushion against the wall; they rose, the dust vanished from them, and when they settled back to the floor, Blue went over and sat in one of the chairs. "What's [i]that[/i] all about, anyway? When I was working as a trumpet player in the theater orchestra out in Red Bluff, they had a couple folks on the town council, but they had to resign when the royal edict came through saying that only people could vote anymore!"

"That...umm..." Muffet brushed at the back of her hand. "That's kind of why King Cole called us, I think."

Bitsy blinked. "To deal with non-human voting rights?"

Blue rolled his eyes. "What did you find, Muffet? His secret diary or something?"

"Something." Muffet stepped toward the desk, the stirred-up dust scratching her throat when she swallowed. "He...he left a—"

The tingle that rippled through her took her breath away as usual, but this time, she heard the other two gasp behind her. A cloud formed above the desk and condensed into the unmistakable figure of Jolly Old King Cole. "Ah," the wavering apparition said, its voice like a breeze through dry branches. "Little Miss Muffet, Little Boy Blue, my Itsy Bitsy Spider: this is costing me the last of my strength, so I'll keep it brief."

"Your Majesty?" Blue's voice squeaked, suddenly almost as high-pitched as Muffet remembered it. Motion to either side of her brought him into her field of vision on her left and Bitsy on her right: their old standard formation, a part of Muffet's mind noted.
 
The figure's mouth went sideways. "And no, Blue, I'm not a ghost. It's a recording spell. I swear: I never knew a sorcerer as squeamish about the undead as you are!"

Glancing at Blue, Muffet couldn't help smiling as his face turned red. "Of course," His Former Majesty went on, "that means I can't actually respond to you. But I'll set a message to play if it detects one or two of you in my study, then set [i]this[/i] message to play once all my Fiddlers Three have assembled."

Muffet swallowed again. She'd triggered that first message at least once a day since stumbling in here just so she could listen to the warm, rumbly sound of his voice.

"As I said in my previous message," King Cole continued, "I know that I'm dead, but I also know that Charming's enough of a twit that if he's on the throne for more than a month, the kingdom will collapse lock, stock, and barrel. So now that you're all here, I'm charging you with this final mission." His misty chest expanded. "Kill Charming. Since he's shallow, too easily swayed, surrounded by sycophants, and a menace to everything we've built, it's the only way civilization will survive. I love you all. Farewell." And the cloud king vanished.

[hr]

"But," Blue said for the ninth or tenth time since the message had ended—unlike the other message, this one had played only once, then had disappeared along with the first one—"Charming's been king for six years now!"

"He has." Bitsy had spun what Muffet thought of as one of her brooding webs in the corner of the study and was hanging upside down from the middle of it. "And yes, some things have gotten stupider for us folks, but it's pretty much the same for you people since Old King Cole died." She shrugged. "Or look at me. Charming knows how dangerous I am, but instead of wasting the couple dozen guards and suits of mage armor it'd take to kill me all the way dead, he gives me a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice pension. And I'm not the only non-human living there, either." She folded half her legs across her chest. "So I can't say I've really noticed civilization collapsing lately. How 'bout you guys?"

"The same." Blue slumped in his chair, then sat immediately forward again. "And think about it! What would've happened it we'd gotten this message right after King Cole's funeral? If we'd killed Charming back then, who would've ascended to the throne? Neither of them had any brothers or sisters of cousins or anything, and the Queen's whole family got executed after we killed her when she tried to assassinate the king! I mean, would Parliament have taken over? Would the guard captains have fought over it? What kind of world do you suppose we'd be living in?" All of a sudden, he looked ten years old again to Muffet, a kid wearing his father's clothes. "And besides, I always thought King Cole [i]liked[/i] Prince Charming!"

Bitsy made another of her snorting noises. "Liking or disliking someone didn't have anything to do with killing them as far as Old King Cole was concerned. He went fishing with the Queen's father the day before he signed the execution order, and how many people and folks did he have us kill just after he'd hosted them to a state dinner?"

"That's different!" Blue did his impersonation of Bitsy snorting. "That's politics!"

"What?" All Bitsy's eyes went as wide as Muffet had ever seen them. "Blue, we did some horrible, horrible things! When the Parliament put me on trial, it took them two solid days just to list all my crimes! I'd never even thought about it before that, but after? I—" Her words choked off, then came back a lot quieter. "[i]I[/i] would've voted to kill me after that..."

Muffet couldn't help wincing, and Blue was staring at Bitsy like she'd grown a couple extra legs. "But," he said after a moment, his voice very small in the silence, "not all of it was horrible, right? And besides!" Jumping to his feet, Blue kicked a cloud of dust from the carpet with his boot. "It was the king who told us to do it all! He even just told us to kill his only son when there's no one else to take the throne except maybe—" Sparks leaped from his fingers, all the dust in the air around him bursting like tiny kernels of popcorn. "Muffet! You don't think he wanted [i]us[/i] to take over, do you?"

Unable to settle in her chair, Muffet had been pacing slowly along the study's back wall since the recording had ended, her mind spinning furiously. But at this, she had to stop and laugh. "Blue? Of all the possible things he could've meant, that isn't one."

"Oh." His shoulders drooped. "Well, we can't just kill Charming [i]now[/i], can we?"
 
"Sure we can." Muffet started pacing again. "The question is: [i]should[/i] we?"

Blue waved his hands. "That's what I meant!"

"I know." With a sigh, Muffet looked over toward the web. "Bitsy? You can get word to King Charming that we're turning ourselves in and get us an audience, right? He'll trust you since you swore fealty to him and all?"

"Probably." Bitsy made some quiet chittering sounds. "But he knows I'm one of King Cole's Fiddlers Three before I'm anything else. Always have been, always will be."

"Yeah." Muffet began walking up the dust-free path toward King Cole's desk, but no message popped into the air this time. When she turned, though, she saw her two best friends in the world looking back at her. And as much as she didn't like it, she knew exactly what they had to do. "You're right, too. We [i]are[/i] the Fiddlers Three. That we stopped being them after King Cole died is the worst mistake any of us ever made, but we've got another chance now, a chance to do what we should've done six years ago." She held out her right hand. "Are you with me?"

"You bet!" Blue jumped forward and placed his hand on hers just as Bitsy did the same with her right foreleg.

[hr]

"Gracious!" King Charming didn't fill the throne with his physical presence or the throne room with his metaphorical one the way King Cole had, but Muffet didn't mind that at all. In fact, she found him to be just as, well, as charming as she always had.
 
Still, the three dozen guards in full mage armor lining the walls seemed a little excessive. Knowing what she did about King Cole's final order, though, she decided not to take it personally. Like Blue had said, in the end, it came down to politics: either he was going to order them killed, or he wasn't. Still, she did her best to look as harmless as she knew how when she, Blue, and Bitsy all bowed to him.

"Can it be, Commander Itsy?" His Majesty steepled his fingers. "Do we have the distinct honor of seeing Little Miss Muffet and Little Boy Blue presented here before us?"

"In truth, Your Majesty," Bitsy piped up in that scratchy voice of hers, "it's my colleagues who are honored to present themselves to you."

"Indeed?" His Majesty had aged the same as the rest of them, of course, but Muffet thought the years looked better on him somehow. One arched eyebrow, though, was all it took for her to see the new king behind the old charm, a sudden and slightly alarming resemblance to his father coming over him. "And to what end do Old King Cole's Fiddlers Three present themselves in our throne room after what some might term a rather suspicious six year absence?"

Muffet spoke up, and Blue joined in exactly as they'd rehearsed it: "To swear our fealty, Your Majesty."

That got both royal eyebrows to go up. "Well! I'm guessing this is then either a joyous day for our kingdom, or my final day on the planet."

Blue made the choking sound of a hastily stifled giggle, and Muffet had to force her chin not to drop. He'd not only made a fairly insightful joke, but he'd done it in the first person singular. And the guarded hopefulness that then entered his face forced her to tighten her jaw muscles even further. "Your open appearance here," the king was going on, "leads us to believe it's the former rather than the latter, but I fear that in the end, I must leave the final decision on that matter in your capable hands."

Something tickled at the edge of Muffet's perceptions, but tapping into the detection magic radiating out from Blue, she couldn't feel any traps or hidden wizards—or things like her and her friends—lurking anywhere within the immediate vicinity.

And that wasn't right at [i]all[/i]. "Your Majesty?" she asked, going off script. "Where's your court sorcerer and your advisors?"

He smiled. "When I received your offer to turn yourselves in, I informed the lot of them that I wished to meet with you alone. That they agreed to this, I think, shows you how much they care for me." His smile faded. "I just wish I could tell Father how right he always was about those who've been calling themselves my friends for all these years."

"Excuse me, Your Majesty." Bitsy jerked a foreclaw toward the guards standing thick against the walls. "But when you say you wanted to meet with us alone...?

"Who, them?" King Charming flicked his fingers. Muffet felt a fairly powerful cloaking spell fall away, and Blue's detection magic began reporting—

"Empty?" Muffet and Blue said, once again speaking at the same time.

His Majesty nodded. "Wonderful stuff, mage armor. Magical, one might even go so far as to say."

"But—" Blinking up at him on the throne, Muffet couldn't find any other word to say.

King Charming sat forward. "If you will honestly swear fealty to me, I swear to you that I won't use you the way Father did, murdering his way through every difficult situation from an international monetary crisis to a hangnail. I'd seek to use you more genteelly." His frown belonged to a much sterner person than Muffet had thought he was. "My advisors and certain members of Parliament, for instance, keep insisting on the necessity of further restrictions upon our non-human citizens. I for my part would like to see a great deal of opposition organized to this idea so that I might rule against it with the loud and assured support of the populace." His frown wavered, and everything about him became much less self-assured. "Might that be a project you'd be willing to take on?"

Silence filled the room for a moment, then Bitsy and Blue spun toward Muffet, both of them looking more like puppies than anything else.

And that pretty much clinched it. She still didn't like thinking that Old King Cole maybe hadn't been exactly a good king, but then she didn't [i]have[/i] to think about that right now. All she had to do was hold out her hand.

So she did. Immediately, Blue's sparkling fingers and Bitsy's sharp foreclaws touched it on either side. Smiling, Muffet met King Charming's gaze. "From now on," she said, "all Your Majesty needs to do is call for your Fiddlers Three."