[b]Jackdaw![/b] [i]Seven by seven by seven.[/i] Wolf pulls out something that isn't a candle and unlights it. It flickers dark and hungry, and you see that which is not in its light. Wolf smiling, hearty, hale. Unhaunted. Fortunate. The woman who used to have a name that wasn't just Wolf came down into the Heart because she was hunting something. A sign, a crown, a betrayal. Seeking it, even. She hated that she dreamed of it, that in empty moments it would signify itself at her, seven by seven by seven, flickering candles one by one on the Candle Line. She took up a gig on the trains because the kobolds were friendly, and because she needed to go someplace that was otherwise than she was, and because she could drown the signs and symbols in the ten thousand lights of the Candle Line. And then her fate swallowed her up and stranded her in the oubliette of fortune, where all the bad girls go when they won't stop but they won't go forwards, neither. You're seeking a Name, Jackdaw. She's seeking something similar, but it's not hers. It belongs to something else, some other story down here, the light at the bottom of a well or at the very edge of dreaming. What matters is that you're both being eaten up by something so much bigger than you. When Wolf regains her voice and her strength, that story is going to keep pulling at her. Her story. And maybe it'll eat her, and maybe she'll come through it different. Sometimes two people just meet for a little while, you know? And sometimes they give what they've got, because why else do we do things? Why have things if not for the moments when they're needed by the people whose orbits we move into? In the priceless light of something that's not a candle, you can see the lack of exit clearly, if not painlessly. Wolf (which is not her name, but it is the name you know, a collection of sounds all crammed against each other, a signifier for someone with her history and heart trapped behind the hollows of the words she ate when there was nothing else left) takes your paw and leads you fearlessly to the place where there is not an exit (for of course there is no exit from this place, and it is not too dark and too regular and too impossibly frightening to look at, looming like the side door that led down to the unlit basement that you always convinced yourself did not have the monster from the woodcut so that you could walk past it without vividly imagining those bulging eyes leering at you through the window, a not-door that might as well be screaming that here there are monsters), and Wolf's shadow flickers with bells and candlelights and the way that light passes through the windows of a train, and for a moment, in the unlight, she is not beautiful and she is not at peace. My treasure is that, impossibly, I am still alive, Wolf does not whisper into your ear, because she cannot, because she is skin and bone and trauma. I am still alive and even if every step brings me closer to the one I cannot take back, it's still one more than I thought I'd have. I am [i]alive[/i], and I choose. And she chooses to walk you through the place that is not an exit, and into the rain (which does exist) and the storm (which does exist) and the clowns, wild and frothing and fatal (which should not exist). Wolf growls a warning, tail lashing, holding nothing, putting herself between you and the clowns and-- Oh. Lucien. *** [b]Lucien![/b] [i]click-clack click-clack[/i] go the hagstones. Crowhame is twisting and infecting the storm all around you as the Professor holds the book open as desperately as he can. The rain is black. The space between the rain is white. The Ringmaster is an offensive purple splotch of color, grabbing you with a hand like a sack of knives. And above you, the hagstones of the Flayed go [i]click-clack click-clack click-clack[/i] as it gives you two a frozen idiot grin, all black-and-white-and-red all over, the black-dot eyes rolling in those white side-sockets. What better god to greet a clown but the shrike-god, the trophy-god, the sacrifice-god, white skin pinned back from white animal bones with black sutures, white stones swinging in that opened chest where all his organs should be, white antlers splitting the black sky into fractals? You swing from one arm, which may very well be dislocated, as the Ringmaster bares his teeth in the mother of all smiles and then roars a challenge at the intruding alien god. (The Flayed being what it is, it doesn't seem to notice; its jaw clatters in what might be laughter, or might just be a spasm of sinew.) It appears that the Ringmaster intends to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker. And there's not a lot of soft places to [i]land[/i] there, just angles and bony knobs and fingers sharpened into talons. Well, it's been a good run, hasn't it? And look on the bright side: you'll probably black out from the physical trauma well before you actually die. Like falling asleep at the end of a very long day. *** [b]Ailee![/b] There is a fountain. It falls in and on itself, water dancing for the sake of dancing, and Surma unlaces her boots and slips her feet into the pool. "" she says, affectionately. " [i]Victory of Crows[/i] " She doesn't talk about how Lucien was a hero. She doesn't ask you how you're feeling or tell you that everything's going to be all right. She just invites you to sit next to her by implication. The interdimensional hutch is decked out in trophies from the Heart and keepsakes from the Old Country and a small shrine with the prayer sticks lit to keep the memory of people she's lost alive. What's one more stick slowly smouldering out? What's one more name added to the sticks, never to really die as long as they're remembered? What's a pretty girl like her doing alone at the bottom of reality, if not looking for one more score to make the prices she's already paid worth it? The gun lies heavy in your hand, and ridiculously, impossibly, you know how you're going to kill King Dragon. Or, at the very least, what's been consecrated for that purpose. *** [b]Coleman![/b] "You know," Black Coleman says, thoughtfully, "the Heart can piss off. Because for you, that means you can try it, see if it works. But you and I both know that we're not going to meet again, like as not, and now I've got a face to put to the question of [i]what if it had worked[/i]? What if I'd made that gamble, that we wouldn't tear each other apart over dwindling fuel supplies and the Powers muscling in on the Vermissian and... what if, what if, what if." He tosses you a bit of the coal that Sasha likes particular. Naturally, you catch it. "Good luck making a better story, though. I'd like to think that yours ends well, you know? [i]And in one version of the Heart's fuckery with time and space, there was a kobold who had a train, and for a little while, everything was all right.[/i] But you're needed somewhere else right now, aren't you?" Aren't you indeed. Here you are, jawing off with yourself, when someone needs to go find where everyone's run off to. It's the conductor who knows the end of the line best, after all.