[b]"Iris!"[/b]

From up here, you can see--

Well, you can't see the swell of the city the way that you could from that statue. But you can see a bit more than you could have seen from ground level. Don't get too close to that edge; your knees are still shaky, aren't they? Not that it seems to bother Gími; she scrambled up as easily as a rat, or some sort of monkey (not that you've seen monkeys before). By the time you've caught your breath up two stories, Gími is spinning your unmentionables around one finger and grinning like a fool.

"You know," she says, with a saucy little lilt in her voice, "we could just have a bit of privacy here to ourselves. You have to pay to get that inside the Heavens, and it's got nowhere near as nice a view. You can see the laundry lines, the trees from Tourmaline Square over there, and-- [i]snapping chains[/i], what [i]is that??[/i]"

On a roof, just visible if you crane your head out a little bit, is that awful brutish Host from the Fire Wheels, in her very, very big form. You're about at the same height, and if she turned her head-- she wouldn't see you, right? Especially if you both ducked back? But Jasmine down there, she doesn't have the same unobstructed view, and she's probably starting to wonder why Gími isn't clambering down to help her out.

All thoughts of sexytimes seem to have fled the urchin, who has plastered herself back up against a wall, barely breathing. Once again, it's up to you to salvage the situation. But if you try to climb back down-- oh, that's high up. That's [i]really[/i] high up. It's Gími who's got the climbing prowess, and now that you're up here, you're at her mercy (not that she's figured that out yet, probably). And if she starts climbing back down, what if the brute happens to see her?

[hr]

[b]Birsi![/b]

The Thief-Queen is clambering up the wall after your partner, but you're getting dragged off, hands already behind your back. Your giggling adversary drags you up a short flight of stairs and pitches you roughly into the broken crack, letting you fumble your way down a rough passageway before you manage to right yourself, and when you try to stumble to your feet, they slip out from under you and you tumble down a several-foot drop onto one of the rickety wooden streets of the 78 Heavens.

This is perilous, not least because one of your feet has slipped between the boards and is stuck. You're overlooking a maze of the poor, the desperate and the debauched, and this is one place where your knowledge of the city largely fails you. Your hands have been lashed together behind your back, but your captor hasn't followed after you-- yet. Presumably, they think you're hapless enough that you'll end up jumped by the locals.

Are they right?

[hr]

[b]Om! Soot![/b]

The thief-queen's coming after you, but you have a moment to talk, if you like. Or you could just cut straight to dangling Soot over the edge and making threats, but that doesn't seem like the sort of thing Om is in the mood for right now (and Soot, you'd best keep things that way).