Genny was a child.
No, she was well old enough not to be one. She was older than Gloria Wynsee by several years, more mature and experienced in the Myrken world. And yet, as others like the Inquisitor had crumbled and succumbed to their own inadequacies and weaknesses, the seamtress still stood. She wore the scars of Myrken Wood all over her: the missing hand, the finger that had vanished from her still-capable fist, the black square of a missing tooth, the permanent swell of her nose from its twice-over breaking. Genny Tolleson had talents of the mind, an ability to peer through the cracks in a brain and whisper into it.
But Gloria, for all her ignorance, all her bluster, had only a single remarkable trait.
Resilience.
"I came here," she said from across the wet, paper-scattered floor of the cellar, "because you wrote me. I too often find that -- that letters are an inadequate medium. I would rather we speak like women even if you, like so many others, discredit what it is I have to say."
The longknife, still in its wooden scabbard, was listed out of her sash. She placed it on the floor.
"I'm frightened," Gloria said, her headcloth wet with black perspiration. "So are you. And you have every right to be, as I have every reason to -- to want to cripple your brain for what it's done. For what it could do. But we're better than animals."
A few steps closer. She was tall, greater by inches than most other girls her age, a barrel-thick young woman who was not fast nor clever, nor brilliant or agile. Yet, in these moments, as Genny's voice stammered to find its use and her words broke like waves against a rocky shore, Gloria was all of those things: she was a Jernoan tower clad in clean, intricate embroidery; Genny was drab, gray, and frail. It would be so easy to--
"You need help, Genny. We both do. I'm here because nobody deserves to be alone."