Acquaintances

[Rance]

Myrken women, with their wary eyes and their old clothes and their thin hair, saw so little of themselves. They tightened their biceps, tucked their chins and put knives in their boots; they bled fluently, died quickly, and that was their lot. It was a pattern. Sew one dress, you've sewn a thousand. What separated Mary Ford from the memory of those lives waggling on the tongues of midtown gossipers was that she still had a heartbeat, and she wanted to make it count.

Mary wrote her. Mary came to her. Very suddenly, sickness twisted in her gut. "For someone who possesses precious little of these qualities," Gloria rejoined, "they are monumental boons, Menna Ford. Our place is to remind people that — that charming people and agreeable people are not soft people. But there are no hard rules, and — and they—" she wielded it with a faint disdain, "—hold no authority over what a girl ought to do, or how she should limit herself."

Sometimes she felt like she stole the shadows she stood in. Robbed Genny of her patience and resolve. Stole Ariane's power and strength. Siphoned the Lady Egris's calculation and determination. Did they sense the leech, she wondered. Did they know about this clay beast that had sloppily formed herself in the honor of their images? What do you think, Gloria? What would you want to do if you could do anything? The question, in all its looming openness, silenced her breath. Her cheek twitched, constraining thought. Dreams, desires, these misled as much as poppy, but—

"When I was young here, I — I needed to learn how to be Myrken. I was different, and the world felt strange and confusing. Rhaena — it was before she soured — taught schoolchildren, and despite being nearly twice their age, she let me learn with them, arithmetic and letters and all the proper things. She never minded that I was slowest to learn, or most easily confounded by the simplest lessons. Of all those who've taught me here, she taught me first. As much as I harbored embarrassment at being so — so old and doing children's exercises, cat and rat and two-and-two and the like, it warms me to reflect upon it.

"If she didn't love me, I imagined she did for all the time she sacrificed for me. Sometimes I think if perhaps—" Spoken, this, as quiet as a whisper, and Gloria stared down at her fingers and the dry flakes of skin alongside the abused nails and picked deliberately at them, "—if perhaps I had lied for her, or I'd been more obedient in that courtroom, it would all be so very different now.

"We could be having a different conversation.

"We could be different women.

"I would be less bold. But what else would I be?"

She swallowed. Coming face-to-face with unseen futures.

"What about you?" she deferred, desperately wanting not to talk, and having said so very little amid so very much. "I'm — I'm quite bad at possibilities, Mary. I always have been. Can you help me understand?"

[Glenn]

Mary did come to her. She had written a note that indicated that Gloria knew Mary better than Mary knew Gloria. Maybe that was because there hadn't been much to know. Maybe that had been because there was too much Myrken left in Mary. That said, she had survived. Maxwell had been consumed by Catch. Others had been subsumed by Rhaena. Mary had lived and, in some ways, flourished. She had no reason to like or dislike Gloria; she did not know her well enough. She knew of Gloria more than she knew Gloria. Yet, she had written. Yet, she was here.

And yet, she could not hide her disappointment as Gloria Wynsee spoke. There were precious few avenues for Mary to turn to on this specific question and Gloria's story was not helpful and Gloria's answer was to turn the question back upon her. "I think, maybe, that the people who have a lot, a lot of things, well, they are the sort that can look back and think, what if this or what if that. I don't think that, not really, because I know that this or that would have led to either me chained to a husband I didn't want or dead or worse." She had seen dead. She had seen worse. "I don't want to be dead and I don't want to be worse."

She pursed her brow, though even despite that and even despite her far-too-early hair of white, she did not seem old. She did not seem diminished. One could barely find her shadow, even in the flickering firelight. "That's the funny thing. I've nothing to my name. Some clothes, a bit of money; more if I want it, for a price. Nothing really, maybe even less than I had then, but I feel like I've more to lose. I feel like this is a moment where if I make the wrong choice or if I'm not smart enough to create a right one where it doesn't exist, I'll be regretting it later."

She wasn't pale. She was quite the opposite from all of her travelling on foot. That helped with the pursing, with the hair. It meant, however, that as the red entered her cheeks, one had to really look to see it. "I think I know what I want, and it's embarrassing. It feels wrong. I want independence. I want to make my own choices and have the power to do so. I want to use what I learned and my talents, whatever they are, to be able make my own decisions, no husband, no patron, no lord. Is it bad, Gloria, is it so bad, that I want to do all of this more than I want to do good and make things better? That is, maybe if I have that independence..." and here her voice faded off, because it did feel bad. Some people could marry their own self-interest with the notion of the general good, but she hadn't the ego or the luxury for such a thing. The gap there left her feeling wretched indeed.

[Rance]

"Of course it isn't bad. You have that independence. You already possess it — so says your presence here, now. You came bound by no ribbon on your finger, answering to no fellow or husband or leader. But if you came here, Mary Ford," Gloria said, drawing in a breath that she never exhaled, "to ask me permission to discover your own independence, I regret to inform you that I cannot grant it. It is not within my power. That is yours, and yours alone."

Perhaps that, too, was disappointing. Gloria did not mind being a disappointment. Not when truth took precedence. If there was any advantage to her dismissal from Jernoah, it was that she found herself free of all constraints: independence, to Gloria Wynsee, was as easy as breath.

Mary Ford struggled for breath, though. The wheezing, hard-chested gasp for air that signaled the throes of desperation and survival. Wanted to be her, wanted to be herself, but not at the dangerous risk of upsetting the unnatural order of it. A frown came to her, darkening her face, tugging down the corners of her eyes.

How do you shatter someone else's shell?

"Stand up, Mary," she said, and stood like a statue in front of the fire. "Because it feels wrong does not mean it is wrong. I've come to presume that — that comfort is the greatest liar in our lives. Marry a man? That's comfortable. Listen to a father? It's comfortable. Obey a rule, that's comfortable, too. Yet, with all of it, we are expected to lose, and — and sometimes to die, and sometimes to be worse, and to accept that we must bleed ourselves dry to satisfy others. I think having nothing to your name, that means you can have absolutely everything, do absolutely anything.

"Be agreeable, Mary, but not pliable."

This next part, she knew Mary Ford would probably not like. Didn't sense it, but presumed it. Built up narratives, put them into chapters, separated them into boxes. Mary stepped on pre-determined lines, walked pre-determined paths, like any girl.

So Gloria patted her stomach, flicked a finger against her sternum, and never broke her gaze.

"Hit me in the belly, Mary Ford," she said. "As hard as you can."

[Glenn]

At first, she smiled. Maybe that wasn't the reaction that people usually had to Gloria Wynsee, but it was easy and right and natural. It was her own fault, and she was smart enough to realize that a fault could well reveal a need. Part of her problem, on this day and on any day where she tried to discuss this, was an inability to explain what she wanted. That stemmed from reactions she'd gotten before, from her upbringing, from other things, but also because she wasn't entirely sure what it was. She wasn't even sure it existed. All of these congealed into one mass of uncertainty that Gloria was trying valiantly to untangle.

Mary listened to her. Through watching Gloria try to get to the heart of this, to get through to her, to even know how to deal with her and answer her, bits about Mary herself were revealed. Gloria may not have recognized them, but Mary did; she'd never seen a mirror that reflected quite like the Jerno before her. She held in laughter, not from her eyes, because you could only do that by shutting them, but from her lips. Those she could keep shut.

Perhaps it was a shame, for a phrase, a retort more than a response, had passed through her mind only to be stopped by the tightly locked egress in front of her teeth. I still have to eat. It felt too harsh; Gloria was trying so hard and she was clarifying a great many things, even if they weren't necessarily the ones Mary had initially sought out. It might have helped them onto a straighter path, but this was a journey worth taking anyway.

They could get there soon enough.

Without those words, however, they didn't get there at all. They reached another point entirely. She was agreeable and pliable both as she stood at Gloria's insistence. The smile on her face was unsure but easy enough. Then came Gloria's words and her next commands; with them was born a stark realization.

The color left her cheeks as she saw the destination they were now headed towards. So, as she stood before Gloria, as she was beckoned to strike her, Mary's usually quick mind went blank. She couldn't. She wouldn't. It was absolutely not a possibility. What instead, then? With distress on her face, she reached back to the words she had rejected before. Her voice, as she uttered them, was the tiniest of whispers.

"I still have to eat?"

[Rance]

To push a limit was to sharpen the knife facing one's own flesh. To force and nudge another to certain action, it could produce both benefit and damage. In this case, she watched as Mary Ford's eyes seemed to darken, almost to sink, like gems desperate to hide themselves beneath the coal of her eyelids. The whisper, dejected, might as well have been a final breath. I still have to eat? Like an urchin's question. I still have to eat? The utterance of a child who did not understand. Mary's was a cruel world; she'd let it be cruel to her, found comfort in its cruelty, chose to be a tiny thing, small enough for any man's bootheel, and—

She is trying. She came to you, whispered the ribbon of logic in the back of her own head, because she wants to be better than what they think she can be.

"You still have to eat," Gloria said, in a tone that could have been silk. "You need depend on nothing but yourself to do that, Mary. Men and commanders, they aren't responsible for putting food upon our plates. We are. We just have to learn how. Less like wild animals, though, and more with the pride of opportunists, adventurers, and sovereigns. I can help — but only to a point, lest dependency be the result." Her dry mouth jerked up into an unusual smile. "And you're already making choices, dictating and determining for yourself what should and what should not be. What feels true to you, and what doesn't."

Gloria's cheeks blew out into a counterfeit of relief.

"My stomach is in your debt. Small women have fists like arrowheads."

She approached Mary Ford with caution, as if the smaller woman were a statue of cracked marble or perfectly-balanced glass. When she neared, she bent her elbow, jutted it out just so, in an invitation for Mary's own. To some, being this close, Gloria Wynsee could have been a stifling and overwhelming presence. She smelled hot, took great, whole-being breaths, and demanded a space greater than two or three women combined, not just by the virtue of her body, but by the nature of her poise. Sometimes she stank of blood. Other times of sweat. Mostly of Sun. Today, she was oiled cloth and old cork. "We'll walk. It's better to walk. I promise.

"But I need you to be direct with me, Mary. This conversation is not, I think, about my wants, but about yours, and I have to know how best I can help. Do not merely give yourself permission to dream because you've first asked for mine.

"How do we get you to eat?"

[Glenn]

Walk. Walk. Walk. Gloria Wynsee wanted to walk. It was warm inside and it was cold outside and they had the fireplace, but she was making demands. Mary closed her eyes, thoughts rattling around her brain. Her cheeks tugged her lips upwards a bit. "We should walk." She finally agreed. "Let us walk," agreement turned to action and she was on her feet, hustling to the door and not looking back to see if Gloria was trailing behind.

How long had it been since she walked in? Not long. Not long. And there they were, moving again. "I might reconsider, you know," one could be put upon and spirited at the same time, "what you asked of me," she clarified. "That punch," she clarified further. It was a demand, not an offer.

Finally, though, she would stop short just before the door, and if Gloria had followed quickly enough, they might well crash (though she was close enough to the door, she'd be able to catch herself upon it; time on the road had honed her reflexes in the face of disaster). "This is unfair to you, Gloria." She didn't turn around. "Someone can ask the world of someone else and at least they all know what's expected, where they stand. I've come to you because I don't know what to ask, yet I was too embarrassed to tell you. I appreciate how you are trying."

Then she'd turn, her gaze bolder than before, more intense, her cheeks flushed, breathless. "Men are not responsible for putting food upon our plates, but more often than not, no, no, most often, almost always, they're the ones in possession of the money we need to put food on our plates ourselves. How is it that you eat, Gloria?"

[Rance]

No, luckily, she did not crash; Gloria, after all, would have likely smashed Mary to bits. A quick scrape of heel, a touch to the back of Mary's shoulder: I'm here.

"Why, I eat like everyone else: by taking food in hand and placing it in my mouth." A flat humor. It did not even make her laugh. Her voice faded into sobriety and softened to factual downy. "I am afforded a stipend from the Inquisitory, and purchase what I must. Sometimes, I barter, I trade, or I leap into agreements of debt for luxuries. Money can pass from a man's hands into mine, but it doesn't mean it is his charity that guarantees my survival. It is my industry, my energy, my sweat and blood.

"Simplify the process, Mary, else you're liable to go mad sourcing your beneficiaries."

Mary possessed intensity, but in morsels, in tidbits, like wind seeping through the cracks of an unfinished homestead. Shake her a bit, it might all fall out or it might explode. Such volatility required a walk. Legs were the gears and the fuel for the mind, and leave a brain too long inside its skull in this bloody place, it'd eat itself whole. Gloria ushered Mary outside, took her arm lightly in hers — a willing companion — and stood on the edge of the porch. "Mary," said she, with a brief smile, "you needn't be embarrassed about — about not knowing. If you want me to be silent so you can speak, then simply say the word. You are being far from unfair to me. Just as you are trying to formulate your ideas, I am trying to understand them. No one in this world has ever commended me for my quick wit, and that's likely because it simply doesn't exist. What I have, though, is yours.

"This morning, I am yours."

Sun had started to creep over the horizon, jetting its light through the ribbons of black branches and nude trees. There was a painting like this, rendered on canvas, in the Darkenhold corridors...

"What happened on your journey to give birth to this feeling, Mary?" she asked. "Surely, there's an origin. Would it help to start there?"

[Glenn]

Though unseen by Gloria, Mary scrunched her nose at the joke. It was a Maxwell sort of joke and would be forgotten and forgiven quickly, for at least Gloria did not laugh at it and draw attention to it as her former associate might. It felt almost a necessary evil to go along with the near collision, and a reminder of how awkward any conversation such as this might be. Gloria moved on quickly with what seemed to be facts and Mary, not yet ushered outside, not yet looking at Gloria again, felt the need to tug at them, just a bit. "You've only just returned. I am glad they accepted you back so quickly. I think, though I don't know, that I could have the same were I give up the luxury," Gloria's own word, "of choice. How did you manage it while away though?"

Not long after they'd be outside. "Simple. Simple." She'd not let that thought go. "I suppose so." If she was cold, she did not show it. Her hesitance did not fade under Gloria's urgings, however. "It's this then. It's getting someone to pay for something that I want to do. It has to be something that I approve of doing. And, it really has to bring me joy. The value of my industry," which is another word she keeps using. "We can't make anyone see that, though. People aren't used to paying for things they aren't used to paying." Again, she scrunched her nose and turned the question back onto Gloria. "Are you satisfied doing what you're doing?"

She'd pause for an answer, certainly, but there were other notions to joust with. "It's not anything specific I learned." This came with a shake of her head. There was so much, some wonderful and some terrible, and much interesting to her but to others and some that might be interesting to others and not to her; much of it was quite mundane and it was hard to sort all of it out. "Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, right? I did learn a lot, though, and I did a lot. I managed a lot of things no one in Myrken has managed, man or woman, and that has to count for something, doesn't it?" It wasn't evading Gloria's question, but it was answering from a different direction, a direction she might not have been able to manage so deftly even a few minutes before.

[Rance]

"I'm fine," she said, in response to this question, or that one. Or to none at all. "I do that for which I am most properly suited, and — and that's well enough."

Their walk was less an adventure and more a brief jaunt: swishing skirts and crushing feet treading their way through brown, reedy grass and dodging the occasional patch of flat, wet snow. Breaking morning invited in the milky fog, and what they walked through might as well have been smoke. Mary proved a mystery. Gloria only liked mysteries insofar as they required rational solutions, and Myrken Wood was so very often not just irrational, but the opposite of rational. Mad, really. And constantly confounding. Some of that, she imagined, had bled over into Mary Ford.

"You want people to pay for what you do best, then you simply need to demand it. No one will beat you, harm you, or maim you if what is easiest for them is to say no. I sold bags when I first came here — and no one, Mary, needs little bags. And I didn't care if they even wanted little bags. I'd have rathered make them enough annoyed with me that suddenly they loved the bags enough to pay for them, only that I might stop pestering them. I think—" A finger lifted, as if to touch the elusive point she wanted to make. Then it lowered, wiped itself off on her kirtle, and they changed direction. "I think if what you know can be of use, then you disrespect the knowledge in your mind every moment that you hesitate putting it to work.

"We die young here in Myrken Wood. Don't we? Or we live long enough to wonder if we'll ever die at all. So you ought to start managing those things right here, and make people realize Mary Ford has quite a lot to do."

She tightened her jaw so quickly, so firmly, that her soft teeth scraped against one another. Coming face to face with an unseen thought, or some unspoken consideration.

"What changed you while you were gone, Mary? You're different," Gloria ventured. "You're different."

[Glenn]

She had been taken out of familiar circumstances and shoved headlong into the unfamiliar when she was drafted into the Inquisitory. It was, much like Myrken itself, mad. Mad work. Therefore, it needed a certain class of people, ones that showed a spark, ones that lacked opportunity, ones that were thereby, just a touch vulnerable. For Maxwell it was academic failure in his home province. For Mary, it was the absolute lack of paths to a farmgirl that had taught herself to read. Then, just as she had found her legs with the basic (still mad) duties of the Inquisitory, she had been commissioned to leave and to see the world and gather together barely useful threads. That had been mad too.

She had found here legs there too, though, and it was with those legs, so used to walking, that she trudged through the Myrken morning. "You make it sound simple, Gloria. Maybe it is," she mused, even as they shifted directions unexpectedly, not exactly gazing off at the sights because there wasn't much to see and she'd seen it all already. "What do I charge them for? Thinking? Organizing? Being a scribe without a sole master? It'd be hard enough even to find a patron," given her unfortunate gender and the lack of options. "Maybe an eccentric, but who wants to work for Treadwell?"

If every conversation was a journey, they were about to reach a waypoint. Gloria Wynsee was the best choice to talk to in many ways and the story about bags proved that true. In fact, she was about to reach the point, the one that she had not quite been bold enough to venture to, when Gloria stopped her short with her question.

Mary Ford swallowed. "Many things happened, and a lot of them weren't all that important. You're different as well." That was a defensive approach brought about by the suddenness of the question and how close she'd been to one of her own. "Myrken doesn't seem different at all though, does it?" Maybe that, more than anything else, was the problem.

[Rance]

"Important enough that they've broadened your horizons, demanded you explore your own value. Forced you," she said, "into restlessness. We squander our time and the time of those around us with dithering—" An ugly word; she liked it, "—when we would better serve ourselves and others by being divisive."

The mechanisms in Gloria's brain started firing more frequently, now, as if the sleep had been shaken away and her thoughts could start on their morning cycle. Her lone hand opened, closed, opened, closed, and if ever they stood still, her eyes danced with wild abandon toward unseen silhouettes and figures creeping just past the treeline. Myrken Wood wasn't different. It would never be. It should never be. Gloria Wynsee took comfort in its strangeness, in its chaos.

Myrken Wood proved to be a hammer, too. Bashing itself against its own walls. Against its own people. Battering out its own space, its own little spot in the world. Blunt, dangerous, predictable.

Like her.

"You charge them for your time. You scribe as your own master." The word drew pause from her. It turned her stomach. And yet her guts had no right to be so bold, so hypocritical. "Families here need women and men with pens to jot down their histories, to hold power over ledgers of trade, to write this missive or — or log that event. Mary Ford, these people would sooner pay you than they would ever pay me or anyone unfamiliar. They want to see your face, see you thrive, and — and they want to say look at her, look at how well she's getting on, she's done so finely for herself.

"They want to put coins in your pocket not because they feel for you, but because you've rightfully earned them."

But this wasn't the heart of it all, was it? They came to the woodline, and Gloria stopped. If anyone from the Broken Dagger looked out, they'd see these two women simply standing there, peering at the tangled branches of the wintery woods like two children staring over the borders from one country into the next. A slight turn of her head was all she offered, enough that the bonnet's edge only framed the round, brown coin of her face, and her eye was but a sliver of gray.

"What happened, Mary, to make you this afraid?"

[Glenn]

Dithering and divisive. Gloria's manner coupled with her specific words had a way of working at opposite intent than the meaning behind them. When that happened on occasion, it was an unfortunate accident, perhaps an ill side effect of lofty desires. If it happened over and over again, with almost every interaction, there might well have been something else behind it. As it was, Mary struggled to keep up.

In doing so, she seemed to fall behind further. "It's the selling. The selling of yourself and your services. That's what I must get better at." She interjected. "Because it does feel how it feels. You've brought forth logic and reason and all such, and in doing so, I am grateful, for I see it clearly now. It's just something that needs to be overcome. Old instincts that have to die so I might live on my terms." She sniffed, not pausing at places where Gloria paused and yet pausing in places she did not. "I'm not afraid of hard work, Gloria. I'm not. Hard's just not the right word for this, though." Whatever she was, it simply wasn't bold, and without boldness, well, what she was describing was quite close to pity. If Gloria couldn't see that, though, she couldn't well explain it.

Even as they got closer to utility, closer to purpose, Gloria just couldn't stop herself. She kept tearing, kept pulling, kept acting how no Myrkener, not even a Myrken-born inquisitor, might.

What birthed this feeling? What changed? Why are you so afraid.

"What I am, Gloria, is not afraid. What I am, is alone. I wasn't when I left. I am upon my return. Myrken seems so big, like it could fit a thousand stories, but it's not so big after all. So I've come back, seeing how much bigger everything else is out there, no bigger myself, not really, and don't be saying otherwise, because you don't know. And no one here can see it and I just can't see anyone else." She would reach out then, would put her hands upon the other woman's shoulders, as if she was to shake her. "I thought you might want a change, that we might be able to pool our talents, go into business. That maybe you didn't want any other master either. Especially not the usual ones around these parts. But instead, you're just not seeing what is for what is and you're looking under every rock for what might be."

[Rance]

"Looking for what might be is not my preference, Mary. It is my necessity. It has been the only reliable tool—" she said, not with haughty dismissal, but with soft and directed focus, watching the other woman between the frame of those extended arms, "—for my survival. Wondering what others will think of me and aim to do to me simply because I look different, or what they might say, or Nameless forbid it, how they might rid themselves of me. Looking for hints of violence in the way men stand, or how they grow taut when they see my skin gleam. Surveying the world for threats because I am not a silent woman, nor am I often a pleasant one, and I possess very little of what the world ultimately prefers."

Give her room. Let her breathe. Even Mary Ford needs a victory.

A downward dip of her chin. A momentary disconnection of the eyes. Small, in that moment, because being large would accomplish absolutely nothing.

"Forgive me. Confusing loneliness with fear is — is my natural tendency. The two look similar; to me, they feel similar." As Mary unraveled the rawhide of her own constraints, Gloria very carefully reached up to drape her hand upon one of Mary's own, perched as it was on Gloria's broad shoulder. Hers was but a touch and nothing more, just the application of a warm palm there, as if it to protect it from rain. Mary could shake her. Mary could shake her senseless, if she wanted. Gloria would let her. Maybe Mary Ford, with that tightness in her fingers and that steel in her grip, wanted to make the whole world tremble just so it would, for a split-second, see her.

"Mary," she said, a steadying punctuation to the woman's truth. "Mary, I—" Her throat spasmed. Made a noise like a creaking floorboard. She smacked her lips together, though, and tried anew. "Sometimes I tire of being my own master. Sometimes I just yearn to — to be told what to do, and want nothing more than to abandon independence. I obey well when obeisance — obedience — makes sense. I imagine that's not what you want to hear. I imagine it's disappointing. I think I am just..."

Another stop. I think. A shield, that. A chance to let her mind slow down.

I think I am just very tired.

"What business do you envision for us, Mary?"

[Glenn]

Mary's cheeks went as red as her hair once had been as Gloria asked for forgiveness. Yes, the other woman had rushed to expectations, had confused things, maybe, had chipped at the cracks, but that was just how they were trained, wasn't it? That's why she had wanted to talk to her in the first place. Mary had responded with frustration, exasperation, even anger.

"No, no," she did not shake Gloria, but she also did not let go. Her hands were locked, not hard or harsh or painful, certainly not painful to the stockier figure, but locked nonetheless. If she had the strength to rend the world, she might, but she simply didn't. She did not have much strength at all. At least she would not have to apologize for that.

Ultimately, though with some delay, Gloria's touch unlocked the cage of fingers and tension. I'm sorry, Gloria. I wasn't thinking of you. Maybe I couldn't. If I did think more of your needs or that they might be different than mine, I'm not sure I would have had the strength to even write you." Her checks remained red, and her bottom lip escaped, ever so slightly, into the recessed of her mostly closed mouth, clamped down upon by unseen teeth.

"Maybe," she'd finally posit, but only after Gloria had said the rest of her piece, "we're on a similar road but you're much further along. I know you are tired, but I'd still like to make it far enough to be able to look back and be tired, if that makes any real sense." Isn't it much better to be tired of freedom than to barely know it at all? Maybe, she didn't know, but again, she'd rather be able to find out for herself.

"And maybe," she continued, "it'd be easier if you weren't facing it all alone, too?" There was a bit of hopefulness in there. Up until now, it was obvious that Mary's needs were not Gloria's. This was the first sign that they might not be incompatible. Still, she was more than a little hesitant, having to joust with that final question.

"Well, that's part of what I was hoping you'd work out with me, but I thought, maybe, there were a lot of things. Some of them were what you said, scribing, but also figuring things out, things that people would pay us to figure out, but on our terms, and maybe figuring out some things for ourselves, things that no one's taking the time to figure out?"

[Rance]

"I am glad you wrote to me."

Simple. Straightforward. And yet sincere. Accompanied by the dropping of her chin, the softening of her eyes, looking down at Mary Ford from her mountainous height and realizing, simultaneously, You were right. She is afraid. She simply does not recognize it. Myrkeners, they rarely registered fear: it fired off inside them in different directions and along unfamiliar avenues, sometimes manifesting as boldness or stubbornness or fury. A mechanism for protection within a machine built for resolve and survival.

But here is the difference, Mary Ford. I am not facing it alone. Not anymore.

(Nameless, hadn't she said this all before, these words pouring from Mary Ford's pert little mouth? To Genny, in letters and admissions, exploring loneliness and togetherness, trying to find that soft, perfect, powerful place where two minds could combine as one and all the doubts, they'd just trickle away, or blow off in a wind...)

New curiosity alighted her dull eyes. She tilted her head to the side. Trying to see into Mary Ford. Wondering about the sparks therein, how they fired, how they flashed. "Something beyond the lawful limitations of the Inquisitory," she reasoned. "Perhaps an agency or institution privately formed and funded by its own chosen contracts. Myrken Wood is bound by very few elements of — of oversight; I doubt we'd have any difficulty simply being, especially in the better interest of the public."

She turned, the voluminous drapery of her skirts snapping to attention against her legs, an army of fabric and stitches. She stared back at the Broken Dagger, standing at Mary's side, her lone hand firmly planted against the shelf of her own hip.

"What I do not have now," Gloria said, "are fully-formed ideas. Not yet. My ingenuity — or what little of it there is — comes with time. I assure you, I returned to Myrken Wood with no interest in simply subsisting as once I did. There are other factors now, and you've seen them, Mary. The world is larger and faster and brighter and darker than most people can imagine."

She glanced, just beyond the blinder of her bonnet, at the other woman.

"But we can. What I know is that very little is accomplished alone. Roads are far more interesting when traveled in pairs."