It was good to have something to celebrate, even after the Glass Sun had long since put its cheek to the pillows of the horizon.
Celebrations in Myrken Wood were often cut dreadfully short -- or that is what the bartender had told her (an unfamiliar fellow; a new hire, a sprightly young buck with one-half smile) when she told him I would like to purchase a bottle of your finest scotch, and he said,What the hell is scotch, won't alcohol flatten out that baby you've got growing in your stomach, and she said, I've got no baby, I've just got quite a belly, and he said, Well, you haven't got a good pair of tits, so no baby indeed, and she said, It is a clear drink that looks like tea and burns like acid when you drink it and gets you very drunk, and he said, Whiskey?
And she said, Fine. It's for a friend. A celebration.
Scotch, then. Whatever in the Pits that its. Three shillings, and another threepence for being a pain in my ass.
Twenty minutes later, a knock on the Vice-Governor's door. Young as she might have been, swollen with diluted logic, she was no fool to assume that the appointed interim representative of all things Myrken Wood would have been so willing to open her door for just anyone. Thus, before the knock, a letter familiar to Agnieszka was slipped like a snake underneath the crack of the front door. A recent note. Agnieszka's own handwriting stood firm along the page. It was the missive she'd sent to the seamstress, a herald to the girl's requested presence--
--and when the door was drawn open, Gloria Wynsee stood like a weary statue, the dark moons under her eyes begging for sleep despite the forced mirth in her smile. Patchwork skirts had been abandoned for a cleaner dress, a drab gray that seemed better suited for broken rocks or flattened granite. With one palm cradling the butt of a wicker-wrapped bottle and her gloved hand latched around the neck, she would thrust out the whiskey and say, with bleary triumph:
"Your first day as -- as Vice-Governor River, my first day as Inquisitor Wynsee. A gift," she said, "for -- for two women who are doing what they need to do."