They stand in the upper hallway of the Broken Dagger, elbow-to-elbow, staring down at the cast-iron handle of the portal two doors down from theirs. Smoke from the wall-sconces hovers in the air, a stagnant, iron-colored vapor that saturates clothes and clogs the nostrils with the ghosts of long-burnt wax. It's night; it's late, long after the dull glow of distant Myrkentown begins to fade where it can be seen along the horizon out the tavern's windows. Most of the patrons in the Broken Dagger sleep, snore, or entangle themselves in drunken communion with one another.
But a highwaywoman and a seamstress stand statuesque in front of that door, and the husky Jerno reaches out to alight her few remaining fingers on the back of Ailova's wrist.
"I know you don't trust her quite yet," she whispers. "Neither do I. But she's a means to an end, and I trust you to — to bend to your instincts if you think that her aims and her objectives don't agree with ours, Ailova. If her designs," the girl clarifies, "seem dangerous." She spares a traveling glance to the basket-handled blade belted at Ailova Smith's side. Rarely does Gloria Wynsee put her trust in steel. But that steel, it's never aimed wrong, not even when the hands behind it beg for a drink to quiet their tremors.
Gloria's fingers fall down to cling to the worn and tattered patchwork skirts she wears. Her fingers are greased with filthy sweat. She swallows as though choking down a whole mouthful of earth.
Then, her dark face upturned, she drums her scabbed knuckles along the door.
"Menna Ressa," Gloria hisses at a crack in the wood. "Do you stir?"