The rain runs down.

[glass_beddau]

[Early evening, Tuesday, July 7 (day 37)]
[Out towards the Voronin Estate]

The day had a fever, today.

One long slick swelter, with the sun sweating through from behind the clouds, and come mid-morning, the clouds went the ill green colour of a fading bruise and the sky howled. Hail--hail, in high summer--and leaves and branches stripped right

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[glass_beddau]

"It will be better if you have something. Something of the place or something of him, or something of the day. A little treasure," and she laughs like wind in the ghost of branches. There's something black streaked and smeared across her fingers, as if she'd been dabbling in bad blood.

Good. I had the right of what she'd need, then.

I open the bag, pull out the shirt Iago was wearing when he saw whoever it was, folded small and soft. There's blood on that, too, but it's really blood, Dorian's, not the soot on Anushka's fingertips. I hand it to her quietly--I'm somehow not taking her for needing an explanation of what it is, or why it matters to what I'm asking--and fold my arms back around myself and my bag. I glance once at Wanda, trying to read the look on her face, catching the Shuck from the corner of my eye.

[mistresswanda]

This is fascinating. Forgetting that I'm in a crumbling mansion, with a madwoman and a God right behind me that can throw me around like a rag doll, I crouch down, balancing on the balls of my boots, black leather pooling around me like so much darkness. Hands folded fingertips tapping against my lips....
I can not wait to see how this turns out. I swing a look to Glass, back to the God-man again, then fix my rapt attention to the ghost playing in the smoke.

[gaueko_erebus]

Oh, how I love to watch Anushka doing this. It never gets old, and though I prefer the rituals directly linked to me the power rolling off her crawls along my skin like stroking fingers, makes me riase my head and slit my eyes and shudder. She's completely absorbed in her task, the smoke surrounding her like veil and shield and blind, whispering its secrets to her ears and only hers, my sweet little magpie girl digging for shiny things in the dust.

The redhead kneels on the floor, rapt, hands pressed to her mouth like an anxious child. Glass is frozen where she stands. And I just watch. Let's see how much of Eris my Anushka can see.

[glass_beddau]

Wanda's down and curled, staring like a cat will at a candleflame. I envy her the fascination, and the ease she has to look back at the Shuck and away from him again. It's curiousity I should be feeling, a gift I think I'd look north for if it could bring me the sense of it, but I'm watching Gaueko tilt his head back and for a second I think I'm going to hear him howl, low and gutting scrape echoing through dead air, empty halls, the invaded tomb of this place.

Wanda doesn't know what he is. She sees, but she doesn't know, or she'd not turn her back, she'd not have come. Anushka's broken enough that she might, but she's always and ever off by herself.

Mother's bones I wish there was a sin-eater about I could speak to, someone who saw what he was and understood the weight of him. My fingers creep back into my bag and dig into soft and shiny purple plush as I look back to Anushka and wait.

[glass_beddau]

I'm breathing shallow and slow, and I can feel myself curling in on myself, wishing for dead leaves to hide in, cover to seek. Dusk is gone and night's full-on and the Shuck--oh, he's maybe not too minded to be after me but so close, he's so close behind me and the whole world's gone to nightmare, now. I can still see but there's no colour nor light to be had now, Anushka the palest thing in the room and even her gone to a dull and smeared charcoal. I don't think I'd dare touch her if I could bring myself to move, not when she's like this, crawling on the ground all pale and dead in the dark like a broken-backed ghoul, high thin laugh and blood running free and all of her like a knife and its wound together. I think she might see too much of me.

"Happy anniversary, Stormcrow," and my lips skin back from my teeth, for all that I can't do anything to keep that name from her. Not ever, and less than ever now with night and murder standing behind me and favouring her.

"The gods don't like you," she says, her eyes settling on me,

[gaueko_erebus]

Sometimes this happens, Anushka has a bad reaction to her vision. Her nose bleeds, she shakes, her heart stutters and stumbles like a three-legged deer. And she laughs, of course, always the laugh, even as she sprawls limp on the floor like a broken toy. "A new one, a new one here, and she's broken and she's looking, and she wears others faces for a game and her back's all cut from the brick, isn't it Gaueko? She's beautiful and spiteful and she laughs. Eris. And she's all over the town, nothing to what you were thinking, nothing to that, you should be glad. He could take your face if he liked but it would be a travesty if he did. Not her in the bar with her pale little hands, not that."

Good girl, Anushka, I nod to myself. Leaving the doorframe behind I straighten, track my way through the dust to the fireplace, kneel beside her. Normally I'd pull her into my lap, touching me steadies her, but not when Glass is here. I'm close enough that she can touch me if she wants to.

[mistresswanda]

Eris. Yes. As we thought, as we suspected. Eris running around, wearing our faces. What to do is another matter. What can one do against a Goddess, against a God...my eyes slide back to Gaueko, and he's smiling, proud of his little pet

[glass_beddau]

Eris. Fine. Goddess of discord, such a pale polite delicate little word for the poison she spread and the hurt she caused. And Anushka's going on, and I'm losing the thread of it. "And she's all over the town, nothing to what you were thinking, nothing to that, you should be glad. He could take your face if he liked but it would be a travesty if he did. Not her in the bar with her pale little hands, not that."What I was thinking... Gaueko moves up to her, crouches down, and I'm the only one standing, now, all of them pale as they could be in the night or dark, hunched or leaning, and this is easier to take. They're like old worn gravestones, shapeless from the rain and shadows spattered across them until you could pick out shapes. There's a strange honesty to the image, in this house she tries to pretend is not charnel dust

[mistresswanda]

Again tonight, the air is as sharp as a blade, as taught as a wire ready to snap. Glass....Glass! Why haven't you figured it out? Bright and clever and curious, why? Why must I be the one to realize it first

[glass_beddau]

"You know. He lives in the tower."

...but the thing in the tower doesn't leave it, does he? Grants wishes, takes souls, but I thought he waited there, trapdoor spider, offering what was offered and waiting there in the strange corpse-fat white glittering magnet of the north...

Wanda's laughing. Or screaming. Still and quiet and far away. Anushka's holding onto her, pale and clinging little viper, and the laughing's growing like a sickness in her and then she turns and it's not Anushka she's speaking to but the Shuck, grinning like her face was peeled from the bone.

"We must be an awfully good joke to those like you, aren't we?" she says, smiling at Gaueko, showing her teeth wide and giddy to the Shuck, and sick horror rises in my throat.

"Wanda we are not here to trouble him."