I didn’t tell Robin any of that. She knew already, didn’t she? She knew she wasn’t suited for the city—and all my effort spent otherwise had been as wasted as throwing coins down a wishing well. So I led her back to the office, Robin beginning to lean against me with tiredness. I checked that none of the shallow cuts from the glass at the warehouse were too deep, and tossed her a box of bandages so she could plaster them up. It wasn’t long before she curled up on the makeshift bed and went to sleep, the blankets curled around her feet.

I closed the door. Then I picked up the phone on my desk and made a call.

She answered quicker than before, as though she were sitting in her office waiting for the phone to ring, even deep into the night. I didn’t tell her anything important, anything incriminating, for the wires that stretched across the Outscape were their own special kind of labyrinth. No one could say exactly what path they took, or what manner of people could intercept them on their route.

Aging was a funny, unpredictable thing for nightmares, but every time I saw her Madeline Zamir managed to look older. She had sleepless bags beneath her eyes, and her usual suit jacket hung loose off her frame. She slumped down in the chair across from my desk and rubbed at her forehead with one hand. “What now, Starling?” she said. “If it’s about that notebook, I don’t know what you expect from me. There’s no higher moral authority I can appeal to, no mother lion to tear us apart by the scruffs of our necks.”

“Not that,” I said. “But you won’t like it.”

“When do I like anything you tell me? When does this city have a shred of good news to sate us?”

“Rarely enough.”

“I see it all, do you know? The archives have long memories—shattered now, but enough to follow the sweep of history in this city, the way it churns and grinds us all beneath its heel. The endless craving for power, the lengths that it drives us to…” She shivered.

I leaned back in my chair, inching the two front legs from the ground. She wasn’t wrong. “Well, then, that’s good, no? Jabberwock isn’t new, or crueler, or worse than any of the others that have come before, even if they’ve found some new methods of working. Unless the archives has records of how they killed Chesnes?” I ventured. She stared back without blinking and didn’t answer. “The Outscape is still standing, we’re still sitting here. Whatever we’ve survived in the past we can survive again. We’ll just have to keep being clever, Zamir-”

“How many are left?”

“What?”

“The day we met, Starling. I walked through the Luna warehouses, I played cards. Badly,” she added with a snicker, but it didn’t last long. “How many of those people are still living? Dumal, Blaine, Evie? How many of those people did Drakon kill? You and I cannot be the only ones still alive, but I fear we are, and I fear the churn will not spare us a second time. I’m—I’m scared, Starling.”

My balance in the chair wavered, and I tipped forward again, catching my palms on the desk. “I’m scared, too, and I’m not a damn nightmare.”

She rubbed at her eyes. She drew a pen from her pocket and spun it on the desk, waiting to see which way it pointed. “You’ve never asked me, Starling. You’ve never asked what nightmare I carry across the divide into sleepers’ dreams.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Do you want me to ask?”

“It is a different space every time. Tight walls, cramped cars, locked doors. They feel trapped—but I am trapped in there with them, every time, even when they do not see me. They wake up, but I never do, and I cannot escape those barriers. The endless ocean surrounds our shores, and we are all just sparrows trapped in a cage, birds fluttering up against the bars.” The pen slowly spun to a stop and pointed at her like a sword of Damocles, and a spot of pitch-black ink dripped from its tip. When she picked up the pen again, it stained her fingers. “This city has always been my nightmare made real, and I have always been fighting it. But,” she added, “what would you know about that?”

I reached awkwardly across the table and grabbed her shoulder. “Hey, Maddy. We’ll make it through.”

“I hope so. I dearly hope so.” She straightened and shook her head. “This is not why you called me here. The world is collapsing and we do our best to survive, and you wanted…”

I motioned back towards the door to the bedroom, behind which Robin slept. “A kid,” I said. “Here in the usual manner, except that it was Chesnes who brought her here and now everyone wants a piece. And she’s clever enough,” I said, “capable enough, for a kid. Reminds me of myself—maybe you’d see the same, maybe you wouldn’t. It hardly matters.”

Zamir frowned. “She’s…not been here long?”

“Just after I saw you at the docks.”

“A dangerous place. Everyone and no one makes their nests there.”

“And none more than Jabberwock.” I leaned forward. “You shouldn’t go back to the docks even if you’re ordered there. It’s too risky, and—I don’t want to lose you. You’re one of the few people I can trust.”

She waved her hands and dismissed it. “The inspections are few and far between. The situation will be…changed enough when they ask again, though I cannot say if it’ll be for the better. I can keep myself safe.”

“Good, cause it’s not all I’m asking of you.” I lowered my voice. Robin should have been long asleep, but I didn’t trust her not to be listening at the door. “She’s trouble, and I can’t manage it on my own. This damn office, my damn job, doesn’t work if I’m dragging a kid who doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’ll get herself killed or she’ll get me killed. I don’t know what resources you have, but-”

“The arrangements can be made.”

I paused. “They can? I thought…” I chanced another look backwards. A rolling sensation of something like guilt was forming in my stomach—but this was for the best, for both of us. Robin needed another home and I couldn’t provide it to her. “I thought it’d be more difficult than that. The Outscape isn’t geared for…that. For…people like me.”

“You ended up with a bad crowd, Starling, a pack that would never have asked the city for such arrangements. But such an action is not without precedent—there would be risks, yes, but there always are, and I can muster more to defend it than one investigator.”

I felt like I’d lost control of the conversation. I’d thought I’d have to drag every last concession from Zamir, that the risks might be too great, that Zamir was powerless in the face of Drakon and whatever control he exerted. But Zamir seemed now more animated than I’d seen her for a long time, spinning that pen between her fingers, jabbing at it me as she spoke. “I’d need your guarantee,” I said. “And it’d have to be well-arranged. People who we know can be trusted and who can stay well out of whatever’s brewing between Dragon and Jabberwock. It’s not—punishment for her. I don’t want Robin to be hurt by it.”

“You’ve trusted me with your life time and time again, Starling,” she said, “and I’ve trusted you with mine. It is a dangerous proposition you ask—but it’s a danger I’ve navigated before.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Zamir. But she seems to draw trouble with her.”

“Imagine that,” she said. “A human with a predilection for causing havoc. I’ve never met someone like that.”

And so we agreed, shook hands, and Zamir left with a list of details to be worked out. Meeting time, place, the vetting to be done and the arrangements to be made. And the farther it was set in stone, the more the plan was crafted, the worse I felt.