Anew veil. The tattered musician had returned and read the room to string a befitting tune for Serib sulking in The Dam’e’s vacant chair, staring out at the ensuing chaos - 'where flying knights and angels' - it has always been said. Woid had thwarted her attempts to escape by being the shadow of her shadow. She wafted her hand against the plume-like candle smoke to get a better look at anything at all, their wicks having long gone out. Woid broke the quiet darkness not with a footstep but with the rustle of his clothes, umbra-stepping from one darkness to another.

∞

“I could maybe shed why Shay was a bit short with you, just now.”

“Just now?” From Serib’s view it had happened a while ago, and the long-extinguished candles agreed. Then the candles smoked confusingly. And then they did not. In the corner of her eye Woid was now sat on the desk:

“There was a prince…” Woid began. “He wished to marry her.”

“She said no.” Serib knew.

“She said yes.” Woid corrected, and the little shaman sat straighter in a chair not hers. “Though she changed after her parents passed away. Grief too long stayed with her. She fears opening that big heart of hers, I’m sure you’ve felt or seen, because Death’ll come taking those she lets inside. ‘Eventually and inevitably’ the phrase she likes. Even before their passing she was unsure, ‘yet-set’ in her weird ways. Her mother's fault, that.”

“I don’t think it’s weird, she seems normal to me. Lay’d Payn has the same phrase. Who wouldn’t want Forever?”

“Maybe you’re right - that the normal are the mad and the mad are the normal.”

They watched together the window a while longer. An angel glowing with Grey light was above the desolation, her shield huge and round as the moon, 'and spear o’er' the oldest of it poem goes. Boiled Angels and Werewolves knelt on whatever structures still were standing, as there to bask in Heir moonlight.

∞

“Do you feel powerless?” Serib asked, small against the fantastic, the fantasy and the nonsense.

“Not a lot to be done about it, if I do.”

“Do you not wonder what all this means?” her eyes were stitched to the windows that now rattled with crimson hail, the weather on and off as a candle lit or snuffed. Again and again.

“Just enough to get me from point to point. Beyond that…” he shrugged happily, and she turned from the window unable to take in anything else she did not understand, thinking - it was not what had been promised to her.

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“The prince sends her letters all the while; but I intercept them… she kept throwing them away, but maybe she’ll change, and her eyes’ll have that light in them again, reading pages of… his devotion, I suppose? Seems the word for it.”

“What is the prince like?”

“Ooh, his township’s a fine thing; one of those nooks of Courtdom that Greed cannot conquer with riches or subterfuge. One of the oldest. Not enough at stake there for a sort like me; I’d off to Greed in a dodgy heartbeat, I would!” Woid showed his strange teeth, one or few of them studded as with jewels: “He has a crooked tooth right here, goofy-like. Wears proud his tiarair, a sort of crown or circlet where he’s from. It's invisible, some say.”

Without really knowing why, hearing the word ‘circlet’ made Serib feel colder and she said:

“He sounds very different to her, how did they meet, then?”

∞

“Shay had a job to poison a corrupt Jester in The Prince’s court. Instead, The Prince and Shay stole each other’s hearts by chance, and the Jester slipped free.” Woid rolled his eyes at his own words. “Dam’e sent some of her best to kill Shay after that disobedience or, or… negligence! That’s the word. Some came from afar volunteering, even! But you know how she is with traps when outnumbered and back then, just one sword. Her mother wasn’t so well by then, and didn’t need the steel.”

Serib thought of her master at home, wading through tall reeds and deep rivers towards the smoky cooking, and how age would change it all. Woid spoke on:

“I met her a while after that.”

“The Dam’e sent you to kill Shay, too.”

“Mhm - you do fit in well around here. I should fetch us some tea somewhere.” He looked around but Tenders were nursing the wounded, giving them all the good stuff.

“How did you survive?”

“And how do you know I didn’t let her live?”

Serib looked thoroughly unimpressed.

“Fine… she had me on the edge, and I offered to teach her the umbra-step style I’m known for, courtesy of The Dam’e. The technique helped her get back here to this desk through all defences and prove to The Dam’e she was an indispensable Shadow of our creed. Shay’s combat was top tier, her traps undetectable, but she needed some more subterfuge to round herself around. Her disguises are much better now than they used to be. The one you picked for her in a hurry is hilarious, though.”

“I had to rush… and then it was dark when she chose the rest.”

Woid carried on laughing. “Eh, she can see well enough. Must be some reason for it. Whether she’d let on or not… who knows.”

Serib sighed: “I don’t think any disguise will help against Argus, with all those eyes.”