Looks like things are heating up, and I ain’t talking about the weather!

Firstborough Constable Chief Royce has promised on his badge that the miscreant behind this desecration will be behind bars within the week. That’s a mighty big claim, Chief. Hope you won’t regret it.

You know. Like the three chiefs we’ve had in the last two years.

Anyways, three Penitents are being treated for minor injuries…

Still woozy with shock, Valkyrie followed Oliver up the narrow stairs to his second-floor apartment. He unlocked the door and ushered her into the flat.

“My room is to the left. Sits over the kitchen. Right is the spare bedroom. Well, really, my storeroom. Had drunks break in for my silverware too many times thanks to those boneheads in the Conclave.”

Mrs. Hewes had made the class do a report on the import troubles between Ruhum and the continent. She had thus informed her fellow students that the price of a spoon had tripled in the last two years. Then again, who noticed a spoon when the landlords jacked rent by a silver note a month every month?

“You awake?” he asked.

“Right. Spoons.”

My life is actually over this time.

“Windows are double bolt, and I’ve got a little alarm rigged up into my room for the doors downstairs. Nobody comes in I don’t hear.” Though she caught the implied threat under that information just fine. “You’re safe here for tonight.”

Truly over.

He glanced at her and changed tactics. “There’s no bed in the spare, but I’ll lay you out bedding in here.”

Flipping on the light, he revealed the rest of the room. A threadbare couch and a table groaning with boroughs paperwork dominated the space. The paperwork spilled over onto the couch, half-collapsed into a mountain over the cushion.

On the other side of the couch slept a life-sized, articulated Livery doll, draped in the black silks of her profession. Her head tilted to lean against the paperwork peak, placid expression dispassionate as a distant god, and her jointed fingers knit together in prayer across her lap.

He better not be a psychopath, she prayed. Or would that doll be wearing her clothes tomorrow?

“Quick to judge a man with dolls,” the mayor noted, nonplussed.

“N-not at all!” she reassured, keenly aware of the precipice of hospitality on which she dangled.

Oliver just snorted, stepping past her to grab the spare bedding from the closet.

The quiet ate at her, so she prodded. “I thought you weren’t an inn?”

“I’m not…but I do seem to have a talent for strays.” Dumping the bedding onto the floor before the couch, he next fetched blankets and a pillow. “Right. It’s not much, but we’ll make do. We’ll have to be up early to get ahead of this mess, so sleep while you can.”

He bid her goodnight and retreated to his room. His window thumped open and then closed, and he muttered to himself behind his closed door.

She stared after him for a moment, contemplating and discarding schemes. What would I even do with all his silverware anyways?

Sighing, Valkyrie turned off the light, fixed her bedding, and collapsed into her makeshift nest to stare at the dark ceiling.

Eventually, to sleep.

Somewhere in the murk before dawn, rolling over against lumps in her bedding, not sure if she dreamed, Valkyrie spied a ghost in red kneeling before the doll. The apparition swirled at the edges, buffeted by aethereal winds, and clutched at the doll like an anchor in the storm.

What fresh dream was this? Valkyrie rubbed at her face and muttered, “I wish I had a damned clue what’s going on.”

The aethereal winds suddenly shifted, tugging the ghost towards the girl instead.

Do you wish it with all your heart?

In a blink, the ghost appeared before her bedding, wispy edges flickering through the sheets.

Let me see your dreams

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

No need to be shy

“My dreams?” the girl asked. Aren’t we in one?

But what harm was there in a dream within a dream?

“They say the Maiden heals wounds with a touch. They say the Tempest streaks across the sky in the blink of an eye to cut an ironclad in half with a single stroke.”

The ghost loomed larger.

And what do you think?

“That they are free,” she murmured into her pillow.

Breakfast in Mel, lunch in Highbranch, a hotel in Waves. Free as the eagle, fast as the sun, racing ahead to skim my fingers through the clouds…

Valkyrie’s fingertips ached to claim a sky for her alone.

For the first time in years, the ghost found the strength to focus her eyes on a single point.

An anchor in the storm.

Such brilliant hopes

Hail, sparkling Valkyrie

The woman knelt, her dress splitting at the thigh to spill across the girl’s bed in a splash of crimson.

I too dream

But the words are not my own

I reach

But only grasp what others seek

She is gone beyond my sight

“Then I hope you find her,” the girl yawned.

Grasping that thread tight, Mirielle even remembered her own name.

Do you wish it?

Valkyrie’s stomach clenched in a warning flare from a still and silent corner of her heart.

Easily ignored.

“Sure!”

Then let us taste each other’s dreams

An offering:

The gravity of my soul

For that veil over your beautiful eyes

“My veil?” she wondered. Her stomach clenched even harder.

Mirielle nodded, finger hovering just before the girl’s lips.

For one shining moment, shall we soar together?

Pray for me

And I will show you the way to your sky

From deep within, another voice whispered, And who are we to own the sky?

But Valkyrie was not in the habit of listening to such nagging worrywarts.

Let us claim this dream together

The ethereal demon offered her wrist, and Valkyrie bit.

Tasted not blood but white-hot honey.

She swallowed the nectar, and a fragment of Light exploded in her belly like a two-mule whiskey. Heat burst through her head, her mind pounding at the gate of her skull. Tens of thousands of voices rushed in, idle daydreams and futile hopes and petty fantasies and lustful stares and…

“Focus,” demanded Mirielle against her ear. “Your target awaits.”

Ghostly tendrils swirling into and through Valkyrie, leading her gaze to the empty doll.

More voices poured in: Lords lost in their former glory and Ladies pining for the suitors of old and Guildsmen counting their coin and deacons dreaming of Keeper robes and Penitents wailing for guidance in a lost world and…

She desperately focused on the doll, the swell threatening to drag her into the demon’s Reverie.

Her cool eyes, her faint smile, the swish of her hair. Her step, her smell, her Light.

A single soul among the diaspora, cast adrift anywhere from the heights of the sephirot to the depths of nightmare. One echo lost under the thundering steps of the dead and undying giants.

An angel, understanding the magnitude of this task, would despair.

But that was the wonder of mortality, wasn’t it?

The blind audacity of the mortal heart!

Mirielle-Valkyrie running together like paints, the two rose to put a yearning hand on Thea’s cold cheek.

We shared a dream, my dear. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already.

More voices – foreign accents – streets paved with black concrete to cover artillery scars – six kings and a slumbering ship – the whisper of Eden; always the inescapable whisper of Eden!

We shared a promise, my dear, and damn the rest!

A gulf of stars, distance so unfathomably exceeding Valkyrie’s scant miles that a vein in her nose burst and blood gushed down her face.

Mirielle-Valkyrie shuddered.

Why does it always have to hurt so much?

Why can’t I ever stop it?!

Yet Valkyrie-Mirielle snarled against the taste of blood. Here was her chance! What was a little blood before her sky?!

They laid both hands on the doll, aching with the void of light-years cold and dead, to straddle the gulf.

Wills united, they reached for their desire.

Saw together a constellation scattered as wide as the diaspora. Dolls slept in their pods at the bottom of muddy seas; in orbit around unnamed worlds; in museums and display cases and shrines by a thousand names.

A network, dormant but not destroyed.

Mirielle surged into that network with a cry of joy, and she offered parting words from one troublemaker to another.

Marvelous! Just marvelous, my dear!

I leave your reward within your breast

Give Ali a little hell for me

The spell broke, and Valkyrie staggered forward under the weight of her gushing nosebleed.

“Hells, there’s so much!” she squeaked, pressing both palms to her nose. This only redirected the geyser against her neck and dress, and stars swam in front of her eyes as half her body weight escaped through her nostrils with each heartbeat.

For a moment, those stars seemed to dance to a vast and inscrutable Song…

…but she would be joining that Chorus in a hurry if she didn’t clamp down this bleeding!

Gushing everywhere, she flailed across the dark living room for a towel.

Soon Oliver yanked open his door, rubbing at his eyes. Baseball bat in one hand, he snapped on his bedroom lights to reveal the trail of blood from the bedding to the doll to Valkyrie sodden as a murder victim.

“Stormmother’s tit! I’ve seen picked noses, but you opened a mining operation!” He dragged the girl into the bathroom, set her over the sink, and pulled down his medical kit. “Come on, tilt your chin up. Hands on the counter. You’re gonna pass out at this rate.”

I always go woozy for you, dear Oliver, suggested a familiar purr against her ear. A whisper just for her, nestled firmly in her bosom now.

Valkyrie snickered.

The mayor froze, gauze in hand. “You doing okay? Other than the obvious?”

She let her chin sink towards the porcelain and muttered, “Just an interesting dream.”