The Nevers: Always Fine

by milk3002

Just as intrigued as you are, and probably more confused. But I do adore Mrs. True and Miss Adair. This will most likely verge from canon, but what is canon but a mere suggestion? Amalia and Penance, along with their fellow Touched, try to figure out just what it is they don't know about Maladie and who is truly hunting them.

7. Fists and Chips

Amalia's bare legs, visible through her singed skirt, jutted out from the end of a pew near the open church doors. The sun cast a cone of light across the floor, as she sat watching parishioners clean up the remnants of Maladie's game, picking up bits of sandwich trimmings and broken glass. The Bishop and the gentleman had been carried away by white-coated medics, linen draped over their burns, and Amalia had been sequestered inside the church, as if everyone thought best to isolate her in the holiest place they could think of while the police were summoned.

Penance knelt in front of Amalia, examining a leg that had once been pale white but was now pink and red, imprinted with scrapes and burns. "You've got a pretty nasty one here. That will smart quite a bit." Scrutinizing the leg was much easier at that moment than meeting Amalia's gaze, where unspoken truths lay in wait. The chaos had kept her from asking questions, but now in the quiet of the chapel Penance realized she was too afraid of the answers to risk asking them. "I liked this dress," she said sadly, fingering the blackened silk.

"I quite liked it, too," Lavinia said, her voice echoing down the aisle of the chapel as she brought herself closer to them, Augustus scurrying to catch up with her chair. She pinned a steely eye on Amalia. "I can spin this with the press and paint you as some Touched hero, but I can't spin it with the police."

"I had no idea Maladie would be here," Amalia insisted quietly, her eyes on the ground. Lifting her head, she pinned a suspicious eye on Lavinia. "Do you happen to know how she might have found out I would be here?"

Lavinia took the slight as it was meant and leaned forward, waiting until she had Amalia's undevoted attention. "You said yourself that your allies are severely limited," she warned her. "If I were you, I'd be careful how I treat the few I have."

Penance watched them square off at one another, two cats ready to pounce, and it was not the first time she wondered at what shared history made them such adversarial partners, other than the fact that Amalia was generally adversarial to most people.

Noticing Amalia's fingers begin to worry themselves against one another, Penance felt an urge to defend her. "She did save the Bishop's life," she reminded Lavinia. "That has to count for something, both in the public's eye as well as yours." She grasped Amalia's hand and squared her shoulders as she looked up at Lavinia, waiting to see how poorly her attempt at valor would go over.

Lavinia only pursed her lips, the blue fire in her eyes calming slightly, and clasped her gloved hands in her lap. "I'm going to see how I can fix this for the orphanage's sake. I suggest you pay a visit to the Bishop and Mr. Gladly so that they can thank you for saving their lives. I'll send you details and you will be prompt and presentable enough for a photograph."

She let her eyes run over the ruined dress. "Perhaps Miss Adair can focus her attentions on creating a fabric that can withstand your proclivity for roughhousing." She nodded her head primly at Augustus. "Let's go."

He jumped, taking command of her wheelchair and scurrying out the door, looking back over his shoulder to give them a cheerful wave and a swimming smile, always pleasantly resilient in his inability to read a room.

Penance slouched into the next pew and leaned her head on her hand, seeming not just exhausted, but drained by the day's turn of events. Amalia had several more pieces to the puzzle than did poor Penance, whose mind was most likely whirring behind her tired eyes. Amalia turned to face her, placing two pleading hands on her arm. "Thank you for that."

She wanted Penance to meet her eyes, but instead she stared only up at the stained glass window above them, the blue of it casting a melancholy pallor across her eyes.

Amalia continued, wishing for a turn that would allow her to tell Penance everything without having to say it. "Penance, there are things I must explain-"

Penance raised her eyes then, looking tiredly back at her. "That's an understatement." But she lifted her head and touched Amalia's beseeching fingers. "I'm sure you have your reasons. But you don't have to explain them right now."

Penance was, as ever, patient and gracious, and Amalia, as ever, felt woefully undeserving of it. "Why don't you take the carriage and allow the Bidlows to escort you home?" she suggested. "I'll take a hansom cab back after Inspector Mundi is finished with me."

"That might be safer," Penance said thoughtfully, her words unintentionally pressing into Amalia's psyche, which, after the events in the belfry, was as penetrable as melted custard. "You'll be fine alone?"

"There are dozens of people still lurking about in the garden, so technically I won't be alone." Amalia buttressed her disappointment with the adrenaline that buzzed through her as she recalled the electric eye hidden in the folds of her skirt. "But, before you go," she said, bypassing map and pulling out only the eye. "I must give you this."

Penance's lip curled as Amalia held up the eyeball of wires, its pupil staring blankly at her. "Next time may I suggest roses as a better way to ingrain yourself back into my favor?"

The attempt at humor helped them edge ever closer back to their natural balance, and though Amalia was grateful for it, she knew that Inspector Mundi would appear at any moment. "I found this on the Bishop," she hurriedly explained.

"You found it on the Bishop?" Penance repeated, reaching for it. "Maybe he is the Antichrist. That would be a twist." She turned it delicately in her fingers, studying it. "This looks like it's part of an electric droid or something." She held the eye level with her own. "Very real. Quite impressive."

"Yes, well before you decide to implant it into our dear Chad, can you see if you can-" Amalia waved her hand, unsure of what she was even asking "-see if there's anything to it."

"Like what?" Penance asked, breaking contact with the inanimate eye to glance at the real ones looking back at her.

"I don't know, you're the scientist." Amalia hesitated, chancing a look at the open door and lowering her voice. "But it's an electric fucking eyeball and there has to be something to it."

Penance's eyes widened, a sickening pooling in her stomach. "Did Maladie place this in the Bishop's pocket? Are you sure it's not a bomb?"

Amalia raised an uncertain brow, which was all Penance needed in manner of casting doubt, and she tossed the eye back to her. Amalia volleyed it back over the pew to Penance, as if they were two distracted children playing marbles during a sermon. "If it were a bomb, you'd be the appropriate person to dismantle it."

Penance cast it back to her. "Although I don't disagree, I think you're being awfully cheeky considering how close you've come to fire and brimstone today."

"I am certain it's not a bomb," Amalia said seriously, pressing it gently back into Penance's hand and closing her fingers around it. "I think it has to do with Dr. Hague and his experiments. Can you just see if you can understand anything at all about it?"

Penance nodded, mollified, if still a bit uncertain. "Eyyyee, captain." Pleased at her own pun, she let out a casual smile that restored some warmth in Amalia. "I'm also guessing you want me to take it so that there's no chance Inspector Mundi finds it?"

Amalia raised an eyebrow, but didn't respond, which was all the confirmation that Penance needed. She sighed, getting to her feet. "Now that I'm an accomplice, I'll just be going, then."

Amalia grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss against the inside of her wrist, letting her lips linger as long as she dared. "I owe you an explanation, I know. I'll see you at home."

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Inspector Mundi appeared in the rectangle of light at the door, looking like the hunchback returning to Notre Dame after a belabored absence. He tipped his hat to Penance and sauntered over to Amalia with the enthusiasm of a hungry mole rat, his whiskers twitching.

Amalia watched as Penance disappeared into the sunlight, wondering at the way her manufactured life, the one she had worked so hard to secure, was now crumbling away from her, leaving a shell of the unknown.

"Well, Mrs. True, we meet again."

"Detective Mundi, always a pleasure."

"This is the second time in less than three weeks that you're the last one in contact with Maladie after one of her performances."

"I think what you mean to say is, 'Thank you for saving everyone's arse. Again. '" She tossed a demure glance at him.

"I do agree you've created an ending that makes you appear a bedeviled hero, if spun the right way. That might work if you were a bit more the lady and less the brute."

"Are you going to remove your hat?" Amalia asked, angling her eyes toward the altar, enjoying any ability to irritate him.

Mundi clenched his jaw, then slowly removed his hat, twirling it in his hand. "It does strike me as a lark that Maladie has outrun the likes of Scotland Yard for weeks, and yet you always seem to find her."

"Perhaps if members of Scotland Yard were more of a churchgoing variety, then you'd have caught her." She motioned to her scorched sleeves. "I think the state of my dress should clear me of any lingering suspicions of conspiring with Maladie."

"You could have worked with her to orchestrate this whole thing."

"Do I appear to you the sort of woman who has that kind of time?"

He leaned against the end of the pew across the aisle from her and crossed his arms. "Maladie certainly has a fixation on you. I don't think you're being honest with me."

"I don't have to be honest with you."

He shook his head, conceding her point. "No, you don't. I have ways around that, though. Fortunately, Strohman's Asylum for the Psychologically Deranged has helpful staff, who don't overly concern themselves with matters of privacy." He waited for her reaction, but Amalia kept her jaw hard and square, forcing him to continue. "Helpful enough staff to inform me that Maladie did have a mate rooming with her for a time. By the name of Molly Ash."

Amalia kept her eyes level, but worry flittered across her forehead, tightening at her temples. "Pity this poor Molly."

"Should I pity her?" Mundi left his perch against the pew and knelt down to her, placing his palms on her knees. The touch forced Amalia backwards, her leg already tensed and ready to make him aware of how unwelcome his hands were. He was used to intimidation, she knew that, but took it on faith he would not try his usual tactics in a church. On a Sunday. With parishioners outside. With a woman sitting in front of him who had little self restraint when it came to violence.

Amalia stood, forcing him delicately out of her way, and walked down the aisle toward the altar. She turned and pointed over at the belfry. "She was there, waiting. Bonfire Annie seemed to be her only accomplice today, and she was most likely outside the church, waiting for the end of the service to let out. What I can't quite figure out is how she knew I was here."

Mundi followed her, looking up at the belfry. "She was up there and, what, you frolicked up there for a prayer and a chat? You like talking to murderers, is it? Or do you want something from her?"

Amalia looked coolly at him. "Which of those questions would you like me to not answer first?"

"How about just this one," he started, rounding toward her. "Why the effort to cover up your psychotic break? Afraid Ms. Bidlow might not want to hire a psychopath to care for her girls? Or afraid someone would discover your tie to Maladie?"

"Again, which of those hypotheses are you actually wishing me to address?"

"Eh, the first one."

"You must be well acquainted with the coverture laws of our great nation, so I don't wish to bore you with the administrative details. My husband, because he could, admitted me to Strohman's under a name that would clear him from any association with anyone officially deemed psychotically insane." She stared willfully at him. "Which I was."

"So you did meet Maladie there."

Amalia shook her head, chuckling. "No. I didn't meet Maladie there. I met a woman named Sarah."

He squinted an eye at her. "She ain't your fucking Sarah anymore. She's a murderer. I don't understand why you'd protect her now."

"I'm not protecting her. You just haven't caught her." Amalia studied him in the professorial way that made men like him uncomfortable. "I bet your superiors aren't happy about that, are they? Makes you a bit desperate."

"Look, I'm not on anyone's side, here. I just catch murderers."

"You have orders from the highest to catch Maladie. Ever wonder why that is?"

"She's murdering wealthy men." He paused. "Ain't that hard to figure out."

"Maladie is the catnip they throw at toilers like you to keep you distracted. Like a hound running after spoiled meat."

He grabbed a votive candle from its stand, stepping closer to her and holding it close enough to her jaw so that she felt its heat. "You should know," he hissed, "that I don't give a sow's teat about any Touched standing between me and that murderous fiend. I don't care if it's her fire happy entourage or Lavinia Bidlow's lap girl."

Amalia kept a steely gaze on him as she turned her head and blew out the candle. "That was not meant as a dart to your honor, Inspector. I simply meant to point out to you that perhaps there are others using Maladie. But not me."

"Like who?"

"Like Dr. Edmund Hague, one of her doctors at Strohman's."

"I know Dr. Hague. He's a fucking quack, but he ain't got the ability to command Maladie. He's lucky she hasn't killed him yet."

"Perhaps it's not luck, but by design. There are Touched girls being targeted across the city, kidnapped by men in masks. Dr. Hague had these masked men all over his house. I can give you the address as well as the current deed holder and I would advise you to go there with a warrant."

"Others in the squad are working on the masks. That ain't my beat."

This piqued Amalia's attention. "You know they're out there, then?"

"There's been reports, yeah, from girls who've gotten away. Men in masks like melted flour sacks."

Amalia felt as if he'd dropped a heavy ball on her chest. "Reports from girls?"

"Girls they brought to the station." He looked away from her. "That's not my beat, I don't know the details."

The ball expanded, red hot. Amalia's voice was low and dangerous. "Where are these girls now?"

Mundi looked at her as if he didn't have the time nor the proclivity to show any shame for his ignorance. "Well, now they weren't arrested for any crime, so I assumes they let them go. Again, not my beat."

The ball in her chest exploded, all angry shrapnel, and with that a lapsed ripple came back to her, one she had almost forgotten, and her fist shot out and smashed into Mundi's nose with a satisfying wet thunk.

"Fuck!" he yelled, his voice echoing through the church. A parishioner glanced in, bestowing them with a disapproving look.

"Those women were clearly in danger and your colleagues just let them walk into the street so that they could be captured again?" Amalia shook with fury, stepping close and pointing a finger at his bloodied nose. "Tell your men if that ever happens again and they don't immediately escort those girls to my house then I swear to your fucking god that I will smash in the faces of every bloody cop on that beat so badly that they'll want to cover their own faces in fucking masks."

"I see your ripples can act on a time delay," Mundi replied, his voice muffled as he dabbed a handkerchief to his nose. "It's only because you throw a fucking impressive punch that I'm not going to make your life miserable by taking you in." He winced, scrunching his nose as if to test whether it was broken. "Better to have you out anyhow, now that I know Maladie's a bit sweet on you."

"What can you tell me about these masked men?"

"You asking the questions now, then?"

"I can ask them with my fist, if you'd like." She had judged him correctly, could see that he liked communicating with violence, a man searching for physical pain to offset his struggles.

"They're for hire, basically. You say they were at Dr. Hague's, but there have been sightings outside of just the Touched kidnappings. Petty crime, burglary. Like they're invisible or something. Generic."

"Lovely. A faceless group of petty criminals out for hire." Amalia clasped her hands in front of her, already knowing her next move, impatience sparking in her belly like kindling on a lit fire. "Are we done here?"

He tossed her a dirty look. "For now. Unless you want to take communion together."

Amalia caught a hansom cab, ignoring the curious double-take from the driver as he registered the state of her dress. She would need to stop at the orphanage and grab a coat, at the least, before she continued to her next destination.

Entering the gate, she heard squeals of glee coming from Penance's workshop, and against her better judgment, she stepped just inside the door and indulged herself in watching the show. The girls were stationed in the middle of the workshop, among Penance's ever-present shimmering chrome and metal clutter, the place itself a bit of a magician's closet. Penance had complemented her dress with a purple cape over her shoulders, and she enthusiastically yanked a stuffed rabbit out of a hat, holding it up at the delight of the girls. Rather than move seamlessly into another alluring trick, though, she spent several minutes belaboring the visual plane and fragments of light that both attracted and distracted the optic nerve.

The girls fidgeted only slightly, Penance's thrall covering them like a delicate blanket, her enthusiasm keeping them excitedly attentive. Amalia put a hand to her mouth, covering a smile, and for the few minutes she stood there, she felt like a woman with a turn that allowed her to walk in the clouds, able to ignore thoughts of fists, knives, and violence that roiled like thunder inside her mind.

And then her eyes fell on Myrtle, who was beaming, and Amalia fell away from her cloud and into a ripple that came on her fast, dumping her into a dark-lit pub. Lucy stood next to her staring down at a group of men whose grime had become a part of their bodies, one of them grinning up at them with sharp stubs where his teeth used to be. Amalia came out of the ripple just as quickly as she went in, and was fortunate that the wall of the workshop was already holding her steady. She breathed out fast, her next steps all but confirmed for her.

Penance caught Amalia at the door and her smile was automatic and brilliant, her hand coming up in a small wave. It was enough of a connection to numb the worry braiding itself up Amalia's spine. She still recalled how Penance had looked at her in the churchyard, as if absorbing some seismic shift under her feet and working to find her balance. What Amalia needed to do next was decidedly more pleasant than puncturing Penance's softness with the blunted edge of her past.

Ducking out of the workshop, Amalia strode purposefully toward the kitchen door, her focus squarely back on the task at hand. She had an idea of where to find her next lead on the masks and she didn't want to waste time. It was an ever-ticking reminder that she was no closer to uncovering what her snippets of memory meant.

The kitchen was already warmed from the oven and Lucy was directing Hortense, the part-time cook who could heat water with a wave of her hand, on how to properly knead dough. "Sometimes I like to imagine I'm giving it a punch in the solar plexus," she said, giving it a jolt with her fist. "Then the kidney." She caught sight of Amalia in the doorway and prideful glee crinkled the corners of her eyes. "Am I to call you Satan now, after your fall from heaven, dear angel?" She laughed.

Amalia ignored her. "Hortense, can you handle the girls for supper?"

Lucy's eyes twinkled, her hands already moving to untie the apron at her waist. "I know that look. What have you got planned?"

"I just thought the two of us could grab dinner at the pub. Catch up a bit."

Lucy wiped her hands on a towel, tossing it onto the table and giving Hortense a smile. "Knead it however you want, lass, this old sow's being let out of the barn!"

Harriet walked in then and Lucy eyed her. "I thought you were at the magic show."

Harriet smiled. "I snuck out to meet Thomas," she said, then put a hand over her mouth, as if it were a confession she hadn't intended to make. She tossed a curious glance at Amalia and Lucy. "Wow, Mrs. True, you did ruin that dress, didn't you? What are you two doing?"

Amalia answered for herself: "I'm more than a little bit unsettled by the day's events and feel that the only way I'm going to be able to explain my past to Penance is if I go to a pub and beat the shit out of a few guys first. All in the name of solving a mystery, and although it is one I intend to solve, tonight's just an excuse, really, because I don't know how Penance will react to everything..." she trailed off, her eyes darting at Lucy and a small realization dawning at the back of her mind.

She swung open the pantry door that she was leaning on and smiled as Desiree peered out at her, a jar of tomatoes in each hand. She held them up apologetically. "Was just helping out Hortense," she said. "Sorry. Sometimes doors help. Not this time, though."

Amalia put a reassuring hand on Desiree's shoulder. "No need to worry. That is, unless you share anything I just said with Penance. Then you should worry."

Lucy circled her arms wide. "Let me put on something that gives a bit more room for motion, don't want to split any seams."

Amalia winked at her and then grabbed her own coat from upstairs before stepping outside to wait on the front stoop. The lane was filled with the revelry of a late Sunday afternoon, all leisure and slow-paced passerby. Amalia nodded at a solitary man across the street, who she knew to be one of Lavinia's new security details. And was grateful that no matter how she riled Lavinia, she always came through for the orphanage; this was one of the reasons Amalia's inability to wholeheartedly trust her was so disconcerting. After a few minutes, Lucy joined her.

"You ready, m'lady?" Amalia asked, stepping off of the stoop and putting two fingers into her mouth, her whistle commanding a sitting cab to attention.

Penance had long finished cleaning up from her magic show, stowing away her bag of tricks until the next time she felt like cheering up the girls. Her workshop was now bereft of voices and squeals, but it certainly was not quiet, with clocks ticking, machines buzzing, and the furnace smoking. Penance pressed a mechanical drill into the box of her recorder, hoping this time the needle would stay in place, rather than wander needlessly across the wax cylinder sitting inside it. She wiped sweat from her brow with her sleeve, having changed from her church dress into something more suited to the sparks of science.

The door to the workshop opened and Mary peeped inside, her red hair draped over her shoulders. Penance leaned back and waved her inside with a smile, holding the whirring drill in her hand. She pushed her safety goggles off her head.

"I thought I'd let you know dinner was ready," Mary said. She pointed at the lights above Penance's head that had gone unnoticed. "Hortense signaled for you, but I wanted to make sure you saw it."

Penance hadn't, and at that moment her stomach grumbled, as if it had heard Mary's invitation. "I got a bit caught up," she said, motioning to the recorder. "But I'm almost there. I think that whenever you're ready, I'll be able to capture your song."

"I heard you encountered Maladie today, at the church." Mary's voice was thin, as if speaking her name too loudly would summon her. Penance could see the fear plastered across her face, making her pale skin almost translucent, and she knew what that kind of fear felt like.

"Yes, but the good news is no one got…" Penance broke off recalling the flames, "- died. No one died." She pressed her lips together in a determined smile. "And I'm certain that between the inspectors and Mrs. True, that Maladie won't be harming anyone, including you."

"You're awfully confident in Mrs. True's abilities."

Penance glanced aside, thoughtful. "More like I'm confident about all of our abilities together, if that makes sense? Mrs. True keeps us going because of her general recklessness and inability to process fear, but it's all of us that keeps this place the sanctuary that it is. And you're just one more part of us."

Mary smiled then, and it was the first time that Penance had seen her give one unencumbered by fear or trepidation. "You all do certainly inspire hope." She glanced at Penance's machine. "If you've worked this hard to be able to capture the song, then I think I can work just as hard to summon it. I'll be ready." She smiled again and made to leave, but Penance caught up with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, their footsteps on the yard covering up the rumble in Penance's stomach.

"You think we have time for a beer first?" Lucy asked as they walked into the pub, which smelled of fried fish or cigars, depending on the time of day. The patrons usually smelled of fried fish, cigars, and whiskey any time of day.

Amalia nodded, offended by the question. "I'm not a monster." They sat themselves along the bar, which ran the length of the pub, the rest of the floor set up with too small tables meant to hold overly large men. The bartender noticed them, and he didn't attempt to cover his disappointment.

"Been a blessed long time since I've seen you both." He looked nervously at them, his dark hair shiny with grease, either from pomade or dirt, Amalia couldn't tell. "I don't want any trouble. We don't got any Touched girls working for us tonight. That we know of, anyway, and you can't hold me responsible for the sneaky ones."

"We're not here for trouble," Amalia assured him. "We're here for information."

"And trouble," Lucy coughed.

"Are you familiar with a racket of masked men working together to pull odd jobs around the city?" Amalia asked. "They're organized."

"Nope, never heard of anything like that," he answered, too quickly, and averted his gaze to pull out a bottle of whiskey. Then looked back at Amalia, suspiciously, as if clarifying something. "Have you had a ripple or anything that shows you I do know something about that?"

"I don't need a ripple to let me know that you're currently lying to me." Amalia took the whiskey he slid her and pointed a thumb at Lucy. "She wants an ale."

"Two pints," Lucy confirmed, tapping her palm on the bar counter in emphasis.

Amalia continued. "And you don't need me to tell you that I don't like it when people lie to me. It wastes time."

He exhaled. "Okay, yeah, there's a group about, ready for hire." He raised his hands. "But that's all I'm willing to give. You sit here long enough and nurse your drink, I'm sure you'll get a ripple or something to tell you the rest." He raised a questioning set of eyebrows at her and lowered his voice. "Okay? Drinks on the house for both of you however long it takes. But leave me out of it."

"Deal." Amalia almost smiled at the palpable relief in his eyes and stared back at him, fully aware of what was coming next, and gamely waiting for it.

"I got nothing to say, Mrs. True!" he called out loudly, spittle collecting at the corner of his lips, and she waited patiently for him to finish. "No dirty business going on here tonight so you lasses have your drinks and get the hell out!"

Amalia felt eyes on her back as she raised her glass at the bartender and he made his way to the other end of the counter, intentionally avoiding her gaze.

Lucy glanced at him, then at Amalia. "Well, he was as helpful as a one-legged ox."

Amalia brushed him off with an unworried wave of her hand. "No matter, I already had a ripple and I know exactly who we need to speak to." She angled her head at a group of men sitting at a corner table, one of whom was a spitting image of the unpleasant man from her ripple. "But now we get to enjoy a few drinks on the house, don't we?" She raised her whiskey. "Cheers to a ladies night out." They drank, their eyes connecting over their glasses.

Amalia had told Lucy of the masks on the carriage ride over, but she did not tell her about the events at the church, and now Lucy turned a keen eye on her.

"You saved a Bishop, did you?" She took a sip of her beer. "That's got to put you in good graces with the Lord."

"I doubt it, I'm already too in debt," Amalia replied, almost finished with her first drink, and she reached over the bar and plucked up the bottle of whiskey. "Did Penance seem all right to you?"

Lucy gave her a knowing glance, seeing right through her. "Seems like you should ask her that yourself." She slapped a hand on the bar. "Oh, but wait, you're here with me about to pick a fight in a pub instead of at home seeing to the one person who loves you most." She nodded, her head in her glass. "You're right, one Bishop ain't nearly enough to make up for you. Aim for a priest next time."

"I had a rippling. I was supposed to come here."

"Yeah, and I broke a plate earlier. So what?" Lucy sniffed the air between them. "You still smell like a week-old hearth." Amalia opened her coat slightly, allowing Lucy a look at her charred skirt. "You didn't change?"

"And what, proceed to spoil another perfectly good dress?" Amalia hid her grin as she took another long pull of her whiskey and refilled her glass. "How are you, Lucy?" she asked, looking at her. "Really, how are you? We've got time."

Lucy cupped her beer glass with both hands, staring down at it as if the answer lay inside it. "Well, yesterday I was walking Lila to the store to pick up flour and I saw a mother, a young thing, carrying a crying baby. The poor thing was about a year old, just screaming his bloody head off. The lass was so flustered, she had the baby in one hand and a sack in the other. Totally and completely in over her head. And I just stood there and watched her and sobbed. Gave even the baby a run for its money." She sighed, taking a sip of her drink. "That gave poor Lila a fright, let me tell you."

"Which part of you did the crying?" Amalia asked, with the helplessness of someone who wanted to help, but knew her powers of assuaging grief were incredibly limited.

Lucy thought for a moment, sliding her tongue around her cheek. "The sad part, this time," she answered. "Not the angry part, not the guilty part. This one was all sadness, like an ocean, and I'm just in the middle of it, always wading, treading water, never really able to get out of it because she will always be gone."

Her voice hiccuped, and Amalia was ready to nod and let her shove her grief back under her heart, but Lucy continued bravely. "My turn happened and then it happened and then she died. I won't hear her cry, I'll never see her grow, the only thing I have of her is in my mind's eye. And that is overwhelmingly sad." She wiped a finger across the bottoms of her eyes and cleared her throat. "So that's how I'm doing today."

Amalia nodded, and even though there was no power in it, no ability to fix anything, and she had said it a hundred times before, she put a hand on Lucy's arm and said, "I'm so sorry."

Lucy patted her hand and exhaled slowly, a fingernail tapping her glass. "We are going to beat some lads up tonight, right?"

"Of course."

"Good." She gave a firm nod of her head, her grief like a fog around her that lightened intermittently, but was always there.

After dinner, Penance had helped Hortense and Harriet with the dishes, their voices wafting just far enough over her head for her to ignore them. Amalia and Lucy hadn't been there for dinner, apparently off on some jaunt to a pub, which Penance knew was like sending two bobcats into a cock fight, meaning nothing good would come of it and a mess would most likely be made. After helping the girls to bed, their chattering questions pulling her to the present for a bit, she had escaped back to her workshop and devoted her attention to the eye, if only to prevent anger welling inside of her at Amalia's ever-lengthening absence.

Fortunately, she possessed a driving principle that had helped scientists and inventors and miscellaneous nerds for hundreds of years: her progress was fueled even more by rejection, and as such she was successfully able to isolate several wires from the eye and examine the current running through them. In one, she found something she had not seen before, a chemical structure that she couldn't locate in any of the volumes lining her shelves. After exhausting her resources and hitting a dead end that kept leading her thoughts right to Amalia, she grabbed the eye and carried it with her upstairs. Perhaps staring at it would help. Or perhaps she didn't want to be in her room alone.

She lay the eye on her dresser and went immediately to her washstand, attempting to avoid catching her own face in the mirror. In the reflection, she saw a slash of red on her pillow and her heart bumped into tonsils as fear rearranged her insides. She turned toward it. Abandoning her towel and the eye, she crept towards her bed, exhaling loudly in relief, swallowing her heart back to its rightful place as she saw a bouquet of roses, at least a dozen or more, bunched together with twine to cover their thorns. They were beautiful, though some were a bit wilted, and one was even partially burned, but Penance appreciated the gesture for what it was and missed Amalia all the more as she lay down and pressed her nose into them, ignoring the eye that stared dispassionately back at her.

Amalia downed her latest whiskey and walked over to the round table near the far corner of the pub, where a plate of fried fish piled nearly nose-high sat in the center of it. "Gentleman," she said, employing the term loosely, scanning the four of them and honing in on the one with the stubbed teeth, as if she'd already made his acquaintance.

He looked up at her and mumbled. "Ain't no girls been around here in a while thanks to the likes of you."

"Lucky for them," Amalia replied cheekily, three drinks in and ready for a scrap.

Another one, a young, new one, looked up at her with the dangerous grin of a man trying to prove himself. "Ah, so you're the one that keeps snatching up all the good Touched girls and putting them in the nunnery?" He snaked a hand toward her skirts. "You got something to substitute it with then?"

The other men turned their heads, none of them wanting to be the one to warn the lad, and Amalia gave him approximately two seconds to remove his hand from her leg and when he didn't, she shot out a fist, but Lucy grabbed her wrist. Amalia shared a look with her and took a step back, as if ceding the last of the jam and bread to her.

Lucy looked down at the man, pulling off the glove of her right hand and giving him a warm smile cooled by the ice in her eyes. "Lucy Best," she said, extending her bare hand toward him. The man took it and his bones crunched beneath her hand, making even Amalia wince. He screamed, falling out of his chair and to his knees, pressing his hand against his thigh, glaring up at Lucy.

"I didn't want to start like this," Amalia offered apologetically, speaking over the man on the ground now moaning lowly at her feet. "But I'm very sensitive about my skirts today." The man's whimpers continued to float up to her and she looked down at him, pressing her lips together in agitation. "Go get yourself some ice, then." He scrambled away and she returned her attention back to the table. "I'm interested in the guys in the masks. The wrinkly, pale ones that look like ghosts with a hangover after the plague. Who do they work for?"

The guys looked at each other and snickered as if she were a schoolmarm, an awfully unexpected gesture from them, and it confused her. "It would benefit you all to let me in on the joke."

"They don't work," one said, laughing.

Amalia looked at him, then at Lucy, who shrugged. "You all are far too stupid for riddles," she said, showing her disenchantment with a crack of her knuckles.

The men quieted and glanced only at one another, as if they could somehow increase their strength by averting their eyes from Amalia and Lucy.

Amalia glanced back at Lucy with the look of a debutante angling for a dance, and then cracked her neck, her hand shooting out and catching the man closest to her by the collar of his shirt. She launched him from his seat and dragged him around the bar and toward the kitchen, calling to the other two men over her shoulder, "Back in a jiffy!"

Inside the kitchen, she tossed the guy through the narrow space between the chopping table and the stovetop, sending him skidding along grime and grease and into a large burlap sack of potatoes, which rolled about him on the floor.

"What the fuck were you all snickering at out there?" she asked, plucking up a cast iron pan and looming over him, a foot on each side of his chest. When he didn't respond, she twirled the pan by its handle with the enthusiasm of a cook contemplating her next meal.

"Do I not look like the type to enjoy a hearty joke?" She bent forward and raised the pan, ready for its weight to land right against his temple.

"Okay!" he yelled as she brought it down, letting it hit the floor by the side of his head with a thundering crack. "They ain't real!"

"Who?" Amalia asked.

He looked at her, confused, like he'd been tossed into another scene and not fed his lines. "The fucking masks, the ones you're so bloody curious about! They ain't really people."

Amalia thought about the eye left in the Bishop's pocket and her blood ran cold despite the stifling heat coming from the cooktop. "Then what are they?"

"Some sort of fucking electric sorcery, the hell if I know!"

"Who created them?"

"I don't know."

"Who uses them?"

"Anybody who pays."

"Who sells them?"

The man went silent, and followed Amalia's hand to where she picked up the pan. "I really don't know!" he yelled covering his head, and she believed him. He also wasn't putting up a fight, which made bashing his head in a bit less fun.

The kitchen door swung open and another of the men crashed through to the floor, Lucy following and bearing down on him with a hard slap across the face. "That will teach you how to talk to a lady!" She glanced at Amalia. "You ready for another one?"

"Hop up," Amalia said to the man at her feet, kicking his leg and turning her attention to the newcomer, the man with the stubbed teeth. "Allow me speak to your manager."

The man with the teeth took a clumsy swing at Lucy with the aim of someone who had been drinking most of the day. Lucy stepped aside and picked up a glass beside the basin with her gloved hand and smashed it against the man's head with a sigh.

He startled, dazed, but then recovered and came at her again, this time meeting his fate with a larger plate, which sent him spiraling to the ground.

"Thank you, chef," Amalia said to Lucy, kneeling next to the man and pulling him up to his knees by his hair. "Hand me that potato peeler, will you?" she asked, pointing to the end of the table.

Lucy retrieved it for her, handing her the palm-sized metal plane with the curved blade at the end. Amalia grabbed its handle and held it up to the man's hairline. "Do you think I could scalp him with this?"

Lucy bent toward the man's face, and when he attempted to shake himself free she moved her ungloved hand to his, which immediately stilled his squirming. "Blade seems a bit dull, but this lad has the skin of an old potato, so it may work."

Amalia, satisfied, pressed the peeler against his forehead. "I have three questions for you and if you get them all right, then you get to keep all your hair. And the skin that holds it on."

Lucy, who was still holding a threatening hand to the man's arm, glanced up at the sizzle coming from the stovetop, noticing a pan of fish frying in hot oil. "That will burn," she said. "Give me a second." She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around the handle of the pan, moving it off the stove top, satisfied. "That'll taste good later." Flapping the towel over her shoulder as if she were in her own kitchen, she returned to the man, giving Amalia a nod that she was ready.

"We'll start easy," Amalia began. "How long have these masks been on the streets?"

The man stopped struggling. "About three months."

"Who makes them?"

The man stuttered. "A-ask me another question."

"Because you don't know the answer or because you don't want to tell me?" Amalia pressed the peeler to his head.

"Because I don't know! I just know they come from the docks."

"Who sells them?"

The man went silent again and Amalia pressed the blade into the skin, a thin line of blood emerging.

Lucy eyed her work, interrupting. "I could just crush his fingers for you," she said. "Less mess."

Amalia shrugged, pulling the peeler the slightest bit, until the man yelped out, "Who do you fucking think sells them!"

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking you."

"The Beggar King! Me fucking boss, that's who."

Amalia rolled her eyes, pulling the peeler away from his head and patting his cheek. "Why didn't you say so? The Beggar King and I are old friends. I can have a chat with him later."

The man put a hand to his head, as if certain the peeler was still settled against his skin. "You're a fucking insane one," he spat.

"Yes, people seem to keep discovering that," Amalia replied warmly, pushing the man toward the door that led to the main room.

They were now alone, the kitchen increasingly feeling like a furnace, and Lucy glanced at her, sweaty and disappointed. "That ain't it, is it?"

Amalia shrugged, and moved to reply, but before she could assuage Lucy's discontent with the offer of another drink, the kitchen door banged open and two of the Beggar King's men loomed at them. They weren't a part of the original group at the table, but they did seem more inclined for a scrap, and Amalia guessed the young one had made a run for it and called for backup. The first guy, with hair as red as a rooster, raised his arm in the air, his fingers spread wide like he were waving at them from the deck of a departing ocean liner. A chef's knife on the table flew through the air and toward his hand as if it were a magnet. Lucy wasted little time rushing for his other hand, taking it in her own and crunching into it along with the rest of his arm. The man went to his knees, taking a swipe at Lucy's gut with his knifed hand, and she kicked out at it, but the knife stayed wedged in his fingers. He swiped again and caught her forearm, which only angered her, and she fired another kick at the knife, this one giving her time to grab his wrist with an ungloved hand. The man yelped and the knife fell, forgotten, from his fingers.

Another knife flew immediately toward him, and Lucy plucked up a cutting board, striking it down in mid-air, pegging him with an intrigued look. "Bet you're a lark in the kitchen," she said, then landed a hard smack across his face.

The second man had wasted no time in going after Amalia, and she had turned, fists ready, waiting for him. As he strode toward her, she noted the arm muscles bulging from his shirt, but while attempting to figure out how to keep his fists away from her face, his arms simply disappeared, fading into thin air. Amalia did a double take, realizing she could still see his face and the length of his body, but before she could fully wrap her mind around his sudden armlessness, an invisible fist smashed squarely into her jaw, sending her twirling in almost a full circle. She stood, dazed, wondering whether it would be prudent to go ahead and fall to the floor and not entirely sure if she had any actual control in the matter, when another invisible fist caught the other side of her face. Facing him again, although not by her own doing, she tried to land a response punch, but was blocked by thin air that felt alarmingly like an unyielding arm. Then another fist smashed into her ribs, and she mercifully succumbed to the floor. But the floor was a good place to be, for it allowed her to focus on the parts of him that she could see, and she kicked her foot out, catching him in the knee, grateful to see Lucy heading her way.

"Oh, this one looks like fun," Lucy said, stepping in and giving Amalia time to catch her breath, which was not an easy thing to do, as she felt as if her ribs had collapsed in on her lungs. An invisible arm, now toiling with Lucy, unintentionally clapped into the side of Amalia's head, which simply pissed her off, and she got to her feet, the two of them tag teaming a few punches and proving that four arms were better than two invisible ones.

Amalia had both her breath and her energy back, and shared a smile with Lucy, grateful for their mutual affinity for violence. But before Lucy could return the camaraderie, the door rammed open again and the Beggar King's very large, very odorous bodyguard ducked under the door, raising himself to his full height once inside the kitchen. Amalia's face fell, her adrenaline freezing in her veins even as sweat dripped down her temple.

"Oh," she said, dismayed. "You look hungry."

He was at her in two strides and she looked resignedly at him, wondering whether it was worth attempting to land a punch or whether it would just put her knuckles through needless suffering. She decided against it and turned and ran instead, pulling Lucy with her toward the alley door, but Odiam caught her quickly, snatching her backwards by the scruff of her neck like a lion chastising a cub. He rammed her onto the chopping table, too close to the meat grinder at its edge, and her adrenaline spiked helpfully back through her.

Lucy had abandoned her gloves completely, but her turn wasn't doing much good against Odiam's leather-covered hands and arms. But it was at least a distraction, and gave Amalia time to drop from the table to the floor, looking for any kitchen implement along its lower shelf that she could use. A vat of oil sat at the far end of the table, sending a relieved shiver through her.

"Lucy, put on your skates," she called, tipping the vat over, its sheen coating the floor. Lucy slid sideways, her shoes shimmying over the floor, but she managed to keep her balance. Odiam wasn't as lucky, and his large legs slid in opposite directions, sending him to his knees. Amalia grabbed a stray paring knife and stabbed it into the meat at the back of his shin, and he snarled with the force of a circus bear, rearing back his head.

Lucy went at him, but he railed out at her with an angry fist, connecting with her chest and sending her skidding backwards along the slick floor.

He tried to brace himself to get back to his feet, but Amalia jumped onto the chopping table and launched herself onto his shoulders, pressing her thumbs into his eyes. Again, she found herself for the second time that day at a precarious height, and her stomach dropped as he rammed her against the wall. She held on, her head smarting from the blow, and then reached up to grab a pipe that ran across the length of the ceiling. She unwrapped her legs from his shoulders and kicked at his chin, sending his face flying upwards, and his sliding legs apart. Amalia dropped to the ground, her own shoes sliding along the oil, but she had a leg up on Odiam, who had a lot more weight and muscle to try and keep upright.

She made eye contact with Lucy, a tacit signal that it was indeed time to run again, but as she slid toward the door Amalia felt two hands that may as well have been metal vices clamp around the back of her neck.

Odiam lifted her, slipping his way clumsily but determinedly to the copper water heater, encased in its brick oven enclave in the corner. He shoved the top open with his elbow.

Amalia didn't have to see the water bubbling inside, for she felt its heat on her legs as she tried in vain to pry his hands from her neck. Thinking it perhaps better if she allowed his fingers to press the breath from her windpipe so that she could at least meet the boiling water blissfully unconscious, she relaxed in his arms, making him work harder to lift her. He raised her over the heater and began to lower her, like a mad chef struggling with a conscious lobster, and Amalia raised her legs as high as she could, then propelled them out toward the wall behind the copper urn and caught enough purchase to run up the wall sideways. Gaining enough momentum to break his grip on her neck, she held onto his hands and followed her own trajectory over his head, flipping and taking him down against the chopping table, where his head cracked grotesquely against it. He slid to the floor, his leather pants shiny with oil.

Out of breath, her feet slipping, Amalia turned to face Lucy and brushed a sweaty lop of hair from her face. She eyed the plate of fried fish still in the pan next to the stove. "Shall we take that to go?"

Penance stood at the threshold of Amalia's darkened room. She watched, unnoticed, as Amalia slid open the window near the bed and stretched a leg over the sill. Penance turned the knob on the lantern that sat atop the dresser, and Amalia put a hand to her eyes, wincing as she lowered both feet to the floor.

"Are you sneaking into your own orphanage?" Penance asked, disbelievingly.

Amalia thought about answering the question, but found it pointless, considering that was exactly what she was doing. "I didn't want to worry Harriet, I saw the light on downstairs." Amalia volleyed a hopeful question at her. "Were you waiting for me?"

"I saw Lucy scaling the wall outside my window just now," Penance replied, tossing a hand towards her own room. "Did you both enjoy your night at the pub?" She crossed her arms over her chest.

Amalia chanced a glance at her as she tentatively stepped a few feet into the room. "If I say yes, will that make you angrier?" She stood for a moment and then wiped a hand across her forehead, realizing she hadn't seen her own face since getting ready for church that morning, and she doubted it was in a fine state. Judging it safe enough, she stepped closer to Penance and touched her arm. "I'm sorry. I went because I had a ripple-"

"I know exactly why you went," Penance interrupted. "Hortense told me while Desiree and I were brushing our teeth before bed. Despite all your secrets, you are strikingly transparent at times."

Amalia sucked her teeth, and Penance raised a finger at her. "You will not say anything untoward to Hortense or Desiree. It's not their fault."

"I won't," Amalia scoffed, almost offended at the insinuation, and crossing that off her mental to-do list for the next day. She could let this one go.

Penance covered her own nose with her hand as she finally studied the bedraggled figure in front of her: Amalia's dress was not only burnt in places, her legs and shoulders dirty where they appeared underneath it, but now it was coated with a damp sheen, as if the witch from Hansel and Gretel had attempted to cook her and slightly succeeded. "Okay," Penance gagged, "I'd love for you to explain what happened today at the church, but you smell like a charred fishing vessel that's been excavated from the harbor and left out in in the sun to decompose."

"That's awfully specific," Amalia quipped. "Just wait, all the ladies will be wearing this scent soon." She was indeed quite ripe, and she imagined her face was in no better condition. "I'll get a quick bath," she said, taking Penance's hand. "And then we will talk."

She moved slowly to her dresser, the day catching up with her and manifesting itself in sore limbs and joints, but Penance moved ahead of her, grabbing a nightgown out of a drawer and a towel from the washstand. Amalia watched as Penance tossed them to her, already heading for the washroom in the hall.

"You can start talking in the bath," she called over her shoulder.

By the time Amalia caught up with her, Penance was already turning the taps on the bathtub, a job for which she was more than suited, considering she was the only one in the house able to get just the right balance between the hot and cold pipes. Penance did think to herself that perhaps Amalia deserved it if she erred on the hotter side of the taps, but she quickly overcame her own pettiness, testing the water with her fingertips.

"I'd prefer it not too hot," Amalia stated, as if reading her mind. She winced. "Nowhere near boiling, if you please." She undid her buttons and loosened her petticoat, letting another ruined skirt fall to the floor with a sigh.

"How much money does Lavinia spend on keeping you clothed?" Penance asked, shaking her wet fingers dry and letting her eyes run over Amalia's body, noting all of the freshly marred places she wouldn't be able to touch for awhile.

"Ask Lucy," Amalia replied, slipping off her corset and chemise, her body exuding the same fortitude whether nude or clothed, and Penance bounced her eyes back to the water, already having forgotten her initial question. She did allow herself to steal a glance at Amalia's leg. "That burn is going to sting."

"You don't have to sound so pleased about it," Amalia mumbled as she stepped into the tub, hissing as she lowered herself into the water. "Oh fuck," she hissed again, squinting her eyes shut and allowing herself to keep slipping until her head disappeared underneath the surface, her submersion at least keeping her mind off the burn for a few seconds. She surfaced and found Penance sprinkling translucent flakes over the water.

"What's that?"

"Saponin. Makes the water foam and bubble, which will, you know, cover you up a bit." Penance sprinkled another handful, a few landing like snow in Amalia's hair. "I want to reserve the right to be angry and I don't want to be distracted." She sat on the commode, watching as the bubbles began to rise, and expectantly clasped her hands in her lap. Then she swallowed.

Amalia's confidence had worn off, too, as if washed away by the water, all quips and jokes diluted into nothing. The bubbles quivered, Amalia shivering despite the temperature of the bath, and Penance felt a pang of sympathy, knowing that it would be up to her to start them off. "You know Maladie," she said softly. In some sense, it helped her to say the words, gave her some power over them.

Amalia inhaled, wanting to say it all in one breath, her eyes soft but determined. "She was my roommate at Strohman's Facility for the Psychologically Deranged. I knew her as Sarah and we were placed together for the time that I was there." Penance met her eye, but knew not to interrupt. Amalia would share what she wished, and that was fine, for Penance only needed to know that Amalia trusted her enough to try.

"My husband committed me after my turn," Amalia continued, pleased that so far she had managed to keep her voice level, as if reading a report about a potential new charge for the orphanage. "Neither he nor I was entirely sure what to do with me. I had thoughts I'd never had before, things that I knew were true, that were causing me to act strangely. On top of that, the day of my turn, that morning in fact, I had attempted to end my life. A girl I loved died by suicide. Her family found out about us. You can imagine the rest." She stopped, exhaling slowly, her fingers brushing aimlessly through the water, and her voice took on that sardonic, self-loathing lilt that Penance knew all too well. "He clearly didn't need to search for reasons to admit me. Other Touched showed up after a time, once their turns were known. But Sarah was there with me from the beginning."

Amalia stopped talking, but Penance just sat quietly, looking over at her with not a word, nor a frown, nor a smile. She just sat. "What are you doing?" Amalia asked, feeling more exposed than she'd like, and not just because she was nude. She swallowed, wondering if her darkness, all her shadows, were too much.

"I'm just accepting you as you are," Penance assured her, letting all of it settle inside, rewiring her understanding of Amalia if not changing her love for her. "Sometimes it takes a minute." She was about to say more, if only to let Amalia know she didn't need her to share any more than she wanted, but Amalia continued, leaning her head against the back of the tub.

"I told her everything I had told my husband, every thought that had come to me." Amalia's eyes closed. "It felt so good to be believed, especially since I thought myself crazy. I was very lost." She swallowed. "I'm afraid I'm even more lost now."

"Your snippets?" Penance asked. "Are they like lost memories?"

"More of a knowing," Amalia replied, frustrated with her own inability to answer the question. "I haven't lost everything, it's not like I have amnesia or something from a penny novel. I just don't know the thing that I'm supposed to know. The thing that I knew when I went into- when I went there. The thing I shared with her. And I'm afraid it's something big and there are all these pieces that seem like they fit, but I'm missing the goddamn puzzle board."

Penance was struck by the fear in Amalia's eyes. She had seen anger, determination, but it had been a long time since she'd seen unadulterated fear. It did not inspire confidence, but Penance knew sometimes the only thing to do with fear was to stand with it.

"There's something about her turn," Amalia said, lost in her own haze of memory. "We were both acclimating to our turns, my ripples were firing nearly uncontrollably, and she couldn't control hers. It was frightening, to say the least, the nurses and doctors thought her possessed." She shook her head, as if turning herself from a path she didn't wish to go down. "She would look at me, though, with her glow, and it would sate me to nothingness. All of my thoughts, the things that were confusing me, just disappeared."

Her voice wavered, thick with a build up of emotion. "I don't know what to do, Penance, but I know that I am supposed to know what to do." Her voice broke. "That there is so much riding on me knowing what I'm supposed to do." Her voice was tight and she frustratedly wiped the tears from her eyes. "And I'm so tired."

Penance spoke slowly, hearing her voice as if it wasn't hers. "And you think Maladie knows. This thing that you can't remember."

"I can just almost grasp it when I'm on the floor of the girls' room," Amalia whispered. "And it fades. Insane, I know." She closed her eyes, if only to keep from seeing the uncertainty in Penance's eyes. She had seen too much uncertainty, too much bewilderment, too many people thinking her insane.

"You think this has something to do with Maladie's turn?" To keep the fear bottled neatly inside, Penance focused her thoughts on what she knew about Maladie's eye glow: it dazed people, perhaps made them forget their surroundings for a few seconds. And what she didn't know: if the glow allowed Maladie to siphon thoughts for her own purposes, or whether, perhaps more likely, something else happened in the asylum that caused Amalia's memory hole. "Did you ever go under any electric shock therapy?" she asked, meaning for her question to be a mere scientific inquiry, but the horror of it only came after the words were in the air between them.

Amalia didn't respond, and instead turned her head toward the wall, morphing her fear into agitation with the talent of an alchemist. "Add to the things I don't know, how to get an insane murderer, one I created, to help me." She glanced pitifully back at Penance, a decision being made behind her eyes. "Penance, you are so bright and wonderful, and I am but a shadow over you."

As if proving her point, she rose from the water, droplets trailing from her as if she were shedding uncried tears, her body casting a shadowed silhouette across the floor. Stepping out of the bath, Amalia reached for her towel, but Penance was there, folding her arms around her in a sheltering embrace.

"I'm so sorry," Penance said, kissing Amalia's forehead and tracing her fingers from her temples down to cup her jaw, waiting until their eyes met and settled into one another. Penance ignored the wetness that seeped into her clothes, physically sealing Amalia into her. "I'm so, so sorry." She placed another kiss on her lips, leaning only her head back, the rest of her pressed against Amalia. "I'm also sorry your understanding of light and shadow is so flawed." She kissed her again. "A shadow can't exist without light." Her hands still around Amalia's face, she smiled. "Light has to be absorbed by an opaque object in order for the shadow to form at all." She placed a hand on Amalia's heart. "So you, my love, are a product of light no matter how much you think you're aren't."

Amalia felt the urge to cry, and so her tears fell, but she also felt an immediate need to smile, so she did that as well, her emotions seeping from her like the water draining from the bath. Penance swayed with her for a bit, rubbing her hands along her back, getting her to a point where the ball in her throat eased, the pain in her chest lessened.

"We're going to figure it out," Penance whispered, wondering how she could sound so certain about something so distressingly abstruse. "This explains why you're so quick to rush into danger all the time." She paused. "Well, it doesn't explain the why behind the why, but it's a start."

"It's a start," Amalia echoed.

Penance felt Amalia's hands clutch to her, struck by life's irony. She had found the love of her life in Amalia: a theorem in search of a proof.

As Penance went to slip out of her wet clothes and into her own nightgown, Amalia padded back to her room, and reached into her ruined skirt pocket, pulling out the map she'd kept hidden. Half of the page was tarnished by smoke and ash, but even what she could see made very little sense, lines and hash marks and square blocks, but no street names or anything to remotely signal that it was indeed a map. Amalia sighed, turning the map over and she caught messy scrawl:

-This map is bollocks. Meet me at the Norton harbor entrance. Tomorrow. Midnight. Kisses, B.A.

Either Bonfire Annie was simply trying to make up for Maladie's ineptitude at cartography, or else she was up to something else, perhaps tired of working with a ship steering increasingly off course. At the sound of the knock on her door, Amalia slipped the map into her desk drawer and slid it closed, turning as Penance slid into the room.

"Thank you for the roses, by the way," Penance said, her nightgown falling just below her knees. She held up the electric eye. "Much better than a dismembered eye."

"Don't pretend, you know you like the eye better."

"Perhaps," Penance shrugged. "I did take a look at it and your suspicions are right, there's something off about it. The material in the blue wiring is like nothing I've seen before. Just the properties I've managed to isolate makes me think it's incredibly strong but malleable. Could be the new copper, which would be quite something." Her eyes flashed excitedly, but she caught the wariness in Amalia's eyes.

"What?" she asked, hoping there wasn't some other revelation she had forgotten to share.

Amalia slouched onto her bed and looked up at her. "Can you please tell me a deep dark secret about yourself? Have you killed someone, maybe? That would be comforting."

Penance smiled, leaning against the wardrobe. "I did steal penny candy once from the corner store." She waited for a beat, enjoying the unimpressed stare Amalia gave her. She sighed and continued, knowing trust was a two-way street, even if her own shadows were of a much more familiar vein. "I did do that, and got caught for it, by the way, end of my kleptomaniac phase." She took a breath. "I also blame my brother for my father's death and there's a dark part of me that wishes him dead instead, because my father would have loved to have seen my turn." She gave a wave of her hands, swallowing the lump in her throat as her eyes clouded. "There you have it."

Reaching out with both arms, Amalia beckoned her. Penance straddled her lap, resting her arms on her shoulders. "Your father must have been proud of you even before your turn," Amalia said. "Which of your inventions do you think he would have enjoyed the most?"

Despite the lump in her throat, Penance smiled. "The pocket watch." She laughed. "Efficient, expedient, something good out of something gone wrong." She let out a pleasant exhale. "Although, I like to think maybe his favorite is one that I haven't even invented yet."

Amalia smiled at the brightness that appeared in Penance's eyes again, the hopeful smile that always seemed on the verge of curling her lips. Earlier today, she'd thought she'd lost that.

"I am glad you told me everything," Penance said, tapping a thoughtful thumb on Amalia's collar bone. "But things are going to have to change around here."

Amalia raised her eyebrows, in surprise and amusement, her eyes asking for Penance to continue.

Penance took a breath. "I can be useful to you, in more ways than I have been. I don't want to be confined to my lab like some sort of-" Penance cut off, words failing her.

"-science wife," Amalia suggested.

"-science wife," Penance concurred, scrunching her nose, all too aware that Amalia was making fun of her, but she continued because she meant it. "I can help you. My inventions already help us and I'm going to figure all of the rest of this out with you. If I'm worth this-" she gestured toward the two of them, "-then I'm also worth you letting me help you with whatever mission you may or may not have that you may or may not know about. And I may or may not take no for an answer."

Amalia leaned back on the palms of her hands, and Penance fell slightly forward with her. "Well, in keeping with your feminist aims not to be confined to your scientific shackles, you can come with me to pay a visit to the Beggar King tomorrow."

Penance's face paled. "Did I say I wanted to not be confined to my lab?"

"You did. Just now." Amalia eyed her knowingly. "I know you can hold your own, I've always known it. But your brain is a hell of a lot more wonderful than mine, and at the end of the day, I'd rather protect it, so you have to forgive me if I get a bit agitated." She smiled. "But I am ever so grateful for your kindness, Miss Adair."

Penance kissed her cheek, avoiding the one with the large scrape from the rosebush. "Speaking of my wonderful brain, I finished the recorder. If Mary can summon her song, we are going to try to record it in the lab tomorrow morning. I want the girls to be there, I want to see their faces when they hear it." She playfully tugged a hand on Amalia's hair, angling her head up. "I want you there, too."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"I want others to hear the song because I think they need to hear it," she said pensively, studying Amalia's face. "You want others to hear it because you think we need them with us. Together. For something." Penance raised her eyebrows. "Is that right?"

Amalia nodded slowly, filtering through her uncertainty to find the thread of what she was sure of, which was that she was responsible for gathering the Touched. "Yes. Although I can't bloody well get us all together if masks are ripping us right off the streets." She sighed. "It's peace and hope, but like a siren song of sorts, meant to be a call."

"A call to what?" Penance asked, knowing neither of them had the answer. She saw Amalia's forehead crinkle, saw the gears of her mind begin their spiral, and she tossed out a question that she knew would grind them to a halt, one that had nagged her since they left the washroom: "Were you and Maladie-Sarah-Maladie-Sarah-"

"I know who you're talking about," Amalia said, tenderly amused.

"Were you two… intimate?"

Amalia looked up at her, gentle incredulity in her eyes. "Might I remind you it was an asylum, not a bloody cabaret." She dipped her head to meet Penance's gaze. "We did not have sex."

Penance blushed, knowing that both answered and didn't answer the question, but her cheeks were too hot for her to try and clarify. "Right, I'm sorry. I just-"

Amalia hated to see Penance flustered, and so she did the thing she thought best in the moment, which was to put a hand on Penance's neck and pull her in for a kiss, one that deepened quickly, sending them backwards onto the bed. There weren't as many layers between them as usual, and their legs intertwined without any superfluous fabric to separate them. Still, even the thin fabric of their nightgowns was too much of a barrier, and each slipped hers off, skin already warm with the thought of each other.

Penance leaned back over Amalia and placed a knee between her thighs as her hands moved down the rest of her, liking the way parts of her tensed and tightened as her fingers stroked and caressed her skin, avoiding bruises and blemishes, knowing that tomorrow she'd ask Amalia to tell her about the rest of her exploits. Amalia pushed forward with her lips and Penance found herself on her back, watching as dark hair moved above her, flashes of brown eyes and rose lips, and then Penance closed her eyes, unable to focus on anything but the feel of hands, lips, tongue, fingers. And then all of it came together in a pleasure that blinded her, making her clamp a hand over her mouth, grateful when Amalia's lips found hers again, if only so she could moan into them as she shivered with heat. As Penance's body went slack, sinking into the bed, Amalia peered back at her, a question burning in her eyes.

"Do you have more of that candy?"

Penance's eyes fluttered, her synapses still not quite firing in a way that allowed her to process words. "What?" she asked, dazed.

"The brandy candies. Do you have any more?"

Penance's attention was on Amalia's body rather than her question, letting her hands wander, her lips wander, her mind wander. "You want to talk about candy now?"

"They were very good," Amalia insisted earnestly, only letting her seriousness slip toward the end of her remark as she felt Penance slide a hand between her thighs. "I want you to know you're worth more to me than just sex." She let out a playful smile.

Penance laughed. "Right. I'm worth all the brandy candies in the world, then."

"Yes," Amalia emphasized, squaring her shoulders as she looked down at Penance, the joke having left her, only sincerity visible in her eyes now. She had the peace of someone focusing only on the simple pleasures before her, keeping her shadows at bay if only for the night. "Yes."

Penance looked at her, understanding. "I know," she said softly, pressing a finger to Amalia's lips before turning her onto her back and laying her head on her shoulder. "I know."

Penance let her hand continue to wander, taking its time over Amalia's skin: feeling, caressing, tickling, entering, until Amalia was just tense muscle and nerves, frozen in place. It was intense but quick, as if her body were too tired to prolong her pleasure, and Penance grazed her fingers along Amalia's skin until she melted back into place. Penance folded into her and they lay there. After awhile, Penance felt Amalia slide into a heavy sleep, and she tightened her arm around her. When Amalia woke in the middle of the night, as she most likely would, Penance would be there, along for the ride.