LADY ERIAPE SPEAKS TO HER USEFUL URCHINS. TO BE PRESERVED FROM RIOTS COME TO CARRERO DEL GAT BY THE THIRD FLAX WAREHOUSE PASSWORD ECLIPSE

She knows where that is. It's three blocks from the river, right about where they picked up the pamphlets three weeks ago. 

She runs.

She mouths it to herself so she will not forget.

Eclipse. 

Eclipse 

Eclipse 

There's a Badger trampled into the mud at the entrance of the alleyway, and she runs in. The man standing there wears the red badger on his sleeve, so she knows it's right. "Eclipse," she says. He nods.

They don't talk. It's against the rules.

She arrives first, which is right, because she's the best. The other girls gather around her, one after another. Oreneta with her her little cat stuffed into her shirt, Èrica with her pack full of other pamplets. 

Twenty minutes later, she thinks she counted everyone but Brisa- and the man stiffens, just like she did. 

"Okay- "

He sweats, turns around. There's a large flat rock leaning against the flagstones of the warehouse cellar, and he topples it over. A dark crevice waits behind. 

"Girls, you go in there. Crawl. Quickly."

They crawl. She's first, and she gets a few moments to see the space they're in. It's round, like they're in a great big barrel lying on its side- all made from some strange soft glittering leather. As soon as everyone's inside, the entrance goes away. 

It feels like the barrel's somehow moving without moving in any particular direction?

(The trick to moving children is to pack them into a portable hole, and then teleport in, pick up, teleport out)

It doesn't have time to get stuffy inside.  The hole opens again, and they're not in the same place. 

Paloma's the first to look outside.

Is that music?

"HI URCHINS!"

(There's no point in having sentient badger undead minions if you can't have a well-paid-but-terrified bard make-up-and-teach them to sing your own theme song.)

She waits obediently for the song to be over.

It's a large dirt cave, shaped like a temple, supported with great big wooden beams, black with age, dressed up with fabrics that used to bright and merry, but are now mostly moldy. At the chancel, a group of hideous badger-like things, leathery skin streched over their gaunt frames, with nothing but small sparks in their eye-sockets, sitting in front of a great big chair, with a tiny woman- not much taller than her- with bright white parchment skin, and the same eye-sparks. 

At the right transsept is glassware, strange glowing artifacts. 

At the left transsept is piles and piles of paper, and pasted up copies of pamplets annotated in a dozen colored inks.

At the nave- are cots. Ten cots. There's just nine of them. Brisa?

Lady Eriape seems to be expecting something, so she claps politely, and there's a mild scattering from the girls around her. The other girls are not happy. She's not happy.

It was fine to think about, at a distance, but- being here-

It is absolutely terrifying, the way the high priestesses were, and even worse. This is- inhuman. A mockery. 

But this is her job. She clenches her fists, presses her lips together, and walks forward.

"Ah! Paloma! My Best Urchin!"

Paloma can't help but smile a little. She did notice! 

"Great and wise lady- I am- we are so g-grateful to be saved-" (are they saved? Is there really a riot? Is it a trick? That man thought there would be, but-) "but do you know what happened to Brisa? There's only nine of us"

Eriape tilts her head with a leathery sound, holds up black-clawed fingers and visibly counts them off.

"Nine!"

She frowns, her eyes brightening to crimson. 

The chair turns like a wheel, and a rather less dilapidated velvet cloth is pulled off a large skull at the very tip of the chancel. The badgers move to watch with a strange interest, arranging themselves in a semicircle around the chair. 

Eriape casts a spell- for ten long minutes-

And the great skull lights up, with a view down the boulevard towards the Constitutional Convention. 

Eriape picks up a brass and glass telescope, green with corrosion.

She holds it to her eye-socket, sweeping it up and down the boulevard, faster than you could think anyone could take in information. 

After a while she stops.

"I cannot See her. Tomorrow I will have New Spells, and I shall Truly Scry. It is a Tricky Spell."

Eriape curls up into a ball in her chair, as of unwilling to say any more, and looks away, at the now blank mirror.

"I am Clarabella! I will Get you what You Need!"

Clarabella waits. 

She sees Lady Eriape preparing her spells, and beginning to cast Scry. It takes a long time. Once Clarabella can tell that she's almost done, she walks over to Paloma's cot.

She's trembling, and mumbling in her sleep.

She is Having Nightmares!

Clarabella presses the tip of her snout to Paloma's neck, and looks down at her with big empty eye-sockets as she wakes. 

oh asmodeus it wasn't a dream

"We are Scrying on Urchin Brisa! Come and See!"

Eriape is chanting over the mirror, her intricate finger-wiggling coming to a crescendo.  

And then the mirror becomes clear again, and light infiltrates the cave again, from the outside.

It's Westcrown. It's raining heavily, but the buildings are clear beneath the scry.

A block of tenements was here, but now half is charred timbers like grasping fingers. The viewpoint shifts, down and down, and enters through a half-burnt window, curtains black with soot. 

The corpse of a very sick adult woman lies in a cot. Brisa's body is curled around her, as if to protect her, even at the end. In her left hand, Brisa grasps, very tightly, a green metal badge.