She leads him out of the common area into a nearby office, then stops being quite so mirthless, returning to being merely stone-faced. "It turns out," she says conversationally, "that somebody was playing silly buggers when they filed your paperwork. Namely, nobody can tell what exactly you did to get sentenced to a stay in New Newgate. And nobody remembers who exactly arrested you, so we can't ask 'em. And you don't seem to have a name or an alias that we can find, so we can't find out by asking around. It being that we have no bloody idea who you are or what you did, we've made the executive decision to walk you. We don't want this getting around to the other prisoners, though, so we're pretending you were assigned to bilge duty and fell out into the Unterzee 'cause you didn't wear a safety harness. That all sound fair?"

"Sure," he says agreeably.

"Excellent. And..." She hands him an envelope and taps her nose. "For a mutual friend."

He nods and tucks the envelope away somewhere safe.

And, with an uneventful dirigible ride, he is deposited back in London. Wolfstack Docks, specifically.

It's been about a day since he was arrested. What would he like to do first?

...it belatedly occurs to him that he never told the Widow he was going to get arrested, and he should perhaps go see how she's doing and reassure her that he's back and in one piece.

She's in her sitting room, doing some needlepoint. "Oh, hello dearie! Did you have fun?"

"I did!"

“That’s good. Was she nice? Or he, or they - shouldn’t assume.”

"—oh!" He laughs. "I wasn't spending the night with someone, I got arrested. I did meet some lovely people, though! And then they let me go because they'd lost all my paperwork and had no idea who I was or why they'd arrested me."

“Oh! Well, all’s well that ends well, I suppose.” She completes a flower on the pillowcase she’s stitching, and holds it up critically.

"That's lovely!"

"Thank you, love." She begins on another.

Right, okay, what next? He should probably retrieve Edward at some point—oh, right, and he's got a note to deliver to the Provocateuse. Well, retrieving Edward seems simpler. He can start there.

The Sardonic Music-Hall Singer opens her door. "Well, that wasn't very long at all. You had me all worried."

"I didn't know how long it was going to be!"

"Well, I hope you got what you wanted out of it." She lets him in and points to Edward, curled up in a repurposed cat basket. "Your mandrake sings now, as well as I can teach him. Did you want to stay and have that honey-dream I promised? Or were you planning to go a-hunting right away?"

"I'll stay for the honey-dream. I did say I would, and it sounds interesting."

"Good lad," the Singer says. She retrieves her honey-jar and two long-handled spoons, measuring out a thick bead of honey for him and a brimming spoonful for herself.

Om... nom? Probably while sitting down or something, right, because it makes you dream?

The Singer has a pair of chaises-longue prepared!

The honey tastes... well, like honey. It's sweet, intensely so, with a floral undercurrent as it... evaporates? Evaporates. Less typical honey behavior.

His limbs feel heavy, and so do his eyelids. As he closes his eyes, he smells jungle flowers.

Ooh, new smells! That is interesting! He happily lets the honey take him.

His eyes open on a thick rainforest. The Singer is there already, looking vibrant, leaning against a tree with a smile on her face. She nods to him as he... awakens? "Welcome to the place behind the mirrors, where isn't is." She arches her neck and sings a few notes, harmonizing with the songbirds.

...he feels... weird. Like, really weird. Much weirder than he expected.

He tries to smile back at her, but he isn't sure he succeeds. He can't seem to operate his face correctly. All the parts of his body are - wrong? Right? Different - and moving is a whole situation. He is just gonna. Sit quietly. Sitting quietly is not usually his thing but he has a slight concern that if he tries to get up he will break something.

She frowns, and walks over towards him. She offers him a hand.