Back in the Gutters. Back in the 'The Last Leg.' Upon which Skinner stood, figuratively speaking, as did many of the sinhouse's regulars. "I'm all mucked out," groaned a gambler as he threw his cards to the table.

Skinner went to the bar and leaned over it. "Got a message for Church."

The barman's eyes leaped past Skinner's shoulder on the utterance. Bootsteps approached from behind. "Turn around, Skinner. Easy, now." The voice was clear and confident. Skinner did as ordered. Standing there was a fairhaired fellow who had stepped from the dim back, one hand on his hilt and the other wiping his last swig of beer from his mouth. Two other men had their crossbows out on their tables, already aimed and ready to fire. If the repeater didn't want to spill his own guts onto the floorboards, he had no choice but to submit. Skinner held out his hands and once again they were shackled with cold iron. That heavy final click felt like an anvil dropping upon the repeater's battered soul.

— • —

Dimia sat outside Sister Chalice's office and winced as she heard Quint take his lickings for his sins through the thick door. It went on for some minutes, the smacking and the yelping and the whimpering. The boy finally came out shuffling and rubbing his ass. His rear cheeks raw with pain and his front ones wet with tears.

"Did you say anything about the cat?" Dimia whispered as Quint passed.

"Fuck off," Quint said and went on down the hall.

Dimia awaited her turn. She'd been caught passing her bread to Quint at dinner by the nun's shrewd eye and the two were brought here by their pinched ears to pay the price for their transgressions. Now it was her turn. "Dimia, come in here," Sister Chalice commanded from that damned other room in an ominous tone. Dimia walked toward the door and grimaced at the thought of the punishment to come. She braced herself and went in, swearing to herself that she would take it like a Reaper.

— • —

The officers hauled Skinner to Strotham Yard in a barred stagecoach. The cage was covered, hiding him from the world. The officers ignored all his questions. Refused to explain his arrest. Skinner sensed a deep tension and permeable hate. After a long and bumpy ride he was pulled from the wagon and pushed through the rear doorway of a large stone building. His captors dragged him down a hall and threw him alone in a square holding cell and there Skinner waited. He knew this drawn feeling well. Went into the place that kept him from going mad in Fetterstone.

Finally the blond officer entered the room with a chair. He sat and put his grim face to Skinner. "My name is Inspector Valen. You are under arrest for the kidnapping and murder of several children over the past few months." His eyes were knives. "Fiend."

"I've been in prison that whole time, beak," said Skinner. "Was hired to look into them minnows. We're on the same side."

"Even if that were so," said Valen, "we don't appreciate citizens nosing around in our investigations."

"I hear you ain't doin' a spectacular job of it, yourselves."

"We caught you, didn't we?"

"Aye, the wrong man."

Valen glared. "We have witnesses who can place you at the scenes of several of the crimes. We know you animals like to revisit such 'sacred' places. And that you are also fond of hanging on to mementos of your victims. Keepsakes." The detective tossed something at Skinner's feet. It clattered on the floor. "Which explains why a man like you would be holding on to this." It was Georgene's bracelet.

"Proves nothin'," said Skinner. "I want an advocate."

"We've also got a vendor saying you recently bought pies and candy for two little local boys who have also now vanished," said the Inspector. "What about that?"

Before Skinner could answer or digest this new information there was a knock at the door. It was another investigator, his face pale and grave. He called Valen over and they had whispers. Shot angry glances Skinner's way.

Valen turned back to his captive. "You sick wretch. We should finish you right now and go home to our families. I would sleep so well. We can simply claim you put up a fight, you realize. Or stage a suicide. An easy thing."

"Listen to me, hardstick... I didn't do it," Skinner said. "He'll deny it, I'm sure, but Warden Hotch himself commissioned me to look into this case."

"Quite the Moonlight Player," Valen scoffed. "I'd laugh if I weren't so disgusted. How long do you plan to keep up the charade, 'Raolet?'" By this he referred to a famed actor who had years ago so embraced his role as a suicidal widower that he committed the actual deed live on stage on the play's closing night. "That officer I spoke with just spent half the day at your old flat on Gravel Lane. Took the entire morning to cut through the bolts and latches of that stinking hovel. Did you think we wouldn't check, daemon? That we wouldn't find the bodies?"

Bodies? In his old apartment? Skinner had been ignoring the signs but now it all sunk in. He had been framed. Set up. A scapegoat. Never in his wretched life had he felt so stupid and used. He should have known a con when he saw one. Warden Hotch and Church and whoever else was involved in this fiasco hadn't employed Skinner to find the killer. They had tapped him to take the fall. So Hotch and his afterlings were somehow complicit in the murders of these children. The sick animals. For all Skinner knew, Inspector Valen and possibly his fellows were also involved. And even if not, they certainly wouldn't accept the word of some lowly nibbler like himself over that of the High Warden of Fetterstone.

Valen shouted the names of two men. The door opened again and a pair of gruff lawdogs entered the room. As Valen watched on, the hardsticks took turns beating and kicking Skinner until his brain could think no more and sweet darkness smothered all light.

— • —

Blacwin waited in the darkness, assigned to watch the farmhouse's near perimeter. His chance to catch her eye. The Reaper made several passes below the farmhouse's windows until he finally saw Cowrie looking out into the darkness. Blacwin stepped out from the shadows and looked up at her, letting his face fall under the glow of the moons. He didn't want to use the same tactics with her as he had done with Merek. He wanted to convince from kindness and not threats. Blacwin smiled and gestured for Cowrie to come down. Her face disappeared from the window.

The Reaper stepped back and wondered if Cowrie did indeed take this as a threat, an invitation of harm rather than peace. A rear door opened and the woman stepped out into the cold wrapped in a hide blanket. The two of them stepped into the shadows. Crickets cushioned their whispers.

"I want to explain what you saw back there," Blacwin said plainly. "Why I did what I did."

In answer Cowrie put her soft lips to his. A rush of emotion flooded Blacwin's being. He breathed her scent in and their warm bodies pressed against one another. Cowrie pulled back and looked into the Reaper's glacial eyes. She was perhaps twenty. That would make Blacwin four times her age, though he only appeared a few seasons older. Such was the blessing and curse of his 'tainted' blood.

"You are nothing," Cowrie said, stroking Blacwin's cheek, "...but a hero. Never forget that."

A lantern flickered in the dim. Jasha approaching from his patrol, cross the stars.

"I will not," Blacwin said. "Nor will I forget you."

With greater will than she knew she had left within her, Cowrie pulled herself away and slipped back toward the house. Blacwin watched her go. It was as if the Reaper had been touched by an angelic proxy of the stars, leaving a mark on his very character. Blessing him. Anointing him a hero. After all this searching, Blacwin had finally found purpose. He would police the Reapers from within and show no mercy to those monsters within their ranks who did wrong in the name of good. No matter if it was a duty he undertook alone and for which he would receive no medals or glory, Blacwin would serve as an eye for justice within the black fold of commandos. His conscience would serve as his own guide, as it had when he broke from Grendyll's sick spell. In the name of what was just and right, Blacwin would be a Reaper of Reapers.

— • —

Far below the city, in the Workshop. Calculations tumbled in Amarant's head. The revelations that plagued the arcanist's mind distracted him even from the raw and festering wound in his gums where he had ripped away his mutant tooth. The theorist's suspicions seemed to be true, confirmed by recalculation upon exhaustive recalculation and stringent observations to the most critical degrees of certainty. The God Eye, after being dormant for thousands of years, was starting to consume souls again, and at an alarmingly quickening rate. More of the darting souls become snared in the gem before Amarant's very eyes. The pit-stone had reached some form of critical mass in which it had enough power to extend its reach and capacity beyond what was before thought imaginable. Amarant's pulse quickened. He had to warn his superiors in haste. Perhaps Egon would know what to do.

The arcanist did not make it far with these thoughts before they were interrupted by even more disturbing a sight. A tiny crack formed in the pitch gem before his eyes. A hairline, barely visible. Amarant drew in a breath to scream but never got the chance to make a sound. The fracture splintered into a web and the God Eye broke into countless crystalline pieces and unleashed all its unholy power miles below the surface of the city, undoing the Workshop and years of discovery and enlightenment in a catastrophic flash of black energy and white fire. Let the monsters slumber, the wise men had warned. Why had they not listened? Here was the price of hubris. In Amarant's dying moment he felt his soul being pulled inward toward that shattering madstone. Waiting there for his spirit was the yawning cosmic maw of the god-king Hekto, hungry to this day.