S-TWC-008
St. Valentine's Ledger
Patron: Nickels Costigan
Date: Aug 11th, 1923 – The Costochondral Axis
Location: The Ouroboros (The Black Collar)
Proprietor: Mags
The Black Collar rises like a necrotic snapped spine out of the Axis.
It isn't a tower in the traditional sense. No stairs, no doors, no windows. Just a column of black stone, scorched and slick, jutting up from the ruin's seam. At its top is a workshop filled with printing presses, ink, and paper. Not even the snakes come here.
███████ does.
My brother, firstborn of the Twelve ███████████████, was waiting for me at the workshop's edge, legs crossed, hands clasped, posture perfect as a prayer. He was dressed in mourning again—tailored, of course—black gloves and a cravat that shimmered with stitched ouroboroi. He never looks disheveled. He never looks tired. But I know he is both.
He nodded when he saw me, but did not smile.
"It was about time you found your way back here," he said.
"And you hardly leave."
"One of us must mind the clock, Magdelena. Even if it no longer ticks."
I sat beside him. The stone was warm. The air too still.
"The Order of the █████████████, they were sent to kill him," I murmured.
"No. They were sent to kill his would-be assassin. █████ knows better than to try and take out one of ██████'s pawns."
"But—I thought █████ doesn't want the ██████'s City to rise again?"
"He doesn't. It's politics."
We sat in silence for a breath, then another. ███████ speaks best in pauses, in things unsaid. I used to resent it. Now I understand it. There are truths that bruise on contact. He produced a glass phial from his coat. Inside: a droplet of something viscous and silver, pulsed faintly.
"█████████ gave this to me," he said. "A drink. For the singer."
I didn’t reach for it.
I didn’t want to.
He tapped the phial. The silver inside flickered. ███████ said, with that knowing glint in his eye, "Don't worry. █████████ wants this singer alive. Alive but… altered."
The word "altered" echoed.
"You mean broken."
"No," he said, too quickly. "Not broken. Tuned. Adjusted. Tilted. It is not the same connotation."
"It never is, until it is. I wonder how ██████ would feel about this plan?"
He sighed, long and low.
"Mags, you only see the surface of things. If you would spend half as long as we do in the Ouroboros you would know that. The ██████, the ████, the ████████—They are worse threats than the ██████."
"████████?"
"One of the Great Houses of ███████. I don't have time to catch you up on every little detail—"
"You? You don't have time? Then what in the hell was all of this for?" I said, in a tone perhaps terser than I felt as I gestured to the madness we were both deeply set in.
███████ said nothing. He didn’t need to. I know why we took this ████████ with this Prince above all other Princes. I closed my eyes. The air was thick with the scent of burnt wax and stagnant wine. The rollers and cogs squeaked without motion; memories of countless apocrypha printed in a timeless slumber.
"I don’t like it, Sol."
"I wouldn't expect you to, Mags."
He stood, brushing invisible dust from his coat.
"Go to the singer. Watch him. Help him, if you must. But if you suspect he is about to sing a song that could wake the City, that could stir the ████████ to attention, give him his final drink."
"Final drink? I thought you said █████████ wanted him alive?"
He looked out over the edge. The Ouroboros curled endlessly below us, a snake devouring a snake devouring a snake.
"A last call, that's all. Make sure you say goodbye to ███████ before you run off again."
Then he was gone.
I… I just wanted to give you the heads up, Nickels. And Glass-Eyes too. I'm not going to have you drink whatever the hell this is. But, I suppose, if things get really in a pinch… it's… an option.
Unsmudge the Ledger
"Ruler of Twelve."
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