Will

After Sam vouched for him, Nug officially agreed to put his faith in Will—after some barely veiled threats of physical violence—and allowed his Brainstorm cast to fizzle out so that his original personality could emerge again.

"Thank you for your time, Gug," Will said with a concluding nod. He sipped at his coffee now that it had cooled down a bit, then held up a finger. "Mmm, one last thing before you go."

"Yes?" Gug asked, frozen on one knee.

"When I said you could use my books, that did not include pilfering my notebooks for your scribbles. As it happens, quality writing paper is at something of a premium, especially in times like these with compromised supply lines."

Gug looked suitably ashamed. "Oh. I didn't know. Sorry."

"It's fine. You can keep whatever you've already taken—just ask me before you appropriate anything else."

The troll bowed his head like a chastized puppy. "I understand. I'm very very sorry, Friend Will."

"Like I said, it's okay—it's my fault for not specifying. And if you find yourself in pressing need of more writing materials, I do know someone who just might appreciate your help. Have you met the man who runs the library in the city? His name is Fletcher."

"Yes! The library was absolutely fantabulous, but Fletcher didn't like me very much, I think. He thought I would ruin his books, so I wasn't allowed back after you were moved to the lord's house."

"I see. Well, his assessment might change when I put in a good word for you. If I get you a position at the library—say, as his assistant—would you be interested?"

"Yes!" Gug exclaimed as he leapt up, shouting so loud it all but rattled the walls. "That would be lovely!"

Will dismissed the troll and had him send the girl and her caretaker through. Ember took a seat on the opposite side of the kitchen table, and Sunny sat in her lap, absently braiding a piece of the woman's thick hair. Sam passed her full mug over to the other woman since it turned out she really didn't want coffee after all. Ember drank from it happily, though.

"Mind if I ask you both some questions?" Will asked, hands folded on the tabletop.

"Go ahead, sir," Ember replied with a polite nod.

"You really don't need to call him 'sir'," Sam intoned from below, her big head putting an uncomfortable amount of weight on Will's lap. "It's hard enough pruning his ego down to size without people going around kissing his ass."

"Aside from the bit about ego, she's right," Will agreed. "Will is fine, okay?"

"Okay, Will. If you're sure."

"I am. Now, do you mind if I Identify the kid?"

"I suppose that's fine." She stroked the little girl's unruly mop to get her attention. "Sweetie, Uncle Will is going to do a little examination on you, okay?"

"Okaaay," Sunny replied, her attention already back on the messy braid she was trying to assemble with her stubby little fingers.

"It might tingle a little, but otherwise you won't feel a thing," Will said.

"Okaaay."

"Identify [System Properties]."

[Name: Sunny Burgess]

[Profession: Mediator]

[Level: 3]

[Attributes: Awareness (6), //?//, Processing (0), //?//]

[Passives: //?//]

[Skills: //?//]

"It tickles!" Sunny giggled, giving her head a playful knock with the side of her fist.

"Damn," Will muttered under his breath. That had told him almost nothing. He cast Identify once more, but got even less out of it than the first time. What made the girl so difficult to read? Maybe her points in Awareness were shoring up her mental defenses somewhat, but surely they weren't that strong.

"Why are you doing it like that?" Sunny asked.

"Like what?"

"Wrong."

Will scowled deeply. "What? Explain."

"Um…" The chubby little girl put a finger to her bottom lip, regarding the ceiling in thought. "So, like, you're trying to look at me, right?"

"That's right."

"But you're not really looking at me—you're looking past me, sort of."

"How can you tell?"

It was Sunny's turn to frown, twisting on Ember's leg to look over at Will. "What do you mean?"

Will sighed. "Well, since I'm not using my eyes to see, how can you tell where I'm looking?"

"I dunno. I just can. Can't you?"

"If I try again, do you think you could help me look in the right place?"

"Maybe, I guess. I can try!" She wriggled out of her caretaker's arms, leaving her weaving work halfway done, and padded across the floor in too-big socks to wait for him by the corner of the table. "You should come here, Uncle Will. It's easier if I touch you, I think."

Will did as he was asked, slightly impressed with the girl for knowing that physical touch could improve the efficacy of targeted mental abilities, and squatted so she could put her soft hands on either side of his face, fingers setting the tender, recently shaven skin of his scalp tingling.

Once more, he cast Identify.

[Name: Sunny Burgess]

[Profession: Mediator]

[Level: 3]

[Attributes: Awareness (6), //?//, Processing (0), //?//]

[Passives: Truesight, //?//]

[Skills: //?//]

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"That was a little better, I guess," Sunny mused, taking her hands back, "but you're still doing it all wonky."

Being lectured by a child was slightly humiliating, but he couldn't exactly argue with her considering the results. This final cast had given him exactly one new piece of information. "What's 'Truesight', Sunny?" he asked. It wasn't a passive he had ever heard of, meaning it was likely something she'd gotten from the Mediator list.

Sunny gave a bored shrug, already looking off elsewhere. "Dunno."

"It's an ability. You might have seen something about it in your sleep—read about it in a book. Remember?"

"I only remember dreams about interesting things, not books."

Will sighed. "Try to play along."

"One time I dreamt I was a princess in a castle. It was really pretty there, but also really lonely."

"Okay, but…" Will pinched his nose between two fingers, then drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils and stood up straight. "All right. You don't remember. Maybe it'll come back to you. What about other things? Attribute points, for instance."

It was hard to tell through his hazy not-quite-vision, but the face Sunny made then looked almost like pity. She patted him softly on the arm and said: "It's okay, Uncle Will. You don't need to understand everything. You think way too much. It's not healthy."

"Fiiinally, someone gets it," Sam called from the couch with a dramatic yawn. "You know, maybe you should listen to her."

"She doesn't talk much about things related to the Concord," Ember explained, cutting Will off from the scathing retort he was about to lay on his personal heckler. "We've tried, but she just… doesn't look at it the same way normal people do, I think. I don't know if that's because she's still a kid, or…"

"Fine," Will said, and returned to his seat. "In that case, Ember, it's your turn on the hot seat."

"I will of course answer your questions to the best of my abilities."

Will couldn't tell if the excessive deference Ember showed was genuine or simply a well-practiced act drilled into her by a lustrous whoring career, which annoyed him more than he cared to admit. It felt like she was mocking him somehow, even though he had no real reason to think that, which annoyed him even more since he knew he was being paranoid.

"How old is she?" Will asked.

"Nine. She'll be ten on November 1st."

"Did she wash up, or was she born?"

Ember called Sunny over and put her hands over the girl's ears to keep her from overhearing. "She was born. Her mother—Farrah was her name—was working at the Red House when she suddenly became pregnant. A few of us girls helped her keep it secret, along with the madam. We knew the child had to be kept a secret or she'd never be safe.

"Eventually, Farrah approached Brimstone for protection. He had been favoring her at the time, so he was utterly certain that the child was his. Personally, I'm skeptical. Considering the complete sterility of all lifers, plenty of customers choose to finish inside a girl without giving it a second thought. Farrah was one of the more exclusive girls, but still, there could be as many as a dozen men with a hat in the ring. This is, of course, assuming that any insemination actually took place."

Will quirked an eyebrow while he poured himself some more coffee. "You think she's the result of some sort of immaculate conception?"

Ember shrugged. "Why not? Sunny is very special—you have to see that, Master One-Eye."

Will nearly spilled as his new right hand shook with sudden emotion. Slowly, slowly, he set the kettle down. "Will," he said. "Will is fine."

The former prostitute bowed her head meekly. "Of course. I'm sorry for upsetting you, Will. I won't forget myself again."

"And stop talking like that while you're at it. It's creepy."

A ghost of a smile traced Ember's full, rosy lips. "I can do that."

Will shook his head, sipped lukewarm coffee. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Tell me more about this miracle baby theory of yours."

"Hey! Let me hear too!" Sunny exclaimed. "Quit saying secrets about me!" She tried to tug herself free of Ember's grip until the woman pinned the girl firmly between her legs and crossed her ankles over, putting a conclusive end to that particular escape attempt.

"Shush now, sweetie," Ember murmured into one cupped hand next to her left ear. "You don't want to be a bother to Uncle Will now, do you?"

"No," Sunny admitted. "I guess not."

"Then be a good girl and let the adults talk for a while."

Sunny seemed to be watching Will for some sign of his opinion. When he gave a small nod, she let out a frustrated squeal and said: "Fine! I'll be good!"

"All right," Ember said with a sharp exhale, jerking the little girl's head back and forth playfully between her hands, "where was I? Right, well, I don't think my theory is really that strange—a sudden, mysterious pregnancy for one, a completely new Profession for another. Even setting that aside, you've seen what she can be like. She's a little… odd. Sometimes it feels like she knows more than she should, things no one's taught her, and her dreams… they have a tendency to come true."

"Uh-huh. Prophetic dreams. Got any examples?"

"Most of it is circumstantial, only notable in the aggregate. One year she drew a picture a week before her birthday with all the presents we were about to give her in it. But fair enough, maybe she'd snuck a peek somehow, or overheard the girls talking. Then there was the time when she told Temerity to stop seeing a customer because he was, quote, 'too hungry'. Temerity didn't listen; the guy drugged her up, dragged her off, carved her open, and ate her. He was even trying to boil her bones into a broth when the guards got him."

Supremely bored by this point and endeavoring to make it plainly known, Sunny tramped about on the spot and sighed dramatically every few seconds. Will ignored her.

"Then there was the time she warned Heavenly not to wear shoes because they were 'planning to play a prank on her'. A week later, the heel of her stiletto stuck between two floorboards at the top of some stairs and she went tumbling all the way down. She survived, luckily, but she busted a couple bones.

"After that, the girls started listening whenever Sunny made a prediction, so I can't really say which ones would have actually come true. There are other things, too. Sometimes she'd dream about people or places she hadn't seen—ones outside the Red House."

She went on until Will held up a hand to cut her short. He believed her. After everything he had seen, what was a bit of future sight to top it all off?

"Is there any way to induce these dreams or visions of hers?" Will asked.

"Not that I know of," Ember said. "Sometimes, one of the girls would ask Sunny for their fortune, but none of them ever left satisfied. Usually she had nothing to say, and when she did it never concerned any of the things they wanted to know about."

"I see." Will would be the judge of that himself. But not now.

"So… what do you think?"

He sipped his coffee. "About what?"

"Do you think she's a miracle child? Do you think she's the daughter of the goddess?"

"Daughter of the goddess, huh? I have no opinions about that just yet. This theory of yours, did all the other women who cared for Sunny feel the same way? What about her mother?"

"Some did, some didn't. The only thing everyone agreed on was that she definitely isn't Brimstone's spawn. Farrah did believe, I think, though she didn't like to talk about it around Sunny since she thought it might influence her too much, put strange ideas in her head."

"Mmm. I can see how believing you're the child of a goddess might skew one's perception somewhat."

With the most sensitive stuff out of the way, Ember let the girl go, and she worked off her pent-up energy by bumbling around the room and swinging her terrible toy monkey around while the adults engaged in conversation. Will asked more questions about dates, memories, people in the girl's life, specifics of her education, and so on. Apparently, she had not been born with her Profession. She had spent most of her life without it. Then, about a year ago, Farrah had woken Sunny up in the morning and the Profession symbol was suddenly on her arm, though Sunny herself hardly acknowledged it.

Additionally, while Brimstone had acted as her patron of sorts, he had allowed her to remain at the Red House, too paranoid to bring her into the keep with all the danger that entailed. Apparently, he had told no one about the girl, and had dealt with any threats concerning her identity personally. How Dawn had found out about the girl, Ember did not know, but she did not think that Brimstone would have trusted even his wife enough to tell her himself.

Sunny had spent her entire life confined to the top floor of the Red House, where even most of those who worked in the place hadn't known of her existence, and had only been allowed to go outside under strict supervision for one night a year, on Halloween, when she could blend in with all the other masked celebrants without much risk of discovery.

It sounded like a dreadful existence. Despite all that, and the fact that she had seen pretty much everyone close to her brutally murdered by the man she thought was her father, she seemed surprisingly—almost disturbingly—well-adjusted.

Once Will had gotten his fill of information, he asked the girl and her caretaker to leave so he could think and digest all he had learned in peace.

Sunny halted in the doorway to the living room, reluctant to go. "Hey, Uncle Will?" she asked somewhat furtively, not quite looking at him. "You're not going to make me stay in this house all the time, are you?"

"Of course not," Will replied. "You can go outside whenever you like. Just ask first so we can make sure you have someone with you."

The little girl grinned broadly, freckled nose wrinkling. "Okay! That's a relief."

"To be clear, you don't go outside without asking."

"Got it!"

Once she was gone, Will lit up a cigarette and puffed absently at it, tapping the ash into his empty coffee mug. Once he'd gone through the first he lit another. Thoughts churned around and around inside his head until he worked up a headache to complement the pain churning in his gut.

"I need to send some Messages," Will announced, and gave Sam's hard stomach a few claps to make it clear he wanted her off his lap.

"What's the rush?" Sam asked, reluctant to move, but reluctantly working herself upright with a petulant groan when he kept pushing.

"A party," Will said as he wriggled his way free of Sam and got to his feet.

He relished the look of surprise evident on her bright, vaguely outlined smudge of a face. "Huh?"

"I'm throwing a party," Will repeated, "and everyone's invited."

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