His smile is slight and prim with no hint of kindness. “And what of the machines you stole?”

“Equipment,” I cough. My lab, humming and throbbing, thick cables slamming with pilfered energy. I am unsure if that theft is included in the charges against me. Not that it matters. Sentenced to one year or one hundred, most people are lost one way or another in the place they’re like to send me.

He reads from the sheet before him for effect. He knows my name. “Sharrow Wight Mason.”

Yes. That is me. Me who lived in the gutters after your feathered gestapo torched my home. Me who sits reeking before you. Yes, tilt your sensitive nose away from the one conscious thing which stands between you and oblivion. Ah, but that is the speech of a prison of diminished sanity, isn’t it?

I reply. “That is my name.”

Up goes the chin. “Sharrow Wight Mason, The Plume hereby sentences you to seventeen years in Tunnel Realms for theft of dangerous property and the reckless endangerment of the public. What say ye?”

I lean over the table. The leg and wrist irons prevent my touching him, but my smell is offensive as a strike. He jerks back.

“It will start to hurt soon,” I hiss. I stare into his gray eyes. The brief glint of fear I see there blooms warmly in my chest.

He recovers quickly. “Yes, I’m sure, Ms. Wight. I’m sure,” he purrs. Jerks his head towards the black robed, purple plumed guards at my back. “Take her away.”

As they grip my forearms and drag me to my shackled feet, I swear I can feel it: every atom in my body, in theirs, in the air, gradually and inevitably growing closer and closer together.

***