Her eyes were more vicious than the snarling maw. She stared Rain down until she’d reached the plate of crystal at the center of the room, and turned around to sit with her back to the thing. To Rain. Her head turned toward the recluse, and she tapped one long fingernail to one of the teeth of her mask, her muzzle, before pointing it down, knuckle resting against the mask.

“Yeah, actually,” the recluse said. “You know ’em?”

The woman offered one, singular nod.

“Any advice?”

“Why ask? She doesn’t talk,” Rain said.

The recluse ignored him.

The woman turned, reaching down to the dias. Rain drew closer to watch as she picked her way through the assorted debris on the table. The wood was burned and as delicate as charcoal, breaking apart at a touch, crumbling into dust as it fell to the five-sided plate. Almost everything on the table was similarly fragile. The glass, the rusty scraps of metal.

She picked out three human teeth, and slid two of them in the recluse’s direction.

“She’s dangerous?” the recluse asked.

Another nod from the muzzled woman. She tapped a finger on the one remaining tooth on her part of the table.

“I really appreciate that,” the recluse said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I have a suggestion,” Snag said. Growled. He was pacing a little, hand brushing against his edge of the plate as he walked beside it. One of his fingers was still damaged from the event a year ago.

“Sure.”

“Don’t do it tomorrow night,” Snag said, stopping.

“Why not?”

Snag turned his head, staring at the darkness that separated his section from Rain’s. He was almost but not quite looking at Rain, shadows heavy around his eyes as he glared. “Tomorrow is your night. The night after is hers.”

The recluse turned to look at the muzzled woman.

Snag said, “Let’s do it the night after hers. In case something goes wrong.”

“Makes sense,” the recluse said.

On my night, Rain thought.

Rain approached the table. He kept a wary eye on the others as he picked up the debris, destroying it in his hands. Almost everything was so old, burned, water damaged or rusty that it disintegrated with firm contact. He cast it aside, letting it litter the floor. The items scraped and cut his hands on contact, but he didn’t mind.

There were only three items he couldn’t destroy. Scraps of metal, too dull and thick to be knives, too flat and featureless to be of any particular use. Like rectangular pieces of a broken glass, but not glass.

The others were sorting themselves out. Five shards of glass for Snag, three coins for the recluse. The muzzled woman stared him down. She’d already handed out two of the teeth that served as her token, keeping one for herself.

Even the others, when they glanced at him, radiated hostility.