[b]In the Tent![/b]

Outside is a sudden squalling storm, almost loud enough to drown out the ominous honks of the slowly constricting cordon of clowns. Anyone who dares exit the tent will be overwhelmed by the fury of rain and wind, a thousand tiny darts of icy pain. Inside? Inside is a howling catfight.

The worst part is that the Professor is teetering on the edge of giving into Clown Madness, watching Ailee and Jackdaw fight; if that happens, the already small tent will not be small enough, and everyone will be part of the fight whether they like it or not.

“It’s an evil twin situation, isn’t it?” Surma asks, pulling out bolas from her belt and giving them a spin. The bola heads are shaped like mouse skulls. “You get a sense for these things, you know. Don’t go running, and follow my lead.”

Then she tosses the bolas at Jackdaw’s legs— how does Jackdaw react?

***

[b]In the Aquarium![/b]

“The reason I bodied the pod is because they were contracted to our enemies,” Black Coleman says.

He should have an eyepatch. Or something. Black scales? He shouldn’t look just like Coleman in a battered conductor’s hat and stained jacket.

“I remember this,” he adds, pistol pressed against the back of the Blemmyae’s head. “Funny how the Carnival works, right? Of course, this was just after the destruction of Wormwood. The beginning of the end. Anyway, younger me, the pod was contracting work to the [i]Constitutional[/i] and her crew, they refused to break their contract, and in the Vermissian Wars there’s no room for sentimentality.”

He looks you in the eye, Coleman, ignoring Wolf hugging Jackdaw tight to her body. “This Blemmyae made a heartworm seed. It nearly killed Sasha when fired into her third car. His sisters and brothers gave Red Zammie seed-guns and phlegm-cannons and sheets of living armor, and— you haven’t met her yet. But you will. God, what was it like, being you? Before we went down into the Heart and hatched Sasha into all this shit?”

His words are regretful, but his scaled finger is steady on the trigger. The Blemmyae grinds slablike teeth together in rage, huge fingers working as if to strangle an invisible Coleman, and in a moment he will attempt to square the circle of the temporal paradox by tearing Coleman Prime’s head off.