You are listening to a Clark's World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clark's World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.

This is our fifth story for the month of July 2017, issue 130. There's not

much news to report except to say a thank you for those of you who continue to

support us via any method you can.

Patreon.com.slash, world, just a dollar or more a month,

can show how much you appreciate what we're trying to do here at the magazine.

And who knows with a big enough following?

We can do something even more incredible and magical.

So our good story is titled Last Chance, and is by Nicole Connor Stace.

Nicole lives in New Paltz, New York. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in a number of magazines in anthologies including Best American Fantasy, Clockwork Phoenix, and 4, The Mammoth Book of Steam Punk, the Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, zombies, More Recent Dead, Apex, and Fantasy

magazine. She is the author of Desideria, The Winter Triptych, and the Norton Award finalist archivist Wasp.

You can find her at her website,

Nicole Cornerstace.com, and that is NIC O-L-E-K-O-R-N-H-E-R-S-A-A-C-A-C-E-E-E. So as I've been whispering into your ear for the last almost 10 years, sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

Mama was the very best torturer in all the three valleys.

Everybody said so. Torturer means someone who's good at making you tell secrets, even when you don't want to.

It's hard to lie to Mama, so I know she's really good at her job.

Even the king up in Greyfall knew Mama was the best. He probably had his own

torturer because a king has everything, but who was it getting brought in the fancy

card all the way up to the high road whenever the king had a secret keeper in his jail?

You guess who?

I don't know why mama didn't want to move to Grayfall.

...