The basement of the "Ochre Tea" smelled of mold and cheap tobacco, but the silent corner where Brog and Miren hid at nightfall, after the rainy crossing, smelled of silver and death.

  On the small piece of matte cloth between them, illuminated only by a weak wall lantern, rested the single flawless coin tossed by the overcoat-wearing observer from the floor above.

  The silver shield with three crossed spears, the insignia of the Academy's Crown in aged lead, neither swayed nor reflected false glimmers. It was, in fact, impossible money for their sewers. The clean advance payment just to hear the man out the next day.

  Miren stared at it with deep bags under her eyes, chaining cigarettes through the room in succession.

  "Official Minor Guild contracts only demand we hand over bone and acid from stinking tombs, and we get robbed in taxes at every turn in the city hall..." Miren whispered, her dry voice echoing the bitter taste of danger. "But when real money, polished by the royalty of a cradle that reeks of expensive Academy soap, falls into a foggy alley at the feet of a sweeper dwarf... the demands trade wild exoskeleton beasts for the hide of men. Hiding bodies in the trash of inner courtyards that the center guards don't patrol. Clean blood on dirty sidewalks."

  Brog ran his giant calloused hand over the dented tin plate. He knew what that meant. He had already seen partners die for dreaming of the clean air of the upper floors. The rich don't play with gutter peasants; they grind them up.

  "The man knows the skinny long-ears is a sharp stake against things in the dark... and he figured out the bizarre secret Nasir hides in that twisted chest," Brog growled. The veins in his neck bulged beneath the soot, moved by a sudden fear and protective instinct. "He walked the roof ducts without making a sound, in a neighborhood where even a rat coughing is heard. We go there tomorrow morning, hear this decoy's impossible proposal, and politely refuse with all our ghetto manners to avoid becoming noble charcoal. One last sack of this fortune before we fade out of sight to a darker corner until the dust settles. If I try to run now... he kills the kids before I can even draw the hammer from my back."

  Miren didn't counter her walled partner's bitter prudence with harsh orders. She tied her tight belt of potions around her flanks in a silent, dark response, closing her exhausted, icy expression. Desperation brought dust, but blind excess ambition aiming at hidden nobility would bring much worse crushed bones.

  ***

  The border between the forgotten Industrial Ruins and wealthy Orynth lay at the Silver Threshold. The people from below, who dared not bump into the brutal and incorruptible uniformed militias, called it simply the Black Arches.

  They were massive bridges and hollowed-out mansions of government bureaucracy. White alchemical lights illuminated clean docks, marble pavements, and patrols in thick rows with golden cloaks, marching against intruders from the slums.

  Malik walked the edge of the puddle, his hand slipping over the armored handle of the knife. The bright light of the enormous space made him tense. Nasir walked almost glued to the leather chainmail of Brog's calf, the dwarf striding in a dark and imposing silence. They moved through the crevices of limestone statues, while Miren covered the rear in the shadows.

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  Exactly as stipulated, behind the minor watch docks, the rotten smell turned into perfumed foreign tobacco smoke. At eight at night in the shadows unreachable by the globes of suspended public streetlamps, an overcoat-clad figure stood waiting with his back turned. He was leaning against a parapet untouchable to the four mercenaries under his invitation.

  "I didn't expect the instinctive discretion of such a lethal group, not in the open arches of our neighborhood." The hatted man's clear voice echoed softly across the flagstones. "Wild dogs generally bark at the first streetlight or reek of fear far from here, in their burrows with dirty water up to their knees."

  "Pour out the damn plan or I take my silvers and cut back to the trench." The veteran dwarf didn't move from the hidden corner of the wall. Brog braced his bulky, chain-covered size, holding the boys back in a defensive position behind him in the dark.

  The observer hid the tips of his perfect gloves in his coat pockets. He turned slowly into the rain of the penumbra, the shadows cut by the cold light revealing the arrogant and ruthless features on the nobleman's jaw.

  "I am Lord Valerius." The name echoed through the vaults of the Black Arches like a funeral bell. He ignored Brog's tension and fixed his sharp gaze directly on the tip of Nasir's nose, protected in the center of the wall of muscle around him.

  "There is a deserter from our Magic Guild hiding in a tavern in the Mid-Levels." Valerius pulled an expensive silver flask from beneath his heavy collar, distilling an unshakeable pause. "He knows the route of our alchemical deliveries from the Academy and has been selling them to underworld thugs to profit with local gangs. It is a dishonor. And, more than that... a public nuisance that my uniformed guardian militias cannot touch without blowing up a scandal in the clean sewer alleys he fled to."

  The cut light revealed a predator's icy smile on the lord's mouth.

  "I need wraiths who can slip unnoticed past the warders of the magical barriers. Someone who doesn't use magic or exude a raw innate core, but who can see the lethal locks in the dark of the intermediate floors perfectly. Someone like this boy, with his inexplicable intuition, escorted by your stealthy blades. I want the deserter's blood splattered on his bedroom wall tomorrow before dawn, and with no trace on the doors or in the dust for the suits to see."

  Silence fell over the Threshold. Brog didn't move a muscle, but his fingers squeezed the handle of his hammer in anger beneath the leather of his cloak. Miren dragged slowly on an unlit cigarette, her gray eyes fixed and narrowed on the lord, as if perfectly estimating the distance to cut his vacuum-sealed neck before he could escape.

  Malik instinctively reached for the new knife resting on his hip.

  He gasped. It was no longer killing ants for a few coins to fill their bellies with hot milk. It was butchering a human target, clean living blood for magnates. And for a hidden cause on the luxurious, rotten side of Orynth.

  Nasir rested his thinness against the flesh and metal of the protective dwarf's leg. He felt the weight of that elegant capital man's offer. This wasn't a contract like the others with insects. It was a lead chain that, once accepted, would drag everyone to the bottom with no return. And Valerius knew it.

  "We need to think," Brog finally growled, his dry, guttural voice cutting the freezing air.

  Lord Valerius tilted his head slightly, an almost invisible smile appearing beneath the brim of his hat.

  "Of course. Until tomorrow, same time. Do not be late."

  The lord disappeared into the shadows of the Black Arches, leaving only the echo of his own footsteps and the suffocating weight of a choice that could cost much more than the life of one of them.