Four hours earlier, before the fight on the city docks, Reeva followed Torrance towards a different method to Vanto’s idea of travelling around the city at night. Reeva’s curiosity was raised when Torrance asked her how she was at climbing. It was further raised when he asked what her jumping was like. This curiosity was confirmed when, as soon as they had left The Four Claws, Torrance immediately began to climb up the wall of the tavern.

  Rooftops were the way for him instead of Vanto’s desire for the shadowy alleys and side streets.

  Reeva stood there for a moment, surprised by this. Torrance paused midway, looked down at her, and chuckled at her surprised expression before he beckoned to her to follow. So Reeva shrugged and followed him up.

  Comparatively, climbing up the side of a building with plenty of window ledges and degrading brick walling was a paltry affair to the sheer mountain climbs that she endured at the Guild for the better part of a year. Interestingly, Reeva was better at the outdoors than those of her two friends. Perhaps, in the life that she could barely remember, she was a true outdoorswoman. Climbing the mountains of ravines of her Eastern Isle nation… Maybe… Maybe that was the case.

  Before long, both she and Torrance were on the slated rooftop of the tavern and had the full view of the immediate district and the rooftops of the city around them. In the fair distance, Reeva could see the Royal Hall, once the dynastic home of the Royal Family of the Dargans. Now it played host to the Oligarchy of Barons. Reeva shuddered at the thought that Malachi and Markus could very well be there at that moment.

  Torrance noted the direction of her gaze. His face grew a shade stonier as he surveyed the grand old building that seemed to glow with latent pride against the darkened cityscape.

  “It is a shame.” He sighed with a weighted breath. “The Royal family wasn’t so bad. Time was, the Dargan lineage was filled with truly worthy heirs, filled with promise and power. About six centuries back, there was Toska Dargan, the fourth Dargan King. He fought alongside Ashgoth Wolfsbane, would you believe it?”

  Reeva blinked at him. “Really? Our Ashgoth?”

  “Yep. There was a great evil - as usual with most legends and stories - and the two joined forces to fight this great evil. A sadistic monster with a great hatred for humanity, who could command shadows and control creatures of the night…”

  Reeva rolled her eyes, but she humoured Torrance’s storytelling.

  He continued. “Toska and Ashgoth formed a fighting force known as the Royal Arms. They were trained by Ashgoth herself. And with that training, they led the counterassault against the Shadow and won.”

  “Wow… Great for them. And us, I suppose.”

  “Yeah. And the Royal Arms became the personal bodyguard and private army of the Dargan lineage for the rest of time.”

  “Until the Barons…”

  “Until them. It was only because of the last king’s weakness and his lax awareness of the Barons’ power that this country has gone the way it has.”

  “That was King Yorick, right?”

  “Yeah… Yorick.” Torrance’s lips curled and he spat on the shingles at the name. “Useless bastard.”

  “No love for the king, huh.”

  “He’s no king of mine.”

  Torrance tapped Reeva’s shoulder lightly and got her to follow him as they made a quick, if shaky, way over the adjoining rooftops.

  “What about the rebels?” Reeva asked. “Are they Royalists like people have been saying?”

  “Some of them are. The others are just looking for an excuse to fight.” Torrance replied as he hopped over a narrow alleyway. “The true rebels want to restore the Royals. Rumour has it that they’re the last of the Royal Arms. But most, if not all, of them got slaughtered during the coup eighteen years ago.”

  Reeva noted a flicker of pain that flashed across her one-eyed companion as he added, “But no one knows where the last Darganian heir is. Even if she is still alive.”

  “But if they did?”

  He shook his head. “Then they will have a lot of work to do.”

  She looked to him. “Where do you stand on it?”

  Torrance paused on the steeple of a roof to allow Reeva to catch up. He eyed her. “Dangerous words. You should be careful who you ask something like that.”

  “Does it really matter? I helped start a revolt. I’ve killed Baron soldiers. Hells, I’ve tried to kill a Baron. As far as I am concerned, I’m a rebel in everything but name.”

  Torrance chuckled. “Fair enough. Well, I’m not really for nor against the notion. If push came to shove, I suppose I would be fighting for the Royals. And that is if they have a proper fighting chance. It’s not like I would be siding with the Barons after what they did to the people of Silverstreak and to everyone else the last two fucking decades.”

  “Wait, are you saying you’d be fine with the Barons in power if Silverstreak didn’t happen?”

  “Only the ones who deserve that power. Who can help the people. You know, that position of Baron was held in high regard way back in the day. The Kings and Queens needed the Barons to manage the land whilst answering only to the rulers of this kingdom. They were decent people too in the past before this last generation.”

  “But they aren’t anymore.”

  “Yes. Because they allowed their lavish lives, their wealth, their power to infect them. Corrupting their souls. Their ideals became their crutches. Imagine having all that power and not being able to properly use it to your fullest? Or in this case, serving a king that you feel did not deserve your effort? Like Yorick… The Guild, the Royalists, the Oligarchy… Everyone is the same in that regard. We’re only human. So of course the Barons would rebel, as ironic as that is now. I know I would have if I were in their position.”

  “I wouldn’t let any of that corrupt me.”

  “Then you are better than me and nearly everyone in this country.”

  With that philosophical quandary discussed, the pair pulled on their hoods and black cloths to mask the lower part of their faces before continuing in silence towards the Merchant District.

  Torrance stopped short of the edge of the last series of connected rooftops and crouched down. He looked like an owl on the verge of striking its prey. Reeva followed his gait and hunkered down beside them.

  Before them was a large communal square, the type that served for market stall gatherings in the high time for wares to be bought and sold.

  In the dead of night, the courtyard was silent and abandoned. The splashing of the fountain was the only sound breaking the quiet.

  In the centre of the square was the large water fountain, formed into a hexagon with stone walls to keep in the shimmering water. The fountain had small marble sea creatures like fish, dolphins, and crustaceans spewing water from mouths and air-holes on their backs, but the main marble statue that took up the centre and surrounded by the sea life was a large and imposing snake-like creature that coiled and curled out from the water.

  Pale scales glistened against the water that dropped from the open mouth of the great snake creature. Three large dorsal fins, webbed between visible stone bones, splayed out as the great rose its head towards the sky in a silent roar, allowing the water to soar directly up before falling down onto itself. A pair of onyx stones made up for its two slitted eyes and its four extended fangs were of an admirable embossed brass.

  It was an incredible design. And Reeva was entranced by it. And in that entranced state, her mind began to remember something about that snake… A story. Her neck and the birthmark started to itch again.

  “Reeva?” Torrance asked. “You like the fountain?”

  Reeva blinked and the itch of her neck quickly faded. “Yeah… yeah… it’s the statue in the centre…”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “I… I remember a nanny…. A nurse. She told me and my friends about it. He was a giant snake… a wyrm… he swam under the oceans of the world, endlessly seeking adventure and stories. But he would never stop as the stories and the adventuring never satisfied him. And because of it, he would make waves and maelstroms from his lashing tail… The world feared that he would sink the land with his restlessness. Then one day, he stayed in the Eastern Isles. Because he had found a friend there. A human woman who had the ability to tell stories upon stories to the wyrm… he liked it so much, he remained. And the woman’s children and her children’s children continued the stories. So apparently, that is why there are always bad currents around the Archipelago. Because the snake still lives there, eager for another story. It’s a religion of the Easterners.”

  Reeva blinked back a stinging sensation in her eyes. She had been tearing up. Where had that memory and story come from? Why had that snake statue brought it back? Was her memory fixing itself? It felt so strange and yet so right, like a piece of herself had returned home at last.

  “I can’t tell who’s the better storyteller, you or me.” Torrance grinned. “That shit had me enthralled.”

  Reeva smirked. “Thanks. But still, the architect must have been from the Isles. That’s a frighteningly good likeness to what I thought the creature looked like.”

  “Maybe.”

  “How does the water come up like that?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea… Pretty imagery though.”

  The pair fell back into a wistful silence, happy to watch the fountain and its water.

  Occasionally, a stray man or woman would hurry across the expanse and around the fountain. It seemed that even a person would feel pretty exposed in such an area. Especially with the oil lamps that bordered the square and lit up the place brighter than a birthday cake.

  Torrance pulled out a scrap of paper and scanned the words written in ink.

  “Information from Volstag,” he said. “The meeting would be held in one of the three warehouses on this square.”

  “There,” Reeva pointed. Across from there was a series of three warehouses that loomed over the square. Reeva gritted her teeth. The thought that children were sold there, and were still being sold there… it sickened and enraged her at the same time.

  “The meeting would be sometime after midnight,” Torrance folded the piece of paper. “I don’t see any lights on inside. The best thing to do now is wait.”

  “Why is it always midnight?”

  “Part of the mystery…” Torrance waggled his fingers, which provoked a snort of laughter from her.

  Torrance then dangled his legs over the edge, laid his back on the tiles, and interlocked his fingers under his head, making himself quite comfortable.

  Reeva sat cross-legged and was grateful that the rooftop was not as slanted as she had feared. She didn’t want to spend her night worrying that she or Torrance would fall at any given moment. That would be quite the ignominious end to their journey.

  She looked up at the night sky. She could see some stars pricking the black ceiling. Somewhere in the city, Boras and Arcos were seeing the same stars. She missed them. She missed Arcos’s brooding attitude and Boras’s loutish jokes. They were a team, and it felt wrong to be separated from them in a city as dangerous as this one. A team. Just like Torrance had been… with Tilda.

  “Can I ask you something?” Reeva piped up, with the thought of her mentor in her mind.

  “Hmm?” Torrance murmured.

  “You and Sibling Tilda…”

  “Ah. I was wondering when one of you three would bring that up. May as well get it over with… Go on.”

  “Well… Were the two of you… involved? When you were at the Guild?”

  Torrance sighed deeply. It wasn’t a sigh of irritation or exasperation as Reeva had feared or expected. It was a sigh filled with melancholy. “Yes. We were.”

  “Wow. I didn’t expect Sibling Tilda to be so…”

  “Romantic?” Torrance finished with a smirk.

  “Well… yes.” Reeva turned to him. “She’s always been cold. But she cares too. I’ve seen that side of her. But sentiment? I never would have guessed. Did you two train together?”

  “Absolutely. We were the same generation of children in the Guild back then. We trained alongside Custio, Vance, and Valari. There were other friends I cared for, but they died in the service of the Guild. Tilda was a scrawny hunter that lived in the mountains, and I was a scrawny urchin that escaped from the city. I met up with old man Archibald on his way to the Guild. I was a precocious little shit. She was a fiery and passionate fighter. We didn’t get along well to begin with. Lots of bickering and contests to see who was better. But we learned to appreciate each other and rely on one another in the fights we had.”

  “The Guild sent you on missions? I never heard of that before.”

  “The Guild sent the Children on a lot of missions. Rescues, assassinations of bad people, investigations, espionage, proper adventuring things. Remember, Ashgoth and the Royal Arms? But after the coup and the Barons… the Elders sought to protect the Guild’s secrecy as a way to survive. Should the Barons have learnt of an independent power that operates with impunity and in defiance of their edicts, they wouldn’t have suffered us to live.”

  “So why did you leave? I thought you would be happy there? I mean, you had sibling Tilda. She’s very beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen really, to be honest.”

  Torrance raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh? You fancied her?”

  Reeva blushed. She grabbed her hood and pulled it forward to stop Torrance from seeing her face. “Well! Any woman would!”

  Torrance laughed, if a little saddened. “Don’t be bashful. Tilda is a looker, that’s for certain. Tell me, what was it that caught your eye? Her hair or the violet eyes?”

  “… the eyes.”

  “Knew it.” Torrance nodded with a ghost of a grin. “She had me with those piercing stares.”

  He smiled sadly. “Like a mountain violet rose. Impossible to reach and impossible to ignore. We had a love that could melt a glacier. Heh… I forgot the number of times that I would hopelessly profess my love to her, swearing my soul to hers in this world and the World of the Black. Blood rites and marriages, be damned. She laughed, as hard to imagine as that might be, she said the same back to me. We were hopeless and naive. And it would have been like that forever more. But when the Guild closed their doors to the world, that was a loss of freedom that I couldn’t handle.” Torrance paused in his words. Reeva saw in his pained expression that the memories he was reliving in order to tell her this was very trying.

  “She and I had a fight. A big one. It would have come to blows if not for Valari. She had to pull Tilda away from me when I stated that I wanted to leave. Hells, I’d never seen her so angry. She scared me. Tilda screamed at me, wishing that she and I never met. That I would die in a ditch from some pox-like malady. But I knew they were empty words. She didn’t really mean it. She was in pain. A pain that I had a hand in causing……” He rubbed his eyes. “Reeva… That’s as much as I am willing to say. If that is alright.”

  “Of- of course! I’m sorry.”

  A pause lengthened between the pair.

  Reeva was left feeling a swell of confused emotions. She had known this man for a short while, but he was unusually open for a stranger.

  Then again, he was a child of the Black, so he may as well be her family on a technical term. But he had told her so much. More of Tilda than Reeva had seen before. When she trained with the striking violet-eyed woman, she was enamoured with her.

  Tilda was the epitome of independence and self-reliance.

  Tilda never asked for help but only provided it. She was there to help Reeva and the others whenever they required it. She was stern but fair. And Reeva had to admit, she even started feeling an attraction for the woman. Her heart would skip a beat when Tilda looked at her. Gods be merciful, whose heart wouldn’t? But this broader view of Tilda surprised her. This conversation humanised Tilda in Reeva’s eyes and in such a way that made her admire the woman more and make her more curious about her.

  Tilda, a romantic? Unbelievable. Tilda laughing? Even more so.

  Tilda, who screamed and cursed at Torrance for breaking the relationship off with her, abandoning the Guild and her and all they meant to one another? Surely, that couldn’t be the only reason for it. Reeva considered his words. That I had a hand in causing… What pain did he help cause? There was more to this story, she was certain of that.

  Torrance spoke up, breaking Reeva’s train of thoughts.

  “Don’t be sorry. You and your friends left the Guild to pursue your personal goals. To save your friends and right wrongs. Just as much as I did. You want to understand me and the history I have with the Guild. You should. Just like the royalist rebels and the Barons and the countless ideals and factions on this continent, the progenitors of them all were the best of them all. What did Ashgoth do before establishing the Guild?”

  “She avenged herself and her children.”

  “Exactly. Now, as the Elders would tell you, the Black guided her to make this happen. To exact the balance, to make two wrongs into a right. But I believe that she solely wanted to avenge her children, balance or not. That was what the Guild was originally: a group of avengers. Wronged folks who felt justice was owed to them and they sought the tools to exact justice the only way they knew how. Now, as time rolled by, that hunger for vengeance changed to vigilance and then that desire for vigilance has become observation. Their ideals shifted. Now, my goals have shifted from when I was a boy. Tilda’s has. And so have yours and the two lads. So be curious. Curiosity provokes change. And that is good.”

  Footfalls echoed in the night. Torrance and Reeva both straightened up and scanned the city square for movement and… there!

  Two figures shifted from the dark and into the oil-fire’s lamplight.

  They wore black cloaks and hoods, the archetypal dress code for nocturnal affairs. They kept close to the buildings on the edge of the square, moving quickly and as silently as they could manage. This they did not manage, as both Torrance and Reeva spied them easily enough as the hooded pair reached the warehouses. They wrapped knuckles against the main doors of the middle warehouse, the personnel door opened ajar, and they were beckoned inside with speedy effect.

  “That’s our cue.” Torrance nodded.

  His jovial manner and warm eyes steeled over into a stony expression and the grimness of what they were about to do dawned on Reeva.

  What were the Children of the Black if not assassins? Killers from shadows…

  Was that not what they were at this moment? This gave Reeva a shiver of dread and then a shiver of excitement.

  Was this only what she wanted to do with the skills she had learnt at the Guild? To exact the justice against those who hurt the innocent?

  The Dargos and Malachis of the world punished at last.

  No longer hesitating, Reeva stood up and climbed down a drainpipe with Torrance, landing on the sodden ground of the alley and rushing with the speed of a Sarku across the square and around the water drake fountain.

  Reaching the warehouses, Torrance looked up and around the windows of the buildings.

  “This way,” he told Reeva in a sharp whisper before he ducked around the back of the three warehouses.

  “Where are we going?” She asked as she followed his lead.

  “I’ve been to this type of building before. If I am not mistaken, there should be a back window that is separated from the rest. Aha, there!” He stopped at the corner of the back and pointed up. Reeva looked up and sure enough there was a window.

  “You ready?” Torrance asked her. Reeva gave him a firm nod.

  “Alright,” and they climbed.

  Reaching the window, Torrance dug his taloned gauntlet into the wooden panelled wall. With his free gauntlet, he extended his claws and pressed the blades into and under the window’s panel. With a twist and a lift, the weak lock broke against the powerful steel and the window swung inwards. Torrance gave a silent thumbs up to Reeva and they clambered inside.

  In the darkness of the room, Torrance took a hold of Reeva’s shoulder, being careful not to scratch her with his talons, and kept her crouched.

  “From now on, be as silent as you can be,” he whispered. “If we see a guard, you will stay where you are and I will handle them. If there is a fight, they will hear it and then we go all out. No one in this place is a friend. They have a hand in selling children. They are therefore all a threat and must die, if there is indeed a full-on fight. Understand?”

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  “Yes, sir.”

  Torrance flashed a savage grin. “That’s my girl. Let’s go.”

  Crouched, the pair shifted through the dark and towards the thin sliver of light that peeked under the closed door to the room. Torrance pressed his ear against the door and listened for any movement. Hearing nothing, he reached up and turned the door handle. It creaked open ever so slightly. Light illuminated the room, revealing it to be for storage, many stacked boxes filled with coffee beans and dried tea leaves. The pair crept out into a hallway of other doors, lit up by a line of ceiling oil lamps. Pushing onwards, they headed to the end of the corridor, being extremely careful not to make any creaking noises on the floorboards.

  Reeva felt her heart thud in her chest and blood pumping around her ears when they stopped short of the corner.

  Torrance held up a fist and pressed a finger to his lips. There were footsteps coming. Reeva was slightly pushed back by Torrance to rise to his full height, back against the wall and waiting quietly as the approaching person came closer and closer, until…

  Torrance shot out his hand, grabbed the man who had carried a cloth sack and swung him around. Reeva darted forth and caught the sack before it struck the floor. It was heavy and clunked metallically in her hands. Torrance pressed the man against the wall, clasped his gauntlet over the man’s mouth and extended his claws. He poised the twin tips at the man’s eyes, which were stricken with terror.

  “You will not say a word. You will only nod or shake your head. One word or sound and your soul shall be dispatched to the World Beyond with brutal effect. Am I understood?” Torrance said all of this with a deathly finality that sent a chill through Reeva. Torrance did not fuck about.

  The man nodded frantically.

  Torrance nodded slowly and released his gauntlet from the man’s mouth, all the while keeping his claws out and ready. The man was older than most, possibly pushing into his fiftieth year. He was balding, wrinkled and had a hunch to his back. He swallowed nervously as he stared at the two intruders before him.

  “Are you a worker here?” Torrance asked.

  A nod.

  “The merchants. Are they all here? All four of them?”

  Another nod.

  “Any guards?” Reeva followed up.

  Another nod.

  “The number, are they more than ten?”

  A shake.

  Reeva looked to the man. “Use your fingers, how many?” She asked.

  The man blinked a couple of times, mentally counting the number. He flicked up his fingers in a counting rhythm, bringing the count to seven.

  “Alright. That’s not so bad…” Torrance said. “Step forward, turn around.”

  The man, hands still raised, stepped forward. He turned around and as soon as he did, Torrance wrapped his arm around the man’s neck and choked him.

  Reeva stepped back as the man flailed his arms, but was not able to speak. It took a matter of seconds before he went limp in Torrance’s grip. Torrance lowered the man to the floor.

  “He isn’t dead.” Torrance said, reassuring Reeva’s surprised expression. “He’s not the target, so it’s unnecessary.”

  “I- I thought you were going to kill him. You seemed very convincing back there.”

  “I had to be. Didn’t want to have him ruin our plan.”

  “Would you have killed him?”

  “If he fucked us around, yes. But only as a last resort. Some people deserve a chance to live. Tilda taught me that… Get the door for me, if you’d be so kind.”

  Reeva nodded and opened the door which they had come from. Torrance dragged the unconscious man in.

  After leaving him in there, the duo headed onwards. Rounding the corner, they reached a flight of steps which more light spilled in.

  Stepping down the steps lightly, they stood before a balcony that encircled and looked down into the main room of the warehouse where carts were stored along both sides of the room in smaller wooden alcoves. The light illuminating the area was from the several fire torches on tall iron plinths, dotted about around the floor. The great sliding front doors of the warehouse were bolted shut from the inside. And in a small circle at the centre of the lit room were a group of four people dressed in fine linen and tunics, with some of the guards— five in their sight— standing by.

  “I’m seeing five guards,” Reeva confirmed in a whisper.

  Torrance wordlessly tapped her shoulder and pointed across the way, and Reeva saw a figure hidden in shadow. The figure was standing by the balcony’s edge, holding an oil lantern. They were quietly watching over the meeting. A shift in the shadow behind the figure suggested that they were not alone. Which made it seven guards.

  “What do we do?” Reeva asked Torrance. It was odd, in a nice way. She and the other two had no issue striking out on their own, taking their justice against the Barons’ soldiers. They had acted on their own agency for weeks, their own autonomy. But Torrance exuded a calm confidence not dissimilar to Tilda’s. A natural energy of leadership. One that Reeva felt drawn to and respecting. She knew, intrinsically, that his was not her mission to conduct. It was Torrance’s.

  Torrance rubbed his mouth, thoughts swirling across his expression. “Alright. We can’t let them leave, otherwise we’ve failed. What I need you to do is creep around to the other side, stay silent. When you’ve reached the far edge of the balcony, climb down to the ground floor and block the front doors. There’s a cart nearby, one of those pushing types, it’s small enough so you can move it on your own and it will be a good obstacle. Put that against the iron bar holding the door and I’ll handle the rest. You ready?”

  Reeva shook her head. “Not like we have a choice.”

  “No, we don’t.” Torrance squeezed her shoulder and shifted past her, quickly fading into the darkness. Reeva gulped and crawled her way towards her destination.

  While she moved, the merchants in the pit were locked into a heated discussion.

  “It doesn’t matter!” One of them, an old man with a lengthy ponytail, snapped. “We have to leave this city tonight or at the latest tomorrow!”

  “Calm yourself, Georg.” One of the women spoke out, a youthful lass with short hair closely braided to her scalp. “If the Docking Fellows are finally moving against the Mercury Gang, we must stay to show our own resolve. Whoever wins, we will stand with them.”

  Georg Logger waved his hands frantically. “I don’t want to wait, Fanri. Every day that goes by, I get the feeling that silver-faced bastard Victor knows what we’ve been up to! I keep losing contacts by the week, either they say they had to leave the city because of family troubles or they go missing and no one knows where or how! You don’t think that too coincidental? It’s Victor, he knows, dammit!”

  “Even if he knows,” the second woman spoke, a bald, dark-skinned woman standing beside a male copy of herself. “Victor can’t do a thing. He and the rest of the Gangs have to lie low, especially with the Barons’ being so incensed by the goings-on in the North and the West. Any excuse for the Lawgivers, the Fist, the Bodyhunters, the Smiters, or those damned Ravens to come down on the Gangs, any at all… Do not worry, he won’t do a thing.”

  “Thank you, Jocelyn.” Fanri Tailor said. “We just keep our heads on straight. Keep working and bringing in the wares to be sold, and we say nothing. It is no different from what we had to do last year and before then.”

  “And what about Volstag?” Georg piped up.

  “What about him?” The second man answered, no doubt Jocelyn’s brother, Zantrix Brewer.

  “He’s been seen at the Mercurial Den. It is clear whose hand feeds that repugnant mouth.”

  “Never mind him,” Fanri waved away that concern. “He will be dealt with. Once the Docking Fellows finish off the Mercuries, we will arrange for Volstag and his family to have a holiday out of the city. And should an accident occur on the country roads, then that is all because of the Hands of Fate. Believe you me, I have more than enough reason to rid the city of that slug. You have any idea at all how much of my business suffered because of his whistleblowing? He certainly tried to cover his tracks, but I know he did it… Anyway, what else is there to discuss?”

  Reeva continued her crawl; she was halfway there. She glanced across the pit, towards the two guards that Torrance had spied. She stared. They were gone.

  Gone, already?! Reeva was stunned.

  Not even a sound of a struggle, not so much as a creak of the floorboards. Torrance was no fool; he trained alongside Tilda. He was good, damned good. He soon appeared from the dark, holding up the still-lit lantern in order to keep up the pretence of a guard’s presence. He gave her a quick thumbs up before retreating out of sight.

  Reassured, Reeva crept towards the end of the balcony. The shadows were plenty in her immediate area, with most of the lanterns situated on the ground floor. Slowly hoisting herself over the banister, she then lowered herself down. Her fingers gripped the edge of the wood and began to shake with the pressure. Her heart thudded quickly. She willed for all the hope of the world that no one saw her. With most of her arms extended, she let go and dropped.

  She landed on the soft ground, with bent knees and splayed hands to lessen the impact of the landing. She still made a sound, a whoompf. That drew two of the guards’ attention. In the same motion, Reeva tucked and rolled into the shadow of a large crate and hunkered down as low as she could manage.

  While their employers continued their meeting, the two guards that Reeva attracted made a slow journey towards Reeva’s hiding spot.

  Reeva fought to slow down her breathing and control the rising worry in her mind.

  “Any news from your rebel friends, Zantrix?” Jocelyn asked. “Last I heard, they suffered a brutal loss in their little insurrection at that coastal town down south. Tigerstone, was it?”

  “Hmm. They said it was an insurrection, it wasn’t. It was a robbery; the magistrate Daldon vanished soon afterwards. The funny thing is, it wasn’t even the rebels doing it. I was told it was some drifters from a hamlet close to the Great Thicket. The royalists just took the credit and used the chaos to start a fight in the town.”

  Georg shuddered. “Until Fosto’s Smiters came along and broke their spines. How many died that day?”

  A shrug from Fanri. “Fifty to sixty dead during the riot. Then some survivors were grabbed at random and got gibbeted as a warning. Not sure how many actually got away…”

  “That being said,” Zantrix added, “I have made great pains to sever my connections with them so that I cannot be tied to any activities. It is clear to me that the rebels are seeing their last days.”

  “Whatever works for us in the long term.” Fanri nodded.

  Reeva could practically hear the guards on the other side of the crate. She had her hands on Bonebreaker; its familiar weight settled her mind. She would have to fight these men and then make for the gate and block it.

  A crash of wood and a cry of shock from one of the guards derailed her train of thought. All heads, intruder, guard, and merchant alike, whipped towards the crumpled body of a man that had fallen through the broken banister of the balcony and was sprawled on the floor. The man’s neck was broken, his head set at an ugly angle.

  “What the hells!” Georg squeaked as he backed away.

  The remaining guards, including the two that Reeva hid from, rushed towards the dead man.

  Thank you, Torrance!

  Seeing the chance Torrance had provided, Reeva darted out from cover and made for the small hand-cart. It had a few bags of flour, but she was able to lift the handles anyways and push the cart quickly in front of the pedestrian door. For good measure, she tipped the cart against the door and wedged it in place.

  “Hey!” A man shouted, possibly Zantrix or Georg. “What are you doing!?”

  Shit.

  Reeva felt a lump in her throat; it was a question for her.

  She turned and could see that all eyes lay on her. Her hood was still up, so her face was still unseen. At least that worked out well enough.

  She was caught in a compromising position for certain, hands on an overturned cart. Why the hells did Torrance think that this was a good plan?

  Reeva gritted her teeth and counted her odds. Five guards, four civilians. That would make five genuine threats, five immediate deaths, four problems easily handled. If she was quick, she could use Bonebreaker to break up the group and pick off the fighters one by one. But that would leave her open to others rushing her. Unless, the playing field were evened.

  And as that thought came by her mind, a second crash emitted from behind the group. They all whipped around and saw the second dead guard on the ground; only this one had their throat slit open.

  Reeva stood to her feet and had Bonebreaker out and ready, moving to the side and keeping the group away from her.

  Seeing their intruder on the move, the five remaining guards drew their swords and encircled the panicking merchants.

  And Torrance stepped out from the shadows, looming over the balcony’s edge.

  “Good evening,” he said plainly. “Lovely night for a dodgy meeting.”

  The merchants didn’t know who to look at, either Reeva or this new masked arrival.

  “Who are you people?” Georg screamed, terror filling his sagging eyes.

  “Do-gooders would be an appropriate title,” Torrance replied. He lifted his legs over the banister and dangled over the edge, his gauntlet hands gripped and scratching on the wood posts.

  “Assassins,” Fanri surmised. “You are assassins, are you not?”

  Torrance shrugged. “From a certain perspective, then sure.”

  “Who are you working for?! The Mercury Gang? The Barons!?”

  “We’re not working for anyone,” Reeva snapped. “We’re here because of what you’ve been doing. What you’re still doing! How many children have you stolen and sold? Dozens? Hundreds?”

  One of the guards, whose mantle was up and covering their face, paused at Reeva’s voice.

  “That was what this is about?” Jocelyn sneered. “Those children were urchins, orphans, runaways! No one cared what would happen to them!”

  The guard who paused at Reeva’s words stared at Jocelyn’s words and the people around them.

  “Unfortunately for you, we do,” Reeva hissed. “This ends tonight.”

  “There is only one way this is going to end,” Torrance said coldly. “Understand that what happens next…” He dropped from the balcony, landed on his knees, and clenched his fists, punching the ground. Standing up to his full height, his four iron claws pulled out of the ground with a low hiss. “Know that it was your fault.”

  Several things happened very quickly.

  Torrance surged from his side, whilst Reeva swung out Bonebreaker like a viper’s strike.

  The hesitant guard ducked and rolled away from the main group that had remained stationary. Which would prove fatal for them.

  Bonebreaker’s flail swung through the air and cut short the scream emitted by poor Georg.

  The flail buried itself halfway through his skull.

  Unable to retrieve the whip from the fractured skull of the dead man, Reeva dropped the handle and darted forward with Ashmak’s knuckledusters adorning her hands. She didn’t bring Valari’s prized repeating crossbow with her as it would have hampered her rooftop travels, but she certainly wished she had.

  It would’ve made this fight a lot easier. A stupid mistake; she won’t make that again.

  Two guards rushed for her, with Fanri bringing up the rear with a hidden dagger that she slid out from her sleeve. Reeva was impressed; the merchant was not content with hiding.

  Reeva commended her for her bravery, even though she was a despicable creature selling children.

  The two guards had shortswords, perfect for fast, close-quarter combat.

  But Reeva was fast.

  She ducked one wild swing and fired an uppercut into the man’s exposed chin. With grim satisfaction, she felt and heard bone breaking as the man’s head whipped back and he fell away, dazed and yelping.

  The second guard’s weapon lunged at her sternum, but Reeva was able to dodge the sword by allowing the weapons to pass in the gap between her waist and elbow. She clenched that area shut, trapping the man’s sword hand whilst lashing out a wild kick at Fanri, who stabbed at her with an overhand attack.

  The kick was enough to stop the merchant from burying the blade into Reeva’s neck, but not enough to stop it from gashing down and along her thigh and past her knee. Hot pain shrieked through her body as she screamed.

  Meanwhile, Torrance battled the Brewer Twins and the other two guards. Both twins produced serrated swords that they had hidden in their coats, and both guards wielded two-handed axes. Torrance, fists up and claws out, danced and jumped around the four. He watched their movements as they constantly tried to strike him, but he would always leave enough room to evade danger.

  He saw that Zantrix was slower than his sister but stronger.

  Jocelyn was fast but weaker than the rest. The guards were trained fighters, but their stances were sloppy and not in sync. Torrance scoffed with derision. When was the last time these guards had a real fight? When they weren’t busy bullying shop owners or harassing barmaids?

  He grinned. He knew who to kill first.

  So with a spinning roundhouse kick, he knocked down one guard and swung his right claws into Zantrix’s face. The man screamed and lurched back with blood flecks arcing in the air. The second guard lunged and swung the axe at Torrance. Torrance batted the axe aside with his left claws with a clang of metal before he kicked out the guard’s leg from under him. As the guard dropped, Torrance upturned his right fist and with one fluid motion, drove the claws into and through the man’s chin, killing the guard instantly.

  Reeva’s scream of pain distracted Torrance for a crucial moment, which Jocelyn exploited by driving her sword into Torrance’s extended leg and pinning him to the floor.

  Torrance yelled in agony, twisted around in his rage, and drove his opened left gauntlet into her stomach, grabbed tight, twisted, and then drew out her organs in a slurping rip of claw, blood, and gore.

  Guts pulled and blood splashing the dirt floor, Jocelyn coughed out bile and blood before collapsing almost instantly.

  “Sister!” Zantrix screamed.

  Reeva smashed her fist into the guard’s face as he struggled to retrieve his sword from her hold. He felt skin and muscle tear as she bashed the knuckledusters into his face repeatedly with a series of rabid punches. Her leg was on fire. She gritted her teeth against the surges of agony that leapt up her body each time she used that limb.

  Fanri leapt back up, teeth gritted and hissing as she swiped her dagger to catch Reeva’s face with a stab. But Reeva twisted and turned the dazed, pulped guard into Fanri’s path, causing her dagger to drive into the side of the guard’s head.

  Torrance tore out Jocelyn’s sword from his leg just as Zantrix came down onto him in a bloodcurdling shout of maddened grief. “Bastard! Fucking die! DIE!”

  Torrance had no way to escape.

  He had no chance. He saw his life flash before him in the form of a single person as the sword came down at him.

  He saw Tilda. In all her beauty. In all her anger. In all her power.

  A true fighter in all senses of that word… He wished he could see her again, but alas the Black deemed it not to be the case.

  A clash of blades brought him out of his near-death experience.

  He stared in surprise as the fifth guard who had fled from the fight had a sword out and blocked Zantrix’s attack which was inches from Torrance’s neck.

  “What the hells are you doing?!” Zantrix snarled before unleashing a second blow at the traitorous guard that held their ground.

  Torrance rolled back from that fight and saw across the floor that Reeva was under attack from Fanri. He grabbed a hold of the swallow-blade daggers in his belt. “KID!” He cried.

  Fanri grabbed the dead guard and threw him aside to get at Reeva. “You little bitch!” She hissed as she leapt at her.

  Reeva deflected Fanri’s jab by knocking her dagger hand to one side before throwing a left hook that collided with Fanri’s chin.

  Fanri spat blood and staggered back.

  Reeva pushed forward. She ducked a wild swing from Fanri and retaliated with a series of punches that tenderised Fanri’s torso. Fanri coughed and retched and doubled over from the wind knocked out from her. Reeva wound back her fist to deliver a finish blow, but Torrance shouted a warning.

  “KID!” He cried.

  Reeva whipped around to see the first guard that she knocked out running for her. He recovered faster than she thought, and his axe—

  The axe came downwards in a single deadly swing as she staggered backwards.

  Reeva saw the blood before she felt the pain. The axe came down, and while missing her clavicle (which would have killed her if she hadn’t stepped back), it made a straight slice down diagonally from her left shoulder, across her chest, and towards her torso’s right side.

  Reeva cried out and jumped back, pain screaming out all over her body.

  That was it. That was the final straw.

  Her body had had enough.

  The pain rushed all over, striking at her eyes, her mouth, her brain, and then concentrating on the back of her neck. Where the itch had been.

  The pain focused there, having found a hold to latch on to. The pain increased and increased and increased.

  Reeva felt herself disassociate from the world.

  The blood and adrenaline pumping through her mind made the world slower than it seemed. The guard that injured her rushed for her, but slower.

  Slow enough for Reeva to register that the warmth at her neck became hot.

  Such heat. Such intense pain. Such emotion. Such feeling. A feeling that was rage, fear, and excitement.

  A feeling that Reeva felt only once before.

  There. In that tiny memory that she had… On the sea. In that storm. Seeing her father drown. Seeing that terrible wave coming down on her. To smash her boat, her life, her body, and the world that she trusted. And in that water, the heat began.

  The rush of emotion… to survive.

  “NO.” Came out a voice that Reeva was certain was not hers, and yet it erupted from her lips.

  The axe swung again.

  And Reeva watched her hands move fast.

  Faster than she could hope.

  Those hands caught the axe blade in a clap of palms. Reeva felt the sting of the cut in her palms. She ignored it.

  Twisting the axe out from the stunned guard’s grip and throwing it aside, Reeva fired out her hand and grabbed the guard by the throat. The guard’s eyes widened in horror and struggled like a rabid cat. He swung a fist to strike at her face. It connected and it hurt.

  But Reeva didn’t acknowledge it. Or she didn’t care. She was in a trance. A hunter’s trance. There was no longer rage. Nor fear, nor doubt. There was only cold focus. Her world had been boiled down to two factors.

  Herself. And her prey. Her prey that was now struggling to escape. No. He would not.

  Latching her second hand on his neck, she squeezed.

  The guard panicked and tried to call for help. A useless attempt.

  Reeva’s grip tightened and with unfound and unnatural strength, she lifted her prey off the ground. The guard was being hanged by her own hands. She didn’t even need to squeeze now. Just let him dangle.

  It was only natural. This man and his ilk, they preyed on the weak.

  The defenceless and the broken. Children who deserved a better life.

  Oh, how fitting. For this man to be the prey for once.

  Torrance watched in confused shock as Reeva suffered the cut, as she dealt with her attacker and as she throttled the man to death.

  There was a part of him, long dormant, that awoke to the sight of her. It shivered to form and presented its name to his mind. Fear. He was afraid of her. The strength it took to effortlessly lift that man and kill him with silence. What was hells was this girl?

  Whatever she was, she wasn’t being aware.

  The woman Fanri had recovered from her blow and was staggering with a dazed gait towards Reeva, a dagger still in hand. Torrance had to give it to the merchant, she was tenacious.

  He pulled out his swallow blade, made a short whistle to grab Fanri’s attention and flung the dagger forward as she turned her head.

  Fanri had lived her entire life according to her law of doing business: make more money than what you pay your clients and crush anyone that stood in your way. Sometimes that meant overcharging your clients, sometimes that meant stealing from your clients. And sometimes you had to get into lines of merchandise which were less moral than others. Like the selling of slaves and that of mislaid children. Fanri didn’t see anything wrong with that. They were a lucrative profit, the Barons seemed to think so. So much, they made practically made slavery a law.

  The Scandal, however… that put a hellfire to her plans and her prospects.

  It never really occurred to her that her actions would have consequences. Consequences like the Scandal… or a dagger that flew towards her face.

  Maybe, if she had a chance to go back… Maybe she would have done something to change the fate she faced. To change the trajectory of that knife. But no. It was too late, it was too—

  The knife embedded itself into and through her skull. Fanri died, standing for one second and dropping to the ground in the next.

  The throttled guard had finally stopped kicking. Reeva blinked and the trance faded away. As did her strength, for she dropped the suddenly heavy body onto the floor. She stepped back, staring at the dead man and her shaking hands, now sore from the effort of holding a man and throttling the life from him.

  Why did she do that? She had no idea.

  How did she do that? She had no idea.

  And what voice was that? The voice that sounded deep and filled with untamed anger? Again, she had no idea. But what was certain, the itch on her birthmark… it was back. A small irritation, a constant reminder of its presence. She reached around and scratched the birthmark. It felt rough, like a hundred tiny scabs blended together into a carapace-like shield.

  This was more than a birthmark, this was something more. Was she Marked, like the Belle Dame or the others she read about in her studies with Archibald Scribe?

  Reeva had no answers…

  A cry of pain and a wet splashing noise drew her reeling thoughts towards the final guard who had performed a flourish swipe of their blade, cutting into Zantrix’s stomach and withdrawing his bowels in a waterfall of blood and viscera.

  Zantrix dropped his sword, tried to grab at his entrails and stammered something that could have been words. But no, the guard would not give him even that. The guard drew back their weapon and, with a thudding hack, decapitated Zantrix.

  The final surviving guard wheezed and panted, so utterly exhausted from the fight. Torrance drew himself up onto his feet, using one of the guards’ swords as a crutch. He felt his leg throb and the blood flow down from the deep cut. He shivered from the pain on standing. But he had been through a lot worse; he knew he’d be okay as long as they got back home.

  The guard immediately dropped their sword and raised a hand in a gesture of peace towards the pair. “Please! Wai’ a sec!”

  Reeva shook her head at the sound of the voice. She recognised it from somewhere. “What?” She turned to the guard who pulled off the helmet that obscured their face.

  Reeva gaped, recognising the woman’s face instantly. “Malka!?” She cried out.

  “Hi lass.” The bounty hunter Malka Catcher nodded wearily before leaning forward onto her knees and panted.

  Torrance straightened up his body and hobbled over to Reeva. “You alright, kid?”

  “I’m… I’m fine. I think. I-” She stared at his stabbed leg. “Gods… You’re hurt.”

  “Ah.” He waved it off. “Nothing a few lashings of Blood Bark wouldn’t fix.”

  “The hells’ Blood Bark?”

  “I’ll show you. Anyway, you know eachother?” He flicked his hands between the two women.

  Reeva nodded. “Yeah, she got me and the boys into the city.”

  “Well, isn’t that kind of her.” Torrance smiled at Malka who watched the pair of them with some uncertainty. “You have my thanks. You saved my life just now.”

  “I didn’ know wha’ they did.” Malka replied, shuffling from one foot to the other as she glanced at the dead bodies around them. “They only ‘ired me yesterday after I dropped off m’ cargo at the docks. When they said wha’ they said… I couldn’ stand by and do nothin’ abou’ it. If you hadn’ turned up, I would’ve done ‘em in misself.”

  “Thanks for that.” Reeva grinned. “That’s twice you helped me.”

  “No idea you knew Four Claws though. Didn’ think you three were tha’ connected. Though’ you were just a bunch of wet-eared brats lookin’ ta steal somethin’.”

  Reeva made a shrug. “Neither did we, to be honest. Torrance, this is Malka Catcher.”

  “I’ve heard of you.” Torrance nodded firmly to Malka. “Good fighter. Racked up quite the body count with a gang of smugglers off Hook’s Edge last week. You could be of some help.”

  Malka rubbed the back of her head. “Well, you know… Wha’ you’ll do ta make cash, I suppose. Wha’ the hells are you doing here anyway? And wha’ help are we talkin’ abou’ here?”

  “Come with us back to base.” Reeva suggested. “There’s a lot you should know.”

  Malka considered for a moment. She looked around again at the dead bodies surrounding the three of them. She chewed her tongue, gave a couple of self-reflective clicks of her tongue, and grinned.

  “Could be fun. Fuck it, let’s go.”