Although her coat hangs off her, she doesn’t look fragile.My eye flinches, a subtle ripple on a surface I’ve worked so hard to keep placid.I don’t know why this detail annoys me, but it does.
The order was clear.
Observe.
Confirm.
Contain if necessary.
Containment is not my speciality.I’m not a ward, not a keeper.
I’m a blade.
She turns down a narrow alley behind the main street covered in lanterns.The crowd thins, the lanternlight growing sparse the further away she walks through the tight streets smelling of damp stone and ash.
This is where my gaze sharpens—watching for how she behaves when she is alone.I don’t have enough information yet to intervene, so instead I jump from rooftop to rooftop, following her measured steps.Keeping a distance like this would be absurd for an ordinary man, but it's effortless for me.Working within the shadows all these years has allowed me to become familiar within their presence.
She walks quickly, but doesn’t look back.
That should reassure me.But it doesn’t.
There’s something off about her presence.Not magic—at least not like my own, or the kind that I’ve studied.Just a subtle pressure in the air, like standing too close to a storm that hasn’t broken yet.
I don’t like things I can’t classify.
She stops at a green door half-hidden behind hanging laundry and taps a rhythm with her free hand.
She doesn’t have to wait long before the door opens, an older female voice greeting her like a familiar friend.They exchange a few words I can’t hear before the girl slips inside and the door closes.
I make light work of jumping off one of the tin roofs and slip into an alley, my eyes fixated on the paint-chipped door as if the wood might betray her.
I don’t move closer, instead I melt further into the shadows, slowing my heartbeat so only a faint whisper of breath releases into the night.
Patience comes as a prerequisite hunting people likeher.
And patience I have in abundance.
2
SEREN
It’s been days since waste from the city above began spilling into our canals.
I crouch beside one now.The putrid air seeps through the rag I call a mask, coating my nose, forcing bile into my throat.The acid burns.I swallow hard and keep my mouth shut until it passes.
The hem of my coat is soaked through, darkened by the dregs lining the canal edge.I stopped worrying about the stench days ago.There’s no point.It’ll only get filthy again the next time I’m down here, and clean water is too precious to waste on cloth.
My fingers skim the stone lip, searching for the familiar curl of psilo mushrooms—pale, twitching things that grow where the sun doesn’t dare.With the penalties they carry and the lack of light, they thrive here.
I pluck them in silence and slip them into my satchel at my hip.
I should be home with Sylas, but the trade master wants the psilo by nightfall, and he always gets what he wants.Right now, we need coin more than comfort.The reward outweighs the risk.
My fingers hover over the last cluster.Their spongy caps are cool and damp, faintly pulsing beneath my touch.They feel less like plants and more like delicate, dormant little creatures.Creatures with a nasty, or pleasant bite—whichever way you look at it.
People need ways to forget.I don’t ask what they’re forgetting.I just supply the means.
I glance down into the canal.It isn’t water so much as a sluggish soup of sediment, plastic bottles, and other things I don’t try to name.My reflection wavers in it, distorted with every ripple.
