Kiri slipped her dress back over her head and pulled at the fabric to straighten it. It always tried to bunch up against the slick fabric of her Firebrand outfit. She pulled her hair out of the tight braid she had added to the ensemble and ran her fingers through it to fluff it up. Wearing it down and wavy wasn’t a fashionable hairstyle, but she was trying to make her two looks, Firebrand and Shaela the Academy student, as different as she could.
Once she had checked herself over, she edged along the alleyway to peek out into the street. When the coast was clear Kiri ducked out and started walking briskly toward the Academy. She knew she was out far too late for the respectable woman she now appeared to be, and didn’t want to be on the street a minute longer than she had to be. Running to get home faster, however, would be beneath the dignity of an Academy student.
A man dropped into step behind her, but she was not immediately concerned because she thought she could easily handle him if he did turn out to be trouble. When a few sudden turns onto other streets confirmed he was likely following her, she decided to lead him away from the Academy, just in case he was an Outsider. It would not do for the Outsiders to find out who the Firebrand really was. There was no reason to narrow down where they might look for her.
She wasn’t used to this route, and was surprised to see a patrol of guards making their way down the street. They didn’t patrol her usual path, which went by the lower-class ways through the city. Naturally, their appearance changed her pursuer’s agenda. He abruptly sped up and brushed past her and into an intersecting street. Even though she couldn’t feel it when he did it, a quick pat of her pockets showed he had lifted her purse.
Since she couldn’t very well strip off her dress and chase him as the Firebrand here in front of that guard patrol, Kiri decided to hand off the job to them. “Thief!” she yelled as loud as she could, pointing. “Stop him!”
The guards acted at once. Three of them set off at top speed and the fourth stood at the intersection with Kiri. He seemed to be as eager to join the chase as she was, although she hoped she hid it better. The left-behind guard tapped his foot and kept clapping the flat of his leather-sheathed knife into the palm of his other hand.
He said nothing, so Kiri took his lead and stayed silent, too. She wasn’t sure why he hadn’t gone on with the others. Was he going to question her? He did glance at her once with a puzzled look on his face, but he didn’t give her any clue as to what expectation she was failing to meet. Surely she wasn’t supposed to leave while there was a chance they might recover her purse? Whatever it was about her that had bothered him, he shrugged it off and went back to his fidgeting.
They heard the other guards returning before the dark night allowed them to be seen. Kiri squinted into the alleyway. Two of the men were dragging the thief between them and the other walked ahead, tossing what appeared to be Kiri’s purse in the air and catching it. They all looked relaxed and happy. The thief did not. It was hard to tell what he was feeling since the blossoming bruises and blood on his face obscured his expression, but Kiri was willing to bet it wasn’t happiness. The two manhandling the thief tossed him down on the pavement at the fidgety guard’s feet.
Kiri held her place, curious to see what might happen next. The fidgety guard stepped forward, planting his foot on the thief’s outstretched arm. The man, who had been limp until then, immediately began thrashing. The other guards grabbed his flailing limbs and Kiri did move away then, to give them room.
“Girl,” the man who was carrying Kiri’s purse bit off the word. He tossed it to her while hauling a small club off his belt with his other hand. Kiri caught the purse out of the air, backing away still further as she put it back in her pocket. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen next, but she began to feel she was no longer wanted around. The club-wielding guard bent over the thief’s arm, the one pinned by the other guard’s foot, and brought the club down.
Kiri looked away as she realized what was about to happen, but still she could hear the sickening crunch of the thief’s bones. She didn’t look back as she fled the sound, and didn’t care who saw her running away.
The next night Kiri transformed herself back into the Firebrand. The freedom of the sleek trousers and top felt wonderful, and even though no one was around and she didn’t need to, Kiri snuck out her window. It was a familiar and reassuring feeling to dig her bare toes and fingers between the stones of the building’s outer wall and climb to the roof. Luckily she had been assigned a room nearest to what had been described to her as the “bad side” of the neighborhood. There were gambling houses nearby. The nearest to the Academy were upscale and the closest thing to theft that went on there was the house’s advantage. Not respectable for a young woman still, of course. But just past those were the less respectable houses, where the gangs who relieved lucky gamblers of newly full purses outside might or might not be in the pay of the proprietors. It was just another layer of gambling to those who braved those places, the cost of not being rich enough to patronize those houses that were under the protection of the Thief Lord. It had taken a long night of drinking with some of her least favorite classmates before anyone had been willing to tell her, a respectable girl, about the district and its dangers.
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The buildings of the gambling district were close enough together that Kiri was able to easily move from one to the next. Most of the time they were flat against one another. No one wanted to waste space in the city. Only occasionally did she have to take a jump across a narrow alleyway that cut between them. Staying to the rooftops, Kiri watched the patrons who came and went turn from well-dressed to grubby, and their revelry from refined to bawdy. When she saw a man carrying a bare knife while escorting another, clearly drunk and happy, away from the front door of the building she was perched on, Kiri decided she had come to the right place.
Having spotted her target, the next thing she did was identify and study the nearby alleyways, to see if anyone was hiding and watching the street in the same way as she was. Sure enough, there were two men in the alley straight across from her. They seemed to be watching the street very carefully, and didn’t appear to have any reason to be standing in the dark. A few more people went in the door, and a few more came out, but whatever the two in the alley were waiting for, they hadn’t found it yet. And then one tall woman made straight for the two in the alley. They didn’t react in any way as far as Kiri could see, so they must have known each other. After disappearing into the darkness for a few moments, the woman quickly emerged and ducked into another alley. Kiri waited along with the three of them, though she wasn’t sure for what.
Less than two minutes after the woman had hidden, a wild-haired and bearded man strode out into the street from the door they were all watching. He was walking quickly, with one hand hidden in his cloak. It was entirely possible he was holding a weapon. He looked suspicious, either up to no good or worried that someone else was. He was wary. He immediately turned and headed south. He was right to be suspicious. As soon as he came out all three of the people hiding in the alleys perked up and waited just out of his notice at the edges of the shadows, watching him. As soon as he was out of easy hearing of the doorway they all came out into the street, though they stuck to the edges as they followed along behind him, the woman on one side and the two men on the other. Kiri waited a few moments longer, then followed along, trotting easily along the gently sloped rooftops beside the street. She surprised a cat, who hissed at her, then dropped lightly to a window frame at street level where it settled back down, tail twitching.
The three pursuers were gradually closing in on the bearded man. He paused a moment, perhaps having heard a tell-tale noise, but before he could react they struck together. The tall woman grabbed one of his arms, and one of the men cursed as he seized the other. There was a metallic clatter. The bearded man had been carrying a knife. Not that it had done him any good. The last man moved in front of the others and took hold of the convenient handle of the victim’s generous beard. “Where is it?” he growled.
Kiri darted along the rooftop to the highest spot where she would be behind the beard-grabbing man, who she assumed to be the leader of the gang. She wanted to force him to turn around to look at her. She rolled her fingers along her palm as she moved, building heat and light in the hand that had made her the Firebrand. She’d learned to hold the light in her hand so the whole of it glowed, not just her palm. A lot of this Firebrand stuff was as much showmanship as fighting tactics, so she’d been glad to figure out the trick of it.
She held up her hand and whistled. As she’d hoped, all of them looked at her. No doubt taken aback at the sight of a black clad figure with a flaming hand standing on a building, the leader of the group let go of the beard and stared.
“Let. Him. Go.” Kiri spoke clearly and loudly. She didn’t want to be misunderstood.
They didn’t need telling twice. These were two-bit criminals out for easy prey, and they had no intention of entering what looked like it might be a losing fight. All three of the gang immediately ran off the way they had come. The bearded man ran the other way, leaving his knife behind in the street. The gang ran faster as Kiri lit the street behind them with a spark of lightning that threw chips of rock into the air. She wasn’t doing it entirely to be aggressive. All that energy had to go somewhere. Kiri sank back into the shadows on the roof and watched the last light fade from her hand. That had been satisfying, even if it did seem she had scared the man she saved as much as his attackers. Saving people, that was the work she was meant for. She knew she would still have to put in some appearances for the Outsiders to keep them from Colin, but she promised herself that she would be back here as well. This was not a one-off occurrence. People here were in danger.