I didn’t like how much of my life I’d been spending in warehouses recently—and how much of that time people had spent trying to kill me. They were in-between spaces, constructs of wood and stone and brick meant only as halfway houses for stacked boxes and crates that wouldn’t stay. They loomed around the edges of the city like great fallen monuments to Ozymandias, the perfect hiding spot for anyone who didn’t want to be noticed. No city inspectors, no police prowled the shores and poked into the darkened windows. Zamir was the only one I’d ever seen this low, and I knew she was on the take.

So it was unhappily I found myself outside another one, checking that Bella was slick and loaded, as the night crept through the streets. The shadows had lengthened far enough to be lapping at the roofs, but nobody had yet come by to light the streetlamps. Conjager stood closer to the building, leaning against the wall so that he could keep an eye on the door. “Shouldn’t be long now,” he said.

“What’s this all for?” I said. “You building to arrest them?”

“For what? And for whom?” He shook his head. “Even if they do not buy their innocence, we have neither the resources nor the, ah, wherewithal to hold any sort of trial. I saw Chesnes’ body, Hexel—I have no desire to end up like that.”

“Seems like there’s not much of your job you can do.”

He stuck a small metal tool between his teeth to leave his hands free. It dug into his gums, and a small amount of blood began to trickle over his teeth. I winced but didn’t say anything. “Jabberwock will not be content to play second to Dragon very long. You know that better than I do. When they make their move for power, when they seek to wrest control of the city and the people, it will not be given up easily. I want to know their movements, Hexel, so that we will not be caught unawares, so that we may do something in the face of an inevitable bloodbath.”

“Selfless of you.”

“Everyone knows the police are in Drakon’s pocket,” he said, and there was a razor’s edge to that. “You know it. I know it. And most importantly, Jabberwock knows it. If they’re making a move I have a deep investment in knowing when, and being far away when it happens.”

Robin raised her hand. “If they definitely want to kill all of us…then how are we gonna not die walking in there?”

That was the second problem. Beyond being unable to push Conjager too far—for he could betray me at any time, all it took was one phone call, one memo slipped under the wrong door back at the precinct—I didn’t know what to do with Robin. My office address was a matter of public record, and clearly Drakon knew how to find me there; who was to say Fletcher couldn’t do the same? Nor did Robin herself leave me much of a choice; she seemed to have got over her reticence and threatened to dog my footsteps no matter where I tried to leave her.

It was dangerous to bring her here, and dangerous to leave her. “We’re going to wait for them to exit,” Conjager said. I didn’t think he was as convinced as I of the necessity of letting her tag along. “Oldest trick in the book.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“Soon, I believe. Or you could walk in and ask.”

She pointed upwards, to a small slitted window with its shutter bent outwards, about ten feet off the ground. “I could look. If I stand on someone’s shoulders I can probably see. And I’m not that heavy so either of you could probably lift me up.”

I shrugged. It was a good enough idea. “Alright, Conjager,” I said. “You’re on lookout because if someone comes by, it’s going to be hard to explain.” I knelt down so that Robin could clamber on to my shoulders, and gripped onto her ankles. “If you fall, I’m not catching you. I think that I’ve got pretty flat shoulders but I’ve never tested that, funnily enough.”

“I’m fine—whoops…” She reeled backwards and nearly fell when I stood up. I leaned forwards so that she could catch the edge of the brick wall and lean against it. “Okay,” she said. “I’m fine now.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Concrete and asphalt on the ground,” I said. “Crack your skull right open.”

“I’m fine,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes and nearly fell again as she tried to peer through the window. Even on my shoulders she was barely tall enough to see over the sill—hopefully that meant nobody would see her from the other side. Not something you could nonchalantly pass off as innocent. “It’s really dark in there, and there are boxes piled up right to the windows. I see—two people? One of them’s in red and one of them’s in blue. She—I think the one in red is Fletcher. She’s got the same hair and she looks the same.”

Conjager, watching the door with one hand on his gun, frowned. “Fletcher?”

“She tried to kill me last night.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Not important right now,” I snapped. “Are they leaving?”

“I can’t tell. She—they’re at a little table, there’s papers on it. It looks like Fletcher is showing him the papers,” she said. “Oh—oh. I think they are starting to leave, she just turned out the light. I can’t see anything now but I can hear their footsteps moving around inside…"

She dropped off my shoulders with a grunt. Conjager, Robin and I ducked around the corner, pressed up against the wall. I thought of the ways I’d been told I was making too many enemies recently and laughed grimly to myself. Two factions in this city now, Dragon and Jabberwock, two creatures red in tooth and claw that could level the city with the wrong swipe of their hand—and here I was making enemies of both. For what? Conjager had asked. For whom? I found that I didn’t know the answers to either question. Maybe I just couldn’t live with myself if I threw my lot in with either cartel now.

The door swung open. Fletcher and a short, greasy man stepped out. The man, who was in the ill-fitting blue suit that Robin had described, sniffed the air and shook his head with a grimace. “The stench of that child still clings to you,” he said.

“If I had been able to kill her, it would have been worse,” she said with a laugh. “Blood clings.”

“It makes the city feel so much grimier,” he said. Before the door could close, he reached back inside and turned a heavy lock, which clunked as it fell into place. “Our enemies move against us now because of your failure, Fletcher.”

She shook her head. Her aura seemed dimmed, somehow, but no less fearsome, as though she were conserving her strength. “It would have happened sooner or later. We would not take this city without a fight—better to know who our enemies are in advance.” She was leaving no doubt that I was on that list. “Come on. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting too long.”

Fletcher stalked off, and the little man followed her. Conjager held up his hand to wait until they were long gone, then carefully approached the lock. “Whatever you did last night must have had quite the effect,” he observed. “Normally they’re not half so paranoid.”

“Sorry?” I ventured half-heartedly.

“Solid and heavy. Even bolt-cutters would be hard-pressed to make something of this.” He hissed out a breath. “I could go and retrieve them, but it is valuable time lost-”

“I’m not sticking around for that,” I added. “I said I was willing to help you, yeah—but not if you’re running back and forth unprepared.”

“There shouldn’t have been this issue. Your previous actions drove-”

“Hang on.” A gear clicked into place in my mind with what felt like a snap. I looked up at the high window, perhaps two feet tall. If she could get up there once, she could get up there again. Robin followed my gaze, then Conjager. “Okay, kid—okay. You wanted to come along, now you get to prove your usefulness,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have to start keeping you around after all.”

“After all?”

It was easier the second time around, Robin’s footsteps steadier and movements more assured. She banged her head on the window frame with a muted shout of pain, then slid through and onto the boxes. We heard the faint rustle and clatter as she descended, Conjager scanning the streets behind us. There shouldn’t have been anybody, but Fletcher was the wild card—she knew about Robin and I, and no amount of managing my own secrets would stop Fletcher. How quickly, I wondered, would they dare move? And who else would I need to fear?

There was a crash, audible through the walls—a cascade of glass shattering against cement. Both Conjager and I tensed, almost mirroring one another with the way we reached for our guns. Robin must have knocked over a crate, but it didn’t seem to have attracted anyone else through the fog. After a second, the door creaked open. Robin was breathing heavily, and glass glittered in her hair.

“What happened?” Conjager asked.

“It was dark. I—fell.”

“And you’re alright?”

“I think.”

She guided us into the dark, cavernous space. There was a sickly scent in the air, like flowers that had rotted away—the scent of Jabberwock, I realized, the dozens of broken vials that lay scattered across the ground. “I didn’t mean to,” Robin continued. “I just slipped, and then I was falling and it was falling too…nobody heard, right? I didn’t mess it up?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But it’s out there, now, and who knows how long-”

Somewhere in the darkness, a light flared. We weren’t alone.