Takes a good hour or two walking with Nikair to the Valley. He’s got moonshine. Nicked a bottle from the Market. We sip it. Trying to be good. The burn. The warm feeling. It helps.

I tell him stories. I tell him a rhyme I just made up.

“The moon doth shone as bright as day.”

“Doth shone!? What you on about Skelly!?”

“Having a menbung I am.”

Then we’re at the Valley. Used to be a football stadium. I can hear the booming sound of a voice through a sound system. Cheering and stamping. Reckon there’s a few thousand in there tonight. Rich pickings for scavs.

Can I scav enough treasure to trade for medicine? Can I save my boys? Would take a skip load. Would take a truck load of junk to buy a single pill. Just want to curl up with you, my old blankie.

The Valley ain’t so well protected as the Market. It’s easy to slip inside. Even though there are some scary looking people around. Probably mercs. Thugs for hire with scary implants, old civil war tech. Most people don’t use that stuff anymore. Witches can hack it, easy as blinking. Mercs can protect you against normal bastards. But they ain’t nothing against witches.

Like drones. Easy target for witches. And there is this whole cloud of them up above us. Dozens of them. Guess they are streamers, taking video for the internet.

We get into the crowd, running an old play we call Orphans. I play the crying boy, all sad cause he’s lost his mummy. Ninja follows a way off. I find a mark, get them talking to me, and he robs them on the sly.

Mainly we’re looking for tourists. People who don’t live in Riverside. They come here for all kinds of reasons. But you can smell ‘em a mile off. They ain’t used to seeing street kids.

Shouty Man on the stage is going off on one about witches. Seen his face before. Bit of a celeb in Riverside.

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“The Republicans say we should use the proper channels! We should report the Witches to the police!”

Booing and jeering. Buzzing of drones. The crowd is angry, he’s like a cook stirring a big pot. So loud. Makes me dizzy. Little voice in my head starts up.

“Is it their families dying of the witch plague?”

No! they all scream in response.

“And we know damn well that the Republic of London has some secret deal with the Witch Clans. The evidence is plain to see!”

Yes! The waves of it go through me. Trying to pick a mark, focus, focus on the one’s who aren’t shouting. There’s a woman. Dressed like a Riversider but she don’t smell like one.

“Who could blame us for trying to purge our community of this awful disease!? While they keep us in this concentration camp!”

Something changes in the mood. A silence erupts from a point up in the stands. One scrawny voice trying to make itself heard above the storm of the crowd.

“Have you seen my mum?”

I say to the woman. I can see she has a bag on her shoulder. I can see Ninja appear out of the crowd, clipping scissors in his hand, making for the bag strap.

She just looks at me, I can see it though. Something I don’t normally see, she’s sad for me. Then she hides it real quick.

Suddenly I can hear what people are shouting in the stands.

“Witches!”

Then the stampede. Pure chaos.

Ninja snatches the bag, but she spins and fights back. He jams the scissors into her hand. She drops the bag, then she gets knocked down by a big man running. Then she gets trampled.

Ninja disappears, too many moving bodies to keep track of him.

I hear them. The air bikes. Never seen real ones before.

The voices in my head have gone crazy. Catch a sight of the lights from the corners of my eyes, look at my hands. All under my skin like skinny little golden lights.

“Leave your supper and leave your sleep.”

I’m looking up.

Two glorious looking things. Like angels. Dark angels. Riding their shiny air bikes in circles above the stadium. Watching the crowds run screaming before them. And they’re chanting, and I feel the chant go through me.

One of them hovers for a moment above me and makes eye contact.

I can hear her in my head.

“Come find us little Crone. Come to the Secret School.”

Then she howls like something that ain’t human. And all the drones turn their blades towards the shouty man on the stage and they swarm him, and the screaming, and the sounds of heavy quadcopter blades on skin and bone, like throwing a side of beef in a blender.

“You burn our sisters again, and we will find you!”

And then they shoot up into the night sky and disappear.