“That’s enough for tonight. Go find your father, and keep your tail out of trouble.” Mardo lingered outside for a moment, then stepped inside and closed the door behind him. In the tenement foyer, just a dark little room with lamplight leaking through cracks in the walls, the huge man paused to breathe the dusty air. Dirty as it was, it was home. He pulled the luxurious curls of his gray mane from the collar of his green robe, shaking it out behind him.

In the darkness, there was a warning growl. Something bestial. Mardo side-eyed it without fear. “What are you doing out here?”

Feline eyes shone at him, reflecting gray. A large, svelte shadow shifted, looked past him, and in a very knowing, intelligent way, the gaze nodded to the hallway beyond.

Mardo pivoted and found himself looking down on a woman in simple cotton rags, a plain sollin hand adjusting the bizarre skull-like bramble of her mask. Beneath the mask, this anthral’s eyes flicked with yellow magic. Her small movements hummed with music.

Straightening with instinctive formality, as though he were in the office, Mardo said, “Ma’am?”

And the Writhewife said, “You need to know: she came here of her own will. She made this decision unprompted, and it is not my place to judge.”

“What? Who?”

The Writhewife quietly, casually stepped around him, like she was just a neighbor silently passing him on her way out of the tenement. She paused for a moment with her hand on the door, looking at the dark and the gleaming feline eyes hiding there, but then went outside.

The shadow growled again.

Mardo lifting a calming hand. “I think I might know what this is about. Just let me handle it.” When he walked to the hallway, he heard the shifting of a large weight in the dark, the grumbling of huge lungs. Mardo said, “No, no, wait. Just wait here a moment.”

He went up the narrow stairwell – so narrow that his large shoulders brushed the walls on the way up, his weight creaking heavily on the stairs – and paused outside the door to his apartment. He set a hand on the latch and found that the lock had been opened by magic. He could still feel the hum of the Writhe upon it, and he huffed curiously at that. It never ceased to fascinate him how a thing so great in power, so distant, could still reach so carefully though its many appendages and affect such small things. It fascinated him that the Writhe even cared to, so accustomed was he to seeing power wielded like a maul or a battering ram.

The door opened easily. He stepped into his apartment.

She was there, right inside, just sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall. Mardo wasn’t ready for the sight of her, her clothes torn, her body burned and gouged open, all that blood, and the way she was shaking. Was it pain, or was it…?

Indirk didn’t look up at him. “I’m sorry.”

Mardo realized he’d been paralyzed. At the Admiralty Offices, Indirk had always been so casual and poised. This was some other creature entirely, but it was the same person. People were like that, containing all kinds of different beings inside of themselves. It was always a shock to see a new one. Mardo managed to move himself forward and crouch over her, instinctively reaching out but stopping just short of touching her. “What are you doing here? What happened?”

“Stupid.” Indirk had her legs crooked in front of her, head bowing. She shook her head, but otherwise didn’t move. “Shouldn’t be here. But didn’t know where…” She stopped and choked. Her shoulders shook. She started to sob, but the movement hurt her, so she gasped and cringed forward, almost falling.

Mardo put an arm in front of her, letting her lean against him. She got blood on his sleeve. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking. You don’t need to say anything.”

She grabbed at her satchel. “Do you have food?”

“I need to stop your bleeding,” Mardo said. “Can I move you?”

“Promised Avie I’d feed her something special. Indirk’s body shook, and then she toppled sideways. Mardo caught her head in one of his big hands. The woman had gone limp, eyes closed, breath shallow. He lowered her to the floor, where she lay unconcious.

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Noticing the shifting of her satchel, Mardo opened it and reached in. He pulled out a thin, white-furred creature that instinctively curled up in his familiar palm. Mardo said, “Hello, Avie. You got a bit luckier than your sister tonight, didn’t you?” The little creature stared up at Mardo, black eyes gleaming.

From the hallway, a low growl rumbled. Mardo looked into the dark, matched his gaze with those feline eyes, and beckoned. “Get in here and help me.”

* * *

“I lost track of her at someone’s house,” Amo said. “Everyone inside was dead, the place wrecked. Whatever was after Indirk, it tore those people apart.”

“A giant snake?” Nymir struggled with the wood stove in the corner of the fishmonger’s shop, stacking wood in the sparse light of the yellow lamps.

“After she shot the dancer, yeah.” Amo shook their head, fully aware how strange that sounded. “Hey, can you take that thing off your head?”

Nymir glanced up. He still wore a mask in the shape of a human skull, the streaks of red on it gleaming wetly. “I have to wear the mask until dawn.”

“It’s creeping me out. Who’s blood even is that?”

“Who’s blood is that?” Nymir used a chunk of kindling to gesture to Amo’s black leathers, all red with carnage.

“Probably one of the people I fucking stabbed,” Amo snapped back, spreading their arms boldly. “I’ve got a reason to be covered in blood. It’s weird is hell to just have blood on your face for no reason.”

“It’s for the Sickle-Sough Festival,” Nymir countered passively, giving his attention back to the stove. “You wouldn’t get it. I need to keep it on. And I’m supposed to stay at the church until dawn, too. I wouldn’t even have come if Edner hadn’t-“

“Why do I need to care about your creepy religion? Take that thing off!”

“And what about Phaeduin, huh?” Nymir got the fire to snap to life. “And where the hell’s Myrel, too? If people are out there getting killed, then-“

Phaeduin was in the corner doing his best to scrub the blood off his armor. The helm he’d been wearing, the one wrought in the shape of a bird’s skull, sat on the table beside him. “Myrel’s following up with that sorcerer I mentioned. They’ll be back soon.”

Sullenly, Amo huffed, “You sure he didn’t say anything about a giant snake?”

“I’m sure. And nothing about that dancer, that Norgash, either.” Phaeduin shook his head. As the fire in the stove caught and Nymir started to make coffee – it was almost dawn by then, so there’d be no sleeping – Phaeduin pulled off his green tabard and started to take his armor off piece by piece. “Just the throw and the curse on the Sickle-Man.”

“Fucked up to use innocent people to fuel your magic like that, though.” Amo muttered. “But I guess all those sorcerers they send out to the Warring Lands have to get their power from someplace. Makes me glad we don’t have any sorcerers in Pharaul anymore. Wonder if they used to do that kind of thing, too.”

Nymir muttered, “Ask that orphan crone you call your mom. She’s scary enough, crawling on walls and roofs all through the night like she does.”

“The fuck?” Amo pulled their gloves tight on their hands. “You want to get a little closer and talk about her like that? Say it so I can hear you?”

Nymir smirked and took a challenging step toward Amo. Phaeduin grabbed Nymir by the collar and, with an almost casual ease, spun the man around and pushed him back to the coffee. He lifted a warding arm toward Amo, who stepped quickly back and lifted their hands in surrender. Phaeduin huffed and shook his head, standing between the two. “Back on the subject at hand, I need to assume the Watch isn’t going to investigate any disappeared drunks from last night. If the Watch wasn’t in on it, the sorcerers wouldn’t be able to kidnap people for their uses.”

“Twisted as hell,” Amo huffed, turning away to pace. “Not really our problem, though.”

“I’m going to make it my problem,” Phaeduin said.

Nymir slammed the coffee pot down on the stove, throwing sparks up at his bloodied mask. “Don’t stir up trouble. We need to keep our covers, remember? We’re here to find magic weapons, not missing people.”

“People who are missing to serve as magic fuel for their kidnappers. If I stir up the right kind of trouble, investigate the disappearances as a member of the Watch, maybe I can shake out a lead.”

“Is that sorcerer friend going to help you?”

“I don’t know. That’s what Myrel’s following up on.” Phaeduin piled his armor on the table near his mask, so many metal plates and buckles. Underneath it, he wasn’t as big as he sometimes seemed. Or had he gotten smaller, at some point? Thinner, somehow? “Did either of you see where Edner went?”

A few minutes later, after changing into a coat with a little less blood on it, Amo found Edner outside, on a boardwalk overlooking the sea. The thin man stood leaning against a railing, shivering, staring down into the water, breathing hard. Amo stepped up beside him and said, “Hey, you okay?”

Edner shook his head. “No. No, I’m not. There’s so much blood. What the fuck?”

Amo hummed. “Yeah, I guess. You’ll get used to it, if you last long enough.”

“Hell with that,” Edner grumbled. “That’s a damned terrible thing to say.”