“How do you know all this?” Revel asked as the night died.

El Sha La only sighed. The pull Revel displayed so proudly in the upper quarta paled before her clout in Tinkerton. Everyone they met recognized her as Arath’s apprentice, and most were nakedly afraid. She raised the brows of the callous and loosened the tightest lips. Just as she’d boasted, El Sha La was known here, and Revel was nothing. In the shantytown maze, Arath’s name was stronger armor than his coat of mail.

“El?” Revel pressed. Being ignored drove him mad.

“I’m a magician. That’s what we do, we know things.”

Denied, Revel rolled his eyes.

“You’re so shy about yourself.”

“Try it sometime,” El replied.

The charge stuck, and Revel grew sullen. It wasn’t fair. If he didn’t talk about himself, they would slog in silence for hours. He’d shared everything with El Sha La: childhood memories, past indiscretions, future plans, and secret desires. She knew his hopes, his fears, his deepest needs, and bitterest regrets. Revel was an open book. She was a locked grimoire. He’d been El’s lover all summer and seen nothing but the cover.

Why did he bother?

Day broke upon on the high towers of the upper quarta as Tinkerton slouched in shadow. Fingers of light crept down, tentative as a pickpocket. A host of yellow-robed crooners climbed out onto rooftops, ledges, and towers to sing out the sun’s rebirth. The streets rang with their strange, yodeling song.

“They must consider it a sin to sing on key,” Revel observed.

Indeed, the dirge was ill-received. Everywhere, pots and trash crashed as irate neighbors flung open windows and hurled whatever was at hand. A few singers raised wooden shields, others relied on their faith. They ducked, they were struck, they sang on. The din was incredible.

“Every morning.” El Sha La shook her head.

A bit down the street, they saw a particularly off-key priest catch a bottle with the back of his head. Stunned, he slumped over the rail and fell three stories into a midden heap below. Incredibly, he climbed to his feet and tried to sing on. His critics switched to bricks.

As the masonry rained down, the priest fled in a panic of flapping robes. A pointed criticism caught him on the crown, and he went down, never to sing again. Still, the song went on. There were too many cultists to silence them all.

“Truestar fools.” Revel shook his head. “Sun-worshipping savages.”

El Sha La gave him a look.

“You’re no better. When was the last time Iustinian answered one of your prayers, Ramos?”

“Ramos no longer,” Revel reminded her.

“Don’t dodge my charge, once-Ramos.”

Revel gritted his teeth. El never let up, not for a second.

“He answers those who are worthy,” Revel recited, in quiet piety.

El Sha La opened her mouth to scoff but yawned instead. Involuntarily, Revel yawned along. They were both dog-tired. They’d been on their feet all day and all night. With El in the lead, they’d canvased more sleaze than twenty watchmen could have stormed in a week.

First, El Sha La searched out every healer, herbalist, barber, butcher, snake-oil salver, and outright quack she could find. No one would cop to treating a thief or performing an amputation.

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No healer meant they were looking for a dead boy. For half the night, they overturned bodies rotting in alleys and fished floating corpses from canals. They grimaced through charnel houses, pig pens, and the dens of rumored cannibals. They left with empty hands and empty stomachs as Tinkerton swung into full bloom.

The evening hours were only preamble, the district only truly alive after midnight. Intersections thronged with beggars, bruisers, users, losers, whores, hawkers, stalkers, and swindlers of all stripes. The pandemonium was indescribable. Every sleepless street yowled like a cat in heat. Revel could scarcely believe El when she told him this went on every night.

How could they stand it? How could he?

Weary as they were, they pressed on, past the bloody aftermath of gang battles. They steered around lines of shaky, yellow-eyed shades waiting to buy cane. They heard wild laughs from rooftop youths and dodged the filth they flung. As the moon climbed high, they poked through slave pens, intruded in drug dens, and forced themselves into overflowing flophouses.

Now the night was done, and nothing came of it. The trail was stone cold, and so were they. Unmoved by the cultists’ songs, the promise of dawn soon sputtered out. Fog rolled through the streets; rain would surely follow. Revel wanted to go home but had none. He wanted to leave El, but he had no one else.

Off in the mist, he could see the masts of a ship. He daydreamed of marching down to the docks, signing on to a galley, and sailing far, far away. Rowing was about all he was good for.

“Let’s get a move on. Scavengers come to strip the yellow ones of those garish robes and carts come to sell the dead to the pigmen. It can get ugly.”

With leaden steps, they got underway.

“El. How do you know all this?” Revel repeated. She seemed to finally hear him.

“I was raised here,” El Sha La said, soft and unexpected. “Arath’s been dragging me down to Tinkerton since I learned to walk.”

“Why?”

“To learn the family trade, I suppose. All my earliest memories are here. Sailors pissing off piers. Poxy whores lifting their skirts. Gutted men, begging for death in the dirt. Then, he wonders why I don’t make friends at court.” El Sha La shook her head.

“What’s an archmage want in this god-awful place?”

“Information and favors. When you can turn lead to gold, the only true worth is what you know, who you know, and what they’ll do for you. People come to the wharf from every port. By the time news filters up to the Quartiere, it’s six ways estranged from the truth. Father trades favors in favors. He unweaves wards, subverts curses, and dispenses with pretenders. There’s always something in Tinkerton that needs undoing.”

“Whole place could stand to be undone at once.” Revel swept a hand at the squalor. Just as she’d promised, a man with a wheelbarrow hurried past them, eyes on the bricked priest.

“Many have tried. Fire, riots, famine, shipbreakers, plague. None of it makes a dent. There are a hundred thousand people here.”

“A hundred thousand! Imagine if they all paid tax.”

“Ten wharf rats for every upstanding citizen in the upper quarta. Imagine if they rose up and swallowed you all.”

Revel nodded; he could see it now. Poison mutters rippled in their wake, and everywhere, eyes singed him with their hate. Without El Sha La, he’d have been dead before midnight, just as she’d said.

“Is that why the duke allows your father to operate here? Is he keeping the mob at bay?”

“It’s the other way around. Arath allows your father to rule. He permits the bloodless peace. He keeps the wolves at bay. That’s why he’s in Terhaljatan now, trying to ward off war. Without him, Lhaz wouldn’t last a year. Just the same, Arath needs Ramos. Arath sees us all as pawns, and everyone can tell. The court barely tolerates me. They despise Arath. He could never rule. If not for the duke, the entire city would revolt.”

“You think my father dances to his tune?”

“No, it’s bigger than that. Arath’s plan is bigger than Lhaz. He has puppets and proxies spread across the lake. That’s what being an archmage is. Thinking you’re smart enough to steer the Arc entire.”

“Is he?”

“If not him, then who? You?”

“Not I.” Revel shook his head and tried to stifle a yawn. Too late, it leapt to El Sha La. Rain pattered against the mud. They were past done.

“Should we head back?”

“No. We’d lose hours slinking back to the tower, and I think I’d find some excuse to surrender. We’ll sleep in Tinkerton. I know an inn that’s less egregious than the rest.”

Revel followed her through a dizzying sequence of turns to Helmott’s Velveteen Inn. Even if it was a hair better than the others, Helmott’s was by far the worst place Revel had ever laid his head. The famed velveteen wallpaper was streaked with the scrubbed ghosts of ten thousand unthinkable stains. He was too spent to care.

Revel stripped off his sodden clothes and coat of mail and moved to crawl into bed. El barked for him to stop. He was about to protest, he was too tired, but it wasn’t that.

El held up three fingers and invoked a series of slithering syllables. Suddenly, the air itched, and the room filled with a smell of singed hair. She moved to the door and murmured more words. A line of green light raced around the jamb. Though the window was barely big enough for a cat to squeeze through, she did the same there.

Then, she fanned her hand and brought her thumb and pinkie into a circle. As her fingertips drew together, Revel’s ears popped. When her fingertips touched, the room was dead silent.

“You can get in bed now. The vermin are dead,” El told him.

“Lucky bastards,” Revel groaned.