A bell tolled, signalling the change of the hour, as the sun’s first rays crept over the horizon. Cas could feel the electricity in the air as she stood in the shadow of the city’s East Gate. The gates were a pair of huge steel reinforced doors. They were set in the immense wall that ran the entire width of the isthmus on its eastern end and marked the city’s limits. Purple cloaked soldiers of the City Watch soon came pouring out of a building close to the gate. A dozen or so took position at the head of the line Cas was standing in while the remainder, almost a hundred in all, stood at the gates.

When the bells fell silent, a loud horn blared from the watchtower on top of the gate. People began to move, and Cas joined the end of a short line as a crane hoisted the massive wooden drawbar that held the gates shut. Teams of burly men lifted the deadbolts that secured the doors to the floor and ceiling and soon, the gate swung outward to reveal hundreds of people waiting to enter the city.

They were organized into two lines that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Pedestrians and those on horseback were in one line, while wagons were in another. Those in each line waited patiently under the watchful eye of armoured soldiers. Men on horseback lolled nearby, in case anyone tried to dodge the barricades and make a run into the city. Behind them, on either side of the broad stone paved road were hovels made from any sort of scrap their occupants could get their hands on.

Cas had heard of the slums that lay beyond the city’s walls, but this was the first time she had seen them for herself and was taken aback by their size. She looked around and wondered for a moment if venturing beyond the city’s walls was a mistake. However, the line in front of her began to move, and the person behind her growled for her to get a move on.

Without thinking, she obeyed and before she knew it, she had reached the front of the queue and couldn’t help but notice that not a single person had crossed from the other side of the gate. A purple cloaked eyed her briefly before brusquely waving her past. Cas stumbled through the gate and watched the purple cloaks unload every sack from a heavily laden wagon for weighing at a nearby set of scales. In the other queue, more purple cloaks argued with a woman who had four young children in tow.

“We are just passing through your city,” she cried. “Fifteen silver for entry is outrageous!”

“It’s fifteen shillings each,” the purple cloak replied brusquely. “And we require a letter of good conduct from your lord.”

“He fled weeks ago!” she exclaimed. “He’s probably living it up behind those walls.”

“If you have neither the silver nor a letter, you will not gain entry,” the man replied. “Make way for the next in line.”

“Yea, make way!” the man behind her said haughtily as he pushed her aside.

Cas’ blood froze. She hadn’t brought enough silver, nor had she any sort of letter of good conduct. It had never occurred to her that getting back into the city could be an issue. She frowned as she examined the gate. All told, there were at least two hundred soldiers and purple cloaks on the ground. She then looked up at the massive watchtowers that stood on either side of the gate. Each was topped by a large white crystal like the ones at the forts overlooking the city’s two ports. No one seemed to know what they did, and they were assumed to be merely ornamental. More importantly, getting into the city unseen in the day would be nigh on impossible. Making her mind up quickly, Cas abruptly turned around and pushed past the people behind her in an effort to get back in.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A purple cloak snarled. “The queue to enter starts there!”

“I just came out and realized I forgot something,” Cas said, flashing the purple cloak an embarrassed smile.

He was unmoved, however, and his eyes narrowed. “The queue starts there.”

Cas bit her tongue and forced herself to shrug nonchalantly. She would have to find another way back in.

“This meeting had better be worth it,” she muttered to herself.

Now that she was on the other side of the wall, she could see tall mountains in the distance to the east, looking like rows of jagged teeth. They were covered to their knees in snow and a frigid wind blew down, making it significantly colder on this side of the wall. Tall ships took advantage of this wind, hugging the coast as they raced towards the Eternal City’s ports. She felt something brush against her pocket and caught a hand.

It belonged to a wide eyed young girl who looked up at her with fearful eyes. Cas looked pointedly at the Purple Cloaks before releasing the girl, who fled into a nearby hovel. Cas looked around and was taken aback at the poverty she saw. The slums here made the one the church was in look like a noble district. Most of the people she saw wore only a motley collection of rags to protect themselves from the cold. Then, she came to another realization. She could for the life of her remember what Harvey looked like.

She then remembered that Dirk and his crew were reasonably well dressed by Eternal City standards, which would make them look like royalty compared to the average person dwelling in these slums. It didn’t take long for her to find a man whose clothes made him stand out from the crowd. He wasn’t as well dressed as the men from the day before, a fashion disaster, as her former mistress would describe him, but his simple brown coat was in far better condition than most of the people observing the queue.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

This man, like Harvey, looked completely ordinary, and though her mistress had trained her thoroughly to always remember a face even if she had only caught a fleeting glimpse, she could not be sure he was who she was after until their eyes met, and a faint smile crossed his lips. She pushed through a crowd of beggars towards him and gently pushed aside a boy who had made a beeline for her pockets without breaking stride.

“It took you a moment, but you did well to find me,” Harvey began when Cas caught up with him.

Her eyebrows shot up. “Was that a test?”

“Yes, and there will be more to come,” Harvey replied. “We are to work together, after all. A test or two should not be unexpected.”

“Your boss seemed impressed enough,” Cas pointed out.

A curious look crossed Harvey’s face and he bowed his head. “His judgement can be clouded when a… pretty face is involved.”

Cas flashed the man a demure smile. “And I suppose you are impervious to such things.”

“Only when a job is on the line,” Harvey replied. “It was a costly lesson, but I learned long ago that business and pleasure do not mix.”

“Ah, a professional,” Cas observed dryly.

Harvey nodded earnestly, ignoring the sarcasm in her voice. “I try to be. Shall we get going?”

Cas nodded and scrunched her nose. “Where is this lair of yours?”

The man lidded his eyebrows. “Where the authorities won’t find us.”

Cas raised an eyebrow, and the nondescript man continued. “Try to keep up.”

“Is this another test?” she ventured as she surreptitiously hooked a small yellow ribbon onto the back of his coat while his back was turned to her.

“Perhaps,” came the cryptic reply. The crowd seemed to part to permit the man to pass only to reform in his wake and extend their begging hands towards Cas. The beggars’ attention only seemed to attract more of them.

She gritted her teeth and pulled a handful of copper pennies from her pocket. They were meant for lunch, but Harvey was only getting further away, and keeping up with him otherwise would be impossible. She held the coins up for all to see and almost had them snatched out of her hand before she was able to hurl them into the crowd.

A cry went up and a nearby man almost knocked her over in his mad scramble to snatch up the coins. He was so focused on the coins that he didn’t notice Cas snatching the threadbare cloak off his shoulders. She hesitated for a moment and crinkled her nose in disgust before reluctantly wrapping the filthy garment around her shoulders. Almost at once, she felt creatures crawling down her neck and had to resist the urge to hurl the cloak to the ground.

Even with the ribbon, Cas found it hard to keep track of Harvey as the man made his way effortlessly through the crowded, narrow streets of the outer slums. The streets and pathways that were scarcely wide enough for two people to walk down side by side seemed to be haphazardly placed. She glanced down one and saw that it ended in a dead end. She swallowed and focused on her quarry. There was an energy in the air and a look of desperation in the eyes of the people that told her that blundering down a dead end could well end in her death.

The slums had grown around a small town, and soon, the roads grew broader, and tracking Harvey became easier, allowing her to take in the sights. Only the frames of several buildings remained along what had been the town’s main street and Cas guessed that the walls had been scavenged to build structures elsewhere. Hovels had been built in their bones and she wondered if they were the building’s original occupants who could only watch helplessly as the wave of newcomers dismantled their home in front of them.

Soon, Harvey came to a stop in front of the frame of what Cas could only guess had been a warehouse standing at the end of a cul de sac. Oddly, there was no one else on this street save for Dirk by the door to the warehouse wearing a devil may care grin.

“Glad to see you could make it,” he said. “Did you find the place alright?”

“Harvey tried to make it difficult,” Cas replied. “But we’re here and that’s all that matters.”

“Where is that old goat, anyway?” Dirk ventured.

Cas’ eyebrows shot up and then when she saw the man standing next to Dirk, she realized that the man she had been following was half a head shorter than Harvey was. But he had the ribbon on his coat! She then sensed someone approach her and whirled around to see Harvey walking up to her.

“That was a clever trick,” he said. “But you allowed yourself to get distracted by unfamiliar surroundings.”

Cas was livid with herself. “Does that mean I’ve failed your test?”

The nondescript man glanced over at Dirk who arched an eyebrow in return. At length, Harvey shook his head. “No, you did well to get here.”

“I will do better next time,” Cas promised.

“See that you do,” Dirk said with mock gravity. He then broke into another grin. “How do you like the Outer City?”

“It’s something else,” she allowed. “Though it hardly seems like lucrative hunting grounds for your work.”

Dirk’s voice became low and dangerous. “Oh, so you know what work I’m into, do you?”

Cas arched an eyebrow. “Please, spare me the act.”

The smile returned to Dirk’s face, and he glanced at Harvey. “She is a sharp one, isn’t she?”

“If you say so,” he sighed.

Dirk then turned back to Cas and his grin broadened. “You’d be surprised at the opportunities out here, and the Purple Cloaks don’t venture out of sight of the East Gate, which grants us a degree of security we won’t get inside.”

Cas shrugged. “So, you said you have work for me.”

“I just thought we’d take the opportunity to feel one another out,” Dirk replied. “But we can do that inside, away from prying eyes.”

Cas nodded and Dirk led the way inside. She came to a halt when the lanky man bent down to open a hatch in the floor to reveal a ladder that led into a black void.

“After you, madam,” he said.

Cas hesitated and he shrugged. “Listen, if we wanted to do nasty things to you, we could do so up here, and no one would bat an eye.”

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Harvey was standing well away from the door that was still open. “You can walk away whenever you want.”

Cas bit her lip and began descending the ladder. She had made it this far already, and there was no sense in turning back now.