Udrebam was a city of stone, the investigation a search for its blood. Methods a mere squeeze. A full day of travelling from point to point and asking repeated questions had loeft Lichos and Pyrhic no more informed than they’d been from the beginning.

Lichos had soon found himself irritated by the fact. His uniform feeling hotter and tighter by the hour, constraints of repetition proving no less suffocating than any cell. Only Pyrhic seemed unbothered by the gruelling process. As always, she had little ill to say about any plan coined by Kaiosyni.

“Patience is more of a boon than any other, at times.” She’d told him, voicing her answer as if it were enough to explain away each of his grievances. As if Lichos hadn’t been patient enough already, standing in silence and listening to her cast the same foreign words so many times that he found them scorched syllable for syllable into his memory.

Still he stayed, and still he bit his tongue. Realising before the day was even half dead that Pyrhic would not be moved by any argument he might make to change her approach.

Torturous and methodical, it seemed, was the only way she would see things done. Even with a perfectly good Wrathman to coax answers out faster with his rifle.

It wasn’t long before he found his hasty resolve threatened. Moving from one set of doors to another, knocking and asking answers of those deemed most likely to possess them, they moved sluggishly across the city’s face.

At first Lichos had been surrounded by houses built like mountains, almost mansions in demeanour and neighboured by structures beneath them by only a hair. Their owners were adorned in finery and jewels, pampered and preserved through all the casual luxuries of wealth with noses turning upward as they laid eyes on the Taiks asking for answers.

An easy people to imagine himself beating for information, but not ones they’d continue interrogating for long.

Soon the roads became torturous beneath their carriage, scars and fissures making the journey through Udrebam ever more kinetic. Lichos saw the city withering around them as he peered through the window, architecture sickening and falling away as if consumed by a cancer.

The questions continued while they moved through the slums, still searching for individuals. Communal pillars or people of power, those with ears to the ground and noses to the air. The uncooperation didn’t change, but the atmosphere around them did.

The weight on Lichos’ heart, most of all.

“I don’t like it.” He said at last, words bubbling free after the dozenth sneering rejection. He and Pyrhic were moving through a wider street than was common to the lower city, gravelly road scraping beneath their boots.

It seemed a nicer place than most, from what he could tell, but there was a strain on the area.

Far more mouths to demand meat and bread than were normal, displaced from those sections Reginald Tamaias had wrecked in his battle. The borough’s locals had made the pragmatic decision, not having enough food to go around for the additional stomachs. Newcomers had been left to find work and pay for what they needed.

But there was rarely enough work to go around in such places. Lichos could see even in their short trip that the roads were marred by no small number of vagrants, faces thin and jagged with hunger. Eyes sagging and empty with the utter absence of hope.

He wanted to help them more than anything in the world, embittered by the task of working out how. In the end he simply continued walking, putting his focus into speech.

It didn’t slip his notice how much hostility those shrivelled faces were glaring his way.

“Running around, asking the same fucking questions to the same set of fucking people time and time again. Wading through shit and misery up to our knees. I don’t like it.”

“I’m aware.” Pyrhic answered, irritated. “You’ve told me near enough a dozen times, however repeating yourself will do you no more good than it has me.”

“You keep going at it.” He noted. The answer earned him a scathing glance from Pyrhic, disapproval etched deep into her features.

“What do you suggest as an alternative?” She asked. “Your methods might draw out useful answers quickly, if we were lucky enough to try them on those possessing them. They might yet close up any we attempted to approach afterwards, have them scatter before us like mice as their spies or contacts told them of the violent thugs roaming the city with bloody knuckles.”

He’d heard the arguments already, if not so lengthy. Instinct had already surrendered to intellect in Lichos’ mind, staying his hand and relaxing fists into palms. Still he protested.

“I can’t think of anything.” He shrugged. “But you’re cleverer than me. Much cleverer. Clever enough that I have a hard time thinking you can’t come up with a quicker alternative.”

Pyrhic eyed him at a loss as they neared their carriage, her face seeming somehow helpless in the dying sunlight.

1“I can think of no alternative.” She answered curtly. “Or at least none that is both faster and humane. Try to grin and bear the questioning, soldier. It surely can’t be so much worse than a march.”

But it is. Lichos thought, climbing next to her in the carriage.

He remained silent as they rode longer, biting his tongue while the discontent gnawed away at him. Doing what he could to keep his frustrations buried. It was a difficult task, for the endeavours continued on hours more. Ending only with the answers of a workman.

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“You’re with Kaiosyni, are you?” He’d asked, gaze fleeting and nervous as he spoke his passable low Taikan. The question had almost surprised Lichos more than the language itself.

“We are.” Pyrhic had answered, adjusting faster. “And we’re here on a duty given to us by her.”

The man had nodded, almost feverish at that.

“Then you’ve got my help.” He’d said. “For however much it’s worth. I live in Unix, but Taiklos is my nation.”

It was only then that Lichos had recognised the peculiar tan of the man’s flesh, seeming at odds with the lack of any constant sunlight to touch it. Inherited, he realised, not adapted.

Fortunate.

The man had been every bit as helpful as he had eager. It took only minutes of further conversation before Pyrhic had secured a meeting with one of the city’s killers, even as the helpful Taik paled with the task of arranging it.

Waiting had followed the stroke of good luck, and Lichos had soon found a direction for his silent anger.

Mere hours after the conversation, men gathered around the inn at which they stayed. Numbering in the hundreds, faces sharp and deathly, cleavers and makeshift pykes clutched tight in scarred fists. Lichos recognised men in a killing mood when he saw them, and it didn’t surprise him at all when Pyrhic translated their hateful demands with a pale face and wide eyes.

“They want us to come out. They mean to hang us.”

“Why?”

Pyrhic had trailed off, even as the mania seeped into her.

“They blame Koros Kaiosyni for… Everything.”

He’d sighed at that, then snorted half an arcstock crystal as he emerged. Letting his nihil envelope the men as he left cover, then rushing for them at a sprint.

Perhaps they could have been reasoned with, had Kaiosyni stood there in his stead, or Pyrhic been trained to keep her wits amid conflict like he was. But Lichos was no negotiator, no politician. He knew only one answer to men with killing tools and killing will.

The fight was short and brutal, ending with the pavement painted red and littered by a score of bodies. He re-entered the inn solemn, sitting alone for the rest of their wait as the adrenaline and magic slowly jittered their way from him. Nothing more to do until news came of their lead.

He got what rest he could while they waited, but didn’t allow himself to sleep too deeply.

Pyrhic woke him by waking herself, change in breathing and shifting of flesh snapping Lichos out of his slumber. He accompanied her as she checked the meeting time, nodded and hid his grin to learn it would be in a matter of hours rather than days.

Twilight turned to dusk before the encounter took place, and Lichos allowed himself a pinch of arstock crystal to offset the darkness.

He savoured the buzz as it flooded him for the second time in a day, felt an uncontrollable grin break out at the depth of his sudden, unnatural strength.

No wonder mystics are such smug bastards. He thought. This is how they live their entire lives.

Pyrhic had waited only minutes for the assassin when he came. Tall, lithe and twitchy, he wore tight cloths about him that covered most of his flesh. Only his eyes peered out from beneath the shroud tied across his head, dark and empty as most would ever see.

They were nothing special to Lichos. A killer’s eyes were more familiar to him than a civilian’s.

Stopping a few yards before them, the assassin stood in a momentary silence. He turned to Pyrhic first, tilting a head slightly as he spoke.

Spoke in Paradisan. Lichos almost shot the fucker out of frustration alone.

Whatever passed between him and Pyrhic did so quickly, their tones hushed and their voices fast. Even so the intensity of speech was enough that Lichos was left waiting almost half a minute before the woman turned to him.

“Our associate here says he knows who killed Flecke.” She said. “Or recognises his style, at the very least. Apparently it’s unique in the city.”

“Sounds too convenient.” He said at once.

Pyrhic answered with what seemed an entire scolding compressed into one look.

“It does.” He insisted. “This man, who we already met because of luck alone, seems to know just what we’d most need him to. I don’t like it.”

“We found him only after a day of searching, someone in this city was bound to know what we were looking for. It’s statistics, not fortune, that we finally tracked one down.”

Lichos could think of no further argument, merely shrugged and gestured for her to continue the conversation. His feeling of unease didn’t disappear, only growing stronger as it sat in the pit of his stomach. Urging fingers close to his trigger.

It didn’t take much longer before the assassin left, disappearing into the night without any parting words at all and leaving Pyrhic to convey what had been discussed in the Unixian tongues.

He listened intently as the woman told him of their next target.

“Apparently we’re searching for one named Glint. Or nicknamed, rather.”

“That’s the bastard who likes saw blades?” He asked. Pyrhic nodded.

“Our associate could give no information as to who hired the man, so we shall have to ask him once we’ve found him ourselves. Which will be a task in and of itself, but not an impossible one. The Crux will doubtless make it possible at least.”

Lichos found something poking at the back of his thoughts. Another intrusive suspicion, urging him to act without anything to act against. To fight for the sake of fighting.

“He didn’t tell you that for free, did he?”

“Of course not.” Pyrhic answered. “But five thousand stars is well within the budgetary limitations I was given by Koros Kaiosyni.”

Lichos tried to hide his bafflement at the figure as Pyrhic turned from him, moving back for the carriage. He followed, his mind painfully free for thought.

That she could throw such sums so casually was among the least of his concerns. Far more pressing to Lichos was the needling sensation pricking his thoughts.

Minutes in the carriage were too little to shake the worry from him, the creeping fear that something, everything, would go wrong. He dismissed the thought even as he sat.

It’s not paranoia if you’re right.

The words were like a knife under his mind, irritating and painful.

As much company as Lichos could expect on his way through the city.