Abbee decided that she couldn’t wait to see Whimsy first and asked for directions to Baylor’s house. Perci called for a buggy instead. Akken’s streets teemed with them, basically big chairs with wheels. A seat in back for the drover. Higher-end buggies had a roof to keep the rain and sun off the passengers. This buggy had a roof. Perci paid the drover but warned Abbee that she’d have to pay for travel around the city from her own wages from now on.

Akken looked different in daylight. Abbee got a good look from her seat on the buggy as it rattled down the Tower Road, and she finally appreciated what Whimsy had said about the city’s reconstruction. Abbee knew that Akken had been rebuilt, but this was the first time she’d been back inside the walls in years. Ipsu had always avoided the city when they’d passed nearby as they crisscrossed the continent. Over the years, she’d watched its skyline change, but she hadn’t realized that they’d redesigned everything. The city had been reshaped into a grid, with only the curving Charrin, the escarpment cliffs, and the existing outer walls as the restraints. The same red slate adorned the roofs of buildings, but all the buildings were new. Some of them must have been replaced with the original designs, because in the Yard District, Abbee spotted the opera house rising from a sea of red. The whole thing was still made of marble. Still had that massive bronze dome with the statue on top. The city looked strange to Abbee without the sanitation depots poking up from the carpet of rooftops.

The Tower Road curved around the Red—now Civic—District. Abbee hadn’t spent much time there as a child, but she knew it was drastically different. No more Council House. The Bank of Akken still stood—or had been replaced with the same building—on the west side, but everything else was different. A sprawling collection of buildings covered the entire district. The University of Akken. If Whimsy and Parn were right, these people had come after her last night.

Her gaze was drawn to a large structure in the middle of what had been the park. From her vantage point above, the building looked like a block of sandstone that had birthed five smaller blocks around it. The central block was the tallest building on the campus and appeared to have a direct line of sight to everything else in the district. Abbee counted eight stories. Every building had the same pattern of windows, with long, horizontal panes of glass set high above the ground. The whole place gave off an air of secrecy.

Abbee touched the badge pinned to her jacket. It didn’t seem real. And it felt like a lodestone, pulling her away from her target. Ipsu. Parn said he could help find him, but Abbee wasn’t so sure. She thought about Whimsy’s warning and decided Parn was using her for something. Abbee wasn’t interested in Akken Council business. She just wanted to find Ipsu.

I’m fooling myself, Abbee thought. Parn hadn’t been living with the one-armed man for the past seven years. Parn didn’t know Ipsu like Abbee did. Ipsu knew how to disappear. It had been five days since he’d abandoned Abbee on that hilltop.

Five days.

Ipsu was gone.

***

Hoger was sitting in his spot on the front porch when Abbee’s buggy pulled up to Baylor’s house. The young man saw her. Made eye contact. His eyes widened in surprise, and he jumped to his feet. Abbee stepped down to the ground, and Hoger took off.

Abbee smiled and gave chase. Hoger hadn’t spent seven years in the woods, running from an implacable one-armed man. She caught up to him at the end of the street. Tackled him from behind, and they both went sprawling. Abbee scrambled and got on top of him. He tried to get away, but she slammed her knee into his chest.

“Quit squirming.”

Hoger’s face became a mask of concentration. He held it for a moment and then frowned at her. “Why can’t I—”

“Surprised to see me, eh?”

Hoger heaved upward. Abbee rocked from side to side. He was about her size, and she knew he could throw her off. She pulled out a knife and put the point under his chin. She pressed a little too hard, and a trickle of blood leaped from his skin. Hoger froze.

“Why did you run?”

“Don’t kill me,” Hoger pleaded. “Don’t kill me.”

“Why did you run?” Abbee repeated.

“You’re gonna kill me,” Hoger said.

“I’m not,” Abbee said. “Not if you tell me what I want to know.”

“I saw it,” Hoger said. “I saw it. You’re gonna kill—”

“What are you talking about? You saw it? Saw what?”

“When I scanned you last night,” Hoger said. “My father saw it too. We both did. And when he started delving—” Hoger shuddered. “Any empath within ten blocks would’ve felt it. There’s a darkness … You want to let it out. You’re bad. Real bad.”

“You’re acting like I’m about to sprout tentacles or something,” Abbee said. “And you’re wrong about me. Tell me everything that happened after I left your house last night.” She wiggled her blade. “Who did you tell about me?”

Hoger pressed his lips together. “I can’t. They’ll kill me. It’ll be worse than death. I can’t.”

Abbee actually understood that last part. She knew there were things far worse than death. A familiar itch tickled her back, and a dark basement flickered through her head. Abbee removed her knife from Hoger’s chin. Shifted her weight and leaned away.

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Hoger blinked. He looked over Abbee’s shoulder and frowned. That mask of concentration again.

Footsteps. Running. Closer. Abbee turned and saw a dark shape as somebody plowed into her. They went sprawling. Abbee lost her cap. She kept her grip on her knife but lost her grip on Hoger. The boy leaped to his feet and sprinted away.

Abbee wrestled away from her attacker—a woman carrying a crushed meat pie in one hand, looking angry, confused, and alarmed that she was now sitting on the ground. She stared at Abbee and said, “I was suddenly so mad at you, but now I can’t remember why.”

Abbee scrambled to her feet and ran after Hoger. The boy turned the corner onto a new street and vanished. Abbee swore and poured on the speed. She weaved around startled people and carts and buggies. Reached the corner. Spotted a shape moving faster than everybody else, fifty meters away. Abbee sprinted after the fleeing teenager.

She’d closed the distance at the next intersection. A four-way with a handful of carts and buggies negotiating their turns and passings. Hoger looked over his shoulder and saw Abbee. With wild eyes, he veered into the middle of the street, just missing getting run over by a buggy.

Abbee slowed a little. A big, heavy cart with steel wheels blocked her view of the street. She paused at the cart’s corner and looked out. No oncoming cart. She stepped into the street. Hoger dug something out of his pocket.

The boy’s eyes were wide as he tipped a glass vial into his mouth. One gulp. He made a face and dropped the vial. Bent over and clutched at his stomach. He groaned in effort. Abbee was five meters away when everyone in the intersection, at least fifty people, turned and looked at her. Shopkeepers, laborers, children, a frosty bread seller, a pack of laborers leaving a nearby tavern, two teenagers stealing a kiss behind a canvas-backed shop selling glassware, poor people and rich people and some in between—all their faces twisted into a rictus of fury.

With a roar of rage, they charged.

Abbee was surrounded. Ipsu’s training hadn’t covered this. She felt someone knock her in the back, and she stumbled forward. The crowd swarmed her like angry bees. People and limbs and grabbing hands all around. Punching, pushing, tearing. Someone ripped her badge from her jacket. A man with thick eyebrows kicked her. A little girl with pigtails poked her in the cheek with a stick. Abbee tried to pull a knife to defend herself, but there wasn’t room.

Fear and fury seized her. For an instant, Abbee was swept away in a torrent of her own dark rage, seething with turbulent wrath. The pushing bodies, grabbing hands, and punching fists fell away. The dark place in her mind sat there like a lodestone, pulling her down into its depths. She reached out for it. Reached for darkness, reached for freedom.

Something small and hard pelted Abbee in the shoulder. Her awareness snapped back to reality. A glancing blow, but it still hurt. A lot. She didn’t see what had hit her, but it had been moving fast enough to knock her off-balance. She stumbled again. A woman in front of her, dressed in a frilly shawl, took a small dark shape to the face. She shrieked and crumpled. Abbee turned. A heavyset man with a big brown beard, his face contorted with anger, reached toward her. Abbee pulled both her knives. Something hit him in the back of the head. He dropped.

Ten meters behind him, sitting motionless in the street, was that big, heavy cart with the steel wheels. Metal bands around the cargo box. A steel hatch in the back. Bank of Akken in grand lettering on the side. Abbee saw three men clad in red jackets standing atop it. Two dropped down to the ground and yanked out swords. The third stood atop the cart with a cloud of small dark objects surrounding him. The cloud hovered in place. The man pointed, and one of the objects whipped straight at Abbee. She rolled to the side. Heard metal strike stone.

A mover. The bank cart’s drover. He was trying to hit Abbee with his missiles and apparently didn’t care who else he struck.

A hand grabbed Abbee on the arm. She struck at it with a knife. A woman yowled and fell away. Abbee pushed herself to her feet and dodged around a fat man in an apron. Kept low to avoid the drover. The fat man took a missile to the back and fell. Abbee rolled forward, avoiding another missile strike, and sliced with both knives at the nearest bank guard on the ground. His sword arm was out of position, and he took both knives to the chest. He wasn’t wearing any armor. He yelled and fell back. The second guard drove his sword forward. Abbee dodged and scuttled under the bank cart. Someone grabbed her foot. Abbee kicked and kicked and hit something soft. She rolled out from under the cart into the street.

Not as many people over here. A few on the opposite sidewalk, staring at the mayhem. Abbee saw Hoger on his knees in the middle of the road, with one hand clutching his stomach and the other pressing on the ground. The boy’s face twisted in pain. Abbee needed to stop him, but he was over there and she was over here, and if she tried to get him, that drover would kill people on the way.

The drover first.

Abbee jumped to her feet and clambered up the side of the bank cart. Her head crested the top. The drover was standing on the far side, looking down. A cluster of twisted metal shards hovered around his head and shoulders. A dozen or so. A small box of the shards sat next to the drover’s seat. Abbee heaved herself up to the top. The cart rocked. The drover turned. Spotted Abbee. The cloud of shards whipped at Abbee as one. She dove forward. Shards ripped down her back like giant wasps. Pain bloomed. Anger bloomed. She roared and buried both her blades in his belly. She stood up and ripped her knives through his soft parts until she hit the underside of his ribs. The drover went slack and toppled backward, sliding off Abbee’s knives. He dropped off the cart.

The roof of the cart rocked under Abbee’s feet as people climbed up. Two faces poked up over the edge in front of Abbee. Abbee kicked one in the face. She was about to kick another when the insane crowd around the cart froze. Faces clouded in bewilderment. The shouts, roars, and curses turned to confusion. Pain. Panic. The crowd melted away from Abbee, like a bucket of water dumped out, leaving a dozen bodies on the ground. Most were victims of the drover’s shards. A few moved, cradling limbs and mewling in pain. Half of them lay inert with bleeding wounds. Others looked trampled.

Abbee turned her head and saw Hoger in the middle of the street. He was on his back and looking at the sky. Both hands on his stomach. He didn’t move. His eyes didn’t move. Hoger’s mouth hung open, as if he were about to say, “Oh.” Dead. Abbee knew it. She didn’t understand. Nobody had touched him.

Stinging pain reached Abbee’s awareness. She hurt all over. Mote wisped from her wrists, healing the worst wounds first. Her back, her shoulder. The drover’s metal shards. Abbee couldn’t believe she hadn’t been pulled under and torn apart by the crowd. She knew it hadn’t been her skill. Luck. So much luck.

Movement at the north corner of the intersection. Two constables appeared. Behind the constables came three House soldiers, blue sashes fluttering. They all slowed, taking in the scene. Their mouths dropped open in stunned astonishment.

Abbee realized what they saw. Her, standing alone atop the bank cart, breathing heavily, holding bloody knives, covered in grime and gore. No constable badge or cap. Standing while so many lay dead or injured around her. Two red-clad bank guards among the bodies.

The third bank guard stumbled toward the constables and soldiers, pointing over his shoulder at Abbee. “She attacked. Tried to steal the cart. She’s a maniac.”

Abbee felt her own stunned astonishment. That’s not what happened. “That’s not true!” she shouted.

Movement to her right. Abbee saw four more House soldiers coming toward the bank cart. Swords out. Blue sashes. She looked at the soldiers around her. The constables. The crowd. Hoger, dead.

Abbee dropped her knives and put her hands up. “I can explain everything,” she called out. “But I gotta talk to Parn Trippers first.”