Elnoire was a sinner’s haven; only the worst came from here and the best were never found.

Magic was warned all his life about Elnoire’s dark corners and shady dealers for as long as he could remember, the tales embossed into his memory like a wax stamp. Between the ever-present scent of booze, dried-up vomit or urine that clung to the crumbled and desolate bricks of the alleys, he couldn’t see this place as anything other than a criminal’s ideal workspace. It was a town laden with trickery and false pretenses of safety; assuming it to be otherwise, Magic knew, was little more than a false hope. Stars, no, it was worse than that. It was ignorance.

Kicking a discarded can further into the alley, Magic leaned against one side of the pathway, hands shoved into his pockets, ears tuned to the conversation further in the main square. His sister was chatting away with a businessman who happily indulged her in conversation. The man looked more than respectable. He was sharply dressed, a briefcase in one hand and his pale skin warm in the glow of the Eastern Curtain, the sun’s dying scarlet rays bright yet gaudy. A foreigner, Magic assumed based on the red curls peering out from beneath the brim of his cap. A high-class foreigner if his pressed suit and pole-straight posture were anything to go by, topped off by the man’s neatly trimmed ginger beard. And high-class simply didn’t work in Elnoire. Instead, it painted a target on your back. Magic counted the stranger blessed that the worst thing he ran into today wasn’t a mercenary or a violent thief, but rather his sister currently talking his ears off.

Magic watched Mira discreetly slip her hand into the business man’s pocket, redirecting his attention with a directive and a destination. He followed her instructions with a dazed confusion.

“North is where you’d find the station,” she said, swapping the coin purse with a stone of similar size. “Just make sure you’re quick—the next train leaves in about fifteen minutes. It’ll take you ten to get there normally.”

“There wouldn’t happen to be any shortcuts, would there?” asked the man.

“Only if you plan on barging through family setups in the alleys. Just take the main roads. Safer that way.”

The man made a small sound halfway between acknowledgement and assent—Magic couldn’t figure out which one of the two was most accurate—before nodding his head and turning to leave. Mira successfully plucked several coins from the man’s stolen wallet, turned on her heel and shouted to grab the man’s attention returning the coin purse to the now frazzled foreigner. The coin purse, Magic knew, would now only give the man enough funds for a one way train ticket to his destination.

Mira caught her brother’s eye as she approached the direction of the alleyway, half skipping, half dragging her feet through the dusty main streets. She propped her foot on the broken wood porch of a nearby house, motioning upwards with  her chin. Follow me, she insisted with a quick raised brow.

In your dreams, Magic replied silently, shaking his head.

His sister gave a disgruntled sigh as though he would be missing out on something revolutionary and heaved herself onto the unstable railing to scale the house’s roof.

Magic trailed her from the back alley, catching glimpses as Mira leapt from building to building with flawless grace and calculated precision. Why she couldn’t have just walked with him through the backstreets like a normal person, he didn’t know. He imagined it was why she did most things: simply because she could. Was it necessary? No. Much of Mira’s decisions hardly ever were. But she didn’t seem intent on climbing down to join him anytime soon, so Magic did what he could to keep up with her. He cut corners and squeezed through crates. Cats and foxes that made their homes in the dingy streets howled and hissed at him. Magic danced around them, equal parts to avoid the attacks and not to stumble over the creatures of the alley.

The clattering of the metal rooftops paused a few houses down, a few streets away from one of Elnoire’s more popular districts, followed shortly by a mimicked bird call. It was supposed to resemble a quail’s, but Magic thought she sounded more like a dead flute than a peaceful bird. He rounded a corner and rested beside a dumpster, wrinkling his nose at the rancid stench of old meat and other nearby trash. Magic gave one final survey of the alley—he looked it up and down to make sure there were no unwanted visitors nearby—and, once satisfied with his findings, cupped his hands and repeated the whistle.

Mira dropped ungracefully down from the roof. Her sneakers clanged against the dumpster Magic was leaning on, the noise so loud, so sharp, and so sudden that it jolted him forward with a yelp. Dust swirled around her as she landed on the ground and approached, one closed fist in his direction. “These are yours.”

“Ours,” he corrected, watching the money trickle like drops of gold and silver water into his palms. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m just here to tally the money.”

Mira’s mouth twisted into a frown. “Not true,” she insisted, hands held behind her back. “You can also read a map.”

“What information did you learn today, Mirabellis?”

Mira shrugged and jumped onto the dumpster, sitting atop its lid. Her feet swung back and forth, kicking the metal with her heels. “Not much that does us any good,” she replied, tossing her head to one side, auburn curls dangling a little in front of her shoulder. She swept a few strands out of her face, mouth twisted in annoyance as she did. “He was a Garaleian making his way here for business affairs.”

“That so?” Magic asked dully, attention focused on the coins his sister had given him.

“Mhm. Apparently he was called to Droidell for some kind of meeting up north in Magnus. He ended up in Flamburr first before wandering here.”

He couldn’t stop himself from cringing. “He should’ve gone north and spared himself the trouble.”

“True, but if he did that, we wouldn’t have reached our quota.” Mira planted her fists squarely on her hips looking thoroughly pleased with herself. Magic glanced at her once before focusing back on the coins in his palm. “He wasn’t that bad of a foreigner,” she went on, merrily chattering away as though Magic were actively listening. “He seemed like a decent enough guy—pretty, too. I almost felt a little bad stealing from him …”

Her voice muddled. Magic was too invested in counting to pay her any mind, but if Mira cared or even noticed, she said nothing. In the middle of his counting, though, he paused, ran the numbers again in his mind, and bit his lip. Observing the tiny metal pieces in his hand—seven small, heptagonal copper coins and five smaller light gray ones—he grit his teeth. This was a total of ninety-five zirca. The two of them agreed to gather at least one hundred seventy-five by the time the sun set.

“Mags?”

His eyes snapped up, snagged into the present.

Mira’s brows furrowed, her dual colored gaze—one pale blue, the other a gray so light it was nearly white—narrowed. “You okay?”

Magic pursed his lips. “We need more.”

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“I don’t joke with money,” Magic said quietly, running his fingers over the flat faces of the coins in his palm. If they were back at home, the value in his hands would have been enough to buy just two loaves of bread for him and his mother—assuming it was a good year, which it rarely was. If they weren’t trying to save every coin they gathered, even if it was plucked from the ground, Magic would have considered spending it on something to calm the rumbling of his stomach. He knew the value of a coin and what money could buy, but even he had to admit that it was a pitiful amount. “I would pull your leg for a lot of things. Not this. It only gives us one thirty-eight total.”

“So what do we do?” Mira asked, gaze focused on the coins in her brother’s hand until Magic shoved them into his coat pocket, drawing the fabrics closed over him.

“Eastern Curtain hasn’t fully faded yet. We still have some sunlight.”

“We won’t find people by the markets. The Elnoirans wouldn’t be caught five feet outside of an alleyway at this time of day.”

Magic felt his face twist. Mira had a point. A quick glance at the marketplace through the mouth of the alleyway told him everything he needed to know. The tarps, ripped and mangled, waved gently in an oncoming breeze, thin strands of peeled fabrics mingling with one another and casting dancing shadows on the ground. The merchant stands were abandoned; not a single person remained to sell goods or offer up their services.

Not that the usual services of Elnoire would be offered here, Magic thought to himself, a wave of disgust weighing his stomach, crawling on his skin like bugs. He dusted the invisible nuisances off his arms. “Not every Elnoiran hides themselves away at night. Fucking heathens.”

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His sister gave him an appraising look, fidgeting with the small ring on her left index finger the way she usually did when she was thinking. Gears were turning in her head. He hardly wanted to know what scheme she was concocting; he didn’t trust her enough to come up with good plans. Mira was many things. Odd. Eccentric. Protective. But “logical” fell nowhere close to any of the other words Magic would use to describe his sister. In fact, it was very, very low on that list, nearest to “attentive” or “pragmatic,” which weren’t anywhere to be found.

No sooner did he spot the mischievous glint in his sister’s eyes, a sly grin, tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I have an idea.”

Magic scoffed. “Mira, no.”

“You haven’t even heard what it is yet!”

“I don’t need to hear what it is to know that I probably won’t like it.”

But Mira was already standing on the dumpster’s lid, scuffing the rubber soles of her sneakers against it before leaping to grab a firmly cemented metal bar that acted as a house’s rain gutter. The squealing of the metal made Magic shudder. “You can stay here if you want,” she said, scaling the brick wall, “or, you can follow me. I’m going to get our quota.”

“Mira, this isn’t about the quota, it’s—”

Magic pursed his lips and sighed heavily through his nose.

She was already gone, leaping over him to the next house.

Ori’s feathers, he cursed silently, holding his coat closed around his waist as he sprinted in her wake, glasses fogging from the cold plumes that accompanied his breath.

It wasn’t quite winter—it was only early November—but it was cold enough for Magic to reconsider his wardrobe only a few days prior to him and his sister’s pilgrimage. His woolen gray coat, a gift to him from his mother, was a simple thing, made of rough cotton with black buttons down its front that ran to his knees and trailed behind him like a cape. The large fabrics consumed him enough to make him look broader in the shoulders, but it didn’t completely obscure his figure.

Not that this was a defining factor of what he chose to bring with him.

All Magic cared about was whether or not it would keep him warm and, paired with his thinner gray shirt and dark pants in case the weather swapped to something less frigid, he was comfortable.

Running after his sister, though, he felt the furthest thing from comfortable, cold nipping at his cheeks and numbing his skin. Frosty air spread across his skin, constricted his lungs. The persistent fogging of his lenses made it difficult to spot Mira on the rooftops and he overshot his destination by three houses before realizing that his sister had paused. The sound of a dying bird cooed softly from behind and slowly, painfully, Magic made his way back, offering a tired mimic in exchange.

Mira made her way down with a bit more care this time, seeing as there was no dumpster to break her fall. She clutched onto jutting bricks and, once she was at a safe enough distance, jumped to the ground. “Follow me,” she said, hands stuffed into the coats of her insulated purple jacket one size too big for her.

Reluctantly, he did. Magic lagged behind and pressed himself against a wall, bathed in the shadows as Mira paused in the middle of the alley. The part of town his sister dragged him to was covered in fog—not a natural fog that signaled oncoming rain as it often did this time of year, but synthetic fog. A mist that could suffocate you from a distance just staring at it. Neon lights mounted on signs outside local pubs flickered and scattered through it fast enough to give him a migraine; Magic squinted against the glare.

The sleazy corner of Elnoire, he thought, fidgeting with the legs of his glasses. “You’re gonna stand here and pull for cash?”

Mira swept her arm from side to side, a dramatic showcase of the plaza as if Magic didn’t have the vision to see it himself. “Look how many people there are, Mags. We can easily reach our quota here.”

They could have, but that was hardly the most pressing concern. Mira would probably have an easier time swiping money from the pockets of the bar regulars seeing that they would be too inebriated and delirious to care about what happened to their funds so long as they got a good time out of it. Elnoirans often chased highs when they were surrounded by lows. They drowned themselves in pleasures Magic couldn’t begin to imagine. Escapism through any means was a mode of survival that quickly evolved into the traditional way of life. Elnoirans were constantly running, often in place. Magic sympathized with them, but the denizens’ definition of a “good time” struck fear into him.

He cut a glance at his sister who looked left, then right, then left again as though she were watching for ongoing traffic before stepping out into the open.

Magic seized the back of her collar and yanked her back to the safety of the shadows. She gagged, stumbling into the dark. “What the fu—?”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’m creative! There’s a difference!”

“I don’t give a shit. No.”

Mira swatted him away, strolling a few paces away from the mouth of the alley. “And I told you I’d meet our quota. I’m getting you the money.”

“I don’t care about the money,” he snarled, “but I do care about that.” Magic pointed directly in the town’s center. His sister’s gaze followed as a group of well-dressed men stumbled down the last three steps of the pub. One got hastily back to his feet, straightened out the lapels of his coat and raised his arms in a manner that made his companions whoop and cheer, oblivious to the side-eyes of more sober strangers.

“I can handle that.”

“Mirabellis, I swear by Ori’s speckled sky, if you—”

“Swear all you want Magic,” Mira snapped, whirling to face him. “A fable won’t stop me. Let me get what I owe you and be done with it.”

He hadn’t the chance to make his case; by the time words dawned on him, Mira was already trotting towards the plaza with her hands in her pockets, posture straight and stiff with a gait that could put royals to shame. She paraded through the main square like she owned the place, a prospect that sent fire prickling across Magic’s skin. Anger and frustration welled in his chest; sucking frigid air into his nose, he wound a sharp kick into an empty can, punting it further into the alley. Stars, his head was pounding. She never listened. Even when it would benefit the both of them to simply avoid the ruckus and the booze and the crowds, she still ignored him.

And he was absolutely going to kill her when she got back.

Silently, he prayed that Ori would keep her safe. And maybe, if Ori were kind to them both, Mira would come back with better sense.

He wanted to follow her into the square, to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid as she invariably did. But he was too aggravated and she was too annoyed with him to tolerate that anyway, so he settled for lounging against the brick wall of a house, hands shoved into his pockets. His eyes tracked her immediately and spotted his sister sitting beside a fountain not more than a few feet away from one of the popular bars. Mira was chatting with a woman who didn’t look much older than either of them. Blaring music drowned out much of the conversation, a sweet, honeyed scent wafting through the property. 

Magic clung to a wooden block in the fabrics of his right pocket and gave his sister’s company a lookover. The lady didn’t seem threatening. Rather she looked like she belonged in this town, bundled in a quilt he assumed to be homemade based on the patches just barely clinging to the fabrics beneath. Small shades of maroon poked out from the gaps in the blanket when her arms moved, revealing a matching set of sweats. An oversized beige beanie covered much of her head, a tiny pom-pom at the top lolling to the left which she batted at with gloved hands.

Mira was safe. For now. The woman didn’t look the type to make a scene or give anyone a difficult time and the wooden object in Magic’s coat lay still inside his jacket.

The conversation continued for what felt like over an hour; neither woman could find an appropriate time to finish speaking and if either showed any signs of tiring, Magic couldn’t spot it in their faces. Mira, for one, indulged in the conversation, waving her arms and hands with flourish and batted eyes. At one point, the woman said something drowned out by the bar’s music that made his sister blush and Magic had the faintest feeling that he shouldn’t be eavesdropping. It felt wrong, like he’d snuck into her room or spied on a date without her permission first. Still, he felt the need to be there, to observe.

Mira said something and the woman paused, color slowly bleeding from her face. For a second, Magic assumed that his sister insulted her chatting companion without thinking and was about to dismiss it as something easily sidestepped. When the lady’s movements didn’t return to normal and instead lay clasped together in her lap, Mira continued speaking as if the other’s discomfort didn’t exist.

But Magic noticed everything. The Elnoiran woman’s posture was stiff and rigid; no longer was she easygoing and flowing with the conversation but her eyes, focused on something just off to Mira’s left and out of sight, were wary. Cautious. He didn’t know what caught her attention, perhaps a rowdy bar hopper had worried her, but the woman looked startled as if something had manifested that both he and Mira were oblivious to.

On second thought, Magic considered, maybe she had. He remembered hearing stories growing up of people who could talk to ghosts and part of him—the childish part of him—hoped maybe that this existed.

It wasn’t until the bundled woman hastily stood, shoved coins in Mira’s hands as a courtesy and bolted that Magic saw him.

Just behind his sister was a tall, stocky man about a half a head taller than Magic—far taller than Mira, who was oblivious to his drunken zigzagged path in her direction. He was stocky and broad, dark spots of stubble lining his face with wild black hair that brought out the olive tint to his skin in the dying embers of the sunset. A pressed gray suit jacket lay half on his shoulders, dangling behind him in a manner similar to a cape. Magic couldn’t hear the man, if he said anything at all, but Mira whipped around and shoved the money into her pocket.

The drunkard was swaying side to side, stalking towards the fountain in a manner that made Magic nervous. Mira must have sensed something, too, but while she stood and backed away, she didn’t run. Instead, she tipped up her chin to look the man in the eyes, hands now daintily held behind her back, matching the man’s predatory grin with a challenging glare.

I’m getting you that money.

Magic made his way closer and reached for the wood block in his coat, flicking it to the side. A sharp, silver blade slid from its sheath, glinting dangerously in the last bits of sun. So long as you can get back here alive.