The stage was set. It was time to spring my trap.

It was a cloudy day, tepid beneath the silver sky, but with the occasional stiff, lukewarm breeze pushing down from the Kerebels far to Floria's north. The weather threatened storm but, for the time being, the field of darker clouds and their stochastic flickering of lightning scudded by well upriver. With the tromp of guard boots coming down the main promenade, I made myself scarce.

I scampered around a corner so quickly I nearly slipped in a slick of muck from the earlier rains. I had to make myself scarce whenever the marketplace guards patrolled nearby - Mrs. Choso's shop was located in a little row of shops along the south end of the market strip and within spitting distance of the riverfront promenade, which meant there was some debate as to whether the Market Council or Waterside Watch guards held jurisdiction. The Waterside Watch didn't know I'd been expelled from Mrs. Choso's, but I wasn't taking any chances and hid from any and all guards in the vicinity while Mailyn stood ready to distract them away. Speaking of whom…

Mailyn gesticulated wildly in the corner of my vision and, when I turned to face her, she held up two fingers. She'd spotted two members of the Tetrad. The time was ripe! As soon as the Waterside guards about-faced, I scampered back to the stoop in front of Chosen Letters, holding a 'package' in my hand - a block of moldering wood wrapped in newsprint. Like dutiful little bullies, the Tetrad tried to direct the guards' attention toward me, so I took off along the western walkway with Mailyn shadowing about half a block behind.

"Hey! She's stealin' stuff!" Nima shouted after me.

Looking over my shoulder, I spotted both Nima and Tizzie charging in my direction. Nima was close to as fast as me, but Tizzie lagged behind, her face going pink as she puffed and struggled to keep up. I slowed down just enough for Nima to close distance and then looped around to give Tizzie a fighting chance as well - if possible, I needed to net all four members of the Tetrad, but as long as I entrapped either Tizzie or Oltzen, the two who'd tried to drown me, I'd call the plan a success. Hopefully, the two boys, Oltzen and Thero, would be back at the Tetrad's hidey-hole.

Mailyn must have signaled to our three boys that the chase was afoot, because a commotion broke out along the eastern perimeter of the market.

"Thief! It's the boy from yesterday!"

If he was following the plan, Nate hadn't actually stolen anything. With twenty items stolen on his 'crime spree' the day before, people were primed to attribute any ruckus to the audacious and nigh-uncatchable child thief. We didn't want to be caught with any stolen items, of course, because then the Collegium would have to make reparations. Our esteemed institution was only mildly annoyed when their students were cast under allegations of crime, but getting caught red-handed in a crime might result in actual punishment (I've never heard of a Scamp getting expelled - you'd probably have to commit cold-blooded murder or irk one of the Masters for that to happen).

"Cut 'im off!" one of the guards shouted. The Market Council guards swarmed to the eastern perimeter, quickly moving to encircle Nate before he could dash into the backways leading to the Tetrad's hideout - a virtual disaster.

"The boy's a distraction - there they are!" Aldo shouted, pointing toward Nima and Tizzie as they pursued me down the marketplace.

Why in the world a dozen adult guards would pay much mind to a child's shouted direction in the middle of a pursuit, I have no idea. But it worked… sort of. At least half of the guards shifted their attention toward Nima and Tizzie… and me.

"Hey, it's that girl who got banned!" one of the guards shouted, and then all of them started tromping after me! Thanks, Aldo!

"Switch!" I shouted. As I doubled back to avoid the guards, I danced around Tizzie's grasping fingers as she puffed after me. Mailyn zipped in to run alongside me just as I made a sharp right toward a shadowed alleyway.

I yanked my cloak off. Mailyn's hands clutched the wad of brown fabric. Still running, she started to don it - if the guards pursued her instead of me, we could…

And then Mailyn tripped right on one of the stolen items that Zev had planted along the route. Along the wrong route toward the hideout. This wasn't the path we'd discussed in our planning. The brass candelabra she'd tripped over clattered along the cobblestones. I gasped and skidded to a stop, pivoting toward the sprawled-out Mailyn to make sure she was uninjured.

Meanwhile, Tizzie had decelerated to a stop nearby, taking in great gasps of air. She noticed the purloined candelabra and lifted it in a meaty fist, wielding it like a bludgeon. "What in the…" she puzzled over the unexpected object before turning back toward me, something between recognition and fury flashing across her face. "What did you do?" she shouted.

Then the guards clambered around the alleyway. "Hey! Kid! Stop under the authority of the Market Council!"

The guards were large adults and could probably run faster than us, even considering how fleet Mailyn and I were (probably the fastest in our whole bunkhouse in terms of straight-up running), but they were encumbered with their crossbows and ruddy Market-Council-stamped brigandine, tromping through a cramped alleyway, and they weren't about to shoot at kids over petty theft. At least not if those kids might be Collegium students.

Before Tizzie could assault us with a big, brass bludgeon right in front of the guards, I yanked Mailyn to her feet. "We have to get to their base for the secret plan!" I shouted.

Mailyn's eyes went wide, as if I'd just revealed a terrible secret. But Nima and Tizzie's eyes went wider still, which was exactly the reaction I'd been going for. I scrambled past Nima, dashing down the alleyway. Meanwhile, Mailyn, waving my cloak about like a matador, snatched the candelabra right out of Tizzie's hand and tossed it over the approaching guards' heads.

"What secret plan?" Nima shouted after me. I just laughed, hoping to further provoke her.

In response, she pulled out a small knife - so mission accomplished on provoking her, I suppose. As I tore off toward the Tetrad's hideout, I felt for my own blade in my pocket. It was still there, its reassuring weight tapping against my thigh with every lightning-fast stride. But, even in this moment of dire uncertainty, I wasn't foolish enough to whip it out in front of the marketplace guards with their armor and crossbows. Then they really might shoot instead of waving their weapons around like bolt-action protest signs.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I was perhaps three blocks from the alley with the Tetrad's hiding spot, stumbling down the damp backways between worn redstone buildings, dodging around abandoned crates, levee sandbags, and maintenance ladders, with knife-waving Nima close behind and the mess of Mailyn, Tizzie, and the guards clambering somewhere behind that. Then, with a deafening boom, the alleyway went pale-white as lightning flashed overhead and rain dumped from the sky in a sudden cloudburst. I was almost immediately soaked. When I mistimed a jump, Nima got close enough to grab my wrist, but between my sweat and the rain, I pulled free. She stumbled off balance, cursing as the pocketknife clattered out of her hand and into the water, suddenly ankle-deep.

I scampered around the final corner to the Triad's hideout… and right into Oltzen. He had enough of a size advantage over me - as large as Tizzie if not a bit bigger - that I only staggered him, whereas running into him was like running into a big meaty wall. I rebounded back into Nima's clutches, drawing a yelp as the back of my head collided with her mouth. Her blade clattered to the ground yet again. Oltzen's face went from surprise to smug condescension as he bent to retrieve it, and in dawning horror, I realized he fully intended to stab me. And then, just as he chambered his arm, the guards rounded the corner… and magic swirled about me as I fully dropped into the Shadelands.

Unlike my prior experiences in that strange and empty realm, moving about was like wading through molasses - the cloud cover of the thunderstorm provided plenty of gloom, but it wasn't exactly dark. Not in the middle of the afternoon. I perceived Oltzen and Nima as indistinct, vacillating blobs of humanoid shadow, the larger of the two thrusting a blade right at me. The knife impacted my gut and simply, painlessly, slipped off, my whole body displacing itself to the side as if inertia was merely a convention. The sky above me was a great, blindingly-white gash between the awnings of the nearby buildings - fortunately, the alleyway itself was well-covered.

I stumbled away from the conflict, toward the fuzzy shade of the Tetrad's open hideout, its interior a great, inky blot in the world. Even as I did, the world around me started to fade, darker and darker, the bare sepia color of the Shadelands becoming something fuzzier and far less distinct. I felt myself dropping toward some unseen abyss, tiny tendrils of cold, numbing avarice leeching out from somewhere in the abyss below the realm of shadow. My limbs tingled, going numb, cold seeping in, the tendrils of the shadow growing alive and voracious as the world faded…

Then lightning flashed. Blessed lightning! It knocked me right out of the shadows, sending me skittering along an unfamiliar alleyway, slowing as I plowed against the current of shin-deep water before gently (if wetly) being deposited against a waste bin behind a shop. Breath still catching in my chest, I peeked around the corner and, with no small satisfaction, watched Tizzie, Nima, and Oltzen getting dragged off by the guards, blood still dribbling out from Nima's split lip. Another guard rummaged through their hideout, a little abandoned cellar behind one of the shops, exclaiming how much stuff 'them damn little thieves' had stashed away.

Success!

Well… sort of…

Virtually all of us had been seen at some point, the Tetrad as well as my own friends, and so none of us could return to the River's Run marketplace for a good while. The guards wouldn't remember us forever, so it wasn't exactly a lifetime ban, but it would be a few months before any of us could safely show our faces without getting chased out or worse. Which, if you recall being seven-and-a-half, several months might as well be forever.

"Some plan," Zev said with a huff. He glowered at me, dark brows furrowed over piercing pale eyes. "What are we gonna do for money now?"

"I guess we're going to Mini Gionika," Aldo sighed.

And so we did.

In the aftermath of Operation: Just Like Golden Masque, it took us less than a week to settle into a new normal. Zev was always a bit distant from me after that, and I can't say I blame him - I'd followed a personal grudge and, even if my revenge had been wildly successful, Zev ended up worse off for it. And Nate? Of course, he forgave me almost immediately. He wasn't the sort to hold onto grudges or even bad moods. Considering his background, that was unusual - like most Scamps, his early upbringing had been far more impoverished than mine, the son of a dockside prostitute and a drunkard of a shipworker living right outside the bad district of the Eastriver Downs.

And, naturally, the Tetrad of Terror was none too pleased with me for what I'd done - but they'd never liked me to begin with, so it was no great loss. And the fact that all of their unsold stash had been seized erased weeks of effort at game hustling and petty thievery. I'm pretty sure Tizzie Drake would have killed me if she thought she could get away with it… she probably would have brained me with the candelabra right there in the alleyway if I'd let her. My scheme of mutual expulsion from the market… or perhaps it was the fact that I shrugged off getting stabbed in the gut… earned me enough grudging respect from Oltzen that he shifted the Tetrad's bullying toward less prickly targets, and I counted that as an unambiguous win. Too bad for the new victims - I'd give them exactly as much help as they'd given me when I was the victim.

A week after the fracas, Mrs. Choso tracked me down as I was finishing one of my daily baths in the Largotto along the Step Wharf. I waded out of the Largotto, swaddling myself in one of the big, roughspun towels that Aldo had 'purchased' from a friend of a friend down in Mini Gionika. Mrs. Choso cleared her throat, approaching several paces before taking a seat on the bleached marble of the steps.

"Hullo, Vix," she said. She didn't look directly at me, presumably because she felt bad for accusing me of theft and siccing the guards on me and not because I wasn't wearing anything but a wrap of splotchy terrycloth.

"Hello, Mrs. Choso," I said. I looked right at her as I tossed the towel next to Mailyn and Aldo's stuff and proceeded to dress. A little spiteful part of me reveled in the bookseller's discomfort with the encounter. But she had sought me out, after all, so whatever discomfort she felt was hers to bear… and, in retrospect, the fact that she did seek me out probably spoke well of her as a person.

"I know you didn't steal my books… when the guards returned some of them to me, they explained how they'd found them in a trove of stolen goods along with the boy who told me you'd stolen them…"

"Oltzen," I said.

"I didn't catch his name," she mumbled. The breeze hushed through the olive trees that dotted the shoreline, and two hundred assorted youths splashed and shrieked all along the sun-dappled waters of the wharf.

"It was Oltzen. I got him back…" I shrugged. "So I guess it's fine."

"I can talk to the guards," she said. "Get you allowed back into the market. I'd like to have you as a messenger again… and you can have a book a week. Just like our old deal…"

I considered it. I knew that this was just her opening offer and that I could probably bargain for more - two books a week! My friends allowed back into the marketplace! Zev would forgive me with open arms, and it would be like the whole debacle never transpired… except the Tetrad was still expelled. I could have my cake and eat it, too.

And then I remembered how I'd felt when the bookseller accused me of theft, the burning shame and hot tears. I'd tried to explain things to Mrs. Choso, and she hadn't even given me a chance. So why did she deserve a second chance from me? The fact was, as much as I'd enjoyed relaying Citadel moves and enjoyed the occasional idle chat over lavender tea, I could never forget that feeling of betrayal. Mrs. Choso wasn't my enemy, but she would never again be the kindly auntie who doted upon her Vix. I looked at her and shrugged.

"I've got another job now, and Mr. Hianchi never accused me of being a thief or turned me in to the guards."

Mrs. Choso winced at that. "Vix… I just… I thought…"

I turned to look across the river, across to the glittering estates of the Mercantile Quarter, my hands absently reaching to braid my hair. "You lost your chance to be my friend. Enjoy your afternoon, Mrs. Choso."

"Alright, Vix. Stay safe," she said in a small voice, and that was the last I ever heard from Mrs. Choso.