That night, Evelynn left Cutlass with two terrible weights. She tried not to think too lucidly about what rested inside her dress or what she was expected to do. That wasn’t what Cutlass was for. Even before she’d obeyed any orders, she knew you didn’t complain.

She strode down the darkening street and gathered her arms tight around her dress. The night winds ensured a naked sky, and a fine moon made the stone walls shine black as jet against the empty merchant stalls. Shadows flocked in multitudes at every alley edge, callous and mercurial, as much to offer shelter as to risk being snatched.

Though her heart spurred in a knot and her stomach clenched, she entered the narrow, suffocating dark. She picked an alley lit with a single torchlight beside a sturdy door – the backdoor to an inn, and took herself over to the mess of scrambled waste that reformed there every night. She climbed up a familiar cradle of spare chairs and reached for a loose brick in the dark. Her grip caught, and even though it’d been years since she’d tried anything so daring it satisfied her to know she still remembered. In minutes she was up, surveying half the city from her modest rooftop, a thousand houses and streets swamping her view. Keep Lions rose steadily in the distance, its turrets shimmering with armour and yellowed light.

And then she was brought out of her searching by a different sound. It crept slowly to her ears, a sharp fiddle and twine stretching steadily amid the raucous laughs and ale jugs crashing into each other from the inn below. Evelynn peeked over the rooftop, saw candlelight and dizzy men spread across the street beneath her. After Cutlass, it struck her as a strange inversion. This was what people were supposed to do, to laugh and soak their throats silly, not plot how to slit another’s.

But hoping did little on its own. She worked for Altar now. And she wasn’t going to let her first job drag her down.

She skirted the edges of her rooftop, leapt onto the next. This far from the noble Keeps, houses weren’t far apart – the rooftops might’ve been a challenge if their gap were twice as wide. She permitted herself to run. On and on she vaulted, picking up a fervent speed amid a battering wind that she just couldn’t explain, loving the illusion of half-flight as she shot forth with dizzying momentum, hanging in the jump a moment, before the next roof caught her.

She raced, on and on, until there were no more houses ahead of her. What spread out instead was a flat street of stone, unremarkable until it rose into a building with thick walls and heavy plated doors. Great, red flags flew proud over the second storey.

She opened her map. She couldn’t read, but Altar had circumvented that issue by scratching out symbols across the parchment. A Key dangled above a wire-thin opening in the building’s left wall. Rope awaited her in a concealed pile just inside. And within the corridors of the Praefectus’s own sanctum, Altar had drawn the visage of a precious, sparkling Star.

Evelynn huffed, felt the red tinge her face and her breath quicken. Praefectus. A shiver just remembering their long, red robes, the flags adorning their every spear. Street children stood clear of them long before they learned exactly why they should be afraid. As little as a stolen loaf could land you in the Penance Halls, and Evelynn had seen many reckless urchins reduced to sullen wrecks after a week in that awful grey tower.

Maybe she should have walked away, and not tempted the very people who ruled this city. But she’d gone hungry too long, felt the wire-plucking strain from the sewing factories for months, and never walked the streets as anything but another desolate girl. Every worthy cause required risk, and sacrifice. Even if it brought you nothing in the end. So she shoved the map into her tattered dress, started climbing down the alleyway Altar had marked, and made for the Praefectus’s Church.

--

Evelynn crouched, inching carefully through the bars, before landing in a brittle crash against the cell floor. She dusted off her dress. It’s barred windows were carved into the bottom of street, intending to humiliate the prisoners inside with an inescapably public view, but it had been surprisingly easy for someone her size to slip in.

She walked through the cell. A chain-drawn bunk and a sack of hay lay amid a floor of fetid flagstones. Rust and rotted clothes filled the air. No moans or stirring indicated a presence in the cell – Altar had ensured this one remained unoccupied, along with dozens of others going by the weak silence that lingered like stubborn cobwebs through the prison. She retrieved a silver key from her dress and pressed it into the aging cell door. It creaked open on poorly-oiled hinges.

Evelynn cringed, but there was no motion or flight, and no one appeared to be guarding the corridor outside. It could be the middle of a shift change or a designated hour when the guards had “decided” to leave. Evelynn didn’t bother asking the specifics – she had to have faith. Altar had delivered her here, and common sense urged he would extract his new asset when the job was done.

She stepped out. The corridor spread both ways, better paved and sharpened with alabaster-white and polished iron sconces, their torchlight making her wince in the dulled moonlit night. From map-memory, she would go right, until a voice hissed from the opposite direction and she scampered back to the relative safety of her initial entrance cell.

Then Evelynn realised it wasn’t a voice, but a whistle.

Instantly her heart sprung in her chest; what if this was a trap, and she’d been led here to fall into the hands of some greater evil, a butcher, or a dealer of flesh? When she heard more, her nerves eased a fraction. The whistler had no idea what he was doing. His lips clumsily teetered through a semblance of a tavern song, lacking the wit or inflection to improvise any but the most basic notes. She almost laughed, then quieted herself. There was more than one set of feet prowling alongside him.

‘Demetrius!’ growled a man. ‘I can’t find a more diplomatic way to say this, so I have to tell you straight: shut up. If you’ll remember, we’re not supposed to be here.’

The whistling stopped.

‘Oh, look what you’ve done,’ the second voice was rougher, thunderous, but definitely a woman’s. It echoed deep and forge hot. ‘You’ve made Demetrius sad.’

The second man’s growl only hardened, as if to contend with the woman’s natural depth. ‘He deserves it. There are eyes and ears everywhere.’

‘Nothing Demetrius says is going to hurt our chances when we’re walking shamelessly through a Praefectus prison,’ the woman said. ‘Remind me why you chose this route again?’

‘My informants said this place would be abandoned tonight. It’s an open prize.’

‘Exactly,’ said the woman. ‘So thanks for your shady info, but we can whistle all we want.’

‘Ooh!’ said a fourth voice, girly, pint-sized and prickly. ‘Can I whistle too?’

‘No,’ the man and the woman said in unison. And then their footsteps turned audibly down another corridor, and faded with the stone.

Evelynn peeked out. There was no one in the hall, and the argumentative voices and feet had turned down the left side of the corridor. Evelynn whipped out her map, then snuck bravely through the shadows to reach the end of the corridor, and turned right.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

From there a series of chambers and stairwells climbed her up into candlelight, and Evelynn was exactly where she needed to be. She stood outside an oaken door at the beginning of marble stairs, high torches making a line into the deeper dark. The bars through the centre were not unlike the cells she’d just passed through. Nervously, she tipped her finger against the door, and was infinitely surprised when that opened, too.

A warmth and the stuffy musk of letters overwhelmed her. The office was impossibly neat. Still-wet parchment stacked against a rich wooden desk almost as tall as her, flanked by darker drawers, their bronze buckles glimmering in the light of an oil lamp sitting atop the centre. A quill set flaunted its writing-feathers like sticks of incense in a temple’s urn. Almost everything in the room would catch if she tipped the flame over. But Evelynn hadn’t come to commit the obvious. She was here for something worse.

She grabbed the vial from her pocket, watched liquid midnight run through its milky glass. Two drops. That was all she had to do. Then scurry off and report all she’d done, as much to brag as to solidify her place in Altar’s murky world.

Her mother had died this way. It was nothing so dramatic as all she attempted now, but what difference was a month of sewage water if they both shared the same colour, both glistened with a black hate and choked the mouths that drank them? Evelynn clenched her vial tight. It was easy, a pittance of effort for all the food Altar promised for this job. For the strong impression, the correct impression, that she could do this right.

It was what she had to do. She would wade through all the darkness and the evil and emerge as something more.

She regretted nothing as she left, scurrying back through the abandoned prison to the now familiar cells. A rope would be lying under the hay, Altar said, with an iron hook to swing between the window bars and pull her up.

She was almost there. The rot of old clothes and iron rust flooded her, and she raced down the last set of stairs without thought to the noise she might make. Perhaps it was the silence that fooled her, or the itching need to escape, but when she turned that final corner a squad of Praefectus stalked the empty cells, red robes and red armour perched like hawks about to snap up their prey.

One cocked her helmet, her banner-spear flapping in the fleeting breeze. ‘Is that…’

Evelynn suppressed the heavy shudder of her heart and ran. Boot steps soon followed, a harrying echo of punishment and threat that made her almost freeze. But she had to thaw, to rush and fight on, or else be swallowed in a red tide.

She didn’t know where she was going, but she remembered turning left back towards the adventurous, arguing voices and stumbling up another level of marshy, soiled flagstones. Images of the inevitable racked her, repeated, and she clapped her ears against the tunnel-narrowed cries and boot treads of those sickeningly close behind. They would be tackle her to the ground, link her wrist to foot in chains, to hobble into the belly of the Penance Halls and never once return…

The corridor stretched on in an endless hall of stone. Doors stood either side, but she couldn’t risk time checking if they were locked. A single, more impressive door waited at the end of the corridor. It dawned she was reaching a dead end. Evelynn panicked, her heart almost in her throat when the she reached it and the knob didn’t give, then one more desperate shove broke its resistance and she hurled into the next room.

The dead-end office no longer fit that description, for it had been liberated of its walls. The brick inlay caved on two sides to reveal the moon shining over endless townhouses and streets. She managed to peer over the edge before the Praefectus entered the room. Three storeys to the bottom. Starting from the prison underground, she’d somehow climbed four floors. At the sight of the Praefectus hunched against the door, she was almost tempted to risk the drop.

‘Little girl!’ one of the men said. ‘Enough games! Don’t hurt yourself!’

But Evelynn was already moving. With her discovery, Altar had provided but one solution. She reached into the pocket with the empty vial, and pulled out what she’d never wanted to use. It was a small red sphere, and even if Evelynn didn’t know the specifics, the Praefectus apparently did. By the time she threw it they were already running, and then it was too late.

It began as a pinprick of heat, then the room shuddered and seemed to curve on its side. Paper burnt and smouldered, tables caught alight, and the air seemed to boil with power. Evelynn swore she felt her skin scald, before being flung back into the hard embrace of a wall of flagstones. She nursed the pain at her shoulder, then blinked, realising she was sitting two feet from the edge of an open wall. The drop went down far too long, and Evelynn looked away after a peek. She might die if she tried taking that.

Then she remembered the Praefectus, heard them mutter and approach through the choking smog by the door, and she realised she had to take the jump.

The wind blew harsh around her, and she felt it push at her back, trying to hasten her along.

Breathing deep, trying to forget the knobbly shake in her fingers, she looked out and her knotted, trembling heart found a semblance of relief. Red flags flew just a storey below her, attached to iron beams sticking up into the sky. Not the worst way to stagger a fall. She dropped down, suffered the pain of landing mid-stomach across the Praefectus’s own flag, then collapsed properly onto the stone street below.

--

Evelynn clutched a bruised elbow as she limped away, her mind scathing at her own poor work and all that unnecessary risk. She dragged her feet into a now-inviting alleyway. There were so many mistakes. Should’ve been listening more, should’ve kept her eyes cautious, keen.

skin bruised and smelling acrid. Somehow, she’d managed to stand. A sack of self-pity she was, as she dragged her feet into a now-inviting alleyway, her mind scathing at her poor work and all that unnecessary risk. had her eyes out and watching, but no, the moment success teased at her, she had to ruin it thoroughly.

She collapsed hard on her knees. This long stumbling about, she was far enough in to buy a minute’s rest. That’s all she needed, just a moment, a respite before she faced Altar and he berated her for her failure. He would hate her. He would never use her again, never pay her…

‘Are you alright?’

Evelynn looked up. Her first instinct was to flinch from a Praefectus, the woman was so huge and red. Then she gasped. Skin fiercely baked like molten flesh, subtle scorch-veins stretching down her arms, themselves thick ropes of muscle that surpassed even the deadliest bodyguards in cutlass. She might’ve belonged to a far-off desert race, if her eyes didn’t glow the same ruby shade.

The woman must’ve read her face. Or Evelynn was too caught up in the moment to try and hide what first came to mind.

‘Um, don’t be scared.’ It sounded half-hearted, like she didn’t usually deal with such an obvious reaction every time she left her house. Or fire cave. Or whatever primordial goo she’d clawed herself out of.

Evelynn crawled back. Fire woman followed. Thick, leather boot tread to the scrambling of her bare feet. ‘What are you?’

She sighed. Her voice was familiar, scaly and harsh as her red skin. The thunderous voice from the prison. Were her allies nearby? ‘Nothing that’s going to hurt you. It seems like something that’s happened to you enough already.’ She pointed loosely to her arm, and though she couldn’t hide a flinch, Evelynn noticed the bloody streak that’d somehow sprouted from her shoulder. ‘You’re not in a good way. I can help you.’

‘I-I’m fine,’ she stammered. Perhaps it was pride, or perhaps the sheer weakness of finishing her first job for Altar by being carried away. Besides, this woman… she was alien. Even in Cutlass, Evelynn had yet to see one of her kind. At least with Rig she had some idea of what he was supposed to be. He had certainly acted the part.

‘You don’t look it,’ she said bluntly.

‘I…had a fall.’ Not a bad lie. It cut deep how easily she could summon one now. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘It looks like a little bit more than a fall,’ the woman said. ‘I know somewhere safe – it’s a townhouse. My friends are there, too.’

Friends. Those other three. Demetrius and the growling man and prickly voice. Most of them had sounded friendly. And at least predominantly human. ‘I have my own place to stay. In the lower streets off Honey road.’

The woman cocked a brow. Whether she believed her or not, the disdain was evident in her voice. ‘I won’t force you. But if you faint on me, I’m not going to have a choice.’

Evelynn gulped. The sharp, concatenated burst of Altar’s sphere and her fall had rattled her so the world was left a dizzy mess that never quite aligned. Something was always spinning. Only now did she smell the heady scent of her own blood.

The woman offered a hand, and her arm was like heat, like light, like the warmth of a summer wind in her face. She longed to take it, to grasp the hand that could effortlessly lift her up. Sharply, Evelynn drew back. Griff always said you never took a stray hand. Such advice served most urchins well. But she was so tired, battered and tossed about and bruised, that the arrival of someone so steady was too great a temptation. She reached up.

‘My name’s Evie,’ the grinding depth of her voice faded to a quiet warmth. Crouched beside her, waiting. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Evelynn.’ For all the heat Evie radiated, her touch was cool as sculpted marble.

‘Come on,’ Evie said, and with one tug held her between two bulging arms. ‘Let’s get you somewhere safe.’

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