I let go of the legs and shrugged my shoulders displacing the weight of the deer and causing the legs to roll up and back. The hooves clattered on the stone pavement behind me a bare moment before the solid thud of the body struck once.

I took a deep breath and stretched. No healing fires came but I did feel the lessening of tension. I’d made it back. At the start of the winter, when confronted by others I’d taken to fleeing at speed, or once, in dropping the much needed meat and running.

I had been so set against killing humans for fear I would feed that I’d watched the children’s sullen faces as I returned empty handed.

Then the winter got harsher. More children were dropped off by those who could not feed them or keep them warm.

The need for food grew even as the hunting grew worse.

The first time I killed a man who tried to rob me for the meat I carried I found I had zero desire to eat him. I was empty of the need to feed as I had just fed upon the game I’d killed. I felt no draw.

I always tried to avoid the main routes back, but there were only two options when I approached the east side of the city. The stone beach, or the Midtown Gate, as the Union Gate was closed and barred. Even Gregor’s men, who used the Union gatehouse and barracks, did not use that gate, and surely they would if they could.

Rumor said something had broken inside with the ratchet system that lifted the huge gate up into the wall.

I never felt like I’d accomplished something until I stood here, at the warehouse door, with meat.

I knocked on the vertical slabs of wood that created a barricade blocking out even the light from inside. We had never found a door that could fit the odd size.

The doors to every warehouse had been burned until they were weak enough for the looters to either batter down or cut into with axes. Many of the thick slabbed strong doors throughout the Slums had suffered the same fate.

Then over the winter, doors were collected with any other wood that could be carried off for heat. It seemed you could tell a building was occupied simply based on if it had a door or not. Which wasn’t exactly true but seemed so.

“It’s Aldus,” I called out to the muffled question.

I heard noises that indicated whomever was on watch was asking Jake’s permission to open it. I couldn’t hear the silent response but I knew the man was shaking his head and getting up from his chair to do it himself. In moments items were being shifted until one of the heavy slabs of wood could be moved.

Light from the cook fire at the end of the building spilled out around Jake’s much closer silhouette.

“We have to talk,” Jake said before I could push inside.

I had to stand tall on my toes but I looked over his shoulder.

The banker’s wife was just beginning to stand in the distance behind him. Marcus’s portly frame was hunched over a tea cup on the stool beside her. The other chairs and stools were empty of children.

“Letting Merle go with her?” I asked softly.

“She’s not-” Jake said as he felt around the opening and then tentatively moved through it toward me. He took my arm and pulled me further from the door, our regular roles reversed.

I had to stop him from falling when he kicked the deer but we maneuvered around it.

“Her husband forced most of the guards out of the estate, staff too. She brought the estate’s chef, her maids, and two guards,” Jake said in a whisper.

“Jake,” I warned.

“Most of the guards ended up with the blacksmith,” he said quickly, “but two of them came with her. They each have a crossbow and decades of training-”

“Jake-”

“They know how to guard houses. They’ve been at it for years. All of them have strong backs and the maids can help out with the children.”

“Maids-” I repeated the plural word in a tone even I didn’t like.

“And there is a Chef. A Master in his craft. He has prepared meals for royals both foreign born and for our own Tobars.”

“Those are your Royals,” I said quoting Cook who blamed the royals when we asked why we could not go outside. He wouldn’t have to raise children in his attic if the Tobars spent the coin to care for the Slum’s orphaned children.

“What does it say,” Cook would ask us, “that they leave the most innocent of their citizens to live and die like rats on the street?”

Jake continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

“The women are good with mending and we’ve lots of clothing to mend, not to mention-”

“Jake,” I snapped interrupting the man. His hand fell away from my arm and I took a deep breath as I glanced at the door. A tiny face jerked back when it was caught spying.

“We barely squeezed through the winter with the mouths we have,” I whispered seriously, “this isn’t about-”

A thought occurred to me and I glanced up at the roof line where another tiny head pulled back. Boy-sized at least. I moved quickly to the doorway and eased around the gap to glance inside.

Marcus and the banker’s wife, no one else. Would Jake-

“Aldus?” Jake asked and I moved back to him reaching out a hand to touch his arm.

“Where are the others? The guards-”

“Fishing,” Jake said, “they insisted on it, to help pull their weight. I warned them you’d say no.”

“You let them take the children! At night?”

“No!” he assured me quickly, “I told the little ones to give me space with the adults. They are likely tormenting Snail, or pulling hair. The others are grown men and women. I warned them, but they insisted they could pull their weight.”

“I don’t need this!” I whispered as I realized how much time it was going to take to retrieve them, “I didn’t ask-”

“No one asked for this,” Jake snapped back. It was a rare enough occurrence that I stopped to face him.

His face smoothed instantly.

“But think,” he continued, “We have the summer. We have food right now, likely will until fall. They can help with the children, something you dislike-”

“It’s not that I dislike-” I began but Jake cut me off by squeezing my arm.

“They can help with the children. It frees time up for you to hunt or fish. They can teach them to read. Keep them busy. The men can help guard them so we don’t have another incident while you are away.”

He knew how much effort I put into trying to get them to read, but it was often a choice of taking the time to bring in food or taking the time for lessons.

Jake couldn’t help with either task and I only had so much time each night.

Just a few days ago, while I was hunting, one of the Butcher’s men had taken Merle. Pure chance had allowed me to save her. Though medicine rubbed on the affected areas had cured Jake of the bruises and marks from the beating, he still moved carefully as if in remembered pain.

His comment about protecting the children stung and he knew it, but he talked on as if it was just another point to be made.

“The Chef is a Master craftsmen. Likely he knows ways to stretch the food out. As to the guards. They have crossbows. How many animals could you hunt with a partner, or two?”

Jake likely felt me shudder as he was holding my arm, but I knew he didn’t know what it meant.

“More mouths to feed, yes,” Jake said, “but adult mouths, with adult minds and adult hands to share the load, and not a one of them crippled.”

“This is when you choose to squeeze me for sympathy?” I asked.

“What if you die,” he said slowly. Quietly.

I opened my mouth but he spoke again, softly.

“I hear the other gangs whisper about losses. Lord Fennic’s men have pushed further into the King’s Wood. Game is already scarce on the flood plains and sometimes when men go into the swamps they don’t come back out. If you die- I can’t even feed myself, not with how the city is now. I surely can’t care for the children. At best Gregor takes us in, though more than likely he takes in only the boys big enough to do a man’s work and the girls of any age.”

Silence stretched. I had never once considered what would happen if I died again. This time there were responsibilities and I did hate having to do everything myself.

“Let’s go inside,” Jake said, “and have a talk with her.”

“There is a deer at your feet,” I said, “it’s small but was the best I could do tonight. Why is Marcus here?”

“He escorted her down.”

I cursed. Everyone took note of Marcus which meant they took note of who he was with. Worse, it wasn’t like he could keep secrets. If someone asked him, he’d talk and never think twice about it. He was the sole remaining Guard in the Slums. He spent his time patrolling the streets on his rounds at night, just like he had before the plague.

Jake’s blindness was obvious to anyone that met him but Marcus was just as crippled, if not more so. Only his broken bits weren’t so obvious.

Only days after signing on to be a guard as a young man, or so the story went, Marcus was kicked in the head by a merchant’s horse and it broke something in him. Left him simple as a child in some ways and simpler in others.

“Get the boys to take the deer inside, but don’t butcher it yet, not in there,” I said with a sigh thinking of having to put up with the smell of blood for weeks as it soaked into the stones and wouldn’t come out with any amount of scrubbing, “and I’ll go get the fools before the ghouls take offense and make an example out of them.”

“There’s more,” Jake said.

“Of course there is.”

“She claims she didn’t think her husband would-”

“I’m in a hurry Jake,” I interrupted, “and lives might be on the line. Talk fast, but only if it’s important.”

“It is. Berkly Devar, another rich man, put most of his staff and his adult children out on the the street. Then a few days later his wife and her maids followed. She never thought it would happen to her but she planned for the staff. In case her-” he shook his head and began again, speaking quickly.

“In secret she loaded a carriage with food and goods the staff might need if they were pushed out. Tools, blankets, clothing, pots, pans, and the like. Anything she could squirrel away that might help. When he put the staff out she told him he either had to put her out too or keep the lot of them. To her utter surprise she was put out the door with little discussion and no time to pack. They were watched and escorted to Midtown and only there given the four crossbows. Most of the guards and two of the crossbows folded in with the Blacksmith. The carriage is still waiting at her estate loaded down with useful things. Maybe you could-”

He trailed off and I waited but that was where he left it.

“And I’m to pull it myself am I?”

“I don’t know if the ones with her are loyal or if-”

“Or if they were just the ones the blacksmith, or their fellows, didn’t want,” I finished his thought.

If I had anyone else get the carriage they could take it to the Blacksmith or Gregor. It might be that the two stayed with the woman just to get her situated and would leave in a day or so anyway to join up with the other guards, leaving the worst of the dead weight here.

“I could let them fish and see what comes of it,” I said, “and go get the carriage now. Myself. I’d need her for directions but-”

Jake shook his head and sighed, “Even if the two guards are of a mind to leave to join their fellows-”

I smiled. Jake might be a blind but his mind was often sharper than mine and I liked when I could think as quickly as he could. I knew what he was going to say this time before he said it.

“She has two maids fishing,” he said slowly, “women she effectively stood against her husband to protect.”

“What is effectively?” I asked.

“It means, um,” Jake paused, “She stood up to her husband,” he said abandoning the definition, “to try to save her maids. She left an estate in the Crown District because her husband pushed her people out into the street. She’s less likely to survive on the street than the children, she’s old, she’s weak, and likely she doesn’t have any skills we can use to gather food.”

“You’re not making a good case for keeping her,” I said.

“I’ve already made the case for keeping them,” Jake said, “but add that she’s loyal to the list. Likely her people are loyal too as that often goes in both directions.”

The woman had visited some twenty days back with an escort of fifteen armed men looking to adopt one of the children. Until that point we’d only ever accepted them from people who could not feed them. No one had ever come looking to care for one. I was fishing but Jake allowed her to enter and look over the children.

“Okay, just for now,” I said, “but if we need them gone they are gone.”

He didn’t agree, but we both knew he didn’t have to. He couldn’t stop it if I wanted to make it happen. So instead of creating discord he remained silent. It was odd how often I noticed such actions after I’d learned to look for them.

The ship-breaker docks were only a thousand paces away as the gull flew but on the other side of the city wall from the warehouse, which I had to go around on foot.

Before the plague the long low barges that floated down the Ren river would dock at the old pirate docks while the deep hulled ocean faring vessels would dock at the high docks further west and on the other side of the Ice River.

The ship-breaker docks were about a hundred and twenty paces long. My eyes could make out two men with crossbows partially obscured behind the massive pillars at the far end, while three other people argued in the weak light of a lantern. I crouched down watching them and tried to listen.

While there were no gulls calling at this hour the waves slapping against the stony shore were loud enough to drown out any noise they were making.

There were five people on the dock with one lantern. They’d taken one of Jake’s nets and were throwing it off the end of the dock. Or they had tried that and tangled it and now they were trying to work out how to untangle it. In the dark. Without knowing how to do it in the first place. All while burning lamp oil, one of the few things that traded well because it was both scarce and no one knew how to get more of it.

There was movement from the corner of my eye and I turned my head.

Ghouls.

I didn’t curse but I openly watched them approach. They hadn’t changed into their more frightening form and looked just as human as I did.

One paused and a after a quickly spoken word they changed course and headed toward me.

The only weapon I had was the t-handled punch and that wasn’t so much a weapon as a tool.

As they came closer I recognized one of them.

Doff was an old man with close cut gray hair and only stubble for a beard. Not that I could make all that out in the darkness. I did however recognize the shape of his walk. His cadence, strength, and cautious confidence were present in his gait. The other one I didn’t know but he walked with bravado, as if he was trying to make himself seem ten times his size.

“Aldus,” Doff said as he slowly approached, “may I join you?”

“Please,” I said. Like a predator not wanting to frighten its prey he moved slowly, and not directly toward me.

Or perhaps like a wary animal ready to leap away if things went poorly at the watering hole. He dropped down into a crouch beside me to watch.

“A banker in the Crown district kicked most of his household out,” I said slowly, “including his wife, her maids, guards, the whole bit I guess,” I said.

“So they don’t know the rules yet?” Doff asked.

“Or they weren’t told because you want us to deal with them,” the other man whispered, “so you don’t have to get your hands bloody.”

Doff looked at him until the man snorted and dropped into a crouch where he stood, still several paces away from us.

“Might be that is the best thing over all,” I said slowly, “but they don’t know the rules, winter’s passed, I know what killing them costs you,” I said.

“You don’t know shit about what it costs us,” the other man said under his breath.

“You don’t know shit!” I screamed at him. The words exploding out of me in a sudden burning rage.

Doff was between us quickly. He stood right at the tip of where my finger was jabbing at the new man, but Doff was turned slightly, hands at his side, eyes turned down to look at nothing. The blood inside me boiled and I spun around striding away simply because I had to move.

Either away from him, or toward him.

Whatever the paladin had done had been a blessing, no doubt about it. Before he had knocked the animalistic nature out of me I’d had no emotions at all. But the emotions that slowly came back were harsher, sharper, and more violent than they had been before I died.

Possibly it was the stress I was under, or the lack of sleep. Meditation didn’t scratch the same itch sleep had, not by a long shot, and the endless hours began to add up quickly.

There were calls coming from the newcomers at the end of the dock now. Threats and warnings mixed with questions about who was out there, alongside demands to show and identify ourselves.

I stopped pacing and waited for my blood to cool.

He didn’t know what I went through any more than I knew what he’d gone through. The initial anger was because of his mocking tone, but I was angry now because he was right, and I’d overreacted. I truly didn’t know what killing cost them.

I kept telling myself that I didn’t know what they’d been through. Over and over I reminded myself that they needed to eat too. That was all that really mattered with this whole dock situation. It was about food. Food we could share if I kept my head.

Food for the children. Food for the Ghouls. Food enough for everyone and there didn’t have to be any more killing.

“Don’t loose sight of what matters,” Jake had said once when I’d been angry about some unimportant thing.

He’d been right then and it was something I had to remind myself of over and over. I had to focus on what mattered.

By the time I’d calmed myself so that I could turn around without the desire to pick a rock up and cave his skull in, the noise from the end of the dock had gone quiet.

Doff was still standing there, patient and unmoving. The other man was already forty paces away and walking off with his back to us.

“I wasn’t going to make you do it,” I said seriously when I reached Doff, “I just don’t-”

Doff didn’t say anything as he dropped into a relaxed crouch.

I did the same cutting off what I’d been saying and turning my eyes back to the people trapped on the dock. They were just now figuring out that they either had to dip into the black water with the things that ate sailors or return the way they had come where someone else was clearly waiting in the dark.

Their lantern was off or shuddered and they were all huddled behind a pillar. A moment later they moved one at a time in a crouched run from one side of the dock to the other. Two of them tripped loudly. Both times someone rushed out to help the fallen up.

Perhaps they thought since they couldn’t see us we couldn’t see them. It seemed so naive to assume-

I blushed, thankful of the darkness as I remembered Paladin Flinn laughing when I didn’t understand why it was better to approach an animal from down wind.

I realized suddenly I was studying these people in the same way I studied deer or boar when I hunted them.

I spat off to the side.

“How are the crab traps Jake fixed up working out?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “and the scraps are appreciated.”

“It’s the least we can do,” I said seriously.

We couldn’t eat the bones or shells of things, but his people needed them. It seemed more than a waste to toss them aside.

“I could help you,” Doff offered.

“I’m not going to kill them,” I said quickly, “but I might try to scare them so they understand the danger they are in.”

“I could help,” he offered slowly, “I’ve enough control for it.”

“They have two crossbows and women to protect,” I said, “they might do something stupid like a heroic charge or the like and I don’t have enough to control to stop once I start.”

I clamped my teeth closed. I hated talking because I always felt like a stupid braying mule. I said the wrong thing, or too much. Doff might not be attacking me now, but I could tell every time we met, that he was revising the plan he had in place to kill me.

They were huddled together behind the other pillar now, and it was clear from what little body language I could see they were scared.

I stood up and motioned to Doff who I knew could see in the dark as well as, or better than, I could.

“Let’s get behind this pillar,” I said, “in case they get a lucky shot off.”

I picked up stones as we moved forward toward the first massive pillar driven into the beach.

“How’s your throwing arm?” I asked Doff.

“Before the plague,” Doff said, “I could knock a gull from a mast two out of three times,” he said proudly.

“Well they are slightly farther than a mast from the deck,” I said.

“Mast from the docks,” he corrected, “used to bet the captains I could hit the birds without hitting the ship.”

“You haven’t practiced after the change?” I asked.

“We’ve traps for the city rats,” he said seriously, “and once outside the gates we can change without fear of hurting anyone. We are quick enough to catch rabbits by hand. I suppose it hasn’t come up.”

“Something to be said about giving yourself to the hunt,” I agreed.

I stood up, and with blood enhanced strength, threw one of the stones. Something in my shoulder tore and the white-hot fire of healing burned into me as I dropped behind the pillar.

There was a scream and the snap of a crossbow and someone screamed, “I’ve been shot!”

I cursed and watched. That had not been my intention. I’d aimed for the man with the crossbow who had it pointed away from the others but maybe-

As I watched I figured out the man that screamed must have thought the stone had been a bolt. They certainly felt similar when you were hit by them. I kept breathing in through my nose waiting for the scent I couldn’t miss.

“You smell any blood?” I asked Doff.

“From this far?” he asked and I glanced at him to find him looking at me in a way that said he was going to remember this conversation. I was the one who looked away.

He’d been there when I killed- I paused, feeling sick to my stomach, I couldn’t even remember the man’s name.

“How’s Sil?” I asked trying to change my line of thinking. I regretted it as soon as I spoke, “and the others,” I added quickly.

“Haven’t lost anyone in months,” he said seriously, “not to the change, and not to a bolt. Six went up the river for good looking to take over one of the abandoned farming villages. Another four headed up the mountain. We lost one to suicide.”

“What about the sewers?” I asked.

“We stay out of them on our side. You?”

“I haven’t seen anything in a long time,” I said seriously, “except a man that lives in a dry dead end. Buildings built over the old grates mean nothing comes in from above and he’s far enough in to stay dry. One of the Ice River’s aqueducts drains into his place for fresh water. He’s got a nice little set up down there, book shelves and what not. He’s an odd one, but he’s been down there since before the plague. He knew about the monster.”

I glanced at Doff who nodded for me to continue.

“He doesn’t know what it is either, but he said to listen for clicks. Says the big thing doesn’t have eyes but it sees with clicks. He said if you hear clicking to run. That holding still or hiding doesn’t work because the thing remembers what the tunnel is supposed to sound like. He’s been down there twenty years or so as far as he can tell. Even Marcus knows of him, brings him things from time to time I guess. He said it gets distracted easily, and just to run, that it’s slow.”

“What a strange world,” Doff said softly.

“Just a moment,” I said standing up now that the other crossbowmen had shifted in a way that I could hit him.

I threw and my mended shoulder ripped again. There was an audible thud of contact and more fear filled conversation, but no second shot.

“Gregor grabbed one of the kids,” I said as I dropped back down.

Doff said nothing and I glanced at him before looking back down the dock.

“One of his men did the grabbing I mean,” I added, “Like as not their will be bodies soon, mine or his. I can’t let something like that stand.”

“We won’t get involved,” he said sternly.

I glanced at him and then away.

“Was sort of feeling you out on their bodies,” I said, “but being direct- do you want them? I know how some of you feel-” I had to force myself to stop talking when I realized what I’d said. I didn’t know how they felt, not really.

“If it comes we will accept them, but we may bury them without-” he shrugged and I nodded.

“Hunting has been good now that we can move better,” he said, “It was surprising how much the cold hindered us.”

“Have you decided on the firewood or, or, anything” I said unsure how to proceed.

“We lost two guests a few months ago,” he said quietly.

“Someone’s cousin came from Midtown. They were starving and had no other choice. There was an accident. The other,” he sighed, “Someone’s child-” he shook his head unwilling or unable to say more.

“That was the suicide I mentioned. The change came and they-”

“Their own child?!” I said before I realized that it might be better left unsaid.

“Even lumbering beside others isn’t likely to happen,” Doff said seriously ignoring my outburst, “not in the traditional sense. Maybe if you were willing-” he stopped as I stepped up and threw another stone. They were huddled behind the pillar but someone was looking out. The stone thudded noisily into the wood and the head jerked back.

“If I was willing to what?” I said.

“We need tools,” he said seriously, “we’ve a grind stone and anvil and what we could scavenge but we are rebuilding homes and wagons and need materials.”

“Wagons?” I asked.

“Sleds more like,” he said, “there is a group that intends to take to the road once winter comes and head north.”

“I thought you were less than useless in winter,” I said.

“Still stronger than men,” he said carefully not wanting to admit to any weakness, “and it’s the group of us that tries to change as little as possible. They think they can travel as men, changing only once a moon and live as men otherwise. They trust to their control.”

I said nothing. I knew what trusting to my own control had cost me.

A drunk lost in the woods can claim sobriety, but unless he’s got alcohol to hand and is still able to hold onto his sobriety he’s lying to himself.

Avoidance wasn’t control.

I couldn’t imagine what they were going through over there, or what it would have been like to kill your own child.

“I’m sorry about yelling at your man,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said and we left it at that.

Doff threw a few stones, grunting with effort both times but coming up short by tens of paces though the stones did skitter down the dock noisily.

The noises seemed to send them into a frenzy enough that it didn’t matter.

“You think they are frightened enough?” he asked.

“The more I scare them now, the less chance we have an incident with your people later,” I said.

“You there!” I screamed at them, “Shoot that other crossbow into the water!”

I let them scream back for a while as I waited.

“I’m here to take you back to the warehouse!” I shouted, “but-”

They began shouting.

“But!” I tried to shout over them. I gave up and crouched back down waiting for them to shout themselves out.

Almost everything about my body had became stronger and faster after I died. Except my lungs. The bestiary explained that the black ooze had dissolved both lungs and only regrew one.

I couldn’t speak to the internal changes but it was true that I couldn’t yell as loudly or for as long as I could before. I didn’t really get winded though as I didn’t really need to breathe at all.

Breathing helped the blood last longer, just like eating did, but I didn’t actually need to do it, something I’d wished I’d learned far sooner.

It was obvious looking back. When I’d risen from the dead as a feral vampire and hunted anything and everything in the swamps I’d slept in the mud under the water. I hadn’t had a need to breathe then, but after my thinking mind was returned to me I hadn’t realized not breathing was even a possibility for a very long time.

I kept thinking of myself as a person with additional strengths and weaknesses. It took a long while to understand that I was actually dead, and the things I had needed my whole life I might no longer have need of.

I rolled my shoulder. The white-hot healing fire had repaired whatever damage throwing the stones so far had caused. Sometimes when I moved the joints afterward there were little lightning shocks of continued healing.

“Do you want to live!” I shouted after they’d been silent for a while.

“Yes,” one of the men called out.

“Send out an unarmed man to talk,” I shouted.

I glanced at Doff.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” I said seriously, “if he sees the change that should speed things along.”

“Now or?” Doff asked.

“After he speaks to you as a man. It’s important he think of you as a person who changes instead of a monster who can look like a person.”

Doff stared at me in a way that made me turn my head.

There was something primal in both the ghouls and myself about eye contact. It carried a challenge of sorts that was hard to ignore even when the looks themselves were not of a challenging nature.

Avoidance might not be control but avoidance worked. Better to not put yourself in a situation where you had to rely on control if it could be avoided.

“That’s far enough,” I called out to the lone man who had walked the length of the dock and was now thirty some paces from us.

“Just stay there,” I said.

He did, arms slightly outstretched. He also remained silent.

“I’m Aldus,” I said, “I’ve got a ghoul from the sweet-water side of the Slums with me named Doff. I help feed the kids that stay with Jake the Cripple. It’s not safe to be out here at night.”

Still silence.

“What’s your name?”

“Lem Fenwell,” he said in a strong steady voice.

“Have you ever seen a ghoul?” I asked.

He spat but said nothing.

“Let’s talk face to face, but keep those hands out and don’t do anything stupid.”

It was hard to tell hair color with only starlight but gray hair had a way about it. A stiffness that younger hair didn’t and Lem was as gray haired as Doff.

“Lem,” I said reaching out a hand, “I’m Aldus.”

He shook my hand without doing anything stupid.

“And this is Doff,” I said.

They shook hands and said a few words in greeting.

“Doff leads the ghouls. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories or seen the ferals even in the Crown District.

“His people aren’t feral, but they can’t always control when the change happens. They don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to die. We’ve worked out a way to avoid the fighting and killing. The shit-water side fishes in the day, the sweet-water at night. Doff is willing to let it slide this once because you didn’t know. Right?”

Doff nodded.

“Let’s get your people back to the warehouse now. Leave the nets and traps. I can come back for them later.”

“Sounds good,” Lem said.

“I’m gonna need you to fire that last crossbow first,” I said. I hadn’t heard a crank for the first one so I knew they didn’t have a way to reset the one they had fired.

“And we get one of the crossbows,” Doff said, “as a sort of fine.”

I looked at Doff who met my eye. Unlike the previous times our eyes had met tonight, this look had a challenge behind it. That sent the hairs up on the back of my neck and I turned my head away.

No one in the Slums had crossbows before the plague. Crossbows, swords, pikes, and spears only came to the Slums when the guards tried to sweep through killing and burning the infected.

Crossbows were still rare, but every group had at least one by this point.

“Sounds fair,” I said slowly after thinking about it. What was important after all? Doff could have killed them and taken both before I arrived if he had an intention to do such a thing. I just needed to change how I looked at it. It wasn’t that he was taking a crossbow from me, that had me grinding teeth and wanting to rip out throats. No it was that I was gaining a crossbow when he could have taken two and I would have taken none.

Lem glanced around as if looking for others and I tensed expecting that now was the time he would attack. The moment passed.

“How does that sound Mr. Fenwell?” Doff asked.

“Lem is fine, but the nets and traps aren’t ours,” he began and I glanced past him thinking he was stalling for time to allow the others to attempt something stupid.

“They are, in fact, mine,” I said flatly, “Jake let you borrow them. They however, will not start a fight. Now get your people and let’s go.”

Lem returned to the others, walking slowly, but calling out into the darkness that he was headed back alone. That they shouldn’t shoot.

They spent a few minutes discussing before Lem called out, “Dry firing in three, two, one.”

The crossbow twanged.

“Headed down one at a time,” he called out to us.

They did, arriving slowly and making introductions.

When they were all standing there Lem offered the crossbow he held to Doff, who took it.

Doff looked at me and I shook my head. A change now would only scatter them and I knew his people were fishing off the main dock. If one of the humans ran that way in a panic it wouldn’t end well.

Sometimes we couldn’t stop ourselves from chasing.

“Let’s go,” I said.

They followed like ducklings, silent in the darkness except for the crunching of rocks under foot or the scrape of boots on the street.

As they filed into the warehouse I paused. I looked up and one of the boys on the roof was looking down at us. I gave him a wave that he returned.

I followed them in but only far enough to grab the two long stocking nets and the fish spear that were on the shelf closest to the door. I was back outside while Jake was offering them seats and water.

I walked down to the end of the ship-breaker dock where Doff was trying to untangle the net they had knotted up. I pulled the thin ropes to bring the crab traps up and emptied them into a barrel that stayed at the end of the dock for this exact purpose.

When I found no bait for the traps I got out of my boots and stripped the shirt I was wearing off.

“I’m going to try to get a fish for crab bait,” I said, “so hold off on tossing that back in.”

Doff didn’t say anything as I carefully stepped off the dock and dropped straight down into the cold black water.

There were sharks and armored eels but they weren’t that active at night and were only really attracted to the splashing of wounded animals or prey swimming on the surface. Once you were in the water they pretty much ignored you.

I blew out all my air and I sank quickly with the extra weight of the spear. I had a brief moment of that same panic everyone has when they need to breathe but can’t. I gripped the spear tightly and was resolved to wait it out.

Eventually the burning need to breathe sort of went away. There was still a need to breathe, but the panic was gone, the animal need to kick to the surface went still when enough time had gone by for my mind to realize I didn’t need the air.

I was burning blood now to make up for the air, even if it was slow enough I couldn’t gauge the loss.

There were two types of seaweed that were worth dealing with in the harbor. The tall shoots of fast growing kelp were further out, where the cold water of the sea overpowered the warm water of the Ren river that meandered into the harbor from the dredged routes in the swamp.

There was also the thick layer of seaweed that lived in the cold brackish water between the main high dock and the ship-breaker dock. Where the Ice River exited into the harbor between the two after its path through the city.

Both types were edible. The kelp forests had lots of fish hiding between the tall plants but they were so much farther away. There were other types of seaweed of course, but the knee high stuff wasn’t worth picking as it was almost inedible, and the long stringy stuff nearer the Ren River wasn’t worth collecting, crying out, and trying to eat. Too much work for not enough food.

Thankfully the pillars that supported the dock supported enough life that there were always fish here. Even if the type of seaweed here wasn’t worth dealing with.

It took me longer than I liked to find a fish moving in the darkness. At night, in deep water, I was limited to seeing only brief glimpses of movement above without knowing what it was or how far away.

So I stabbed blindly with the spear each time until I felt the resistance that meant I’d struck something.

I pulled the spear back quickly and confirmed a fish was on the barbed end. I pushed the fish down far enough that the barb had completely exited the flesh.

Gripping the spear directing behind the fish I swam upward. There was a ladder of sorts on one pillar. It was made from simple horizontal beams of wood nailed into the pillar. I had to burn some blood to climb with the spear in hand, but made it up top without help.

I let Doff cut the fish up for bait and then helped him when he requested it to untangle the net.

“I’m in again for snails,” I told him.

This time I moved between the two docks in the chest deep growth of sea weed. I pulled seaweed from the plants by the handful and pushed it to the end of the long tube net, what Jake called a stocking net because it looked like something the whores wore on their legs and it was about the same diameter.

I felt more than saw the lumps in the seaweed around me. The snails here were smaller than those that lived on the kelp we had dived for as apprentices. Those had shells we could grind down to make ink, but both kinds were edible.

The snails went into the stocking on my right side. The sea apples, little hard growths the seaweed produced went into the mass of seaweed in the left stocking. From time to time I’d stuff in another handful of seaweed to trap the sea apples which were small enough to fall out of the net.

When I was in shallow enough water where I could see better I removed the spear from under an arm.

When I got shallow enough that the waves above were causing me too many issues I secured everything and marched out of the sea and into the ice cold fresh water of the Ice River. The temperature didn’t really bother me. I knew it was ice cold, but I was able to still function.

In fact, over the worst parts of the winter, I had functioned far better in the water of the harbor than I had in the biting cold winds above.

While hunting I’d feel the healing fire at the tips of my fingers, nose, and ears. In the winter I could spend hours in the cold water without the healing, but the jog from the water to the warehouse had caused things to start to freeze horribly fast.

The snail net was full enough it was dragging behind me. The seaweed stocking was about chest high. I lifted both as best I could but heard a few snails fall out as I walked back to the ship-breaker dock.

I set them both down where the wood met the stone beach and carried the spear down the dock with its six fish slid down the metal shaft and resting near the wooden handle.

The crab barrel was almost half full when I glanced in. The darkness in the barrel didn’t let me make out any individual crabs but I could see the moving mass near the edge.

Doff had the net ready and folded up and waited until I arrived before he flung it out spinning it beautifully so that the weighted edges expanded before striking the water and sinking.

As I pulled the fish from the spear doff pulled the net back in holding it near the surface of the water to see if there were any fish. He caught three smaller fish and an eel.

The black eels were hard for me to see in the darkness and I only spotted that one because of the shimmer from the moon moved as it struggled.

His knife cut the eel’s head off and he flicked it into one of the crab traps.

Doff gutted the fish I’d caught and tossed the innards into the traps I emptied while he chewed on pieces of the raw eel.

“This isn’t enough,” I said staring down at the crabs in the bucket.

We’d almost filled it

“What isn’t?” Doff asked.

“This,” I said swinging an arm to encompass everything.

Doff snorted.

“Maybe we should fold in with Gregor,” I said.

“And live under the whip?” Doff asked.

“Maybe that’s what we need to survive,” I said.

“We? We will survive,” Doff said seriously.

“And the kids,” I said, “Jake? Marcus? There are still gangs fighting over fishing rights on the docks during the day. If we all fished without robbing each other. If we built boats again-”

Doff said nothing.

“What you are talking about is civilization,” Doff said, “The plague fractured that idea and the winter ended it. Everyone is too busy worried about the survival of their own people to think about the survival of the city.”

“That’s um,” I said trying to think of a smart way to compliment him.

“I have my moments,” he said with a smile.

“What do you think?” I asked him, “how do we move forward here?”

He sighed.

“Who did they- we, everyone, blame for the plague?”

“The merchant sailors-” I began.

“The immigrants, the outsiders, the sailors from across the sea. The Cistemi who were born here- our neighbors and fellow citizens. They were hung all across the city. Why? Because rumors said they poisoned the aqueducts. Or was it because they were still, after all these years considered outsiders. Or was it because many of the money lenders were Cistemi? Don’t forget too that those in Midtown and the Crown District blamed the Slums. They didn’t have to blame immigrant or sailor, they blamed all of us. Midtown closed her gates and fire bombed the Slums. They forced their sick into the Slums in the same way we’d forced the immigrants into the hot houses or up the gallows.”

I nodded.

“We-” he sighed, “I didn’t turn against friends and neighbors because they were easy to blame, but I didn’t stand up the crowds who did. I knew those mobs were going to burn innocent men out. They were angry, trapped, dying, and powerless. Of course they were going to blame someone. Anyone.

“People don’t change. We did the same thing for that string of murders six or seven years ago. The working girls, you remember? Turned out it was one of our own not the sailors they had hung for it. We’ll do it again whenever we are scared and powerless. Killing others makes us feel like we might not die ourselves. Except now the group that’s the most different, is one people no longer even think are human. When you speak about moving forward, you speak of folding into other gangs, becoming a single unit without infighting but that’s not how it works. The only way to keep the infighting down is to give the lads someone else to be angry with. You want peace? Give your people a target to hate and fear.

“The slums may very well come together and move forward as you say. But we will be the target. We will be the outsiders, the monsters, the eaters of the dead.”

I wondered when he used the word ‘we’ if he included me. He knew some things about me, but I didn’t know how much.

“There is always a need to blame someone else. They are going to need outsiders to blame or they will begin to blame each other. There are no longer immigrants, travelers, sailors, or traders. Who does that leave except us, the monsters living on the other side of the river? Will they aim for Midtown where the guards and the shoemaker have crossbows in numbers we can’t count? Or the Crown District where the wizard lives and every estate has guards with alchemical and magical defenses? Or will they target the monsters who live on the good side of the Slums where the sewers don’t vomit up their filth during every storm.

“You’ll see more fish and food if the gangs stop fighting themselves, and likely you are right, it will happen this summer at some point no matter what we do. From there they will either build up enough to flee or begin to build stores for winter. They will have firewood and food in abundance. Then, forced together over the winter, they will grow to hate each other again. To keep them together they will be pointed at us, and next spring there will be a war to drive the monsters out.”

He began hauling in one of the ropes.

“I didn’t ever consider that,” I said slowly.

“You’re still young,” he said dismissively, “and buried under a lot of responsibility you were never trained to deal with. I’m surprised you did as well as you have if I’m being honest. I feared you were going to loose children over the winter.”

“Me too,” I said slowly.

We emptied the crab trap but didn’t bait it or toss it back in as it was getting late and his people on the other dock were already pushing hand carts back toward their side of the slums.

When I reached the end of the dock I pushed the two stockings of seaweed and snails into the crab trap and lifted the trap, net, and spear with the gutted fish.

“Don’t shoot,” I said as I got close and smelled someone near the door.

“Who is it?” Lem ask.

“Aldus,” I said.

I heard Jake talking and then heard him clap his hands once like he did to get the children’s attention. He said something in a low stern voice and a moment later the bricks and clocks began to move and the slab was slid out.

“Fish on the spear,” I said guiding his hand to the long spear when he darkened the doorway, “And a crab trap with snails and seaweed at your feet.”

By the time I returned to the dock two more traps stuffed with ropes were ready to be carried back.

When I returned the last trap was full of crabs to the point where they could hardly move, but the barrel was gone.

I smiled at that. He’d avoided the discussion about who got to keep them by simply taking them.

The trap was heavy enough that I burned blood instead of stopping to rest. Had I not fed from the deer and currently held more blood than I could retain past dawn I wouldn’t have wasted any for such a simple task.

Jake was waiting for me when I got back with a basket and a long knife.

I could smell the fish oil that had been used to sharpen the knife and keep the rust away.

I sighed. “It never ends.”

The Ren River was shallow, muddy and swampy. The mountains rose to the north in huge masses that created the eastern most coast of the continent. While there were small fishing villages on the sea side of the mountains they were only occupied in the summer and their people lived within the stone like miners. The storms were so bad that there were no trees or homes to speak of. The boats had to be carried into the caves at night or risk blowing away.

The Ren River began far to the north, to the west side of those mountains and meandered through the flood plane, collecting what rainfall made it over the mountains to fall on the western side. It ran for hundreds of miles until it reached us.

Some distance to the north the land grew flat and the river widened into the massive swamp that eventually ran into the sea, as the eastern mountains sloped gradually downward.

The Ren River never really reached the sea, becoming instead an impassable network of swampy flows that changed over time as channels filled or shifted.

Before the plague there were crews that constantly dredged a route from the harbor to the main branch of the Ren river so that the shallow barges could maneuver from the ship-breaker docks upriver.

The reeds that grew in the swamps were great for making baskets and the like but it seemed like we were always in need of more material.

Granted, I was the one that lost baskets in the dark waters or broke them by overloading them and carrying them from the top. Weaving the baskets did keep the children busy, though it seemed like they could work through the reeds faster than I could collect them.

While the children could help fish or collect nuts or kindling during the day while out with other gangs, sending anyone into the swamps was a foolish risk.

There were people who lived in the swamps that everyone in the Slums told stories about, but Cook had told us the real danger was not with the people, but the insects. And even if I could get one of the magic baubles that kept the bugs away the big lizards could kill a child before they ever saw it.

The people were not an issue for me. I rarely saw them where I hunted at the edges as they seemed to stay deeper in the swamps. Or it was entirely possible that they were all dead.

I didn’t know. The insects would bite me, but I’d never gotten sick from them. The lizards though could be problems if I let them.

I stripped naked when I reached a part of the swamp with a dense area of reeds.

Waste deep in the boggy sludge I cut the reeds above the water level and stacked them on top of the sludge until I had an armful. Then I took the armful out and arranged them in the basket. I took the time to pull all of the leches off my body counting thirty-three before going back in for the second load of reeds.

It took a while to make sure I was leech free the second time. I folded my clothes up on the basket and walked back to the Ice River as naked as the day I was born.

The river poured it’s small but steady stream into the harbor between the two docks.

The ghouls were still moving around and even as I watched someone tossed a spinning net from the end of the western dock.

I washed and scrubbed in the Ice River’s cold water before I got dressed on the stony shore.

Someone was bringing the empty crab barrel back to the ship-breaker dock on a wheeled cart. They waved at me as they pulled the cart and barrel through the River’s wide wash.

I lifted a hand in return, then felt odd for doing so. I often dealt with Doff. He was always in control. He seemed to move slow, deliberately, and with purpose. It made me forget that the ghouls had all been normal people before they changed.

Lem nodded at me after I entered the warehouse in an overly familiar way, as if we had known each other for years.

Karl, the other guard, began moving the planks back into place to block the door after I’d gotten everything into the room.

I helped him as he had an arm in a sling.

“Broken?” I asked indicating the arm.

“Just a sprain,” he said, “from your friend’s rock.”

I didn’t correct him on who had thrown it.

I was more than surprised that no one overwhelmed me with questions or demands.

Once we had the plank back in place we hung the old patched blanket over it and then stacked the bricks and stone blocks into place.

Someone had already taken the basket of reeds away.

When I reached the chairs I saw that Merle was carefully setting the reeds onto the huge stump we used as a table. From time to time she found one of the leeches and picked it up to drop it into a bowl of water. Later she would add them to the jar.

Some of the children were still processing the seaweed in the kitchen. The portly chef was sitting on a small stool near the fire place. He was cooking fish in one of the pans and looking over his shoulder at me from time to time.

Jake was sitting in his chair at the stump table where Merle was working. Mrs. Miller, and Marcus, were likewise seated around the table. The two maids were in the corner of the open room designated as the kitchen sorting over the seaweed with the children.

“Ready for the questions?” Jake asked as I sat down.

“I am not,” I said seriously.

Merle touched Chef William on the shoulder so he would shift out of the way before she lifted the kettle from it’s hook to fill my copper mug with hot water. I watched her cut four of the freshly collected seaweed apples in half and drop them into the water. They’d float annoying on the top and bump into my lips when I sipped, and I cared little about the taste. The energy the tea gave others did nothing for me. It was the warmth I wanted, but I couldn’t very well ask for a plain mug of hot water.

I was as cold as a corpse right now and it would take me a long time to warm up. If I shook a hand now my condition would be more than obvious.

I sipped at the drink and sighed, holding the hot metal in both hands and taking a moment, like the paladin had suggested.

"Okay,” I said, “Let’s sort this all out.”