Ethan moved eastward through Westbank like an able seaman walking through a rotted hull – quietly, and with no expectation of structural integrity.

  The borough, if one could call it such without offending the term, lay slumped between tenements of soot-blackened brick and timber-beamed hovels. Light sources were few, and the ones that remained flickered like dying fireflies behind cracked glass. A dishonest glow at best.

  Not that it mattered. Darkness had never been a hindrance to him.

  Ethan's vision, stark and without colour, rendered the world in gradients of greys and silvers. Cracks in masonry, slumped shapes in alley mouths, movement behind windows too obscured for those without darkvision like his to suspect – he noted all of it. Nothing human stirred within pistol range, and those few souls who occasionally crossed his path did so briskly, eyes fixed on the ground. Living evidence that Oaleholder was not quite a mausoleum. Not yet.

  He adjusted his cloak against the stink riding the breeze. The Matresa River was breathing again. Low tide had dragged the worst of it down to Lower Portside, leaving only the trickle of stagnant human waste to perfume Westbank. Thirty feet from the levee, the Matresa slunk past like an open wound. He followed its curve until the silhouette of a red-brick cottage emerged from the desolation, improbably neat by Westbank’s standards.

  The sign outside had survived another week’s weather: 'Denzil, Mouth Physician', written in bold copper letters. It was functionally unreadable to the vast majority of its illiterate audience. Ethan rapped twice, paused, then knocked four times in quick succession. Recognition without speech.

  Floorboards groaned inside. Denzil had grown no lighter since they last spoke.

  The door had barely begun to creak when Ethan slipped inside, gliding past the half-elf before the man could properly register him. The hallway remained untouched by either taste or mess. White paint had long since begun to peel, flaking around coat pegs like dandruff. At least the floor was swept clean.

  The dentist said nothing and simply turned, leading him towards the waiting room. Ethan wiped his boots on the rug with a perfunctory scrape and followed.

  The room was as he remembered: cramped, underfurnished, and still without proper illumination. Straw-stuffed stools lined the back wall, and two more rows marched across the floor like pews for the odontologically damned.

  In the darkness, Denzil stubbed his toe against a chair leg.

  "Cod bollocks," the man muttered.

  Ethan remained silent, perfectly adjusted to the gloom. Every detail of the room came to him sharp and immediate – splintering grain in the wood, brittle edges on the candlewax crust, even the faint whorls in the straw cushions that had once imprinted themselves on his backside.

  Denzil lit three candles, all in the same candleholder. Their weak, yellow glow softened the outlines, dulled the clarity. Aesthetic improvement; tactical downgrade.

  The half-elf turned, features thrown into uneven relief. His auburn hair, normally combed neatly, now hung in greasy strands. The pale sheen on his skin hinted at an enervated malady. Sleep lost over days, if not weeks. His ears – ordinarily powdered with the vanity of un-elvish heritage – were unadorned and twitching.

  “Ain’t often I take appointments after sundown, Mister Harbinger. Is this an emergency?”

  Ethan examined him without answering. Denzil’s eyes were shot through with redness, the sort that came from either drink or weeping. Neither boded well for competence.

  “Got a new problem, Denny?” Ethan asked. The direct line was more efficient.

  Put on the spot, Denzil sighed deeply and slumped onto a stool, the straw padding wheezing beneath him.

  “Abby,” he said, elbow resting on the table between them and his head in his palm. “My lovely whiting. Gone ill with wastin’ sickness – or somethin’ like it. Aelielaya suspects an infection, likely from the river. She... Nearabouts a week ago, she was fine. Next morn, she clammed up and didn’t rise. Then her skin went pale, burnin’ like fire. Mind’s gotten fogged two days past.”

  Ethan nodded once. The symptoms were textbook consumption. That did not make it easily survivable.

  “I’ve been tendin’ her with cold compresses and Aelielaya’s tinctures, enemas and all, but nothin’ brings down the fever. Right kettle of crabs. Five days now, and I begin to worry…”

  He trailed off, wet palms rubbing at beady eyes.

  “You have my sympathy,” Ethan said. The tone was flat, but honest. He had not a clue on how to comfort someone soon to be bereaved. “If you are indisposed, I shall return later.”

  “No – no. I could use the distraction. Please. What do you need of me?”

  Ethan considered the matter settled. He drew Best’s coin pouch from his cloak and placed it on the table. Denzil hesitated only briefly before opening it, spilling its contents into his trembling hand. The teeth landed with a soft click-clacks. Several glinted gold. All of them bore crusted blood.

  “Storms and silt,” Denzil muttered. “Fangtooth lot, ain’t they? Pun unintended.”

  Ethan arched an eyebrow.

  “Well,” the half-elf continued hastily. “Who am I to argue with providence? You keep my pots bubbling and my rent paid, Ethan. For that, I am grateful.”

  He laid the teeth out on the tabletop, one by one, and began his grim assessment. Discomfort evaporated the moment professional familiarity took hold.

  “Cavities here… root damage… this one’s worthless… ah, splendid craftsmanship,” he paused at the golden canine, holding it up to the candlelight.

  Ethan waited, arms folded. Somewhere outside, a scream pierced the night, followed by dogs barking. Both men disregarded the noise with habitual apathy.

  The process took precisely as long as it did last time.

  “Of the twenty-eight,” Denzil finally declared, “I can faithfully use nine. Including the golden ones.”

  Ethan reached for the remainder. “Then I shall keep the nineteen that do not meet your standards.”

  Denzil hesitated, smirked, and gave a slow nod. “Mayhap... thirteen. If I don’t get too dainty and my punters ain’t picky.”

  “Better. The rest shattered on removal. I doubt their previous host took oral hygiene seriously.”

  Denzil opened his mouth.

  “Don’t ask, Denny,” Ethan cut in. “Safer for both of us.”

  Denzil’s mouth snapped shut. “Aye. Agreed,” he breathed out, fingers trembling slightly as he set the viable teeth aside. “How’re your molars, by the bye?”

  “They function.”

  “Toppin’. Between me, Aelielaya, and that patchwork Caravan, we did right by you, then.”

  “You did.”

  Denzil allowed himself a brief smile before returning to business. “Now, as for the haul – three guineas, five shillings, and I’ll knock a fair bit off your next service.”

  Ethan’s expression did not change. “That’s a pittance. You know it. I know it. Hell, the corpse probably knew it. I’d rather sell elsewhere.”

  The dentist’s eyes widened. “No! Cod bollocks, no, Mister Harbinger. I – look, I’m skint. Rent’s due, Abby’s medicine… I could try her vanity stand, mayhaps there’s coin still hidden there, or Aelielaya may–”

  “Two guineas,” Ethan interrupted, “and I keep the golden molar. Gold for gold.”

  A pause. Then a miserable squeak and a weak nod.

  Denzil disappeared into the back of the house. Ethan retrieved the molar and the rest of the rejected teeth before his host returned with six crowns, four half-crowns, and two shillings – all of them silver.

  Ethan took the money and stood.

  “I still expect that discount, Denny,” he said, clapping Denzil once on the shoulder. “And I hope Abigail recovers.”

  “Thank you, Ethan. I… truly.”

  He nodded once and stepped back into the dark.

  Ethan did not dawdle.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, he turned northwest and set off at a brisk clip, his path parallel with the curtain wall looming in the distance. It was tall and impassive, its masonry worn yet sound, the same as it had been for almost two hundred years.

  And it would stand two hundred more, if Oaleholder maintained its fragile status quo.

  Such speculation was presently immaterial. In a few hours, high tide would roll in, dragging with it all the refuse and disease presently festering in Lower Portside. Westbank already reeked of salt and filth – a precursor of worse yet to come.

  His destination was the Stag’s Head. One of the few public houses in the borough open reliably late, and among the fewer still where the clientele were inclined to keep their mouths shut and knives sheathed.

  The pub’s door swung inwards on oiled hinges. Warmth enveloped him at once – an amalgam of hearth smoke, hops, charred grease, wet wool, and stale breath. His stomach responded with a low, insistent growl, voicing an objection to the day’s lack of sustenance.

  Oh, be silent, would you? Food is less than a half-hour away.

  The interior was as he recalled. Mismatched furniture, thoroughly worn but serviceable. Smoke-stained beams overhead. A floor slick with generations of spilt ale and the rare blood stain. And above the bar counter, the eponymous stag’s head. Glass-eyed and dust-laced, the head mount stared down at the pottering punters with the dull resignation of the taxidermied dead.

  Surprisingly, the trophy itself had not been stolen. The Stag’s Head’s publican had acquired it in a raffle – spoils of a fallen Inner City banker whose fortunes, like his dignity, had been poorly managed. Now the mount served as decoration in a pub full of men who drank to forget they were already much the same.

  Said publican stood beneath it now, a grin splitting his broad, dark face as he poured a pint with practised efficiency.

  Dinner, Ethan supposed, will have to wait until business was concluded. Diligence over comfort, as always.

  His stomach protested again. It would lose the argument.

  Jacob Abbas was not a man of subtlety – six-and-a-half feet of black, bulging flesh. The burn that covered the upper left quadrant of his face had not diminished his cheer, nor his capacity for blunt-force diplomacy. A black goat-patch beard clung to his chin, and his tightly coiled hair was cropped just enough to avoid kitchen fire hazards.

  “You, I was expectin’, ya mualem,” Jacob called, sliding Ethan a full pint without so much as a pause.

  Ethan caught the drink mid-motion, not a drop spilled. “How did you know I wouldn’t be ordering a half-pint, Clobber?”

  Jacob laughed. “Like namir from the hunt returned, you look. In your eyes I see it – victory... and maybe a bit of blood.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ya sahbety!” Jacob barked over his shoulder. “Watch the counter! With namir, I speak!”

  “Aye aye, gaffer scallop!” came the reply, high-pitched and full of verve.

  A young girl emerged from the kitchen, lean and energetic. Her blue shirt was patchworked to the point of being more stitch than fabric, much like the cheap, cotton trousers on her legs. Her grin never faded, and despite the drawn hollows of her cheeks and the sharpness of her nose, it gave her countenance some youthful appeal. A thick ponytail of mahogany hair bounced with each step, apparently as enthusiastic as its owner.

  “Evening, Emma,” Ethan offered as she approached.

  “Ahoy, Ethan!” she beamed and leaned over the counter to peck his cheek.

  That, inevitably, provoked an outcry from the regulars.

  “Oi! Where’s me kiss, then?!”

  “Cod bollocks, unfair advantage!”

  Jacob bellowed back at them. “Ay-ee! Quiet, ya mangy lot! Lass got taste, she has!”

  Ethan winked at Emma. On his face, it resembled a death threat. She giggled anyway.

  He followed Jacob through the rear doorway, past the kitchen’s raucous clangour and the odour of scorched onions, into the pantry. The door shut behind them, dulling the noise but not the smell.

  Oil-lamps hung from the ceiling beams, casting a sickly orange glow over sacks of flour, crates of preserved goods, and a hanging hook suspiciously free of carcass. Jacob lowered himself onto a bench, causing a thin rat to scurry out from underneath him.

  He stomped down with surprising swiftness, and the rodent perished with a small squeak, guts exuding under Jacob’s boot.

  Ethan leaned against a crate and took a sip of the ale, aloof to the violence. The drink was palatable. Barley-forward, with a clean finish. Jacob was spoiling him.

  “What have you got for me, Mister Abbas?”

  Jacob snorted, scraping his sole on the floorboards. “Playin’ the toff, are ya? Mister Best – ghostly as fog on dunes, he is. No footprints, no shadows. Most my alfiran come back empty, if back they come at all.”

  “But they did find something, I hope.”

  “Aye. High men he meets. Always by boat. Isle folk, foreign-blooded folk – every one with titles to their name. King and Country types, as you call them.”

  “I suspected as much. I tracked him myself once or twice before he got wise. What else?”

  “With the Duke of Golrook, the last meeting was.”

  Ethan’s brows rose. “The Field Marshal?”

  Jacob nodded, slowly. “More, there is. One far on a servant leaned – said Mister Best speaks directly with the Fleet Admiral. Also muttered something about 'Ten Votes', but shaytan knows what that is.”

  Ethan exhaled slowly. “Interesting. Not much, but it confirms he runs in rarefied company.”

  He pulled five silver crowns from his purse, followed by three copper pennies, and handed them across.

  Jacob frowned at the minor coinage.

  “For the urchins,” Ethan clarified. “The branch trick worked, by the way. Lost our tail in under ten seconds.”

  Jacob’s grin returned, bright as ivory under lamplight. “Ah, namir – always I deliver, eh?”

  “And 'Ten Votes' means he can strong-arm ten parliamentarians into voting his way. That is no small thing – levy breaks, land reassignment, even declarations of war. His word holds sway.”

  Jacob grunted. “Ya rayal, your Helveconean rules – they’re madness in riddles wrapped. A king you have, but rule he does not? Then why call him king at all?”

  “The Republic of Falchovarii asked the same question, Clobber,” Ethan replied. “Then they answered it by removing the crown from the man. Along with his head.”

  He made a slicing motion across his own throat.

  Their business concluded, the two returned to the main hall. More patrons had arrived, smelling of chimney soot, Portside salt, and disappointment.

  Emma was swamped, flitting between the counter, casks, and bottle shelves so quickly that half the drinks she delivered came half-spilled.

  Jacob reclaimed his post behind the bar with a lewd insult aimed at Emma, which she reparteed with two raised fingers and a laugh.

  Ethan scanned the room. Simon was at a corner table, holding court. His friend gestured wildly, evidently regaling their companions with an embellished account of Baron Stonewater’s downfall.

  Ethan drained his pint in one draught. He signalled to Emma before she vanished again – one plate for him, one round for the table.

  He approached as Simon was halfway through an overly dramatic oink.

  “You sound just like your mother last night.”

  Simon grinned, face scabs cracking. “Least mine ain’t pushin’ daisies yet, ye ratbag prick.”

  “You have a mother? Remarkable. I was under the impression a hen had hatched you.”

  “Eh, might’ve done, for all I know. Can’t recall the ol’ bird. Just fancied a jab back at ya.”

  “Ahoy, scallop,” Mary raised a lithe hand.

  “Good to see you again, old bean,” added Warren.

  Ethan nodded. “Evening, both.”

  Of those gathered, Ethan had known Simon the longest – two years, more or less. Mary and Warren had joined the circle some six months thereafter.

  Mary Brown possessed the sort of appearance that neither provoked notice nor warranted memory. Average in stature, average in bearing. Hair the hue of sun-bleached straw, parted without affectation. Eyes of a dull, greenish-brown shade not unlike old brass. Even her freckles had the courtesy to space themselves evenly across her features, lending her a strange, orderly charm. Ethan had once found that symmetry irresistibly fetching. Enough to pursue her.

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  Their romantic entanglement had been brief and dissolved without theatricality. The matter had been put to rest with little ceremony, with both parties citing irreconcilable dispositions.

  Nothing else.

  Still, her bearing remained familiar – tight shoulders, restive gaze, that perpetual knit of the brow. She surveyed every room as if it were a battlefield. Veterans of Oaleholder’s streets often did.

  To her right, and Ethan’s left, sat Warren Macintosh – a priest in training. Not quite the size of Jacob Abbas, yet still broader and taller than Ethan himself – hence his unfortunate moniker: Fat Warren. Coined by that most artless of social classes: the criminal underworld.

  In truth, the sobriquet was misleading. The man bore only a round face with full cheeks, right side supporting a mole more hair follicle than flesh, the bottom bearing a dark brown moustache anchored by a chinstrap. Beneath his layered garments, he was as solid as an ox, and, by his own account, had developed said bulk carrying young stots.

  Prior to discovering a violent love of theology, Warren had worked his parents’ fields and barns. He now considered himself a man of the cloth – again, in training – albeit one better suited to wrestling heretics than sermonising them.

  “How fares Arthur?” Ethan asked, voice neutral.

  “Barmy that the daft bleeder thought his coachman’s name wuz Henry…” Simon cut in, slurring ever so slightly. Ethan noted the two empty tankards lined up beside his elbow, with a third halfway drained. Not the first time Simon had mistaken himself for a cask.

  “Bleedin’ lamprey drank himself blind-like and sobbed all the way to haystack in Eastbank’s stables,” Mary replied. “Was puttin’ all his bits and bobs in a box last I saw him – like as not Archie’s left Ol’ Holdy by now.”

  Warren’s expression tightened. “That man committed no offence warranting such disgrace. He’ll scarcely survive the winter without honest employment.”

  Mary gave a prolonged sigh. “Cod bollocks, Warren, spare me the sermon. He’ll get his belly full o’ gruel so long as he’s thumbs to pick oakum with. Worryin’ and carpin’ over it ain’t worth guppy’s spit.”

  “We might have given him coin, at the very least,” Warren muttered, fingers idly tugging the hairs on his mole. “To cast him into a pile of muck after drowning him in drink is both a sin and an affront to the priesthood.”

  “Simon,” Ethan interjected, ignoring the bickering pair. “How did you manage to encounter the Old Ghost on your way back?”

  “He were loiterin’ right outside the fuckin’ wall, weren’t he!” Simon proclaimed, eyes wide, drink aloft. “I left a quarter-hour after ya, like we said, but climbin’ walls ain’t my game, yeah? So I think, ‘try the gate, Simon, mayhap yer luck’ll turn.’ Got up sharpish, too – quicker’n a street rat up a gutter pipe. But just as I’m ‘bout to swing over, Old Ghost pops out the murk like a... a… a ghost!”

  He paused to drain the rest of his drink. His eyes, a striking green, were already clouding with ale. That he had not yet vomited was a statistical anomaly.

  “Anywho,” Simon continued, wiping foam from his chin with the back of one hand. “So there I was, straddlin’ the fuckin’ gate like some bugger in a pigeon patch, starin’ straight at death dressed in a nobby coat. Next blink, I’m slippin’ – near snapped me own bleedin’ neck if one o’ me legs hadn’t caught the ironwork. Left me swingin’ there like a right fuckin’ lump till the Meat Man pulls me down and chucks me on the stagecoach like a sack o’ taters. Arse still feels like it’s been flogged by mum’s abbess.”

  Emma arrived bearing plate and pints just as Simon paused to push his tangle of greasy brown hair out of his face. Ethan’s meal was, as usual, drowned in gravy – pork shavings, roast potatoes, and not a hint of subtlety. Emma slid refilled drinks around the table with practised ease. Thanks were muttered. Ethan acknowledged none of them and began eating with silent resolve.

  The noise of his companions was ignorable, and so that was what he did.

  Mary’s cynicism, Simon’s nonsense, and Warren’s piety all blurred into a familiar, tolerable din. He ate quickly but methodically, not because he feared someone would take the food, but because it served to anchor his thoughts away from everything else.

  Eventually, Mary asked the inevitable. “Right then. When’s the tide bringin’ us our coin?”

  “Bring your ledgers to my abode tomorrow. Notify me in advance if you intend to make a withdrawal,” Ethan delivered the words by rote, chewing as he spoke. It had become a recitation – habitual, dismissive, and devoid of novelty.

  “And remind me why we let you mind the coin, ye uptight ledger-sniffer?” Simon mumbled, already tilting towards his fifth drink.

  “Because I am the only one here who possesses a lockbox that resists lockpicking, explosives, and drunken idiocy,” Ethan said. “Also, our funds had a peculiar habit of vanishing before my appointment as coinmaster.”

  All three of them glanced elsewhere. Guilt distributed evenly, like freckles on a symmetrical face.

  Mary, recovering fastest, lifted her gaze again. “We know why the job were called, or are we still splashin’ with no fish?”

  “Could be cos the prick were–“

  “We have a working hypothesis,” Ethan said, cutting off Simon before he could finish. “But it shall be discussed neither here, nor now.”

  The topic was wisely abandoned.

  What followed was more drink, more insult, and more comfortable banter. If not genuine camaraderie, then something convincingly adjacent to it. Ethan allowed himself to indulge in the illusion. There was a certain efficiency to keeping company with those whose flaws were already known and catalogued. They posed no surprises.

  And in this line of work, that was the highest form of affection one could hope for.

  At approximately half past eight – assuming the timepiece inside the Stag’s Head had not suffered sabotage – Ethan excused himself from the warmth of the taproom and stepped into the biting air of Westbank. Before leaving, he retrieved a crumpled papelate from his tinderbox, lit it on a guttering candle, and tucked it between his lips. Acrid smoke drifted past his face, curling about the mist of his breath like a ghost of cheap lavender water.

  Outside, the cold had grown fangs. He drew his cloak’s hood over his head and struck off north, on a collision course with the Inner City’s curtain wall. With every exhalation, breath vapour and tobacco smoke mingled and dispersed in chilly gusts. The day’s final errand lay on the western end of Upper Portside – a due conversation with a certain elf.

  Westbank’s streets were as unlovely as they always were. Sagging roofs, shuttered windows, and the aroma of boiled starch leaking from tenement sculleries. He counted the steps between dead oil lamps – none close enough to concern him – and let the monochrome of his vision stretch deep into the gloom. All was rendered in perfect, colourless clarity.

  His foot started itching as he walked. The left sole – precisely along the arch – in a place impossible to scratch.

  The inevitable happened soon after. Behind him: footsteps. Too slow for urgency, too uneven for sobriety, and far too loud for stealth. He halted with a sigh – half annoyance, half resignation. Westbank etiquette demanded at least one attempted mugging per evening. He turned slowly.

  "Three of you," he observed aloud. "Poor odds for you, lads. Better just drop it."

  From the shadows emerged precisely that number – hooded, masked, and swaying. One carried a rusted iron rod down the leg of his trousers. The other two seemed unsure whether they were accomplices or ballast. Ethan flicked ash from his papelate with exaggerated calm.

  "Get gone, or get thumped. Your choice."

  There was a moment of hesitation. Then the middle man swaggered forward and produced the iron bar with a flourish dampened by inebriation.

  "Yer money or yer life, ye pallid dogfish," he slurred, brandishing the rod as though it were a rapier.

  Ethan puffed on the last of his papelate and dropped it to the cobbles. “Pity,” he muttered, stomping it dead.

  Before the man could lower his arm, Ethan closed the gap, seized the bar in his left hand, and drove his right elbow directly into the vagrant’s jaw. Bone met bone with a sharp crack. The bastard went rigid, bloodshot eyes wide, and collapsed crosswise onto his stomach.

  The other two lunged – or staggered, rather – in response. Ethan tested the iron bar briefly, found the corrosion offensive, and hurled it into the face of the thug on the left. It struck the shoulder instead, off-centre, but the momentum sent the man reeling with a scream.

  The other mugger lunged with a cross punch as elegant as a falling chimney. Ethan stepped sideways and drove his knee into the vagrant's groin. The reaction was immediate: his would-be assailant collapsed, choking on air and whatever bargain swill he had consumed, which now evacuated his stomach onto his own bandana.

  The third rogue massaged his shoulder as he reconsidered his life choices, but in the end, still advanced with what might loosely be called a guard stance.

  A drunken pugilist. Life really is a comedy.

  Ethan did not oblige him with theatrics. He kicked him directly in the solar plexus, passing his guard entirely. The man emitted a strained wheeze and folded backwards onto the ground.

  Ethan approached, crouched, and yanked down the bandana.

  "Oh, for the love of..." his jaw tightened. "Frank, you rancid clot. What compelled you to try and rob me of all people?"

  The cook’s husband blinked at him, pupils dancing in separate directions. “D-didn’t r-recognishe ye, ye... ye m-mackerel. Sh-shpare a tuppenshe?”

  "Ye’ve had more than your fill, ye scabby gallows-bait," Ethan’s voice took on an Aury lilt as he dropped the bandana back onto Frank’s face. "Take yer bawjaw friends and shove yer arses out the windae. And you go home to Bertha. Reckon she’s worried over your worthless carcass."

  Without waiting for a reply, Ethan turned north, leaving the unfortunate trio to decorate the gutters. The ground began to slope gently upwards the closer he drew to the curtain wall, with the surroundings becoming gradually more civilised. Streetlamps – functional ones – began to appear more often. Sparse at first, then increasingly more frequent. Their sickly yellow light was little more than a faint nuisance to him, but he could see how the paupers might mistake it for sanctuary.

  The Lord Mayor’s grand campaign for “a light at every threshold” had, of course, died in its infancy. Yet he persisted with the less ambitious programme of streetlamps along primary thoroughfares. A feeble gesture, but not entirely without merit.

  The glow grew steadier as Ethan approached Pilgrim’s Way, one of the five arterial roads of Oaleholder. Even at this hour, the thoroughfare still brimmed with the appellative pilgrims. More so than usual. Likely the result of Falchovarian policy: raze the cathedrals, burn the altars, and drive the faithful underground. Those still brave – or foolish – enough to worship had flocked to Oaleholder’s Hold Cathedral instead.

  Ethan cut through the unceasing throng and bypassed Pilgrim’s Gate, opting for the broader but less congested Craglen Gate to the north-west. Even so, he had to slow his pace through the thirty-foot portal, swaying bodies pressing on all sides.

  He relieved two distracted souls of their coin-purses along the way. Small ones, but soundly stitched. The redcoat guards manning the gate looked on with the glassy-eyed apathy of men robbed of purpose. The war was over; all that remained was their hangovers.

  Beyond the gate, Craglen Street stretched out like a golden ribbon, flanked by stately terraces and fluted towers. Its cobbles glowed in the lamplight like the teeth of a well-fed merchant.

  They also bore the wounds of prosperity – namely, horse dung. The pure-gatherers had been delayed by the increase in crowds and carriages, but lingered on the margins like carrion birds, waiting for traffic to disperse.

  All Saints’ Eve was a busy time in Oaleholder.

  Ethan did not pause to admire the scenery. He turned off at the first northbound street, escaping into a quieter quarter with equally bright lamps but less pomp. From here, he caught glimpses of the Oaleholder Citadel to the right – its parapets like teeth atop a stone maw – and Stoic Keep to the left, an austere relic of century old wars, now repurposed for bureaucratic tedium.

  The people thinned out. Those who remained fit neatly into their stations. Bowler-hatted clerks. Salt encrusted dockhands. Rag-wrapped gleaners stooping for coin, trinket, or dung. Oaleholder's streets were clean not out of civic pride, but because the poor knew how to make refuse vanish for profit.

  Even shite could be used to tan leather, after all.

  It was a mutual toleration: the rich tolerated the poor as long as they kept the pavement spotless. The poor tolerated the rich because they had no alternative.

  Ethan pressed on, entering the western side of Upper Portside. The air here bore the distinct stench of the Matresa – stagnant sewage stirred by rising tide.

  He breathed through his mouth. Just barely.

  The district, as always, appeared determined to flaunt its restraint. Here, wealth manifested not through garish ornamentation, but in the clinical neatness of red-brick terraces, the geometric discipline of hedges, and an absence of anything remotely improvised.

  The houses themselves were a study in middle-class affluence: unadorned, solid, and entirely without personality. No shattered panes, no laundry strung between windows, no children hurling pebbles at shutters – merely stillness, and the hum of orderly domestic life. Ethan was not impressed, but he acknowledged the advancement from Westbank’s societal decay.

  He found the address with ease. An aged sign hung from a wrought iron bracket over one of the doors – its lettering cracked and weatherworn, reading 'Aelielaya’s Poultices and Other Remedies'. The sign here was not wasteful, unlike Denny’s, for Upper Portside’s residents were literate enough to find poetry in liniment.

  She was already visible through the parlour window – grinding something in a stone mortar with unhurried hands. When she looked up and caught sight of him, her expression shifted to a faint smile. She vanished from view. A moment later, the door opened precisely as he reached for the handle.

  “Ethan,” she greeted, voice clear as glass and soft as dew.

  He stepped inside and exchanged his mud-caked boots for a pair of slip-ons that resembled clouds on the brink of dissolving. “Much obliged,” he muttered, nodding down at the plush horrors.

  “Shall I prepare you something to drink?” she asked.

  “Aye. I am ravaged by thirst,” he said. “Only authentic elvish tea will suffice.”

  She gave a quiet laugh, musical and otherworldly. The sound of a genuine faye, not just a half-breed.

  “Then I shall put the kettle on. Wait in the parlour, if you please. I shall return shortly.”

  She moved like water through reeds – no sound, no hesitation. It was a distinctly elven gait, unreplicable by their diluted cousins. Ethan wandered into the parlour, slipshod feet slapping the floorboards, glowing eyes taking in everything of note. Mortar, pestle, bundles of dried flora arranged by someone with surgical priorities. The blend she was working on was an antipyretic – fever-reducing, most likely for the dentist’s wife.

  And already infused with aether. The glow in his irises flickered as he blinked it away.

  The smell of bark, crushed leaf and something antiseptic hung in the air. Every board of the pine floor shone with obsessive polish. Oaken furniture gleamed, unblemished and likely more pristine than when it had been first crafted.

  “The tea is prepared,” she called not two minutes later, standing barefoot beside the guest table, green skirts skimming the floor.

  Too swift to boil a kettle – likely sensed me approaching well before I arrived. Prescient as ever, the sly elf.

  He made his way over, unclasping his cloak and pinning it to the left shoulder like a half-cape – old habit, hard to break.

  He sat. The tea was poured. Steam rose.

  He inhaled, and the aroma of authentic Augustine tea was intoxicating in itself. “Divine ambrosia. You truly are a blessing to the world, Liel.”

  “And you are incorrigible,” she replied, waving a gold-skinned hand. “Besides, I am old enough to have witnessed your grandmother’s cradle being carved. Your flattery falls on deaf ears.”

  “That would explain the condescending tone.”

  She smiled again. Slight tilt of the head, slight narrowing of her eyes. Difficult to say whether it was fondness, amusement, or mere politeness. At any rate, he drank. His eyes flashed again with the first sip, the aetheric properties of the leaves making themselves known, then settled into their usual azure paleness.

  Aelielaya bore the hallmarks of her kind: chin and nose too sharp, eyes large and with emerald irises. Her skin held a golden hue, and her waist-length hair was richly verdant and glistening – as though fresh sap ran just beneath the scalp. He thought, privately, that she resembled a dandelion in a meadow, but wisely kept such observations to himself.

  Women, even faye, did not take kindly to being likened to weeds.

  “What brings you, Ethan?” she asked at length. “Your visits are seldom idle pleasure calls, and the aether within is taut – strained, even. It speaks before you do.”

  “I marvel at your insight,” Ethan replied. “And yes, as always, there is a reason.”

  He reached into his cloak and produced a coin purse, placing several guineas, crowns, and pennies on the table – gold, silver, and copper, respectively.

  “Payment owed.”

  The elf regarded the coins. A few bore flecks of dried blood – a subtle indictment of their provenance. She frowned. “This exceeds what is required.”

  He gestured towards her desk with his chin. “You are not charging Denny for Abigail’s treatment,” he guessed easily, which Aelielaya did not deny. “Consider it a sweetening. Use the rest to mend your sign. Maybe get dusk lily petals for Simon’s pox salve while you’re at it.”

  Her lips twitched – upward of downwards, he could not tell. “Still you posture. And still beneath it all, sentiment endures.”

  He raised his teacup in silent acknowledgement. Far easier than attempting to refute or accept such claims.

  They lingered a while longer, speaking of inconsequential matters. He enjoyed the tea, and the relative warmth, and the unspoken understanding that neither party would pry too deeply.

  When he finally made to leave, she halted him.

  “Before you depart… may I ease the weight you carry, if only in part?”

  The aches in his joints answered before he could. “Aye. That would be appreciated.”

  He lowered himself where he stood, sitting cross-legged on the polished floor. Aelielaya folded herself opposite, her skirts crumpling into verdant waves. His eyes, by now, glowed faintly with the cyan of active aether rolling off the Augustine Elf, giving his already pallid face a corpse-like cast.

  Aelielaya leaned forward and placed both thumbs gently at the base of his forehead. Index fingers spread over his temples. Not pressing, but guiding.

  “Release the jaw,” she murmured, voice growing distant. “Let the shoulders fall. Inhale... let the breath take root… exhale.”

  He obeyed without question, slipping into that half-reality where body and mind parted ways. His consciousness expanded into a spherical field surrounding him by an arm’s breadth, his body now something he perceived rather than inhabited. He felt his blood flowing beneath his skin. Felt his muscles contracting in a thousand autonomic processes. Felt the faint currents of energy zipping through his body – far too swift to track – controlling all of its functions.

  And he felt Aelielaya beside him – present, but untouchable. Her defences remained impenetrable, even had he known how to test them.

  Unlike the elf, he had no control over the aether. Not within, not without. A limit of the human condition, in a way.

  She withdrew her hands from his head and repositioned herself, scooting forward until her knees touched his shins. Her hands rose again – this time not to guide, but to sweep the aether in and around his body, hovering over every aetheric fault line within him. Head, neck, torso, limbs. She never touched him, but every pass of her hand felt like the lifting of weight. Threads of tension, fine as spider-silk, unravelled one by one. Each minuscule in itself, but cumulative.

  His thoughts dulled. His vigilance quieted. The constant itch of readiness subsided into something resembling peace.

  For the first time in weeks, he began to loosen his grip on the world.

  Not surrendering; only uncoiling.

  It was well past ten o’clock when Ethan departed Aelielaya’s residence in Upper Portside. The walk down the hill was mercifully free of foot traffic, the day’s trades and trifles having all concluded, and the genteel portion of the populace now shuttered indoors with their firelit comforts and self-satisfaction. The poor had finished their pure-picking; the labourers their sweating and swearing.

  Only the desperate, the drunk, and the devout remained abroad. And tonight, even they appeared thin on the ground.

  The streets lay clear, lamplit, and quiet – an illusion of calm that his instincts distrusted entirely. Smoke from his papelate curled around his nostrils as he walked, acrid and cloying, though familiar. His lungs welcomed it like an old deckhand greeting the cat-o’-nine-tails: wearily but knowingly.

  Despite the pleasantness of the evening – or perhaps because of it – he found himself loitering. A premonition, sharper than usual and with the sting of specificity, gnawed at him. He recognised the sensation. Most men would call it a bad feeling. Ethan called it evidence. Unlike most men, he had learned to treat his evidence seriously.

  More pilgrims than last year’s All Saints’. More lawmen. Arthur the coachman remains an unaccounted factor. Mister Best had promised a surprise earlier. Simon is likely sloshed and seeking trouble.

  The night did not bode well.

  Instead of returning straight home, he turned north and ascended to the cliffside railing. From there, the districts below unspooled like a coachman’s map. To the west, the wooden stairways of Lower Portside clung to the cliff-face like a dying man’s fingernails. Even with reinforcement, they looked primed to collapse under the weight of a sparrow’s wingbeat. To the east, the incline road of Upper Portside eased its way downward with civic grace, engineered for carriages and cowards alike.

  Ethan leaned into the iron rail and watched the tide stir the waste from the docks’ estuary basin. The breeze favoured sea-salt over sewage currently. A small mercy – high tide had washed most of the filth upstream of the Matresa. His cloak flapped behind him, the northerly gusts prising at the golden seams.

  Two lawmen passed. Their boots clinked upon the paving-stones and one gave a cursory glance before asking: “All well, sir?”

  He did not turn to look at them. “Perfectly well, constable. Just admiring the city’s ingenuity in not falling into the channel.”

  The younger of the pair, either flattered or fooled at being called a higher rank than he deserved, gave him a salute. “Plenty o’ jumpers this time o’ year. Just makin’ sure you ain’t one of ‘em.”

  Ethan exhaled a plume of smoke. “If I meant to die tonight, I would manage it with rather more dignity than gravity alone allows.”

  They did not laugh, but the pair left him to it.

  He finished his papelate. Then, with no further excuse for delay, he turned and went southwest. Toward home, such as it was.

  By the time he passed Pilgrim’s Gate, the dribble of remaining traffic was inconsequential. Westbank’s lanes of approach had gone to black, the lamplighters skipping refilling them, as always.

  Still, the familiar tension returned, aching like an old injury in cold weather.

  He pulled up his hood as he entered Westbank proper. The locals had long since grown used to the scent of the Matresa mingling with slop runoff and the miseries of overcrowding, but Ethan had not. He endured the reek in silence, stepping lightly, avoiding puddles of indeterminate colour and composition.

  No footfalls followed him. No shadows stirred beyond the expected. The threats here were rarely subtle – but even so, he kept his hand near his pistol's stock under his cloak. Again, old habit.

  When he reached his home, the tension that had merely lurked began to speak. The street was as dead as all the others, but something had shifted – imperceptibly, yet absolutely. A silence too complete. A stillness too confident.

  He checked the first door. No signs of forced entry. Both locks turned without resistance. He closed his eyes and listened, but heard only the sounds one might expect to hear in Westbank at the current hour.

  Mostly that of drunk men thumping their wives, their children, or each other.

  The second door was likewise untampered. Inside, there was light within the parlour. Dim, golden, oil-fed. He saw both pairs of house slippers in their place on the rack.

  That was wrong – Simon had never been fastidious, and rarely sober past dusk.

  He drew steel without ceremony. The stiletto slid into his right hand, the pistol into his left. The floorboards had their traitors; he avoided them all. As he reached the parlour threshold, he noted the glow of the lamp, the scent of tobacco... and Simon, slumped on the settee, mug in hand, eyes glassy.

  “H-hullo, Ethan,” his friend slurred with the casual guilt of the drunkenly compromised.

  Across from him, legs crossed and smoke curling from a well-carved pipe, sat Mister Best. In Ethan’s chair – naturally.

  Best rose with his usual unctuousness, tipping his head a fraction. “Good evening, Mister Harbinger. I do apologise for the informal manner of our reunion. I assure you, the matter is most urgent.”

  At the sound of hinges behind him, Ethan half-turned. The Meat Man filled the doorway like a slab of offal nailed to a spine. Ethan raised his pistol. The stiletto remained levelled at Best’s throat, although too distant to pierce it.

  “Breaking and entering is enough reason for a hanging. I could end this right here and enjoy the privilege of civic duty.”

  “A poor idea, sir,” a new voice entered the fray from the stairwell on his right – soft, and entirely unwelcome.

  Rupert.

  The valet’s bald pate glinted in the low light. He held a blunderbuss, old but lovingly maintained, and judging by the bulge in the barrel, filled with whatever scrap metal they could dig on short notice. Shrapnel did not have to be elegant to be effective.

  “Mister Harbinger,” Best said smoothly, as though discussing the weather, “I assure you, no such laws were broken. Your housemate extended an invitation most... graciously.”

  Simon waved his mug vaguely. “Sh-shorry, Ethan... They had me by the scruff. Didn’t wanna take a wallopin’, y’know?”

  Ethan holstered both weapons. “Think nothing of it. I shall beat you senseless myself once you’re sober enough.”

  He turned to Best. “Well, then. Let us dispense with ceremony. What do you want?”

  Best’s grin widened. For the first time that evening, he abandoned the veil of courtesy. His teeth were white, well-maintained, and unmistakably carnivorous.

  “Work,” he drawled. “Of the most pleasant kind.”

  The pit in Ethan’s stomach grew teeth of its own.

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