Infernal Investigations

[saithor]

"Shit," was Varrow's only remark. His eyes flitted towards the doorway, trying to find a way out without touching Voltar.


The detective watched in mild amusement as my patient tried to move as far away as the chair would allow. I had no idea where these two had crossed paths, but Varrow clearly better appreciated the danger Voltar presented than most did. The detective's thin frame resembled a scarecrow, only padded out by the thickness of his greatcoat, and his face wasn't particularly intimidating. His eyes, though…


You learned quickly on the streets from people's eyes. Some were steel all the time, constantly projecting it outward. But there were those who, even if you saw not a single glare from them, not a harsh word or threatening notion, you still knew what lurked underneath.


"Hold still, and relax," I told Varrow, and I stuck the syringe into his elbow. I lodged it right into the vein and held it steady. It was an extract from a fire lizard in the underground, not that I'd ever let Varrow know. It could clear out the lungs if it had time to work and you kept up the doses.


Not relaxed, Varrow sputtered while Voltar politely cleared his throat.


"I hear you, Mr. Voltar. I'm handling a patient right now."


Petty on my part, but he'd barged into my home, currently standing in my doorway. Yes, the door was open, but that was hardly an invitation to enter.


"I can come back later if that is a better time?" Voltar asked.


"No, this will only take a few moments," I said, wrangling Varrow. I kept the needle's feed slow. "Can you please wait outside or somewhere beside my doorway?"


Voltar took a few steps back, clearing my doorway. I turned my attention back to Varrow.


"Please hold still. Also, I have a message for you to take to Mr. Tolman. I'll be around his house in say, a half hour? I'd appreciate it if he could be ready for a job by then. Double rates. It's understandable if he can't make it. Did you get all that?"


Varrow gave me a nervous nod in reply.


I reached for a bandage on my table, managed to grab it, and put it over where the needle pierced the skin. I took it out, keeping pressure on the bandage as I tied it up.


"It should take a few minutes to heal. In about half an hour take it out. Could you repeat back the message for Mr. Tolman?"


He repeated it back to me, adding his own rambling vernacular as I finished the bandage. Then, I went to get a bottle of the elixir from my closet. It was close enough to the original message, so I handed him the bottle.


"Swallow it all at once, Mr. Varrow," I told him. He didn't pay attention, eyes still locked on Voltar.


"Don't eat anything for at least an hour from now. If you must, make it something dry. Crackers would suffice. Mr. Varrow?"


He gave me a shaky nod, heading for the door. As soon as he was past Voltar he started running, boots rocking the cheap wooden floorboards.


"And remember to deliver that message to Mr. Tolman!"


Voltar stepped in, closing the door behind him. Immediately, the room felt much smaller than it had with Kalasyp or Varrow. I wiped my hands on a bit of cloth and walked over to where the fire was.


"I can not even begin to guess where you crossed paths with him, Mr. Voltar, but you've put the fear of both deity and devil in his heart. Coffee or tea?"


"Coffee, if it would be possible?"


Varrow had only had one cup. My battered drip pot had enough for one more.


"It is possible. I must say I'm surprised to see you here, Mr. Voltar. I'm not about to be led outside and find a squad of watchmen waiting to lead me to the Coffin in chains, am I? My heart might not be able to survive the scandal."


The polite smile didn't change. "No, nothing like that. I wanted your opinion on a substance as a professional."


"There are plenty of alchemists you must be able to consult, some of whom I imagine are much closer to your dwelling than I am," I said.


"Yes, but there is another reason for me to come here. I have some follow-up questions from the interview yesterday. I figured I might as well get two pieces of business solved at the same time."


Sure. The only reasons. I was well aware of the absence of Dawes. Or maybe he had one of those lowlife kids he worked with trying to break into my bedroom while we talked. There was another game afoot.


"It saves me a trip to the Coffin," I said. "I can hardly complain. Pass me the sample?"


He produced a small vial from his coat, which I took. A clear liquid lay inside, half-filling the vial. At first glance, it seemed to be water, but something seemed off.


"I'll take it to my lab later, although I can try a few things before you leave. The questions?"


"The infernal you were with had a box with him. I'd like to know what became of it."


I shrugged and uncapped the vial. I took a few hesitant sniffs. Nothing recognizable. A slight whiff of pine, maybe? He hadn't slipped me a vial of water just as an excuse to talk, had he? I started dividing the sample between the original vial and some of my own.


"Yes, he did have a box with him. I remember him dropping it when we reached the cathedral. He got rather cross with some urchins when they tried to nab it, and then the humans arrived, and I lost track of where it was. Why, was there something illegal inside?"


Voltar stood, watching as I divided the sample between six vials. "A good question. We don't know because no one has found it yet. Why did you not mention the box to the Watch?"


I shrugged as I took one of the vials and put a stopper in it. Using a pair of tongs, I held it above my fire. "I thought they had picked it up themselves. I didn't know much about it, my questions to the gang member, uhm, Golmar?"


"Golvar."


The liquid in the vial had begun to boil, but there was no other reaction from the liquid. "Well, Golvar made it very clear that he would not tell me anything of what was in the box. And since he seemed violently predisposed to me prying further, I left it at that."


"You didn't bother to look for it last night at the ruins of Halspus Cathedral?"


Was he fishing for something off in my response? A stupid question. That question was too specific to ask if he didn't know the answer already.


"I did visit there last night, and I won't deny it. How did you know, though?"


"You smell faintly of a tannery. The night wind only went to the south, so you must have gone south of the only nearby tannery, Jasper Leatherworks. But your apartment, your lab, and Carnly's all are north of that establishment."


I did my best not to drop my cup. I let wide-eyed amazement take over my face as if in awe of Voltar's discovery. Inwardly? I wanted to kick him. Hard. He knew where my lab was? I thought I'd have a day or more before he or the Watch went there, but now I might be down to hours. This was becoming increasingly bad.


"You have a perfect sense of smell, Mr. Voltar."


"Yes, although in addition, I have an eyewitness to you revisiting the crime scene and doing some peculiar things. Sticking your arm up to its elbow in the rubble of Halspus Cathedral. A bit odd for you to be doing, one would think?"


Of course, I'd been found out anyway. The question would be whether a tracker had been planted on my possessions I couldn't part with or had someone legitimately tailed me.


"I can certainly see why you would think that odd. Truth be told, I lost a brooch of sentimental value and was just trying to find it. I figured if I brought it to the Watch's attention, it would simply be pawned off by whichever officer did find it."


"You mentioned having Sculpts done on you. I hadn't asked at the time, but who exactly did your Sculpts?"


He hadn't bought the lie about the brooch. I could tell even if his expression didn't change in the slightest between sips of coffee. He'd just moved past it to this new line of attack instead.


"Verinith Scaligi, a year and a half ago. I think he's died since then, back in the Blaze. At the minimum, I haven't heard or seen him since then."


The Blaze was the latest in a series of grand conflagrations that threatened to eat the entire district. Fires were a regular occurrence in the still mostly wooden construction of the Infernal District, helped by the war with the dwarves, which had left brick and tile in short supply for the longest time. Great blazes that ate entire blocks were rare, they'd threatened the district three times in my life.


At least these days brick and tile buildings were slowly entering the Infernal District.


"A costly series of changes to have made to yourself, permanent cosmetic alterations. And a smuggling pouch as well. I do wonder how you afforded it?"


Mostly through a lot of self-financing, some stolen funds from Versalicci's coffers, and the fact that I made the modifications myself. Scaligi had never worked on me, not that I would have trusted him to. The only reason I shared his name was he was both dead, and with his body missing, no necromancer would get answers out of his spirit.


"I got very lucky with a client early on, and for why I spent so much on them," I hesitated, and gave Voltar a downcast grin that didn't reach my eyes. "Mr. Voltar, I don't think I need to speak on the prejudices so many in this city have. So I did my best to accommodate them and reduced my demonic features to cater to them."


If those words had any effect on him, they did not show. He finished his coffee, put the drained cup back on the table, and said nothing else.


This was not going to take the heat off of me. If anything, it only indicated that the detective had taken an interest, which was worse. Should I take a risk, or just suffer his interest in silence till hopefully this died down?


Maybe a small offering of the truth would help a little.


"I was lying about the brooch" I offered. "I was looking for the box, although I didn't find it. You probably know that already from your eyewitness."


"It was reported that you left empty-handed. Not the most important part, which is that you searched for it in the first place. And if you know what's inside."


"I do not," I replied quickly. "I'd never seen it before that day, nor did I find out was inside it, nor do I care to find out what was inside it. I only hid it and tried to retrieve it because I have to live here Mr. Voltar. There's a few rules to live by to live here, and one is do not cross the Black Flame."


"Not wanting to cross them is not the only reason to try and retrieve their property," he remarked.


"I am not a member. If you must be convinced, I will go to the Coffin again, and female members of the Watch can try searching me for the tattoo. I can already assure you they won't find it. Besides, if I was a member or even an associate, I'd just send word to the Black Flame, and someone not under suspicion by the Watch would have gone there to look for it. Assuming they didn't already find it."


There was no reply from Voltar.


I did my best not to look at Voltar, afraid of giving away my thoughts through my expression. Instead, I focused on the mystery substance, the identity of which I had a good guess. The details fit, for what better poison was there than one that had no odor, no color, no reactions with many common substances, and seemingly no distinguishing features?


Lucky for me, I hadn't tried taste-testing it.


I pricked my earlobe with a needle, collecting the blood as it fell out. Once I had enough for a drop, I let it slide into one of my vials.


The mixture turned to gold, bursting into light as it mixed with my blood, instantly turning it into vapor. The glass at the bottom began to melt, but the violent reaction stopped as soon as my blood finished evaporating.


I gingerly put the vial down and started collecting the other ones I'd been using. If the sudden reaction had startled Voltar, he showed no signs of it.


"Angel's Sorrow," I concluded. "An uncommon poison. You ran across this recently?"


Which one of my clients had hired Voltar? Or was there a third case?


He inclined his head. "Very recently. My current case, in fact. Not everyone would think of mixing their blood with it, Miss Falara. You've handled it before?"


Claim I regularly mixed my blood in as a test or the truth?


"I've handled cases of it before. Two, in fact, recent ones. Possibly the same ones you might be investigating yourself, although I doubt we are free to say who our clients are."


"My client made no statements on such things."


"That does not mean it wasn't implied. Are you going to state who it was?"


"Lady Kersin. She did mention hiring an alchemist to help obtain a cure. You, I presume?"


"I'm not at liberty to say," I said.


Let him dig that answer out with his own two hands. He seemed entirely too calm dropping that name, but he traveled in circles much higher than my own. To him Lady Kersin would be minor nobility, whereas traveling down to where I was, nobility was nobility. There are fewer resources at their disposal, yes, but they are still in the stratosphere.


He didn't seem inclined to pry further into that.


"If you were to prepare it, would there be any difference to your methods?"


I gave him a coy grin. "Mr. Voltar! I hope you are not implying what I think you are?"


There was still no change to the somewhat amused look on his face. I'd seen it before, in predators playing with their food. "And what would that be, Ms. Falara?"


I gave him the most scandalized look I could muster. No nerve manipulation this time; simply acting.


"I think you are trying to ferret out if I'm the one who poisoned those two souls," I said


"And what would you say if I did accuse you of the crime?"


I tapped his cup, and he nodded. I picked it up, taking it over to the sink. I didn't wash them, not yet. I needed this saliva. It'd be a nasty business I had planned with it, but it was necessary.


"The first is that I lack the resources for it. To begin with, I'd need to employ someone to travel in those circles to poison them. Secondly, I'd have to know there aren't any other alchemists better placed in the social circles they could trust. The money to fund it and pull it off, the fact I'd need to obtain very rare ingredients for both, would make it a very expensive scam. There are other reasons, but I think the third and most important is you'll find no evidence of me preparing them, as I have not made a single dose."


"It seems rather well-reasoned. Did you prepare that little speech in advance after our meeting yesterday, Ms. Falara?"


That was an interesting little nugget. Why would I prepare a speech about not being responsible for poisonings and have no clue he was investigating?


I grinned. "Oh no. I've just read so many of Mr. Dawes' accounts of your adventures, you might say I have something of an insight into how your mind operates. Where is the good Mr. Dawes, anyway?"


"Handling another matter related to this case. One I must attend to soon myself. Thank you for confirming the sample's identity, Ms. Falara."


Mr. Voltar grabbed his coat and hat, preparing to leave. I already moved to the door, opening it with a genuine smile. The sooner he was out my door, the better.


"Thank you for your time, Ms. Falara. It's been a very illuminating visit. Before I go, my original question, Ms. Falara? On the preparation?"


"Hrrm. Oh. There couldn't be a difference. The process of extracting the poison doesn't really produce a variation, no matter how you do it. The key one was thought to change depending on the method, but I honestly think that's just silly superstition."


"And that key ingredient is?"


He knew the answer, I was confident. But there was no reason not to humor him.


"The tears of a divine creature, of course."

 

[saithor]

Silence reigned as those words left my lips. I looked at Voltar, but his expression still refused to shift.


The poison was called Angel's Sorrow for a reason. It didn't need to be an angel, but it required a divine creature to shed its tears. The concentrated sorrow of such an entity was powerful enough to hurt the living through exposure, to touch the mind much in the same way a visitation from a divine creature would.


For people or creatures originating from the profane like myself? A mere touch could be instantly fatal.


"I suppose that is another reason why I would not be the one brewing this poison," I said, giving the assorted vials back to him. "One small slip-up and, in the best case, I'm an invalid for oh, years, I would say. Assuming it doesn't kill me or permanently damage my brain."


"A risk," Voltar said. "But in the interest of clearing your good name, you wouldn't mind me looking at your lab, would you?"


Oh, I very much minded in the imminent couple of hours. But I could hardly explain that a stranger was locked up in the cupboard. I didn't need more complications in my life.


"You are welcome to visit. I do have the only key outside of my landlord, so you'll need to talk to him or me before you visit. Do you wish to go immediately?"


He shook his head slightly, a slightly amused expression still there. Whatever his plan, my having time to go through my lab wouldn't interfere with it.


"Please let me know before you go in there, Mr. Voltar. I don't deal with the most volatile or dangerous substances, but I would not recommend exploring any unfamiliar alchemist's lab without one with you. Are there any more questions?"


He put his hat back on, already heading out the door.


"I don't think so. Have a pleasant day, Ms. Falara."


"And a pleasant day to you as well, Mr. Voltar," I said with false cheer.


I shut the door carefully, doing my best not to slam it. I fished my key out of my pocket and locked it up again.


I hurried over to my sink, grabbed Voltar's cup, and removed it. Inside it, the detective's leftover coffee still sat. Alright, this would be simple enough. I'd have to go somewhere else to perform the diabolism, so its stain didn't point to anyone here, but I had the ingredients here. My blood and his saliva- I just needed my focus to help bridge the gap between materials and power, and a tracking spell would be easy enough to work.


I drew the blinds shut, then grabbing a candle from my cupboard, I lit it. Vertrul, they called the invisible creatures whose fat I'd made the candle out of. Its methods of not being detected went beyond disappearing from sight, so as long as the candle was lit, attempts to scry my apartment would be obscured, if not outright blocked.


Grabbing a chisel, I worked on the floor, tapping gently at the gaps between the floorboards. I cleared out the putty and other material I'd used to fill the gaps between them. After a while, it was all cleared out, giving me space to use my fingers.


I lifted up one of the floorboards, looking at the trio of small wooden boxes hidden under them. These three boxes contained all the other remnants of my life as Malvia. Mementos, Biosculpting tools, and Diabolism.


The one I wanted was separate from the other two, with symbols carved into it that pained my eyes to look at. The wood singed my fingers as I lifted the box out and opened it. Ignoring the pain, I opened it up, grabbing a small metal star, eight-sided and with an inverted crown in the center. Black-painted flames backed it, glistening in the morning light.


I should have burned this, removing the temptation entirely. Diabolism was still possible without it, even if it was harder to perform. But why not use it? Desperate times and all that.


I sat in one of my chairs, thumb going over the inverted crown. Using it would mean calling on Him, and that was never pleasant. Versalicci would know as well the moment I called on the focus. That didn't matter too much. Golvar already confirmed he knew who Katheryn Falara really was.


The chair cracked underneath me. I looked down, seeing a spiderweb of cracks cutting their way through the already cheap wood. I got up, glaring at the focus. Probably not best to have this out till I had the ritual ready. I should have better control over it. Then again considering my teacher I was lucky to still be living.


Eager to be used again, are we? I thought, putting it back in its box. I quickly latched it shut, then considered the tips of my fingers. The burns were already fading. The seals on the box weren't holding up that well after a year of neglect.


It meant I could carry it in cloth to whatever secluded, abandoned building I secured for the ritual. It wouldn't be hard magic, just a little mixture to keep Voltar tracked. I couldn't track Dawes, but it would let me know what Voltar was doing.


Still, something felt off. I went to pick up the cup.


I looked at the coffee cup, a thumb going over the rim. Cracks in the surface formed irregularities as my thumb slowly went around it. In the center, the dregs of the coffee seemed to swirl. White specks mixed in with it, almost looking like the night sky.


I filled the cup with water and rinsed it out, watching it all vanish. The pipes here were crap, but they did the job. I then reached for the soap and started scrubbing the cup as if it was covered in a layer of shit.


How dumb did he think I was? The greatest detective in the world happens to leave his cup unwashed in an alchemist's home? Even if I wasn't a diabolist, using what he'd left in the cup for a mixture targeting him specifically would be simple enough.


I couldn't figure out how, but it was a trick, a trap. I rinsed it twice more until the inside of the cup was bare.


Okay, this might be a touch too paranoid, but I would take any excuse not to attempt some diabolism. Besides, paranoia was needed now more than ever. Why did elements of my past choose now to trample all over the neat little life I'd arranged for myself?


I stared at the disappearing water. This had been a mistake. I wasn't risking much; just a taste and a little nibble of diabolism would set everything right. He couldn't have gone far. Use the remnants of human flesh still in my system, conjure forth an imp, and set it watch-


I rammed my head against the wall.


This time, the wooziness took over a minute to fade. I sat in a chair, head in hand, both eyes scrunched shut as I recited the list of elements from beginning to end.


Zindlium, Zinc, Zirconium, Zorinthium. I needed to stop letting my head get hammered like this. Too many more instances and I would concuss myself.


In my stomach, something knotted, twisting in my gut around and around. Thankfully, I hadn't even considered breakfast yet. Something leaped, forcing me to gag. I tried to stop, stumbling as I got up from the chair.


It had been years since I'd used it. Why was it so damn powerful? It didn't even seem to be coming back; I hadn't spotted a single spirit since that one bite and shouldn't as long as I didn't draw on the power.


I retched into my sink, whatever was in my stomach coming up. Panting, I forced myself away from it. Was that blood in the sink? No, don't focus on it. It wouldn't, couldn't kill me, and I wouldn't feed it anymore. Actual Diabolism would just make its gluttony worse than the blood I'd accidentally fed it, and I didn't have six months where I could disappear anymore.


Ignoring the pain twisting in my stomach, I put the boxes and the floorboard back, then replaced the putty. It would take a little time, but it would eventually look like all the repairs you did yourself to keep the cold air from reaching inside. The Biosculpting tools I'd need but those were for later. I'd need several hours to redo the cosmetic alterations maintaining my disguise, so best to save those for later in the evening.


When you forge a mask, and wear it, you must become it. Whether you want to be that mask or not. Anything less and it's no longer a mask, Malvia. And you'll need masks, being you. We all do, but the two of us most of all.


The remembered voice echoed in my mind as I looked back at the sink. Katheryn Falara did not use Diabolism. I could not be tempted again.


I grabbed a coat and left. I might not be able to do anything about Voltar, but that intruder to my lab could provide some answers to this.


***


Half an hour after concluding the events in my apartment, I and a recently collected Tolman were walking the path to my lab. It was still early morning, so the roads were merely somewhat crowded instead of fully packed with foot traffic.


My stomach was calm now, although a worrying knot still sat at the bottom of it. Whether anxiety or the Diabolism making its displeasure known, it gnawed away at me.


Tolman filled the early morning with a cheery banter that I didn't share with him.


"You know, one night, you're worried about me and Arsene being on the outs because of me working with you. The next morning, you're dragging me out to work with you again without letting me say a word in protest. You are the mistress of the mixed message, Falara."


I'd just visited his house, a ramshackle place a few streets from mine, and pleasantly not had a run-in with Tolman's husband.


"If I'd known Arsene sleeps so late in the day, I'd visit more often. I'm shocked he's the one who was bone tired and not you, considering how late you were out."


Tolman grinned. "I wore him out plenty when I got home. Besides, even if he'd been up, I'm sure I could convince him to let me go with you. People prying into your past could find stuff on us we also want to be buried."


I nervously glanced at the other Infernals nearby, but the closest one, maybe a few paces behind us, didn't even react. This early in the morning, people were more focused on reaching their destination than listening in on our conversation. You woke up this early to beat the crush of foot traffic and the times when carts and wagons would travel the streets.


Still, that didn't mean he should be so cavalier in what he said.


"And that includes your mystery intruder. You said you think he's one of Lord Montague's?"


I'd told Tolman an abbreviated version of the events since I'd left him at Carnly's last night, along with a few suspicions on my part.


"Him or Lady Karsin," I answered. "Although I suspect his lordship more between the two."


"Why, because you like Lady Karsin?"


"No, although I'll admit I have a personal animosity with Lord Montague. But Lady Karsin's heir is free of the poison's effects. He's had the antidote. She doesn't need more doses, but Montague does and did not like the price we negotiated."


He shrugged. "I don't know. Sending someone to your lab the day you both met feels like a bit too fast for him to arrange. He decided to doublecross you immediately?"


"Good point," I conceded. Lord Montague was a racist, arrogant man, but willing to risk his son's life on a single person finding the antidotes? Maybe not. "I suppose we'll find out from the person themselves today."


"Right, I wanted to ask. You left them in your closet overnight?"


I sighed. "Yes, I did. Tolman, I have had the unique displeasure of getting all of….three, maybe four hours of sleep. I was in an even worse state last night."


"So, did you beat him up while cussing him out like you did Three-toed Williams?"


"Katheryn Falara shouldn't even know who Three-toed Williams is," I hissed, glaring at Tolman.


We were in public! I already had to deal with my act slipping after just one encounter with one of the still loyal Old Crew, now Tolman was joking about past life things with me?


We weren't alone in some deserted corner of the quarter, the streets were filling rapidly. Just within a dozen feet were a dozen people, including a trio of urchins, which I mentally noted as probably getting ready for a pickpocket attempt.


"Peace. Calm down. Most people here don't know who he is, either. You're bringing more attention to us by making a deal out of it."


A reply was on the tip of my tongue, but he was right. I took some breaths and forced myself to calm. "Apologies, Tolman. Yesterday was simply a very trying time. It threw me off balance, but it will not happen again."


"It probably will. I do understand what's going on, but you can't let it all get inside your head, Falara. The world is not out to get you."


I felt a small hand slip inside my pocket. My tail wrapped around the arm attached to it, yanking the street urchin forward so I could grab him.


I glared at the urchin, my hand clamped onto his wrist. He immediately started screaming bloody murder, which very few paid more than a few moments of attention to. Everyone knew he was a pickpocket, and no one seemed inclined to believe the rather inventive list of things he was yelling I'd done to him.


"That last one sounds anatomically impossible, but if you've seen it personally, I would be interested in hearing the details," I said. "Now, are you going to be reasonable about this?"


The urchin tried pawing at my clothes, either in an attempt at leverage or to strip me. Those couple of inch-long talons he sported could certainly manage the latter.


It was a bit of a scramble that saw most of the surrounding traffic move away from us to avoid it. The urchin's two friends tried to close in, only to back off as Tolman gave them a look that invited them to try something. Eventually, I got both my arms underneath his shoulders and linked them around the back of his head.


It was awkward, but I managed it well. Not quite the same kind of scrambling brawl I'd done when I was younger. I got him into it with no difficulties or foul behavior on my part.


"What do you think?" I asked Tolman. "A perfect little orphan to bring home to your husband as a gift for leaving without saying goodbye. You mentioned him wanting to add to your brood a while back."


"What are you doing to him?" He asked. "Also he's blackened your eye. That why you tried to gouge his out?"


I frowned. "Look, you weren't supposed to see the eye- never mind that. I've seen you use this in the fighting pits. To subdue your opponents."


"That's supposed to be a full nelson? Sloppy."


The urchin, seemingly out of ideas, was still pawing at my blouse, my coat, anything as I kept the hold applied. He better not rip the fabric, this was my second-best outfit.


"I would disagree with your assessment of it being sloppy," I said. "I think I'm doing it rather well-"


"Let go of me!" The pickpocket shrieked, turning into a flurry of motion. A foot kicked my knee, an elbow rammed into my ribs, and then teeth bit into my wrist. I quickly released the little imp, just in time for the back of his head to ram my nose.


My tail reached out to grab him, only for him to claw it. I most definitely did not squeal in pain as I pulled my bleeding tail back to me.


"Let this be a warning to you!" I yelled at the retreating child after a few gasping breaths for more air. My ribs throbbed. Little shit was stronger than he looked. My words were more nasally than usual. "Just because it looks like a good mark doesn't make it a good mark. Use your eyes for more than a few glances at a time!"


"Yeah, I think I'll pass on him as a gift for Arsene," Tolman said, keeping an eye on the other two. They kept a healthy distance, clearly having reconsidered their odds. "Seems a bit high-maintenance for a gift."


"Did he break my nose?" I asked. It felt like it.


He considered it for a second. "No. Just a bit swollen. You didn't do the hold hard enough. Gave him too much room to work with. Doesn't help you've decided to drop quite a bit of height and muscle. Also, you know, your tail."


I glared at him. "Pardon me for trying to do a disguise as far removed from my previous self as I could get. And I never had that much muscle."


We could talk a little more openly. People were giving us a wider berth. Violence was not unusual for anyone, but staying away from the aftermath was a good idea.


"To the alleyway? The Watch may have decided to keep a heavier presence here since yesterday," Tolman said.


I nodded, and off we went to the relative privacy of the alleyway. The few residents of the alley kept their distance. Not managing to break into an abandoned house to live in instead meant they were all lower on the societal pecking order than Zarrow. Very low.


I probed my nose, and winced as my fingers set off fresh bursts of pain. It went back to a slow, dull ache. Now that I knew it wasn't broken, there was something else to check.


My tail bled from where the urchin's claws had cut through my skin, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. From all the blood, I thought he'd almost severed it. Instead, a quick bandage staunched most of the bleeding, although it hurt like hell.


A few scattered pieces of fabric on the ground caught my attention. Three pieces, dull colors, and seemingly having appeared out of nowhere. Oh, hell.


The little urchin had pawed all over my blouse instead of trying to escape and had seemed far too deliberate about it. And I doubted he'd wasted an attempt to pick my pockets to try and grope me. I checked my blouse and found a scrap of different fabric that had sewn itself into my blouse.


"Tolman, one second. The urchin tagged me with a self-sewing tracer."


Quick as a flash, said urchin's two compatriots fled into the alleyway.


"Well, that's not good," Tolman said. "Self-sewing tracer? You mean just a tracer?"


"No," I said, examining the patch of crimson fabric. It was maybe a few centimeters in length, which helped it stand out less on the brown of my blouse. I drew a knife snd started trying to cut it off. "It started melding with the fabric of my blouse the moment the kid slapped it on."


"Is that as easy to make as a normal tracer?"


"No. It would be much more difficult," I said. Concerning. A tracer would already be a pretty expensive investment of magic to trust to a street kid. A self-sewing one? Who would trust an urchin with one of those? Even the Watch mostly sewed them into the clothes themselves.


A name came to mind. Versalicci would trust urchins with this. He used to trust me with this back when I was just a street rat. It had been just regular ones back then. These were new to his arsenal. How many more of these had been put on me?


Sighing, I took my coat off, looking along the inside and outside for any more tracers.


"People are watching," Tolman said. It was true, a few people in the surrounding houses looking down at us; most of them would probably be leaving for the morning commute soon enough.


"Let them. They will be very disappointed if they expect to see more than my coat off." I groaned as I counted the number of tracers. Three, no, wait four, as I found one that was the exact same shade as my coat. I'd only found it because my thumb had rubbed over the slight bump made by it. "How many are on my blouse?"


Tolman circled me. "Three on the blouse, two on your skirt. Someone wants you tracked bad."


I sighed. My entire wardrobe would be ruined at this rate. With Tolman pointing them out, I cut each of them free, trying to spare as much of the fabric as possible.


"This was my second nicest set of clothes," I said to no one in particular. "My best was already ruined after yesterday. If that urchin shows up again Tolman, I will shoot him."


"I thought he was going to be my adoptive child? You aren't going to be considered his aunt now."


We set off for the lab again, and I covered up much more with the coat than before. I wasn't indecent underneath, but removing the tracers took away more fabric than I would have preferred.


"Versalicci is the one who ordered this. It's another issue to be solved on top of all the others," I said.


"Talk to him."


"Talk to him? I might as well serve myself to him like a turkey at the solstice. I'd be dead before I could even meet him."


Tolman chuckled. "He likes you, Falara. He won't kill you. I'd be surprised if he does anything more than keep track of you and drop some suggestions you should drop by to see him."


"Katheryn Falara might associate with criminals, but she does not associate with the Black Flame."


"Well, first, Katheryn Falara is probably notable for not dealing with Flames at this point, and second, she might not have a choice in the matter."


I shivered. "Tolman….you know what he's like. I can't go back."


"Not saying you should. Arsene and I left for a reason as well. But you can't pretend he doesn't exist, and you might as well leverage what you can. He's not willing to jab you in the face. Set him up for an uppercut. Find out what he wants and why he's so desperate to tag you. Maybe get someone else to box him instead."


"I hate it when you use those kinds of metaphors. But thank you. We should save the rest of the discussion for after we finish this."


We'd reached the building my lab was at, and shock of shocks, my Landlord still was not here. Neither were any of the other tenants. Not a surprise. None of them operated labs, they just used these apartments as storage. And trusted in their preparations and foul reputations to keep others out.


This building had no security provided. You supposedly paid for some in the rent, but it never materialized. You only rented here if choices were slim or you were confident you could protect it yourself. In another building, that might mean hired muscle, watchers, maybe the backing of a gang or two. For this one it was magical defenses, prepared by the people who rented it.


In my case, a rather simple spell I'd paid to be installed where if you entered without a key, you would end up asleep. Simple and merciful, yes, but I couldn't handle the alternative. My neighbor had, and I hadn't known which was worse, seeing the liquified remnants of the would-be thief, knowing they'd slowly melted, unable to do anything about it, or listening to the psychopath complain about the smell afterward.


I opened up the door to my lab and passed the key to Tolman so he could cross the threshold.


Inside you could see where I'd fought the intruder. Luckily, not too much had been smashed, and most of the cupboards were still closed. I hadn't started any new potions, and it took longer than a day to brew since finishing the cures a couple of weeks ago. I'd have to make sure nothing was missing from the storage. Then again, if the intruder took anything, it would be on them. Nothing they could have stolen would help them escape, at least not with the testing cabinet remaining intact.


The testing cabinet lay at the back, the door still shut.


"Do you want to stay quiet?" he whispered.


I shook my head. "They probably heard the door open. You can hear us, can't you?"


No response from the closet.


"Get ready. Don't hurt him unless he makes it necessary."


Tolman rolled his eyes at the unnecessary instruction. I reached for the testing closet key. The pain in my stomach was gone, replaced with what was definitely anxiety now. Finally, some answers were within reach as I fit the key into the lock.


I opened the door. Inside my testing closet lay a small pile of clothes, a piece of paper, and no sign of the intruder from last night.

 

[saithor]

My testing closet lay utterly empty except for a small pile of clothes. I stared down at them. I….the door had been locked. I leaned down, lifting the clothes up, searching through them as if I could find them hiding among them. The door had been locked!


I found nothing besides the piece of paper, which had three words scrawled across it: Out For Lunch.


The rest of the room was bare, which wasn't strange. You could see the marks on the stone floor from me dragging the testing table in and out of the room, and nothing else was stored here during testing. Which only made the lack of the intruder more apparent.


I let out a noise reminiscent of a steam whistle as I moved to one of the walls, hammering it with my fist. Rough wood threatened to put splinters in my hand as Tolman leaned down, reading the note.


"Well, what do you know, they disappeared from a locked closet. And they left their clothes behind. Maybe they got overly warm and decided to go streaking to cool off?"


I ignored the joke. Thud went my head into the wall, then again and again. My head hit rough wood, my short horns digging into it.


"Falara? It was a joke."


"Why me?" I asked no one in particular. "I've done my best. It's been years since I killed anyone before yesterday. I barely do anything worse than anyone in this district. I've kept away from the worst of my vices. I've not done a scrap of diabolism since. Why are the gods punishing me?"


Tolman went to grab a chair from my lab, sitting down on it. "I'm pretty sure stopping killing people doesn't improve your standing too much. Scamming people and stealing at the same level as those in this district is still a sin. And you drink way too much mead to claim you don't have any vices."


"Tea is not a vice. Neither is mead. But besides that, things were looking up. Now they're heading down at a swift rate."


He'd picked up some of the clothing, searching it for anything hidden inside. "Might be true, but no use moping about it. You've had a few bad days. You'll bounce back."


Tolman did have a point. Moping about this would not solve anything. Sighing, I looked around the lab. I had an emergency teapot somewhere. The intruder had gone through the drawers again, opening up even more ingredient containers I dutifully shut. Some of these were ruined, but at least nothing poisonous had been touched.


I eventually found the shattered remnants of my spare teapot inside one of the cupboards. Ah, they had chosen death.


I returned to the testing closet where Tolman had finished going through the clothes pockets.


"Okay. Let's think about this. The intruder got out, but they couldn't have used a key. Outside of why they didn't just use it to continue trying to fight me, leaving the clothes here suggests their only method of escape required needing to strip their clothes off."


Tolman cocked his head. "Are you copying Voltar?"


I didn't know whether he was referring to having encountered Voltar as part of the Black Flame or one of Dawes' published accounts of their cases. He was right, but I did sound like the detective's vocalization of his deductions.


"I…it's not copying. Voltar didn't invent deductive thinking, Tolman. But besides that point, if the intruder could open the door, they wouldn't have stripped naked."


"Unless they want you to think that."


I shook my head. "No. As insane as events in this district get, someone strolling through naked would have gotten attention. They wouldn't do that willingly. So they got out of the testing room. The door is locked, and most of the room is reinforced. So the only potential exit is this."


This was the crack underneath the door, one I'd cut out myself to precise measurements. If testing something with dangerous fumes, I'd stop it up with a material that would expand and seal it off from the air. Then, I'd prepare the rest of the lab so I could safely open the door. Not the best solution, but on limited funds the best I could do. Most of the time I left it unblocked, like I had last night.


It also was a gap only half an inch tall. I should have noticed my stop-gap of rags to stop the intruder's screaming had somehow vanished.


Tolman leaned down, poking a finger into the gap. "You think he made it out through that?"


I lay down on the floor, looking at the crack. "Unless another explanation presents itself, it's what we must go with."


I wasn't enthused about this being the possibility either, but there were no signs of another way they could have left. The wood of the testing closet, roughly knotted and pockmarked, was solid and showed no signs of being tampered with.


"Well, if he went through there, maybe he Biosculpted himself to fit through it?"


I shook my head. "Remember how long it took me to alter myself compared to you and Arsene? It's even more time-intensive when you work on yourself because inevitably you'll be altering parts of your body that help you manipulate the tools you use to alter it."


That had been the struggle in handling my own disguise. The only reason I'd managed it was having a half-year in which to do it bit by bit slowly. Once in place, the temporary alterations only required me to touch up on them and fuel them every two weeks. I'd done minor alterations, like the ones since Lady Karsin had contacted me, but they were relatively easy compared to altering my entire form.


"It wouldn't be possible to do some quick and dirty ones just to make him capable of leaving under the door?"


"If she, or he wanted to try that in the time they had, they must have accomplished some breakthrough in the field that I haven't heard a whiff of. We're talking about a complete transformation to something barely resembling their base form overnight."


"You've not been doing it the past couple of years. Considering how little you've been doing, you might be a little out of touch."


"Which doesn't mean I haven't been following it." Although if the ability to alter one's form on the fly like this had been made, it being kept secret wasn't too far a stretch. Not if they wanted to keep that ability for themselves. But there was still one issue besides all that.


I gestured at the pile of clothes at our feet and hooves. "Even if they did make some breakthrough, they wouldn't be able to take their sculpting tools with them. Even the finest set wouldn't fit through that opening."


"If not biosculpting, perhaps some other kind of magic. Teleportation?"


"They could have taken the clothes with them if they teleported. Shifting magic maybe, but they all have a limited number of forms, and anything small enough to fit through the door crack would be difficult to change back from."


"Right, you mentioned it a couple of times when Darlav wanted to become part wolf. The animal brain exerts an influence, and the smaller you get, the more it does. What happened to him anyway?"


"Went chasing stories of lycanthropes. Versalicci didn't receive it well. You never heard?"


"Versalicci trusted me with a lot less than he did you. But if we're talking about lycanthropes, vampires, maybe? They can turn into mist. Even if they're a bit rare."


I snorted. The reason vampires were rare is that most of them were dead. After the Infernal Empire's collapse, vampire hunters killed most of the known vampires. Which didn't stop rumors of them cropping up every time a new spree of murders occurred. Even in quite a few cases where the killer has been caught, rumors still fly about a vampire being responsible. It was easier to believe a blood-sucking monster could do such cruel acts over someone you knew.


This was on top of the usual everyday rumors about various nobles or public figures secretly being vampires. Although apparently, a new trend among some in the upper class was to pretend to be vampires. Supposedly to spice up their love lives, or so I'd heard.


That sounded like the kind of utter nonsense people stuck in arranged marriages might pursue to spice up their lives. Either way, I doubted any member of the nobility could be a vampire.


"If it was a vampire, I doubt I could have manhandled them into the closet so easily. And before you ask about lycanthropes, outside of them, they are also strong enough to rip my arm from its socket on average, and they can't displace their mass as easily. Their animal forms can't get smaller than a small dog. No, wait. Some can do vermin, but only very large vermin."


"Shapeshifters, perhaps? They might be able to shrink their bodies small enough to fit out between the door crack."


"The last shapeshifter known to exist in the city was perhaps a hundred years ago? Ignoring all the claims and rumors that were never proven."


Those were always in season, especially if you wanted an excuse guaranteed not to work for why your spouse caught you cheating on them.


"Doesn't mean it wasn't a shapeshifter. Not knowing if someone is them or not is part of their entire deal."


I frowned. "The question is why they'd be rooting through my lab. Regardless of whether they are shapeshifters, vampires, or something else. Montague still tops that list."


"Where did you put the cures?"


"Somewhere secure," I answered. "Not that I don't trust you Tolman, but considering everything that's occurring, I'm not saying it out loud."


"Maybe you shouldn't in your head either, you never know if they have someone capable of reading minds," he joked.


I glared at him. "I am being precisely the amount of paranoid this situation requires, Tolman. Those cures were expensive to make, and I doubt I'll be able to acquire the ingredients for more."


There were very few substances that could be substituted for the extracted brain fluids of a draconic entity. I doubted another would die again so soon or be so poorly guarded. Smaller creatures wouldn't be much easier to find and wouldn't be as useful to harvest. You didn't tend to get much fluid out of the brains in the first place.


I couldn't go out and kill one either. Outside of morality, I rather doubted I could.


Sighing, I went through the pile of clothes again. I found nothing, not even any personal items to help find out who he'd been. The clothes were definitely not what I expected: a morning coat with silver metal thread mixed in, trousers, a waistcoat with more metal thread except this looked like gold, a shirt with well-done embroidery, and even a top hat. Despite our brief fight last night, their tears were only minor.


Had the intruder broken into my lab after a fancy dinner party?


"We'll need to take these with us," I said, already folding them up. I'd need to find a box or a bag from my lab to put them in.


Tolman tossed me the waistcoat. "They're pretty fancy, but I don't see pawning them earning you much."


I considered the belt missing from the set of clothes. Perhaps taken with, if it could fit under the door? Perhaps with a weapon, like the second saber I had strapped to my own? "Maybe I'd pawn them eventually, but I meant more for finding out who the intruder is with them. These couldn't have been cheap. Hrrm, no identifying marks, but they might have been hand-tailored."


We both left the lab, the clothes stowed away in a bag. I locked it behind me and sighed. I'd have to remove everything from here or figure out how its defenses had been bypassed.


"Apologies for dragging you out here, Tolman." I pressed a few pounds into his hand. If I kept burning through Lord Montague's advance at this rate it wouldn't last a week.


"Don't worry about it," he said, taking the money and then opening the door for me. We'd be traveling light. I'd have to hire security or people to help me move the lab's contents and tools. "It beats work at the laboring and gives me something outside the fighting pits. Arsene is the breadwinner anyway, even if he keeps moaning about not being able to artifice like he used to. I think someday he will murder Karlat for not doing things right."


Karlat would be the blacksmith Arsene had gone to work under after I'd arranged his, Tolman's, and my own exits from Versalicci's gang.


"Still. This is an additional risk for you since Versalicci knows who I am. He might guess you and Arsene's true identities."


Tolman snorted derisively. He always didn't have the proper fear and respect one should have for Versalicci. He'd not been around the boss when things had reached the end, and he'd never been as far into the inner circle as he thought.


I'd never spill the details on that. Partially because just remembering some of them made me sick, partially not to draw attention from Versalicci. I did not want to see if any of the curses set up to prevent us from talking about them still worked.


We reached the downstairs. It would be mid-morning now, so if I ran for it, I might make it to Halmon before he closed for today.


Of course, as soon as we exited the building, the next batch of trouble began.

 

[saithor]

I resisted the urge to curse. Not only would it not do anything, but the assortment of thugs before me and Tolman might think it referred to them.


It did, but provoking them wouldn't do any good.


Five people stood outside the entrance, maybe a dozen feet away. Most of them wouldn't look out of place on the street, dressed like vagrants, bearing the stained teeth of those addicted to one substance or another. Of course, most vagrants didn't stand in a loose line outside the entrance of this place. Most vagrants didn't possess the very well-kept knives this group was using to do such mundane tasks as picking their nails.


Most also didn't have a trio of street rats behind them, one of whom was busy making obscene hand gestures at me while shrieking insults about my parentage.


There were no Black Flame tattoos in sight, which was not a shock. Part of the reason the tattoo existed was for members of the gang to deliberately not have it. Badges of honor and sisterhood were useful for morale, but they were also useful for making the Watch think you had to have one to be a member.


"I think we've been followed," I confided in Tolman quietly.


"Amazingly, I must agree. Raises the question, why do you think the kid tried to put tracers on us then? It's not like you renting out of here is a secret."


"Maybe they didn't expect us to come here," I replied before continuing from the front entrance into the street below.


I didn't recognize any of the Black Flame, although the leader seemed a little familiar. I recognized the three orphans in the back, the lead one being the wannabe pickpocket. He had given up on parental-based insults. Now a grin on his face that threatened to bisect his head with how broad it was, eyes taunting.


Ah, the follies of youth. I pulled a pistol from within my coat, not all the way. Just enough for the flintlock hammer to clear the coat. His eyes widened immediately, the smile vanishing. He and his two friends scampered off into the distance.


The lead Black Flame leader looked at their fleeing forms and then turned her attention back to me. "Was that really called for?" She chided me. "He already got a chewing out for fucking up the job on you. Poor kid's also going to get a lashing from Syn, he's got enough problems for today."


I folded my arms, not reaching for my replacement saber quite yet. Lashings? Huh, just when I thought Versalicci couldn't get any worse in managing his little criminal empire. Syn being alive wasn't too much of a shock. Rats knew the best ways to escape death.


"Considering that he put tracers on my person knowing how this would probably turn out, I don't see putting a fright into him as some grand sin. Why are you here?"


The leader held her hands up placatingly. "Mr. Versalicci wants to have a chat with you is all. About your mutual dead friend Mr. Golvar."


"Calling Golvar a friend is stretching it," I replied. "But if he wants to ask how Golvar died, the answer is simple and doesn't need me. Golvar got stabbed to death by Pure-Bloods, as part of a delivery. He probably knows more than me about that."


I knew this one from somewhere, now that I was focused more on her than the urchin. The unsymmetrical cheekbones, for one thing, one lower and forced inward compared to the other. It probably had been broken sometime in the past and never healed properly. The tail end of my time in the gang? Probably.


"Mr. Versalicci doesn't doubt you didn't kill him. But he does have some…questions he wants answered in person. As well as some missing property he thinks you possess."


Tolman moved next to me, expression calm, but I could read the tension behind that. So could the leader of the group, who now had a hand firmly inside her coat. Pistols? A risk of the Watch, which would normally not be a factor except they'd been here yesterday.


I wish I could tell him to back away. We couldn't communicate with each other, at least not with the hand signals. I really should have set up some kind of alternate form of communication for us that didn't have its origins inside the Black Flame.


"You can tell Mr. Versalicci that I will meet with him on the subject at a later date, but I do not possess his property," I said.


One of the thugs chuckled as the smile on the leader's face grew a mite less warm.


"How about you tell him yourself?" she asked.


"I unfortunately have a very busy day, nor do I particularly want to see Mr. Versalicci. I made it very clear last time we met I did not want to see him again, no amount of gifts would change my mind, nor any other overtures he might make. If you want to take a message back, how about this? I've made it clear I'm through with him, and if he insists on continuing his pursuit of me, I will reveal things he does not want made public."


The leader's face went blank, and some of the others were muttering amongst themselves. While I didn't make out much, a few words were loud enough to hear. 'Think she's the lady in red?'


What, no, the Lady in Red was dead. Laurata had breathed her last, not being paid back in the slightest for being Versalicci's….


My mind blanked as I realized what this group of Black Flame was clearly thinking.


The leader cleared her throat. "I was told this was a delicate case, didn't realize it was that delicate. Miss Laurata, it's been a while since we last met, but I can assure you this isn't related to the relationship you had with the boss."


Tolman started roaring with laughter, making it for a full second before I elbowed him in the ribs.


This needed to be clarified. Immediately. "You misunderstand me, I am not Lau -"


One of the Black Flame glanced to the side and then immediately turned, knives clearing their coat. My own hand pulled out my flintlock, head turning.


Four humans were heading our way, canes in hand, the one in front bearing a top hat. More Pure-bloods? Why would they be here?


Don't question it Malvia, I told myself.


The Black Flame leader had spotted them as well. She gestured to the other members of the gang, who turned their attention away.


By the time they turned back to the entrance, me and Tolman were halfway to the alleyway.


I resisted the urge to look back as a gun fired behind us. It didn't impact anywhere near us. The best thing to do was leave and let the two gangs beat and kill each other instead.


More gunshots sounded as we skidded into the alley. I spared a moment to look behind us. The Black Flame members were seemingly torn but most had turned on the Pure-Bloods.


I slipped my pistol back into my coat as I ran. No need to present a threat. Time for the opposite, actually.


Tolman gave me a look of fake scandalization as we hurried through the alleyway, a grin threatening to break through the surface. "So did you mean to imply you and Versalicci were slee-"


"Finish that sentence, and I'll remove the repairs on your horns," I said.


I spared a look behind us. No one had even bothered chasing after us. Both groups probably knew where I lived, they weren't too fussed about wasting their morning chasing us. I was almost insulted by how little effort they were putting into this.


Then again, they were likely too busy killing each other.


"We can stop. And no, I did not intend to give that impression." Even considering the thought made my stomach rebel worse than the diabolism had.


"He'll probably be just as horrified as you if he hears about it. That or he thinks he got things very wrong and thinks you're really Laurata in disguise. Which well, considering what your disguise as Falara looks like, I can see why."


I considered the shade of my skin and the adjustments I'd made in the last few days and came to a horrific realization. "Oh gods, I do look a little like Laurata. No wonder they suspected I might be her. Why didn't you tell me?"


Tolman chuckled. "I thought you were aiming for that kind of look?"


Unconsciously maybe. When I was fourteen, Laurata seemed to be the most elegant and refined person in existence. Had I gone for a look similar to hers because of that?


I sighed. This disguise would need to be changed regardless. "Okay. Enough on that. Did you recognize the leader of that little band?"





Tolman looked back down the alley towards where the fight must be raging on. "Not by name. She was a new recruit right before everything went straight to hell. Guess she's advanced far up the ranks since then."


"She wouldn't have a lot of competition," I replied. "Well, it seems from the lack of whistles the Watch is not as on the ball as they were yesterday. We should probably use that to our advantage and get as far away as we can."


"I'm surprised you want to run. I imagine whoever's left will try and break into your lab?"


"They will," I agreed. "I'd say they'd have to make it past the defenses first, but considering last night….write it off as a loss."


We finally slowed down to a walk. Whistles were beginning to blow, but nowhere near us. I turned back to face where my lab had been. Gods damn it, I'd just built that place up, and most of Lady Karsin's payment had gone into that. Pain lanced through my palms.


"Malvia, your hands," Tolman warned me.


My nails had started cutting into my palms. Cursing, I pulled them out, watching as drops of blood started falling. It took half a second to get some cloth out of a pocket and wrap it over the bleeding wounds.


Tolman looked at me cautiously. "We can probably take the survivors of that little skir-"


"Don't," I cut him off. "I appreciate the thought, but I doubt it's the last group that will be sent, and we just don't have time to move anything. I got the cures for Angel's Sorrow out last night. It's not ideal, but we can rebuild, and you are not risking your life over this."


"Alright. What's our next move then?"


"Your next move is heading home before Arsene gets more reason to kill me," I muttered. "For me, next is meeting with Halmon and then dealing with Kalasyp's clients."


"With how worried you've been, I'm surprised you don't think Kalasyp's offer is a trap," Tolman said.


"The thought did cross my mind," I confessed. "But if they knew where my apartment is, there's no real need to arrange for me to head to his lab."


"Wanting to abduct you in a more quiet, isolated spot?"


"His lab is underground and right next to the Delver's Guild headquarters," I said. "Trying to abduct me would be foolish right next to people who might actually intervene if they see someone being abducted."


Tolman whistled. Getting real estate in one of the old dwarf quarters was an achievement. "How did he get such a prime piece of real estate?"


"Old deals with the guild masters," I answered. "He used to be something of an adventurer a century or two back."


"You're joking. He doesn't look it even a little. And he's extended his life?"


"Apparently, they don't mind too much if it's done with enemies of the state. Which includes anyone who happens to be in a dungeon the Empire wants to be cleared." We'd reached the street by now, and after a second Tolman was heading down the street.


I headed the other way, still checking my hands. The cuts weren't too deep, so healing them could wait. I could take the main tunnels down, but I didn't want to run the risk of being ambushed by another group of Pure-bloods or Black Flame.


Time for the smaller tunnels. There were dozens of them, and not well-patrolled. This close to the surface, there shouldn't be any creatures. But given my luck today, there probably would be something down there.


I checked the flintlock. I'd been holding out on buying a revolver, the new weapon costing easily twenty times a trusty old flintlock. That was changing the first chance I got. But for now, it would have to suffice underground.

 

[saithor]

I really needed to stop going into dark places.


I did have a lamp with me this time, a candle burning at the center and providing some light. Not as much as I'd prefer. The darkness ahead shifted as I pushed forward, shadows dancing along the tunnel walls.


I walked along a rough stone path, maneuvering carefully in a tunnel not much larger than I was. I should be grateful the dwarves who'd carved out this rectangular passageway had bothered to make it big enough for folks my size. Not too much bigger as my horns scraped against the tunnel ceiling for a third time.


The problems of taking the smaller tunnels as opposed to the main thoroughfares. Originally the plans had been for all of these to be constantly patrolled, when the invasion had started. Plans changed very rapidly. Originally they'd envisioned an underground frontier and already built dwarven settlements ready to colonize.


Those were settled now, leftover dwarves and adventuring guilds and an assortment of others flooding in. The rest, including the mines? Less so. Colonization was going to be a ways off till the Imperial government was certain the yield from the mines would be consistent. Monsters made that difficult.


They'd been allies to the Shining Princess, back during the campaigns to depose Her Most Profane Majesty. They'd been firm allies for the decades after until she'd decided to declare them a protectorate and formally part of the empire. The economic issues ravaging the empire at the time most definitely were not part of the reasons to extend the empire's protective shield to the dwarven kingdoms, as the newspapers had insisted so many years ago.


Everyone knew dwarves had money. It had been a fact you didn't question, even after the idea had taken a few hits. When I'd been pickpocketing on the streets a decade ago, the assumption was that if you saw a dwarf, they had wealth.


If you ventured past that image of them, it turned out that a drawn-out campaign that took a decade and ended up driving the entire race further underground didn't tend to leave much wealth behind. Their surface raids hadn't helped the economic situation; what land had been recovered had been left bare and without any wealth, and very few new citizens of the empire had been gained out of the deal. Whoever had decided to sell the idea to Her Majesty that a long drawn-out war would revitalize the economy was unknown, although Duchess Lindisfair's horse-riding accident soon after was a decent indicator.


The end of the campaign had led to the Understreet incident partially because Imperial officials had become curious about the stretch of the underground populated by Infernals instead of dwarves.


The mines were still here in the dwarven tunnels far below, but other issues were still lingering about. Speaking of those issues.


My lantern's light illuminated a slick green trail across the tunnel floor. I cautiously poked it with the tip of my hoof. Pulling back, my hoof seemed to have nothing wrong with it besides the new layer of gunk. The slime probably wasn't acidic, at least to keratin.


I eyed the slime trail. It stank, and from its lime green color, it probably belonged to something I wanted no part of. So many creatures made trails like this, but the general rule was the stranger the creature, the more dangerous it would be.


Of course, it shouldn't be here to begin with. The guilds were responsible for preventing any monsters from the deeper earth from making their way up here. Meaning this probably originated aboveground.


It had been bad enough when the only things down here were monsters spawning from the heart of the earth. Over time this place had also become a dumping ground for failed experiments. My fellow Biosculptors never stopped surprising me with how utterly insane their creations could be, as well as their own lack of self-preservation. No amount of regulations seemed to stop them either, you always had one growing some strange abomination in their cellar. There was always something new every month, whether it was some strange shapeshifting abomination that absorbed people into itself or mosquitos that drove into your brain through the nose and puppeteered you.


I suppose only its usefulness to the Empire kept it from being publicly banned like Diabolism. From personal experience, this was probably the right decision on their part.


Something gurgled up ahead, a wet, phlegmy sound.


My tail looped around the lantern's handle, leaving my hands free as I crept forward.


I drew my pistol and saber. After the first tangling with the Purebloods, I didn't have any acid on me, and anything else might just scratch it. The gurgling noise grew, along with the sounds of something scraping across the stone.


A lizard rounded the corner, gasping as it wriggled around. Two forelimbs grasped at the stone, pulling it forward while its rear resembled a slug, undulating as it forced itself forward. It was about the size of a wolf, though nowhere near as fast.


"Not any closer. Back!" I said authoritatively, weapons raised. Some Biosculpting creations could understand commands. Even if it couldn't, animals could pick up when something was threatening them.


The lizard hissed and surged forward. I pulled the trigger on the pistol, the roar of firing gunpowder filling the room. The sudden smoke couldn't obscure the bullet hole sprouting in the lizard's head. It didn't halt, still charging.


I nearly bit my tongue as I tried to back up. There wasn't room to maneuver here. I timed my slash with the saber, aiming for the scales along its neck. The blade bit deep through the scales. It didn't care, jaws trying to close on my face. I screamed back, pushing with the saber. Blood poured out of the hole in its forehead. I moved my tail, the coal lantern slamming into its eyes.


The light flickered, shadows playing across the lizard's face as its teeth closed only inches away from my face. I'd dropped the pistol, hand going for a dagger. It lunged again, jaws going for my head.


Suddenly it shrieked, falling into the floor and splashing in a sudden pool of liquified rock.


I didn't give it a chance to do anything. My saber cut again at the neck, and then I lunged forward, dagger going straight into the beast's eyes.


It wailed and shrieked, no longer focused on me. I fell back, leaving the weapon stuck in there as it rammed into the walls. It continued to sink, till only the top half of its body protruded from the ground. Its movements slowed, the screaming weakened, and eventually, it slumped over.


I approached cautiously, prodding it with the tip of my saber. No reaction. I grabbed my dagger and pistol, stowing them back away, and examined the corpse. I briefly considered dragging the corpse with me but settled for cutting some scales loose and sealing some blood in a vial.


I didn't want to be around if even more of these creatures were lurking in the tunnels. Although at least this was relatively minor in terms of the creatures these tunnels could spawn.


The stone… had frozen, like a roiling lake suddenly frozen in an instant. I prodded a wave of sediment with my saber, but it refused to budge. Damnations. I did not need this to become a thing again.


I chose to focus on the creature instead, taking a few more samples before continuing on my way. I'd been lucky, but it was a good indicator of why the Delver's Guilds were back in the city.


One problem had become apparent as soon as the dwarves left the city. Without them guarding the Underground, the various creatures they regularly fended off had made a return. Originally army regiments had kept most of the new Dwarf Quarter clear, but the empire had new surface conflicts to fight instead. Leaving their newly gained territory filled with monsters.


Adventuring was in the middle of a minor renaissance as a result, which had to irritate Her Majesty. Despite her own adventuring days as an exile, in the last decades, she'd made it very clear that she considered monster hunting and ruin-delving a responsibility of the state. Especially as the number of ruins to delve into had dropped over the decades. Until the Dwarves had gone further underground, most adventurers headed to the colonies, and the Guilds went with them.


Now they were back, although for how long was an open question. Maybe the streams of creatures from the dark depths would keep them busy for years as they lived off the bounties put on these creatures' heads. Maybe they'd exhaust them and be finished in a few more years.


Until then, the underground was theirs.


It took another twenty minutes of tight tunnels before I reached one of the larger ones carved out of the rock. Smooth stone twenty feet high and three times that across forming the walls and roof, occasionally broken up by another tunnel's entrance and rock statues of various dwarf figures carved out of the rock.


Most of those were beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Edges and corners began to round as the rock was worn away. What dwarves had chosen to stay with the empire didn't feel confident enough to maintain them, apparently. I couldn't blame them, the general mood towards dwarves wasn't very positive these days. Monsters bursting from the underground in the aftermath of the war hadn't helped with that. Not their fault, but most didn't care, and the Empress certainly didn't want to intercede on their behalf.


Familiar ground being retread there.


The tunnel was empty. I was arriving after the morning rush of people who actually worked here. Guests were a common occurrence but typically took tunnels that didn't lead from the Infernal District. Hells, people going to one of the Dwarf settlements from the same general direction would circle around, finding other tunnels to take here.


It did make for a nice quiet walk in the tunnels.


Part of the stone wall shifted, and I took a few steps away from it. The surface had gone from solid stone to the surface of a pond. A sidewise pond made out of rock.


I'd be more upset if I didn't know what this was.


"Not interested," I addressed whatever spirit had just decided to crawl through the walls. Probably damn powerful to leave a visible mark on the mortal world. "How about you just keep moving through, and I'll pretend I didn't see you?"


There was no reason spirits should be following me around. I'd done my level best to make sure this body was as unable to perform magic as possible. Diabolism would only work because that had been half-clericism, half-magecraft, and me keeping the focus. The imp was still around, but I kept him quiet, and until the throat-biting incident, he'd stayed quiet.


There should be no reason any other spirits were interested in me. I couldn't even see them anymore with how much I'd tried to Sculpt that ability out of myself.


Nothing else happened. If the spirit had chosen to stay around me, the best I could hope for is that it remained quiet. I continued my walk down the tunnel. It took only a few more minutes for the gate to come into sight.


The gate to the dwarven settlement was efficient for its goal, which was keeping people the hell out. Thick slabs of granite, split down the middle, only openable from inside and with the help of enchanted mechanisms. The amount of force to break this open would need to be massive, and it was hardly a surprise the few gates that had been shattered were still in their broken state.


A single human stood guard at a hastily constructed wooden booth in front of the gate, clad in half-plate and a halberd at his side, both glowing faintly with runes. Surprising. You'd think after three years, they'd have replaced the booth by now.


"Hello, Mr. Jebediah," I greeted the gate guard. He was hard to miss with the half-plate on. You didn't see that these days unless the owner had loaded up on enchantments or was a paladin. "Been having a busy day?"


Joe Jebediah was in his late forties, grey just beginning to mix in with his hair as he leaned on his halberd. "No busier than usual. You here on business?"


I half-smiled. "Business, yes. Guild business, no, and not likely for a while."


He raised an eyebrow. "Something for me to keep an eye on?"


"Oh, not really. Local gang issues. If they choose to start anything down here, my already low estimate of their intelligence will sink even lower. More pertinently, I did encounter a monster on my way here. A lizard monster of some kind, probably a rogue Biomancy experiment. Didn't seem too harmful, but figured I should let you know."


Joe stiffened. "Just some kind of lizard? Didn't do anything weird, did it?"


"I couldn't tell. I tried to drive it off, then killed it pretty quickly. Came up to about my waist, didn't really do much besides charge me and try to chow down. Had tentacles, so probably some Biomancer's pet they abandoned. Would have grabbed the corpse, but I'm in a bit of a rush. If anyone else wants to try and retrieve the body, best of luck to them."


"Probably some new signees," Joe said with an amused tone. "Lot of them feel real apprehensive about heading deep down, they make themselves useful running odd jobs. Anyway, just need to mark you in the book, and you can head inside."


"Not a lot of traffic today?" I asked while he dragged out the logbook. Typically there was a line to get in through the gates.


Joe sighed. "You just missed the rush. Took forever to clear them, but it's either that or have the Imperials shut us down. Have you seen some of those new security automatons they've been demonstrating at the Ironworks? Think they could get one of those to take over?"


"Hrrm," I signed my name in the logbook and checked the time off the clock hanging from the cavern ceiling before adding that as well. "I've seen a few. Especially those new ogre-sized ones. Of course, those have their own issues. Were you there for the arm-wrestling demonstration?"


He nodded eagerly. "The one last week? Very impressive, managed to outwrestle that ogre in two seconds."


I nervously chuckled as I wrote down the street I'd entered the tunnels from. "I was not at that one. I was at one a few months back and well, it outwrestled the ogre in a fraction of that time. And also nearly ripped their arm off."


Joe winced. "Ah. Well, it didn't do that this time, so I guess they're improving the design."


"Yeah, but they aren't that skilled at anything they aren't programmed to do, what they comprehend is still pretty limited, and on top of that, expensive as hell. I think you're stuck on gate duty for a while longer Joe." I handed him back the logbook. "I'm good to head inside?"


He took it back, quickly reading my entry. "Yeah. Usual warnings: be careful, and don't provoke any fights or something similar like that. If you don't start anything, you aren't responsible for it, but restraint is appreciated by everyone. Got any idea how long you'll be in here?"


"Should only be a few hours," I said as he knocked on the gates with his halberd. From inside came the sound of moving gears. Granite slabs began to move, opening a gap.


"Well, welcome back to the Delver's Guild."

 

[saithor]

All around me, the dwarf settlement extended up and down along the cavern's walls.


I'd been in a few dwarf-built settlements underground before and each tended to differ depending on where they'd carved out their settlements. When you have an existing natural cavern like here? They took the route that required the least work.


Korvath had been built in what could best be described as an underground canyon, so the dwarves had taken to building their homes in the walls, dwellings carved into the rock. A single road threaded its way down to the bottom. Further up, the outskirts of settlements were carved to the side instead. Even dwarf architects hadn't bothered trying to build on the cavern ceiling. Not for this settlement, at least.


The Imperials had hung an arcane sun from there, necessary for those of us whose vision wasn't functional in the dark underground. It hung there, a ball of glowing light that hurt to look at directly, especially as the intensity grew. At its dimmest, you could see the rune-encrusted metal sphere directly, shedding a dim light barely greater than a single moon. They'd even made it go through a day/night cycle of a consistent twenty-four hours, which was more than could be said for the length of day and night on the surface.


The guild headquarters and most of the businesses lay near the bottom of the settlement. Farther to walk if you didn't live down here, but easier access to the tunnels and caverns further below. Which left those dwarves who hadn't fled with their kingdom on the levels above, where I currently walked.


A few watched me from the fronts of their houses. I could feel the weight of more eyes looking at me from within those houses. I did my best to ignore it, simply waving a hand in greeting. No one bothered to return it.


They may have chosen to stay behind, but those who hadn't fled deeper into the earth did not like surface dwellers among them. Tolerated at best, and only with the strict understanding Imperials would come down on anything remotely resembling a rebellion.


Going past the still-dwarf inhabited parts of the settlement, there were a lot fewer people in the houses and a lot more walking the street. Not too many, though, and only a dozen along my path toward the bottom.


Most adventurers would have left on their delves by now. Those remaining would either be taking the day off, new signees, or groups who'd finished early. Which meant my path to Halmon's shop was mostly free of interruption.


I ignored a pair of adventurers making the sign of Halspus at me. An irritating itch sprouted behind one of my eyes as one of them tried to follow me, shrieking something about succubi coming from the depths to tempt the honest, good people of the world.


Trying to correct him on me not being a demon wouldn't help, and the only person coming close to falling for temptation down here would likely be him. I just hoped the little prick of divine magic that had hit me didn't irritate the imp.


A wall near me shifted, turning liquid. I kept a wary eye on it, but after a few moments, it stilled.


Nothing, I told myself. There were other practitioners of magic down here, all far more active than me. The spirit was likely attracted by them, not me. Best to keep my mind focused on the task at hand.


According to the directions he left, Kalsyp's lab would be near the bottom, but I had enough time to check in with someone else first.


Halmon's Ingredient store was unmarked, looking like another residential dwarf home taken over by someone from the surface. The granite walls only had a single door that remained firmly shut, and only the lamplight under the door hinted that this place was lived in.


Halmon was a big believer in the idea that if you wanted his services, you'd find them yourself. This was not the best business model, and it was probably why he remained relatively minor despite being an excellent supplier of alchemical ingredients. However, given how some of those ingredients were sourced, I could understand not wanting to advertise too publicly.


I knocked thrice on the door, then waited. After a few seconds, a voice barked from within in a short clipped tone.


"We are closed. Come tomorrow."


"Mr. Halmon," I said, pitching my voice high enough to be heard through the rock door hopefully. "I appreciate this being relatively close to closing time, but this is about an ingredient I acquired in part thanks to you. Just some questions, shouldn't be too long."


There was a pause, then a sound very similar to the hiss of steam leaving a teapot. "Falara," the voice hissed, followed by several words in gnomish that I could only guess the meaning of.


The door opened, a young woman behind it, a slightly apologetic look on her face.


"Mr. Halmon will be out shortly. He said he needed to go…" her voice faded as she searched for a diplomatic substitution to what I was sure had been a string of profanity-laden instructions for myself: "Freshen up? You're welcome inside, though."


Nodding my thanks, I entered Halmon's shop. It was a converted front hall and dining room, racks of herbs, preserved animal parts, crystals, and other alchemical ingredients crammed into every space wide enough to hold a shelf. The kitchen had been converted into a counter, and I'd never ventured to the second floor or any other part of the residence turned store. Wooden doors separated those parts from the parts of the store available to the public, clearly installed by Halmon himself. Dwarves always used stone when and where they could.


One of those swung open, and an elderly balding gnome in a suit stepped through carrying an empty basket, his expression carefully neutral.


"Mr. Halmon!" I waved over to the gnome. "Already packing up for the day?"


His neutral expression turned into a thin grin. "Yep. And you know the rules. You are not in the store on time, you do not get access to my stock until tomorrow."


"As loathe as I am to miss the opportunity, there are problems of a different nature I need to discuss with you. The ingredient I mentioned. Preferably in a more private setting?"


Not too loathe to miss it. My lab was likely being destroyed as we spoke. Best not to dwell on that too hard. Increasingly, one option was becoming the most likely one to deal with this problem.


Halmon grunted, then turned to his assistant. "Harie, finish packing, then get ready. I'm not missing out on tonight's expedition. You, follow me back."


I gave Harie a polite smile before following Halmon toward the back through a beaded curtain. Politeness was key, even with the impolite. Especially when said impolite could and would threaten those who were impolite back with explosives.


The tale of Terry the thrice-exploded was very popular in the guild tavern.


The back of the store was a storeroom, shelves filled with various packages and boxes, a few herbs poking out on occasion. Elemental lilies, Dragon Toadstool, Mortaietia, a full stock. I felt a pang of jealousy looking over it all. This overshadowed the collection I had in my lab. Correction: used to keep it in my lab. If anything was left intact, I would be quite shocked.


"Get that look off your face," Halmon snapped. "If I find one thing missing from back here, I'm coming to the surface and pouring holy water down your throat."


"Why Mr. Halmon, I have no idea what you mean," I said, hand up placatingly. "Have I not been an honest and well-paying customer?"


"Yes," he snapped. "Which makes it even more likely you are part of a bigger scheme. Tell me which ingredient you had trouble with, and then get out of my store."


I suppose this is what I got for associating with the least reputable ingredient supplier down here.


"The ingredient in question isn't defective, I just have questions about where you got it from. Or more accurately, how you heard about it, since I handled the harvesting process. The wyvern whose location you suggested to me has brought me back here," I said. "It seems that-"


"I don't know anything about that," Halmon scowled, folding his arms across his chest.


I sighed. "Yes, I'm aware of your policy regarding admitting when you've given someone information, and I am willing to pay for you to ignore that policy."


"Ain't nothing to pay for. I got a hot tip, I sold you the hot tip, and the person who gave me that tip ain't popped in since then," Halmon waved his hand dismissively. "So we have nothing to talk about or trade coin about. You can leave."


"I disagree," I said, putting a single pound down on the table. "You saw the person who gave the tip. That's information I could use, Mr. Halmon."


He grunted. "Put the coin away. You've been a good customer. Probably trying to rob me, but good for now. But I don't have much. And my name does not come up. In any circumstances."


I pocketed the coin. "Anything is a help. It's a start, at least. And your name will not come up at all."


"Really should grab someone capable of making binding oaths down here," he muttered. "But that would mean bringing a third person in. Fine. Red hair, green eyes, taller than me."


I frowned. That wasn't a lot to go on, although it did sound Keltish. Probably not the best idea to assume. "How tall, approximately?"


"Taller than me," the gnome replied. "Anything beyond that is your concern, not mine."


"Well Mr. Halmon, I am most grateful I did not spend a coin on this after all," I said.


He grunted. "Out, please."


"Certainly."


I didn't pay too much mind to the door slamming shut behind me as I continued on my way down. Well, that was one line of inquiry pretty much sunk. With everything that had happened, the sudden death of a wyvern and the very poor guarding of her corpse had stuck out in my mind as rather suspicious. Just in time for a series of poisonings requiring materials from her brain to cure? Didn't taste right. Someone was trying to play me. The only question was, who?


One name lept to the forefront. Versalicci would tug me around just for the kicks, but especially if he thought the pressure could be leveraged to make me rejoin the Black Flame. I frowned at the thought. The main issue with that was nothing connected Versalicci to the poisoning business. And if he knew who I was there were easier ways to apply pressure.


I stopped a few levels down, leaning on the short wall keeping people from toppling off the ramp. I still had about ten to go before I reached the bottom.


This was infuriating. I had the names of people who I knew would love to try something like this, but there was no evidence they were involved, and other people I'd never encountered before went out of their way to mess with me.


"Miss Falara?"


My hand was on my saber's hilt before my mind processed whose voice it was. Behind me, Halmon's assistant had backed up against the wall, frightened.


I let go of my saber. "My apologies Miss Harie, I've had a difficult day. May I help you?"


She eased up, the tension fading out of her. "No, but I can help you. I overheard your conversation with Mr. Halmon, and while I can't promise miracles, I think my memory of the customer you asked about is a little more concrete."


"I can't help but notice you decided to come out here instead of bringing this up inside Mr. Halmon's shop?" That raised the worrying possibility that the gnome was in on this.


Harrie winced, looking over her shoulder. "I…want to request something in turn. Something Mr. Halmon wouldn't approve of."


I raised an eyebrow. "You have my attention. What do you want?"


"A referral," she said, doing her best to meet my gaze. She seemed to be resisting an urge to look back over her shoulder as she talked. "I've always wanted to join the guild, and my apprenticeship with Mr. Halmon was to be a stepping stone to joining the guild itself. However-"


"You're worried that by the time the apprenticeship is finished, the guild will have left." I finished for her.


She nodded. "No one can give me a definite time, but the monsters coming from beneath cannot be endless. I want to feel the taste of adventure at least once in my lifetime. And the guildmaster talks to you fairly often."


"Mostly because he wants to recruit me, and I've kept the possibility open but never decided one way or the other," I said. "I have his ear a little, but not by much."


"A little is more than nothing," she replied.


I looked over Harie with a more critical eye than I had all the times I'd encountered her in Halmon's store. She was young, not as young as I'd been when I'd been conscripted into what some might term a very morbid kind of adventure. What kind of excitement was sweeping her up into the mood to head on one? Definitely one different than mine had been, and not one I really should pry into.


"The information on the customer who supplied the tip first, please," I said.


She nodded. "It was weird, he couldn't have looked more Keltish, but his accent was Varavian. Not heavily, but just enough there for me to pick up on."


"You have a lot of experience picking up on accents?" I asked.


"No, but I once helped some immigrants from there adjust to the city," she explained. "Even the ones who got our language the quickest had these traces of their old accent. They sounded very similar to him."


"Cosmetic mods, more than likely," I said to myself. "I suppose if you want to keep your identity secret, an entirely different ethnicity is a good idea. Not being able to disguise your accent makes it a little less worthwhile, though."


"I don't know who else would have picked up on it," Harie said, joining me at the little stone wall. "It wasn't the weirdest thing about him, though."


I raised an eyebrow. "It wasn't?"


"Nope. The customer was dressed like he'd just come from a fancy dress party. Top hat, fancy coat, I think he even had metal woven into them."


"Metal thread?" I grinned. Finally, something was fitting together. "If I were to bring you some clothes, do you think you'd tell if they were the same ones our mysterious Varavian masquerading as a Keltish we're wearing?"


Harie frowned, thinking. "I could tell if they looked like the ones he was wearing, but if they were the exact ones? No."


"Close enough," I said excitedly. "I'll see when I can bring them down. You've been a great help Miss Harie. I can find you down here once I have the clothes ready?"


Those I'd left with Tolman, who'd keep them himself for now. Leaving them at my apartment seemed unwise.


"At Mr. Halmon's shop, and if not there then down at the guild hall. The Guild master lets me sleep there and earn some extra coins doing mundane tasks. And he wants to hear what Mr. Halmon has been up to."


I nodded. "I'll check either of those first. My thanks, Miss Harie."


"You're welcome. And the Guildmaster?"


"I'll suggest it. I can't do much more than that."


Truth be told, I didn't know what Almaseck would say. He'd been trying to recruit me for a few years now, but an apprentice alchemist might be too low a level of experience for him.


Harie nodded, then started to walk back towards Halmon's shop, and I continued my way down. The Delver's guild was close enough to make out people walking between the buildings down below.


The guild hall occupied the old town hall of the dwarves. Three stories tall, it still bore the scars of battle. Hasty repair work had been done for the chunks in the roof and wall that were missing, but only the texture of the stone gave away what parts had been redone by mages.


As large as the building was, the entire guild didn't fit in it. The guild sprawled across all of the lowest levels, spreading like a fungus across abandoned buildings repurposed from their original use. Oh, some still served their original purpose; the military barracks now housed adventurers.


Easily a hundred of them lived there now, although I only knew about a dozen close. Most relationships down here I kept strictly mercenary.


I waved to a few adventurers as I passed, people I'd worked with freelancing for the guild. They'd get word to Almaseck I was here sooner or later. I'd be invited for another recruitment attempt disguised as a conversation.


Hopefully, I'd have finished my business down here and be done by then. Not that I didn't enjoy my discussions with the Guildmaster, but I had few enough hours in the day as is.


I was one level away from Kalasyp's lab when my step faltered. A grey orc in a suit had rounded the corner, the insignia of the guild on the upper right chest of his suit jacket.


Helvek, Almaseck's right-hand man. I wasn't dodging the meeting with the Guildmaster.

 

[saithor]

I didn't try running. Helvek had spotted me already and made swift progress to where I stood. All running would do is delay this and antagonize him and Almaseck. Not something I could afford to do, nor want to do. No matter how much this delayed me, I was on decent terms with both of them.


As Helvek neared I could make out more details. He still had his tusks polished, and the guild sigil tattooed right underneath his left eye. It seemed a little silly, but I used to polish my horns. I really couldn't judge.


I waved a hand in greeting. "Helvek, good to see you! I'm sorry, but I'm not here on guild business. Mr. Kalasyp, a fellow alchemist, hired me to check on his-"


His steady baritone cut me off. "Mr. Kalasyp already sent word that you'd be entering his lab. That's not what this is about, Miss Falara. Mr. Almaseck would like to see you."


"It seems many people want to see me as of late," I said. "How truly urgent is this?"


"Very urgent," Helvek said. "He said he'd appreciate you treating it like a serious matter. No delaying this for days like you usually do because you'd rather do something else."


"I treat everything seriously. It's just some things by nature are more important to me than others. We all have our priorities."


Helvek remained quiet. The orc, as far as I knew, didn't have any strong opinions outside of the ones the Guild paid him to have.


I sighed. "I'm not getting out of talking with him before I can leave, right?"


"You are correct."


***


Helvek had escorted me right to the guildmaster's office. It was busier than usual, a dozen adventurers gathered. All of them must be here for one reason or another involving Almaseck, and I'd offered an apologetic grin as I'd been marched past the entire queue.


I really did not want to get on the bad side of a group that included Loony Marvin, the Chainer of Kelackel, Vraspus Chilltooth (a fake name to be sure but actually skilled at his craft), two paladins of very different deities, and Harask Many-cloaks, who was rumored to be varying members of a massive ratfolk tribe who took turns wearing an enchanted cloak.


They hadn't seemed too upset. Maybe not here for the guild master, then.


Helvek was behind me, guarding the door. It was an arrangement I was used to, as well as this office. A desk of black wood, some rare material from deep in the earth, was the centerpiece. A high-backed chair on one side, several others on the other. Lining the walls were display cases and trophies, treasures found, and heads severed respectively by the guild master. I'd heard stories about many of them several times during the frequent recruitment speeches. Almaseck had once claimed I was making their spirits sad by refusing so many times in a row.


Adventuring had started as a way to get ingredients that threatened to devour the rest of my life. Not in a serious way, but it was hard to ignore how all the usual groups I worked with were regularly dropping hints about how great it would be to do this full-time. Or how each manager was sure to mention how they were recruiting for full-time positions. How there always seemed to be a Guildmaster ready to talk to me about the possibilities of joining the Guild.


The city had ten guild masters. I'd met and talked with every one of them four times apiece at a minimum over the last year. All of them had their peculiarities, but none of them I'd call odious. They wanted people with talent, so it was a little flattering.


"Ah, admiring the griffon head?"


I turned around to see Aaron Almaseck.


The guild master was a short man, shorter than even my current form, and you'd think him fat at first glance, round and practically poured into a suit. I'd learned by my third meeting that what most would think of as fat was nothing of the sort after he'd punched out a rowdy orc recruit who'd gotten a little too full of himself. Dark hair in braids obscured brown eyes that were usually lively.


When they weren't, it was a good sign to watch out.


"There's a good story attached to how I cleaved that head off of its owner," he said, heading for his chair.


I smiled genuinely. "Yes, I believe I've heard it four times already."


"Well, I do like to repeat a good yarn."


"This year, I should clarify."


He laughed, settling down in the chair.


"Apologies about keeping you so long, I had a few things to deal with that popped up right now. It couldn't be avoided. One of my groups went missing somewhere down deep and to the south, hunting reports of something creeping out of tunnels and going after livestock outside the city. They've got the surface tunnels closed, but you know how it is, new ones always open. Wish I knew why."


"Dwarves, likely trying to get some revenge," I said.


"You might be right. But the official policy of Her Majesty, which means an official policy of the Guild, is all the dwarves who aren't citizens of the empire are gone. Anyway, there's a bounty for whatever is down there. They vanish for a week, I think nothing of it. Groups are gone for longer, even if it's a small area compared to most guild responsibilities. Once it hits three, I get worried and send another group down. They returned with a pair of arms they found. Turned to stone."


I paused. That was…disconcerting, if only because of what might be in the underground. "A basilisk?"


"It certainly wasn't a sewer gator, and while it might be dwarves, I don't want to contemplate them taming a basilisk," Almaseck replied. "City officials are already being made aware, although it's deep enough down that they'll leave it to us for now. Question: How quickly could you whip up a cure for petrification?"


I frowned. "The guild has alchemists, you can't tell me you haven't asked them yet."


He nodded in response, pulling a piece of paper out. "I have. And most of them don't have the materials. What I am asking is, as a personal favor, do you have any materials from your very reputable stores that can help make these."


I drummed my fingers nervously. "Not on me. And for in my lab….well, I don't expect to find it intact when I next return."


He raised an eyebrow. "Something likely to follow you down here? Problems with the law?"


"Probably not, and maybe," I answered. "I didn't start the issue with the law; honestly, they are pretty low on the list of people after me."


Almaseck grunted. "You could stay down here, depending on other factors. While you were working, the groups you were attached to had some of the highest clearance rates on the boards. I need that. Young alchemists are a rarity in the underground."


I smiled politely. "Most young alchemists probably think you can make money much more safely simply brewing on the surface above. No offense to the guild."


"None taken," he responded, marking something in his book. I resisted the urge to try and take a peek. "I can't say I don't understand. The basilisk does make me wish the timing could work out more."


I drummed my fingers on the table. "The brewing isn't the problem, it's getting access to the ingredients itself, which is fluid from the creature's eyeballs. If whoever takes it down is careful not to damage anyone who is petrified, it's a simple matter from there."


"Unfortunately, the damn thing will insist on not making it a simple matter," Almaseck growled, expression tempestuous. "I've had the displeasure of fighting one. You'd think the gods would have figured petrifying people with a look was enough and not make it hard to injure and damn strong."


I nodded. I'd never seen one in person, but I had seen a skeleton at the Imperial Museum of Dungeonology. It figured a lizard the size of a horse could have some serious punch behind it. Maybe not enough to shatter stone on its own, but you couldn't judge something or someone's strength by how they looked.


"I do have some small way I can help," I offered. "There is one young alchemist who seems to consider the thrill of adventure greater than the safety of a lab."


Almaseck grunted and considered me for a few seconds. Realizing he wouldn't directly ask me, I continued.


"Miss Harie, Mr. Halmon's apprentice, asked me if I could get her into the guild or at least talk to you about the possibility."


Almaseck groaned in response, closing his eyes for several seconds before they snapped back open.


"I can't imagine you are under any illusions this is the first time she's asked about this, on her own or through intermediaries," he told me.


"I figured as much," I said. "I'm guessing Mr. Halmon is the issue?"


"Addrias Halmon is one of the most paranoid and vindictive people I know," Almaseck said. "Honestly, your insistence on being so polite all the time is probably the only reason he hasn't shot at you yet. Not because he likes you, but because I hope he's on his last legs with the Guild and needs a believable reason."


My grin became much less genuine as I processed that. "Hope? I thought the guild had to approve and manage all the suppliers down here. Do you not manage that?"


"I manage that for close to all of them," Almaseck said in a disgruntled tone. "I can't say who Halmon has in his pockets, but they are further up the food chain than myself. So I'm not exactly enthused about taking on one of his current apprentices and risk drawing his ire. So for right now, the answer to the young lady is no."


"She'll be disappointed, but I suppose we all learn the taste of that sooner or later," I replied.


Well, I'd have to remember all of this for later. I'd never have guessed the sketchy gnome was that well-connected or had that much influence, but I supposed that's why he acted the way he did. Distract your mark from your intentions.


"I do have an issue I could use some answers on. Related to my own troubles. It's a little bit of a stretch, but are you acquainted with the gang known as the Purebloods?"


Almaseck's eyes narrowed. "I am. I dealt with them a few times, and none of them were pleasant. You've met them?"


"Unfortunately, yes. They attacked me because I was trying to aid…well, a member of the Black Flame."


Almaseck grunted noncommittally. "That's none of my business. I can tell you that most of my dealings with those are usually gang members trying to get some cash on the side or working a job through the guild. Not this lot, though. Came right down, informed me if I wanted to operate, I'd need to stop hiring non-humans."


"That seems like a bit of an overreach," I said. "They leaned on the entire guild or just you?"


"Me and every human guild master. And you're right on the overreach part. I settled for letting Helvek work the one that came here over since the asshole decided to insult Helvek to his face. Travult settled for letting them go with a firm no. Carsacci apparently let her people know it was open season till they got out of the underground."


Almaseck turned to the window overlooking the street, snorting derisively. "Fucking three-fourths of the guild is non-human, and it's hardly a secret. They were insane to even make the attempt."


"They might not be that insane," I said. "The number of guild members who aren't human might be the point. You are one of the riskiest but fastest ways to become someone in the empire without race being a major factor."


"They did hint they had ties to some of the bigger pro-human movements. Wouldn't shock me if they had some kind of connection, although no one would stand up for them publicly. You said you tangled with them because of the Black Flame?"


"They were trying to rip a box off of him," I confirmed.


"Probably just gang business. I did a little looking on the side myself, when they aren't intimidating non-humans or checking each other for red hairs, they're like any other gang."


I chuckled at the idea of them going through each other's hair looking for strands. "Seeing if they have any Keltish blood? Do they check their skin color as well, make sure it's within the acceptable range?"


"Maybe. Probably. You really that interested?"


I shook my head. "Not really. Just amused. They already set themselves quite the task of going after every non-human in the empire, then they want to add other humans to the mix as well? You think they'd pick their battles."


"The smart ones aren't on the streets selling wiz and khaliff to people in dark alleys when they espouse their ideas."


He had a point. "I don't suppose you have any concrete information? Known members, locations, anything like that?"


Almaseck considered me for a moment before speaking. "Some. Not much. I'll have Helvek collect it before you leave. We do have one other matter to discuss."


I nodded. "Helvek said this was urgent. And the Basilisk most alchemists could help you with. Why did you need to speak to me, Guildmaster?"


"Yesterday I was visited both by the City Watch and Mr. Voltar, the greatest detective of the empire. Separate times, same subject. Files on a freelance alchemist often employed out of my guild." Helvasek considered me, steepling his fingers. "Why are they so interested in you, Falara?"


I didn't move my head but I suddenly was much more aware of Helvek's silent presence a foot behind me.


Mouth dry, I answered. "Well, I mentioned the Black Flame, Mr. Almaseck, they likely-"


"If they were just trying to find out information on that they wouldn't have been trying to find out what adventuring parties you've been a part of over the last two years. Unless you can think of how that's relevant to your encounter with the Black Flame and Purebloods?"


"I honestly can't," I said. Best not to say anything too rash in here. My blood might as well be ice. This could not be a simple coincidence at this point, but how did that damn Voltar know?


"Perhaps if they want to build a case of some kind against me, they're looking into some of the connections I've cultivated-"


"Halmon," Alamsek cut me off dourly. "Why does every alchemist end up dealing with that graverobber, Falara? It's bad enough he's already come up once in my life today. I prefer keeping that as the maximum."


"He is very good at what he does," I admitted. "Honestly, I'd say at least in terms of finding corpses to secure ingredients from, I suspect Necromancy. Or something related to death, he seems to know when everything dies down here. And since he clearly has connections high in the guild."


Almaseck snorted. "I see your point. Well, they'll probably have visited him as well."


"Most assuredly so," I agreed. And if they had, Halmon hadn't hinted it to me during our conversation. It's not like the gnome owed me anything, but hiding it was a slap in the face.


"Why are they so interested, Katheryn?" He asked.


The bluntness of it was like an old fish to the face in effect. Had he ever called me by my assumed first name before? I couldn't remember. No one called me Katheryn. I made sure of it on purpose.


"It's a personal matter," I answered briskly. "I appreciate the concern, but it doesn't concern the guild, so-"


"The guild is already involved," he said in a voice filled with steel. Not loud, but each word felt like a hammer to my head. "Every guildmaster in the city has been approached by people about your activities in their section of the city. Not all by the Watch and Voltar. What did you do?"


"I couldn't say-"


"Couldn't or won't?"


My mouth snapped shut. Did he have a truthteller hidden here somewhere? I hadn't eaten or drank anything down here, but a mage of the right talents could cast a spell. With what I'd done to myself, I wouldn't be able to tell until it was reversed.


At least now I knew what other factors governed my staying here.


Almaseck considered me some more, leaning forward in his chair. My hands tensed. His eyes were cold. It felt like staring down a predator.


"You are a free contractor. Independent from the Guild. There's very little I can do to pressure you into telling me why they are so interested, Katheryn. With some of the hints Voltar dropped, I don't think pressuring you would do either of us favors."


"More than you could possibly guess," I said. "You wouldn't like what would come out."


It was supposed to be a jest, but before it left my lips, I'd twisted it into something darker without meaning to.


Behind me, I could feel Helvek tense, but Almaseck didn't so much as twitch.


"I take it that wasn't a threat?" He asked me quietly. The implication of what would happen if I said yes was plain. A dozen guild members, well-respected and experienced, just happened not to be doing anything today right outside his office.


How much had Voltar told him?


I shook my head. I didn't trust myself to speak. The silence stretched until some words made their way out. "I didn't intend to make one. I don't want us to be enemies, Mr. Almaseck."


"It's interesting you think we'd be enemies, Katheryn," he said, getting up from his desk. "Until this matter is resolved, and until I'm given some concrete information about what makes the imperial government so interested in you, you are considered persona non grata to the guild and all areas it manages. You know the way out."

 

[saithor]

Kalasyp was going to be furious.

It's all that echoed in my mind as I walked the street. It shouldn't. On the list of things that had gone wrong, not fulfilling my word to Kalasyp was far, far down.

Could he blame me? It's not like I'd planned this morning to be banned from the guild and the underground settlements they controlled. I couldn't have even guessed the guildhall meeting would have happened.

Helvek had been very polite but very insistent about me immediately leaving. I'd been walked to the front gates and left outside while they ground shut. Joe Jebediah had also been very polite about me moving away from it before anyone needing to enter came along.

Walking along empty tunnels traveling out of the underground had been a blur. My mind had been in another place. Another gate. Another banishment. Another march by someone there, others watching. Another sending away, never to return.

There were differences. I respected Helvek, even liked him, but he was simply doing his job. There was no betrayal in that. Nothing near the same as when my mother and I had been cast out from the family home.

There were superficial similarities. Not enough to explain why I felt a dull ache too similar to a stab wound in my gut.

I'd never considered the guild a home, and I had barely considered it an option. It was a means to an end, a place to mingle, get ingredients, and enjoy conversation. To occasionally feel flattered by the recruitment attempts. I'd never valued it.

Never take anything for granted, Malvia. It's how they trick you. They make you content with scraps, thinking the gifts will last forever. Never believe anything given is there forever. There's always someone waiting to take it away. You need to always put in the work to prevent that from happening.

I shivered at the memory and picked up the pace, hoping that focusing on walking would banish that back where it came from.

Some of those remembered words were true. Not all of them, but enough of them held truth.

I did my best to remove the evidence of tears. Katheryn Falara did not value the guild. Neither did Malvia Harrow. I was not making another mask. This one was too close to fragmenting as it stood.

You might think the biggest struggle with masks is maintaining them all the time, all the mundane little details repeated repeatedly. What will be your greatest test will be when pressure is applied, because then the temptation to let the person behind the mask take over will rise.

I sighed, considering where I was. I'd reemerged from a side tunnel near the Hells' Own. It might be worth stopping there, just for something to take the edge off. I could hardly say I had demands on my time now. I could not supply Kalasyp's customers except for what alchemical supplies might be in my own stocks. Both those and my regular customers were dependent on those stocks not being destroyed, which would mean checking first my own lab and then my apartment.

It's probably best done sober. Sighing, I looked at the end of the street where the tavern stood, then headed in the opposite direction. Time to salvage the rest of my day.

***

I looked over the wreckage of my lab.

Someone had ripped both of the doors off at the hinges. Inside, smashed glass, burnt ingredients, smashed-apart piping, and shredded herbs all coated the floor. They hadn't even bothered stealing anything, instead destroying it all.

What had I done to earn this kind of enmity?

A stupid question when I thought about it a little more. If this was the work of the Pure Bloods, I'd help cut down members of their gang. If it were Versalicci, I'd escaped him. That would rank higher than stealing from his coffers on the way out. If I ever rejoined his ranks, he'd consider the stolen money a loan to be repaid, just as temporary as our parting.

Gods, I could recall the smug condescension of his voice perfectly, even after five years.

I'd gotten here a few minutes ago to an unusual sight. The owner of the building was here for the first time in four months. In two years, Richard Marlow hadn't changed. He was still wearing a tattered and worn suit with a roughly trimmed goatee. A couple of new scars, although they didn't look deep or long. He might have put them there himself. I'd seen people more intelligent than him do it in an attempt to look more intimidating. They were morons, usually. He'd also filed his horns to pointed ends and made them even more fragile with the amount of bone he'd removed.

He was busy going off on a tirade about the costs of repair and how much I would owe him. He'd not paused for breath since I met him at the front, climbed the stairs and finally arrived at my wrecked lab.

Next to him was a hired leg-breaker, looking about as fond of Marlow as I was, but she wouldn't fail to step in. She didn't bear any gang symbols, but she was a head taller than me, well-muscled, and also had a steel club in her hands that could probably crack right through my horns. I hadn't risked touching her to check, but probably Biosculpted in parts. The muscle had some signs of that not-quite-natural look from the less professional sculpting. It was not distributed naturally and was not balanced properly. She'd probably not gained it from actual exercise.

Also, she was not someone to provoke if I wanted to keep my brains inside my head.

"You'll be paying for this," Richard shrieked, kicking a half-broken beaker, sending more broken glass flying across the room. "This place is ruined, and the costs to repair it alone are more than the rent you've paid-"

"It is not," I said as calmly as I could manage. Not as calmly as I'd wanted. The hired muscle's hands went for her club. "Not at the rates you charge. Which, some of which I believe was supposed to be for security?"

He glared at me, mouth shut. It was true the contract said that, but he'd never provided any, of course. You were simply expected to provide it yourself in return for the landlord not prying into your business.

I'd done what I felt was sufficient. It clearly hadn't been. The sleep spell had been part of my defense, but most of my protection had been too little of notice to be worth bothering. Don't irritate anyone, stay away from the big power players, pay for mother's hospital, and work towards maybe eventually having enough money to move out of this quarter.

I also didn't want to melt anyone with the more deadly security measures I could have installed. That might have been too kind a choice in hindsight.

"Either you pay for the repairs, or you don't rent out of this place again!" Richard yelled, having found his voice again.

I looked at the remnants of my lab with as much clinical detachments as I could. Smashed glassware. Destroyed ingredients. Months of work and pay ruined overnight. I could replace some of this, but it would take time.

"Deal," I said.

I'd already turned and made it a few steps towards the exit when Richard found his voice again. "What?"

His hired muscle was already moving towards me. Sighing, I drew my flintlock, turning around and pointing it at her in a single fluid motion. They both halted.

I wasn't going to shoot either of them. Gods and devils, that would be even more trouble, but I wasn't going to browbeat by this cheap little shit either.

"Deal," I repeated. "Richard, I'll be frank because it's been an extremely tiring day. I have two criminal gangs after me, one of whom has smashed up my lab, both of whom probably know where I live. I am not renting this place again. You have a deposit for another three months, keep it. I didn't provoke this mess, and any imperial magistrate isn't going to care either way. You can try taking me to court, and we can quibble over the contract until your hair has gone grey, or we can leave it at that, and you can satisfy yourself on the money you've gouged out of me these past two years."

"Be careful with your tone," he warned me, scowl deepening. "I know people Falara. I can make your life very difficult if I want to."

"That's nice," I replied. "I know people too, but you should consider the fact that I am probably your least important customer by a fair margin, and everyone else who rents from you is probably wondering how much their property will get protected by you."

His eyes narrowed, but he gestured to his muscle who backed down. I lowered my pistol.

"Don't ever come here again," he threatened quietly.

"I don't plan on it," I replied, turning around and heading down the stairs.

I put my pistol away, sighing. Katheryn Falara didn't pull pistols on people when words would suffice. Or at least she shouldn't. I could do better than this.

Neither Richard nor his legbreaker had followed me. Good. I'd burned a bridge there but not sufficiently that either would come after me. Not now, anyway. I wouldn't put it past Richard to send some hired thugs to my apartment.

I would be burning bridges many more times in the coming weeks. All of this was far too much. Voltar, the Watch, the well-dressed stranger, two noble houses, the Guild, the Pure-bloods, and finally, the Black Flame all swirling about, catching me like a piece of flotsam in their wake. I could only begin to guess at the game being played. Things had been planned around me, meant to occur and catch me in the center of this scheme. The fact that the well-dressed stranger had left the original tip and then later broke into my lab only confirmed it.

Well, perhaps not the center, but I was being manipulated.

Thinking about it, that was the most dangerous thread of them all. I'd gotten the tip from Halmon before the poisonings had even started. The well-dressed stranger would be connected to them, then. But what did they gain out of it? Why try to seize the cures after I'd distributed two? Was he connected to Montague in some way?

I snorted, dismissing that entire train of thought. I didn't even know for sure if Halmon's source for the wyvern's corpse was the same as the person who'd broken into my lab. Besides, I shouldn't be wasting time thinking about it. The proper solution to this was to escape.

I'd need to talk to Tolman and Arsene. The latter wasn't likely to be very cooperative and would probably blame me for the situation. He might not even be wrong for doing so. However, it was perhaps time for the three of us to disappear once again. I'd need to finish things up with Montague first, which would hopefully provide the liquid funds to do it. Maybe get out of the city entirely. Infernals got treated worse in other parts of the empire, but fewer people knew us out there.

***

Walking towards my apartment, I found the traffic slowing. It was not a shock, heading towards the afternoon, especially considering how many were on foot, but things were slowing to a halt. Not only that, but people heading in the other direction looked agitated, muttering darkly amongst themselves. I caught snippets of conversation in between discussions about getting weapons. A march of some kind?

I heard it long before I could see it, a chant that only grew in intensity and volume the closer I got, echoing through the quarter.

"Hell's Get belong in Hell! Hell's Get belong in Hell!"

Frowning, I moved through the crowd, eventually finding a low enough building with a waterpipe attached. Being out of practice, it took me nearly half a minute to climb onto the rooftop. My muscles ached when I made it, as well. Out of practice, and in this body, definitely out of shape.

Near twenty other Infernals were up there, most bearing gang signs. I chose a spot not close to any of them along the roof's edge. No one bothered asking me what I was doing up here. Hell, members of rival gangs were within feet of each other and did not raise a fuss. The same member of the Black Flame who had tried to fetch me for Versalicci earlier was only a few feet away, but after a forced nod of acknowledgment turned her attention to the street.

We were all occupied with something much bigger.

Humans marched across Salenbury Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares of the Infernal Quarter. Most waved placards, and all chanted. A seething mass of humanity, and specifically humanity. Occasionally, I spotted a halfling, gnome, or elf, but only maybe one out of every twenty. Those who didn't chant were yelling at Infernals, their screaming forming into an indecipherable mess of yelling, over which the central chanting still rose.

The Watch was here, trying to set a cordon along the street, but they were failing. Groups of Watch moved up and down the street, trying to intercept any potential problem spots as they happened.

My lips quirked as I spotted a dwarf officer down below. I'd only spotted her briefly; she wore a different haircut than before, and she had less metal in her face, but it was my neighbor from my brief stay in the Coffin.

Infernals had gathered along the sides of the street, wary eyes on the marchers. No weapons were displayed openly at the moment, even as more gathered on the sides of the streets. Hopefully, no weapons would be displayed, with the more reckless members being kept in check by those with some sense.

I hoped no one down there had illusions about what would occur if Infernals openly brawled with whoever these marchers were. A second Understreet, except not just limited to the underground.

That understanding would only put a limit till this blew up of course. My sympathies were on the Watch with this one, as strange as that was. I'd lived through one Understreet, and that had bled anger from me. Even if this group was routed, it would be their victory at the end of the day.

Of course, there was a difference between knowing that and accepting it. My teeth ground as I watched the marchers continue, some of them carrying torches and others bricks. More worrying were the weapons: swords and pikes, old favorites of the rebels that had broken the back of Her Profane Majesty. No guns, at least none visibly carried. Were they testing to see how much the Watch would allow?

A voice boomed somewhere further down the street, amplified by magic. Male and full of the fire and conviction only zealotry could bring.

"See how these things live in a den of their own filth and depravity! They are turning our city into their own home, that place of sin and vice revered by all their kind! We must reclaim it before they finish what their foul forefathers began and sink our city into the depths of hell!"

Whistles blew from the opposite direction. Boots slapped the pavement as the Watch swarmed where a knot of the marchers and Infernals fought. The Watch separated both sides, Infernals being slapped in irons quickly. Not so with the Marchers, who quickly disappeared into the mass of humanity; others surged forward to form a wall against the Watch. A few of the officers tried, getting into a yelling match with individual members to no avail.

Not a good move on the part of the marchers. Watch sympathies might be with them, but defiance of their authority might tip the scales.

The zealot leading this talked over all of it, and the restlessness of everyone only rose as he continued.

"They have plotted this before, and they will plot it again! The officials of this city hide much from you, of how far their tendrils reached into it! They will stretch again, given the chance, which is why we must be vigilant, brothers and sisters!"

I froze, turning to look at where the voice echoed from. Halspus Cathedral? If you wanted to talk without worrying about interruption from an Infernal, atop those ruins worked. But that last bit was worrying. This might be something other than some zealot to know about the causes of Understreet.

Speeches like this kind weren't unusual. This wasn't even near the tenth worst thing I'd heard from some of my own relatives, let alone random people in the street. What was different was the scale. How many people were marching here? Hundreds, at least, maybe thousands.

Tensions were never good and had been bad before, but a march through the center of the Infernal Quarter was unprecedented, at least in my memory. And those hints about Understreet were very disturbing. Most everyone had some understanding of what had happened in Understreet, but the why had been well-hidden. Was this one in the know, or simply shooting in the dark? Frowning, I considered the marchers. Most of them looked like…well, average citizens. None of whom I'd guess to be of the same mold as the Pure Blood thugs I'd encountered. Still, that group's recent pushing on the Delver guilds couldn't be a coincidence.

This…didn't feel right. Tensions were never good, but there should have been rumblings of this long before it occurred. The fact the Watch, whose ears were usually so close to the ground, were so clearly unprepared for the scale pointed to something more than the usual animosity.

I shook my head, forcing those thoughts from my mind. Not my concern. Neither was this, at least not immediately. My apartment was on this side of Brimant Street, and I wasn't waiting for this to spark a riot. I headed for the pipe.

"Falara!" A voice called. I turned around, frowning at the Black Flame member who'd followed me to the pipe.

"I think I made my preferences clear earlier today," I said. "And for the record, I am not the Lady in Red, despite the resemblance. I will talk to Mr. Versalicci later, at a time of my choosing. Oh, and it is Miss Falara. We are not friends."

She raised her hands placatingly. "Mr. Versalicci said you'll find your way to him eventually, although his patience has its limits. He did want to pass a message along, though."

"That message being?" I asked.

"Your trip tomorrow, the one you have planned? Do not do it. It doesn't serve a purpose and if you cared about the person on the other side, you wouldn't do it."

"Ah," I said. "That was the entire message?"

"Yes," she replied warily. For some reason, her hands were near the saber belted to her waist. A few others on the rooftop were also giving me strange looks. I turned my stare on them even as pain sprouted behind my eyes.

"Can you take a message back to him in return?"

"Yes?" she said hesitantly. My eyes burned now, and I forced them to keep open even as something began to well in them.

"If he sticks his nose in that affair again, I will make sure he hurts for it, even if I have to use myself as the fuel to set him alight. And if that's too vague for him, he gave me the tools I'll use. I doubt the Watch will be pleased to see some of them being used and will have some very pointed questions about where I got them. Good day."

I was down the water pipe before she could formulate a reply. The pain in my eyes faded as something wet traveled from them to my cheeks. I pressed the fingers of my glove against them, pulled it back to find it streaked red. Damnations.

I took a few moments to clear all the traces of that away before continuing towards my apartment.

As I neared my apartment, I saw someone in a cloak begin to move toward me from one of the alleys. Sighing, I produced a knife from one of my sleeves and then rushed forward, one hand pushing them against the wall while the other pressed the knife's blade tightly against their throat.

I wasn't going to kill them, but a knife against the throat would go a long way to securing some cooperation-

"Wait, don't-" the bundle of rags yelled, and his face came into view.

"Varrow?" I asked, immediately letting go of him.

"You trying to scare me to death?" He hissed, pulling further back.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have done that." I quickly put the knife back. "You startled me, is all. Why are you lurking outside my building? Did the medicine not help?"

"What?" Confusion flashed for a brief second across his face. "No, not that. I came to warn you, that people broke into your apartment, humans. One of them's still up there, looking through it. Fancily dressed looking fellow, top hat."

Oh. Oh.

"Is he?" I said politely, the knife vanishing up my sleeve once again. "Well, I suppose I must say hello to my new guest. Tell me, was he here before this most recent circus came into town?"

Varrow looked at my sleeve curiously. Crap. He'd taught me that trick.

"Mr. Varrow," I said, tone insistent. "Was this human here before the group outside was?"

That snapped him out of it. "Can't say for sure. It looks like whoever broke into your apartment did it earlier, but no idea how much earlier. These marchers just got here, but-"

"They could have very easily started doing other things in the quarter earlier," I finished for him. "Well, I suppose it's best to go say hello."

And unless I got a damned good explanation, to force one out of him.

 

[saithor]

The stairs creaked beneath my feet, some of them shifting under my weight. The half-hearted thought of seeing these fixed rose up again. There was no real chance of them ever being fixed. I didn't have the time or money, the landlady could not care less about maintenance, and my fellow tenants didn't consider it something to fret over. The moment people's hooves or feet started going through boards, then we might collectively do something.

Some of my neighbors gathered in the hall, worriedly whispering to each other. One of them glanced back, spotting me. Spotting the weapons I held. They quickly scattered, giving me a clear path to my apartment.

My door had never been the most impressive barrier. A cheap-four paneled door, its main use was absorbing a few blows, enough for me to wake up and realize someone was attempting to break it down.

It was now lying crumpled against a wall, ripped from the hinges. Framed in the open doorway was the intruder.

A man in a top hat and morning coat stood among the wreckage, idly examining my teapot. Tall, with broad shoulders, clean-shaven, a fox-like face, and long brown hair.

He'd also looked up, spotting me stalking down the hallway with saber in hand. A disarming grin sprouted on his face.

"Well, while I can hardly claim this is the first time I've been caught in a lady's room, this is the first time it was the lady doing the catching-"

I lunged forward at the intruder.

One benefit of compressing myself. I hadn't gotten rid of the extra mass I used to have, just compressed it, so I hit a lot harder than most people expected. The trade-off was worth the occasional crack from Tolman about my weight.

I and the intruder both went down, grappling with each other. After a few seconds of scrambling, I had the edge of my saber under his chin, lightly pressed against his throat. Staring down at a grin that hadn't faded a bit.

That had been remarkably easy with how muscled this one was. Definitely not a grappler of any kind.

Both of us remained silent while I looked at the intruder's clothes. Metal threads refused to show up in his waistcoat or morning coat, and his shirt was a little puffy but not embroidered. Hardly evidence he wasn't the intruder from the lab, but maybe signs I shouldn't assume he was that person.

His grin hadn't faded at all. "Well, this is a rather compromising position. I'll have you know that I'm not that kind of man. I require at least one dinner first, at a restaurant of my choosing, with wine-"

I pushed on the saber, not enough to break his skin, but enough to make him stop talking.

"Enough chatter, stranger," I told him. "I'll apologize for my rudeness later if this is a misunderstanding. Your name and why you are in my apartment in the next thirty seconds, or we'll see how well you can seduce the ladies with some severed vocal cords."

The expression on his face barely changed. Enough to let me know something had shifted, but unless this one was very good at hiding his emotions, he was not afraid of me at all. Disturbing with a saber at his throat. Who was this? From the clothing, I was inclined to believe the intruder at my labs, but that was just an assumption.

"You're bleeding on me," he said, and there were drops of blood staining his jacket. "Could you please stop?"

I'd wiped as much blood as I could out of my eyes before coming here, but apparently, they'd started up again. I needed to find a way to quiet the damn Imp before it woke up even more. I wasn't going to convince anyone I was one of the people in the city holding a license to practice Diabolism. Bleeding from the eyes was hardly a sign of it, but it was a sign the Imp was stirring.

"Name first," I insisted. Let him wallow in the ruining of his clothes. He at least seemed to care about that, unlike the blade pressed against his throat.

He sighed, rolling his eyes dramatically. "I am Gregory Montague, fourth son of Lord Bartholemew Montague, who is the reason I'm here. If you want anything more, I do insist you let me up."

I frowned. That was plausible but hardly something I was going to believe in.

"Please," he added as an afterthought.

I gave the human a closer look. At first glance, he looked nothing like Lord Montague; however, the eyes….were absolutely nothing alike. The facial structure was a little similar, and if I squinted, the noses might have a passing familiarity.

"You are Gregory Montague? Nobility rooting through my apartment like a scavenger picking flesh off of a corpse? You expect me to believe that?"

His grin only seemed to grow. "What a delightful metaphor, and for your information, I've been informed I barely count as a noble. But if you want proof, I'm afraid that can only be found on my father's estate. I neglected to bring some with me."

"No signet ring?" I asked. "You really expect me to believe you just happened to forget one?"

"Those require the permission of the head of the family to wear in public," he explained while trying to get a hand toward the guard of my saber. A bit more pressure on his neck cut that off. "My father has currently decided to let me forgo mine as punishment for, well….that's not really any of your business."

"At the bare minimum, you entered my residence without permission and have probably been rummaging through my possessions. Right now, everything about you is my business. Why is there no signet ring?"

The stranger sighed. "I slept with the Lady Basare. And got caught. Right around the wedding of her and Lord Mosley. At the most inconvenient time, actually."

I was too curious not to ask. "Just before?"

"Two hours after they exchanged vows. As you can imagine, there was quite a scandal, and only my breaking of Lord Mosley's arm in a duel has prevented any more 'deserved consequences' as my father puts it."

Well, this answered much of why Lord Montague had considered setting me up with Gregory as the lesser of two evils.

"I suppose I can take your word on this for now," I said, getting off of him. "Truth be told, there's very little of your father in your face. Apologies if I was perhaps a bit overzealous in not believing you."

The cocky cheer in his voice was drained a bit now. "You aren't the first to notice," he said, the look in his eyes colder.

Ah. His lordship had tried to set me up with someone he either knew or suspected was a bastard. Maybe? I'd already made a false assumption so far in this conversation.

"It doesn't matter to me. What does matter is this my lord, what are you doing in my apartment? If you were not the one who broke down my door?"

Gregory Montague's expression sobered entirely. "My brother needs the cure. Now. I came to retrieve it, only to find you gone, the apartment ransacked, and your neighbors very unhelpful as to where your whereabouts might be. So I decided to simply wait and hope whoever came along would be more helpful."

A faint grin crept onto my face. I wasn't any great friend to any of my neighbors, but some things trumped how close you were. Strange humans coming into the quarter looking for an Infernal? Not a bit of help.

Unless they had money of course, but that was a different matter.

Gregory Montague considered me, his expression turned a little worried. "Just to make sure, you are Katheryn Falara?"

"I am she, alchemist extraordinaire and owner of…this," I said, gesturing to the ruin all around us. "Does your father remember what I told him about using the cure too early? It's not a pleasant thing to administer to one not ready for it. It would be very easy for it to kill him."

Gregory Montague frowned. "I don't trust my father on very many things, Miss Falara. I do trust him on my brother's health."

I sighed. It sounded like a house call was called for. Or at least sending the cure with him. "I'm assuming that's the sole reason you are here, then?"

"My father said that getting the cure is only part of why I'm here. For the rest, he said, 'She'll know why I sent you, and she's the only one who needs to know'. Which is a little concerning. I'm not about to go into your stew or something, am I?"

"Not to worry, my lord," I answered. "Far too little fat on your bones for my taste, and muscle tends to stick in my teeth."

He chuckled. "Then I'm at a bit of a loss then? Why specifically did my father send me? While I've found our encounter so far fascinating-"

"Fascinating?" I raised an eyebrow. "I put a sword to your throat."

"And that alone will make an excellent conversation piece for the next half year, at which point it'll probably have worn out its welcome," Gregory Montague replied. "But I have other things planned today, yet Father insisted I come to get the cure."

I cocked my head, eyeing his lordship. Warm green eyes stared back at me evenly, cheer in them as he settled against my shattered doorframe. He stood tall, about as tall as I had been as Malvia, which meant a full head taller than me right now. Despite the fox-like cast of his face, the high cheekbones, sharp eyebrows, there was nothing of a predator in his smile, just simple cheer which dragged my gaze back to his warm eyes.

One of those warm green eyes winked at me.

"While I'm very flattered," he said. "This might not be the best place?"

"Your father suggested I lower my price in return for offering me dates with you and possibly your hand in marriage. Although I imagine if he ever even considered it, he would need me to turn human first."

Gregory Montague shuddered, an expression of revulsion across that pricked at me.

"I'm as unenthused as you are," I said as drily as I could manage.

"Oh," he said, suddenly looking abashed. "My reaction wasn't because of that. I just don't like the idea of being tied down. Father has been trying to marry me off for years. He thinks he can force me to settle down, or at least find a noble family willing to take on the task of making me respectable. I doubt he was serious about the offer."

Every second sounded more and more like a reinforcement of my decision not to agree to date Gregory Montague. I moved across the room, heading towards my bedroom, and startled the young noble.

"Where are you going?"

I moved through the door to my bedroom, shutting it swiftly before the blue blood could follow me through it.

"Finding which of my drawers you and others have been through while I was out. Do grant me some measure of privacy, please."

"I would never do that," Montague said in a tone far too joking for my tastes. "I restrain that kind of activity for fellow nobility."

That remark got my one intact chair in the room hurriedly jammed underneath the doorknob in response.

The truth was what I wanted to check most was my hidden boxes under the floorboard, but I could hardly do that with him here. And I could hardly tell a nobleman and the son of a client to get the hell out of my apartment. Keeping him out of my bedroom was hopefully something even he wouldn't challenge.

Alternatively, I could drug him, drag him to his father's estate, and leave him with a strongly worded letter about trying to steal goods without payment. That had its own appeal. Potentially completely ruin my relationship with his father.

Idle fantasies of drugging the noble in my apartment to the gills aside, I turned my attention to my bedroom.

They'd ransacked all the doors, the contents tossed all around the room. Same with the furniture, all of which had been roughly handled, but no one had smashed it apart looking for hidden compartments.

Huzzah for small favors, although a fair bit of it had fallen apart just from being roughly searched. That or I'd trust it even less to carry my weight than I did before. The dangers of buying cheap and second-hand furniture. I tested the edge of the bed, torn and shredded where the thin mattress had been cut open. It creaked ominously, wood cracking as soon as I sat down. I got back up.

The mattress wasn't the only thing torn, of course. Someone had taken a blade to all of my clothes, scattered about the room. They'd been thorough too, shredding everything into strips of fabric tossed all over the room. I looked at a strip of leather that could have belonged to one of my boots or a jacket, turning it over in my hand. Some of those cream-colored strips were probably what was left of my favorite blouse.

Books lay shredded across the small shelf I'd purchased, pages torn out and ripped. It all mixed on the floor into a mess. I picked up one book from the ground, half of it sloughing off in my hand as pages fluttered to the ground. Tolman and Arsene had gotten this one for me when we'd made new lives. Back when me and Arsene could still be in the same room and have a civil conversation.

This was all stuff. Not even stuff from before my life as Falara. I could replace it, with time. If anything, this was a reminder of how stupid I'd been. I'd gotten comfortable, forgotten what it meant to be on the streets where a bad day meant huddling underneath discarded newspapers and hoping no one else tried to claim your section of the alley.

The door handle rattled, and from beyond the door I could hear Montague ask, "Sorry, but you've gone silent. Is everything alright in there?"

I swallowed an urge to tell him to fuck off. Not something Falara could do. Not something I could afford to do to a nobleman, even a disgraced one.

I forced myself back to the present. Gregory Montague needed to be handled. I could hardly open the boxes while he was in here.

I pulled the chair away from the door only for the frame to fall apart in my hands, legs falling out of it. I stared blankly down at them before just dropping the rest and heading back into the other room.

Gregory Montague was leaning against a wall, clearly not trusting anything here to support his weight. He looked up, and to my irritation, I found sympathy in his face.

Don't offer me sympathy, you silver-spoon-fed dandy. You think I'm hurting because my things got broke?

"I suppose it's useless to ask, but did anything survive whoever ransacked your place?"

Breathe in, breathe out. If this was some seductive technique pushed by either him or his father, I'd poison them later.

"Most everything is a loss," I said. "Some things might be salvageable, but just barely. Could you do me a favor?"

Eyes wary, Montague nodded. I resisted the urge to sigh. Every time you asked for a favor or anything in an ambiguous manner. Sometimes with other Infernals even! I was hardly about to rip out his soul!

"Please, just move my door back into my doorway and give me some privacy for a few minutes while I try to gather my thoughts. And then I'll have your brother's cure ready for you."

Montague frowned. "While I appreciate things are difficult for you, I can't exactly let you out of my sight. My brother's condition is at a point where I am not risking you-"

"My lord, someone has ransacked my apartment, then someone also destroyed my lab earlier, and those are only two of many things that have happened these last few days," I said firmly. "I want five, no ten minutes of privacy to myself, which is very inadequate, but at the end of those ten minutes, I'll fetch your brother's cure, and we can be off. If you are that worried about me flinging myself out the window, there are enough people here desperate for coin that you can pay to stand outside and make sure I don't escape. Or we can sit here. Neither of us budging. Because I'm hardly going to draw out a rare antidote where anyone peering down the hall might spot where I'm hiding it."

A second passed, and then two, and then Gregory Montague retreated out to the hall. The door took half a minute for him to wrench back into place, during which I contemplated my ruined little kitchen.

Someone had gone through the closet. All the smashed glass from numerous destroyed vials remained inside there, a minor relief. If it had been out on the ground, Gregory Montague and I would have torn each other up.

Plates and all my remaining cups had been smashed. Someone had taken a hammer to my windows, smashing the glass. Only the fact that it was midday kept this room warm.

Somehow the tea and coffee pots had survived. My lips quirked as I picked them up. The tools of temptation, some had called them when both tea and coffee had been new. Fitting that such tools were the only of my possessions to survive.

Enough time had passed. It was time to make a little noise to cover up opening up the floorboards.

Being able to shed tears on command was something you learned early on the streets. When you're a young little scamp, few things were as likely to get sympathy from the watch as much as shedding some tears. They became less effective as you grew older, but still had their uses.

I barely had to try for them.

It helped cover up the sounds of me moving the floorboard, even as tears obscured my sight. I rubbed them out of my eyes three times as I removed the floorboards.

Nothing lay underneath.

I stared down at the empty alcove, the only signs of the boxes being imprinted in the dust. A dreadful keening noise filled my ears, and after a second, I realized I was making it.

Deep breaths. Panicking wouldn't make this better, and neither would crying, although trying to focus on that didn't make the tears stop.

A lot of this was my fault. Storing them in the floorboards could hardly be called the most secure place. My defense had been my anonymity. I should have moved them to….well, I didn't have any place to move them that was more secure. I kept myself and my possessions safe by keeping my head down and not displaying anything beyond the abilities of a two-bit alchemist.

Only I'd fucked it up.

If only to stop thinking about how screwed I was, I tried to think on who could have done this. The interested parties were the two nobles, the Pure-Bloods, the Black Flame, the City Watch, and at the end Voltar and his eternal sidekick Dawes.

City Watch could have just searched my apartment and labs and I couldn't stop them. Did they get anything by doing that in disguise? Not really, nor did they get anything out of smashing up my lab and apartment. The Pure-Bloods I had even less knowledge on. They apparently were after me now for some reason, otherwise, they wouldn't have shown up at my lab, but the only thing they had their fingers in was the Black Flame's box.

Speaking of the Black Flame, this fit them all too well. Versalicci ordering this, taking away my tools to make me dependent on him again? That fits both his motivations and what I knew about him. The only question there would be, why wait till now? Where had Dawes been while Voltar was visiting? Lurking about, looking for a way inside once the two of them knew I'd left? Smashing things seemed not their style.

Too many involved parties with a motive.

Running away was out of the question. The biosculpting tools were the least problematic, merely having a cost equal to everything that had just been trashed in my lab. Outside of no longer being Katheryn Falara soon. That….I needed to focus on other things. That could wait. My diabolism focus and related materials? Directly connected to my soul, so having that in someone else's hands could pose problems. My personal possessions in the third box?

If those had been damaged, whoever had stolen them better hope I never found out.

I could still recover them. The box with my personal possessions had a tracker in them, one I could follow to wherever they'd been taken. Given time, I could find out who had stolen from me and give them a little of pain in return.

Someone knocked on my door, jolting me out of considering what possible affliction I'd inflict on whoever had ransacked my apartment.

"My apologies, my lord, please give me a few seconds more," I said, getting up from the loose floorboards. I started moving them back into position just as quietly as I'd removed them.

Why had someone tossed my room so violently, but my floorboard collection of possessions had been quietly lifted with no signs of disturbance? They'd even put the floorboard back just as I'd left it. Instinct said the wreckage strewn about was a distraction from that, but it made no sense. I'd be checking these floorboards the first chance I got. Two parties must have searched through my apartment. Or maybe just one covering their tracks? If I had more time to look over things, maybe I could figure out a more definite answer, but Montague had probably disturbed things in here ever since his arrival.

I was inclined to think he had nothing to do with this. Not just because Lord Montague had seemed too desperate to risk his eldest's life on the chance of finding the cure, but because only an idiot would stick around after finding the boxes. If the goal was the cure, opening the boxes would have provided more than enough blackmail material to wrench it out of my grasp.

Speaking of the younger Montague, far longer than ten minutes had passed. At least it felt that way in here.

I checked my face in the largest fragment of a mirror I had left. More tears than I'd intended, but I finally made myself a little more presentable.

"Apologies for keeping you, Lord Montague, I realize I may have been speaking above my station earlier. I apologize. It's been a frustrating day. Please come back inside."

The door opened. If Montague was suspicious of how long I'd taken, it didn't show on his face. "You have the cure then?"

"One second," I replied, heading for my sink.

The plumbing in my apartment was very basic. A single pipe and pump led down to the city's reservoirs far below. It was not the healthiest of sources, but it was that or relying on rainwater instead. Typically, there wasn't enough rainwater.

It had been a common fixture since the city constructed a series of reservoirs a half-century ago, so it wasn't unusual to find them. So they remained below notice.

I slid out a section of pipe from under my sink. It remained sealed on both ends, and the metal was closed snugly—perfect.

Montague's eyes narrowed. "A fake piece of plumbing. You were hiding my brother's cure in that?"

I smiled disarmingly. "Peace, Lord Montague. It worked, which is all that really matters. It worked better than what I did to hide possessions much more dear to myself."

"Fair enough," he conceded. "I suppose you know how to separate out the doses in the right amounts?"

"Easily done," I replied. Most of my standardized measuring equipment was smashed back at the lab, and whoever had broken into my apartment had wrecked most of what was here. But a few beakers remained by the sink. I quickly scooped them up.

A few minutes later, I had a vial filled with the prerequisite dose. He took it, looking suspiciously between it and me.

"I'm half-tempted to insist that you come with me just so we can have you on-hand if this turns out to be a fake," he admitted.

"I'm tempted to insist on my payment up front, but we must all make sacrifices Lord Montague." It felt weird calling him the same thing as his father, but I could hardly presume to use his first name. "I'll insist on coming. I want my payment for this, and I am not having this used on your brother if it will kill him. You may trust your father on this matter, but I don't."

I was so lost in thought I barely noticed the other human striding down the hall.

This one I knew, his servant's livery in purple and white. One of Lady Karsin's servants I'd met on her estate, panting and out of breath as he made his way down. Curious neighbors looked at him as he made his way down.

There went any slim remaining chance of me living here. The gossip about what had happened to my apartment alone would drive me out.

He got to the end, trying to catch his breath. He spotted Montague and looked shocked to find him here, while Montague looked much the same. Finally, the servant caught his breath.

"Lady Karsin needs your services immediately. Her son has fallen into an illness, and she's worried the poisoner might have struck again."

 

[saithor]

They'd had a carriage waiting for me, which had drawn enough onlookers pulling out onto the street had been an issue.

"I'm going to have no peace for the next few months, perhaps even years," I observed as the carriage tried to make its way through the district. "You're aware there's a march of…protestors going through the district?"

Protestors was the diplomatic term. I didn't know how anyone else in the carriage may react to my thoughts on the marchers. There were three of us in the carriage: Gregory Montague, Lady Karsin's servant, and myself. I barely knew the servant more than I did Montague. I'd been to Lady Karsin's estate twice to examine her heir and then later to deliver the cure, precisely at a time when as few people would be around as possible.

It had been a different experience, being in a noble's estate during the night with their permission.

Montague and the servant did know each other, based on the former's cajoling of the latter to let him into the carriage.

"We're aware," the servant replied evenly. "We'll be avoiding them, although getting the carriage in here to begin with was a struggle in of itself."

They should have just left the carriage on the district's border and come to get me on foot. "You said Lady Karsin is convinced her son was poisoned again?"

"She thinks it might be the case," the servant clarified. "Not Angel's Sorrow, she said, but perhaps another toxin. Lord Desmond collapsed in the middle of a public banquet hosted by Duke Beractel."

"It would be too soon for Angel's Sorrow," I said for the benefit of Montague. "It's a slow-acting toxin. You probably noticed it with your brother; he would have first appeared to have some minor illness, but only for the effects to have built up over time. Honestly, you should have sent for a doctor or another alchemist."

"Lady Karsin wanted someone who could be discreet to examine him. And also someone she knows she can trust with matters such as these."

I smiled politely, pretending to be flattered by the compliment. Internally, I was much more doubtful.

If Desmond Karsin had collapsed publicly, there was very little hiding this. Outside of being discreet, the only advantage I had over another specialist was the Angel's Sorrow cure. Besides his public collapse, coming to get me in this fashion was also not very discreet.

I couldn't forget that all signs pointed towards someone picking me to harvest that dead wyrm's brain. Shortly afterward, I'd heard from Edwards that someone was looking for a cure to an unknown disease afflicting their heir. Had that been arranged?

It seemed ridiculous to poison someone only to arrange for a cure to be made available immediately. Perhaps two factions? This only reinforced my desire to find a way out of this mess.

Someone was playing a game, and I was a piece on the board.

The servant cleared his throat. "If you don't mind me asking, my lord, what were you doing there?"

Gregory Montague grinned. "My father sent me to seduce Miss Falara, of course."

"He tried to rob me," I replied flatly.

The servant's eyes moved between the two of us as if deciding on who to believe. He ultimately chose silence, which was probably the best choice. I turned my attention to Montague instead.

"You seem remarkably calm about us heading to Lady Karsin's," I told Montague. "Considering that this will delay us seeing your brother?"

"Well, Lady Karsin's is only a few blocks from the family estate, and since I have a dose if your business with Lady Karsin runs long, I'll just nip on down and-"

"Don't do that," I interrupted, getting a shocked look from him and the servant before I added a belated "my lord."

"My coming along was for the sole purpose of arguing that you should not administer the antidote," I continued. "You said your brother was getting worse than previously? You witnessed this yourself?"

Montague frowned, his expression uneasy. "I only saw Edward briefly before being sent here. Father has been restricting who could see him and for how long."

"Good," I replied. "Still, you must have seen some of your brother's current condition. How is he?"

"Weak, and pale. Edward seems to barely hold onto consciousness most of the time. While he keeps his food down now, he's still a prisoner in his own body. He can barely move most days."

His unease had only grown while recounting his brother's condition. It was about to grow worse.

"My lord, under no conditions should your brother have the cure yet, especially if it grows even worse."

"What?" He snapped.

"Did your father mention the instructions I gave when we negotiated our initial deal?"

He shook his head. "Father didn't inform about exactly what the particulars of the deal were, as I think we had found out just a while ago."

"That was just a hypothetical," I said quickly, all too aware that Lady Karsin's servant was in the carriage with us. "But the point is, the cure is a violent one. If one's system is weakened too far, it will kill them."

"What? It's supposed to cure him, isn't it?"

"It does," I assured him. "But it is more accurate to describe it as, say…a battle. And battles tend to leave scars on the land."

"I follow the logic, but my brother grows weaker every day. Letting time pass would only decrease his chance, wouldn't it?"

"He won't get weaker, not by much more," I replied. "If you feed him the dose now, it'll kill him, and far more violently than the poison would. Angel's Sorrow is not a particularly quick poison. The only real benefit to using it is the difficulty in curing it. The patient increasingly gets weaker, but towards the end, there will be a period when if he's treated well, he begins to recover. A last grasp for redemption, some call it."

It was the leading theory for why the patients did recover. Angel's Sorrow was the only poison derived from celestial creatures, and some believed its effects were a passing of judgment on the poisoned mortal, with a brief period to try and repent before final judgment. It also could explain the rather sudden shifts in character found in survivors of the poison.

If it were a celestial judgment on one's sins, it would certainly explain why very few survived it.

"Follow my instructions, and he'll build up his strength again, enough to survive the battle between cure and poison." A battle might be a slight embellishment of how the process occurred, but I could hardly think of another term better fitting the conflict between a draconic and celestial-derived substance.

"Are you certain of that?" Montague asked in a flat tone.

"There's little I can offer except maybe suggesting you consult another alchemist. If they're any good, they'll tell you the same thing. Or if you insist, I can give you the cure, and when your brother dies because he's not strong enough to take it, it'll be on your head and not mine. Do yourself a favor, my lord. Let me make the decision and not you. My cure, my fault if he doesn't survive."

Montague hesitated, his face a mix between anger and sorrow.

The servant cleared his throat, startling the both of us. Truth be told I'd forgotten he was in here.

"Far be from me to instruct my lord in any way, but Master Desmond went through the same process, and before the incident last night, he was back to his normal self."

"That wouldn't be Angel's Sorrow," I added. "I can't be sure what it is till we get there, but if there was a sudden relapse after a period of seeming normalcy, it would have been much more violent. Even those who barely suffered tended to expel blood, and afterwards were perfectly fine if weakened."

Placated, Montague finally nodded his assent. The rest of the ride passed in stilted silence.

***

Most noble estates weren't very large outside of the Imperial Palace.

This wasn't some expression of restraint on their part, more the fact that for centuries past noble seats of power tended to be out in the lands they owned. Dealing with the monarch had meant either a grand procession from the monarch out there to meet them, or the nobles to the rather meager size city Avernon had been back in those days.

That had already been changing by the time of the attempted invasions of the Hells, as the world had gotten more connected and correspondence and the occasional trip was proving insufficient. Of course plans to change that had been forcibly altered by the fallout of the invasions. During the reign of Her Most Profane Majesty, most of the nobility had stayed on their estates for the express purpose of avoiding being near the court.

That had all changed after she'd been killed, her body publicly hung, drawn, and quartered in front of a crowd of thousands, including the nobility that had survived her reign.

Lady Karsin's estate was close to as grand as they got, probably due more to it having existed long before it became fashionable to put estates inside the city. A central tower stood tall, old stonework still strong and layered in enchantments, still as formidable and defensible as it would have been back then. Smaller buildings dotted the estate, forming a wall along its edges, most of them servant's quarters and a guardhouse over the main entrance.

We weren't headed for there. There was a small entrance along the side for servants and for guests who were best not seen publicly arriving. I qualified for the latter, and I accepted a hooded cloak produced from the carriage's storage without protest as we came to a halt. He'd been gracious enough to let me store what little I could salvage from my apartment there.

I got out of the carriage, almost stepping into a small crowd.

About half a dozen humans, men and women dressed in laborer's clothes, had been lurking around the side gate. They'd started walking away as soon as the carriage arrived, the driver and servant staring after them suspiciously.

Once it was clear they were not going to return, the servant produced a key and slipped through the gates, saying to wait just a moment while he arranged a place for us to wait for Lady Karsin.

I absent-mindedly nodded, focused more on the disappearing group of humans.

One of them wore a top hat, and I stared at the group's departing backs. Had this been a group of Pure-bloods loitering around Lady Karsin's estate? It seemed too much a coincidence to not think about, but also maybe a bit paranoid to think that of a group of humans.

I shook my head slightly. I was just being too judgmental and perhaps a touch too suspicious. I didn't want to end up like some members I'd known of the Black Flame, thinking any human who crossed my path thought ill thoughts of me.

"Pure-bloods," Montague noted, disdain in his voice. "What are they doing here?"

"You know for certain?" How could he tell?

"Yes. However, only because some of that group was at our estate. They tried to beg funds off of father and were very disappointed when he had them ejected from the estate."

"Really?" I asked in surprise before quickly swallowing my ill-thought. I was being far too frank with the son of my client, even the disgraced son. Speaking ill of him would not help an already tense relationship that would only become more tense over the coming days.

Montague raised an eyebrow, inviting me to continue. Carefully wording my next sentence, I spoke.

"He doesn't seem like the kind of man who would object to their goals," I said cautiously.

"Some of their goals," Montague snorted, looking at where the Pure-bloods had just rounded the corner, disappearing from sight. "My father definitely has his prejudices, but they are nowhere near broad enough to fit with their worldview."

"For the same reasons, I can't imagine they were here to meet with Lady Karsin. I imagine half-breeds would probably top the list of things they find distasteful. Unless they like elves?"

"From my very brief time with them, they don't," Montague said. "Not likely to make them friends even among other supremacist groups. Honestly, very strange."

"How so?" I asked. My own thoughts led in the same direction, but no need to let anyone else know about my run-ins with them.

"We've entertained nobles with views like that. Father is one as well. But most don't approach this level of bigotry. Not against so many groups at the same time, and not as hostile as they presented themselves. Elves and gnomes have been able to get citizenship for centuries at this point. Centaurs were among the founding members of the empire. Yet they seemingly consider them blights as well. I'm not shocked they are so desperate for funding if they've alienated so many, but they've seemingly popped up suddenly and with so many members."

I nodded, but privately, I suspected that quite a few of these nobles Gregory talked about would be more biased than he expected, just not necessarily at events hosted among the notorious gossips that were nobility, not in an empire where the ruling Empress still owed so many not of human descent for her throne.

Then again, the dwarves had once ranked among those.

"They weren't around till recently?" I asked.

"You don't know? I'd think that an Infernal would know more than anyone."

"I know the bigger groups, but some things are harder for me to find out than it might be for you, my lord. They are recent, then?"

"I thought we'd hosted every noble who might lean that way in their beliefs, if only for politeness' sake. If they have been around a while, it's been out of the sight of every noble in the city."

Ah. Useless information, then. I was acquainted with how much you could hide from nobles in this city if you wanted to—a slow takeover of their capital, for one.

The conversation came to an end as the gate opened. It was time to head inside and see exactly why Lady Karsin had sent for me. I could not think of an answer that made any sense.