My heart thumped in my chest like a drum. I watched the woman for a long moment, scared to move or even breathe. Finally, I closed the distance, my hands shaking as I knelt and took Ophelia’s hands in mine.

  Her face turned to me, her gaze meeting mine when our skin brushed against each other. Her eyes sparked with recognition.

  “Ophelia?” The question came out dripping with a mixture of raw anguish and relief. “Who’s coming?”

  She stared at me. The question rang out in the silence like a hammer shattering glass.

  I waited, holding my breath as her lips barely moved.

  “Wailing…” Her voice was softI almost didn’t hear it. She said the word again, this time her voice growing louder. Without warning, she ripped her hands from mine and slammed them against the side of her head, covering her ears.

  “Wailing. Always wailing. They won’t stop!” She repeated the words again and again, pressing her palms flat against her ears. She clenched her eyes shut and shook as her yells continued.

  I watched, the anguish in me growing deeper, like a ravine that had been split wider by the quaking earth.

  The door to the room slammed against the wall as Sil rushed in, already pulling a scroll from his pocket.

  I moved out of his way as low musical notes flitted through the air, their energy brushing softly against my senses. He pressed the scroll to her forehead and whispered something I couldn’t make out.

  Power rushed from his hand, through the scroll, and into Ophelia’s body. Her demeanor changed immediately, her shoulders slumping, her hands falling to her sides. Her words grew quiet until her lips stopped moving entirely.

  I stood and helped him situate her in the bed, laying on her back.

  “She just needs to rest,” he said, tucking the blankets over her. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  I nodded. “Did you hear what she was saying?”

  “It’s not the first time she’s mentioned it,” he noted. “Henrietta says that whatever is going on in her head must be causing her to see or hear things.”

  Once again, I nodded, but I wasn’t convinced. The way she’d repeated the words… there was more to it than just madness. She had been genuinely terrified. Even when going into the palace dungeon, hearing that demons were real, and watching literal dragons walked past us, Ophelia had never shown that kind of fear or panic.

  Whatever she was hearing, it felt like bad news. We’d already had enough of that in recent weeks. I thanked Sil for watching over her and then left the two of them behind, heading back downstairs.

  The crowd had thinned out some now, most of the patrons having finished their breakfast and headed out into the city—either to enjoy it or perhaps to look for work I didn’t know. None of us had any idea how long the empire planned to keep the city locked down.

  I passed Irinda on the way to the front door, offering her a small smile. She returned it, but that weary sadness still kept it from meeting her eyes. I made a note to catch up with her this evening before heading out on my nightly patrol.

  That was another thing I’d taken to doing each night over the past few weeks. With Brin gone, and part of the Eastern Quarter claimed as our own, I’d wanted to start building up a network of information gatherers. Part of that meant enlisting the help of street kids that either already worked for Aurelion—like last night’s group—or those that hadn’t fallen under his influence yet.

  It also meant providing important benefits for some of the market stall and shop owners in the area. Not exactly protection, as we didn’t have enough people for that just yet, but ensuring they had access to goods they wouldn’t be able to easily restock during the lock down had proven a good way to negotiate with them and get them to work for me.

  I stepped out of the main door and into the street, ducking past one of the doormen that Irinda had hired to help keep peace at the inn.

  I chewed on my lip as I walked, Ophelia’s screams echoing in my thoughts.

  Who was wailing? Why were they wailing? Once again, I found myself with more questions than answers.

  Frustration bubbled up as I passed through the market closest to The Slumbering Drake. I had spent centuries with all the answers and now, it seemed like I never had them.

  I stopped by one of the stalls, and grabbed some spices to take back to Irinda later. They were things I’d noticed she needed, but she hadn’t asked for them.

  She wouldn’t. Not with things as tight as they were. But we had plenty of coin to work with at the moment thanks to Brin’s hoarding.

  My heart skipped at the thought of the treasures tucked away in the corner of the master’s room of the inn. Taking the establishment over had been a smart play for many reasons, but the fact I had gold to call my own again was certainly one of the biggest points of success.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  I tucked the spices into my satchel next to the tonics I kept stocked, and the stack of lockpicks I kept close jingled against the glass.

  Around me, the city almost looked normal, signs of the lock down hidden in plain sight. More of the city guard than ever roamed the streets, their golden cloaks flapping in the wind. Their watchful gazes were suspicious of even the most elderly and frailest-looking members of the crowd.

  I had to force myself not to grimace as a group of three focused their attention on me.

  “You,” one of them called out, his hand motioning directly at me.

  I stopped where I was and turned to them. “Yes?” I asked, standing in the middle of the street.

  The crowd moved around them and a look of annoyance flashed across one of the men’s faces.

  “Step over here.” The angriest looking of the three said, motioning at me again.

  My heart sank, but I moved to the side of the street, stopping in front of the men.

  The three city guard were all similarly built, men of narrow-shouldered stature. They all had clean shaven faces save for the middle man, who has a large mustache across his upper lip. Piercing eyes watched me from above the man’s hawk-like nose, and his two companions took a step outward, as if trying to surround me in a half-circle formation.

  “State your purpose,” the angry man with the mustache said, his hand moving casually to the hilt of his sword.

  “I just wanted to go for a morning walk and I decided to stop in and buy some spices from the market here.” I motioned to my satchel as I spoke. “They’re getting a lot harder to find now, so I had to travel a good distance from my home in the Western Quarter to find them.”

  The mustached man nodded his head as I spoke, eyes watching me as if they might find some sign of a lie in the way that I spoke or moved.

  “Have you seen anything suspicious today?”

  Shaking my head I spoke again, “No, I haven’t, sir.” I added the last part hoping it might appease him. Some of the anger had seemed to fade from his eyes, but I could still see the embers of something burning in them. Something that might come back to bite me if I wasn’t careful.

  “I see,” the man responded.

  The other two guards behind him moved nervously, swaying from side to side. One of them even looked around, as if he were worried they might be spotted taking something from a market stall and not paying for it.

  “Very well, continue on your way.” He said after several tense breaths. He waved me away.

  I nodded my head in thanks, my heartbeat slowly starting to return to normal as I put some distance between me and the group. The man was still watching me when I glanced over my shoulder at the three of them, his two companions talking amongst themselves.

  Sighing, I started moving toward the Western Quarter, using the narrow side streets to twist and turn through the city. When I was confident that I’d put a good few buildings between myself and the angry-looking guard, I sank into motion with a group of citizens roaming toward the northern end of the Eastern Quarter. Ovali’s shop was there, and that was the real reason that I’d come out of the inn today. The spices were an added bonus, of course. But I wanted to speak with the fence. To see what his dealings with Brin had involved and whether or not I could somehow put them to work for me, too.

  *** *** ***

  Ovali’s shop was smaller than I remembered. The worn sign hanging above the door creaked as the wind pressed against it.

  I slipped through the door of the establishment, eyeing the shelves lined with various baubles, trinkets, and clay pots. The place was a mishmash of items that looked like he’d bought them off people just trying to sell whatever they could for a few coppers. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it.

  Ovali was seated behind the counter, just as he had been last time, a large tome opened across his lap. He spotted me as soon as I entered, his voice rising in that same deadpan tone as last time.

  “Welcome, welcome. Ovali has everything you need.”

  It took everything in me not to comment on his energetic attitude—or lack thereof—but I wanted to make a good impression, not drive him away. Instead, crossing to the front counter, I offered him a warm smile.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked, watching the man’s face. “I came in a few weeks ago for some specialty goods.”

  His eyes narrowed for a moment and then widened in recognition. “Ah, yes. Yes. Misplaced your keys. Have you made the same mistake twice?” Amusement spread across his wrinkled face, the edges of a smile hidden behind the bushy beard and mustache with twirled ends that covered the lower half of his face.

  I shook my head. “Not quite. I have some business that is a bit more… nuanced.”

  His eyebrows knitted together for a moment. “I see. And you believe Ovali can help with this?”

  Shrugging, I said, “I’ve had it from good sources that you might be a man of many talents.”

  “Ovali very talented. But what you may seek is dangerous. City is full of looking eyes and working against the empire’s laws is for foolish men.”

  “That’s true. It could be foolish. But it could also be very enlightening if someone was particularly good at keeping those eyes off of themselves.”

  The implications of my words hung in the air for a long moment before his face stretched into a wide smile. “Ovali very good at blending in. Nobody ask questions about Ovali. City guard too worried to care about old trinket shop.”

  A big smile stretched across my lips at that. I had managed to hook the old man with my bait. Now it was time to spring the trap.

  “The first thing I want to talk about is how you and Brin were working together.”

  Ovali’s smile faded, his face become a mask of stone with barely veiled anger beneath it. “Brin. Ha. Fat, bald man always stiffing Ovali. Offer top of shelf goods but always bottom feeder. Forced Ovali to work together. You speak for him?”

  The outburst was only slightly unexpected. I hadn’t known what any of the symbols next to the names in Brin’s book meant. But I’d had an inkling when I noticed the drawing of a coin with an x through it next to Ovali’s name. It wasn’t a very hard guess to make, but without truly knowing Brin or whether he was straightforward with his codes had been a shot in the dark.

  I shook my head slowly in response to Ovali’s question. “I don’t work for Brin, no. He’s dead.”

  Surprise chiseled the man’s face into a soft grin. “Dead?” He questioned, as if he couldn’t believe it.

  Nodding, I offered him a half-shrug. “He was a piece of rat devish who treated everyone he met like they were stairs for him to walk all over.”

  Images of Brin’s burning body flashed through my mind, followed by those of the empty outline of where his ashes should have been. I tried not to let the thoughts deflate the confident air I’d painted on my body.

  “A partner and I have taken over his holdings and we plan to expand them beyond the city. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

  Before Ovali could answer, the door to the shop pulled open, sunlight flooding into the cramped center aisle. Three men stepped inside, the gold cloaks of the city guard hanging from their shoulders.

  All three of them focused their eyes on me.