This time, I really took a coin out of my pocket, hands trembling with excitement. The nureal almost slipped between my sweaty fingers, but I caught it and stuck it into the spygss's base. After a few seconds of whirring, it spat out a cardboard ticket with a green magical seal on it. Now the almost invisible stream of dust motes flowed from my ticket to the southwest. I followed it, running down the stairs. I didn't care it was te and I'd been up most of the day. Nobody who'd seen me would've doubted I felt refreshed.

  Valentino's steps followed me. He overtook me at the end of the stairs and stood on my way. Luckily, I managed to stop myself before colliding with him.

  "Can Your Excellency please let me know what are we running toward?"

  "Sorry, I'm not used to having a backup." As we walked after the stream of dust motes, I expined the situation to him. Only someone holding the ticket could see it. That's one cheap spell, but it made it easier for me to sneak up on the necromancer unnoticed.

  "Shouldn't Your Excellency summon His Illustrious Highness?"

  "Yeah, but not just yet. First I want to know what's going on. After all, he attracts way too much attention."

  He nodded. "Lead on, Your Excellency."

  The dust motes didn't care that there were walls and buildings in their way; they simply flew over any obstacle. I wasn't going to be stopped simply because I couldn't do that. I jumped fences and ran across private yards every time it was easier than turning a corner. Ahead of us, curtains rustled, blinds were lowered, lights were snuffed out. Other people refused to be dragged into whatever I was doing. Did they believe Valentino was chasing me? Or did knowing he was on my side make things even worse? I'd never know.

  I climbed into a balcony and from there, the rooftop. Not for nothing I had become so good at sneaking out of our farmhold. It had served me well in my days living alone in various cities and towns, too.

  My hands slipped on the tiles, so Valentino lifted me to the top with a spell. Having backup really is better.

  "I'm so lucky you're here," I whispered. It was only polite to give him a hand up. Valentino accepted it. I returned to my crumpled and sweat-stained ticket. "The stream is thicker here. I think we're getting closer."

  "Please be careful, Your Excellency."

  I leaped to the neighbor's roof, then to a tree, clinging to the trunk like a sloth on my way down. The road was fairly uneven there, with several missing cobblestones, easy to trip on.

  I'd always thought myself adept at finding a bance between moving fast and moving silently, thanks to my experience. It didn't matter that my grandmas would infallibly know; I could fool anybody else. I'd proven myself right by dodging guards and other dangerous types. That night, though, my steps sounded too loud to my own ears, unless I walked far too slow. So I proceeded along in fits and starts. Valentino, blessed man, always stayed several steps behind me, sticking to the darkness more than me. Of course, his uniform practically glowed in the moonslight.

  Luck was on my side: I could still recognize all the consteltions on this part of the world. The Lizard's tail told me we were moving toward the southwest. The industrial district. Less whitewashed houses, more tall, wide brick buildings. This time, we approached the district from the center, not from outside. And we'd gotten into a very different part from the barricaded factories that'd been active only a couple of months ago. Here, abandonment and decay had seeped into every wall. Though I couldn't see all that much, I smelled sewage and a damp almost as potent as the one at the mountain's foot—but more unpleasant, because it felt stagnating.

  Valentino had fallen far behind me, but I wasn't alone. People surrounded me: huddled into groups or sitting alone, most of them wearing only a pair of pants or a simple dress. Under the damp and smell of decaying greenery, people. They sat on the street, as there wasn't any kind of sidewalk or anything. The only thing that'd keep them from being trampled by a carriage, it seemed, was the driver's good will. Well, and I supposed it was extremely unlikely for any carriages to venture there, especially at these hours.

  I walked on slowly, trying to act as if I belonged there. I'd come skulking across the streets like the hero of some radio show, as if the real world didn't even exist. In the hills, a stranger would almost never have to spend the night under the stars. As long as we had a roof, we shared it. We were lucky, in a sense. We'd been driven into the hills and left to scratch out a living like the weeds, tolerated only as long as we squeezed enough profit out of very unprofitable nd. But we didn't live under the Protectorate's breath. All around me these people felt like a string stretched out too tight, about to snap.

  If you knew you were going to snap anyway—why snap alone?

  I didn't want to attract the slightest attention to my ticket, or even reveal I'd gone there for a specific reason, so I had to rely on my memories of the dust stream. Luckily, I wasn't far from my destination. The necromancer had kindly stayed put while I raced to them; with a bit more luck, they wouldn't change their mind until I figured out where they were hiding.

  Nobody seemed to care about my presence. Though I wasn't going to rely on that, I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. My work clothes were faded and mended, so I blended in pretty well as long as Valentino didn't follow me. Hopefully they'd allow me to finish my business there and leave. Of course, the necromancer would fight back, but I'd summon Vanth before they had a chance to. That wouldn't cause any problems, because nobody would argue with the King of the Dying Sun.

  Then again, yesterday I could've sworn nobody would interfere with a Sabrewing's job, either.

  To my right, a wall had crumbled almost completely, turning a warehouse into a courtyard. Thanks to a series of missing doors and the cloudless moonslight, I could see pretty far into the distance. How long had this part of the city been abandoned, anyway? Since the strike had begun? Or earlier than that? Maybe Cassel's Big Project sucked up too much money and there was none left to buy and fix these failed factories. Or something along those lines. Otherwise, I found it hard to believe nobody else would set up shop there.

  No, even if nobody had bought those factories, I was sure they wouldn't be abandoned.

  I made my way among the crumbled walls, stepping carefully to make sure I wouldn't squish a rat or something. This pce seemed to be surprisingly clean and rodent-free, though. Just as I suspected.

  Valentino better not pick this moment to come after me. I moved through ransacked offices. This pce hadn't been abandoned a couple of months ago. Shattered windows, graffitti scribbled over the walls, furniture taken apart or just taken away. Yet no spider's webs, no excessively dusty floors, none of that thin lifeless air you breathe in a building abandoned by humans.

  The people outside hadn't cared that I got in. Maybe it wasn't their business. Maybe they knew something I didn't.

  Faint noises came from deeper in—steps, or some kind of knocking. I followed it with calm firm steps. I wasn't an invader. Was I lost, though? Or just curious? Not sure yet, but hopefully I'd come up with something soon.

  As I walked past a broken window I saw a woman leave into a different street: she tapped the ground before her with a cane, and had a bundle much like mine tied to her back. An opportunity to announce myself? Just in case, I followed her.

  Before I could get much closer, a small group stepped out of the shadows right after her. Approaching a blind person from behind, how underhanded! But never mind the hypocrisy. I was already running as one of them raised up a bottle. It flew lightly enough I could tell it was empty. The blind woman dodged it, but barely.

  "Wait, what are you doing?" Doing my best to sound drunk, I threw my arm around Bottle-Thrower's neck, weighing him down with my whole body. "Since when do you throw things at people?" I jabbed a finger in his arm. He was also a brown guy in work clothes, so it wasn't strange I'd supposedly mistaken him for someone I knew. "And a blind person at that! I'm sooo disappointed!"

  One of Bottle-Thrower's buddies tugged at his arm. "Don't do this, man. She's, y'know. She's one of them."

  I jabbed Bottle-Thrower again. "Yeah! Don't do it! Or I'll tell everyone what a jerk you are! Oh, you don't believe me? I'll tell everyone! Everyone around!" I swept my free arm toward the factory. "Look at what he just did!"

  Bottle-Thrower's friends were running away. Looks like he didn't want to be left out, because he threw me off and followed suit.

  After they were lost in the distance, I turned to the woman. The moonslight was enough to see she was tall and angur, perhaps thirty or so, wearing a striped dress of summer wool and a couple of spell neckces.

  "Are you going somewhere?" I asked like a dumbass. "I can go with you, just in case."

  She turned toward the sound of my voice. The upper half of her face was marked with old burn scars. Must've been some pretty bad damage, if healing spells couldn't fix it. Either that, or she hadn't gotten any healing spells for way too long. Guards will do that to you, sometimes, if they get you. Of course, I shouldn't jump to any conclusions.

  "That's kind of you, but I can handle it. You need something, right? Too bad there's no dog jerky left. Don't listen to álvaro, it's good."

  "Actually, I hoped I might be able to help you." The lie slid out smoothly.

  "Ask Nina. Tell her Amankay sent you."

  She turned around and left into the night.

  Either Nina wouldn't be hard to find, or this Amankay person was setting me up for something bad. She didn't know I could summon Vanth whenever I needed him, though, so I didn't worry. I went back the way she'd come from.

  A hallway ter, I found a bucket with some suspicious liquid I decided not to interrogate further and an oil mp sitting on a shelf. Somebody talked ahead. After crossing another door I found myself in what surely once was the assembly room, except all the machines had been scrapped away.

  I'd entered a makeshift clinic, with injured and ill people waiting on cushions and chairs and crates at the left. On the right, a long row of improvised bedding and mattresses leaking out their stuffing, for patients who needed the rest. Despite the general shabbinessm everything was tidy and clean. That aggressively clean smell healers like hovered over the entire room. About half a dozen of them moved from patient to patient. Going by my experience helping Grandma Cielo, I'd say three were assistants, the kind that handle superficial wounds and minor diseases.

  A middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun stood up, scanned the room, and noticed me. She raised her eyebrows. I shook my head and she moved on to the next patient.

  Did healers ever turn to necromancy? Their natural inclination leans away from the Underworld, but that don't necessarily mean anything. And of course, the patients were instantly suspect. What if one of them had been injured doing necromancy? I couldn't very well examine them closely, not unless I wanted to attract their suspicions instead. Everyone there had to be connected with the strikers one way or another, so it wouldn't be surprising if they reacted to my presence like the guards from earlier.

  Well, at least one of them believed I had a right to be there. The best I could do was finding this Nina, and if I found something else along the way, even better. I went on, noticed only by a few of the people waiting to be healed. They only seemed to care about me as a distraction from their surroundings, though.

  I did wonder why that pce hadn't been raided by guards yet. Surely they hadn't missed it? Or maybe they did. If the people there had enough of a warning about the raid, they probably could've managed to disperse and hide. The question was, did they really have an inside person among the guards? It wasn't impossible. And, if the average person in the streets really wanted to avoid making an enemy out of "them", I guessed it made sense they'd leave the clinic alone.

  Of course, that couldn't st forever. Sooner or ter, someone would really need the reward money you might get in exchange for a lead about the strikers, or they might decide they couldn't afford the danger of being associated with "them". Anybody with a few smarts could tell that, though, so I wondered if "they" had a pn in case it happened.

  Going through the next door I found the restrooms and a spiral staircase going up. I climbed the tter, and as I did so, I caught scraps of someone's loud singing: a rich bass, albeit a bit off-key. It covered my steps.

  broccolifloret