Chapter Text
Krist
Krist Schaeffer was no stranger to jobs going badly.
He wasn’t one for changing his ways, but if there was one thing he’d learned over the course of his not-so-illustrious career as a two-bit criminal, it was that the city of Ketterdam itself seemed to delight in throwing wrenches into even the most carefully-laid plans.
Not that Krist had a track record of particularly good planning. He’d made it through alright, up till this point - but a trail of events had left him less than the most confident thief. That job on the reef with the bad tasting tea. That time in the pub when his coat had snagged on a lady’s gold tooth. That time when he was young, sandy haired and stupid, which was every time counting, and he’d had a hankering for a bauble bigger than himself.
With this experience the general novelty, the thrill of the chase had come to stall. Time had ceased to slow in those predicaments when his veins ran flush with adrenaline and his movements rendered themselves imperceptible and slim. It was a matter of mechanics - the ways of his work were gathering rust. This land in particular was new territory for him, marked out on a sootstained map with a blunt knifepoint and a wary grin.
The structure of Robert de la Rocca’s gardenhouse was practically braided with roses, white like snow against the bold blacks and browns of this side of Ketterdam. It sported foliage and faint fauna, the scent of orange blossoms and green, ground spices. Nestled amongst a row of houses just as splendid, it blended in like tea leaves in a kettle. It was perfect.
Nobody would notice a scrawny, freckled man with a secret intention. Not if he didn’t act out of place.
Everyone had their place in this city.
The florid perfume only grew as he drew closer to the walls. It caromed off his nostrils and left him breathless. Only rich merchers could grow flowers this sweet in the city. Nothing beside of wretched could be nurtured without coin- and only the stubbornness of a rich man would persist in trying to cover the ever-present smells of smoke and harbor. Krist wasn’t sure which was worse- the unrepentantly horrid smell, or the futile attempt to mask it.
Squaring his shoulders, electing to focus on the job rather than the cloying odor, Krist took up a brick.
And then another.
And another.
His fingers caught the edges of the wall with alarming practice. He typically wasn’t so sure of himself; the flowers kept him going, the smell almost welcoming now, beckoning him upward, farther along the wall.
The fall was light, from splintered wood to pleated soil, just between two of the flower beds. The flowers they sported were a demure red, black at their stamens. Nothing short of easy to blend into. Disguising himself amid the flowers would not be his strangest undertaking yet. He held himself aloof, boots light in the soil. He would never want to be a disturbance, because it would mean his head on a pike.
He took another look around, at his surroundings in something more of depth than cheap ink - flowers, only flowers. Clustered in pots, lining the few cobble paths that ran like veins around the perimeter, climbing up trellises in their own beautiful sort of plagues. This display was paid for from the pockets of the well-to-do, coffers fit to burst. Yet tonight, it would be his and his alone.
Infiltrate through the garden, sneak his way into the house - that had been Krist’s plan. But he’d never been the best at sticking to those, anyways. As he glanced furtively about, trying to discern the best way to proceed, a flash of movement caught his eye. Sticking close to the shadow of the wall, he eyed a pair of surly, steel-laced guards as they entered his line of sight, walking far too close to his hiding spot for his liking. They were not standing at attention or walking straight- instead, their heads were bent, whispers hardly audible to Krist. Certainly not the air of two men simply making their rounds.
The garden laid itself out in a neat plot of land: a section of rose-green grass led to rows of gardenias and geraniums, ivy leeching its way towards the main house. Dried leaves lay in clumps around his soiled shoes, leading past the guards with their muddy grey caps and around the batches of eglantine around the shed.
A shed-
He bit back a rising curse from under his breath. He cringed as his words, whispers though they were, fell into the air, fortunately going unnoticed. Krist had peeled through the schedules of the present night, and had become acquainted with their tables. There should have been a trip, a sedated parley, an outing of some sort. Yet he’d found himself with company, albeit hidden, and this was not what he had intended. Not at all.
Yes. It was safe to say that this job was going rather badly.
A guarded shed, probably sent from some Saint who wished a too-curious thief like him ill.
But De La Rocca was a mercher. The antithesis of a Saint. So what-
Before he even had time to hesitate, the shed door suddenly creaked open, startling both him and the guards outside. The sound muffled itself beneath crushed, dense grass, and as it swung open, the smell only intensified. Saccharine and unsafe, it smelt like too many summer buns at the harvest festival, or an extra spoon of sugar in one's tea. A double portion of something that might have been good- but instead became too much, too quickly. A rush like adrenaline.
But adrenaline he knew, and had long since grown tired of its thrill. This was novel, and maybe he should have been more wary of it. Still, he couldn’t help the way his curiosity sharpened, even as his nose wrinkled against the overwhelming smell.
Faint voices drifted from the hazy light inside. A man’s voice, gruff and domineering.
“Get it inside. She’s ready, but I don’t know how long—“
“That was quick.” One of the guards muttered, turning to rummage in a pile by his feet.
“Hey.” The man said. “Nobody is paying you to state your opinion.”
“No-but—“
“But nothing. Hurry up. You want everyone in the sector to hear?” There was a sharpness there, a double meaning that made Krist’s pulse spike. He pushed himself flatter into the wall than he thought possible, his entire back splintering with the weight of desperation. This was clearly more than a couple of jewels. He couldn’t be caught here. Not like this. The scent of the garden grew and grew, grew tall like bushels of ivy, until suddenly it was roving his skin and stripping it clean.
He was being watched.
And with this realization came the near-obvious actuality of it all - their breaths practically snaring the back of his neck, the rather audible movements of their unpracticed feet. Practiced he was, and so he would run. Quick to his clumsy feet, he leapt upward-
He only managed to pivot from toe-to-toe before a rather hefty arm was thrust across his collar, yanking him out of the bushes and into a burly guard’s constricting grasp.
“I wonder what a canal rat like you is doing, crawling around here.” The accent was tart. Rounded in the vowels, consonants tipped with venom. The Ravkan lull and Kerch tongue to mismatch.
Krist attempted to whirl, once, twice, to no avail. He resorted to primeval - let his jaw drop, teeth falling to wrist. It lasted a moment, hardly so, before a second hand was thrust to his chin.
“P-please sir—“ he whimpered, painting his face in an only halfway believable contrite expression.. “I-I didn’t—“
“I don’t care what you have to say for yourself.” The guard snarled. His breath smelt like fish and white wine, masking the smell of something sweeter coating his fingertips. “I asked you a question. What’s your stinkin, sewer-rat ass doing, skulking around here?”
Krist balked, face turning the color of the roses on the trellis. “I-I wasn’t— look, I-I’m a petty thief!” He shrieked. “I’m just a petty thief, and your house was right here and I took it, please don’t kill me, Ghezen help me—”
The guard laughed in his face. “So devout- calling to Ghezen, while trying to steal another man’s wages. How pious of you.” He smirked, cruel delight overtaking his face as his thumbs ghosted over Krist’s windpipe. He nearly retched.
“Bring him here,” the second guard cut in, coming to grasp one of Krist’s arms, gesturing for his companion to do the same. An odd procession they made, the two guards dragging Krist through the flowerbeds, no heed given to the growing gardenias, right up to the shed door, where dim lamplight leapt from the crevices.
Krist had wanted a look inside the shed- and it seemed he was getting his wish. Despite the circumstance and the anxious beat of his heart, he couldn’t quite stop himself from being curious. Whatever was in this shed- it was no gold, but given the secrecy surrounding it? It must have come pretty damn close.
More people waited within the cramped space- two more men, clad in black, each grasping the sleeve of a worn garment. As Krist’s eyes adjusted to the half light, the mass of fabric soon grew matted hair, disjointed limbs. A bowed head. A woman, hardly conscious. Should she have been dropped, she would have likely fallen - broken and frail to the soiled floor. She couldn’t have been more than Krist’s age.
One of the pair restraining Krist lagged as they entered, fishing a pouch from his belt, no bigger than a cinnamon bun, innocuous like a child’s toy. For all Krist knew, it could have been a sack of pebbles. And yet- his gaze stuck on it, sensing that there was greater significance to this small parcel than he might assume. It was something in the way it was held, like it was sewn of fire, the look in the man’s eyes. One’s very first glance at the sun.
“Who’s this?” someone barked, out of Krist’s view.
“Just a canal rat we caught trying to eavesdrop,” the guard holding him responded, jovially, as though they were discussing a particularly pleasant turn of events. “Maybe he’ll make a nice subject, eh?”
The guard laughed and gestured meaningfully to the woman, who did not stir, her head remaining bowed. Krist was overcome by an intangible sense that something was very, very wrong.
“We will proceed as before. No more interruptions,” the voice behind him came again, from somewhere near the door. It was a drawling voice, with the air of one used to getting his way, accustomed to being obeyed. Was it De La Rocca? He wasn’t even sure what the man looked like. He tried to turn his head, but was wrenched back by his captor.
“We’ll just have to make sure this rat of yours doesn’t squeal afterward,” the commanding man concluded. “Proceed with the trial.”
From behind him, the wielder retrieved a small pewter plate. With movements more tentative than effective, he nipped at the drawstrings of the bag. He tilted it to the metal, knocked the canvas back, whatever the contents may have been spilling to its surface.
He then proceeded to hold the plate to the girl.
It wasn’t so much a gesture of amity - however it may have seemed, because with shackled arms, she took it willingly. The chains were generous enough to allow her room to flex her wrist, to hold the plate just slightly up to the moonlight of the roof’s glass panes. It was then that Krist saw her face - rather ordinary, still softened by youth - blue eyes made brown in the darkness. Perhaps, had she stood in the sun, she would have appeared different.
He got no glimpse of what was on the tray. Not until she balanced it in one hand, eyes and face alight with eagerness, and dipped her fingers into the contents.
She took her fingertip, and pressed it roughly to the surface of her tongue, which fell and lolled from her parted lips.
Purple. The powder she sought so desperately was purple.
She smeared it over her gums, tossed it between her teeth. He watched as her cheeks took on a sunset hue, eyes gleaming brighter still. From the outside looking in the experience seemed enjoyable, even sensational.
Grisha. The realization washed over Krist, his already-anxious heart beating faster still. This girl was Grisha.
“Looks nice, no?” The man holding him back whispered in his ear as the girl stilled unnaturally, then stood with some intense purpose. Her movements were like that of a puppet’s with no comely gait, stiff and unnatural. The only solace was that she seemed to be enjoying herself. She laughed and laughed and laughed. She had a pretty laugh.
“This one’s a Healer, yeah?” Krist overheard one of the guards mutter to his companions. He exhaled shakily, reflecting that whatever he was about to witness might not be so harmful after all.
“W—what are they doing?” Krist asked shakily. “What are you doing to her?”
The guard didn’t answer him.
“What do we have?” Someone asked. “She needs to work on something.”
“Can I?” The girl spoke. She had a voice like day-lilies, breathless and awe-struck. “Can I—”
“Yes—yes.” The guard soothed, eyes not on her, scanning.
Krist shivered. It sounded perfectly pleasant and thoroughly wrong, her voice.
And then another spoke up- that commanding voice, belonging to someone he still hadn’t gotten a proper view of. The conductor of whatever this ‘experiment’ was.
“We’ve got a subject right here, don’t we?” He mused. “You said it yourself. We’ll use the thief.”
“You’d like that?” He turned to the girl. She looked at Krist for the first time that night, and he noticed her eyes were a glassy blue, the kind a child would find on the seashore. She clapped her hands, smiling very, very wide. He swallowed, and felt it come back up again. What had he gotten himself into?
They commandeered him from the relative security of the corner from which he was held, shoved him to his knees in the vacancy of the moonlight. His wrists were released. Then they were not. Thrust ahead of him rather than behind, sleeves quickly ruffled up to expose his forearms.
It came as less of a realization and more of an epiphany, the intention behind the hold. Krist had always been reactive, flexible, fond of urgency. He’d run in the past, left his hands blistered and bones to ache. He was fond of the feeling. Panic was something he knew as a mere consequence, and would be loath to call himself its master. It bound him. In its grasp, he was still, near limp.
“We’ll start with something simple,” the overseer said decisively. “A cut on the arm, perhaps?”
“No objection,” one of the guards said with relish, grabbing roughly for Krist’s arm quicker than he could register the meaning behind the words.
With that, in a flash so quick it felt like nothing, the man had taken the sharp point of a dagger and sliced his arm down to his elbow.
He may have cried out. And had he, it would have been beyond his span of thought then. He had known pain. He had known pain and panic weld together and yet, in the light of the moon and the gaze of the girl who burned ahead of him, it was different.
As Krist writhed, the girl surveyed him with a curious expression on her face, wide-eyed and not unsympathetic, but rather as though she were unsure how to proceed.
They thrust his wrist forward, wound bleeding in arcs down onto the cement. The girl drew closer, closer, her blue eyes kind and soft and sweet despite the fact that she was most definitely about to do something to him.
Krist was not well-versed in the ways of the Grisha, but he knew this much: that Healers could mend certain degrees of wounds, knitting flesh back together and soothing scrapes with merely a touch.
But the girl did not touch him. She stretched out her hand in a beckoning sort of gesture, and Krist gasped sharply as a prickling sensation marched up his arm, leaving smooth skin in its wake where a bleeding gash had been a mere second before. His thrill of relief was shot through with fear- between the sensation itself and the almost bewitched expression on his savior’s face, he was becoming more and more certain that this was something unnatural, beyond even the bounds of the ‘small science’ so hailed by the Grisha.
It itched, even in the absence of her touch. He had neither the gall nor physical ability to scratch at it.
“Interesting,” the authoritative voice mused, cutting over the curious murmurs of the guards and Krist’s own ragged breathing. “Now- let’s try something a bit trickier, this time.”
The man shifted.
“Break his arm.”
Krist’s head went blank.
After the fact, there was no pain. Pain was something only a conscious mind could feel, and his own was too distracted with panic and regret and a whole host of other circumstances to register the feeling of a bone being cracked in half.
A snap. It sounded, it tasted, of gunfire. Spots of black danced across his vision, and he reckoned he may as well have been shot. The keening sound in his ears swelled and rang.
The Grisha girl looked on, her face aglow with something strange and yet shadowed as she watched him. Krist dimly registered that it was eerie, how still she was. .
“You’re hurt,” she murmured. Krist raised a blurred gaze toward her, hardly daring to hope.
She still regarded him with pity, even horror—but something else played out in the facsimile of her face. Even from delirium there was a cruel fascination to be seen behind the fogged film atop her eyes, something forced. He was hurting. She found that positively wild. It was a matter of what it meant to her.
Or so it seemed. There wasn’t much trust to be strewn upon the premonition - Krist's vision ebbed out and for a single pain-blurred moment. In the split-second he saw double, and would have been able to fervently swear that he was being stared down by two Grisha rather than one.
In one instant, just as the bone had been broken, the girl raised her dainty, stained fingertips, and it groaned back into place with a deafening crack. He opened his mouth to scream as a force older than his ancestors pulsed, aligning his innards in one gigantic sweep. His mouth was exhausted of sound, so none came.
He bent over and retched, instead.
How badly this night was going, indeed. Though he had just been healed, he felt nothing but dread- for if a wound like this had been healed, how badly would they continue to break him, without consequence, just for the fun of seeing if he could be pulled back together?
The men in the room gasped as his bones set back into place. Awe-struck, they doubled back, clearly unsure how to proceed.
Krist couldn’t hear much through his agony and panic. Whatever was there was foggy and unfocused.
“Certainly better than last time.”
“Should we keep going?”
“How do we—”
They were cut off by a slight, unassuming giggle from the girl, whose eye had suddenly grown wider than Krist had thought possible, streaks of her hair damp around her face as she brought her hands up. In an instant, the whole shed shuddered. The men cried out. One scrambled for the shed door, pulling and pulling as though he was on fire.
Krist couldn’t feel anything at all.
In the end, it came as an odd sort of sleep. He was conscious, broken, heavy against the cobble floor. His eyes hardly looked in regard as the girl stood, the ragged hem of her skirt frisking past his cheek. He heard not her footsteps, or the reacting words of their company. He heard:
“Wait.”
And they did. Not so much in silence as a charged patience, thrumming with intent. He obeyed too.
The girl rounded to kneel ahead of him. She took two shaking fingers to the underside of his chin, and tilted it to face her. Her eyes darted between his own, vivid in the bleakness of her spell.
Krist moaned. “How much more? How much more? What are you going to do to me now?”
It was only them in a room. A thief and one who had been stolen. He heard the sweep of her skirts as she knelt in the shed with him, her breath smelling of an odd flower he could not place. Purple. Violet, violent purple.
“Shh.” She soothed. “Shh.”
She took his face in her hands. They were wet.
“Just wait.” She said. “Wait.”
He would.
“It’ll be over soon.”
———
Lila
Lukas Randall did not need a reason.
Lila had heard this whispered time and time again, and rolled her eyes at it every single time. Of course Lukas had his reasons. All men had reasons. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that bitter fact.
So then why did it seem like there was no reason for their presence at Whiteriver plaza?
Lila had ensconced herself in the battlements of the veranda above long before, darkness snug around her face and ankles. She watched the scene below, a perfect painting of what Ketterdam was like; a brooding fight in an open area, nothing more than pride and kruge at stake.
Lukas Randall stood in the dead center, a black dart in the center of a bullseye.
Even in solidarity, he was a force. Black hair and sallow cheekbones, skin like olives and eyes that felt treacherous to even look at. He looked and felt every bit the demon they’d named him, too elusive to touch—too real not to be feared.
Nobody who looked at him would be able to tell he was a man who gambled. Because for someone who risks his life with none of it in value, who deals in aces and kings alike—he held no cards himself.
From out of the dark, a woman stepped out, winged by a goon or two - or eight - in some imitation of a phalanx. She was dressed modestly, in a dark coat that tapered at her waist, buttons of silver lacing it- a merch’s coat, a trophy if not a relic from the past. She wore woolen gloves which spiraled up her wrists. A small fortune had been sewn into her appearance, tailored to project such. Modest, not humble.
Her rouged lips bent into something of a cruel smile. “It does not behoove you to arrive at a parley with such a dwindling company. Really—I expected better from you, Caracal.”
Caracal.
Even sans proximity, Lila could practically feel the way Lukas drank it in—with a stolid posture and a clear countenance. The name echoed around the crevices of the circular plaza, the wind naming him and giving birth to the myth. Even so - more than anyone, she knew what the name was worth. Sometimes fear was worth more than any bit of coin.
She pressed herself closer to the cobble, and peered around the battlement.
If Blakesley was dressed in darkness, Lukas had the void. His coffee-brown coat was self-evident even in the bogs of the city night, the leather of his quintessential gloves warping his fingers into something more akin to claws as he raised them in greeting.
“Why, but we are merely conversing- “ He flicked his gaze across the plaza’s perimeter. As he regarded where Lila crouched, his expression revealed itself to be nothing short of bored. Seemingly cocky—but she had seen the manic glint to his eyes as he’d detailed his aim of the night in vague vignettes. He had a plan.
“-Though I do keep my weapons close to my chest.”
Blakesley scoffed. The ex-merchant, even in her days of business prior to an evident fall from grace, had never been one for banter. To another, a pity - to Lila, a relief. “Let them stay warm in your coat then, Ghezen allowing. Or do you run so cold?”
Randall put both hands to the head of his cane. His palms curled over one another, taking their rest atop the head of a crow. Stained dark to tenebrous measures, two ruby eyes glinting from between the slots of his fingers. It shared the same severe forgery of the face of its commissioner. Lukas would always be the jackal, claws poised over prey in every sense of the word.
And the cane itself - lithe and limber, a staff capable of shattering a sorry victim to the bone. Lila had seen it firsthand, and knew what it could do.
Lukas responded with intention. “The spy you tossed to my doorstep would gladly testify.”
Blakesley pursed her lips. She tilted her head in a slow motion, the stretch of her neck freeing itself from her collar. In the skin, clear as the absent day, the stark needlings of ink atop it came into visibility even from afar. A flock of birds done in elementary silhouette, the mark of her creed.
“To never turn away a customer is more egregious than a breach of company policy. It’s an upheaval of common sense.”
“Of course,” Lukas agreed smoothly, his pale face taking on an enigmatic leer, “However- rest assured that the Crow Club does not hesitate to crack down on those who care to leech or overstay their welcome.”
Blakesley had the class to respond with a dual, insincere smile. “Nonetheless. What remedy is necessary to bring this guest back to his family?”
“The Razor Gulls are no family. Your orphan is in my custody.”
And rather satisfied. Currently, he was locked up in a room just above the club, indulging in a coffee and the warmth of the place. He’d taken any liberty the Dregs had offered him with open insistence. The little traitor.
“I’d just as well hear you out as I would drop him back to the ruckus on the West Stave.”
“So you came for a mere statement?” Blakesley snarled. “You waste my time, Caracal. I’ll lose no more.”
Almost instinctively, she pressed a thumb to the silver threading at her wrist. A signal. Lila leaned forward.
Lukas stepped to the side, raised his cane to the air as one would raise their glass in toast - and made no move to flinch as a dart embedded itself squarely in the back of the bird’s head.
They had company, as to be expected.
Slowly, Lukas lowered his cane to the cobble. With two tentative fingers, he pulled the dart from the wood. He examined the feathered needle, twisted it over his knuckles in some expert maneuver. He breathed it in, certain.
He then put the shaft of it to his tongue. “I’d advise your goons to poison the coup de grǎce, on the occasions hereafter.”
Mockery. The cat—the boy— was mocking her. The figures ringing Blakesley began to shift as she did, action before apprehension. “Ensure there won’t be.”
In return, Lukas lured in more pawns to the board. A woman, lean and itching for clean work, fingers already stumbling over one another to the broadblade at her thigh. A gangly boy with a pistol extended. A pale man, sleeves rolled to his forearms. A vivid tattoo, recently pressed upon one of them, seemed to depict a migration pattern. Birds, traveling in a neat line from the crook of his elbow down towards the blade he held.
The Razor Gull spy. Lila strained her vision, confirming what she saw - Lukas had left her in the dark regarding this facet of the plan. She clicked her teeth in disapproval.
Blakesley spat. “You dare take my fodder-”
“A matter of resources. Common sense.” Lukas nodded towards the boy, who stood with inanimate resolve. “Kruge.”
All hell broke loose.
Lukas Randall fought like he was the last man alive. Bold, daring, dark—bestial and hungry. He slammed his cane into the grooves of an unfortunate goon’s collarbones, barely flinched when a hand grabbed at his coat to pull him backward. Lila’s breath hung as she watched him twirl his cane in a wide circle, immediately clearing out half of the assailants in one fell swing.
And the bastard’s face was lit up like a flashlight.
Adrenaline junkie, Lila thought sourly.
Though she could feel it. Four Dregs on nearly triple Gulls was not bound to end well. Lila made to go for Blakesley, already reaching for a silver-tipped handle at her belt.
But the woman had gone.
Damn. And for all of her talk of family -
Lila stood, turning back to the fight, filled with a new, leaden sort of drive - and just in time. She picked out a blind spot near Lukas’ right shoulder, supposedly - the Razor Gull turncoat had something vicious behind his eyes, and a dagger aimed at Randall. Poised for the kill.
Traitor. Traitor, again.
Lila hurried, picking up her feet and darting between the structure, just as another man had found it too.
One, two, three, a leap and a hop and a swing to the side of Lukas’ broad shoulder, working itself right into—
Just as his back was turned, open and perilous, a soft whoosh and a loud crack sounded behind him.
Lila smiled. Her talon had found its mark. The man stumbled to the curb, hardly stirring. Hibou, the Owl, with a blade both broad and intuitive. It had proven so much. The handle stuck straight to the sky from somewhere in his midsection, angled like a spine.
From beneath the wave of diluted guilt she couldn’t seem to shake, Lila wished that she could see Lukas’ face. He looked down to the man and the knife for a drawn out moment, both because he knew what it meant, and because its existence personally offended him in some way. He could turn and look at the shadowy alcove if he wanted. He did not.
One final assailant tried to swing his club underneath the distracted man’s feet, but Lukas was faster, thrusting gloved, bloody knuckles into his gut and laying him into the waste of limestone beneath.
There was little fanfare to the matter. The trio gathered in the plaza’s center, eyes darting to and fro for any trace of Gulls. But only Dregs remained.
The woman and boy took off together, arms locked and weapons stowed, not long after so much was confirmed. Lukas lingered for a moment after them, examining the evidence of the struggle . He breathed in the carnage.
Then he began his departure.
He quickly stopped, however, harsh in stature and sound - his cane fell decisively to the brick walk, reverberating off of the building facets aside him. It was intentional, and Lila knew it. He lifted his face, bearing a severe look of vindication, to the balcony. “Wraith.”
Lila said nothing, let the wind whistling across her frame towards him speak words enough. It was a language of which he had garnered fluency.
He did not repeat himself, because he needed no clarity. Even so: “Don’t pretend you’ve fooled me. You haven’t gotten me once since—hm. Well besides, it’s rather characteristic for you to apparate at just the right moment.”
The jaundiced face of the grand clock facing the Staves confirmed the fact. A split minute past morning’s first hour.
Lila loosened her grasp against the column she held, and allowed herself to meet him in some parody of a fall. She arced gracefully, meeting the air like an old, trusted friend. The leather of her soles made no sound of protest upon her landing.
“You’re welcome ,” she huffed, drifting over to join him, silent as a stray breeze.
The wind blew across his hair, obscuring his view of the blush-haired, spritely girl with limber legs on the stonework.
“I had it in the bag.”
“You did not-” At the look upon his face, one of grim satisfaction, she gasped. “You knew! You knew of the treachery, and you assumed-”
“That you’d cover me in due time? Yes, because you always do. I have faith.”
“Oh, what do you know of faith-” A groan from behind cut her off.
Lukas approached the spy, boots far from soundless. The drop of his lesser leg, aside the cane, was the confirmation of such. With his toe he prodded him at the hip. “This is what happens when you play vigilante.”
“Please, I’m no vigilante-” At the exhalation the man gasped in pain, grasping the hilt at his side. “- This was, I swear, for the sake of my home. I won’t recant it.”
At the conviction, Lukas nodded. “The letters intercepted at the Club’s back door made so much evident.”
To Lila’s shock, the Caracal knelt beside his victim, tilting his head to look him in his eyes. “Where does familial loyalty get you, guttersnipe?” He whispered, venom snarling its way through his teeth. His voice was raspy, drawn from some low point in his throat. Lila shifted her weight to her other foot.
He gleaned no response. He took his finger to the hilt of the knife, feeling for its depth, which was apparently not far. The shot had been a restraining one, no means for a fatality. Lila had made sure of it. “It gains you a sorry pocketful of Kruge and a rather ghastly wound.”
Lukas wrenched Lila’s blade from his flesh in a clean movement, fist tight at the hilt. The man’s screams seemed to refract off the metal, laced with just enough fatigue to keep those in the surrounding houses asleep. He then went abruptly silent.
Lila bit the inside of her lip.
She broke from her stupor as Lukas pressed her blade back into her hands, the silver still slick with blood. Lila cleaned it against the wool of her tunic, and slid it tentatively back into the cuff at her side. “That was harsh.”
“The wound was shallow. He’s just passed out of shock.” Lukas stood. “I have no doubt the Gulls have a Medik half across the harbor by now, regardless of our presence. Loyal to a fault.”
“I can’t help but understand it. You were cruel.”
He spread his arms wide, at the carnage around him, the other plethora of moaning and groaning forms. One of many of their enemies. He tilted his head in cocky, arrogant triumph. He didn’t even have to smile.
“Regardless. We all breathe easier.”
“As if you breathe any different, Lukas.”
“Sure. Whatever demon you want to make me, Wraith.”
Lila felt the winter’s cold more vividly at the apathy. She couldn’t quite convince herself that Lukas Randall did not breathe regardless.
Frantically and without warning, a hand grabbed Lila’s ankle. Swiftly twisting and catching herself, her hands fumbled for her knives, and she could see Lukas’ kohl-black eyes darkening at the boy who, still alive, was trying to paw at her vitals, bring his hand up to her neck and kill her in an instant.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t let another person touch her. She had vowed that years ago. She wouldn’t let them get their hands on her, crawl their fingers up her skin. No. No—she couldn’t she couldn’t get him off get him off of her she c—
Bang. Bang.
Two rapid, trusty gunshots, and the fanfare was unnecessary.
Their little spy exhaled his last, two wounds to his skull.
A low, loud whistle sounded from betwixt the pillars. Lukas did not react.
Lila, coming down from her high, felt that she should at least acknowledge an old friend, even if she had already known she was there.
“Soo—“ the voice drawled, ricocheting off of the stone like a bullet. “I arrive—albeit uninvited— and I see I missed out on all the fun!”
A woman swaggered out along with her swinging lilt of a voice, wearing a dark blue, ornate peacoat, and twirling two still smoking pistols in her deft hands, which she quickly holstered to her hips, not a single movement missing her drumbeat.
“It’s not supposed to be fun.” Lukas hissed, clicking his teeth and making a show of checking his oil-black gloves for stains, of which there never seemed to be.
“Hello, Kym,” Lila cut in.
Kym Ladell, the spirited, mercurial sharpshooter Lukas insisted on keeping around, bounced her heels and stuck out her tongue, evidently trying to get some rise out of the boss. Her wild navy hair, swept in every which direction, fell none too gently over her smooth face, over the tawny eyes and the mole dotting her right cheek.
“Hullo, Lila.” She said, tipping her head. “ Stunning as ever. Darkness does you good— and you—“
She swiveled on Lukas. “Don’t give me any of that-” She waved a hand, somewhere in the chasm between languid and frantic, as she always seemed to be. “- ‘The bullet from the chambers diverts attention’ bullshit. I can attest and prove that the allegations are false.”
They may well have been, Lila wouldn’t have doubted it. The twin pistols slung low on a sash on her hips had not a nick or scratch to be seen, though it wasn’t something Lila could have confirmed. Kym had seldom let even her careful hands grace the metal, for fear of some horrific accident to be had. The bound gold and brass were some equivalent of children to the sharpshooter. Children who, on rather many occasions, had proven themselves to be rather lethal things. So they would take Kym’s word for it.
For all her prodding, though, Lukas remained unfazed, cocking a darkened brow at her.
“Are you done?” he asked dryly.
“Never am- you know that,” she snarked back, the barb eliciting no response save for a grin that was wider still. Lila often wondered at this peculiar dynamic of theirs- where many tiptoed around Lukas, fearful of provoking him, Kym didn’t hesitate, her easy humor never faltering in the face of his famed glare.
“Bother. I sacrificed a good night at the tables -” Kym cleared her throat. “Whatever. I carved my mark tonight.”
“A bullet does travel faster than a blade. Randall, you owe her a bit more credit. She’s overdue.” Lila teased.
“Lila! My hero!” Kym gushed, throwing back her head. Her laughs were bullets—sharp and poignant and lethal. She shot one Lila’s way, and it seemed to sink into her, contagious.
Lukas seemed immune. “I’ll take my leave. I have a last engagement tonight - head back to the club. I left charge with Ladell and one of the goons. Sans Ladell, the equation looks bleak. Confirm that Ketterdam’s nocturnal arson count doesn’t come knocking.”
Without another word of gratitude nor spite, Lukas slipped under the canopy of the next building’s facade. He lifted his cane to tap the pendulum of one of the storefront’s bells, balancing on his good leg with seeming ease. The sound of brass on brass was all he left behind. Lila watched him go, his form bleeding into darkness as though it were his mother—coming home to a loving embrace.
That left Lila and Kym alone at the plaza, the tail ends of their coats blowing in the salty breeze.
Kym turned to her. “I have an idea. Let’s go down to the club and get impossibly drunk, and I shall gamble our last few pennies away.”
“You will not.”
“Oh, I kid. I’ll only risk one. Anything for you, Wraith.”
Lila’s eyes crinkled. She swept some of her hair out of her face, damp from the humid seashore beyond. Part of the name still gave her pause—as though the syllables were not hers, and never would be. Kym, perceptive as always, immediately brightened more to compensate for the sudden shift in mood.
“Shall we?” she asked, holding out her arm.
Lila smiled, one she could manage under her hood. “I suppose I do need the walk.”
“Must beat running over rooftops,” Kym snorted, “I don’t know how you don’t slip and fall.”
“You’d understand if you’d been up there,” Lila says smoothly. “You love a good risk, don’t you? In this case, I think the view is rather worth taking a risk for.”
Kym laughed, long and high and to the heavens. Her laugh was infectious, and Lila did not try to suppress the curve of her lips.
“Alright, Kym. You won me over.”
With a whoop and a laugh, they left the plaza, their minds only half caring who saw them.
Fin.