Maeve followed Liorin over gutter and fence until the alleys gave way to hills, and the hills gave way to the Fellstar Cemetery yawning below the cliff.

She stopped at the edge and crouched. Liorin skidded to a halt beside her, small and bird-quick. The wind certainly tried to push them forward, but she resisted it and squinted. Old Banks' mansion in the crater's heart glowed like it'd swallowed a sun. Every window was bright gold, the glass sweating music and muted laughter. Along the main, winding path to the mansion, a line of umbrellas bobbed to and away from the front door. Just a quick glance at it told her it was immensely crowded tonight.

"Oh. Right," she muttered, remembering. "It's the Saint's Hands' celebration, huh?"

She'd met some of the new recruits over the last months—she'd trained a few, yelled at a few, and threatened to smack several into better habits—and, of course, she knew the new Five Fingers who ran different divisions of the gang across the southern ward. All of them were Fergal's former goons, after all, promoted from goons to executives… which, in Bharncair, meant they got paid slightly more to break shinbones with a clipboard than a hammer.

But since she arrived in this swamp of a city, she could say—quite confidently—that Blightmarch sat in the hands of a good gang.

… She waited for a bolt of lightning to smite her for thinking those words together and laughed.

Hah.

'Good' gang.

Next thing I know, I'll be murdering fishmongers for not giving me fish with all the bones plucked out.

Liorin looked up at her, rain dripping off the edge of his mask. "We crash… the party?"

She sighed. "Yes. I'm sorry. I know you like parties. We can steal cake on the way out."

He perked up immediately. With that, she flipped her umbrella up, whipped it open, and stood up straight. "Grab my leg."

Liorin didn't need telling twice. He clamped both arms around her calf with a seriousness that would've made a priest proud, and immediately after, she walked off the edge.

The drop yanked her stomach somewhere between her throat and her ankles, but wind and rain quickly billowed the umbrella into a black, creaking sail. She leaned, adjusted, and let the storm do the work—-Bharncair's weather loved to show off, so she let it. The two of them glided in a slanted descent towards the mansion's roof like a dandelion seed, and all the while, people on the main path pointed up, their faces turning lantern-pale as they spotted her coming.

She ignored them. There was something more important than them, anyways: the chain at her ankle. Surprisingly, the chain ran straight through the front door she was gliding towards, which meant he was inside.

Of course you are.

For half a breath she wondered what he was doing. Auditing the bar? Setting a curtain on fire to demonstrate a point about fire-proof curtains?

Then she shook her head.

This isn't about him.

Focus.

The umbrella caught a generous slap of wind at the last moment. She rode it all the way to the front porch, boots tapping stone, and as Liorin let go of her so they could both tip-tap their way to the front door, four giant hellhounds sat in their way—except they weren't guarding anything at all. Busy as flies fighting over dung, they were tearing apart their own dignity over what looked like mashed bone treats scattered across the steps.

She raised a brow at the snarling scrum of heads, tails, and sibling betrayal.

Hm.

Security appears… distracted.

The two of them simply walked past the hellhounds and entered the mansion. Past the foyer, the mansion's banquet hall was truly a sight to behold: men and women dancing everywhere, eating everywhere, laughing everywhere. It was almost like a party up in Vharnveil, except the musicians in one corner of the hall were interrogating their instruments for crimes they hadn't committed, while the food tables in the other corner of the hall were definitely not up to par for Vharnveil's food standards. Not that she minded, though. She spotted cake and desserts on one table, which immediately grabbed Liorin's attention.

"... Eat as much as you can," she said, patting Liorin's head as she waded into the crowd. "Before it's too late to eat anymore."

As Liorin nodded happily and bolted towards the cake table like a sugar-starved gremlin, she pressed forward without a pause. She didn't waste a single glance on the banquet hall's glittering chaos or the squabbling merchants shouting about trade deals. If her stolen specimen was anywhere in this madhouse, she knew exactly where it would be—locked away at the very top, where rich men always believed height translated to safety.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

She cut a direct path through the banquet hall, wading through the crowd as though it were waist-high water. Every second step, someone complained when her elbow or the steel ferrule of her umbrella found a ribcage or boot, but she pressed on without apology. One fellow tried to call her 'Exorcist's wife' before she ground the word right back down his throat with a glare so sharp he nearly tripped over the punch bowl.

The grand staircase rose before her, lacquered steps slicked with mud from too many guests. She climbed it, ignoring the spilled drinks and strewn petals underfoot, and once she was above the banquet hall, she continued climbing through twists and turns in the mansion.

At the second floor landing, a boom echoed down a corridor to her right—followed by a crash, another thud, and what sounded suspiciously like someone losing a fight with a wardrobe. She didn't even break stride. Fights in hallways were just something she lived with in Bharncair. If someone wanted to get themselves killed in formalwear, that was their business, so she kept on climbing.

At last she reached the third floor, and then she climbed a tucked-away set of stairs leading up to the attic, where the air thinned into something more perfumed. More private. The stairs ended in the attic garden: a room grand enough to shame a cathedral. Here the roof was all glass panes, rain drumming steady overhead, and moonlight silvered the wide beds and aisles of flowers, herbs, and decorative shrubs that twined through wrought-iron trellises.

And in the center, upon a marble pedestal, rested a single silver flower pot glowing like treasure.

Six figures stood in a neat circle around it, their postures sharpened to menace as they carefully tended to the pot.

Maeve scowled, snapping her umbrella forward like a blade.

"... It really is you, then," she drawled. "Kind of hard to misplace a six-armed man in Bharncair these days with the Repossessors gone."

The six turned with theatrical slowness. Their leader's broad frame and familiar posture gave him away long before the light caught his mask.

Fergal.

The man and his five goons had long since traded in their old stitched-skin Repossessor cloaks for actual fabric—beautiful robes and coats etched with the motif of interlocking hands—but their masks… ah, their masks were another matter. Each of them wore a gas mask molded into the shape of two hands clasping across their mouths and noses, like some grotesque parody of prayer.

It was slightly creepy, but…

Well, I'm not the one to judge.

Not when I'm wearing the lower half of a Raven's mask.

… Even creepier, still, was the way they all stood silently like actors who hated the play.

Maeve kept her umbrella leveled, tip steady, the little silver pot shimmering between her and Fergal, but it didn't seem like the man was going to say anything.

She took that duty upon herself.

"Why?" she asked. "Why steal it from me?"

For a heartbeat, the only answer was the rain shivering down the panes. Then Fergal cocked his chin and improved his sneer by a tasteful degree.

"That's nothing you need to know. And it's nothing personal," he said. "I didn't know the other buyer was you. That explains why the gardeners wanted ten times what I was offering initially. They were terrified of you. Must be the beak."

She ignored the bait. "You're spending the Saint's Hands' coins on yourself?"

"Gods, no." He laughed once, short and humorless. "If it came out of the gang's purse, the flower matters less. This isn't a bauble to pin on the wall. It has meaning only if I paid for all of it, and what I bought, I will hold."

She tightened her grip on the umbrella's handle. He sounded like a man who'd already said his prayers and planned his sins. "So you have no intention of handing it over?"

"I'm grateful to you and the Doctor," he said plainly. "You freed my sister from Lorcawn, and I don't forget debts like that, but this is about pride—mine as the Saint's Hands' boss, and mine as a man. I will not hand this over."

With that, he raised all six arms in a smooth, efficient threat. Steel spider-claws slid open like a bouquet of knives. His Five Fingers mirrored him, standing as his bodyguards.

"I only pick fights I can win," he said. "Do you think you can win this one?"

She thumbed a button on the umbrella's handle. The familiar purr rose through the shaft as gears whirred to life, then the umbrella spun faster and faster until the whole weapon blurred into a shrieking drill.

Wind stirred around her boots, spiraling up into a miniature gale that rattled the glass panes overhead and sent petals trembling on their stems.

"... Well," she said flatly. "So be it."

The six men didn't wait for ceremony. In the blink of an eye they scattered, moving faster than most would credit them capable of, spider-clawed limbs slicing the air. They blurred into positions around her, circling like a pack intent on tearing her apart from every angle.

Maeve planted her boots. Then, without a heartbeat's hesitation, she drove the spinning umbrella down into the floor.

The floor didn't crack so much as it detonated. Glass screamed, soil and stone burst apart, and the whole world gave way as the seven of them dropped together.

The third floor slammed up into her like a drunken friend insisting on a hug. She and the Saint's Hands tore through it, beams snapping, furniture exploding into splinters, and a gout of plaster dust blasting outward as though the mansion itself had sneezed.

Down again.

The second floor didn't fare much better. They burst into a bedroom mid-collapse, umbrella still whirling, and—for one dizzy, ridiculous second—she found herself locking eyes with Gael.

Gael, who was very much in the middle of a sword fight with Old Banks.

Her eyes went wide. His narrowed, then widened too. They stared at each other in the falling haze of wood, dust, and feathers from a gutted pillow, both registering the absurdity at the exact same moment—then her umbrella bit deeper, punching through the floorboards beneath them.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.