When Scarlett had outed her real name at the stone-table meeting, Thea had still been questioning how anyone could be so foolish—and besides, this trainee officer had been assigned to protect her in secret, yet had gone and run her own Advancement Ritual while on the job.
But thinking it over afterward, she realized with a sting that she herself had been the fool.
Miss Scarlett was a frank and forthright sort, one who carried out her work and her superiors' orders to the letter and never doubted them.
The precinct had ordered her to protect Thea through the Advancement Ritual, so she would throw a hundred and twenty percent of her strength into doing exactly that.
Which meant she'd choose to follow right on Thea's heels, stepping into the ritual alongside her.
Scarlett's behavior at the stone table hadn't been true foolishness. She couldn't be sure whether Thea was among the participants, so she'd chosen to blow her own cover—letting Thea find her directly. She'd even drawn a cross over her chest, the Church's mark, telling Thea her purpose: I've come to protect you.
Then, introducing her codename: she'd already learned during her last investigation that Thea excelled at compounding herbal mixtures, so she'd picked the plant night iris to tell her the time they'd rendezvous.
The signals were crude and clumsy, reeking of brute earnestness. She'd practically shouted, All eyes on me, look at me, look at me.
If a seasoned detective had been present, he'd have spotted it in a heartbeat...
But then again, Miss Scarlett did have a distinctive style and forceful way of acting—like a husky hidden in a pack of wolves, picked out at a single glance.
Thea recalled that of the seven common paths, three—Alchemy, Mercy's Blade, and Seer—were forbidden to spread within Avengarde. So the only paths Scarlett could possibly advance along were the Holy Grail, the King, the Forge-Hammer, and Oak in the Earth.
And the Suppression Bureau, as a body under the royally direct Grand Constabulary, fit the King's-path authorities precisely: order, sovereignty, stability, strength, leadership, control...
Which meant the role Scarlett could play in this ritual was, perhaps, very much worth looking forward to.
About once an hour, a priest would come through the streets scattering holy salt, then seek out the homeless souls tucked into alleys and doorways to give them whatever healing they needed.
Thirty minutes after that came the patrolling templar-knights — power-armored giants standing nearly 3 meters tall, the steam furnaces strapped to their backs belching thick white smoke into the fog.
When these walking steam-cans rounded onto Birchwood Street again, the lead knight sounded a warning whistle.
One of them thudded up to the front of the inn, his voice coming out unexpectedly gentle. "Miss, we're under martial law at present. Please don't wander the streets. Bishop Canthus at the Cathedral has already begun purifying the plague — order should be restored within a fortnight."
"Hello, Sir Knight. Forgive me for being a bother, but I'm truly worried about my sister. I just arrived by coach from Silverkeep, and before I could even step down, they announced a quarantine on White Oak Street—"
Thea gazed up at the knight with brimming eyes, a small catch in her voice.
"You came all the way from Silverkeep? It's far too dangerous here. The Silverkeep papers must have reported the situation — you shouldn't have risked the journey."
"I know, but my sister lives here. I have to know how she is. She's at No. 405, White Oak Street... she's the only family I have left."
The girl wiped at her eyes, and the templar-knight found himself genuinely moved.
"If you'd like, I can carry a message to her. White Oak Street happens to fall along my patrol route."
"No — no, that's far too much trouble. But if it isn't out of your way, perhaps you could leave a letter at her door? Just stick it to the mailbox..."
Thea produced a letter she'd written well in advance, an iris blossom tucked beneath the fold.
The knight took the envelope with exaggerated care. A panel of armor along his flank hissed open to reveal a mobile medical station, and the letter was nestled in among bandages and an assortment of small medicines.
He pressed a gauntleted hand to his chest. "I'll deliver your heart's words faithfully. But for now, please go home. The streets are dangerous — and not only from the sickness. Yesterday a gang of underworld men came up from the docks into North Harbor, and they still haven't been found."
"Underworld men?" Thea gasped, putting on a frightened face. "They're still loose out there?"
To the knight's eyes she looked like a poor thing scared half out of her wits. He softened his tone. "We believe they're thugs of the Black Fire Gang — seem to be hunting someone. Some of them are said to wield wicked witchcraft, but the constabulary already has a lead on them, so there's no need to worry overmuch."
In the room upstairs.
Vera had watched Thea's entire performance through the window, and she couldn't help marveling at the acting. The whiplash between the two faces was simply too much! A moment ago Thea had been all bared edges, aggressive enough that Vera had felt like a lamb dropped into a wolf pack.
And then she goes downstairs and turns into a poor, weak, helpless little girl?
Creeak—
Thea pushed the door open, and Vera was already griping. "You should be doing stage theater instead of all this Transcendent business..."
"Sometimes I think so too." Thea's eyes curved into a smile. She set a bowl of goat's milk down at the edge of the table, dipped a finger in to feed little Vera in the bed, and brushed the infant's cheek along the way.
Watching it made Vera oddly uncomfortable, and she hurried to change the subject. "So how's your plan coming along?"
"The letter's gone out. Barring surprises, Scarlett should reach us by tomorrow morning. And I happened to learn something rather interesting in the meantime."
"Could you please stop touching that baby..."
Vera felt her face going hot for reasons she couldn't name.
"This is my adorable little niece. I'm Sophia Salvia, Elvira's elder kinswoman. I have to protect her — not merely because the task requires it, but out of basic morality and conscience. Isn't that right, big sis-ter?"
"...Whatever makes you happy."
"All right, enough idle talk. The knight on patrol just told me a band of Black Fire men have been working their way up from the docks into North Harbor since yesterday — looking for someone. You understand what that means, don't you?"
Yesterday. The docks to North Harbor. Looking for someone.
Vera caught Thea's meaning at once — these were almost certainly the people tracking the two of them.
"The Black Fire Gang? Are they easy to handle?"
Vera knew nothing whatsoever about underworld factions.
Thea said, "More than a decade ago they were one great syndicate, powerful enough to spread across all four districts of Nuremport. Then the constabulary made a point of breaking them, and they splintered into several pieces."
After the Black Fire Gang fractured, its remnants became the "Justice Gang," the "Serpent Party," and the Lawrence Security Company.
The Justice Gang held North Harbor — the Marlin Tavern, which fenced Thea's goods, was a Justice Gang concern.
The Serpent Party operated in Great Harbor, but it wasn't a single gang so much as a loose alliance of underground crews stitched together. Quickhand Pete, the mark on Thea's collection list, was one of the Serpent Party's bosses.
The Lawrence Security Company, by contrast, had gone fully legitimate, providing protection to the upper crust across the Clocktower, King's, and Great Harbor districts.
"As for dealing with them — it's a touch thorny. I have rituals, but they take far too long; I can cook up poisons too, but I'd need the materials. We'll wait for Scarlett. The moment she arrives, I'd put our odds at seventy percent."
"And me?"
"What can you do?"
"Uh... extract colchicine, synthesize cyanide?" Vera scratched her head. Her skill tree ran much the same as Thea's — all the underhanded-cold-bastard line of work. And same as Thea, she was short on materials. "Oh, and I know a few rituals. Soundless Step, Detect Hostility, Shared Senses. Those three I can find the materials for right now."
"What do they do?" Thea asked.
"Soundless Step muffles noise. Detect Hostility is exactly what it sounds like. Shared Senses links the five senses across two to six people. It needs a fair bit of material, but I can find substitutes."
"Tell me the specifics," Thea said, curious.
"Silver, gold — or just paper notes will do. Fifty grams of gold sustains it for an hour. I've got seventy-some gold pounds on me."
The Avengarde gold pound was anchored to gold, one pound to four grams, with minor fluctuations that never amounted to much. Thea still had thirty-some gold pounds herself; that would keep Shared Senses running for eight hours.
These rituals had real promise. They could genuinely prove useful when the moment came.
The lingering question was this: why would a homegrown gang, rooted in its own soil, chase two foreign stowaways with such relentless determination?
The sky had gone dark, and a thin mist drifted through the streets of North Harbor.
Two hours after Thea's iris-marked envelope was delivered to the door of No. 405, White Oak Street, Scarlett came stumbling out of the underbrush — wrapped in a black greatcoat, leaves clinging to every inch of her.
She was in a sorry state. Her left arm was slashed, and beneath the torn coat and her blue-and-white uniform a deep gash welled red. Her trousers were caked with mud and grass; her knees were scraped raw and bleeding freely.
"Miss Sorelle isn't here? This is the mark she left? No good — how did they catch up to me..."
Scarlett drew a deep breath and swept her eyes around. She spotted the iris-marked letter on the mailbox, turned it over, and there was Sorelle's name.
She didn't have time for anything else. She snatched up the letter and bolted.
And behind her, three hunters followed close — short swords in hand, pistols at their belts.
"Couldn't find her?"
"Damn it, she gave us the slip again!"
"We only nabbed the one. What do we do now? Boss Grew.”
The three of them turned in unison toward the darkness behind them, where Grew Lawrence — the nearly forty-year-old deputy chief of the Black Fire Gang, known as "the Runt" — stepped out, drawing on his cigarette one pull after another.
Grew Lawrence cast a sidelong glance ahead, utterly unbothered. "So we lost this one. Aren't there still two more? Antonio's cult doesn't want only the single sacrifice."
The three shifted awkwardly. "Boss, not to complain, but those cultists said this morning all we had to do was tie up the two women at the inn and we'd be done. Then halfway through they send us chasing a constable from the Nuremport constabulary. The constabulary's hounds are no joke!"
"What's there to be afraid of? As long as the Great Plague lasts even one more day, we will not die. Those cultists are digging their own graves trying to spread it, sure — but for us it's honestly no bad thing. We close out these jobs, we take a ship straight to the Empire."
"That's all well and good, but this Antonio character wants us to kill an infant... I— we don't quite have the stomach for it... And I hear both those women are witches who work real witchcraft..."
"Grown a conscience all of a sudden?" Grew sneered.
"The moment they came off the boat, that old crow Antonio laid a curse on the child — turned it into a carrier for the Foul Blood."
"By now those two are probably sick past saving anyway. Killing them might even be a mercy."
The three blanched. Mighty witchcraft was half truth and half rumor — but the Foul Blood was real, visible to the eye, close enough to touch.
That was one thing you truly did not want to lay a hand on!
They scrambled. "Can't the witches just lift the curse?"
"Lift it?" Grew exhaled a ring of smoke. "Barring surprises, that child burns to death of fever tonight — nobody can save it but a Transcendent of the Holy Grail path. Or do you figure two stowaways can talk a Church priest into wasting Blood of the Grail or candlelight on some nameless, kinless infant?"
"Could— could we maybe just not go..." The three of them were trembling.
Only the Church possessed the means to suppress the Foul Blood's spread and treat the early stages of infection.
Each of them had seen the Church's priests slice open a finger and splash the bloody water over corpses to drive out the pestilence — or kindle a holy candle so that under its light black vapor came hissing up out of the ground.
But they were gang men. Once infected, with no Church aid to be had, all they could do was wait to die.
Grew blew out a smoke ring and smiled with narrowed eyes. "Too late for second thoughts."
"Those two sorceresses have likely caught the Foul Blood themselves by now — can't even save their own skins. From infection to onset, the Foul Blood takes only twenty-four hours."
"We'll head over tomorrow at noon. Collect their corpses."