Tallah and Vergil found Sil next to a brightly lit cart at the edge of the skating rink. It served a kind of waffle twisted into a cone, filled with a thick white custard and topped with various jams, all of it steaming hot in the crisp cold.


    Even the air around the cart smelled sticky and sweet. Tallah’s teeth hurt as they got closer.


    “You’re having dinner with Mertle tomorrow,” she said by way of greeting. “You’ve sulked long enough.”


    “Am I now? After how she laughed at me, do you think I want to see her?” Sil pretended to pay extra attention to the man serving the confectionery treat. Her ears and cheeks turning red were just due to the biting cold. “Why’s Vergil grinning like an imbecile?”


    “She really thinks you’re upset with her.” Tallah walked up next to her and jabbed an elbow in her ribs and got back a very satisfying flinch. “Two more of what she’s having.” She glared at Sil. “Don’t do that to her. She thinks she’s hurt your feelings.”


    Sil carefully bit into her confection and still managed to get jam down her chin. “What time do I need to show up?”


    “Third bell. No knife-ears. I’ll help you sneak out of the Meadow.”


    Tallah took the two cones the vendor offered and absent-mindedly handed one to Vergil. He accepted sheepishly, shaking out of the stupor he’d been in since Tummy had patted him on the back before they left the shop.


    “Thank you. Why?” he asked.


    Is he broken?’ Or simply dumb? Bianca wondered.


    Frightened stiff more like, Christina said.


    Of us?


    Tallah, be nicer to him. He’s impressed Tummy. You couldn’t.


    “Because it’s yummy,” Tallah replied, talking slowly. She ignored her companion ghosts. There was a lull in the melody singing out to her so they got chatty.


    Sil snickered. “If you won’t have it, I have room for seconds.”


    “Why are you being nice to me?” He tried again, walking quickly behind them as they made their way through the jostle of bodies.


    Skating was a popular past time in wintertime Valen and the crowd swelled and surged towards the rink. Evening rolled in with the conspicuous calm of a planning storm.


    “You’d prefer I be mean to you?” Tallah asked the boy. “Fine then. Give me back the cone.”


    Vergil almost complied. He had the confection held out before catching on.


    “You’re making fun of me.”


    “I am.”


    “Why do you act like this? One moment you threaten that my head will explode. The next… pastries? New armour and weapons? Someone to train me? Why?” He waved the confection around, almost spilling jam on himself.


    Tallah caught his arm and steadied him before he made a mess of the thing. Sil couldn’t contain herself and laughed openly even as she struggled not to slip on the black ice. There was salt underfoot but it hadn’t made it any less treacherous.


    “Oh my, Tianna, you’re confusing the boy,” Sil said, wiping her eyes with a glove, still chuckling.


    “Am I? Oh dear. How mean of me.” Tallah cupped Vergil’s cheek with a palm and talked softly, pouting just so. “I’m sorry, darling. I promise I won’t do it any more.”


    Vergil drew back so abruptly that she half-expected his skin to leave his bones. She was enjoying the routine a bit too much though.


    “For now we’re in Valen and it’s safe. When we’ll head off, I won’t be able to care for you at every turn.” Tallah explained in Tianna’s sing song voice, leading their small group towards the Enginarium Quarter. “Thus, I got you armour and weapons from someone that does actually good work here. Second, it’s getting late and we’ll likely go without dinner tonight. So I got you the same snack we’re having. It would be rude otherwise.” She finished eating and licked her fingers. “I can’t understand what part confuses you.”


    “You are not a servant, Vergil, or a slave,” Sil put in. “We paid a small fortune to get you back on your feet, but we don’t expect anything in return from you. We leashed you because we have concerns about our own safety not because we want you to serve us. And it’s certainly not our goal to mistreat you.”


    “I can’t get what I want out of you, yet, and I can’t kill you for it. May as well be civil.” She locked her elbow onto his and almost dragged him forward, with Sil trailing behind.


    “That’s what worries me. You’re civil because you can’t kill me. How is that normal?”


    It began snowing again while they ascended the stairs up onto the elevated Enginarium grounds, heading for the Alchemists’ Quarter. A pungent stench of chemical compounds and volatile oils struck them as they emerged out of the stairwell. Even with the sparse snowfall, the air was oily and thick with gagging wisps of smoke, not helped in the least by the sector’s reliance on old-fashioned gas lamps for artificial light. A greenish fog covered the dense, misshapen architecture of the place, with monstrous heads of masonry gargoyles peeking out through the airborne soup.


    Something exploded in the distance as they made their way through the small, cramped alleyways, down and up flights of stairs that made no sense to anyone not already familiar with the place. Distant cheers erupted as the echoes of the detonation died out.


    Someone cursed loudly nearby, muted echoes bouncing around the alleys.


    “How can you eat in this?” Sil had taken note of Vergil taking small bites out of his now stone-cold pastry. “You are the slowest eater I’ve ever seen. Watching you gnaw at that thing in this stink is turning my stomach.”


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    “What do you mean?” He finally finished and even licked his fingers for any traces of runaway jam.


    “Did you lose your sense of smell in the caves?”


    Vergil sniffed at the air and made a sound with his mouth as if he were tasting it. He shrugged at her, unimpressed.


    “It’s not that bad. Oily, maybe, but I used to work and eat in worse on the Gloria. This is actually pretty pleasant by my reckoning.”


    They passed narrow slits of light scratching the gloom. Workshops had their gates open and inviting with the sound of industry within. Apprentices and novices were being sent out into the night laden with materials on unknowable errands.


    Despite the sparse foot traffic and the poor light, there was energy in the air, laced into the fumes, crackling with potential. The Quarter offered a strange kind of privacy made up of tight streets, cacophonous echoes, and hurrying ghosts.


    If Tallah learned that someone, somewhere in there, was melting down diamonds, she wouldn’t have been surprised. The feel of the night made anything seem possible.


    Tianna was no longer useful in there, and Vergil’s fidgeting started getting on her nerves. She released him from her arm with a shove and pulled two steps ahead, guiding their progress.


    “Do you think we’re still being followed?” Sil asked as they stopped by an overlooking balcony that gazed into the maze of buildings some distance further down. Warm forge lights shone through the murky wet fog, waxing and waning as the miasmas travelled.


    The entire place sloped downward towards Valen’s wall, built to dump its excesses outside the city.


    “Someone following us in this soup would be nipping at our arses to keep up.”


    Sil was unconvinced. She looked over her shoulder and fretted, restless like a spooked corallin.


    “They were very keen on us in the Agora. That Egia could follow us easily enough.”


    “She was not in the Agora. We are watching for her.” Christina took over Tallah’s voice and spoke with infuriating disdain. “You are safe, hen. Leave the worrying to your betters.”


    Tallah reeled in and muzzled her wilful ghost. Banging and clanking, curses in at least three different languages, and the sounds of detonating apparatus made up the voice of the Quarter. Their discussion drowned in the background noise.


    Truth of the matter was, in spite of Christina’s boasts, that it would be hard to catch any whiff of someone trailing them. A mugger wouldn’t be much of an issue but it’d leave a mess behind. Someone tracking them with no intention of revealing themselves?


    Hairs on the back of her neck prickled, but that was just Sil’s whining getting on her nerves too.


    “Safe from what?” Vergil asked, echoing Sil’s worry as if it mattered to him. It was too long and too tedious of a story to get into for his curiosity’s sake.


    Tallah walked on ahead. “I think we’re coming up on the church. Or we should be.”


    Ahead, two flights of stairs down, they reached an open square. The blind light of the lamps illuminated the hazy outline of The Church of Old Hope, its crooked sharp roof and bent bell-tower peeking out through the murk. Handling highly-explosive compounds mixed well with faith in a higher protective power. Hymns to Cassandra could be heard echoing from within. Far as Tallah knew, Cassandra had never acknowledged the Old Hope as a cult to herself.


    They headed behind the building to find a flight of narrow steps going down at a steep angle.


    “Was that belfry always this bent out of shape?” Sil asked Tallah, looking up at the sloping outline of the building.


    “I think that was me.” She couldn’t help but feel smug. “They chased me over this way last time and I collapsed it on top of a couple of them. Nothing gets rebuilt straight around here.”


    “Who’s they?” Vergil asked.


    “The Storm Bellends,” Tallah answered, almost dismissively.


    “What’s a storm bellend?” Vergil couldn’t take a cue to shut up if it hit him over the head. Tallah considered actually hitting him.


    “The Storm Guard, Vergil. Tallah’s just being affectionate,” Sil replied in her stead.


    “The Storm Guard? From the Fortress?!”


    “What are you, an echo?” Tallah asked, annoyed. “Yes, those guys. We don’t get along.”


    Vergil stopped dead in his tracks, hands on the side rails.


    “But… they’re the law of the Empire.”


    “Yes, yes, quite so.”


    “You’re a villain?” He even managed to sound incredulous.


    “Be honest, Vergil. Does that even surprise you?” She turned around and gave him an encouraging smile, complete with a mischievous tilt of the head and doe-eyed stare. He flinched.


    Sil groaned.


    “Don’t scare him, Tallah. He’s spooked enough of you. We’re not villains, Vergil.” She gave it a little more honest consideration. “All right, she is, but not how you’d imagine.”


    That reassured him even less. He had the look as if ready to bolt back up the stairs and into the night. It was rather endearing.


    “But the Storm Guard are keepers of the peace. At the Corps they were extremely proud that they had members serving, even right here in Valen.”


    “Yes, yes, they’re all very valiant and honourable and whatever else makes you feel good and tingly,” Tallah said, with as much venom as she could be bothered to show. “Don’t be naive.”


    “Can we please move on from the subject.” Sil glances over her shoulder again. “I feel like we’re inviting attention.”


    “You encouraged him. You deal with it.”


    Something, somewhere, exploded. It lit up the hazy darkness for a fragment of a moment and the boom shook the ground. Tallah waited for the echoes to dampen before continuing to descend to her destination.


    Behind, Sil tried to reassure the boy.


    “We used to be in the Storm Guard, Vergil. There are a lot of things the Guard does that aren’t noble, or honourable, or even moral.”


    Tallah felt Vergil’s gaze on the back of her neck as he and the healer hurried to catch up.


    “But she’s so young,” he said in what he thought was a conspiratorial whisper. “You’re an aelir, but I didn’t think the Guard took in people as young as her.”


    Tallah burst out laughing, followed immediately by Sil.


    “I love him,” the healer said. “He’s like a puppy, all innocent, wide eyed, and dumb as a brick. He makes me want to feed him treats.”


    “I wonder if we were also that dumb at his age?” Tallah asked, elbowing Sil in the side.


    “You’re not that much older than me,” Vergil protested. “They kept going on about the Guard when I was in basic training, like it was the highest calling we could aspire to. I thought they were all grizzled veterans and wise scholars.”


    Sil blew into her hands for warmth as they finally reached the bottom and Tallah checked their bearings again. They went down another tight, sinewy alley, no different from the many others they’d followed. If the two following her noticed they had gone in circles at least twice, they didn’t mention it.


    “We’re much older than you, Vergil,” Sil continued “And we’re not good people, if I’m perfectly honest, but neither are those in the Storm Guard. The difference between us is that we’ve stopped pretending.”