At the end of the day, Ash and I met up in the Silver Market by a Dagger Isles spice stall to exchange notes on our progress towards tracking down his whereabouts. After scanning the open-air market suspiciously, Ash suggested, “Let’s get out of here.”

Not until we were several streets out of earshot of any merchants did he speak again. To my surprise, he didn’t interrogate me further about the sword or the mysterious nobleman whom he wasn’t allowed to sacrifice to That Which Hungers. Instead, he turned out to be preoccupied with an entirely different affair.

“Isha, what do you know of the Hive’s activities at the Docks?”

“It’s been trying to push the Red Sashes and Lampblacks out of the district,” I replied warily, uncertain where he was going with this.

“That’s what I’ve gathered as well.”

“How?” I asked sharply.

“My sister, of course. How do you think? According to her, the Hive has been acquiring berthing capacity in the east end of the Docks, at an accelerated pace in the past month. She thinks they’re planning something and warned us to avoid that area.” He snorted at the very idea. “Come on, let’s find out what they’re up to.”

“Why the sudden interest?” I probed cautiously. I knew why I cared about the Hive’s activities in the district, but I couldn’t begin to fathom why they mattered to Ash. After all, despite all his daydreaming, he didn’t own a leviathan hunter – or anything that needed berthing, for that matter. On top of that, we weren’t hawkers, who required turf to sell our products, or smugglers, who needed to offload illegal goods.

“Because that’s where leviathan blood comes in,” he explained impatiently, as if it were patently obvious. “Leviathan blood is the lifeblood of the Imperium. If one were to interrupt the supply….” He trailed off dreamily.

I shuddered, imagining a gruesome death at the hands, so to speak, of horrors from the deathlands. “Are you feeling quite all right? You’ve been acting, well, different ever since – ” I searched my memories to figure out when it had begun – “ever since the spa.”

Ever since the trauma of coming into direct contact with tendrils of the Golden Stag triggered a collapse. I was sure that his ritual up in the cupola of our ill-gotten casino hadn’t helped his mental stability either.

In his normal crisp tone, Ash informed me, “I’m fine, Isha. But we need to think about our next score. After all, Irimina is going to have her hands full with the casino for a while, so it’s uncertain that we can count on her. We need to be proactive about tracking down potential jobs. It’s crucial to maintain a steady cash flow….”

And that was how we wound up in a squat waterfront tavern that was seedy even by Docks standards. Sullen dockers coated in tattoos nursed their ale and shot suspicious glares at us when we walked in, as if weighing whether to assault us immediately and without cause, or wait until they could claim plausible deniability. Predictably, they warmed up to us as soon as we bought them a round of drinks. Once they were sufficiently drunk, we orchestrated an impromptu chorale of work-songs and, under cover of an a cappella performance of “What Can You Do with a Drunken Sailor?” (quite a lot, apparently), we chatted with them about the Docks. The western end, we learned, focused primarily on repairs, while the eastern end handled cargo of all sorts, including Ash’s “lifeblood of the Imperium.” As Tess had reported, the Hive had been buying up berthing capacity piecemeal so it wouldn’t be obvious, and by now controlled almost enough space to take in a leviathan hunter.

“I guess the Hive wants to monopolize berthing in order to raise rates,” concluded Ash, approving and envious at the same time.

Further investigation revealed that the Hive funneled all its activities through a single proxy, one merchant named Skannon Vale.

He sounded like a promising target – if we wanted to tangle with the Hive even more, that was.

Back in the railcar, we found Faith napping in her compartment, curled up on her side facing the wall. Putting a finger to his lips, Ash tiptoed up to her, silently lifted her gauzy bed curtains – and whacked her on the back of the head.

Faith jolted upright, saw that it was us, and immediately lay back down.

“That was most effective witch meditation,” Ash smirked.

In response, she only yawned widely and stretched luxuriously. “Finally, my young novitiate, you are beginning to comprehend the grand mysteries of witchiness!”

While they bantered, I slipped over to her desk and perched on it, swinging my legs and taking an inventory of her belongings. Faith’s green eyes slanted in my direction.

“Isha dear, do you mind straightening my pens while you’re perusing my personal possessions?”

I gave her an injured look and left the pens where they lay.

Fidgeting, Ash told her, “We haven’t heard from Irimina in a while. I know she’s been busy with the casino, but I don’t like going so long between scores. You’re the closest to her. Can you go have tea with her and….” He trailed off meaningfully.

Faith half rose, eyes wide with betrayal. One hand clutched dramatically at her chest. “Why, Ash, the heart of my relationship with Irimina is not a crass, commercial one! I’m devastated, desolated, disconsolate that you’d even suggest it!”

Ash waited a moment to see if she planned to test out any more alliterations. “Well,” he proposed dubiously, “my mother has hinted that she might want to hire us. She certainly won’t be as generous as Irimina though….” He shook his head at the avarice of the Slane family. “Or I guess there’s Nyryx. We can see if she has any enemies she wants removed and sold back, like last time….”

I suppressed a shudder, remembering those screams and the terrible silence that followed. “No.”

“That leaves only our back-up plan, then,” Ash said, nodding at me. “Soliciting someone to hire us to assassinate Skannon Vale.”

Lounging on her pillows, Faith recommended to her bed curtains, “I suggest putting out flyers. ‘For a good time, send enemies to – ’”

“How about Bazso or Mylera?” I asked quickly, cutting her off before she invented any crazy names for our crew. “I’m sure we can convince one or both of them to hire us to deal with the Docks.”

“Why, Isha, are you implying that the nature of your relationship with Bazso Baz is a transactional one?” I’d never known it was possible for a voice to slither, but Faith, as always, failed to disappoint.

Even when I wanted to be disappointed.

Especially then, perhaps.

Ash raised his own voice to drown her out. “I don’t know Mylera, but I’m on good terms with Bazso.”

“Ash! Ash!” Faith sounded appalled and delighted at the same time. “Are you condoning this? Are you actually going to encourage her – ”

Curtly, I said, “Bazso it is, then.”

After all, I took his coin already – and had done so, in fact, from the very beginning.

After confronting Mylera Klev that first time, surviving the encounter, and accepting both her insult and her slugs, I slipped down the back stairs of the Red Sash Sword Academy and out a side gate, automatically registering the urchins who loitered on the edge of a small park. Placing a hand on Grandfather’s hilt to deter any precocious pickpockets, I took what I thought might be a shortcut back to Madame Bell’s boardinghouse but instead turned out to be an odyssey through a maze of narrow alleyways that all looked exactly the same. At last, I washed up at the foot of an ancient tower silhouetted against the bright white moon. Squinting up at its crumbling masonry, which was only mostly obscured by shadows, I could just make out figures in the upper windows, far enough into the rooms that they didn’t provide easy targets for snipers. I wondered who those people might be, and what they used the tower for.

“Jumping ship to the Crows already?” asked a soft voice from the darkness, partly teasing, partly testing.

I jumped just the tiniest bit, before lowering my head deliberately to face my first employer. All I could make out in the late-afternoon darkness was his general shape – the outline of his overcoat, a stray gleam from the silk of his hat.

“Is that what they call themselves?” I asked coolly, as if the answer made no difference whatsoever.

The head of the Lampblacks detached himself from the shadows, approached me, and held out an arm. It took a moment for me to realize that he meant for me to take it.

It took another moment for me to decide to do so.

Resting my hand on it lightly, haughtily, I let him lead me away from the tower and back into the warren of alleys.

“You met with Mylera.”

It was a statement, not a question. I did vaguely remember a couple of urchins pelting off when I passed. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, I supposed, for a gang leader to plant spies around his rival’s headquarters.

“Yes,” I agreed, deliberately playing obtuse. “I did.”

His voice betrayed a twinge of impatience. “And what happened?”

“I took her slugs – the same amount you paid me – to spy on you for her.”

He stopped dead in the alley, his muscles going hard as steel beneath my fingers. “You did what?” he demanded. “You work for her now? And you dare tell me this?”

With an effort, I left my hand where it was, curled gently around his arm. “Wouldn’t you prefer to hear it from me than from someone else?” I inquired flippantly. Then, before he could knife me, I adopted an offended attitude. “Of course not. I work for you.” I took a gamble. “Because you’ll pay me more.”

I could feel the very instant he chose to be amused instead of angry. “Will I?” he asked ironically, reminding me so much of him that a wave of homesickness struck me. “Then let me propose that we discuss the question of your wages over dinner.”

“Of course,” I replied smoothly. “It would be my pleasure to treat you. With Mylera Klev’s money.”

Throwing back his head so his hat tumbled off, he roared with laughter. “I like you, Glass,” he proclaimed, as he had in the tavern.

The moonlight fell upon his face, and in it I read respect and liking – and perhaps something more. In return, I felt a tug of something in myself that might have been more than…interest of a transactional nature, as Faith would have put it.

He didn’t invite me to his townhouse that night, nor did I ask him to return to the boardinghouse with me, but it didn’t take long before I became a regular at his booth for reasons beyond pure commerce.

Speaking of matters of commerce, our crew entered the Leaky Bucket with considerable fanfare, thanks entirely to Faith, who never met a scoundrel she didn’t want to bait. While she waved cheekily at Mardin and flounced over to kiss Sawbones on the cheek and winked at grizzled old Lampblacks who, to their own astonishment, found themselves blushing and removing their hats, Ash and I headed for Bazso’s booth.

“We brought gifts!” Ash announced almost merrily, setting a basket on the table.

Faith materialized beside us. “Great, glorious, grandiferous gifts!” She paused, put a finger to her cheek, and tipped her head. “Oh, wait, that’s not a real word.”

“You brought gifts?” asked Bazso, looking a little bemused but playing along. “Please, have a seat, all of you. How are you doing?”

Ash slid onto the bench opposite him, bumped along by Faith and her giant skirt. Smoothing down my own, much-less-exuberant dress, I sat down demurely next to Bazso.

From the basket, Ash produced a bottle of expensive whiskey and a bundle of hot Tycherosi pastries. “We’ve been doing very well,” he chattered rapid-fire (I would say so, if he dared brave Mardin’s corkage fee). “Things have been busy lately, but we do have an opening in our schedule.”

Parsing that hint correctly, Bazso raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking if I have someone I want you to kill?”

“That’s a very blunt way of putting it,” gasped Ash, looking taken aback.

“I’m a blunt man. But let me think about it.” Leaning back and staring off into the distance for a few minutes, Bazso considered and rejected several options as either “handled” or “not worth your time.”

In a low voice, too low for Pickett to hear from her booth, I reported, “We do have information about the Docks.”

Ash rapidly followed up with: “What operations do you have there?”

Bazso gave him a hard stare, reminding him that he wasn’t a Lampblack and that, even if he were, information about Lampblack business was parceled out on a need-to-know basis. When Ash looked sufficiently quelled, Bazso observed, “The Hive will take over the entire Docks. It’s like the tide. No one knows where it comes from.”

“From one point,” I murmured.

Bazso stiffened.

But before he could speak, Faith happily launched into a fantastical tale of valiant knights stemming a tidal wave of enemies through resolution and steadfastness of purpose alone.

“There are three of you. Against the Hive.” Bazso’s face was impossible to read.

“And I volunteer two of us!” Faith assured him.

Bazso turned to me. “Tell me about the one point.”

“His name is Skannon Vale,” I said, still speaking quietly so no one else (i.e. Pickett) could hear. “If we remove him, we can…redistribute the Hive’s assets.”

Ash, with all the authority of his insider information, put in, “At the very least, we can disrupt and delay them. After all, no one person is in charge. I’m sure that as a gang member yourself, you know how it is – when there’s an entire committee squabbling over decisions – ”

In an icy voice, Bazso cut him off. “I am in charge. Things work differently here.”

That silenced Ash – and the rest of the Lampblacks around us. Pickett looked as if she’d kill me for foiling her eavesdropping attempts. One day, warned her scowl, one day, girl, you – or one of your friends – will go too far. And then –

After a long, tense moment during which none of us dared breathe or twitch (except for Faith, who was mouthing poetry to herself), Bazso finally relaxed. Picking up the conversation as if the dominance display never happened, he agreed amiably, “It would be good to remove this individual – this Skannon Vale – if you keep both my and your names away. I can offer you six coin.”

“Well,” rambled Ash, sounding artless but observing him closely, “it would be nice to pick up a small amount of turf. After all, we would like to work with those around us….”

From Bazso’s expression, I got the distinct impression that he did not enjoy the bargaining game as much as Irimina. “What do you want?” he asked point blank.

Ash looked offended by the direct approach but cut to the chase. “A warehouse would be nice. I do have quite a bit of stuff to store – ” I suppressed a look of surprise, but not quite enough to fool Bazso – “and even though it’s not particularly nice or valuable, a little space would go a long way….” He signed at me, Help me out here, crewmate.

Even though I had no idea why we wanted a warehouse anywhere, much less all the way across the city from our railcar, I dutifully stepped in. “How about that warehouse you used to control near Saltford’s?” I suggested.

Bazso looked stunned – but not angered – by my participation in Ash’s mad scheme. “I need my warehouses, Isha, for my stuff!”

Faith, who’d been staring off into space for the past few minutes, snapped back into the present long enough to say silkily, “If I were in the habit of misplacing my warehouses, I would rather find all but one than none at all.”

Shooting me an annoyed you-will-have-words-with-your-associate-later look, Bazso thought the matter over and finally conceded, “I can pay you six coin plus the warehouse if you pin the murder on Mylera.”

Almost before he finished speaking, I was signaling frantically for Ash to reject the offer.

With a regretful sigh, Ash acquiesced. “Let’s keep it purely financial for now,” he said to Bazso. “Although knowing what turf was yours would help us proceed.”

The head of the Lampblacks began to outline his “misplaced” territories, but at some point he thought better of it and told us, “Just take care of Skannon. My boys can handle the rest.”

I happened to agree with that assessment. Matching his bluntness, I promised, “Leave him to us.”

Across from me, Ash just shook his head.