That night Henry tossed and turned, his sleep disturbed by dreams of blood and death. His eyes snapped open. The room was pitch black and no-one held him down, but he felt a hand pressing down on his mouth. A small hand.

“Come on,” Maggie whispered, and took her hand off his face. She snuck away and he rolled out of bed to follow. He stayed as quiet as he could. Unlike the orphanage, it was not against the rules for him to leave. There weren’t a whole lot of rules regarding his behaviour at all, really, but he felt he’d still rather not draw attention to himself.

She hurried through the corridors and then up the winding stairs and into the Taylor’s Guild proper. Henry did his best to keep up without causing a lot of noise, but she was a lot quieter than he was. Eventually, she pulled him into yet another of the many small rooms, and he wondered for a second what was waiting for him inside W.as this still a dream?

She coughed impatiently and he slipped through after her. She closed the door and they stood there in the dark for a moment. What did she expect him to do?

Francis’ angels coalesced, lighting up the room, their glowing faces staring down at him. It scared Henry half to death. A number of candles sprang to life on the little table in the middle of the room, and the Angels vanished as swiftly as they appeared. Behind them, Francis was sitting on a low stool. He looked fidgety and excited.

“He’s leaving in the morning,” she said. “They must have found somewhere for him.”

Henry looked from Maggie to Francis. His friend elaborated.

“When I was in the kitchens this afternoon, I overheard the matron talking to one of the cooks about assigning duties for the coming days, and she told them to leave me off.”

Henry knew there could be nothing else it meant. Byford had decided Francis couldn’t work anywhere but the kitchen. He’d said the workings of the guild itself were only to be observed by members and trusted servants. If Francis wouldn’t be working in the kitchen, that would mean he wasn’t working at the Guild house at all.

“They didn’t tell me anything about it,” Henry said.

“Nor me,” said Maggie.

“Well, it’ll be nice to get out of the kitchen, at least,” Francis laughed.

She looked at him, her expression tight. “What?”

Francis gaped, flapped his hand and said “You know, do something more interesting. Something involving my… you know.”

Maggie crossed her arms, “Of course you’re not going to go,” she said.

“I’m not?” Francis asked.

“You’re bloody well right.”

He inhaled sharply, clasping his hands together until his knuckles went white. Ten careful seconds pass. “Then what am I going to do?”

“We’re all going to go,” she said matter of factly. And she looked at Henry for support.

“Go?” He and Francis both asked at once.

“If they didn’t even tell us you were going, what makes you think they’ll be any more communicative when you’re gone?”

Henry hesitated. He knew better than they did what it was like out on the streets, and he knew things would be much worse for the others than they were for him.

The angel’s light gathered on Francis’ shoulders as they whispered to him. “I mean, I could always try it. Just go and see.”

Maggie frowned at him. “Are you crazy?”

Henry leaned back from the table. While the three of them are like a family, Maggie and Francis actually were a family. Henry decided to keep out of this argument.

“Well, I don’t think so. I think… I don’t know… I could just go and see what it’s like. See what they have to show me, you know? It could be good.” He looked to Henry for support and saw he’d backed out of the conversation, so he looked back to his sister. “No?”

Maggie cast around, looking frustrated and upset. She ran her fingers through her hair, and then said “But if you go, we might never see each other again.”

They both looked at Henry, and he knew he couldn’t sit this one out anymore. He’d come to like the guild in the short time they’d been there, and he hated the idea of spending time on the streets again. Under any other circumstance, he’d have chosen to stay. But what would he be staying for? If they never saw Francis again, Maggie would blame him, and he’d have lost them both. No amount of hot food and warm beds would be worth that.

“We’re in our nightclothes.” he said, grasping at straws.

Maggie reached under the table and pulled up three bags.

“Coats and boots,” she said, and they all stared at one another.

Henry sighed, then shrugged. “Let’s get dressed, then.”

Henry’s little group had hours to go until dawn, and outside the January air was bitterly cold. They pulled their cloaks tight around them, but the cold winter breezes that whipped through the alleys found their way through the thick wool and leather to pinch at their skin every time they turned a corner or otherwise disturbed their desperate wrappings.

Eventually, they found their way back to The Old Forge, just like old times. They didn’t have any money, but the landlady let them sleep upstairs for the rest of the night. One night only, she cautioned. They kept their coats on and curled up the three of them in one bed. It had a horse-hair mattress, like the beds at the orphanage, and the stuffing obviously hadn’t been changed in a very long time. It was less comfortable than he’d grown accustomed to, and it felt like it took Henry a long time to fall asleep.

In the morning, the three of them were taken into the kitchen and given mugs of hot broth and then ushered out into the street. “I’ve been working in a kitchen,” Francis offered. “I could be useful.”

“Got no need, young lord,” she said. “But I’ll keep you in mind if I hear of some-it.”

It was a little warmer now that the sun was up, but they still had to pull their coats tight around them as they walked. The streets were slippery with compacted snow and filth, and the three orphans held hands as they shuffled through the winding streets looking for work.

While Maggie and Francis were tossed out by their foster parents in their early teens, and Henry thrown out by them a few months before that, none of them knew much about surviving alone in the city, or where in it they might go. They walked because they had to do something; find something.

Before too long, Maggie saw a dressmakers she used to browse in when they’d sneak away from the orphanage. She grinned and snapped her fingers. “There’s our answer,” she announced. “Wait here.”

She pulled her coat about her tighter still and ducked into the shop.

She returned a few minutes later. She still had a smile on her face, but Henry could see that it was taking a lot of energy for her to keep it there. “Not a good time for new staff, apparently, but we’ll get something.”

With no experience, no commercial skills, and not even any proper clothing to speak of, the only offers of work that Maggie got were of the decidedly unsavoury variety. Her smile cracked a little more with each rejection, until eventually she stopped going in all together.

Henry and Francis kept their eyes peeled for labourers. They find a group of men hauling heavy flour sacks down from a row of wagons parked in front of a bakery. The youths asked if they needed any more help; Henry was refused, and Francis was laughed at. They too spent the rest of the morning getting rebuked, and they too eventually stopped asking.

That afternoon they came to a stop in front of the orphanage gates. They looked up at the building, and then at each other. None of them chose to walk here. It had been a habit. They knew they couldn't go in, but they took a second to look through the iron bars at the building they’d called home for so long. Henry noticed the windows on their old floor had been boarded up, the wood blackened around the frames in the corner of the room where he had fought the priests, and Henry can’t help but remember the man he tackled, the one he’d killed, and the way his screams had dwindled, and then stopped. He turned away from the orphanage and marched down the street. The others hurried to catch up.

The sun was soon setting again and they hadn't found any food, work, or a place to sleep. They headed back to The Old Forge. Francis convinced the landlady to let them stay again, but she insisted that they could only stay if they came back right before close. She was willing to let them use the room if it would otherwise go empty, but she wouldn’t turn away coin for their sakes.

The three of them nodded and shuffled back outside, looking for a place to wait the evening out. Eventually they ended up at the Thames and the three of them sat by the frozen river and watched people skating on the ice. They’d no money, no options, and no hope, but they were together, the three of them. For Henry, at this moment, it is enough.

Eventually the wind grew too strong and the three of them turned back to the densely packed shelter of the city’s buildings. Henry tried to use the walk to give himself time to think about what to do if the Forge had no room for them. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how helpless he was. He burned with anxious worry. What kind of world was this?

They huddle away from the constant sleet under a canvas awning stretched between two shop-fronts. Henry glanced back along his path, but he couldn't concentrate.

Visions of violence and terror kept breaking Henry' focus. He moved on, walking too fast so that he brushed past people; he was noticed by the bravos and prostitutes lounging in the shade at the sides of the alley. Maggie called out to him, struggling to keep up as she dragged Francis along behind her.

Someone whistled at him, and he glanced over to see two burly men stand up from a game of knuckle-bones and start walking after them.

Henry didn’t break stride, just looked forward as if he hadn't noticed. He knew the others would still be struggling to follow, but a bit of distance was good right about now. A couple of men stood up ahead of him and moved to block him in. Henry considered running, quickly glancing left and right. The ambush site was well chosen, a stretch where the buildings on either side were large, stone-built, and lacked windows or doors facing the alleyway. Bystanders gambled and drank cheap sack all around them, uncaring. Once they were done, the muggers would probably just sit down again and resume their conversations as if nothing had happened. Henry grit his teeth. with so many witnesses, obvious magic would be a mistake.

Lacking alternatives, Henry stopped, and the muggers surrounded him. The leader was a barrel-chested woman with a jaw like a millstone. She nodded a greeting at him, and gestured with a long kosh. “Purse.”

Henry shook his head. His palms were sweating.

The woman growled. Her men pulled in tighter, crowding him.

The thieves were big, probably stevedores on the docks when they weren’t taking purses in alleys. Henry knew that even then, he might be able to surpass any of them in speed and strength. Henry held his hands up in front of him, palms out. He bit his tongue, and the world stood out with sudden clarity.

He knew there were two men behind him, and he could hear them shuffling their feet forward, an inch at a time, desperate to be allowed to strike. There were two ahead of him, also armed. And he knew that lagging behind were Maggie and Francis. He could see the reflection of Francis’ angels in the polished brass bowl of an oil lamp, the telltale shimmering at his shoulders.

Three unarmed teenagers in hand-me-down cloaks and nightshirts against four fully grown, fully dressed, fully armed adults were bad odds. Henry could definitely even the odds a bit by using magic before he attracted too much attention to himself, but Francis’ abilities would draw attention to them immediately; the type of attention they couldn’t reasonably outrun.

If he didn’t do something soon, Francis would, and it would be the end for all of them.

He took off his boots one by one, then his coat. He lay the coat on the boots and spread his hands. The wind whipped around his body, pressing the thin nightshirt against his skin. “It’s all I’ve got.”

The woman scoffed at him. “Then we’ll take it. Idiot.”

One of the muggers knocked him to the ground, and swept his boots and coat up in his arms on his way past. The thieves scattered back to their dice and sour wine, leaving Francis and Maggie to help Henry to his feet.

There was no space at the Forge. The landlady apologized to them, though she’d done nothing wrong, and she gave them some old blankets and half mugs of ale on the house.

When the door to the pub closed behind them and the streets were empty and quiet, Francis sighed. “Let’s go back.”

“But Francis-” Maggie started.

“Well, I’m not going to have you die frozen on these streets just because we’re scared of the unknown.” Francis shook his head, and made a cutting gesture with his hand. “I’ll go and see what it’s like, if they’ll still have me. And if they won’t, then we’re no worse off than we are now, I guess. But I’m going. And you two can come or not.” And he set off. They followed him, exchanging a few encouraging words on the walk back. They’d always be together. Who could possibly hope to keep them apart? It was for the best, in the end.

Earnshaw was still at the door, his face all wrapped, but for the eyes, in a knitted scarf.

“Been wondering when I’d see you all,” he said.

“Told to keep us out?” Henry asks.

“Told to hurry you in.” The footman opened the door and waved the three of them in. Francis first, then Maggie. Henry stopped at the top step.

“Byford knew we’d be coming back?”

“He knew you’d be leaving. He only hoped that you’d be coming back.”

Henry nods and started in, but the footman stopped him with a gentle hand on the shoulder.

“But I don’t expect old Earnshaw to be told to keep the door open for your return if you decide to run again, if you catch my drift.”

Henry nodded again, and swallowed.

“Now get inside before you let all the warm air out,” he said, and gave the boy a playful shove into the warm, inviting halls of the guild.

Francis was gone in the morning.