After cleaning himself up a bit Darian pushed open the warped door of the old shelter and stepped inside. Darian climbed the watchtower stairs, carefully, avoiding the third and sixth steps, both of which had sent better men tumbling.
The tower itself was a husk of what it had been in Winterfyrian times: all stone bones and patched wooden floors, with rooms stacked atop each other like a crooked spine.
Most were communal now. No doors, just hanging cloth and the kind of unspoken rules that kept strangers from knifing each other in their sleep. Rent got cheaper the higher you went, mostly because the wind cut through the upper floors like a blade and the roof leaked when it bothered to rain.
Darian's room was four flights up, bare floor, two pallets, a broken stove that doubled as a table, and just enough space for him and the crew to sleep without kicking each other unconscious.
He slipped past a sleeping drunk in the hallway, pushed aside the faded curtain that marked his door, and stepped inside.
The air smelled of dried piss, redleaf smoke, and last night's sweat. This was home. It had been for years.
"Don't open the door like that, it'll let the lizards in!" Bren the Mole shrieked from his pile of rags in the corner.
He looked like someone who'd been yanked out of a fever dream and hadn't quite come back. Wiry, all elbows and knees, with a mess of ginger curls that stuck out in every direction like he'd fought off a comb with a knife.
His freckles were half-hidden under grime, and his skin had the pale, blotchy hue of someone who didn't go outside unless chased.
Bren's pupils were the size of buttons. Redleaf flakes dusted his collar like snow. He was halfway between sleep and prophecy, twitching like he was listening to things that hadn't been said yet.
"No lizards, Bren," Darian said, stepping over a broken stool.
"Lizards have thumbs now! That's how they open locks, ask anyone!" Bren snapped, still staring at the wall like it had personally insulted his ancestors.
Across the room, Sefra sat cross-legged on a pile of old shipping cloth, sharpening a knife no longer than her forearm. Each pull across the whetstone was practiced and patient, the blade whispering as it grew sharper with every pass.
She didn't look up.
"You're late," she muttered. "Or dead. Was hoping for one of those."
"Still weighing my options," Darian said, tossing the small pouch of coin onto the crate they used as a table. "You eat yet?"
Sefra snorted. "Bread and boiled rat."
Darian shrugged. "Luxury."
She wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, thank the gods. Being that kind of pretty in the Gutters meant you got passed around like a coin purse. But she had just enough to get noticed: a sharpness to her jaw, full lips always curled into some half-suspicious expression, and black hair tied back with whatever string was clean that day. Petite, quick, quiet. Pretty enough that men sometimes made the mistake of thinking she was soft.
They didn't make it twice.
"Did you win at least? You look like the neighborhood cat after Crazy Philly was done with it." Bren croaked from his rags, scratching at the side of his neck with a dirty nail.
Darian flopped down beside Sefra, stretching his sore legs and groaning like an old man.
"Only you... look like a chewed-out cat Bren, and the Butcher's breathing through his ears, if that counts."
"Didn't kill him?"
"Didn't need to. Dropped him good. Crowd screamed like they were watching a sermon."
Bren sat bolt upright in his rags, eyes wide and watery, spitting a rumbling of words out too fast to understand. "You didn't kill the Butcher? He owes me ten silvers! I don't look like a cat. I bet on him losing his eyes and vomiting blood! You robbed me!"
Darian blinked at him. "Calm down, will ya? If you bet on him losing, why do you care he's still breathing?"
Bren flailed one hand like he was swatting at invisible birds. "It's about style, Darian! Drama! You can't just knock a man down and walk off! Where's the showmanship? The blood-fountains? The existential dread?"
"You bet in your head, Bren," Sefra said.
"Still counts!"
Darian leaned his head back and groaned. His jaw still throbbed.
"You get a nickname yet?" Sefra asked, eyes narrowing as she examined the edge of her blade.
Darian grinned. "Not yet. Though someone did call me 'Pit Pup.'"
Sefra groaned. "By Basst, that's miserable."
"Think it'll stick?" Darian chuckled.
"If you keep fighting like you've got something to prove? Yeah."
"Could be worse," Bren said, eyes now fixed on the ceiling like it held secret knowledge. "Could be 'Thumb-Lizard Slayer.' That's a name with weight. Historical weight. Ancient weight. Thumbed weight. They speak it in dreams."
He blinked slowly, then let out a soft cackle before slumping back down into his pile of rags, whispering something about scales and prophecy.
They lapsed into silence for a bit, Bren fainting away into his dreams again. Outside, the sounds of Varentis waking up crept in: distant hammering from the refineries, the bark of a Glacium overseer shouting at his brightbloods, and the metallic ring of a bell, someone's funeral, or someone's warning.
In the Gutters, it was hard to tell which.
The silence didn't last.
The curtain burst open like it owed someone money, letting in a gust of street stink and the loud scrape of boot on stone.
"I return!" Kazan announced, arms wide, a bundle of half-broken junk clattering in his hands. "Fear not, my beautiful and poorly-fed friends, for I have braved the wilds of the East Market, the fury of two drunken meatmongers, and what I suspect was a sewer demon in a hat and survived!"
He dropped his load onto the crate with a grin that could grease a wheel, golden hair tied back in a fraying strip of red cloth, face smudged with soot and confidence.
"Gods," Sefra muttered without looking up. "Why are you loud?"
"Because silence is for the guilty and the dead," Kazan said, tossing himself into the room like he owned it. "And I, dearest Sefra, am merely tired, heroic, and unfairly handsome."
He kicked off his boots, one landing with a hollow thunk, the other skidding under the sleeping Bren, who barely flinched.
"What'd you bring?" Darian asked, eyeing the pile of junk as he wiped sweat from his brow.
"A treasure," Kazan said, pulling out a twisted copper coil, a busted magnifier, and something that might've once been a Church-grade mana core but now looked more like a cracked egg.
"Scraps from the old furnace yard. And a rumor."
"A rumor," Sefra repeated flatly.
Kazan's grin widened, and continued with dramatic flair. "A whispered thing, spoken only in hush and hiccup, one of the scrap-haulers said someone's been moving contraband through the old canal path again. Glacium remnants. Maybe even a vein node."
"No one moves Glacium without a permit or a death wish," Darian said.
"Exactly." Kazan leaned in like he was sharing sacred truth. "Which makes it either very real… or very fun."
Sefra set her blade down slowly. "If you get us killed chasing sewer ghost gossip, I'll feed your balls to the Red Rats."
"They'd be honored," Kazan said, hand on heart. "But until then, admit it, you missed me."
"We didn't," Bren croaked from under his cloak. "But the lizards did."
"See? Someone appreciates greatness." Kazan winked and flopped onto the floor beside the crate, digging through his sack like it held glory instead of bent nails and stolen tools.
Sefra looked back at Darian. "You hear anything useful on your way in?"
"Maybe." Darian rolled a coin between his fingers. "Merchant type. Talking to a cloaked runner."
"About?"
"Shipment. Dusk. Black Gate. 'Payment upon arrival.'"
Sefra stopped sharpening. Her eyes locked on his, head tilting slightly.
"Could be trade. Could be bodies. Could be something worth watching."
"Didn't stop," Darian said. "Didn't ask."
"You shouldn't," she muttered. "But I might."
Kazan had stopped rummaging. His expression sharpened, grin slipping just a touch. "Black Gate? That's not a word people use for spice or silks."
Sefra nodded slowly. "Lines up with the whisper from Marn. Docksend Pier, shipment vanished, crew gone. Same district."
"And Pig's Cross," she added, almost to herself. "That carriage that vanished into the old tunnels near the canal. I dismissed it as drunk talk."
"Most things are," Darian said, "until you hear them twice."
Kazan leaned forward, elbow on his knee, golden hair catching the grey light from the broken window. "Three times, and it starts to sound like an opportunity. Or a setup."
Sefra's brow furrowed. "And Hollick's bit about redleaf crates marked as tithes? Shit."
She stood, slid her blade into her belt with a single motion.
"I'm checking it out."
"You sure?" Darian asked, eyes narrowing. He leaned against the brick wall like he had all the time in the world, but his voice carried the edge of someone who'd buried too many friends for curiosity's sake.
"If I wait," Sefra said, already adjusting the strap on her belt, "someone else scoops it."
"What's the split?"
"Eighty-twenty."
Darian snorted, low and dry. "Sixty-forty."
She stopped. Turned. Her expression was blank, but her hand lingered just a little too close to the hilt on her thigh. "You what?"
"I gave you the lead," he said, tone flat. "That's finder's coin."
Sefra's mouth twitched, either toward a snarl or a smile, it was hard to say. "You want a finder's coin? I'll toss you one when I get back."
Kazan raised a hand. "Sixty-forty's fair," he said, voice calm, almost amused. "He brought the spark. You'll be the flame. No one eats without both."
Sefra's eyes flicked between them. Her jaw worked for a second, then she muttered a curse in gutter-cant. It came out low and tight, not spat like usual habit but fury.
"Fine. Sixty-forty. But if I come back with a missing finger, I'm taking it out of your face."
"Just don't take my jaw," Darian said, smirking. "I need it for banter."
She rolled her eyes, exhaled through her nose, then yanked the curtain aside.
"Don't die," Kazan called after her.
"Not planning to, you glass-eyed stumpfuck," she shot back without looking.