Darkwell, despite its grim name, did have nice areas. They weren’t the luxurious white stone palaces of the South, but there were sturdy streets you weren’t likely to get mugged on. Bernwood was one such area.

  Vuk leaned back against the grey brick wall of a cobbler’s shop, a brown cigarillo burning slowly between his fingers. For a man who didn’t smoke he went through a frightening amount of tobacco. He only bought the cheapest, low quality kind traded in by Southern smugglers. He rarely had to taste it, and anything more flashy might give the impression he had money, which would get you robbed in any part of Darkwell.

  Standing, inspecting a crowd with no apparent purpose would be noticed, but put a cigarillo in a man’s hand and he became invisible. Whenever Vuk had to operate during daylight hours, he stood and he smoked, and he could often stand for hours in the exact same spot without drawing attention.

  He’d already been casing the busy square for an hour. Four hours the day before and another four the day before that. Waiting for a man who fit a very specific description who may or may not walk through this very square sometime between the hours of eleven and three. He would be tall but terribly hunched, wearing a long white fur cloak and matching fur hat. The inside of the cloak was lined, but not for warmth. A hidden interior pocket contained a small velvet bag tied with yellow-gold cord. He flaunted his wealth and was used to would-be muggers.

  But mugging was far too grisly for Vuk. He was a scavenger, content with letting others do the dirty work while he cleaned up after.

  Vuk looked across the square to where a couple of boys played a game on the ground with sticks. They stayed close, huddled together under the same cloak which was far too large for either of them. They kept their heads down, laughing and shoving each other and seemingly totally engrossed in their own little world. But Vuk knew better. He’d been them once. A child on the street, feigning weakness while hunting for it in others.

  Working with others just got you in trouble. There wasn’t a soul in the world you could trust entirely. Even the closest of friends or loyalest of lovers could be blackmailed or strong armed to turn against you. Vuk never worked with people, but he did use them.

  A few days ago Vuk had offered a courtesan a smoke and they’d shared a conversation in an alley. A large crate used as a vegetable store sat at the end of the alley making an all too easy hideout for eavesdroppers. And what more fun was there in the world for two young boys late at night than to eavesdrop on courtesans?

  To their assured disappointment there had been no removal of clothing, not that she’d been wearing much as it were, but knowing there was even the possibility of sultry activity would keep them listening for a while, Vuk had boasted to the girl of a particular busy square where he frequently robbed blind dim witted aristocrats. She was uninterested, as she surely made a killing in her own profession off dimwitted aristocrats and likely believed thieving to be beneath her. By the time the cigarillo was gone so were the eavesdroppers.

  Vuk was not surprised at all to see they’d taken his bait and showed up exactly as planned. They didn’t know him, not his name or his face. If caught and questioned all they had was an overheard conversation between a drunk and a prostitute.

  It was the boys perking up that caught Vuk’s attention before he realized what they were looking at. At one end of the square, walking at a brisk pace, came a tall man, badly hunched, wearing a white fur coat and matching hat.

  And the stars align…

  Vuk took a long draw from the cigarillo, holding the smoke a while in his mouth, before dropping it to the ground. Then he watched and waited for the boys to move.

  Just as they’d been unable to resist Vuk’s staged conversation, they were equally powerless to stop themselves from attempting to rob the obviously very wealthy man who’d just walked into their trap. Or what they thought was their trap.

  One of the boys slithered out of the cloak just as the man passed. Likely no one had paid them much attention and if a passerby took a second look they would not even remember if there had been one boy or two there a moment before.

  Clever boys...

  The kid ran down an alley where Vuk knew there to be a shortcut along the back of a row of short houses and reentered the square from the other side only a few moments later, walking quickly in the direction of the man.

  It appeared the boy walked with his hands in his pockets but Vuk would put money on one of those sleeves being hollow, the boy's arm slipped out of it and hanging close to his side, hand ready to shoot out the bottom of his shirt.

  Vuk took two perfectly timed steps toward the spot where the boy and man were destined to meet. Just as their shoulders brushed, Vuk lunged forward and grabbed the boy by the back of his shirt, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the hunched man’s side.

  “Hey! Off!” The boy hollered. He almost slipped from Vuk’s grasp as he was in fact half out of his shirt.

  “Little thief,” Vuk said. “Mother’s going to smack you good if she catches you stealing again.”

  The boy looked about to speak but Vuk hoisted him up a bit higher, putting more pressure on the one arm that was still trapped in the shirt. The boy stared daggers at Vuk but wisely said nothing.

  The hunched man was brushing off his too white coat and looking equally displeased with Vuk’s intervention.

  “So sorry, sir,” Vuk said. He brushed the coat violently with his free hand like it was a rug to be dusted and he dropped the boy who immediately ran off.

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  Still brushing at the coat, Vuk looked after him and shook his head.

  The hunched man huffed and tried to pull away but Vuk put a hand on his chest. In one movement he unclasped the gold chain that hung from the breast pocket of the vest the man wore beneath, the gesture gone unseen as it was directly beneath the man’s chin.

  Vuk held up the end of the chain for the man to see. “Nimble fingers,” Vuk said as if he’d found the chain unfastened. “You’ve got to watch children.”

  The man watched him through narrowed eyes and Vuk refastened the clasp. The man looked like he might say something when Vuk gave him a wide open mouthed smile, making sure to breathe out, giving the man a face full of his smoky breath.

  The man pulled back, repulsed, and snatched his coat from Vuk’s hand. Vuk made a curt nod then walked casually off in the same direction the boy had gone.

  The man seemed just as eager to be away and didn’t give Vuk a second glance.

  Vuk’s current residence was an attic crawl space above the small home of two sisters. He’d used to take shelter in the Death Tunnels, or sometimes in the boarding homes, narrow buildings shared by a couple dozen others. No bath and no food, just a closet sized room with no door and two sleeping mats. No space, no privacy.

  He’d rented the attic almost a year ago and though he knew he should move more frequently, he couldn’t give up the luxury of his own space, even if he couldn’t totally stand up straight in one end of it.

  This area of Darkwell was built on a hill, all the streets sloped and wound around dangerous angles for carts and horses. Those wealthy enough to own a pack animal in this neighbourhood had ponies, the short, stout little animals whose mains were pure fuzz. They came off the mountains but most did just fine in the city. Many roads were too narrow for larger horses.

  Because of the slant of the road it was easy for Vuk to clamber up to one of the shorter roofs and walk along the tops of the close homes, many of which didn’t have an inch of space between them and their neighbour.

  From that vantage he could see most of Darkwell. Clouds that looked heavy with snow hung low over the tops of the ramshackle city. Unlike other regions in Twinfall, the North had been almost entirely destroyed after the fall of the Empire. There was little to nothing left of the castles or temples that had been common a few hundred years ago. Nothing in the North was old, and yet nothing was quite new either. It was a city in constant chaos, neither moving forward or belonging to the past.

  A window in the peak of the row of houses stood open and Vuk slipped inside. The sister’s didn’t mind him using the door but he preferred his comings and goings to be unobserved.

  Neither sister ever came into his attic room, though sometimes they would knock and, receiving no answer, push open the trapdoor and scoot in a plate of fresh bread or muffins. Today, however, no treats awaited him. The small worn floor was empty. Vuk lit the small lantern he kept on the window ledge and then shuttered the window behind him.

  He removed his cloak and hung it from a nail sticking from one of the beams. It was growing colder but the heat from the sisters’ stove below kept it cozy enough for now that he could go without.

  For the first time since the square, Vuk removed from his pocket the item he’d pinched from the hunched man and held it in his palm. A small velvet bag with yellow-gold cord. He opened it and poured the contents into his other hand. Coins. Many, but less than he’d been promised in exchange for stealing them. He flipped each over until he found one that was slightly different. It had a strange blue tinge to the metal, almost like a Death Token but not as bright, and there was no image cast into its surface.

  Vuk scooped all the coins, including the strange one, back into the bag and pulled the cord closed. He had no idea what the odd currency was or if it was even currency at all, but guessed it was what his contact had really wanted. Her instructions had been clear. She’d described the man perfectly, knew exactly when he’d come through the market and where on his person he’d carry the bag. She knew what the bag was made of, what it looked like, and how much it would weigh. This was not the first time Vuk had stolen something for her. She was always uncannily precise, and never wrong.

  Vuk didn’t know how she did it or why she didn’t steal the things herself as she seemed to have so much knowledge about her marks, but he didn’t complain. He needed the money.

  A knock sounded below his boots. Vuk stood on tip toes and felt along the beam just above his head until his fingers felt a divet in the wood. He placed the bag inside the crevasse before taking the piece of glass he kept tied to a string that hung on another nail beneath his cloak. He dropped the glass through a thin crack in the boards just beside a knot hole in the wood. He knew from experience that due to the angle of an exposed beam, the glass was mostly hidden from anyone below, particularly if they were standing on a chair directly below the trap door, as Asamay was.

  Asamay was the younger of the two sisters, but as her elder sister was blind, she’d become the more prominent caretaker of the home. She was a too-thin, yet still very pretty woman whose default facial expression was a smile in spite of her hardships.

  Vuk could just see past her slender shoulder to where her sister Dram worked at baking pies. Terrifying pies. Blindness didn’t stop her from baking, but it did result in her sometimes confusing spices for the herbs Asamay used for the tonics and charms she sold in the market.

  Beyond the kitchen the only other room of the house was the bedroom the sister’s shared. The door stood open, revealing two small simple beds laden with poorly stitched quilts.

  Vuk pulled the glass up as Asamay knocked a second time. He only ever used the glass when someone knocked, to make certain he wasn’t letting in someone unfriendly. He might be a thief but he wasn’t a pervert. He’d considered telling Asamay as much. Telling her that even though the floor was thin and he knew she was a prostitute on top of being a herbalist, that he never watched, never peeked, and did his damndest not to listen either. But he assumed his assurances would come off just as unsettling, so he remained silent and only spoke to her when spoken too.

  Vuk squatted and opened the door, looking down at Asamay standing on the chair below him. She smiled warmly and held a small pie up to him. He eyed it cautiously.

  She laughed and wrapped a thin handkerchief around the pie to keep it warm. “I watched her make it.”

  Vuk smiled back and accepted the pie.

  Asamay opened her mouth to say something more, then stopped. Vuk watched a rose blush color her pale cheeks. He held up a finger to her and then set the pie on the floor so he could dig in his pocket. He came away with eight silver coins and handed them to her.

  “For rent,” he said, as she accepted them into her cupped hands.

  She looked at the coins. “They’re too much,” she said, trying to shove them back up to him. “The roof leaks.”

  Vuk smiled, refusing the coins. “This whole bloody city leaks.”

  Asamay smiled again and slipped the coins into the pocket of her dress. “The pie is still very hot. Don’t burn your tongue.”

  “Thank you, I won’t.”

  She nodded and climbed down from the chair as Vuk shut the door.

  He reopened the shutters and let the pie cool on the sill. Outside, the city had grown even darker, night falling on the valley. Vuk grabbed his cloak and climbed out onto the roof again. He was exhausted from staying up three days in a row, but he couldn’t resist the night.