Martin sat with his back to the wall, facing his friends and looking over the bar. The man with the scarred lips sat just on the edge of vision. While Martin’s friends chatted aimlessly, the man’s table remained silent. One of the men, the thinnest of the bunch, played idly with the dirt under his fingernails with a long knife. The other watched the people in the bar, his gaze returning inevitably to the Worm. The man with the scarred lip, after his initial stare of recognition at Martin, had returned his gaze to his drink, where he remained seemingly lost in thought.

  “So Martin, you think you’re going to get an enforcer position?”

  Martin shook slightly, not expecting to be drawn into the conversation so suddenly.

  “Eh? Sly told you then?”

  “He did,” Monika said with a laugh, “You know he can’t be trusted with secrets.”

  “It’s not a secret per se, but I don’t know. I’m a bit older than you, Monika. I’m not sure how long I can continue like this before my body completely gives out. Besides, being a wandering hunk of dumb muscle pays better.”

  They laughed at that, and Dillion launched into an anecdote about one of the times he had been accosted by one of the dimmer enforcers.

  Martin was engaged in the story until, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the Worm standing up to leave. The thin man at the table paused his knife work and glanced at the man with the scarred lip. The man shook his head slightly and then took a long draft of his beer, finishing much of the remainder in one gulp. Taking the hint, his two compatriots similarly sped up their drinking. Martin pretended to be engrossed in Dillion’s story. After a moment, the man with the scarred lips gave a signal, and the three rose to leave. Just before walking out the door, the man with the scarred lips turned back to glance at Martin. Martin, pretending to be laughing at the punchline, didn’t acknowledge him. The door closed, and the bell above the door jingled with a sudden, ominous tone. Martin reached for his own beer and drained the rest.

  Sly noticed his action and shook his own empty glass.

  “About time you caught up, I’ve been ready for round two for ages,” he said.

  “My apologies, but one round’s the limit for me tonight. I have another engagement I need to be off for.”

  “So soon? Surely you can stand another,” Dillion protested.

  “Not tonight, I’m afraid. Thank you all for your help today. When I’m chief enforcer, I promise to look the other way at least once when you lot get handsy with the merchandise.”

  They laughed and waved their goodbyes. The smile evaporated from Martin’s face as soon as he had turned around. He opened the door to the bar already prepared for combat. However, all that greeted him was a nearly empty street. He stifled a curse and quickly thought back to the other night. The Worm was clearly a creature of habit. It was still a couple of hours before he would end up at the clock Martin had seen him counting at before, but where would he go before that? Martin thought about going back into the bar to question Moe if he had any idea where else the Worm went, but he couldn’t think of a plausible reason to be interested. With no other option left, he took a road that would lead him in the direction of the Black Dog and the clock he had seen the Worm and the man with the scarred lip before.

  He walked quickly, and to his surprise, luck was on his side. He soon caught sight of the three men he had seen at the bar, and further down the street, the Worm. Martin slowed down and began to walk more in the shadows, using the skills he learned from Jacques to pass through the streets as inconspicuously as possible. The three men glanced back occasionally, but Martin’s luck held. The Worm, for his part, never looked back and stopped to look at nothing but the public clocks.

  After a short journey, the Worm arrived at the entrance to a long alleyway. For the first time, he looked around to see if he had been followed. His pursuers were seemingly aware of this destination and had hidden themselves out of sight in advance. Satisfied he was unobserved, the Worm entered the alley. Meanwhile, the man with the scarred lips—Martin was fairly certain he was the group’s leader at this point—began to count on his fingers. This particular stretch of street lacked a clock, but Martin could watch the time pass in blocks of ten on the man’s fingers.

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  Three minutes later, the man ceased his counting and signalled to the others. The thin man led the way, reaching into his jacket pocket for what Martin could only assume was the knife he had been playing with back at the bar.

  Martin paused for a moment before following them. He started his own count, focused on his breath rather than his fingers.

  Elisia. Elisia.

  Why was he getting involved in this trouble so clearly unrelated to his own? He couldn’t say, other than the timing was too coincidental and must have some connection to Seraphine’s prophecy. His fingers stretched and wiggled gently, ready to draw his Faceless Dagger if the need required. Ten breaths later and his mind and body fully prepared, Martin entered the alley.

  The scene resolved itself slowly. No lamplight dared enter this alley, and what detail Martin could make out had to be gleaned by the faint moonlight. The alley ended in a brick wall. The bricks were much darker than the red most commonly found in Alderbridge’s brickwork, and were laid out in a pattern that seemed impossible. When looking at it, the bricks seemed impossibly numerous and irregular enough to suggest the outline of a face in the wall. The shadows of the faint moonlight highlighted the edges of slit-like eyes and a mouth just around waist level. Just a look at the eyes made Martin feel a slight tremble in his knees, as if he wasn’t worthy to remain on his feet in front of this stretch of wall.

  Martin tore himself away from the wall to look at the alley in front of him. The Worm lay on his back, eyes wide in astonishment and mouth working soundlessly in a final wordless plea. His coat had been torn open and was soaked in blood, and his hat lay in a puddle of mud, slowly deforming.

  The thin mad stood over him, chest heaving. In his right hand was his knife, its edges dyed crimson. In his left hand, a piece of gold. Not a simple coin or a bar bearing the royal seal, but a raw piece. It was a jagged and unrefined lump about the size of a child’s fist, and it glimmered dully even in the darkness of the alley.

  The man with the scarred lips hissed, “You fool. You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “He wouldn’t let go.” The thin man replied, gesturing wildly with the bloody knife. “You heard me. I tried to warn him, but he hung on to it like, like, like it was his child or something.”

  At this point, Martin walked forward. Despite the noise of his compatriot, the man with the scarred lips was fully cognizant of his surroundings and turned to look at the intruder.

  “You—” his eyes flashed in recognition. “You should have stayed at the bar and not meddled in things that don’t concern you.”

  “Crime in Alderbridge concerns me, particularly if you’re picking targets out of my regular bar.”

  “I assure you, it’s a one-time thing. Run along now and forget you saw anything. Otherwise, it’ll be the last thing you see.”

  “You talk like a character from a penny dreadful.”

  The man with the scarred lip spat. “You’ve got a pair on you, don’t you? Boys, take care of him.”

  The third man, who had been silent until this point, smiled broadly, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth. He reached into his own jacket and pulled out a knife as he started walking towards Martin. The thin man, further back in the alley, rushed forward himself, pausing only to hand the gold to his boss.

  The third man lunged forward with a stab. Moving with an unexpected swiftness, Martin pushed the blow aside and delivered an uppercut to the man’s jaw. He could feel something crack and wondered if it was one of the man’s few remaining teeth. The third man staggered back, revealing that the thin man was nearly upon him. The thin man swung the knife down wildly, but Martin simply stepped into the charge. He drove his shoulder into the thin man’s sternum. The blow struck with brutal precision, sending the man flying and the knife slipping out of his grasp and falling to the floor. Martin delivered a quick kick to the third man as he attempted to get up before turning his attention to the man with the scarred lips.

  “Not bad, not bad at all,” the Man said, his hands raised slightly in a gesture of surrender. He lightly wiggled the hand with the chunk of gold. “See this, this is a block of raw gold, and what all this fuss is about. The Worm gets one a week from this alley, don’t ask me how, I don’t know. Seeing as the Worm is no longer with us to miss it, what do you say we cut you in, and we part ways, all of us richer men?”

  “Not interested.”

  “Well, that’s a shame.” The man lowered one hand into his pocket and, instead of pulling out a knife like his comrades, revealed a single-shot pistol.

  Martin cursed as he felt the luck that had carried him thus far evaporate. As much training as he had received from Jacques, he hadn’t yet learned to dodge bullets. The model of pistol the man held was fairly inaccurate and only had a single shot, but at this distance, Martin didn’t like his chances. He prepared to make a sudden dive and draw his Faceless Dagger at the same time, hoping he could somehow get under the bullet and close enough to fight the man in close quarters.

  Before either man could move, the temperature in the alley suddenly dropped. Martin could feel the thin fog move softly across his face, as if the alleyway itself had inhaled. Martin’s eyes moved from the gun pointed at him to a point further back in the alley. There, in the middle of an alleyway getting rapidly darker and colder, the Worm sat up.