It was like that. Every day. I'd wake up in a bed I never could recognize, one that I couldn't quite call home, and I'd walk through a city that still wasn't mine. For a full week I picked on down the main street of Agustus' Hope, walked along the steep cliffs that overlooked the harbor, and then spent a few hours gettin' stabbed, shot, and bludgeoned by a man I had...

  An interest in.

  The more I interrogated the thoughts, the more I concluded one simple fact.

  I wasn't hot for Raph. I ain't never wanted after a man before and I didn't want after one now.

  No sir.

  Like a thirsty man in a desert, I just wanted whatever succor was at hand. Even if that meant drinkin' my own piss...

  Wait. No. That's a terrible analogy.

  Look, I was hard up.

  I hadn't got a girl on her back in weeks! Years if you counted magic time bullshit. I was just projectin' on that to the closest thing to an option.

  That was why I was struggling so much in mastering my talent. That cursed Two-Step, the Douce et Doux Drift, my head was in the wrong place to make progress. I was focusing on obstacles, falling to find the path around.

  Yeah.

  That was it. That was what was wrong.

  The alternative was too hard to swallow. The idea that I was just a fuck-up. That I had chosen an ability that I would never master. That I would find myself stuck on this earliest Step in my Path, it was plain unthinkable. So I refused to think it at all.

  Instead I latched on to a solution to a problem I could fix.

  Gettin' Raph out of my head.

  It was with that notion finally wrangled and sent to pasture that I left the Della Luna estate after a particularly grueling session of Raph stabbin' and lecturin' and Ernie chattering about how la romanaza or whatever we was. Felt like every time I tried to focus on my own training and growth the young businessman would come along and turn me back to his cousin. It was almost like he was some overbearin' mother trying to pawn her daughter off on some poor bastard.

  Not that I had much experience with such a thing.

  Most mamas did the opposite with me.

  Either way, the point was clear.

  It was time to leave. Time to exercise the strangeness I'd been feelin' since we met. Time to remind this old world why my name was a curse upon the lips of pious Chanters and overbearing daddies up and down the Broken Coast.

  It was time for Lorcan Roche to get laid.

  For the first time since I'd set foot in the district, I did not take the high path out the harbor. Now I knew I could find many a find establishments in Lowtown above, likely even finer in the city above that. The only catch is that such establishments were staffed by professionals. Folk who made a livin' pleasuring and selling the company of others.

  Now I wasn't ashamed. I was no stranger to such an industry. Despite the Southfolk's odd shame on so many matters whorin' was respectful work in my neck of the woods.

  But there were a couple problems with goin' and buying myself a few hours Elysium.

  Price, and principle.

  The first was honestly immaterial. I hadn't bothered countin' the sum of the promissory notes the Guild had given me to pay my wages and due, but it was a lot. Probably enough to have a Hightown whore in my lap and a fancy whiskey in my hand every damn night.

  The second issue, was well-

  Principle.

  I didn't like the idea. Didn't sit right with me. What kind of man am I if the only companionship I might find is the kind coin can buy? What would remain of the long legacy of Lorcan Roche, a man of many lovin's and a few friends, if my first mark in this new world was one made-

  Not with charm, wit and plain good looks, but the paper promise of money.

  No sir.

  A man has to have standards, and mine...

  Existed.

  I looked up at the sign in the rundown docks neighborhood. The streets here were paved with rough cobble, the homes and businesses packed tight, built cheap. The scent of sea air and human suffering was thick, so thick it seemed to cling like oil on every surface and person. And then there was the acrid burn of Leviathan fat, the static charge of industrial mana production.

  Some wheres around burned furnaces packed full of fat stripped from the corpses of monsters larger than any ship what sailed. That same substance, refined, processed, and purified, would run the gears and cogs of the great manufactories where steel was forged, where papermills churned out printed pages, and a hundred other industries ran.

  It lit the city above, powering magelights and flushing fancy toilets.

  It even lit the gaudy sign hangin' above me.

  Funny thing, never imagined that adding light and color could make an establishment feel even more seedy. But here I was, looking up at a mermaid, tail lit with dim, sea-green crystals, the pink nipples on her bare breasts studded with tiny rubies. Her hands were bound in a playful manner, the sign above her proclaiming:

  The Sailor's Catch.

  A man stumbled through the double doors of the sea side saloon, letting out the stink of soured beer and the raucous of a place I knew well, even if I'd never seen the it's like. In that chaos and cacophony though, in there dwelt something new. Like a pearl in a rotten oyster, good song bled out of that open wound on the city's ass.

  And good music too?

  "Home, that's what this feels like" I muttered to the unfortunate bastard, my words distractin' him for a moment as his head turned and he took a stumble off the gutter. He planted a sloppy kiss on the cobbled road. A wet gurgled later and a fresh puddle spread out, the man's eyes rolling back in his head.

  I spared a chuckle and pushed him over with a boot. Didn't deserve to die chokin' on his sick. Call it my good deed for the day.

  Penance for the Hell I was fixin' to raise. Though I couldn't see her, I knew that whatever songbird was warblin' inside, she was a fine woman indeed.

  I smiled like the fox who found the chicken coup left unlocked, and I pushed through to the Sailor's Catch.

  My feet seemed to have a little kick to them as I took in the sight and drowned in the music. In addition to gaggle of drunks, and swarm of well painted workin' gals was just a little more. Seemed the Sailor's Catch was as much a dancehall as it was any other den of sin.

  Men, the hard worked and salt-stained kind, spun their women about the floor. The music was a strange, slow sound, a heavy beat and a low, sad song. Like a funeral dirge, but not a death, a birth. It was like they was singin' truth, life unvarnished and real, and the song was mournin' that fact as much as it relished in the pair.

  Well, that's what I thought after the fact. At that very moment though, I wasn't thinking too much.

  My eyes were locked on the small stage that rose above the tide of warm bodies and sweaty skin. The source of the music, the source of the life that thrummed and beat all around.

  Now look, I'll sit here and tell you I'm the kind of man that notices a woman's eyes first thing. That they're the windows to her soul, or some romantic shit like that.

  Not true.

  Normally I tend to focus on more... Tangible charms when it comes to the fairer sex.

  But her?

  Know that I do not lie when I say that her eyes were the first things I noticed about her.

  Like lookin' into the depths of a frozen lake, like lookin' up at the sun from the deepest wake. I was lost and cold and burnin' all at once, and in those moments, all the rest didn't matter.

  Some small part of me recognized the feeling, as I stood dumbstruck, some part recalled the scintillating patterns and hungry stare. Remembered the dark, and the things that dwelled deep down in the Vault...

  But, but I wasn't there no more.

  I was here.

  In the Catch, a place where men came to forget and remember.

  I think just like my strange, consideration, of Raphael, the scepter of that trip beneath the sands was an obstacle in and of itself. I made it a point never to think on what we'd seen, what we'd barely survived, and I forced myself to move past it.

  For a minute at least.

  I looked away from her just as a smile broke her lips as she sang another line in the language of the Outcast folk. At first I wondered why but as I moved through the outskirts of the crowd to find my place at the bar I figured why.

  While most of the men folk and their ladies had the sun-warmed hides of Southerners, rangin' from onyx to good leather, more than a few had the ashen hue and pointed ears of the local people. Many more were some blend of the two, mostly those near my age or younger. Seemed here the line between settler and native was blurred.

  A lot more than leviathan fat got melted and mixed in the harbor.

  I smiled, a little of the tension leaving me.

  For some reason, that made me feel a might better about this whole thing.

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  "Whiskey. Rye," I ordered, leaning against the bar and turning to face the stage.

  "Don't get no fancy stuff here," a voice replied, and a small, round glass appeared on the counter, supplied by a halfling man in a stained shirt and suspenders "you look a little rich for this place. What, you lose your friends?"

  I took a sip, winced at the burn, and savored the taste. I could almost see the rusty, iron-colored rye grains the amber liquid had been distilled from. Truly cut rate.

  I picked a cigarillo from my breast pocket and tucked it between my teeth as I turned to him.

  "Nope," I replied, lighting the rolled paper and taking a pull, "all my friends are right here."

  I let a cloud of smoke fill the air and the halfling, his face a maze of old scars and new wrinkles, frowned at me. He wasn't buying.

  "Yeah, and I'm a Lord's virgin daughter. You can drink here xolopi but only because your coin spends like any other," the little man sneered as I passed a handful of marks along the stained bar top.

  I frowned and chewed my cigar. I knew I'd been insulted, but I wasn't quite sure yet how much I cared.

  Enough to start a fight?

  Maybe.

  Enough to make an ass outta myself and miss the rest of the show?

  Also maybe.

  It was important to determine the degree of the slight in order to formulate an appropriate degree of response.

  They call that critical thinkin'.

  "Sorry I don't speak dumb motherfucker, you mind translatin'?" I asked, tossing my coat aside just enough to reveal the revolver at my side, "zsholo... zsholopi? That what you said?" I asked leanin' in.

  judgin' by the way he grinned, yellow and black, and the way he leaned in, he was enjoyin' himself now.

  "I don't translate for the likes of you. But sure. You want to know what it means-" He started, his hand reachin' under the bar before a new voice cut him off.

  "It means," the woman's voice said, "idiot, or foreigner. The terms are interchangeable in this district of the city."

  She slid right by me, like a snake slipping into water.

  One moment she was on stage callin' all the bar to romance and the next she was at my side, sat easy on a stool and lightning the slender cigarette she'd slipped from a small silver case.

  "Oh, uh," I cleared my throat, and tried not to choke on my cigar, "thank you."

  "Why?" She asked, turning her face to the stage, but her eyes on me, "for saving you the trouble of bloodying his face and being tossed from the best saloon in the city?"

  "Uh."

  She shook her head, then smiled, the expression softenin' the sharp edges of her face. Her eyes though?

  Those stayed hard, like steel.

  And gods... They weren't only thing hard.

  "Mitch, what did I tell you about pickin' fights with customers?"

  The halfling spat on the floor, "That I can't afford to lose no more teeth? That I should only do it when I know I can win? What does it matter?"

  "Because this handsome stranger isn't from the city. Look at him," she said tipping down my hat, nearly makin' me lose my cigar, "ain't no salt-crusted, sun-dried Southerner. Got bullet holes in that old coat," she tittered digging a finger into the breast of my, admittedly well worn, duster. I slapped the hand away, or tried, she was quick, "got a pair of fancy pistols, and judging by the fact that he reeks of mana, might even know how to use them."

  I gave her my best scowl, but it had little effect. Even less when she snatched my hat off my head just as I went for a sip of my whiskey.

  Mitch looked me up and down and shrugged, "I guess so. My apologies Mister..."

  "Roche." I said snatching my hat from the songbird's braided locks.

  Now that I wasn't plain mesmerized, it was a little easier to take her in.

  Dark skin with a pale undertone, like she'd lost blood, or maybe just never saw the sun. The mane of thick braid she wore reminded me of a fancy Pardaz woman I'd seen up Uptown, feline grace and something undeniably regal. Of course she was human, mostly. The pointed ears and uncanny color of her eyes marked her as one of the mixed folk all around.

  She was maybe twenty, and reeked of the kind of squalid luxury you could only find in places like this. Good perfume bought well after it expired and laid on thick. A fine dress, but that had been worn a hundred times, and the stains were expertly hidden by careful dye that only enhance the strange allure.

  If I didn't know better I might think her a Witch. One of the desperate or mad who struck a pact with the Entropy itself, certainly the dark magic that clung to her tight and thin, like funeral shroud, indicated something like that.

  I ignored Mitch as he muttered his own name and something about collectin' the tab after. I couldn't hear him over the sound of my heart thumping, the music in the air, and the sound of her breath.

  The rest of her band picked up another tune as the woman smile, her black painted lips parting to reveal perfect white teeth.

  "You stare," she said coyly as she tapped the bar and Mitch poured with an irritated grunt, "where you from cowboy?"

  I felt a shock of irritation as she tested me once again. I was used to folk makin' fun, but I did not suffer disrespect.

  Not even from pretty women.

  "Where I'm from," I started, my words low and hard, "they have manners. We call 'em civilities-" I snatched the glass the moment Mitch set it before her, "and you should mind yours."

  She blinked, mouth opening to speak, hand raised in warning as I raised the rich smelling wine to my lips.

  I paused.

  Her face had shifted, a flash of anger, a flicker of fear, and a spark of excitement.

  "You're not..." she began as I threw the mix back, and immediately regretted it.

  "Gah damn!" I said sputtering and coughing as the warm, metallic, and wildly alcoholic brew burned its way down, "what the fuck is that shit?"

  The woman sighed and gave the halfling a sad look, "Another one, Mitch."

  "Ha. Sure. Surprised he got it down. A little marination for your midnight snack, eh?"

  Her eyes hardened as I continued to hack, unable to appreciate the exchange for whatever it truly was.

  "Shut up," she hissed drumming her trimmed nails on the bar, "and put them both on his tab," she said and clapped a hand to my back with surprising force.

  Stung a bit, but seemed to finally banish whatever vile spirit I had mistakenly swallowed.

  "What, ah," I wiped my mouth, "what the hell was that?"

  "Wine." She said primly, raising a new glass to her lips.

  "No," I grunted as I recovered, "I mean what was that about my tab? I only buy drinks for ladies. You ain't no lady."

  Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head, a thin, dangerous smile parting her lips, "Good eye, cowboy."

  Then she stood and turned her back on me.

  "Hey! Hold on!"

  I rose and reached for her arm, the woman's lithe frame twisting and sliding out of my grip. Her other hand reached for my wrist as she stepped back, dragging me along.

  "If you want to dance," she said hauling me in with a strength that didn't match her slim figure, "ask like a gentleman. Keep your paws to yourself."

  I let her pull me onto the dance floor, not that it was much effort on her part, and raised my hands, a chill of shame running down my back.

  "Er, wait, sorry didn't mean to-"

  "I know," she said, voice barely above the music as she grabbed me and started the slow, sultry dance that had infected the floor, "just follow, I prefer to lead anyway."

  Well...

  That was alright.

  Aw who am I kiddin' a lifetime of hankerin' for the company of a strong, willful woman was all the proof anyone need to know I preferred to let her.

  It was a simple thing, two steps on the beat, hold close, two steps again. Every man and woman who'd ever worked for a living seemed to know the basics, and I was no different. For her part, my new acquaintance seemed pleased with my abilities, if a tad surprised.

  "Didn't figure a man like you would be good for much more than starting trouble and grabbing what's not his..."

  "Well," I said, a little bit of heat coming to my cheeks as she leaned in close, the scent of her, a mixture of sweat and sweet things, was enough to make a man weak in the knees, "you know what they say about the quiet ones."

  She pulled back a bit, her eyes narrowing as her mouth twitched. Then her smile broke out in full, and she laughed.

  "No. No I don't. Do you think you're a quiet one?" She asked, mockery and genuine amusement both coloring her tone.

  "Nah, not particularly," I admitted as she spun us closer to the stage. I caught the eyes of the rest of her band. An older man on the accordion, and a youngster with a strange, stringed instrument I didn't recognize, both gave me the side eye. Wasn't protective anger or jealousy but...

  I didn't know what.

  "But they say quiet folk often have depths, still waters run deep. In my experience," I took her hand and led her into a little twirl as we met again to continue the slow, intimate sway.

  "In my experience, it ain't cause they're quiet, it's because they don't want to be seen. But me?" This time the music picked up, going from the low, mournful beat that had filled the room, building to thrum then a steady, driving pace, "I love to be seen. And I go just as deep as you'll let me."

  We came apart and the dance got a little more involved, a lot more physical. My partner was smiling, her teeth gleaming in the dim light of the dancehall, as our two step evolved into something more kinetic. Despite my boast I was no master of the dance, but I knew enough to fool the crowd. More importantly, Miss Mystery knew a little more than that.

  With her in the lead we cut and twisted, turned and spun, all the while the music swelled and the pace grew more frenetic. It was like the singer herself was trying to drive me harder, faster. Like she commanded the band on stage with pure emotion and intent. The more we sweat and breathed, the more our lives pressed together in the heat of the crowd, the faster the music played, until-

  Blur.

  Time seemed to slow as we spun, eyes locked in a lurid, sweaty dance, bodies grinding. My hand found the curve of her ass, and I squeezed.

  Her smile widened, her eyes darkened.

  Blur.

  We were kissing in some dark corner of the bar, the crowd and music long gone as my hand found it's way beneath her skirt and the hem of her blouse. Her nails dug into the meat of my shoulders and her tongue probed into my mouth, her breath hot and sweet as the wine she drank.

  Blur.

  An alley, the scent of piss and the blinding sting of cheap spirits as the bottle smashed on the cobbles. Her body was flush against mine, her lips parted and inviting, her eyes wild and bright as we drank each other's breath. She was leading me down toward a set of stairs, over the bar, some bleary part of me guess. Before I could think much on it we were tangled again, my eyes staring into hers as we kissed.

  It was so strange, the sensation, the feeling. I was here, with her, and yet...

  My thoughts were elsewhere.

  Silk beneath my bare back, my arms, writhing and free as she straddled me, only her taut belly, small breasts, and hungry smile visible through a sliver of moonlight.

  "Oh you are special. I knew I could smell mana on you, could see it in that eye," she hissed as her nails dug into my cheek while her other hand dug right into the squirming mess of my left arm, "but fuck! I wonder how many you killed to get like this..." she whispered as she leaned back as tore at my belt to drag down my trousers.

  "I killed... Fifty men," I slurred, too drunk to recall the truth as she dragged a fingernail from my throat and down, tracing my ritual scar until her hand met the base of my prick.

  For a split second a terrible memory cut through the fog of lust and poison. I saw the ruined visage of a Anasis above me, fangs bare and ready to strike. I felt it's coils crushin' out my life as I dug a knife into it's stinking guts. Two monsters twisted in an embrace of death.

  And then it was gone.

  Replaced by an unearthly warm as the woman atop me leaned down to kiss and bite and-

  "Ah!" I winced as her teeth cut deep into my neck, then deeper.

  Blur.

  "Ahh!" I screamed, or tried to, my voice a dry, broken rasp.

  "Shhh. It's okay," she assured, her hips working as she rode me, warmth spilling down my neck as she kissed deeper, hungrier. I could feel something tugging on the magic inside of me and once again I felt that fear. That fear of the dark and the things that dwelt therein, only...

  It was twisted now, mixed up with the heat and pleasure of this wicked woman. I felt a scream building, the horror and panic rising as the darkness of the room seemed to grow thicker and the air grew colder.

  "Gods, so much," she mumbled through the blood, through the flesh she had torn, "it's endless, I feel so whole..." she shivered and her hips stalled as warm tear drops stained my flesh, the salt stinging as it rolled into the open wound. She clenched, releasing the ragged remains of my shoulder and neck as she came, her nails digging into my chest.

  "Ah, ah," she panted, and the shadows grew longer, the moonlight swirling into the delirium of the moment as her own ecstasy, and the sudden relief of her bite, made me climax. "I love you!" She screamed her voice peaking in a unnatural keen that seemed to cut right through my drunken state.

  Fuck.

  What have I gone and done?

  Did she say she loved me? I didn't even know her name, and I damn sure didn't know what to do with that.

  We just rocked together for a few moments, basking in something shared, something unnatural and yet...

  Boom.

  The moment ended with a crash as heavy boot took the door off it's hinges, and a pack of masked men rushed on in.

  Oh thank the gods. I thought as I dove off the bed for my discarded gun.

  This I can handle.