Risens moved wraithlike through the streets. The sound of the solitary, drawn-out cry only gave him general details of which direction to run. Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called for the Conspiracy of Ravens once more. They would aid his cause. The birds would be his eyes.

  “Find her,” he hissed as the birds floated into view.

  With a unified sharp response, they screeched and pumped their wings. Against the blackened sky, the dull yellow glow—the aura that surrounded them—shone like a lighthouse. He couldn’t help but wonder once more if he alone could see it.

  A few hundred meters down the main avenue, the birds cut to the right, above a darkened alley.

  The muffled sounds of struggle sounded like thunder.

  His avian friends had assisted him well. The ravens alighted on the corner of a building, their attention focused on the commotion in the alley beyond. Their time was limited, yet he hesitated to let them go. He expected he would need them again soon.

  Glaring down the alley, the sight before his eyes turned his heart to stone. The fire that raged in his veins threatened to consume him.

  It seemed that the gods had drawn Risens and the youth together once more. Her retreat into the night had only lasted a few blocks before meeting its tragic end. Suspended by a lock of her hair, she was held aloft by a man nearly thrice her size. One of her hands grasped desperately at the straining locks, feverishly trying to relieve what must have been a tremendous discomfort pain. Her feet and the other arm lashed out wildly at the man behind her.

  As if Risens needed any further evidence or coercion, the jeers from the men surrounding them sealed their fates.

  There were four in total. The one who held her was tall and slim, yet easily overpowered the scrawny waif. The others in the group were nearly as disheveled as she was. Their clothes were threadbare, their hair, faces, and skin, dirty and scarred.

  Of the three standing apart from the girl and her captor, the one in the middle was most definitely in charge. He held an air of superiority that was undeniable. A lord among the waste and fellow denizens of the gutter. His eyes were deeply set, but even in the darkness, they glowed bright hazel. His long black hair looked like a nest that Risens’ fowl friends would envy for a home.

  “We took a vote, little urchin,” the man grumbled, his voice cold and hard. “These alleys and streets belong to us. You don’t panhandle here. These are our corners.”

  He stepped forward, violently shaking the entrapped girl. She swatted at him with an unexpectedly controlled swing, but the older man easily blocked her punch. Jostling her again, the distinct, high-pitched clinks of coins striking the damp stone echoed through the alley.

  “What do we have here?” he hissed. “What did I tell you boys? She was holding out on us. She clearly must have stole it. It would only be right for us to take it back—would it not? To return it to its rightful owners. Us.”

  He finished his speech with an awkward bark, wicked and foul.

  “No,” she protested. “It’s mine, and I need it for food. I didn’t steal it. It was a gift.”

  Her pleas, honest as they were, incited vile laughter and earned her a hearty backhand across the face.

  “That’s not how things work around here, Missy,” he croaked through his laughter. “We do things fair here in the alleys. We vote on everything. Isn’t that right, Dran? Jonpre? Pes?”

  With short jerking motions he inclined his head at each of his companions as he growled their names — Jonpre to his left, Dran to his right. Pes still easily held the youth in his grip. Each returned his attention with mumbled, wicked affirmations.

  “Ha, that’s right,” the one on the left, Jonpre agreed. “We got a way of things. This territory is ours. Everything in it belongs to us.”

  He reached down greedily, his yellowing fingernails scraping up the coins that Risens had just given to the girl.

  “Here you go, Carr.” Having handed over the earnings to his boss, he stepped back and showed his mangled, crooked teeth to the others. He shook his head wildly, beaming, as if he’d done something extraordinary and was begging for the praise.

  A few meters to his side, the last in the group, Dran stood a step behind the leader, Carr. His smile quickly faded into a frown as his hand scratched uncomfortably at his chest before he thumped his fist against his skin. The bizarre actions seemed as if the excitement of it all had suddenly stopped his heart, requiring a manual restart by his thumping fist.

  “What do you say we vote on what to do with her next?” Carr said over his shoulder.

  Risens had heard enough. He’d seen too much.

  The ravens perched on the building to his side glared expectantly at the scene. Their beady eyes met with his. The vicious sentiment was one that they shared.

  “Free her.” His words were a whisper that only the birds would hear. “Then lead her away. She does not need to see this.”

  With a flap of their wings, they circled once before letting out a shrill cry as they streaked toward the group. The call of ravens was not an unfamiliar sound in the city. They were the symbol of the Kingdom of Halthome, after all—visitors seen daily flitting among the buildings, hunting or merely preening their shiny black feathers.

  This time, they sought revenge.

  Pes had no way to defend himself from their attack.

  Diving in fast, their talons raked against his cheeks while their beaks simultaneously stabbed into his eyes with frightening precision. With a pained squeal, he dropped the youth, throwing his hands to his face before crumpling to the ground. Blood spurted out from between his fingers as he writhed in agony on the stone.

  Risens stepped out from behind the corner of the building, his pace was determined and steady, covering the distance and only a matter of breaths. The trio of assailants stood in panicked shock at the brutal and disturbing attack. Their companion squirmed on the ground, splattering crimson everywhere.

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  Risens glared at them, freezing them in place. Their eyes flitted, seemingly unsure where to focus—on the shadow-oozing menace that stalked from the alley beyond or the birds who had just blinded their beloved leader.

  But Risens’ glare never left them as he took a knee next to where the youngster had fallen.

  The ravens, their beaks wet with blood, hopped before her. Their talons made a quiet tapping as they struck the rocks.

  “Follow the ravens,” he whispered to the girl. “Do not look back. I will find you.”

  With a combination of short hops and small bursts of flight, the ravens led the girl, first crawling and then stumbling, away.

  “What is this, Carr?” the eyeless man demanded, clutching the coins protectively in his hands despite his condition. “You promised me. You’ve promised me everything in this territory was mine. All mine.”

  Risens pulled a Talon from its sheath. The insatiable urge for blood flooded his senses as the flashing symbol ignited in the corner of his vision.

  “I voted,” Risens growled.

  With a single slash, he whipped the blade across the squirming man’s neck, nearly separating his head from his shoulders.

  The others backed up a step, just nodding in appreciation or approval. It was clear they would follow Carr with sheer, blind stupidity.

  Carr growled, glaring first at the body of his companion before turning his hateful eyes to Risens. Perhaps the power of his stare had intimidated others.

  Not Risens.

  Not today.

  Carr pulled his blade, leveling the tip ominously at Risens’s chest. The others, emboldened by their leaders’ actions, likewise drew theirs one by one.

  Not making baseless speculations about one’s opponent was a lesson Risens had had drilled into his head throughout the years of training. His masters, brutal in their efficiency and acumen, had deceived him. First: tattered garb and cheap thread were no testament to a fighter’s skill. Neither was their cleanliness, nor lack thereof. He had been instructed in painful teachings that neither did apparent handicaps, as they could be easily faked.

  He was taught well to follow the cues beyond outward appearances: how one wielded their blade, how their eyes moved, scanning the situation before them. Even the rate of their breathing was a potential cue to whether they believed they could win the fight. He studied the three before him, pinpointing their weaknesses immediately.

  Their blades were pitted, likely never maintained adequately since the day they found their way into their grubby hands. Their stances were unbalanced, feet too close. Their positioning was cramped, leaving no room to maneuver or to surround the single victim they hunted.

  He knew many of the street gangs that haunted Windwake’s alleys. He recognized most of the faces, if not their names. This one had not reached his ears or eyes. They were either trivial to the crown or too new to have been studied.

  Either way, it mattered not. None would leave this alley alive.

  “Let’s see you try,” Risens growled.

  Whether combined or alone, they were wholly unprepared for the ferocity of his attack. Whipping the other Talon from his sheath, the second glowing symbol flashed into view in the opposite corner of his vision.

  The blades screamed an expectation as he charged the trio.

  “Slit their throats!” one cried.

  “Feed them their own bollocks!” shouted the other.

  Unsurprisingly, one of the trio, Jonpre, withdrew from the fight immediately. Before the first ringing of their swords clashing, he soiled himself, the dark stain spreading along the front of his filthy pants.

  Risens surged between the remaining pair, sliding under Carr’s motivated yet careless attack. The trio had been standing too close to one another. The blade whistled as it traveled over Risens’ head, ending in a solid thunk as it bit into Dran’s chest. Spinning on the slick stones, Risens wheeled back on the pair, offering a single slash with the Raven Talon.

  Clutching at the wound that gutted him, the man crumpled to the ground without offering a sound.

  “YES!!!” The celebration of the Talon was so loud in Risens’s ear, it was as if Carr himself had shouted.

  He did not, however. The horror and realization on Carr’s face wasn’t lost on Risens as the glowing symbol in the corner of his vision increased with his latest kill.

  There’s still more to go. The blades knew, screaming for justice.

  Carr screamed as well, leveling a vicious slash with a new dagger at Risen’s neck. Though he hadn’t thrown the blade this time, his poorly aimed strike was cut short by the Talon that nearly severed his arm at the elbow. Flopping at an awkward angle, blood erupting from the wound, the arm went limp, and the blade skipped harmlessly off the grimy alley floor. Carr opened his mouth but was silenced as the Raven Talon punched past his lips and out the back of his head.

  The gang of four who had preyed on the child had now been reduced to one. Slipping in his own urine, the bastard scrambled to escape. Risens casually tossed one of the Talons at the fleeing man. The razor’s edge cut across the back of his left leg before the tip bit deep into the side of his right knee. With a pathetic squeal, the man tripped and fell.

  Risens was at his side in a breath, wrenching his blade free from bone and flesh. He loomed over the squirming, blubbering, pathetic excuse for a man.

  “Please!” the man begged. “I’m not like them.”

  “Coins. Now.”

  “But they’re mine,” he protested, pathetically obstinate until the end.

  “You claimed this territory was your own. Now haunt these filthy streets for all eternity.”

  Allowing both of the blades to feed, he dropped to a knee, driving the Raven Talons through the men’s chest. The counters increased once more.

  Risens quickly cleaned his blades off on the dead man’s clothes. Pressing the heel of his boot on his wrist, he pried the coins from his dead fingers.

  He didn’t need to survey the scene to know that none of the assailants survived. Vengeance and justice had both been served. They’d bought their deaths and would rot in the gutter where they belonged.

  Windwake would be safer in the absence of these men.

  Risens cursed to himself as he turned to walk back down the alley to where the ravens had led the girl. She had made it a few dozen meters, though she had not followed his instructions as intended. She kneeled on the ground, the ravens, both glowing with a faint yellow aura, perched on either of her slender shoulders.

  From her wide eyes, he knew she had not looked away. She had witnessed every moment of his retribution. She had seen the whole scene unfold in her defense.

  Timidly, she rose to her feet as he approached. Her hands fumbled idly together in front of her.

  “Teach me how to do that,” she pleaded.

  “No.”

  There was no room for consideration. Even if he had the time, he had not the desire to train an apprentice. She showed promise; it was true. However it had been learned, her stealth was impressive for one her age. He was the King’s Rightmaker, an assassin now hunted by forces he didn’t understand. He suspected that the King, too, had sought his death. He had no aspirations of dragging anyone else into his orbit. Tawny and Marlaine we’re already inextricably tied to his fate. He would not bring a child into this disaster.

  Without a word, he moved forward, collecting the girl by the arm. He pulled her with him, though he was intentional not to drag her too hard.

  Without explaining where he was going, he stalked through the alley. The ravens flapped from her shoulders and circled silently overhead. The girl trailed a step behind, doing her best to keep up with his pace. He stopped as he reached the opening to the main avenue beyond.

  “There is a temple a few hundred meters down the road,” Risens said. He held out his hand, unclenching his fist that contained the coins he’d recovered. “You will go there. You will stay there. They offer shelter for those in need. You will not follow me this time. The ravens will ensure that you make it unharmed. Do not cross me, little one.”

  “My name’s Aleth, you know?” she grumbled, the displeasure clear in her tone.

  “And I am but a shadow.”

  She nodded and walked a few paces along the cobblestone avenue before she turned back toward him again.

  “I thank you again,” she said, her eyes still wide with wonder if not tinged with disappointment. “I agree with the ravens. They disagree with that assessment.”

  Her attention shifted upward, and she skipped carefree along the street in their wake as if the traumatic happenings of the evening had never occurred.