“So what are you proposing, exactly?” Qala said, her eyebrow now raised so high that it was in danger of disappearing entirely. “That you simply go and steal some clothes from someone else?”

  They had walked a little way down the high street, asking directions of the strangely dressed—or at least, strangely dressed to Telos’s way of thinking: he had never seen so much black—inhabitants of Daimonopolis. Eventually, they had found the major bathhouse of the city. The Mermaid Palace, it was called, which caused Xheng to look slyly at Ylia and wink again. Ylia flushed crimson and averted her eyes from the sea-captain. Telos had to admit: she was cute when embarrassed. It softened her leonine ferocity somewhat.

  “Well, you said it yourself, Qala. I’m a thief,” he replied.

  “An extremely unlucky thief,” Xheng pointed out. “I saw evidence of that in the dungeon when you lost that spear.”

  “Yes, thank you, Xheng.” The sea-captain had a way of striking the exact buried nerve that would cause most irritation. Telos wondered whether this was how he’d once entertained himself at sea, or perhaps motivated his crew. “But did we not return with the princess in tact?”

  Telos regretted his words the moment they left his lips, for Qala self-consciously covered the missing fingernails of her hand.

  Xheng was right. Telos was nervous. With his new enhanced abilities, he did not doubt his chances of survival, but he did doubt his chances of success. Isn’t it the case that the more I want it, the less likely I am to get it? It was some equation to that effect, a cruelly worded contract with Fate that made that which he desired slip away from him.

  It was why he was also afraid of his growing feelings for Ylia. It was far, far too early to say it was outright love, of course. But certainly there was attraction. Then again, who wouldn’t be attracted to Ylia? Maybe Jubal. Even then, Telos wasn’t so sure. The theront seemed quite taken with her.

  “I’ll meet you back here in two hours,” Telos said. “If I don’t return… Well, I don’t think it will come to that.”

  “We’ll take the first Engine out of here, never fear,” Xheng said, jovially.

  “I have no doubt you mean that,” Telos said, forcing a grin. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Ylia waved. Qala nodded. Xheng grinned. Urgal yowled—so Telos scratched the huge felidae’s ears. Jubal inclined his head ever so slightly.

  “Be safe, Telos,” the theront said.

  “I will.”

  He felt strangely sad, leaving them there. He wondered what they would do to pass the time, what conversations they might have. I have become sentimental about a group of people I hardly know, he mused. But survival will do that to you.

  He had seen it many times with bands of thieves, carny troupes, and adventuring fellowships. Danger and threat pulled people together, accelerating the time it took to feel bonded to someone. He, Ylia, Jubal, and Qala had been through hell together the last week. And Xheng had just lost his entire ship and crew. He was coping by projecting wit and cheer, but deep down, Telos knew he must be hurting badly.

  Telos slipped into a side-alley—though in truth it was far too wide to be called such—and crouched low. There was a pile of refuse—bits of wood, compost, and broken furniture—which served as meagre cover. The night was beginning to break, the first signs of dawn showing on the horizon, but clouds rising from the factories and fires partially obscured the light, lending him some shadows still.

  He knew how to identify the houses of the wealthy better than most thieves, for he had lived among them, been one of them. But now he wanted to try something different. He wanted to put his enhanced senses to the test.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deep. Instantly, the range of his awareness expanded. In his immediate vicinity, he could smell the faeces of rats (all-too-familiar from his three month stint in Ob-koron), the acid chemical they poured into latrines in the bigger cities, the froth of activated Daimonsblood as it hummed through the pipes and conduits of the city. And now I’ve realised what is strange about Aurelia, he mused. There are hardly any animals. In any Yarulian city, even ones so grand as Gorgosa, there was always a menagerie of beasts: oxen for the ploughs, horses and mules to carry wares and pull carts, dragonlings to send messages, saying nothing of the chickens and pigs that made up the city’s food supply. But here, other than a few dragonlings flitting to and fro in the sky, there was hardly a whine or bray. The city ran on machine oils. The blood of the earth made it turn and gyre. Here, they did not need oxen to pull ploughs, for the ploughs pulled themselves, while belching fumes into the black night.

  Maybe not all of Aurelia was like this. He remembered Ylia had said she grew up on a farm, a real farm with bees and livestock. Still, though he was no great lover of animals—despite Urgal’s affections—the thought of a world without this harmony between man and beast perturbed him. He couldn’t fully explain why, it simply struck him as wrong. He wondered if this was how Beltanus saw humanity. It was not that the god wished to save them out of the goodness of his heart, so much as that a world without human beings, and whatever function they served in the gods’ schemes, was strange and somehow cold.

  “Silk,” he whispered, drawing his attention back to the task at hand. “I need to find silk…”

  He could not have described what silk smelled like, but his nose knew. Soon, his range of awareness had broadened yet wider, and he detected the subtlest notes of perfume. He followed those scented tides until he reached another smell, the one he sought. Silk was earthy, hardly detectable in normal circumstances, but his nose was now as a bloodhound’s. The memories of the worm, and the earth, lingered on the costly, smooth fabrics. He inhaled them richly and smiled. He would never tire of objects of luxury.

  There were other smells too: the harsh acridity of Goldleaf burning in a pipe, and some kind of Aurelian flower with which he was not familiar: pungent, bombastic. Just like the people, he thought. Though the ones he had spotted in Daimonopolis dressed like they were attending a funeral. Perhaps that was simply a consequence of the smog-laden air.

  Telos rose. Wealth, it turned out, reeked. More so than poverty. He opened his eyes and followed the smell, eventually arriving before a large, three-storey building, its bricks all black, the window sills adorned with overhanging vines, a wall surrounding its perimeter. Irritatingly, the Aurelians built their houses with far more space between them than Yarulian abodes. Thus, even though Daimonopolis was more crowded than Wylhome, there were still not many places for him to hide.

  He listened now.

  His ears were just as sensitive as his nose, detecting whispered conversation between servants, the harsh words of a nurse to a child. He winced at that, remembering his own childhood, how infrequently his mother had ever been there to discipline him. He hardly knew his parents, in truth, only their falsehood.

  Some days he regretted leaving so rashly. He had enjoyed the privilege of two parents. They weren’t exactly loving, but nor were they abusive. They had been fond of him, he thought, in their own constipated way. But he had left them out of some sense of wounded pride. They were not good enough. The pattern had repeated many times in his life. He had joined the carnival troupe, only to abandon them for lack of ambition. He had then become a Master-thief of the Guild, only to reject them also as being too cowardly to accompany him on his raid of the Royal Vaults. And had he not also rejected his saviours, Beltanus and Danyil, to a degree?

  He shook his head. Now was not the time for distraction or reminiscing. He had a simple job: to liberate a family with more than enough of a single garment. He would feel little guilt at the theft.

  He crossed the wide avenue as swiftly as he could. He thanked Danyil that the Hydra-Scale armour he wore made virtually no sound, flexing like leather. He reached the wall and there paused. He could easily leap from the top of the wall to the second storey window, which looked like the master bedroom, but he could smell the wet, clagged fur and meaty breath of hounds.

  Telos cursed. He had mentally complained about there being no animals in the city, and now he found himself confronted with watchdogs. Nereth’s curse continued to serve up the choicest frustrations for him to eat.

  “I should have liberated that assassin of his blowdart,” he muttered.

  He tried to clear his mind, to erase all thought so that the Fate-shaping curse had nothing to feed on. If I eliminate desire, then… He breathed, and breathed. What did he care if he failed in his task and Qala had to walk naked through the streets? He cared not at all. In fact, he should very much like to see her naked. There, Nereth could try and untangle that intellectual knot!

  He skirted the wall, keeping low. Thankfully, the crisis in the city seemed to have driven most people indoors. No doubt any curtain-twitchers would spot him, but he would be hard to see in his dark armour, clinging to the shadows of the wall.

  He found no cellar door, this time. A gate allowed him to look in on the forecourt of the mansion, where two dogs lounged and tussled over bones. They were black, hulking things that looked like they had some bear blood in them. Even in his augmented state, Telos did not fancy fighting them. He would have to attempt the wall.

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  With a nimble scamper, digging his fingers into the jagged brickwork, he soon found himself at the top. Even without his enhancements, he would have found it easy to walk along the narrow ridge, one foot in front of the other with feline precision. The dogs dropped what they were doing and peered at him. One barked. The other growled deeply in the back of its throat. Telos ignored them and tightrope-walked along the wall’s top until he reached the second story window. No one had yet come. He suspected the dogs barked at any passersby, and that if he was quick, their outbursts would not raise much of an alarm.

  It was a long jump to the window, nearly ten feet—and having to be made from a standing start. He might not have been able to make it without his added strength, but he could feel the tensile power in his hamstrings and knees. One bound and he would be at the sill. Whether it would hold his weight was another matter, but he saw no other way.

  He bent his knees, readied himself for a jump.

  And the window opened.

  Telos froze. He stared at the little girl with black hair who had swung the window wide. She was pale in a sickly way. Her eyes were darkly rimmed. Her lips were pursed in a look of thin disdain.

  He remained comically poised for the jump as the two stared at one another.

  “Greetings,” Telos said, after a long silence had passed without the girl feeling the need to say anything. She rested her elbows on the sill and peered quizzically down at him.

  “Hello,” she said. “You’re Yarulian too.”

  The girl had a Yarulian accent—a nobleborn accent, if he had to guess. She was clearly part of one of the aristocratic families that had migrated to Aurelia in the hope of greater fortune. He didn’t blame them. Yarruk had problems—problems with trade, problems with money, problems with resources—problems only being compounded by the idiocy of the King.

  “Were you going to jump in through my window?” she asked.

  “Erm… yes?” He had given up lying. It seemed everyone could see through him whenever he tried it. The closest he could come to lying these days was omitting certain facts.

  “Well, then,” she said, stepping back from the window. “Better to do it with the glass out of the way.”

  Telos swallowed. He had lost his desire to jump. Although she was only a little girl this screamed trap. But the dogs were still barking, and soon their persistence would arouse suspicion. He bent his legs even further, and leapt to the window.

  He cleared the sill with even more grace and ease than he’d anticipated, landing in a palatial room. Freshly cleaned carpet greeted his filthy boots. The smell of lavender combined with the emerald wallpaper made the whole room sleepy and dreamy.

  The girl wanted for nothing. Plush, hand-sewn toys lined a bed with silk sheets, warm blankets, and a bedside table sporting a crystalline lamp that gave off a luminous glow. That alone was a sign of immense wealth, for the glowstones Anpa were costly indeed, the shipping alone making them too dear for anyone save the richest to afford.

  “So, what were you going to steal?” the girl asked, as though it were nothing in the world. “I warn you, my parents have gone out to help deal with the fires at one of their factories. But they will return soon.”

  “Well, the honest truth is I am looking for something to dress a princess.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. A bright smile split her face.

  “You don’t jest with me?”

  A great sadness filled Telos’s heart. The girl spoke like an adult, not an eleven-year-old. She spoke like one for whom the magic of the world was already fading.

  “I do not jest. I am friends with a Qi’shathian princess. And she… has nothing to wear.”

  The girl smiled.

  “One moment. My parents leave my door locked, but it is no trouble to open it.”

  She went to the door and produced, from the folds of a black dress, a long hairpin. She inserted it into the lock and, with some wriggling and twisting, caused the latch to clack open.

  “Wait here!” she commanded, then left, shutting the door behind her.

  Telos stood, restlessly shifting his weight. Was she going to get guards? Would she alert the house to his presence? He was mad to trust her. But something about her reminded him of, well, himself. He saw in her sleep-deprived eyes the same hollowness that’d eaten away at him. She was a prisoner in this house, just as he had been. For the wealthy, children often became assets, not people. He knew this was not the case for everyone. He had met others who enjoyed both the privilege of love and financial security. But that was not the condition of his household. Cynicism had pervaded—and permanently infected him.

  The seconds ticked by like hours as he waited, and he started to notice a few oddities in the room. From the top drawer of a gorgeous black cabinet, a tiny white rag peeked out. Is that a bandage?

  Next to the crystal on her bedside table was a bottle of yellow-brown glass. The contents within looked like some kind of potion… He went to the bed. It felt wrong to invade the privacy of a little girl, but he had to know. He peeled back the silk sheets. The mattress was soiled with pustulous stains. He recoiled.

  Oh Gods…

  The door cracked open and he readied himself to jump out of the window.

  The girl slipped in and closed it shut behind her, making sure to lock it again. She was thorough, would make a good thief.

  If she lived another year.

  “You have the Kiss,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She stared at him. Slowly, she nodded.

  “I do. This room is my world, for the most part. It gets… lonely. That’s why I let you in.”

  She extended the bundle she held towards Telos. A gorgeous silk kimono, neatly folded, dyed a luxurious jade that almost sparkled.

  “A jade dress for a Jade Princess,” the girl said.

  He accepted the dress, noting that she quickly withdrew her hands as though fearing to touch him. He wondered if she would pass on her curse to him. The dress felt tainted. Cursed luck again, he thought, that the one helpful person I meet has the plague! He tried to keep his face neutral. He did not want to upset a child who clearly had suffered much already.

  But evidently, he failed, for she said, “Do not fear my sickness. So long as we do not touch skin to skin, you shall not contract it.”

  He stared at her. Such wisdom in the eyes of an eleven year old. It hurt him to see. Children should be wild and free. “You’re old enough to know not to trust strangers, and that I’m probably a criminal or worse. Why open the window, fetch the clothes, do all this?”

  The little girl smiled.

  “I told you: my life is a lonely one. No one talks to me except to tell me what not to do. I am mad with boredom. I have only books for friends. And here you are, like a knight from a storybook, calling at my window! I do not have many adventures. I am unlikely to have many more… So thank you, Telos, for this adventure.”

  Telos’s heart nearly stopped.

  “I… I never told you my name.”

  They stared at one another in silence. The seconds dripped by with the sluggishness of oil. Telos knew he should go, but he felt the vice-grip of Fate about him, saw something mythic in her eyes, and longed to understand what it meant.

  “You should go, now,” she said, softly. “I’ve said too much.”

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me how you knew.”

  “I would not raise your voice. The servants will come. And then, all will be lost.”

  “Tell me,” he whispered.

  The girl smiled, deliriously and darkly.

  “If you insist… She told me to help you.”

  Telos felt his god-powered heart stumble over its rhythm.

  “She?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Yes. The tall lady who comes to see me every night. I call her The Dark Veil Lady. She always wears a black veil over her face. But I know she’s beautiful underneath.”

  Telos felt liquid dread injected into his veins.

  “This… lady. She told you to help me?”

  The girl nodded.

  “She said if I did, then I would get better.”

  Telos swallowed. He had watched the naked goddess Nereth bathe in the pool; he had stood before the fury of Beltanus, the Lord of Creativity; but if there was one god he feared to meet most, it was Eresh, she of the Sickle and Sickness, she of Might and Madness, the Flesh-shaper, Mother of Theronts, Goddess of Disease. Koronzon was the Lord of Death, but Death was swift and pure and black. Eresh’s “gifts” were anything but swift, corrupted all that was pure, and bubbled every vile colour of disease.

  “She knew you would come,” the girl whispered, her loaded with awe. “The Dark Veil Lady. She knew.”

  Telos swallowed. Clearly, Nereth was not the only one who could read Fate’s scriptures, though perhaps she of all the gods could most bend it to her will. Either way, it was clear that Eresh was their ally, as Beltanus had stated. He wondered at why a god would concern themselves with such a trivial thing as clothes, but then, were not the smallest details often key to success? With his newfound powers of focus, he was increasingly realising the importance of little things, and the way all things interconnected. Chains, cycles, this is how the gods see the world. They measure time not in a line but as part of a web.

  He shook himself. These truths would paralyse him if he let them. He smiled at the girl.

  “What is your name?”

  “Aurea. Aurea Ebon.”

  “Aurea, I will pray for your recovery.”

  “It is already done,” she said, and the smile that split her face seemed to illuminate her from within, and he believed her words.

  He turned and went to the window. He grinned at Aurea.

  “I shall tell the princess your name, so that when all this is through, she can thank you in person.”

  He leapt from the window.

  Dawn was painting the black city gold.