The rain fell in fine blades beneath the Black Arches. The water didn't pool on the rich, perfectly leveled limestone, draining into polished canals away from the damp boots of the four mercenaries slinking in the alley.

  Exactly as on the night of the proposal, Lord Valerius's slender figure cut through the shadows. The smell of perfumed tobacco dueled with the faint stench of dried blood the group carried beneath their clothes.

  The nobleman took a step forward. From the folds of his cloak, he tossed a thick, dark suede pouch onto the cement. The leather hit with a heavy thud, announcing the densest clinking Malik had ever heard. Pure gold.

  Brog didn't look at the pouch. He kept his eyes on the half-light beneath the flat hat. Valerius smiled. A thin, predatory cut beneath the freezing dampness.

  "The room woke up silent, but in perfect crimson," the lord's voice sounded lethally soft. "Official guards went up early today due to the maid's screams. They didn't detect even a speck of soot from the deserter's arcane containment runes. No one saw smoke from magic, no one witnessed the breaking of the locks. Frighteningly invisible. I hope the execution was as clean as the watch's reports state."

  "Our tracks sank into the sewer along with the stench of our street, my lord," Miren murmured, icy. "The deserter took the trade routes of his guild to the rat's hell without even seeing our faces."

  "Splendid." Valerius snapped his elegant gloves, adjusting his collar.

  His gaze carried no gratitude, only the satisfaction of an artificer testing the sharpness of his rented guillotine.

  "The underworld hides better in the dirt of your rustic boots than in the leather of expensive assassins or stupid magical sellswords. I count on these blind tools of yours being free should the Academy have another rat to be reaped. The Imperial Throne cleans even the alleys for those who dirty their hands marvelously well for silent silver."

  The chill hit the pit of Malik's stomach head-on. The nobleman wasn't finalizing a trade of favors. He was snapping the collar on. Accepting that suicidal contract had paid a lifetime of gold for nights in the gutter, but now the free instincts of the street dogs belonged to the lethal gears of the nobility's empire.

  Brog waited for the suit to disappear up the isolated stairs. Only after Valerius vanished did the dwarf pick up the fat leather pouch of coins. The group retreated through the threshold into the same washed-out night, now lethally richer in their heavy pockets and with invisible royal chains around their necks.

  ***

  Beneath the decaying tavern of the "Ochre Tea", Brog threw twenty brutal imperial crowns onto the rotting wooden table. The thud echoed in the slum's hidden base, far away from the streets above.

  The night seemed less cold there, warmed by the tiny fireplace.

  Malik held an entire pork leg on a crude plate in his hands. The smell of real roasted fat erased months of rats and rotting garbage. He gnawed on the soft meat without fighting dark monsters for disgusting marrow or sharing scraps with stray dogs in the alleys. They ate like kings of the sewers at last.

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  The young man wiped his greasy hand on his pants. He took a deep gulp of dark malt beer. He swallowed the drink, closing his eyes in relief. The warm bitterness in his throat helped settle the invisible stench of his first human blood under his nails.

  By the fireplace, Brog held his own mug. The dwarf exhaled the smoke of his thick tobacco through his nose, turning his rustic face to stare at the youngest chewing desperately on the rich meat. He raised his mug toward the boy. Malik met the firm stare and returned the rustic toast of malt with a greasy-cheeked half-smile.

  The dwarf didn't spew poetic nonsense on a night of plenty.

  "You didn't swallow your tongue in fear before dirty meat, kid." Brog dragged his deep voice through the sparse words. "Kept the knife straight. Undid the chimneys without trembling a fingertip in that lethal magic fireplace there. The rich prey fell clean for us."

  Malik nodded. It was the first time the hardened leadership had praised him face-to-face. The dwarf swallowed the rest of his drink in a single gulp, proud and tragic.

  The raw euphoria in the base lasted for a few hours full of pork. Brog and Malik fell into a deep sleep due to the expensive novelty of a stomach full of oil, malt, and fireplace heat on dry mattresses over the thick, arranged boards.

  But in the stuffiest corner, Miren didn't sleep. She dragged on a rolled cigarette behind the dry flames of the fireplace. It was then that her ears caught the extremely sharp and contained scraping of a dirty paper scratching in the improvised cradle of old blankets far in the back. The mage narrowed her gray eyes through the darkness.

  Nasir, sitting quietly propped against the upright crates in the ember's ghost light, hadn't looked at Malik's midnight banquet. In the pale and skinny hands of the youngest, there was a crumpled piece of pale yellowish parchment, rich with the thick borders of the court.

  "What did you steal from the shadows of the untouchable wood right under my and his cold mustaches, at the door?" Miren's voice came out dry as glass, without waking the lethal, snoring brothers on the blind boards.

  Nasir didn't turn his thin, sparse head to stare at her. But his voice brimmed with a mortal, cold, shallow, and muffled cut against her smooth, stagnant smoking on the hot tip.

  "I pulled this from the yellowish lower fold of the loose safe fallen under the tables. The exact dirty moment by the opposing luxury fireplaces to the cold bed while Brog silently asphyxiated the lethargic current of his dark neck."

  Miren put out her cigarette on the floorboards and walked over to the boy. She pulled the edges of the yellowed paper from Nasir's tiny hands. The dim light of the fireplace illuminated the thick lines of the court.

  The unlit cigarette slipped from Miren's lips.

  "This..." the mage's voice failed. Her gray gaze turned pale before the wax seal on the parchment's margin. "This bears the official stamp of the Chief Apothecary of the Imperial Capital Triads..."

  Nasir raised his cadaverous face.

  "'Project Roots', Miren. He paid us that river of gold because Valerius acts in the shadows of the Throne's official fund. Lord Valerius is buying children from the outskirts. Boys with atrophied canals, like ours."

  The silence collapsed over the slum. Nasir's breathing faltered in a cold gasp.

  "The deserter hadn't stolen trade routes. He operated on broken meridians. He extracted what was left of children's vital cores to make alchemical extractions for the royal tower. The man there didn't flee out of greed; he must have threatened to expose the clandestine children's mass graves, and that's why he was killed. The immense payment we celebrated... Valerius used off-the-radar assassins to muffle a state scheme involving the disappearance of children from the sewers."

  Miren stepped back, the paper trembling minutely in her stained hand.

  "We shouldn't have touched Valerius's money..."

  "We already did." The youngest finalized. There was no fear in his eyes now, only the crushing weight of a world much larger than the filthy streets. "Valerius put our marks on the knives in a State crime. The collar is already on our necks. Now, we will find out to the very bottom where this rot comes from."