Strathmill Park wasn’t a bad place to hang out (for Crow’s Foot). You might even call it an idyllic country escape within the city – if you blinded yourself to the dead trees and decayed benches, and focused instead on the elderly gentlemen playing chess or the young couples strolling hand in hand along the canal that separated us from Charterhall. From my station just inside the side gate of the Sword Academy, I could even make out the gleaming dome of the Sensorium in the distance through a web of skeletal branches.

Scanning the park, I double- and triple-checked that all our pieces were in place. Seated inside the derelict gazebo, Faith folded her hands demurely in her lap, the very picture of a proper young maiden awaiting her suitor. Meanwhile, Ash lounged on a bench near Chime’s usual seat, seemingly engrossed in the Dockside Telegraph’s latest headlines and oblivious to the ragged urchins playing a game of marbles nearby. Around the outskirts of the park swaggered three of Mylera’s Cutters, their red silk sashes gleaming under the streetlights, their hard stares suggesting to the citizenry of Crow’s Foot that there might be better times to enjoy this particular taxpayer-funded public space.

Right on schedule, Chime strutted into the park, sprawled in the center of his bench, spread his legs to occupy the maximal amount of space, and fished a stale roll out of one greasy pocket. Pulverizing the bread, he flung a handful of crumbs onto the ground in front of him. When the pigeons flocked to them, he took aim with the larger pieces, smirking every time he hit a target. Although the birds bobbed and squawked indignantly, they quickly settled back down to peck at the crumbs.

Casually, Ash raised his newspaper.

One orphan promptly knocked the other’s marble under a shrub; with a yelp, the child dove after it.

A single pigeon with a slip of paper trailing from its leg landed next to Chime. Throwing another handful of bread crumbs at the other birds, he seized it, undid the message, and tossed the pigeon back into the air. With a flutter of feathers, it soared up and vanished into the distance, heading due south in the direction of Ironhook Prison. While Chime read Tarvul’s latest instructions, I surveyed our surroundings one last time, met Ash’s eyes, and nodded once.

I didn’t catch his signal, but the first orphan tucked his marbles into his pocket, tiptoed up to Chime’s bench – and then darted forward, grabbing at the Billhook’s pocket watch.

Quick as a flash, Chime seized the little boy’s wrist with his free hand. “Here, you!” he snarled. Crumpling the note and shoving it into his pocket, he dragged the boy forward.

The orphan promptly began to wail. “Please, sir, I din’t mean nuthin’! I’ll never do it again!” He struggled desperately, but Chime merely held him at arm’s length, flicked out a Bowie knife, and angled it so the streetlights showed all the dark stains on the blade.

My red sash streaming out behind me, I dashed across the park and ordered imperiously, “Let go of the child!”

“He was stealing from me,” Chime growled, tightening his grip and forcing the child’s hand out as if preparing to hack it off.

The little boy screamed and fought, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw his fingers creep towards the latch on a bracelet that Ash had given him.

“You can’t mutilate children in the middle of a park. That’s not how we do things here in Crow’s Foot. Hand him over,” I commanded, blatantly ignoring the fact that here in Crow’s Foot, gangs mutilated children who got in the way all the time. When Chime made no movement to release the orphan, I drew myself up and twirled my sash casually, reminding him whose doorstep he was on. “Come, man. We’ll take him to Strathmill House and sort things out.”

Even though the residents of Crow’s Foot had carefully cultivated a lack of curiosity, Faith swung into action. Reaching into the ghost field, she daintily drew out the shimmering outlines of spirits and traced them next to the chess players and lovers. The ethereal outlines flickered just out of their lines of sight but atavistic instinct made them uneasy, and one by one the old folks packed up their chess pieces and the lovers strolled off in search of a café.

From one of the Red Sashes came a birdcall – moments before a Bluecoat patrol ambled around the corner, still hooting over a crude joke. When they caught sight of Chime, they immediately stiffened, puffed out their chests, and headed over to see what the urchin had done to their friend.

Ash launched our backup plan. Dropping his newspaper, he leaped up and began patting himself all over frantically. “What! What! They must have taken it! Those orphans again!” he screamed.

The second orphan crashed out of the shrub and streaked off across the park towards the orphanage with Ash in hot pursuit.

“Here, you!” bellowed the Bluecoats, changing directions and chasing after them. “Boy! Come back here this instant!”

All four of them vanished into Strathmill House.

The three Red Sashes and I converged on Chime.

Faith quickly hand-signed the orphan to use the bracelet – in a flash, the child flipped the latch, sprayed trance powder straight into his captor’s eyes and nose, wrenched free, and pelted out of the park.

Chime roared once and flailed wildly, clawing at his face, but within half a minute, his motions slowed and grew uncoordinated, and his eyes unfocused. Deep in a pleasant, hypnotic trance and mumbling happily to himself, he started stumbling away from the bench – right towards our tripwire.

Unfortunately, he noticed just before he blundered into it and gave a yelp of surprise.

Across the park, the Bluecoats were heading back out of the orphanage, shaking their heads while Ash gesticulated and blathered about the dangerous rise in juvenile delinquency. As soon as Chime cried out, Ash went back into a frenzy.

“What! What! They took that too! I can’t believe it! They must have done it while we in the orphanage!”

“What else did he take, sir?” inquired one of the Bluecoats in a weary voice.

“Oh, I don’t know, one or two bracelets maybe. It’s so hard to tell when you wear all this jewelry!”

The poor Bluecoats exchanged harassed glances, trying to signal to each other that they needed to get this lunatic gentleman across the bridge into Charterhall before he died of terminal idiocy in Crow’s Foot.

“Might I suggest Jayan Park, sir?” one proposed tentatively. “I hear it’s very nice. It’s just across the canal….”

While they were busy calming Ash down and herding him towards the bridge, I jumped forward and struck Chime on the back of head, knocking him out. He collapsed with a thud at our feet.

One Red Sash glanced up sharply and warned, “Incoming.”

With all three of the thugs occupied in the park, citizens were drifting back in our direction, newspapers and chess sets in hand. Hastily, we rolled Chime over, tied a red sash around his waist, and stripped off everything that might identify him as a Billhook. One of the Red Sashes dashed to the canal and hurled it all into the water, while another rushed into the Sword Academy for a stretcher. As we loaded the unconscious Chime onto it, I upbraided him and the third Red Sash for holding an unauthorized duel in the park.

“The academy has strict rules regarding matches!” I raged. “Each and every one of you signed a pledge to uphold them! You and you – you’re going straight to the headmistress!”

The thug I was berating shot me a glare, as if warning me not to get carried away. In a sullen tone he didn’t even have to feign, he muttered, “Sorry, Mistress Glass. We won’t do it again.”

“You won’t have a chance to!”

In a nice counterpoint, Ash was haranguing our orphan on how adversity was no excuse for petty theft, and how he must learn to transcend socioeconomic disadvantages – how? Oh, with the aid of this purse, of course. And Ash shoved the agreed-upon slugs into the child’s hands while the Bluecoats looked on in utter bemusement.

With a chipper smile, Faith flittered out of the gazebo and attached herself to us, greeting the Red Sashes as if she were a fellow student.

Safely inside the academy, we stuffed Chime into a chest, waited for Ash to get rid of the Bluecoats, and caught a cab back to the Old Rail Yard.

Faith was all ready for our guest. Don’t ask me where she found the requisite accessories, but she’d transformed one of the empty compartments into a Bluecoat interrogation chamber and even procured a full uniform, which she changed into as soon as we returned. (The sight of her in trousers might have been the most bizarre part of the day thus far.) She directed Ash and me to leave the chest in the compartment, then firmly shut the door in our faces.

We could have forced the issue, but neither of us particularly cared to.

Especially when the screaming started.

Accompanied by cheerful remarks such as, “Let me just consult the list of injuries…. Ah, yes, I think this rib on your left side needs to be cracked…yes, just so…. After all, this is what you did to Madame Keitel, is it not? I wouldn’t want to be remiss in my attentions!”

Very quickly, Ash and I decided that the wisest course of action was for us to sit outside the railcar, feed the mutt, and head off any passersby (although, honestly, anyone who might pass by the Old Rail Yard also knew to mind their own business, especially during an ongoing interrogation).

After several hours, the shrieking finally subsided into low moaning, and I poked my head back inside to see Faith towing an unresisting Chime by the feet into the hallway. A large, blue-black bruise darkened the right side of his face, and one arm flopped like a cooked noodle. “Hey, there!” she greeted me merrily. “Say ‘hi,’ Chime, there’s a good boy!”

The Billhook emitted a cross between a grunt and a groan that might have been an attempt at a “hi.”

“Good boy,” proclaimed Faith with satisfaction. “Do you mind getting the door?” she asked me.

I slid open the door to her compartment, taking the opportunity to scan it. The room looked much as it had when I first moved in, albeit minus the bouquet of flowers she’d left for me, and plus an assortment of empty crystalline bottles arranged tidily on her desk like antique vases. In front of them lay a silver tray with a tea set and platter of scones. Next to the beribboned chair sat a locked wooden chest that I’d seen under her bed but hadn’t had a chance to search yet.

Chime’s head bumped across the threshold.

“Give me a hand, please?” Faith asked, still in that terrifyingly perky voice.

She dragged Chime into the middle of the room and dropped his feet. His boots hit the thin carpet with a dull thud, and he simply lay there, whimpering softly, while she circled around, grabbed the un-noodly arm, and tugged on it.

Reluctantly, I entered the compartment. “Where do you want him?”

“Right there, on the chair! I have it all ready for him!”

Together, we seized his shoulders and hauled him up until he slumped limply in the chair, head lolling on his chest.

“Thank you, Isha! You’re the best!”

At the use of my (fake) real name, I looked at her sharply.

Faith beamed back at me. “Now, if you don’t mind, Chime and I are going to have a lovely chat over tea and scones!” Plopping herself down sideways in the Billhook’s lap, she slung one arm around his neck and leaned in close. “Aren’t we, now?” she asked him in a confiding way. Without looking up, she sang, “Oh, Isha, are you still here? Bye-bye!”

Bye-bye indeed. Skin crawling, I scurried out of the railcar and slammed the door behind me.

“I guess she isn’t done yet,” Ash observed, glancing up from petting the mutt. It had flopped onto its back and was writhing in the dirt, matted fur vacuuming up all sorts of weeds and gravel as it luxuriated in its tummy rub.

“No, no,” I babbled, trying to gouge the image of that tea set out of my mind. “Not yet. You know, if this dog is going to keep hanging around, we should really name him. How about – how about Sleipnir?”

“Sleipnir?” asked Ash, frowning a little. “Is that an Iruvian name?”

“No, Skovlander, actually. It’s a mythological horse with eight legs.”

Quite sensibly, he pointed out, “Unless I’m counting wrong, this dog only has three.”

Although I was tensed to hear screaming at any moment, the railcar remained eerily quiet.

“Yes, exactly,” I prattled on, straining to fill that silence. “We can call him Sleipnir because he has the wrong number of legs.”

Giving me a slightly odd look, Ash acquiesced. “Yes. Sleipnir. That is acceptable.”

The next morning, the two of us were nodding over mugs of what the hawker claimed was coffee (but was more likely canal water dyed brown) when Chime stumbled into the common area. Escorted by a slightly disheveled but beaming Faith, he lurched along like a marionette missing half its strings.

He halted when he saw us. His arms dangled limply. His head slowly rotated on his neck. His lips moved.

An incongruously alert voice issued from his throat: “If you will excuse me, mesdames et monsieur, I have some crimes to confess to.” Opening the outer door for him, Faith bowed like a butler.

Through one of the windows, I watched as the now-possessed Chime trundled off towards Nightmarket and its Bluecoat station.