Over the next week, I shadowed my new Crow friends so they could “show me the ropes,” to use one of Noggs’ nautical expressions. For the most part, we made the rounds of local businesses, both legal and illegal. As Noggs was a tall, burly fellow, Skinner usually assigned him to loom conspicuously in the background while the rest of us courteously requested the Crows’ tithe. With him around, affairs stayed civil, so to speak.

Although his family had immigrated from the Dagger Isles generations ago and he didn’t speak a word of their language (or maybe because of that), Noggs fancied himself a pirate in the tradition of his forebears. So when the mood struck, he swaggered around bellowing “Yar!” and “Avast me hearties!” while the rest of us groaned and pretended not to know him. (“Hey, who is that guy anyway?” “Who? Him? Never met him.” “So…he isn’t your enforcer?” “Nah, not if you hand over the tithe.”)

Noggs also harbored for Lyssa the finest example of courtly love this side of the Cataclysm. After Stev helpfully arranged for a bed for me at their flophouse (which offered discount rates to Crows), I spent many happy evenings lolling on its front steps, listening to Noggs enumerate his fair lady’s virtues. “She’s undefeatable in single combat, you know,” he sighed once while Stev, Skinner, and I rolled our eyes and passed a bottle of moonshine. “Give her a pistol and a dagger, and she can take anyone.”

Leaning comfortably against Skinner’s chest, Stev grinned and taunted, “I heard she used to be a noble.”

At that, I twitched. What was it about Crow’s Foot that attracted so many ex-nobles? Disingenuously, I protested, “Nobles don’t fight, do they? Don’t they have all those bodyguards to do the fighting for them?”

“Not in the Dagger Isles, they don’t!” And off Noggs went on a dramatic tale of fierce pirate queens who adorned their stolen naval coats with medals pried off the cold, dead bodies of Imperial admirals they defeated in single combat. I rather thought that he and Faith would get along.

After his fairytale finally wound to its gory end, I asked innocently, “But isn’t Lyssa Akorosian?” Before the lockdown, I’d seen her around Crow’s Foot, and what I remembered was a brown-eyed, pale-skinned young woman with close-cropped brown hair.

It was Stev who confirmed in his quiet, gentle way, “Yes, she was born into one of the minor noble families. But she fell into disgrace and got disowned. She never talks about it.”

At that point, Skinner stirred restlessly, glanced at the position of the moon, and reminded us, “Patrol duty in the morning. Get to bed, all of you.”

From him, I had learned that the Crows normally maintained a strict division of labor. But with most of the gang holed up in the tower, the system had broken down quite thoroughly, and so the four of us also pulled shifts guarding the streets around the Crow’s Nest. Frustratingly, none of us were ever allowed inside: Instead, Lyssa’s lower-ranked lieutenants came into the courtyard to deliver our orders.

“Will I ever get to meet her?” I asked the others on a different evening. “Noggs makes her sound like a fairytale princess and an epic villain at the same time.”

“But in the Dagger Isles, those are the same thing!” he joked.

One arm draped around Stev’s shoulders, Skinner swigged from the whiskey bottle I’d swiped on our way home (I was subtly trying to expand their palates). “Of course you will,” he promised. “As soon as things go back to normal, we’ll take you to meet Lyssa and get you properly inducted.”

“But not before that?” I pressed as hard as I dared.

“Unlikely,” he replied flatly. “Lyssa’s not taking any chances just now.”

And there went any hope of wrangling a private audience in which I could broker a three-way peace deal or just convince Lyssa to flee Doskvol.

Between my Crow duties and off-duty carousing, it was all I could do to sneak back to Coalridge every couple days to update Ash and Faith. When I confessed that it was well-nigh impossible for me to reconnoiter inside the Crow’s Nest or lure Lyssa out of it, my crewmates sent in the heavy reinforcements.

For once, it was Faith who invited the Insect Kids into the common room. With Sleipnir prancing at their heels and begging for treats, the five tiptoed in and lined up against a wall as if awaiting execution.

Their fear was not lost on Faith. Prowling back and forth in front of them in her best army inspector impersonation, she proclaimed, “Well, little morsels, you’ve probably been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now is the time!”

“Other shoe?” Mantis piped up, spoiling her dramatic pacing.

Beetle elbowed him. “It’s a figure of speech,” she explained importantly while Faith grimaced at the interruption.

Catching sight of her expression, Spider quickly shushed both of them.

Once she had their full attention again, she continued, “We have a job for you. It may be somewhat…dangerous.”

Ash made a gurgling noise in his throat, as if to choke back a protest.

Pretending she hadn’t heard him, Faith explained, “We need eyes and ears in Crow’s Foot, and delicious little morsels like yourselves seem to be the perfect sort to investigate – ” Catching their puzzled blinks, she toned down the vocabulary: “To go and look around.”

“We can do that,” Spider agreed warily. “We’re good at looking around.”

“Good. Now here’s the challenge: Crow’s Foot has an orphanage, and many gangs employ – that is, use – orphans. So on the one hand, you’ll fit right in. Pretend you’re one of them, beg for food, pick pockets, do whatever it is orphans do.” She gave a casual shrug, as if she couldn’t care less whether they got nabbed by the Bluecoats for petty theft. “On the other hand, the local orphans might be protective of their turf….”

Beetle, the cleverest of the lot, cocked her head at me inquiringly. I gave her a reassuring nod and made a mental note to teach them hand signals once this was all over.

“So,” Faith finished, “this is the nature of the task: We want you to go to Crow’s Foot, ingratiate yourselves with the local orphans, and simultaneously investigate the large tower in the center of the district. The Crow’s Nest, I believe it’s called. Let us know if there are large groups of people entering or leaving the tower.”

She couldn’t have confused them more thoroughly than if she’d started reciting classical Hadrathi verse, but they all bobbed their heads gamely. Catching their bewilderment, Ash shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. Peace, I signed at him. We’ll translate later.

“Meanwhile, my dear friend Cricket here – ” Faith pointed at the little ghost, whom I’d tried unsuccessfully to bar from the common room on the grounds that she was also technically underage (or at least had been when she died) and hence should be subject to the ban. “Cricket will be hanging out with you while she carries out her own tasks. She may need one of your bodies from time to time. Try not to be too alarmed.”

Redirecting his frustration to an easier target, Ash threatened the ghost, “If anything happens to them….”

Hovering right beside Faith, Cricket bared her teeth and chirped smugly, “Faith wouldn’t letcha.”

Faith, of course, immediately dashed those hopes. She stage-whispered into the ghost’s ear, “Of course I would. But let’s not have this discussion in front of the children.” To the Insect Kids, she sang, “Well, toodle-loo! Come home in time for dinner!”

That part they understood.

Ash and I walked the children over, practically falling over each other in our rush to impart advice for surviving Crow’s Foot. Although meeting with Bazso and Mylera to request safe conduct for them was out of the question, I did my best to keep an eye on them as I made the rounds with Skinner and his squad. Meanwhile, Ash cast realism to the winds and demanded that they check in with him every two hours.

Hampered by his overprotectiveness, the Insect Kids tried their hardest to ingratiate themselves with the local street children. Unfortunately, their Six Towers upbringing had prepared them much better for dealing with ghosts than gangs and they were, as Noggs would put it, “fish out of water.” The most useful piece of intel they collected was that there were no large groups leaving the tower, although Crow messengers of both the human and avian varieties came and went at all hours of the day.

Cricket, on the other hand, proved her worth and more. Besides hovering near the children and possessing the younger ones a couple times to remove them from dangerous situations, she snuck into the lower levels of the tower. There, she discovered that the Crows employed no Whispers, an indication of either lamentable hubris or oversight or both. Unfortunately, a strong ward installed by Roric or maybe even Mardin Gull blocked off the top, where Lyssa’s office and living quarters were located.

That was Ash’s cue to disguise himself as a deliveryman. Like me, he also couldn’t get into the tower, but from the courtyard he was able to attune to the ghost field and inspect the ward. “It’s very old,” he told Faith and me at our next meeting. “They haven’t renewed it in decades.”

“Sloppy, sloppy.” She clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

“The ward appears to be generated by a circle of runes inscribed on the floor. Inside the ward, of course. They’re not quite that sloppy. Isha, why don’t we go in as messengers and blow up the runes? I’ve been studying these Crows. Imitating their mannerisms is simple: All I have to do is act super arrogant.”

While that was true for many of them, I thought of Stev with a pang of guilt. “How do we blow up arcane runes?” I asked to distract myself.

Ash redirected the question to our resident Whisper, who shrugged. “While exploding them sounds…almost exciting, it might be enough to disrupt them temporarily. You could smuggle in a device or something, trigger it, and bring down the wards. Then I’ll scare Lyssa out with arcane assistance and you two can assassinate her. Something like that. It should work. Probably.”

“You think Lyssa will be scared of a few ghosts?” Ash inquired doubtfully.

Obviously considering that question a waste of time, Faith fended off further inquiry with ye olde mental dictionary: “These ghosts are fierce and ferocious fiends. If they can’t force our fellow Crow to flee, what else could make her a fugitive?”

Before we fled her presence, we agreed that Ash should commission a Coalridge tinkerer he knew to build an electroplasmic pulse bomb. The man’s first attempt was a complete dud, but Ash and Faith bought him the appropriate supplies, and on the second try, he produced a small device that was easy to both use and conceal. One of the Insect Kids – probably Beetle, although I never confirmed that – reverse-pickpocketed me and slipped it to me for safekeeping.

On the morning of the score, I faked a fever and bad cough and burrowed miserably under my blanket. Skinner dug me out, felt my forehead, frowned at its clamminess, and ordered me to stay in bed. “Rest. We’ll bring you supper,” he promised, to which I gave a weak nod with my eyes squeezed shut. As soon as he, Stev, and Noggs disappeared around the corner, I crept out of the flophouse and bribed a runner to deliver new orders that would keep them occupied at the Docks for the rest of the day.

Then, as planned, I met Ash near one of the Crows’ courier routes. Out of sight of their patrols, we waylaid two messengers, stripped one for a uniform for Ash, and hid their unconscious bodies behind a stack of crates. Thus disguised as one trainee Crow and one Crow messenger, we jogged up to Lyssa’s stronghold, where I gave the guards the correct passcode. “Where’s Lewis?” one of them asked, puzzled but not yet suspicious.

Shoving his face right into the Crow’s, Ash hissed, “We have an urgent message for Lyssa from a Crow’s Foot citizen. Do you really want her to find out that you delayed it because you stalk your friends?”

That they most certainly did not. Stepping back, they waved us through the door. Just for good measure, Ash mesmerized them into forgetting all about us (at least until the next time they saw us, which was hopefully never).

Inside the old watchtower, a narrow staircase, its stone steps worn smooth by centuries of booted feet, spiraled around and around all the way up the Crow’s Nest. That ascent was the most nerve-wracking climb I’d ever made. The stairs themselves were lit only by bars of moonlight that fell through arrow slits in the walls. Every time my eyes adjusted to the darkness, we’d reach another landing and my night vision would be killed by bright torches, in whose glare loomed guards bristling with weapons. More guards were posted at regular intervals along the staircase, which was barely wide enough for two people to pass if both turned sideways and hugged the walls. Dazed and half-blind, Ash and I grunted greetings at the Crows and kept climbing. Now and then, I caught a glimpse of Cricket flitting in and out of the arrow slits, monitoring our progress and presumably reporting back to Faith.

An eternity later, we finally reached the last landing, where another Crow guarded the door to Lyssa’s office. It was then that Ash’s persuasive skills failed us at the worst possible moment. Unimpressed by his bluster about urgent intel and Lyssa’s wrath, the Crow said brusquely, “I’ll take it to her.”

Knock him out, Ash signed under cover of fishing through his pockets for the message.

I palmed a dagger and reversed it, concealing it inside my sleeve.

At my tiny blink, Ash flourished a piece of paper. “Here it is! Make sure she reads this immediately!”

When the Crow turned to take it, I rapped him sharply on the back of the head with my hilt. He crumpled. Grabbing his arms, Ash and I slowly eased him to the floor out of sight of the doorway. While I kept watch at the top of the stairs, Ash peeled off his messenger’s uniform and threw on the guard’s vest and belt.

“Cricket!” he whispered.

She drifted through an arrow slit, head cocked expectantly. “Faith said to tell you that she’s corralled the most vicious ghosts she could find, but she’s not overly impressed by the quality of specters in this district.” Belying Faith’s assessment, the little ghost shuddered.

“That’s fine,” Ash replied in a low, distracted voice. “Possess this guard and take a post a few steps down.”

We gave her a moment to obey, then Ash laid his gloved hand on the doorknob. Ready? he signed.

Ready.

Just before he turned the knob, he cautioned, If things get desperate, don’t look at me.

Okay, I signed back.

He twisted hard and pushed, and the door creaked open to reveal Lyssa’s office – if you could call it that. The top level of the watchtower resembled nothing so much as a stone gazebo. Although thick gray columns mostly blocked the rain, the wind that whistled shrilly between them threatened to extinguish the braziers heating the space. All around us lay heaps of what I could only describe as loot – overflowing chests of gold coins and silver slugs, bolts of silk brocade and Iruvian rugs half-unrolling across the floor, stacks of oil paintings. Somewhat at random, I thought that now I understood why Noggs worshipped Lyssa.

A group of perhaps ten Crows were huddled around a desk in the dead center of the room, obviously in the middle of a strategic meeting. At the interruption, they straightened and parted, and I got my first close look at the leader of the gang that had run Crow’s Foot for a century.

She was young, a few years older than I at most. Over her man’s haircut, she wore a jaunty pirate hat, complete with a tattered feather and a silver skull-and-crossbones brooch pinned to the brim. As she shifted and leaned forward, a metallic blaze nearly blinded me. The front of her double-breasted military greatcoat was covered with a jumble of medals from all branches of the Imperial Armed Forces, plus some civilian associations for good measure. Perhaps to a romantic like Noggs, she embodied the warrior queens of yore, but to me, she looked just like another scared young woman trying to act tough.

Before I could decide how to react, Ash plowed right through her lieutenants and caught himself on the edge of her desk, panting, “It’s happening! They’re coming! The Red Sashes and the Lampblacks are coming!”

His words provoked an uproar among the Crow leaders. Lyssa’s second-in-command Henry Bell, a stocky middle-aged man in a scavenged naval uniform, whirled towards the open spaces between the columns and roared, “Fire!”

Guns drawn, several Crows dashed to the edge of the balcony, crouched behind the columns, and surveyed the buildings around the tower. Indeed, several small fires flickered on nearby rooftops. Briefly, Moth’s figure was silhouetted against the flames, but a hand reached out and yanked her down before any of the Crows could aim at her.

In contrast to her lieutenants, Lyssa hadn’t moved. Ignoring the commotion, she scrutinized Ash with cold, hard eyes.

Some help here? he signed at me reproachfully.

I stepped forward. “It’s true. The Lampblacks and Red Sashes have made their move. Skinner sent me to report,” I told Lyssa respectfully, squashing a pang at the betrayal and promising myself that I’d check on my friends after the score.

No one so much as glanced at me.

Instead, Lyssa continued to stare at Ash – or rather, at the vest and belt he had stolen from the guard outside. “I don’t know him,” she snapped in Bell’s direction. “Kill him.”

In a flash, a dirk appeared in Bell’s hand. With shocking speed, he lunged at Ash, who twisted sideways at the last second so the blade only sliced him across the chest instead of punching right through it. Bright red blood welled up and soaked the stolen vest.

Vicious, almost inhuman hatred twisted Ash’s face. “This is the last mistake you’ll ever make,” he pronounced, the venom in his voice commanding all of the Crows’ attention.

Dirk at the ready, Bell sank into a defensive crouch.

While all eyes were on the two of them, I slipped my hand into my pocket, palmed the electroplasmic device, and flicked the switch. Instantly, a silent, invisible pulse blasted through the room, whipping the papers on Lyssa’s desk and nearly blowing her hat right off. All around me, Crows dropped their weapons and clapped their hands to their ears.

And then it was over. The arcane buzz that had niggled at the edges of my mind since I entered the room cut out.

In the deafening silence that followed, Lyssa leaped to her feet, whipped out a pistol, and shot at me at point-blank range.

I jumped out of the way – right as a swarm of specters poured between the columns. With no more than a contemptuous glance for Bell, Ash threw back his head and raised both arms. Waving them wildly like a conductor in an orchestra pit, he pretended to direct the ghosts. Eyes wide, Bell actually straightened up and edged away. Meanwhile, howling as fiendishly and ferociously as Faith had promised, her ghosts swooped through the room in patterns calculated to sow maximum fear.

With no Whisper of their own to counter the onslaught, and pitifully little arcane experience relative to, say, denizens of Six Towers, the Crows scattered. Some huddled behind piles of loot, while others scrambled for the door, tripping over rugs and knocking over paintings in their panic. One after another glowed blue, crumpled, and lay still while the ghosts inside them devoured their life essence.

One of the largest specters I’d ever seen hovered between a pair of columns, surveying the carnage through malevolent eye holes. All of a sudden, it reared up, hissed – and shot directly at Lyssa. Its ragged edges brushed through a Crow’s arm, and the man doubled over in pain. “Roric!” he croaked.

The ghost of the murdered ward boss sucked out his life force almost casually, then shrieked a terrible, hair-raising screech and tried to burrow into Lyssa. Ramming an electroplasmic cartridge into her pistol, she fired a quick succession of shots that held him at bay. Hissing and spitting, he circled her while she coolly rotated in place and followed him with her gun.

In that moment, I had to admit that Lyssa was truly magnificent. She’s unbeatable in single combat, you know, Noggs had said. Give her a pistol and a dagger, and she can take anyone.

For the first time, I understood Ash’s regret when we killed the Hadrakin.

Torn, hand hovering over my sword hilt, I danced around the edges of Lyssa and Roric’s duel. It was Roric who decided for me: Sensing my presence, he whipped around and screamed, warning me off.

A very familiar sense of vast, insatiable hunger began to compress the room. In my vision, the columns fuzzed and the floor buckled, and a booming voice commanded, Consume them all.

Unbearable terror nearly flattened me, but thanks to Ash’s warning, I’d already “battened down the hatches,” and so I forced it back.

But the Crows all broke.

With a triumphant shriek, Roric drilled into Lyssa’s chest. She stiffened as if electrocuted, then spun on her heel and sprinted for the balcony.

“No!” rasped one Crow.

Half-crawling, half-lunging forward, he tackled her around the ankles and knocked her to the floor while she screeched and clawed wildly at his face. Fighting free, she scrambled for the edge on her hands and knees, but he desperately grabbed her boot and hung on with all his might.

I drifted a few steps in their direction. In front of me hung the image of Skinner promising to bring me supper this evening. Stev arranging a bed for me at their flophouse, unbidden. Noggs making me laugh. So few people ever made me laugh.

Through Lyssa’s throat, Roric howled with insane rage.

I saw Lyssa in her ridiculous pirate costume, just another scared young woman trying to make a place for herself after her family kicked her out.

And I saw Bazso’s and Mylera’s calm, implacable eyes when they ordered us to kill her to seal the truce that would end gang warfare on the streets of Crow’s Foot.

I had come this far. What was one more death?

As if in a dream, I felt my icy fingers brush and then grip the revolver at my waist. I felt my arm rise and point the gun at the back of the Crow hanging on to Lyssa’s foot. And I felt the little click of the gun cocking, the resistance of the trigger.

I squeezed.

The blast and recoil jolted me back to myself.

The Crow cried out and tumbled forward across Lyssa, blood staining the back of his shirt. She scrambled out from under his dead weight, crawled to the edge of the balcony, and vanished over it without a word.

I sprinted to where she’d disappeared and stared down. Far below, a tiny figure in fluffy skirts skipped up to a crumpled body and poked it with a lightning hook. The body didn’t move. In the distance, a bell at Bellweather Crematorium tolled.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of motion – and then everything vanished into a bright, blue blaze.