Xigbar was hungry, lonely, and out of money. He considered that last one the biggest problem, since solving that one would also neatly solve the first two. Of course, that raised the challenge of actually finding a way to make some money.

Pinching scales from people in the streets was an option, but the average citizenry of Lochmire wasn't exactly known for lining their pockets with cash, which meant picking them was a poor return on investment of time. And more to the point, that shit should be beneath him now. Pickpocketing was for orphans and thieves with no ambition beyond their next meal. He'd outgrown that kind of petty theft even before he'd ended up on Xykesh.

Without careful target selection, burglary could turn out to be a similar waste of his time, unless he wanted to work in bulk, and risk drawing too much attention. If he'd still been with the Pavers, finding the perfect house to hit would have been easy. But he wasn't with the Pavers anymore.

His blood still boiled when he thought about that. He had been the best damn operator the Pavers had scooped up in months. He could do it all—highway robbery, burglary, surveillance—and they'd still turned on him the second Arthur had given them a shred of an excuse.

Not for the first time, Xigbar found himself missing home. The Pavers never would have made it in Her Lady's City, a place where at any given moment, whoever was in power was one mistake away from getting everything they had yanked out from under them. In Xykesh, things were different. Stagnant.

Nobody questioned the way things were on Xykesh. Everyone just accepted it, because that was how things had always been. Digax and the Chosen owned the provinces. The Pavers owned the underworld. Monsters owned the wilderness, and every dark nook and cranny in the cities too. That was just how things were, nothing to be done about.

Even if you did get any funny ideas, the powers that be were so entrenched (and in some cases, packing mind control powers) that any dissent or movement for change was killed before it could gain any momentum.

The Lochmire province was the absolute closest anywhere in Xykesh came to having some life to it, which was why Xigbar had opted to stay back when the Pavers had first recruited him. Lochmire was the only province to have not one, but two changes in leadership in as many decades, and as a result seemed to be the only part of Xykesh with any signs of actual life.

First a ship full of outsiders had turned up all at once, wrecked on the shores after getting caught in the storms that surrounded the continent, and there'd been so many of them showing up so soon they destabilized and then took over the entire province. They even got their own Chosen, a man named Xiran Song, instead of being wiped out by Digax's forces.

But because they were outsiders, they'd turned up their noses at actually using those sweet sweet mind control powers that came with being a Chosen, and five years ago, a man named Emir Zaman orchestrated maybe the only straight coup in Xykesh's history, killed the outsider Chosen and anyone loyal to them, and had taken over the province for himself.

Digax apparently didn't care who ran Lochmire, so long as they paid their taxes on time, and none of the other Chosen lifted a finger, so Song and his people were buried, and Zaman got his own province. Honestly, the man kind of had Xigbar's respect for the move.

Reversal of fortune. That was the force that Xigbar's world used to run on, before he'd ended up here. He needed some of that now.

The city was abuzz with activity. Here, Threshart was more than just an evening ceremony of lanterns. It was a full-fledged festival, complete with a flood of street vendors, performance art, and citywide decorations.

This was Xigbar's first time experiencing the holiday, but if it turned out anything like King's Dawn, there were going to be ample opportunities for very lucrative endeavors while everyone else was busy celebrating—whatever it was they were celebrating. Famous dead people? He'd have to ask around.

For now though, he needed a clear, easy target, or a gig that paid good and made good use of his skills. Finding one of those as a guildless criminal would be difficult, and if he went about it the wrong way, it would hand deliver him to the Pavers. But he had to try.

As any Iandran worth their steel knew, fortune favored the bold.

So, instead of making his way to a seedier part of town where the guildless criminals plied their trades, Xigbar donned a scarf and hood to obscure his features, and headed straight for one of the bars in the city that had been unofficially claimed by the Pavers.

It was a genius move, really. The Pavers knew he was on the run from them, and that he'd eventually need to get money somehow. They would expect him to try to find work as a guildless thief. They'd never expect him to waltz straight into their territory.

Although calling the Diamond in the Rift a bar might have been a bit of a stretch. Sandwiched between two brick buildings, the Rift was actually just a collection of tables, and stools gathered around the reclaimed furniture that the 'owner' had retrofitted into station to serve alcohol, with a tarp and some lanterns thrown up to keep things dry and bright.

The trick to being somewhere you didn't belong was to act like you did, which was especially easy for Xibgar since, up until a few months ago, he had belonged here. He sauntered into the Rift, palming an unattended drink to give himself the illusion of a paying customer, and sat down in an empty stool to gather information.

It took a few hours before he caught anything interesting, but when he finally did, he struck gold.

"What do you mean he's not coming?" a woman hissed to a dragonblood she was sitting with.

"Seven's Light, Em, his kid died," the dragonblood rumbled. "He's going with his wife to the lantern lighting."

"Well what the fuck are we supposed to do?" Em asked. "We need a breaker."

"I don't know," the dragonblood shrugged. "Can we do it without one?"

"No," Em grunted. She stewed in silent anger for a few moments. "This is a fucking mess."

"I know."

"Screw it. Let's find Enji and make him do the job."

"He's not going to listen."

"Then we make him listen. I'm not losing this score just because—"

"Excuse me," Xigbar greeted as he sauntered over to their table. "But are you Em?"

The woman shot him a dirty look. "Emerald. Who are you?"

"Kai," Xigbar introduced, throwing out the first name that came to mind. "Enji sent me to find you. Said you were going to need someone to fill in for him."

Emerald and the dragonborn stared at him for a second, before Emerald spat. "Bullshit."

"Guilty," Xigbar said, casually dropping one of his lies. "I overheard you needed a breaker and decided to shoot my shot."

Emerald shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Xigbar rolled his eyes. "Relax. I'm with the guild."

He pulled one of his gloves up, careful not to reveal any scales, and showed them the hammer brand on the inside of his palm. Emerald and her dragonblood friend examined it, and he let them. It was real, afterall.

"Never seen you around before," Emerald said when she couldn't find any fault in the brand. "And what's with the mask?"

"I just got into town. Transferring over from Grazzdale," Xigbar lied. "I had a . . . disagreement with a slaver out there, and got a pretty nasty set of scars for my troubles. I keep 'em covered up as a courtesy these days."

"Can't be that much uglier," the dragonblood said. "You're already missing scales."

Xigar was glad for the scarf, because he wouldn't have been able to hide the smile that broke out on his face. "Well, we can't all be so handsome as you . . ."

"Soris," the dragonblood rumbled. "You're really a breaker?"

"Never met a lady whose locks I couldn't open," he said, the first intentionally honest sentence out of his mouth all night.

Soris exchanged a look with Emerald, who stared "Kai" down with eyes that matched her namesake so perfectly he was certain it wasn't her real name. But hey, glass houses.

"Pass," Emerald said.

"Oh, come on!"

"No," Emerald said. "I don't trust you. And more importantly, I don't like you."

"You just met me."

"And I already wish I hadn't. So get lost."

Xigbar's jaw tensed as he quickly ran through everything he'd been able to pick up on about Emerald. Impatient, insensitive, and so far, responding pretty poorly to his smooth operator routine. He needed to change things up.

He let out a defeated sigh and let his shoulders sag. With a much more desperate and pleading tone, he said, "Look. You said it yourself. You don't know me. No one does out here. I did good work in Grazzdale, but that doesn't mean shit because I've got no rep to back it up. I need this. Please. You guys can have half my cut, just give me a chance."

Soris shot Emerald another look, and this one said, "We do need a breaker . . ." Emerald's jaw tensed, but when she didn't immediately tell him to go screw himself, Xigbar knew his facade of dropping his facade had done the trick. By the Court, he was a genius.

"Fine," Emerald said. "But if you screw this up, you'll never work with the guild again."

Again, Xigbar ws grateful for the scarf hiding his smile. "I understand. So what's the job?"

They filled him in on the details, and Xigbar smiled. It looked like he was going to have a happy Threshart after all.