Team 3's members sat in wait on a road outside Catatonia that was known to be frequently ambushed by the birdmen. Hendle and the few living witnesses said the Qoldah rode down from the hills and collected tolls and often flesh from any passing traders. The Reapers scanned the foothills that rose up from the flanks of this wide valley. There were many places for the monsters to hide in those undulating roughs. The Reapers hid and waited with stony patience. In time a lone wagon crept along the rutted path and, as predicted, the attackers came quickly from the hills on the backs of swift horsedogs. The riders did indeed have great feathered wings and beaks that gleamed in the moonlight. Kicking up dust, the birdmen descended upon the wagon with shrill cries meant to strike terror but the ears they now met were already steeled by atrocious war.

Their intended prey threw off their cloaks and the wagoneers revealed themselves to be Thirteen and Blacwin. They each shot one of the creatures with their bows, Blacwin piercing his target in the chest and felling it with a single bolt while Thirteen clipped the other's neck and finished him off with a second shot. And yet another for good measure. Eagle-eye Blacwin shot his target to wound, knowing Thirteen would shoot to kill. Better to keep him breathing for the Reapers had questions.

The other commandos made their way down. The men examined the bodies and quickly found these were not the last lingering tribesemen of the Qoldah. They were merely common bandits dressed as the ancient avian people. Their wings were strips of wood crudely plastered with large feathers. Their beaks were of beaten metal. Perhaps the highwaymen wore the costumes to intimidate the superstitious townsfolk and hide their own identities.

The surviving bandit would not speak. It was not clear whether the injury had made him mute, or if he already had been so, or if it was simply a ruse. "You're going to lead us to your nest, rat," said Nail as he manipulated the bolt jutting from the man's ribs. "You understand?" The bandit squirmed in pain and nodded. Vulture tended to the captive's wounds to ensure he did not die as the Reapers forced him to guide them to his hideout. The bandit blacked out many times along the way and the animalist had to rouse him with salts so that he may continue to give them directions by pointing this way and that. The Reapers kept the captive's hands tied and promised him freedom once their work was done. In truth Nail had no intentions of letting this scoundrel walk free. The moons would surely not shake their orbits if one less cutthroat walked the earth.

— • —

Beneath the high arches of Beggar Bridge the countless hungry plucked snails off the columns and cracked their shells on the stones and swallowed the slimy gastropods live on the spot. The spaces under the enormous stone span were thick with the webs of spindle-rats for no one here bothered to keep them cleared each night. Many of the vagrants even made homes and hammocks from the silk's knotted strands, risking becoming mistaken for prey themselves. Skinner recognized a smattering of faces among the throng of despondent souls but kept his hood up and his face down. It was best if he kept his profile low as he looked for anything that might be a clue in his ongoing investigation into the mystery of Camshire's missing children. That ambition for passing unnoticed soon met an abrupt end.

"Skinner! That you, blood? Holy stars!"

Daggers. He'd been recognized. Skinner knew that voice even if it had lost its old luster. He turned and yes it was Ruma. He'd spent a summer with the woman years ago in a dirty flat in a haze of wick and flesh. Back when they were both young and thus demigods. Before the crush of desperation and addiction grew too heavy. And then there had been prison, of which each had their own kind.

"How ya been?" Skinner asked.

"Still above snakes," said Ruma. They embraced and the felon could smell the smite on her. Could see its resin in her pores and hair. "Didn't hear you got out."

"I didn't," Skinner said. "You're jus' hallucinatin' me."

They warmed their hands at a barrel-fire and caught up on matters old and new. Ruma was an echo of her former self, a last dying gasp. Smite had crushed her beauty inner and out. Her carefree spirit had helped halt Skinner's destructive spiral in those gone days. Now it was Ruma who appeared to need someone to pull her back from the junkie's edge. But Skinner doubted he could be the one to do it. More likely he'd fall again as well. She would take him down with her like a panicked drowner. Skinner feared he hadn't the will to escape that old intoxicating web if he allowed himself to draw too close to his old ways. Smite could make a blood feel like a titan and then put you in a cocoon that was nothing less than a return to the tenderness of maw's warm womb. And then after you came down from heaven you puked your soul out—and yet still you wanted more and more and more.

Ruma rattled on about the dark fates of their common friends. Father Death's oar had been busy during the time Skinner was locked away, as if he had ironically been made safer by Fetterstone's walls. Smite had cut short most of those Ruma named but many other killers worked those streets as well. The Rot had been awful of late. Gang wars came and went like bloody acts in a sick and stopless play. The criminal outfits constantly shifted rosters and leadership and names and colors faster than the fleeting fashions of Lantern Row. Ruma said it was rumored that a few outliers in their old mutual circles had even joined up with anarchist 'rune crews' to help upend the Diluvian regime from the shadows using the forbidden tools of song and sorcery. They climbed the city's rooftops with defiantly runed muscles. Some of the underground rebels even runed their own peckers the better to fuck with. Wrapped up in an ideology of sex and revolution, they sabotaged and terrorized the ruling class without mercy. Some of the lunars had even taken to blowing themselves up for the cause. The Diluvians had responded in like fashion.

"Rounded up many to never be seen again," Ruma said. "Bad Egg was one of the ones they took."

Skinner groaned and his heart turned to slag. Bad Egg had been a good friend of theirs with a bushy beard and arsenal of dirty jokes and dirtier songs, a man of raging philosophy and profound vice. He knew a few rudimentary spells, simple cantrips meant to entertain and do no harm. A puff of smoke, a flash of flame, the nudging of a stone, crawling cards. Egg claimed he knew a spell to make a woman come in an instant but Ruma turned down his offer to demonstrate once the old trickster explained the spell could only be worked if he put his lips directly to her privates.

Skinner shook his head. Quite some fate for his old friend. He changed subjects, to the matter in the front of his mind. "There's someone else you might know... ever hear of a kid named Georgene Mautte? She went missing some time ago."

Ruma had. They had not been personally acquainted but she recognized the kid's name. Ruma took Skinner to a decaying corner of that underpass that was carpeted in graffiti resembling runery a bit too much for comfort. These streetfolk had known Georgene. Showed Skinner the only remaining reminder of her that was left behind, a tarnished bracelet with her last name engraved within its inner ring. Wrong-fated, that heirloom, just as all those children and poor old Bad Egg had been. Camshire sure could chew up a soul and spit it out. Georgene had exchanged the piece of jewelry with these pushers for a few wicks of smite before she disappeared off the streets. She often traded finds from her shore-hunts in the sewers for the drug, they said. Skinner fought the urge to buy a wick or splash for himself. Instead he traded the junkies a silver crown for the bracelet and left them to their own nebulous devices.

Skinner told Ruma he had to be on his way and that he would see her again soon. He wondered if that was a lie. Once he'd gotten to the bottom of these missing kids and collected the Warden's reward he did not intend to stay in Camshire for long. He'd find some quiet fishing town, or some place on the frontier. He was done with this city. The Hookyards, the tunnels, the orphanage, the bridge. All places Skinner remembered well and would love nothing more than to forget.

He went to the top of Beggar Bridge and found there another unwavering fixture from old days. It warmed Skinner's heart to see that despite all the people who had been lost or changed with the relentless passage of time, the hunger artist still roosted in his rusted cage. The gnarled graybeard was forever revered among the countless beggars below for he seemed to have somehow found a way to live without food or any other human need. This hunger artist was a man fully liberated in their eyes, despite his corroded cage. Skinner thought of his old cell which was itself a palace next to these wretched confines. At least the hunger artist had relatively fresh air, and as badly as the river stunk it nonetheless beat Fetterstone's damp foulness. Skinner looked the hunger artist over and remembered the man from so many years before. In those gone days the artist had been young and still had color in his hair. There were rumors he'd been a sorcerer who locked himself in this cage to prevent himself from returning to the spellbook, which was said to be more addicting to some than smite itself. Whatever the artist's motivations, it seemed at first to be simply some stunt that wouldn't outlast a week. But here he still was, after all these seasons. The hunger artist seemed to be a yardstick for the state of Camshire's very soul and it seemed appropriate he now looked to be at death's door. Skinner believed he had been told the hunger artist's name once. Horton or Thorsten or something along those lines. All he knew now was that the emaciated artist seemed to do nothing but observe and judge his whole life as if the passing world were here for his quiet scrutiny. Or that it was all some sort of puzzle to solve, and that Skinner was simply one of the pieces. Perhaps the hunger artist's lot was more of a curse than that. The burden of bearing solitary witness to some great and terrible show.

Skinner went to the caged artist and pulled his last piece of toffee from his pocket. "In case yer eatin' on the sly, blood," the repeater said as he held out the candy. "Here's a somethin'." The hunger artist either did not hear him or pretended such. Only stared with eyes of unmatched color. It was as if each orb housed a different soul, two mad siblings locked in one crowded skull. Skinner had tried to give the artist food in his younger years as well but never did the man partake. He seemed genuine. Perhaps the emaciated artist relied on some other source of nourishment that allowed him to forgo the altruism of others. Skinner would accept trickery over miracles as the explanation for such a mystery any day.

Skinner pocketed the candy and went on his way down yet more familiar walkways from his past. Everywhere there were plagued bodies to step over and avoid smelling. A sense of restlessness permeated in the streets. Cackling hooligans flitted among the alleys. Warring spouses drunkenly shouted from tenement windows. Skinner passed a sagging tavern and remembered the days he and his trouble-making friends pickpocketed the old drunks that stumbled from its door. The establishment's name had changed and it now had a great sign on its rooftop that advertised some form of mass-produced snake oil. Many of these eyesore billboards had propped up in the parts of the city that had any money to spend. There were other subtle differences such as all the strange antennae jutting from some rooftops and some newly gated paths and shuttered doors but otherwise Skinner knew these neighborhoods as well as he did that scar on his hand. Or his cell in Fetterstone. It seemed Hotch had made a good choice for this task for these were indeed the felon's own sorry streets.

But Skinner's hands were tied. He couldn't go to his old friends in the criminal underworld. He had to avoid the law. In some ways, the Warden's choice of the convict as proxy in this search for the missing young was quite odd. Someone of Hotch's power and profession had no access to more capable men? A proven investigator? Someone with influence? And why was the Warden so interested in finding these kids if, as Sister Chalice had said, this Inspector Valen at Strotham Yard was still making genuine efforts in pursuing the case? Frustration set in. Skinner had shreds of information but no theories, no suspects. Dots with no lines between. Clues that led only to dead ends. Church had said he knew more. It was time the two spoke again.

— • —