Dimia saw that a handsome man with an easy smile often came to see Mulia (and though he had one eye missing which he did not cover, Dimia had long been hardened to such sights). They sat in the courtyard garden and whispered together and sometimes broke into laughter. Astrid and Amelie told Dimia the stranger's name was Nayte. The twins were fond of the nobleman. He brought gifts and compliments. But Dimia did not warm to the suitor. To woo Mulia was to dishonor Halo. Mulia shamed her husband while she should be at the window waiting for his return at the gate. Or, more grimly, news of his ultimate fate from a uniformed messenger. But perhaps the betrayal was for the best. If Halo were to come home to this cuckoldry, Dimia would be waiting to comfort him. Perhaps she was too young to be the Reaper's bride, but she could still be his confidante. Their relationship could be platonic and all the more pure.

Oddly, her mind went back to Quint, the boy she had kissed in the attic of the orphanage. Dimia almost felt an adulterer herself. Quint had not been nearly the man Halo was, but she did not need a man. She needed a companion. Her Brambles were gone, both piglet and golem. And while Scratch was her best of animal friends he was still feral and aloof as many cats can be. Perhaps she could write Quint a letter. Dimia laughed at herself as she watched Nayte tell some tale to a transfixed Mulia. Quint had blackmailed her out of bread and a kiss. He was a scoundrel. Dimia cleared her mind. She was not destined for boys or love. She had ambitions of blood. She could never count on things staying the same. The world could turn on its head at a notice. Dimia had to focus on her studies, secret and known. Perhaps when revenge was done there would be time for more trifling things. She pulled out her lute and sat at her window and quietly played and practiced her forbidden songs as she ruminated on her future plans.

— • —

Skinner studied the guards on patrol in the Warden's magnificent estate from his perch atop one of the high ivy-choked walls that surrounded Hotch's family manor. The fugitive had bought rope and hooks and spiked gloves and studded shoes and thieving tools at the Hookyards market with the money he stole from Inspector Valen. He knew he should get out of Camshire. Spend his life hiding somewhere in the wild, away from Nation eyes. He had the mettle to survive in the wild, enough to warrant recruitment into the Reapers before he was sabotaged by his inner dragons and dropped out. The ranger skills he'd been taught would serve him well on the run. The city was less safe than ever. He was a wanted man. Surely after his escape from Strotham Yard's custody and all the false evidence Warden Hotch had stacked against him, Skinner had no chance of convincing anyone who mattered that he was an innocent man.

But no. He couldn't let the Warden win this one. Skinner had nothing next to the lawman's resources but he had his own particular strengths. He still had a network of associates that could tell him things like where a certain powerful and rich man lived, and now that he was no longer forced to work by Church's rules he exploited all of them. And Skinner was quite good at breaking into houses, or at least he once had been. He was older now, and if his writing was rusty, his ability to scale walls and sneak quietly and navigate tight spaces were even further diminished by his long stay in that damp cell at Fetterstone and the bodily changes that simply came with age. He wasn't so young anymore. He only knew one thing that would make him ever feel young again. Smite. He had some ready but would only use if it he needed its boost. Only as a last resort.

The Warden's estate was thick with sentinels. It would be difficult to infiltrate through the exterior but that was never Skinner's plan. Tonight was simply about observing and studying, as had been the last several. The fugitive had watched Hotch himself come and go, emerging from the front door to be greeted by his guards and ushered into his armored carriage and out the gate toward Fetterstone or wherever his business or pleasure carried him. Always the Warden had several guards with him, surely due to the innumerable enemies he must have accrued over his draconian career. Skinner also saw Hotch's family in windows and in the gardens and coming and going. A wife, several boys and girls, elderly in-laws. If Skinner was the type of man who would threaten an innocent, he could snatch one of them as a hostage. But for all he knew they would be of no use against such a callous man as the Warden anyway.

Skinner had explored the sewers beneath these streets but found the tunnels in the area secured with heavy metal bars and bottlenecks no grown man could fit through. For the briefest moment he remembered those shore-hunting boys and considered putting them to the purpose, but then what good would they be for Skinner on the other side? It would be ridiculous to have them attempt to climb up through the manor's latrines and unlock a door for Skinner. No, it would be over the walls and along the branches of that great sootbark tree and then onto the roof and through a window of the upper floor. Skinner didn't quite know what he would do once inside. Try to pry a confession from the Warden, he supposed, and then dispatch him of his life. Skinner had no ambitions of using such a confession to clear his name. Hotch would simply say he had been forced to admit to his crimes under duress. The confession would be for Skinner's ears, to quench his own satisfaction and curiosity. He still did not know why the Warden framed him. Did this mean Hotch was himself the kidsnatcher? And to what end? Some perversion or mad ritual? More than anything, even justice or exoneration, Skinner wanted answers.

The manor house's back door opened and a lone figure exited. He was cloaked in black. The figure glanced at something in his possession, a timepiece probably, and waited. Shortly a horse could be heard clambering down the quiet street off of Sable Row. A small carriage approached. The robed figure went through a wrought-iron gate leaving the manor grounds and opened the vessel's door. Skinner quietly made his way down the length of the wall on which he perched and it was then that he caught a glimpse of the cloaked man's face. All he saw was the lower jaw but between that and the man's great height Skinner recognized him immediately to be Warden Hotch himself. But why sneak out his own back door? Perhaps he was on his way to snatch another child?

Hotch got inside the carriage and closed its door and the coachman jerked his reins. No words were exchanged, which meant the driver already knew the destination. Skinner climbed down the wall once he felt it safe. He slipped at one point, catching his breath. But no one heard. Skinner kept to the shadows, following Hotch's coach. The fugitive still had not regained his full health and his breathing became labored. His legs burned with hellfire and his lungs smoldered like a forge and his clothes were soaked in his sweat. He was going to lose them. He could not keep up.

Skinner saw no choice. Rather than lose sight of the vehicle, he opened his pouch and drew a line of powder from it with the tip of his knife and he snorted the smite. All pain left his body. Strength poured into him like a thick stout. His senses sharpened. He made his way to a balcony and leaped upon a roof where he spotted the Warden's coach as it crossed into a crumbling quarter of this once-proud district. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop Skinner closed the distance. He had forgotten youth. Smite reminded him of the taste of life's marrow. He risked falling back into his old addictions but perhaps it didn't really matter so long as he found out what happened to those kids and, if the stars willed it, find some way to avenge them.

The coach made more turns, approaching Old Sablewood. The formerly grand estates here had been allowed to deteriorate into an urban ruin. Skinner had heard of places like this deeper within Sablewood's gated depths, whole neighborhoods that had become so afflicted with ennui and lunacy and incest that they were more like madhouses or boneyards than actual communities. Finally the Warden's coach came to a stop near a dilapidated gazebo at the edge of a park that in its neglect had taken on a new kind of beauty. Unmanicured bushes and untrimmed trees rambled into the night. Ponds were thick with lilies and cattails. Frogs and crickets peppered the foggy night with chirps and croaks. All was cast in blue.

As Hotch briskly made his way through the overgrown park he reached into his robe and brought out a colorful object and put it to his face. Skinner realized that what the Warden was securing to his head was a mask. It was the sort worn at the masquerade balls held by the elite and wealthy. The mask's long and pointed nose was hooked like the beak of a goblin bird and had gilded feathers jutting from its brow. The sight of the dark-robed man in his wicked mask striding through the wild park was a surreal vision indeed. Skinner followed.

Finally they came to the park's other side. Here was a long and broken cobblestone street. The neighborhood was still and haunting. There were lights in some of the manor-house windows but one in particular seemed to have the most activity within. It was to this old gothic house that Hotch went. A couple of masked strongmen guarded its front gate. Hotch muttered some sort of password to them and held a small object for them to see and they nodded and permitted him through. Skinner wouldn't be able to get in through that door, he knew. Fortunately he had come prepared. He went around to a side wall and found it an easy climb thanks to the many vines and gaps between the stones. From there he studied the activity on the grounds and inside the windows. Several more masked figures milled inside and outside the house. It was some sort of clandestine gathering.

Most of the guests remained inside and as soon as there was no one in the space below Skinner took his chance. He dropped to the ground and darted across the short distance to the side of the sagging house. He crept to a window and could hear conversation inside. Skinner waited and listened and came to realize from their words that this was a meeting of a secret society he had heard whisperings of called the 'Sinners' Club,' a group of aristocrats who were said to take part in the most twisted sensory pleasures and taboos imaginable, things that would turn even a sandman's stomach. They were rumored to delight in the most awful acts against humanity for no other gain than sick pleasure. These lunars had all that money could buy and so they thirsted for things forbidden. Surely the masks and this location away from prying eyes were all efforts to keep their identities protected. If the Warden's presence was any indication, these were powerful people indeed. It wasn't even out of the question that this entire ruined ward was owned by these men and intentionally kept unoccupied and in deterioration simply to serve as their own private pleasure-ground. Skinner had heard stories of the Club letting poor souls into these streets so that the Sinners might stalk them down and murder them in cold blood. Is that what had become of the poor children Skinner and Valen had sought to avenge? Had they been turned into game for urban hunters?

The fugitive wondered what tonight's main event might be. For what sick purpose had the deviants gathered? The smite's effects were waning. Skinner had to act. He went from window to window until he came to a latrine where a lone guest squatted and groaned in tortured constipation. Another odd sight for this funhouse night, that shitter in his madcap mask and feathered hat. Skinner felt no remorse when he crawled into that privy and relieved the deviant of his life with his knife. He took the man's belongings to include a small medallion, perhaps matching the one Hotch used to get past the guards, and most importantly his mask. There were strange markings on its inner surface, beautiful and elegant strokes.

Skinner shoved the body out the window where it landed in the thorny bushes. He then donned the reptilian mask and pulled his hood over his head. It was time he invited himself to this twisted ball.

— • —

Dimia occasionally went out into the city with her adoptive family. She often felt people were staring at her from across bridges and plazas and through the crowds. A strange disheveled man watched from among the tombstones of a small church's graveyard. An old woman with dirt smeared on her face stared unblinkingly from the window of an old folks' home as they shopped in the street market. One lurched behind them as they shopped the fruit stands. He smelled of rot and death. Someone complained that a cart must have rotten product. Dimia knew better. She had enough. She turned and pointed at the lurching monster stalking her and screamed at it. "Get away, rotter!"

"Ain't no rotter," said the lurcher. "I ain't but an ol' beggar! I ain't no rotter! I'm alive, see, I'm alive!" The oldster did an odd dance to prove Father Death hadn't yet claimed his soul. The man was clearly barmy, but not undead. Just another transient that smelled of piss and death and madness.

"Forgive my charge," said Mulia as she ushered the three girls away. She considered admonishing Dimia but thought better of it. The girl was clearly disturbed by her morbid past and needed more than a tutor. Dimia had also not taken to Amelie and Astrid as Mulia had hoped. She had nothing in common with the other girls and usually ignored them. If Mulia was to be honest her own children were probably just as much to blame for the divide. They surely didn't appreciate this new girl with whom they now had to compete for their mother's attention. If things did not change for the better Mulia feared she might have to send Dimia back to that home, or worse, to a madhouse... though those whom the imaginative orphan accused of stalking her did have the stink of the dead.

— • —

Reaper camp. The men came down from the high of the action. Team 3 had done well. In and out with little fuss. This is what they had trained for. Nail was proud of his boys. Addison was in surprisingly good spirits for the abuse he had seen at the hands of the gobs. Perhaps it was because his imprisonment had been so torturous that he sprang to such life now that he knew it was done. He allowed only a minimal amount of medical aid.

"Unholy Fate!" Addison exclaimed upon recognizing his former fellow trainee Blacwin among the commandos. He raised an accusing finger. "That man is a recreant! He deserted our group on his watch in our final training mission! We could have all been killed while we slept after that traitor forsook us."

Vulture glared at Blacwin. "Knew you was no good. Bet you did Thirteen in, eh? I seen him, watchin' you in the night."

"Snuff it," Nail said. He leveled his eyes on Addison. "This Reaper has proven himself again and again. Stars, he brought home the head of Orchid, the Blind Prophet himself, where the rest of you failed to come home at all." Addison appeared stunned by this revelation. "If he stayed with you cockgoblins," Nail continued, "perhaps he would've needed rescuing, too. Perhaps you were all just dead weight. And worse... what kind of man are you to condemn your own savior? Ungrateful shit! We all got our dragons. Blacwin will live with his. I'll live with mine. I suggest you contend with your own."

Addison rummaged through his things and withdrew the ragged hobgoblin head he'd taken during his rescue. Threw it to the ground at Nail's feet. "Well, there's the head the Nation asked of me, finally delivered. Now I demand my Reaper dagger."

"Who says that's your skull to claim?" said Nail. "That head belongs to me. To 'Three. Get your own. And then we'll see how magnanimous Commander Barda feels about still making you a Reaper."

Addison blinked. "Barda's a commander now?"

"A lot's changed, friend," said Blacwin. He walked to his spot near the fire and lay down and reflected on the evening's successes. The moons watched down on him as he drifted off into something that was not quite sleep, the light of Sharil on one cheek and Huul on the other. Despite Addison's accusations, Blacwin's heart had been warmed by the exchange. Nail had come to his defense, after all... 'inhuman' or no.

— • —

An emaciated and elderly man was spotted by a passing supply wagon as he limped along the road between the old Reaper training grounds and the site that had once been Fort Nothing and was now simply nothing. The Nation men who discovered the wanderer were shocked indeed at the sight of him as they drew closer. The long-timer's skin was covered in moss and his eyes had been eaten away by the wild. Vines grew from his mouth and nostrils and sockets. A feast for the senses he was. The smell of his worm-eaten and tattered robes from the folds of which a small rodent peered. An aura of insects surrounded him in a biting haze. Spiders in his tangled beard. A lizard slithered under his sleeve. He made strange nonsensical mutterings of wild gods. The men considered leaving the old man to his wandering and likely eventual demise until he babbled something that caught their ear. His rescuers helped him onto their wagon and after listening more closely to his ramblings they knew he had to be taken to Fort Stowerling. It seemed the man was either a Reaper or mad enough to believe himself one.

— • —