A tavern’s flickering candlelight and a streetlight’s fading illumina glow cast shades into the dark alley Saphiria skulked through. Backs pressed to icy plaster walls and listening to inebriated shouting and the clinking of metal and ceramic mugs, she and her most capable servant awaited the signal. It would come soon.

The recent rumors led Saphiria here. Just three days ago, her people praised Dimitry as the apostle, accepting him as Zera’s medium. But now, one could hear them whispering of his corrupted magics throughout Malten.

An enraging prospect.

A disturbing prospect.

How could one capable of thought deride Dimitry after he had saved countless lives and slaughtered an entire heathen raid? It was foolishness. And considering the swiftness with which the sentiment spread, it was unnatural.

When Saphiria had lived in Estoria, the largest city in the Amalthean kingdom with a population even more condensed and connected than Malten’s, she worked with scoundrels to torch the reputation of the Shire Reeve—a warden known to abuse his prisoners. She spent six months framing him with everything from murder to tax theft, yet an entire year passed before the complaints of the populace became loud enough for King Gregorius to execute him. If a man as rotten as the Shire Reeve took so long to get his comeuppance, how could a single mishap undo a beloved surgeon?

Saphiria swore to find out. Her task was not easy.

Ever since she caught the pie vending thugs, word of a patrolling princess had spread, and every gang in the city went into hiding whenever she dispatched the royal knights. Either the gangsters were organized beyond comprehension or a double agent had infiltrated the royal knights—a possibility Saphiria could not ignore. Nobles across Malten comprised much of the royal knights. If what the thugs said was true, that a noble had hired them, her own men might have been leaking her plans to the gangs before she could capture them.

Tonight, Saphiria shed most of her forces to curtail the chances of espionage. She worked alongside the two servants she trusted most.

The first was a court sorceress who pinched her knee-length tunic, a dingy woolen skirt flowing from the hem. “Your Highness,” Leandra said, “when Her Royal Majesty learns that you and I are wearing peasants’ attire in public—”

“She will deal with it.” Saphiria adjusted her plain brown headscarf. “Enchanted armor and yellow robes would alert the gangsters. They elude capture as is.”

Leandra scowled, her amethyst eyes glinting in the feeble light. “Those damnable critters, making us stoop so low. Harder to exterminate than brigands.”

More pernicious, too. Dimitry feared they would bring further harm to his followers, and while Saphiria had scrambled to capture the criminal to reassure him, his Hospitallers left to reclaim the coast two days ago with him following the morning after.

Saphiria clenched her fist. For chasing her friend out of Malten, they would pay dearly. She spent all of yesterday interrogating the jailed pie vendors. Though Dimitry might condemn her methods as villainous, one thug swiftly pleaded he had an associate tasked with decrying the apostle. They were told to wait until after the poisoning incident to visit alehouses, cookshops, and anywhere else people congregated to convince them that the Ancient Evil had possessed Dimitry’s food offerings. Everything was planned.

Yet when Lukas sent spies to survey establishments across Malten, he discovered that there was more than just one criminal. In pairs of two, dozens patrolled the city, blaspheming the apostle. Another gang. There seemed to be no end to them.

So they could not alarm their brethren, Saphiria would capture each gossiper one pair at a time. No marching knights. No warnings. None would escape. Like a farmer’s wife who had carried a milkmaid’s yoke all her life, she hunched her back and peeked around the corner.

No signal yet.

But there was the silhouette of a boy. No older than ten, he stared at Saphiria from the shadow of a cobbler’s shop across an intersection. Another child, watching her, just like the time she raided the pie vendors’ hideout. Did they know who Saphiria was? Was it another gang? For babies to resort to crime—the thought broke her heart.

She stepped out of the alley to confront the boy, to punish him and smuggle him to the orphanage, only to pause at a whisper.

“They come,” Leandra said.

Saphiria’s gaze darted back to the tavern doors.

A crow of a man, dressed in all black, stepped out. It was Lukas. He straightened his worn leather sleeves as he left. That was the signal. The targets were following him.

First a man. Then a woman. As if hurrying elsewhere, they walked together on a deserted nighttime street.

“There’s two,” Leandra said.

Hoping for the boy’s sake that they did not interfere, Saphiria grabbed a filthy rag protruding from between two timber beams. “I’ll lure them in. I need one awake and both alive. Stay out of sight and silence them when they come close. If a child comes, do not harm him.”

Reaching into her tunic for vol, the court sorceress retreated. “Be safe, my liege.”

Saphiria waited for the thugs to get closer. And closer. Once they were close enough, she flipped a pouch.

Silver and copper coins crashed to the ground, ringing and chiming as they rolled and spun and spilled atop paved stone.

The thugs’ attention snapped towards Saphiria.

Eyes wide as if her family treasure had been discovered, Saphiria glanced up at the thugs. She grasped for coins.

Greed consumed the thugs.

Ogling the marks Saphiria clutched at her belly, the man puffed his chest like a backwater savage and strode forward, threatening her with towering height, his barrel body shaded black and dim light looming over his shoulder.

Feigning fear, Saphiria teetered back, and the woman swooped in to claim the space, scooping money off the alley floor.

The man lunged towards Saphiria’s stash, but as if losing all vigor, both of his arms flopped down. Eyes closing, he collapsed, and his face soundlessly plunged into Saphiria’s outstretched knee. A well-placed snoozia and silencia.

Noticing the marks she scrambled to collect no longer jingled, the woman looked up, shrieking in silence as Saphiria drove a filth-encrusted rag into her agape mouth and knelt on the back of her head, pressing her face into loose coinage.

Leandra emerged from the shadows and kicked away a hand reaching for a knife scabbard. “Your Highness, why did you not use gold marks?”

“Gold marks?” Saphiria asked, restraining the thug’s wrists with horsehair rope and checking around the corner for the boy. He was gone.

“Surely gold would be a more irresistible lure than silver and copper.”

“We are but peasant women. It would be too suspicious.”

With fingers carrying the burn scars of heathen’s blood, the honorary countess thoughtfully stroked her cheek.

Saphiria flicked the back of the thug’s head. “You. Stand or I will make you stand.” The thug stumbled to her feet, and Saphiria pushed her towards the extraction zone Lukas had prepared.

“I’ll grab the other.” Leandra dragged the male thug across the ground with thaumaturgically reinforced strength.

Dense metal rang in the night.

Saphiria’s head shot back. “What was that?”

“I’m not sure.” Leandra hovered over a thick iron bangle with a central handle. “It fell from his pocket.”

“Those inscriptions on the sides, are those seals?”

“Perhaps it is a spell canister.”

“Why would a thug have something so intricate?”

Saphiria and Leandra shared an alarmed glance and looked at the female thug, who shook with fear.