***

Night was upon the city as eerily silent as the one before. Guards both city and Keep patrolled the walls, maintaining the protective flames. Not even the few typical animals like a stray cat or crow dared draw near the blaze.

Suddenly, a pair of gleaming teal eyes brought a guard to attention. Only one Chohtah imp appeared instead of the normal group, purple and chittering, and a city guard readied his sling to startle it away from the light’s peripheries. But before he loosed, the imp glanced behind, chittered frantically, and vanished in a swirl of purple haze. The stone passed harmlessly through it. Once it was in the ground, however, the dry grass distorted. The silver-blue figure passed over with the grace of a tiger circling its prey, once again backing off as the runes shimmered dimly on the wall.

The guards who had dragged Ilanlan from the inn strolled down the same main way, spying a splotch of blood from his wound. They were elated anyone had finally put him in his place. Ever since the end of the war, he’d been causing disturbances and arguments in the market and his friends were barely able to restrain him. He and his group were one of the only two northerners still trading with the Capital, as a man his size was practically necessary to survive what the Borderlands had become after the Scorching. Many southerners had avoided his stall, but often a sugar glazed Uttaran starfruit was too tempting to avoid. When the guards came to an alley further down the main way, they had paused and summoned up the courage to check it again. The night before they found the corpse of one of Ilanlan’s friends splayed there, the clanless porter, hidden under a few tarps. He was blackened, like a fully rotted fruit. It was a matter quickly taken over by the Keep guards. One was there in bronze scales, double-checking as the city guards were, but they found nothing new and all moved on.

As soon as the sun had set, Dhanur had gone to the inn for her nightly visit, leaving Janurana to rest or enjoy another bath if she wanted.

But Janurana did no such thing. She stood behind the front door, listening to the city, catching every smell, waiting for the world to quiet as a tiger would wait for their prey to look just busy enough to strike. She slipped outside when she caught the seventh person’s snoring. As she did the first night in Dhanur’s house, Janurana leaned against the closed door of her host’s manor among the sparse violet light of the moon, even though it took up the majority of the sky. She kept her parasol close to her heart, between the embrace of her breasts. Her hands tightened around and caressed the fabric for its tactile comfort and relief. With an all–encompassing preparatory breath, she surged onto the back alleys once again to begin her hunt.

The target was seared into Janurana’s mind, and her course was set, changing only to avoid any guard she saw, but she wouldn’t travel alone. Behind her, a wisp of smoke followed unnoticed.

Janurana knelt at the side window of the inn. She surveyed the room and came upon the final unfortunate soul from last night. She reeked of sugar even more than the night before. Janurana could hear her fingers peeling from her cup, sticky with the glaze from the fruits they were supposed to sell. Instead, the lone northerner had eaten every single one herself. Janurana bit back her tears. Loss was nothing new to her or anyone, but a mercy killing to those who hadn’t asked for it was too much. She fell to her knees, skittered behind a cluster of urns to stay further out of sight and rubbed her parasol.

‘Neither of them would make it home,’ Janurana reasoned. ‘They’re wounded. They wouldn’t make it through the Borderlands. Unless they range the roads. No, the clans hate each other. They won’t help another. Probably.’

The last word smacked against the side of her skull from the inside and she met it with a smack on the same spot, cushioned by her untamable hair.

‘You have to eat. You have to eat. You. Have. To. Eat.’

The Fish Clan sat with her back to Dhanur, who had, once again, slumped over her drink.

She would have been denied service that night if Dhanur hadn’t groaned at the innkeeper to let the girl have a drink and accept her shells. When he still wouldn’t, Dhanur paid for the northerner’s drinks herself and shot her a remorseful look. Dhanur had tried to offer her a seat at her table, but neither of them knew enough of the other’s tongue and the Fish Clan woman retreated to hide at the table she was at the night before. From time to time, the Fish Clan would peek over, making sure their attacker wasn’t coming at her again, debating if she could convince the northern woman to help, and hoping no other southerner was coming to finish the job. 

When the Fish Clan looked up she would grab her leg and seethe. The porter was the one who knew how to wrap bandages properly so her own haphazard job had already bled through. She had no idea where her friend had gone. He had said he was going to see if he could find a tarp for them to sleep under and never returned.

After finishing her drink, she summoned up the last of her strength and pushed herself from the table. She could barely hobble to the door, instead bracing herself on one of the support beams before pushing off that as well. Dhanur got up, staggering herself, but wasn’t able to offer a hand as the Fish Clan bolted away as fast as she could.

Janurana, in a single, silent motion, leapt to the roof of the Inn.

She waited, lying prone, clutching the dusty edges of the roof. Not a single person sleeping there so much as twitched at her presence even as the bricks cracked, her fingers digging in with anticipation. The scent of blood had smashed through her apprehension causing the thrill of the hunt to course through her. The dust rained down on the northern woman but she barely noticed.

She limped away from the inn as the Innkeeper and the other patrons began making jokes at her and Ilanlan’s expense. Even in Daksinian, she could tell what they meant. Her face contorted into a scowl and she cursed and smacked her leg.

“Should have been stronger,” she said in Uttaran, curling her fists. Each slap made her waver but she forced herself to endure it.

The few townsfolk out and about added their own japes under their breath as the Fish Clan passed, but one didn’t need to know the language to tell when someone was laughing at them. A passing guard noticed and sighed. She rubbed her head under her bronze helm and jogged over. But like Dhanur, she couldn’t offer any help as the Fish Clan bolted into the maze of alleys.

The guard rolled their eyes and said, “Light shine on you too.”

Janurana followed it all like a specter, tracking her smell, gracefully leaping from building to building with a single step. She casually slipped past the pots of pea plants and occasional northern fruit bushes, over the communal gardens, and between the many citizens sleeping on their roofs. Not every home could afford the cooling skylight of Dhanur’s. Those she passed didn’t even flinch, as Janurana noiselessly drifted by. All the while her posture remained immaculate, and her parasol resting on her shoulder, unopened.

The translucent blue figure beyond the walls perched itself atop an ancient tall tree far from the walls with Janurana’s form in its sights. Focusing on her, it too failed to notice the smoky wisp following her every move.

The northerner’s wound finally became too much. She collapsed between two lower class homes in a gap barely big enough for a person to walk through without twisting, cursing in the northern tongue for spirits to haunt the whole of the southern plateau, for the warriors who survived the war to fall in the next one, for the Daksinian Light to fade to shadow below Uttaran spears and axes all gave Janurana the cover she didn’t need.

Janurana dropped from above. The noiseless descent of a nebulous shadow. The dim moonlight masked the executioner. Her parasol sat as the ax, but the killing blow was from concealed blades. Two shining implements of death extended and gleamed in her widening maw.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she thought. 

Janurana pounced.

All the while, Dhanur stayed at her seat on the same pillow as every night. It practically had her name stained onto it, as the oil from her maintained leather had left its mark. She had laid her head flat on the table as she was oblivious to the world. Her bow and quiver sat beside their master, ready for action like last night. When the Fish Clan had left, Dhanur shut out the world, drifting into her own head. She hadn’t even noticed someone knock over her bow and warily place it back where it was, instead only moving to take another sip or order when her cup emptied. Her mind, however, raced.

‘Couldn’t help the northern girl. Now I wanna help Janurana. Why’d I go to that stupid temple? Just ugh,’ she complained to herself.

‘It isn’t like you knew these things would go badly,’ her inner voice replied.

‘Just wanted to clear my dowsing head and now it’s worse. Stupid little, ugh, Light lost woman.’

‘Oh, please. Assuming you’re speaking of Janurana because why should you be clear about your words, if she’s strong enough to survive Outside stupid isn’t the right word.’

‘Fine. Just…’ Dhanur rolled her head. ‘Annoying then.’

‘Pausing during each sentence? Someone’s having a hard time with their words.’

‘Shut up!’ She screwed her eyes tight and sipped her beer.

‘Yup, keep drinking. That’ll shut me up eventually.’

‘Why the Dark did I even help her?’

‘Sure, sure, you’d sleep great if you left her to a vengeful northerner. You helped for the same reason you paid for that Fish Clan’s drinks and wanted to offer her a place to sleep too. There was nothing you could do there but you can do more for Janurana.’

‘But what if she does work for the gwomoni?’

‘Then they would have killed you earlier, or sent Gehsek to slit your throat while you slept. It seems a tad overly complex to use this girl. I think she’s fine. Didn’t we go over this?’

‘Just, brings up stupid stuff.’ Dhanur pulled a chunk of yeast cake from her beer that had made it through the filter. ‘I dunno.’

‘You do know.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t want to.’

‘That’s not a bad thing!’ She picked up her head and dropped it back onto the table.

‘It kind of is. That’s why you’re here.’

‘Seeing someone… I don’t like being reminded… She does look like Aarushi.’

‘Running from what you endured isn’t helping. It never has.’

“Fine!” Dhanur shouted aloud as she finished her drink in a defiant gulp. The innkeeper fled to the other side of an urn.

‘Agree to not run and then keep on running.’

‘I don’t. Want. To think about her!’

‘You know, a high class woman acting like that shows up looking like Aarushi. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe you can try again!’

‘No. She’s just a dowsin’ puppet now. Her mind’s gone.’ Dhanur shook her head. ‘Stop changing topics!’

‘I’m just saying maybe the Sun or Spirits or whatever are here for you now. It could be a sign. Maybe her puppet masters are losing their strength. Maybe she’ll stay lucid this time. It can’t hurt to try. The rest of the army still remembers you as one of the best. They’ll let you inside.’

Dhanur started to take another gulp, but her cup was still empty. She tightened her grip and resisted the urge to call for a refill.