“That black-eyed piece of filth said what?!” Jasna snarled and lunged to her feet from the dilapidated lounge she’d been sitting on.

Gavrail flinched but didn’t bother to repeat himself as his mandor paced around the living room of the ramshackle house their little crew had lay claim to. It was in better shape now than it had been when they moved in, and was certainly cleaner thanks to the efforts of the kids in particular, but the repairs they’d managed were hodgepodge at best, ineffective at worst. Every last one of them was better at cracking skulls than hitting nails when it came to wielding a hammer, but at least they’d managed to stop the worst of the leaking and the roof wasn’t in imminent danger of collapsing.

That’d change as soon as winter arrived and they had to contend with the snow, of course.

The gang had all gathered when Gav returned, relieved to find he was in one piece, none the worse for wear beyond the bad bruise from the blow that had laid him out back at the Red Bird.

“That cocky old piece of shit— we’re going back tomorrow, right?” Zelimir demanded furiously. Jasna’s older brother by a year, it was common for the siblings to butt heads despite Jasna ostensibly being their leader, but on this point, at least, they seemed to be in agreement.

“Damn straight!” Jasna replied and returned her brother a ferocious grin. Gavrail grimaced internally at the sight— all too familiar with that particular smile. It’d take an act of the gods themselves to stop Jas now she was on the warpath.

Still, he had to try.

“Listen, I want to kick the old man’s teeth in too for what he did,” Gav insisted and pointed to the ugly purple and green bruise blossoming on his chin, “but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Maybe we should just camp another street until we make it in the gang and then—”

“You shit-kicking little coward!” Zelimir bellowed before Gav could even finish his sentence. Two years older and a good bit bigger than Gavrail, Zel jumped over the lounge to pounce on the younger man.

Quick on his feet, Gav managed to keep from getting grabbed by the neck like Zel had been aiming too, but the other man still managed to catch him by the front of his jacket and give it a hard yank that destabilized the both of them. They went down in a tangle of limbs that quickly degenerated into a messy bout of wrestling as they rolled to and fro across the floor. Gavrail managed to clip Zelimir across the ear but in turn he earned himself a punch to the chin. It wasn’t a hard enough blow to make him do more than wince on a normal day, but after the hit he’d taken earlier from the butt of Hastur’s sheath it was enough to leave Gav gasping and seeing stars.

Left curled up in a heap on the floor, it was all Gavrail could do to keep his arms over his head to protect himself from the blows Zelimir rained down on him.

“Zel! That’s enough!” Jasna shouted and dragged her brother off his would-be punching bag. He tried to shrug her off but the gang leader wasn’t having it— she punched her brother right in the nose for his insubordination.

Zelimir yelped in pain as blood erupted from his nose and immediately climbed off Gavrail then retreated several paces. “The hell you do that for?” he complained bitterly, words muffled by his hands as he worked to staunch the flow of blood from his face. She hadn’t hit him hard enough to break his nose, but it had deterred him all the same.

“He’s already had enough today, let him alone,” Jasna barked then helped Gavrail to sit on her battered lounge with a help of a few others.

Her brother scoffed. “Not enough of one, obviously. He’s gonna turn us into a rutting laughing stock he keeps talking like that.”

Jasna frowned, golden-brown eyes narrowing as she looked at her brother then turned her gaze to Gavrail as she stood over him. The pair looked remarkably similar, even by sibling standards and they’d been confused for twins on more than one occasion. Both had the same tan skin and vibrant red hair— though Zelimir’s brown eyes lacked the golden tone of his sister’s.

“My idiot brother’s not wrong, Gav,” she said eventually and ignored her brother’s objection at her casual insult to his intelligence. “We can’t let some old coot make fools of us now. White Street will never let us in if we let this lie.”

Gavrail sighed and ran his hands restlessly over his hair then dragged them down his face, one leg bouncing as he struggled to find the words that would steer his friend down a different path. “I know— I know, but it just ain’t gonna play out for us I can feel it,” Gav insisted fervently. “He laid me out and you all ran!”

“And I’m sorry for that,” Jasna said seriously, brow furrowed with regret and determination when she laid a hand on Gavrail’s shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll go in prepared— bring the whole crew.”

“It’s not just that, Jas, he’s a Ward. You saw his eyes, you know what that means!”

“We’re not gonna kill him, Gav. Duke won’t care about his bastard so long as he’s left alive with all his bits in tact. You know how nobs are— he’s lucky if they keep him around for breeding stock.”

“’Sides,” Royko chimed in from her place on lookout by the window, “I’ve heard of him. Some big shot in the Red Guard years back til he freaked out one day and quit. He’s probably got some old moves but it won’t take much to push him over with all of us there.”

Gavrail frowned and fell quiet as he studied Royko. At seventeen years old she was a year younger than him and absorbed gossip off the street like a sponge did water. With tawny brown hair and grey eyes the girl blended in with a crowd which made her particularly good at snooping, but this time Gav didn’t think she had the whole story.

Whether she was right about Hastur having quit the guard years ago or not, Gav had sat across a table from the man and shared a drink— you could gage a lot about a person in those circumstances and every fiber in the boy’s body was screaming that, under no circumstances, should they pick a fight with the black-eyed man.

~~~

The sun was on its way down when Naum stepped out onto the street and patted himself down in search of his cigarette case. He found it tucked into his waist sash but scowled when he flipped it open and found the case empty.

It’d been a long day. He’d gotten home in the wee hours the morning and had to leave again around dawn when he was summoned to a particularly gruesome murder site in Wall Street. Contrary to the name, Wall Street was, in fact, an entire neighborhood that ran along the old wall that and once been the city’s fortification against outsiders. Now it was just an arbitrary line between Wall Street and Ashtown but oh how quick the wallers were to remind the ‘slag’ of Ashtown just which side of it they belonged on. The divide meant less and less the further up the salt road you traveled towards the palace, but this close the poor split hairs like misers counted gold.

Anything to not be the one at the bottom of the heap.

Vorslav didn’t have many reeves like Naum, so it was rare for him to be sent someplace like Wall Street to investigate yet another murder (an unfortunately common occurrence in the area), but this was the third in as many weeks with the same method of killing and some writer for Hightown’s gossip sheets had picked up the story and run with it. Now the watch had all sorts of important people asking overbearing questions and breathing down their necks, so to buy some peace from noble interference the powers that be had put Naum on the case.

Naum snapped his cigarette case shut and started down the street towards the nearest tobacconist.

He didn’t mind being put on the case itself. Naum was all too aware how rarely the higher ups bothered to take an interest in justice when justice required going south of Market Street, let alone south of the wall. It rubbed him so raw it felt like he might break out in a rash just walking around the city sometimes and made him question why he bothered with the job at all.

Then there were days like today. Days where he felt like he might make some small difference in a way that mattered to someone that didn’t have a hand on the chain around his neck. Figuring out and catching whoever had murdered the three stable workers wasn’t going to change the city at large, but it might bring some peace to those men’s families that they wouldn’t have had otherwise, and might save other lives besides.

He had his suspicions on the culprit, but it’d take more nosing around to—

Naum stepped out of the tobacconist, cigarette case freshly filled and one as-yet unlit hanging from his lips, to find a child waiting for him.