Lilah ended up leading her a few streets away, to one of the tenement buildings common to this part of town where people lived in sets of rooms like stacked-together boxes. Evidently, Mr. Trippingly and Madam Akiba shared one such set of rooms, not much different from any other in the place. Ishtal would never have guessed where to go if Lilah hadn’t marched up to one of the doors on the second story of the rabbit warren and given three sharp, insistent raps on the bare wood.

When the door opened, it revealed neither of the people they’d come to see, but rather Kosef, the human who seemed to be Mr. Trippingly’s bodyguard. He looked to Lilah first, without having to glance around and then down the way some people did, and then his gaze flicked up to take in Ishtal. 

“It’s late. What do you need?” he asked, his expression unreadable.

“We need to see Trip and Akiba—and you, too, I guess. There’s been an incident with the Krakens.”

Krakens. She’d heard that somewhere before. Lilah had said there was another criminal gang, one based in the north side, called the Blue Krakens. Presumably krakens were also some kind of creature, the way dragons were, but somehow Ishtal suspected Lilah was referring to the group of people. 

Wait. Blue. Blue like House Buchanan, like the stones in the necklace… But surely that couldn’t be right. The Buchanans were one of the noble ruling houses, and the Krakens were just a bunch of criminals. There was no way they could be connected.

Kosef looked very grim, and stepped back to let them in at once. The moment they were inside, he locked and bolted the door, and then crossed in three great strides to where Mr. Trippingly and Madam Akiba were sitting at a plain wooden table covered in papers. It was the most cluttered thing in the apartment; everything else was very spare and minimalist, meant for functionality. There was little furniture, only what two people would need, and the fabrics hanging on the walls were in plain, solid colors without embroidery, meant for keeping the chill out more than for decorating. It was, oddly, the closest thing to her home that Ishtal had seen in Lozhapad, although she thought this might actually be even more stripped down.

“Lilah’s here, with Ishtal,” Kosef said curtly. “We have a problem.”

Before anybody else could ask any questions, Lilah had approached the table with light, sharp steps. “Ishtal went out on a solo burglary tonight,” she said tightly, “which I admit was my suggestion. Apparently I didn’t make it clear enough that this wasn’t some kind of test, and she felt the need to prove herself and broke into House Buchanan.” In a single swift motion, she produced the necklace from inside her vest and thunked it onto the tabletop.

There was a long moment of frozen silence, as everybody stared at the glinting silver and sapphires lying innocuously amid the drifts of paper. Then Madam Akiba looked up, and directly at Ishtal. “Did anybody see you?” she asked calmly.

Ishtal wanted to shrink into something very small, but she made herself take a couple of steps forward. “Yes,” she said, trying not to let her voice waver under that yellow gaze. “Some kind of magical alarm was triggered when I came in through the window—it made my bones hurt, and I think it alerted the guards. I made it as far as a bedroom, and that’s where I got the necklace and an earring, but on my way out I ran into the guards. They chased me, but I got out of the house and over the garden fence, and I lost them pretty quickly after that. They didn’t follow me anywhere near the Salamander.”

Madam Akiba sat back, somehow looking very tired. “That is well,” she said, “but I am afraid it may not make much difference.”

“It’s not going to take them long to figure out that she’s the only Onena in this city,” Kosef interjected, “and she was wearing our color. They’ll know, and she won’t take it lightly.”

“No, no she won’t,” Mr. Trippingly said quietly, staring at the table and drumming his long fingers slowly against it. “I can’t imagine she’s gotten any less vindictive over the years, or any more reasonable when it comes to perceived insults.”

“Who’s ‘she’?” Ishtal asked, pulse speeding up. “What’s going on that’s so terrible?”

Mr. Trippingly shifted to face her fully. “Did Lilah tell you at all about the Blue Krakens?”

“She mentioned them. All she said was that they were, um snobs, and Kosef’s problem, and that they’d been quiet lately.”

“My problem, ah?” Kosef interjected, one eyebrow raised in Lilah’s direction.

“In a general sense,” Lilah retorted. “I didn’t think they would become a thief problem, at any rate, or that she would need to bother with more than that to start with.”

“Enough, both of you,” Madam Akiba interposed. Looking to Ishtal again, she continued, “The Krakens are the other major organized crime operation in Lozhapad, and they are actually older and more well-established than we are. Mr. Trippingly used to be one of them, before he split off and joined forces with me to found the Dragons. There has always been a certain amount of…mutual animosity ever since, but usually it does not escalate into outright violence, as that only draws the attention of the watch onto both factions.”

“The few exceptions,” Mr. Trippingly said, looking very tired, “have all occurred when someone’s been foolhardy enough to draw the ire of Lady Gormlaith Buchanan.”

Ishtal recognized the surname, of course, but… “What does she have to do with the Krakens?”

“She’s their leader,” he said plainly, like this wasn’t a completely jarring concept. “She’s the last of her House, and about ten years ago, she was apparently about to go bankrupt, so she decided to solve her financial problems by finagling her way into the Blue Krakens and taking over. She practically purged the gang then—she’s more biased than most towards non-humans, and that’s who makes up the majority of the criminal underworld of any city. All the Krakens now are human or human-passing, except for a couple of elves that I’d guess she kept around for their viciousness. Mostly, we try to stay out of their way and they try to ignore us, and our spheres of operation are separate enough that we’re usually not in direct competition.”

“But Lady Gormlaith has a tendency to be…vindictive towards those who have insulted or offended her,” Madam Akiba added, her tone clipped. “The offense does not have to be intentional, either. She has been known to set assassins on Krakens who slip up on a job, though with household servants who are unfortunate enough to make some small error, she is usually content to merely ruin their lives.”

“With you, though…” Lilah pursed her lips. “You broke into her house, stole jewelry from her—jewelry that could be evidence of her link to the Krakens, no less—and then made fools out of her handpicked household guards and got away unscathed. If she doesn’t send her assassins after you, at minimum, and possibly start picking fights with the Dragons for good measure, we should probably investigate whether she’s actually still alive.”

“Thank you, Lilah, I’m not sure that’s entirely helpful,” Mr. Trippingly murmured.

Ishtal’s head was spinning; she felt as though her knees might give out from under her. “I should leave town,” she whispered hoarsely. “Try to get away, and maybe then she won’t come after you.” She looked at the four of them, stricken. “I’m so sorry I brought this down on you.”

She had just barely started to feel settled here, like she could just possibly enjoy a stable life. But all she had done was wreck everything again, worse this time. Was this what the rest of her life would be like, constantly moving from place to place and never being able to stay anywhere for long before her own mistakes uprooted her again?

The Dragons exchanged a swift glance before Mr. Trippingly shook his head vehemently. “Absolutely not,” he declared. “There’s no guarantee that your leaving town would do anybody any good, and besides that, you’re one of us now. We look after our own, even when they make mistakes. We’re not going to just abandon you to deal with this on your own.”

“And if you try to leave for some useless noble plan of protecting us,” Lilah added, “we’ll just come find you and bring you back where you belong. We care about you and you might as well get used to it.”

Ishtal opened her mouth to try and protest, but couldn’t seem to find the words for it. It was not, after all, as though she wanted to be cast out and have to leave, and if they said it would do no good to deter the Krakens, they probably knew what they were talking about. It was just that she could not think of any reason why they should take on trouble for her so matter-of-factly.

“I will see what I can do to mitigate this,” Madam Akiba was saying. “I have negotiated with Lady Gormlaith before, and sometimes it has worked. Trip, you and I will have to discuss details later, you are the one with inside knowledge, for whatever it is worth.” She shifted her gaze. “Kosef, who can we arrange to shadow Ishtal for protection?”

“I shouldn’t need protection,” Ishtal felt compelled to interject. “I was trained as a guardian of my village; I can fight.”

“I don’t doubt that, but I’ve seen the people Lady Gormlaith sends in these situations,” Kosef rumbled. “You’ll want backup. I’d better take point on this if you can spare me, Mr. Trippingly, although I should be able to come up with a couple of others who I can trade off with if I need to.”

Mr. Trippingly waved a hand. “Of course, of course. Not to worry, I’m sure I shall manage just fine.”

“If nothing else, because you will be going nowhere without me if Kosef is busy,” Madam Akiba chimed in. Mr. Trippingly scoffed at this, but didn’t seem offended, and Ishtal could have sworn the ezkatatsua looked fond as she said it.

“If that is settled,” Mr. Trippingly said, “then I don’t think there’s much more we can do tonight. Kosef, if you’d be so kind as to escort Ishtal back to the Salamander? We’ll work out more in the morning and keep you all informed. Thank you,” he added, looking between Lilah and Ishtal, “for letting us know right away. We’ll do our best to get this resolved as soon as we can, if it can be resolved at all.”

That there was doubt as to whether resolution was possible was not, to Ishtal’s mind, terribly reassuring. But for lack of any better options, and with exhaustion threatening to overtake her again, she acquiesced to walking back to the Salamander as instructed, Lilah pattering along next to her and Kosef a solid, surprisingly reassuring presence on her other side.