Part 1

The off-duty guard's back struck the alley wall hard enough to shake grit from the mortar. Lucien Voss kept him there with one forearm across his chest and a narrow knife resting beneath his jaw, the edge close enough that the man could feel its cold without yet feeling blood.

"Last time," Lucien said.

His voice was almost pleasant, which made the knife worse.

"Where did Marrick move the gold?"

The guard swallowed carefully. The blade moved with his throat.

"I told you, I don't know."

Lucien's expression did not change.

Marrick.

Twenty years ago, Lucien had watched the man step over his father's body with a sack of stolen gold on his shoulder. He had watched him pause at the vault door, look back at the eleven-year-old boy kneeling in blood, and decide there was nothing worth returning for.

Now Marrick bought stolen goods from half of Ravensgate and had somehow convinced respectable men to call him a businessman.

Lucien pressed the knife a fraction closer.

"Then I strongly recommend remembering."

"I don't—I don't know—"

The blade pressed deeper. A bead of red appeared at the soldier's collar.

"Wrong answer." Lucien's smile held no warmth. "You were on duty when they walked it out. I know you signed off. Which means Marrick paid you to look the other way while they stole what was mine."

The guard's eyes darted left, right. No escape. The alley was narrow, shadowed, and Lucien had chosen his ground well.

"The—the docks," the soldier stammered. "Warehouse Seven. Three days ago, I swear—"

A shout echoed from the street.

"There! In the alley!"

Lucien's head snapped around. Three Valenorian Watch soldiers, tabards bearing the crown's crest, already moving. One hand on sword hilt. Another raising a whistle.

Fuck.

He released the guard and was moving before the whistle's shrill cry split the air. Boots hit cobblestone in a dead sprint, cloak billowing as he burst into Ravensgate's sprawling market.

"Stop! By order of the Valenorian Watch!"

He didn't stop.

Ravensgate swallowed him.

Wings battered wire to his left. Exotic birds shrieked from cages, their plumage catching the light. A mule screamed somewhere ahead. Bodies closed around him—shoulders, baskets, cages, elbows—and behind them all came the iron rhythm of Watch boots.

Too close.

Lucien vaulted a crate. Apples scattered across stone. A woman shrieked. Someone cursed. The Watch soldiers were shouting, armor clanging, boots pounding.

Three behind. Maybe four. Armed. Fast.

He cut left through the press of bodies. Right. The market opened into a wider plaza. Animal pens dominated the space. Scaled creatures hissed from reinforced containers. Birds of prey scraped talons against bars. Massive dogs strained against chains, snarls adding to the cacophony.

Lucien ran through the center. His boots splashed through spilled water and scattered feed. A caged serpent lunged as he passed, scaled snout snapping inches from his face.

The guards were still coming. Sharp commands. Clatter of armor. The whistle's piercing cry.

Need to break line of sight.

He ducked into a side street. Buildings pressed close, upper stories leaning inward. His boots splashed through something he didn't want to identify.

Behind him, boots struck stone. Voices shouted. Still coming.

A stack of crates leaned against a warehouse wall. Lucien jumped, caught the top, pulled himself up. His fingers found purchase on rough wood. He climbed fast, reckless, his body remembering a hundred other escapes.

The rooftop was slate and moss, slick with salt mist and afternoon rain. Lucien's boots found purchase anyway. He ran across the peak, jumped the gap to the next building, landed hard.

Below, the guards were shouting. One had spotted him. More whistles. More voices.

The rooftops became a maze of chimneys, gaps, and slate tiles shifting underfoot. His breath came ragged. Heart hammering.

More whistles answered from the eastern roofs.

Apparently the Watch had finally learned teamwork. Inconvenient.

Then he saw it. A ventilation shaft, grate rusted and loose.

Lucien dropped to his knees, wrenched the grate free, squeezed inside.

Metal walls pressed close. The air was thick with dust and old smoke.

Behind him, boots scattered across the rooftop. Voices shouted. Someone following.

The shaft angled downward. Lucien let gravity pull him, hands and feet bracing against walls. The metal was cold. His palms already raw.

Metal scraped his shoulder hard enough to tear cloth and skin. Rust filled his mouth. Rust and smoke and fear—

He was eleven again.

You don't have to do this, Lu.

A boot struck the roof above him.

Lucien jerked back—Ravensgate. Not the vault. Watchmen. The grate rattled behind him.

He dropped deeper into the shaft.

The corridor stretched farther than it had in the plans, smoke rolling along the ceiling while torchlight smeared across stone, and somewhere ahead his father was calling his name—

"Lu! Get out of there! Now!"

The explosion came early. Too loud. Too wrong.

His hands worked the grate. Dropped into the corridor. The vault door stood unguarded.

He ran.

Then he saw him.

His father on the ground. Blood pooling beneath him, dark and spreading.

"Papa!"

Lucien was on his knees. Hands hovering, not knowing where to touch.

"Lu." His father's hand found his, gripped with surprising strength. "Listen—"

A whistle shrieked somewhere above.

Lucien's shoulder struck metal. The shaft opened into a dark storage room cluttered with crates. He dropped through, landed in a crouch, was moving before his eyes adjusted.

Door. Corridor. Another door.

He burst into an alley, different from the first one, still narrow, still shadowed. His legs trembled. Lungs felt full of broken glass.

But he was ahead of them. Still free.

Just need to—

Something whistled past his ear.

The arrow took him in the shoulder.

The impact spun him sideways. He crashed into a wall, his wounded shoulder screaming. Fire exploded through his body—white-hot, devastating. His knees buckled.

No. Not now—

He forced himself to move. One hand pressed to the wound, feeling the warm slick of blood. The other braced against the wall. His knees threatened to fold with every step. His vision blurred at the edges.

The guards' voices were closer. Too close.

Lucien stumbled forward, deeper into the alley. Each step was agony. The arrow had gone clean through; he could feel the shaft protruding from both sides, grinding against bone with every movement.

Keep moving—

He didn't see the low-hanging beam until too late.

Wood cracked against his brow.

White light burst behind his eyes. Then red. Then the alley rolled sideways beneath him.

His legs gave out entirely.

Lucien hit the cobblestones hard. His ribs struck the edge of a stone trough hard enough to drive the wind from his lungs. The impact sent bruising pain exploding across his left side. The arrow shaft snapped against the ground, sending fresh agony through his shoulder. He tried to push himself up but his arms wouldn't respond. His vision was fracturing. The alley split into multiple overlapping images that refused to resolve.

Blood ran hot down his temple. Into his eye. The taste of copper filled his mouth.

The guards' voices were distant now. Muffled. Like he was underwater.

Get up. Have to get up—

But the world was going soft at the edges. Cold creeping in from somewhere deep. His body felt heavy, disconnected.

Lucien's cheek pressed against cold stone. His breath came in shallow, ragged gasps. The pain in his shoulder was a white-hot point of agony, but even that was starting to fade into the general numbness spreading through his limbs.

Not like this—

His fingers twitched. Just barely.

Move.

He managed to roll onto his side. The world spun violently. Bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it down, tasting blood and fear.

His hand found the wall. He pulled. Dragged himself forward. Inches. Then more.

A drainage recess. Half-hidden by shadow and jutting eaves, barely wide enough for a man his size. He pulled himself into it, using the last of his strength to wedge himself into the narrow space. His shoulder screamed. The ribs on his left side sang with sharp, bruising pain—not broken, but badly damaged, each breath a negotiation with his own body.

The guards' voices were fading. Or maybe his hearing was going.

Lucien pulled himself deeper into the dark.

Part 2

The cold came in waves, rising through Lucien from the wet stones beneath him until even his teeth ached with it. The alley had dissolved into shadow and firelight, the cobbles under his hands cold one moment and strangely warm the next, as if time itself had folded and laid two different floors beneath him at once.

Blood ran over his fingers.

For a moment, he was certain it was not the alley at all.

It was an armory floor. Or an older vault. Wood beneath his knees, polished stone beneath his cheek, torchlight shivering across iron-bound chests. Somewhere behind him, someone was laughing.

Sylvain.

No.

Marrick.

Does it matter if he's dead?

Boots splashed into the alley, dragging him violently back toward the present. Lucien pressed himself deeper into the narrow recess, biting down hard as the broken arrow shifted inside his shoulder. Pain flared white through his chest, sharp enough to blur the brickwork in front of him.

"Blood," someone said from the street.

A shadow stopped across the opening.

Lucien went completely still.

One step came closer, then another, slow and deliberate. His knife was already in his hand by the time he realized he had drawn it, his fingers wrapped so tightly around the hilt that his knuckles burned.

The shadow leaned toward the recess.

Lucien held his breath.

A shrill whistle sounded from the next street.

"North!" another guard shouted.

The shadow hesitated, then turned away. Boots pounded back through the rain, fading quickly until only the sound of water dripping from the eaves remained.

Lucien sagged against the wall, but the alley did not stay with him.

The stone beneath his fingers became wood again.

He was kneeling beside his father.

Blood soaked the knees of his trousers, spreading across the vault floor in a dark pool that seemed far too large to belong inside one body. Lucien had both hands pressed against the wound, though even then he had known the pressure was useless.

"We have to get you out," he heard himself saying. His own voice sounded thin and young. "The crew will help. They'll get you out."

His father caught the front of Lucien's shirt and pulled him closer with a hand that had always been strong and now barely had enough strength to hold on.

"Listen."

"Don't."

"Lucien."

"Please don't talk like that."

His father's eyes locked onto his, fierce even as the life drained out of them. "You're going to be fine. You're going to survive this."

"Papa, please."

"I'm proud of you."

Blood touched the corner of his father's mouth. Lucien wiped it away with his sleeve, only for more to appear.

"The crew will take care of you," his father whispered. "Marrick promised."

Lucien nodded because he needed the promise to be true.

"Yes."

His father's grip loosened.

"Papa?"

Behind him, metal clinked.

Lucien turned.

Marrick was loading gold into a leather sack. Senna was wrenching open the false bottom of a strongbox, and Torvin was stripping rings from the dead watch captain near the vault door. None of them were looking at Lucien's father. None of them were looking at Lucien.

They were working.

"Marrick."

No answer.

Lucien looked back at his father and realized his chest had stopped moving.

Something inside him seemed to go quiet.

"Marrick."

The older thief finally glanced over, and Lucien would remember that expression for the rest of his life. It was not hatred or cruelty. That would have been easier to understand. Marrick looked at him the way a man might look at a broken lock or a wounded horse, measuring inconvenience against time.

"He said you'd take care of me."

Marrick pulled the drawstring tight around the sack. "Kid, we don't have time for this."

"He said you promised."

"We have guards coming."

"My father is dead."

Senna lifted another sack onto her shoulder.

Nobody answered.

Lucien's voice broke. "He's dead."

Marrick stepped around the body. "And we'll be dead too if we don't move."

Then they left.

Torvin went first, Senna behind him, Marrick last. Lucien watched him reach the vault door, and for one stupid, desperate second he believed the man would turn around.

Marrick did.

Their eyes met.

Lucien reached toward him.

Marrick walked away.

The door slammed.

Water struck Lucien's face.

He gasped and found brick above him again, rain sliding down his temple, blood running warm beneath it. The alley returned for barely a heartbeat before the world shifted once more, the walls narrowing and becoming polished stone.

He was twenty-five again.

The Royal Armory.

His skull had been split open behind the ear. Every breath caught against broken ribs, and his left arm lay useless against the floor. Voices echoed around him, horribly familiar.

"Didn't think it would be this much."

Sylvain's voice.

Smooth. Almost amused.

"Highcrest money," Thorne replied somewhere nearby. A chest scraped across stone. "Someone important."

Lyssa stood near the vault gate, wiping blood from her knife with the same careful attention she used when cleaning surgical tools.

Lucien tried to lift his head.

His vision doubled.

"Sylvain."

The name barely came out.

His own crew.

The people he had trained. Trusted. Built something with.

Sylvain looked down at him.

There it was again.

The same look Marrick had given him years before.

Calculation.

Useful?

No.

Dangerous?

Possibly.

Worth saving?

No.

"Leave him," Sylvain said.

Thorne laughed. "Here?"

"Perfect place for him."

Lucien tried to move. Pain tore through his ribs.

"Lyssa."

She buckled her knife sheath.

"Don't."

For half a second, even Thorne stopped laughing.

Lucien tasted blood. "We built this."

Sylvain crouched beside him.

Hope surged through Lucien so violently that it almost hurt worse than the broken bones.

Sylvain reached down.

Not for Lucien.

For the ring of lockpicks lying beside his hand.

He picked them up and slipped them into his coat.

"You're very good at what you do," he said.

Then he stood.

Footsteps moved away. Sacks were lifted. Buckles fastened. A door opened.

"Is he dead?" Thorne asked.

There was a brief pause before Sylvain answered.

"Does it matter?"

The words struck deeper than the blade ever had.

The Armory changed around him.

Stone darkened into timber. Sylvain became Marrick. Lyssa became Senna. Thorne's laughter echoed through a vault twenty years gone, and Lucien could no longer tell which betrayal he was remembering because the shape of both was exactly the same.

His father's blood beneath his knees.

His own blood beneath his cheek.

Marrick stepping around a corpse.

Sylvain stepping around him.

Two crews.

Two doors.

Lucien left bleeding on the wrong side of both.

"The crew will take care of you."

His father's voice.

"Leave him."

Sylvain's.

"I'm proud of you."

"Does it matter?"

Lucien's fingers twitched against the floor. He did not know whether he was touching wood, stone, or wet alley cobble anymore. He only knew that there was something solid beneath his hand and that his body had not stopped breathing yet.

He hooked his fingertips into a crack and pulled.

Pain ripped through his shoulder so violently that blackness crowded the edges of his vision, but he moved. Barely an inch, perhaps less.

The people who loved him had left.

He pulled again.

The people he trusted had learned exactly where to put the knife.

Another inch.

Fine.

Let them leave.

Let them take the gold, the plan, the contacts, the reputation. Let them leave his name behind for the Crown to hang around his neck.

Lucien dragged himself forward again, his breath breaking into a wet, ugly laugh.

They did not get to leave him the corpse.

Not Marrick.

Not Sylvain.

Not anyone.

The memories finally began to loosen. His father's face disappeared first, then the vault, then the Armory, until Sylvain's laughter thinned into the sound of rain dripping somewhere beyond the alley mouth.

Lucien opened his eyes.

Brick.

Cold water.

Blood.

His own hand gripping the edge of the drainage stone hard enough that two fingernails had split.

He was back.

The guards were gone. The alley was empty, and he was alone.

Of course he was.

Lucien rested his forehead against the wall for a moment, breathing through the pain, then slid one shaking hand higher along the stone.

"Fine," he whispered.

He pulled himself forward.

Part 3

The streets blurred into one another.

Lucien moved through them like a man underwater, each step an act of will against a body that wanted only to stop. His shoulder was a furnace of pain. The arrow wound had reopened somewhere in the chaos—he could feel the warm seep of blood down his back, steady and patient as a clock counting down.

No more roofs. No more alleys. Find a door.

The city's layout fractured in his mind. He'd been here before, years ago, on a job with Corvin. There had been an inn, the kind that understood discretion was worth coin. The Broken something. The name slipped away like water through his fingers.

He turned down a street that seemed familiar. Wrong. Turned again.

The buildings pressed close, their upper stories leaning inward like they were conspiring. A woman with a market basket gave him a wide berth, her nose wrinkling. He must have looked like death walking.

Shock and blood loss made the world pulse. Cold sweat ran down his temples despite the evening chill. How long had he been bleeding? Hours? Days? Time had become unreliable.

His vision doubled. The street ahead split into two overlapping images that refused to resolve. Lucien blinked hard, trying to force them back together.

A figure emerged from the shadows.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. The silhouette wavered like heat shimmer.

Father.

No. His father was dead. Fourteen years dead. But the resemblance was there: the way the figure held itself, the set of its shoulders.

Lucien's feet faltered. His eyes locked on the shape, searching for confirmation.

The figure turned. For a moment Lucien saw it clearly: scarred jaw, steady eyes, a man who'd stood beside him when everything went wrong.

Corvin.

But then the image rippled. Features shifted, reformed, became someone else entirely. Or no one at all. Just shadow and failing light and the desperate architecture of a mind trying to make sense of blood loss and concussion.

Lucien's knees buckled.

He caught himself against a wall, his wounded shoulder screaming. The figure—if it had ever been there—was gone. The street was empty. Had always been empty.

Not real.

His hand came away from the wall wet with his own blood. The cobblestones tilted beneath him.

He forced his legs to move. One foot in front of the other. His vision was narrowing to a tunnel of gray.

A voice called out. He couldn't make out the words. Couldn't tell if it was real or another hallucination.

He stumbled. Caught himself. Kept going.

His father's voice echoed from somewhere: You're going to survive this—but the words were underwater, distorted.

Marrick's voice joined it. We don't have time for this.

Sylvain's laughter. Should've known better than to trust a Voss.

All of them. All the voices of everyone who'd ever left him. They filled his head, overlapping, becoming one continuous sound of abandonment.

Lucien pressed his hand to his wounded shoulder. The blood was warm. Too warm. He was losing too much.

Then he saw it.

The sign hung from a rusted iron bracket, the paint so weathered the original image was barely visible. But the shape was right. The placement was right. The narrow door beneath it, the windows with their thick, warped glass.

The Broken Wheel.

His breath broke.

The Broken Wheel.

His next step nearly folded beneath him.

Made it.

Lucien pushed through the door and nearly fell. The common room steadied him—firelight, the smell of ale and old wood, the low murmur of voices that seemed to come from very far away. A handful of patrons looked up, then looked away. This was the kind of place where men didn't ask about wounds.

The innkeeper was behind the bar: a broad woman with iron-gray hair and scarred hands and the expression of someone who'd seen everything and been disappointed by most of it. Her eyes tracked Lucien's progress across the room with the precision of a merchant counting inventory.

"I need a room," Lucien said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. Distant. Wrong. "Top floor. Back corner if you have it."

The woman's gaze moved from his face to his shoulder to the blood on his cloak. She didn't flinch.

"That'll be four silver. In advance."

Lucien fumbled for his purse. His fingers were numb. He managed to produce the coins, though he couldn't quite remember how many he'd given her. The woman took them without comment.

"Room seven. Stairs in the back." She paused. "You need a healer?"

"Yes."

"There's one two streets over. Keeps late hours. I'll send word." The innkeeper's tone suggested this was a transaction she'd conducted before. "She'll want payment."

"I have coin."

"Good."

The stairs were a nightmare of narrow turns and uneven steps. Lucien's vision kept sliding sideways. His legs moved on instinct alone, muscle memory from a hundred other escapes, a hundred other desperate nights.

Room seven was small, cold, and blessedly empty. The bed was narrow but solid.

He made it three steps inside before his knees gave out entirely.

He fell rather than sat, his body hitting the mattress with a force that sent fresh agony through his ribs. For a moment he couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only lie there, his chest heaving, his shoulder a white-hot point of concentrated suffering.

The room tilted. Steadied. Tilted again.

Stay conscious. The healer is coming.

But the darkness was already pulling at the edges of his vision, soft and insistent. His eyes were so heavy. His body so tired. It would be so easy to just close his eyes and let it take him.

The door opened. A woman's voice, sharp and competent. Hands on his shoulder, gentle but firm. The sound of cloth tearing.

"Bad," the healer said. Not a question.

"Arrow," Lucien managed. "Concussion. Ribs."

"I can see that."

She was already working. He felt her fingers probe the wound, gentle but thorough, assessing the damage. Then something sharper—a tool, maybe a blade. She was cutting through the broken shaft.

"This is going to hurt," she warned.

She wasn't wrong. When she pulled the wooden shaft free, the pain was white-hot and devastating. His shoulder erupted in fresh agony. He tried to cry out but couldn't find the breath.

"Arrow passed straight through," the healer said, her tone clinical. "You're lucky. Half an inch left and it would have taken the joint. Half an inch right and you'd be dead."

She worked quickly after that. Binding, cleaning, something that smelled like herbs and alcohol. The world was fading now, the edges going soft and gray. The healer's hands moved with practiced efficiency. He tried to stay present, tried to track what she was doing, but his body had other ideas.

The last thing he felt before the darkness took him was the sharp sting of needle and thread passing through flesh, and the strange comfort of knowing that someone—anyone—had stopped to help.

Part 4

Five days later, Lucien sat in a corner booth of the Broken Wheel, nursing weak ale. His shoulder still burned, but the fever had broken and the bleeding had stopped. The healer's work had been competent enough—he'd paid her in coin he couldn't afford to lose.

Ravensgate was no longer survivable. The Watch had nearly killed him here, and they would try again if he remained. Marrick's gold was gone, moved days ago to men who would guard it better than Lucien could reach it. The city had become a trap with only one exit: north.

He was planning to leave tomorrow anyway. Now it was simply a matter of necessity rather than choice.

Then he heard the voice.

"—and I'm telling you, Corvin Ashmark is gathering a company," an older dwarven warrior was saying to his companion at the bar. His voice was loud enough to carry, the kind of casual gossip that came with ale and comfort. "Heading north of Millcrest, from what I heard. Looking for skilled fighters, apparently."

His friend laughed. "Ashmark? Isn't that the one from the Iron Anchor?"

"Aye, that's him. Principled bastard. Fought with him once, years back." The dwarf took a long drink. "Though I heard the last company he was with went missing or something. Whole crew just vanished. Probably got themselves killed on some fool's errand."

Lucien's fingers locked around the cup. Ale climbed the rim.

Corvin Ashmark. The man who had pulled Lucien from beneath an overturned wagon while centaurs tore through the caravan line. The man who had stayed when the hired guards ran.

Gathering a company. Heading north.

He finished his ale slowly, methodically. Paid his tab with exact coin, no conversation.

Outside, the slums district stretched toward the northern quarter. Lucien stood at the edge of the street, his pack on his back, and looked north.

He didn't know if this was hope or desperation. Didn't know if Corvin would remember him, or if the man had changed into something unrecognizable.

But he knew he was going.

Lucien turned north and began to walk.

He'd made it three streets when he heard it.

A whimper. Soft and pained.

Lucien stopped. His hand went to his knife on instinct. But the sound came again—not threatening, just... hurt.

He found the dog in an overgrown lot behind the tannery, half-hidden in the weeds near the northern quarter wall.

It was a big animal—a large shepherd hound, black-and-tan, broad through the chest and heavy in the jaw, as though some war mastiff ran in its blood. Its coat was matted with dirt and burrs. And its front paw was a mess—swollen, bleeding, clearly injured.

The dog watched him approach with wary eyes. Not aggressive. Just... waiting.

Lucien should have kept walking.

He had a destination. A purpose. Getting involved with a wounded animal was stupid and impractical and would only slow him down.

Marrick would have kept walking. Sylvain and Thorne and Lyssa and Kael would have kept walking.

Every crew he had ever trusted would have kept walking.

Lucien knelt down.

"Hey there," he said softly. "That looks like it hurts."

The dog's tail twitched. Not quite a wag, but close.

Lucien set down his pack and pulled out his water skin and the clean cloth the healer had given him. The dog watched but didn't move as Lucien carefully cleaned the wound. A deep cut, probably from broken glass or a sharp rock. It would need stitches he couldn't provide, but he could at least clean it and wrap it.

"You're lucky I'm feeling charitable," Lucien muttered as he worked. "Or stupid. Probably stupid."

The dog made a soft sound—not quite a whine, not quite a groan.

"Yeah, I know the feeling."

He wrapped the paw as best he could, using strips torn from his spare shirt. The dog tolerated it with surprising patience. When Lucien finished, he sat back on his heels.

"There. That should hold until we can find someone better qualified."

We.

The word had slipped out without thought.

Lucien looked at the dog. The dog looked back.

"I'm heading north," Lucien said. "It's going to be a long walk. And I don't have much food to share. And you're going to slow me down."

The dog's tail wagged. Just once.

Lucien sighed.

"You're going to be a pain in my ass, aren't you?"

The tail wagged again.

"Fine." Lucien stood, shouldering his pack. "But if you can't keep up, I'm not carrying you."

The dog struggled to its feet, favoring the injured paw but managing to stand. It looked up at Lucien with something that might have been trust.

Or maybe just hope.

Lucien started walking. After a moment, the dog limped after him.

They made it maybe fifty feet before Lucien stopped and looked back. The dog was struggling, its injured paw clearly causing pain with each step.

"Damn it."

Lucien went back, crouched down, and carefully lifted the dog into his arms. It was heavier than it looked—solid muscle under the matted fur. The dog made a surprised sound but didn't struggle.

"This is temporary," Lucien said firmly. "Just until we find a town with a proper healer. Then you're on your own."

The dog settled against his chest, its head resting on his shoulder.

Lucien adjusted his grip, then pulled his cloak free and knotted it beneath the dog's chest. He used the makeshift sling to take some of the animal's weight off his wounded arm.

Better.

He started walking again.

Somewhere beyond the gate, Corvin Ashmark was building something that might be worth believing in.

Lucien adjusted the sling.

"We're going to need a name for you," he said to the dog. "Can't just keep calling you 'dog.'"

The dog's tail thumped against his side.

"How about Armani? You've got that dignified look about you. Even covered in mud."

Another thump.

"Armani it is."

The dog's tail thumped once. Lucien adjusted the cloak sling and continued toward the northern gate, Armani's breathing warm against his chest.

From the northern wall came the first bell of curfew.