5.

PRESENT DAY

It was hard to tell an elf's gender if you weren't an entire elf yourself. The elf before Lotte could've easily been a man or a woman. They were all slender, willowy creatures with long limbs and narrow, gentle-featured faces. This one had a sharp chin, much sharper than Poe's, so maybe they were female?

Their chest was rising and falling, but only barely. Lotte couldn't quite see where they were injured. She knelt down to have a better look. She didn't know much of medicine. Some enchantments she made could take away pain or give power to a healing process that was already taking place, but in this lay the limit of Leilan magic.

Healing, building, creating—that was all Yomi magic. Poe had shown her Yomi enchantments tattooed into his skin. Some for protection, protecting his thoughts and body, some for health.

And one in particular, the one on the right side of his neck, was for healing. Three intersecting helixes that formed a type of springy, six pointed star. Yomi enchantments were always beautifully abstract.

She turned the elf's head, and there she saw it, the healing rune, almost completely faded. Their injuries had cost all the magic of the healing enchantment.

"There's nothing I can do, Fintan," Lotte said, settling onto her heels. "They're going to die the minute this tattoo fades."

Fintan settled on her shoulder, accepting her words in grim silence.

"I'm sorry," Lotte added, looking over at the elf. Wondering if they had anyone waiting for them back home, in the high cities of Lasuran. Why would the elves need to come all the way out here to wage war on the humans? They could just retreat to their home, a place that killed humans. What was driving the elves here?

The night and the enchantment that was meant to give Lotte strength were wearing away. She had to keep moving, to make it into the cover of trees.

"Water," a voice whispered in elven.
Lotte pulled the canteen out of her pack and brought it to the elf's mouth.

Pale lips parted, to take one last breath.

Lotte flinched away. She had seen it, the moment of death. Alive and then...and then...gone.

She screwed the bottle shut with shaking hands and rose onto wobbly legs.

Her head spun, the world spun, but she continued walking.

***
10 YEARS BEFORE THE WAR

The four months Lotte spent living on the streets of Raidox were the longest in her life. Each day felt like a year, especially during the first few weeks.

When Lotte ran out of the food and coins she'd pinched from House Mistress's office, she needed to find ways to fill her belly. She'd followed some other street dwellers to a soup kitchen, and even managed to down a bowl of watered-down stew. But the next day there were two constables waiting by the entrance.

She was certain they were searching for her.

In those days before the coup, when the Lord General still wanted to gain public support, all children who didn't have families were supposed to belong to some sort of institute. Even at seven years old, Lotte knew that she had to avoid the city constables at all costs.

Hunger became her only companion until she solved that problem.

After a few false starts, Lotte learned that if she scurried near the east end of Republic Avenue in the evening hours, there were many frilly ladies whose purses hung open, with money ready for the taking.

As always, the shadows embraced her wherever she went at night. She was as stealthy as a whisper of a breeze, as quiet and quick as a blink of an eye.

When she stole too much in Republic Avenue, she moved to High Road, and then the evening Market down at the Loradells that sat on the lip of the Nic river, the biggest river that passed through Raidox.

She never stole from the very rich. They had their own little fortified towns within Raidox. Nor did she steal anything other than stray coins and some paper money.

Soon, she only had to resort to thieving every other day, then once a week and then...

And then things became complicated.

Lotte made sure not to spend more than one night at any particular haunt. She slept under bridges, tunnels, parks gazebos, old metro stations and out-of-the-way bus stops. The oversized coat she wore was also her bed and she could curl her entire body into it.

Its many pockets stored as much food as she could carry, but money was lighter than food.

Sometimes she was forced to share a haunt with another street dweller. She tried to avoid them as much as she could. It wasn't that they seemed particularly threatening—they had defeated grimy faces and eyes that were always a million miles away—it was just that people talked, and she didn't want any of them to report her to the constables.

It happened during one of the nights that Lotte didn't have to haunt the high streets of Raidox. That night, she chose to sleep in the boat dock on the riverbank. The smaller boats were stored upon tall racks—or in Lotte's eyes, rows upon rows of bunkbeds. She climbed to the very top and slid underneath the tarp protecting a red sturdy boat that didn't look like its owner took it out too often.

It was Lotte's favourite nighttime spot. The tarp protected her if it rained, the night chanted in her heart. Up high, she felt less helpless. She was meant to be this high—at least, half of her was.

She drifted off within seconds.

A creaking below her started her awake. It was a gentle sound, but Lotte could hear better than ordinary humans. She shifted her body within the boat, heart hammering with fright. Did the constables find her?

The metal frames of the rack holding the boats vibrated and thrummed with the obvious sounds of someone climbing. Lotte didn't dare peek out, lest she give away her exact location.

But then the tarp over her head began to rustle. Someone undid several of the ties holding it in place and whisked it aside, washing the interior of the boat with moonlight.

Lotte stayed back in the wider part of the boat where the tarp still cast a shadow. A figured hauled itself into the boat.

"Little girl," said a raspy, woman's voice. Lotte could only make out a wizened face and a crazy mane of cobweb hair. "Come out little girl," said the woman. "Old Loureen has you now."

The woman had skeletal arms and knees as round as doorknobs. She began to slunk forward, and pulled out something from the folds of her tattered coat.

A switchblade.

"Old Loureen has you now," the woman repeated with a toothless grin. "You best be a good little thing and give me all you got. I knows about you, little girl. Old Loureen watches you. Little thieving girl. Old Loureen knows. Oh, she knows. You be a good little girl and you get to live, eh?"

A brittle, bony hand with gnarled fingers reached into the dark towards Lotte. The woman couldn't see her in the dark, Lotte realised.
Lotte sat there, frozen solid. Unable even to reach into her coat to deliver the money to this old street witch. It was the shock of it all, that as careful as she was, someone had noticed her.

Loureen drew closer and closer. "You give it to Old Loureen, little girl," she went on in her rasping voice.

But suddenly, for no apparent reason, she froze, knife in the air.
One, two, three seconds passed before Lotte realised why. Loureen's odd milky eyes looked like a spider had spun its web over them. But within them, Lotte could see the two pinpricks of red light that were her own eyes reflected back.

In those days, she knew near to nothing about night elves, only that they were as dangerous as wild animals. Everything about Lotte attested to this. She had sharp senses. She could not speak. Her ears, teeth and nails were all pointed. House Mistress had made sure to file down the claw-like points of her nails, but in the street no one could stop the feral side of her.

The ice that held her firm broke in an instant. She feared the woman's knife—enough to know that if she didn't move, she'd die.

She shot forwards, as fierce as a cat, nails breaking the thin skin on the sides of the Loureen's neck, digging into her flesh.

Loureen shrieked, "Elf!"

And Lotte didn't have a voice to correct her. She jumped back as the woman clumsily brandished the knife towards her, and leapt over the side of the boat and down, down, down, ten feet at least to the hard concrete floor.

She landed on her feet with a jarring impact that was enough to make her bones quake and sharp pain shoot through her knees. Still, Lotte was not human, not completely. She managed to run from that place with Loureen's screams echoing in her ears.