The streets were lonely without Franc by my side. A chill breeze reached down my collar and trailed along my spine, raising gooseflesh along my arms. I rubbed it away and debated spending my money on a cup of mulled wine.

Franc's voice weaseled the wind out of my ear and whispered in its place, "Life is too short to not spend a few pennies on a cup of spiced wine."

I sighed. "You always liked the finer things, Franc," I said aloud.

They're called 'creature comforts' for a reason. Just because we're creatures of the street doesn't mean we have to forgo every comfort.

Franc had always been the ray of sun breaking through the clouds. I kept us alive and she kept us happy. Which was just as important.

I thought about searching the tents and shacks of the Haven, but it was a place best traversed in daylight. Especially for a foreigner who hadn't set foot there in seven years. Instead, I went to the place where I had first met Franc.

To anyone else, it would look like just another dingy alley full of things no one wanted. Full of children no one wanted. But to me it would always be the place my life changed.

I had been new to the city, washed up on the shore like a capsized rat after a dangerous but successful escape from a pleasure barge during a thunderstorm. I hadn't cared if I drowned when I tossed myself into the sea, hoping the boat owners would think I fell overboard and cut their losses. Coughing up seawater on the hard-packed sand the next morning after swimming for the city's glimmering lights in the distance, I hadn't cared that I had no money in my pocket to carve out a semblance of life in this foreign place. An instinctual need to survive, to keep moving, kept me on the living edge of starving in the streets for the next six months. But the desire to live was primal and nothing else. Until Franc found me.

It had rained the night before and I was still damp, stuck to the alley floor like waterlogged trash. My hunger has surpassed the point of hurting and was another ache to join the rest of those in my body. The sun had risen, but it didn't reach the depths of my corner and so it was dank and chill. A figure appeared at the mouth of the alley and I stirred enough to draw the knife I had won in a brawl the week before. My lip was still fat from the hit I had taken, and the cut in the corner in my mouth cracked and leaked blood if I parted my lips too far.

The figure took a few tentative steps into the alley and I brandished the knife to make the message clear.

"You are Fayore?" It was a female voice, sweet like the honey the pleasure barge owners would smear on our mouths in between customers.

I flashed the knife again, but the girl was either new to the street language or unafraid of what she saw. I bristled at the thought that what she saw in me was unintimidating.

"I'm not here to hurt you," she said, raising her hands in the gesture equivalent of a white flag.

Her feet were as dirty and bare as mine but her hair was freshly washed and shone like a new penny even in the gloom. I didn't trust anyone that clean.

"What do you want?" I rasped, breaking open my mouth. I swallowed and tasted copper.

"That knife belongs to one of my friends. I've come to ask for it back."

I grinned, hoping the blood stained my teeth red. "That's not how things work around here."

She was closer now, a nervous smile playing about her pink lips. "I was hoping we could make a trade."

Her gray eyes, the color of the sea in a storm, regarded me with brazen curiosity. I narrowed my own eyes. Several years upon the pleasure barge had given me time to decipher expressions and read facial queues. I had seen enough smiles that didn't match a person's eyes to know when I was being played.

I gripped the knife more tightly and pushed myself to my feet. The alley wobbled in front of me and a thrill of fear went through me when I realized she was better fed than I was and likely stronger for it.

"I doubt whatever you're offering is worth it," I countered. The dead end of the alley put me at a disadvantage and I took a step forward. She paused like I knew she would. She would bleed just as badly even with more skin on her bones than me.

"I'll trade you a song for the knife."

I barked a laugh that was mostly a scrape of sound up my throat. "A song won't shelter me or feed me."

"Neither will a knife."

"It'll get me closer."

She was only a few feet away now, close enough for me to see that she was nearly as tall as me, though I tended to slouch, and she kept her weight on the balls of her feet. Light. Like she could change from walking to dancing in the breath between steps. A sly smile had replaced the nervous grin and I found that I liked it more.

"I've been told that my singing could sustain a man for a week."

I snorted. "A man, maybe. They're full of meaningless words anyway. What's a few more sung rather than spoken?"

Her grin widened at my words. "Very well. I'll make you a deal. I'll give you a song and if, at the end, you don't feel sustained you can keep the knife."

A stupid barter. "Aye, go on then."

It wasn't the last time I underestimated Franc. The song she sang me I sometimes still hum in my sleep. Though it wasn't so much the words as the purity of her voice filling that dank alley with light and life. The stone echoed her, so I was surrounded in a cocoon of sound that flooded my body with an emotion I hadn't felt for a long time. Had perhaps never felt. I later learned that what I was feeling was hope.

When she finished, the last of her words ringing off the cobblestones, I wordlessly held out the knife. She stepped forward to take it and then surprised me by reaching out with her sleeve to dab at the corner of my bleeding mouth.

"Salt water is good for that," she said. She pulled a copper bit out of her pocket and handed it to me. "For being honest," she explained. I turned the piece over, thinking of the hot roll it could buy me off one of the bakery carts. For a long time, whenever I thought of Franc after, I thought of the smell of freshly baked bread.

"I sing on the corner of the East Gate commons every third day as long as it's not raining," she said and winked. "If you ever want another song."

She made to leave and I finally found my voice lodged behind my heart. "Wait! What's your name?"

She turned back, auburn hair slipping over one of her eyes. "Francesca."

Now I stood in the mouth of the alley where I had first seen her, and the smell of baking bread brought a tear to my eye. It was as dark and dank as it had been all those years ago without Franc to infuse it with beauty.

I had gone to find her at the commons three days later, hiding behind a cart and listening to her sing, the applause that rang out when she finished. It took me three more times to fit myself in the crowd and then another two to put myself at the front. But when she saw me, a huge smile of recognition lit her face and my stomach fluttered.

At one point I couldn't imagine my life without her. Until I was dragged, screaming, away from her in handcuffs while her terrified, ash-stained face looked out from the gathering crowd. She found me once. Now it's my turn to find her.

I walked into the alley on the infinitesimal chance that she had left a clue to where she had gone. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of putrefying waste. I hated that Brune was right and I was beginning to miss the smell of the sea. Have I forgotten how horrible this place smelled or has it gotten worse?

I nudged filth over with my boots, scanned the walls, removed the lose brick at the end where I used to hide away valuables, but there was nothing. I was shoving the brick back into place when I heard the scrape of boots on stone behind me.

I flicked the knife out from my coat sleeve and turned slowly on my heel.

Three bulky figures filled the mouth of the alley.

"I'm just sight-seeing," I called.

"Not much to see down here," said one. His voice was a thick burr, but in the shadows, it was hard to tell which one the voice belonged to.

"Oh, I've seen quite a lot." Once more I was backed against an alley wall, but Franc wasn't going to save me this time. And you're a lot better fed.

Flexing the fingers of my free hand, I weighed my options. "If you let me go, there's a silver piece in it for each of you and we all walk away without any bruises."

"Never did mind me bruises," said a second, nasal voice.

"And all your fingers," I added. "I'd say that's worth even more than a silver piece."

A chuckle seemed to rise from the group and they moved further into the alley like one, three-headed beast.

This was not the homecoming I wanted. I took another step back. "I don't usually barter, but I'm open to discussion. What is it you want?"

"It's not what we want. It's what she wants."

Another step back. "Who is she?"

"The Lady of Third Manor."

My mind was too busy calculating my escape to place the name. "And what does she want?" My boot hit a puddle and the splash echoed off the stone.

"You can ask her yourself. We'll be taking you to her now."

"Perhaps, I could just send a card and make an appointment with her instead? Now's not the best time." The end of the alley was right behind me. I was out of steps. I scrabbled for the lose brick behind me, keeping my eyes trained on the approaching men. The brick came out and tumbled to the ground. I reached back into the hollow, my fingers closing around a tiny glass vial. It was ice cold in my hand. An uncomfortable buzz started in my fingertips.

"Now's the best time for her," growled one of them.

The gap between us was closing. My heart rattled in my chest. I used my thumb nail to scratch the wax seal from the rim of the vial.

"Last chance for a rain check, boys," I said. It seemed the time for talking was over. One produced a knife that glinted in the shard of moonlight that slashed the alley. Another pulled out a length of heavy rope.

The time for thinking was over as well. I ran my knife along my palm, popped the cork from the vial and poured the blue liquid into my palm. It sizzled and I hissed as the icy sap mixed with my hot blood. There was only enough sap for one casting. I threw the glass vial toward them, but a hand deflected it into the wall. A spray of glass splintered the moonlight and in the brief second of disorientation I said the only word that came to mind.

Sabulo.

The stone beneath their feet crumbled into sand and they sank up to their waists; four of the six arms were pinned as well, including the one brandishing the knife.

Too late I realized that this would be hard to cover this up. Sand pits didn't just open up in the street. I should've knocked them out. But conscious castings took a lot more.

The three men were wriggling and hissing like angry snakes. They looked well and truly wedged, but I wasn't sure how long the sand would hold. I crouched down close to the lip of the pit and flashed my own knife.

"Now, would one of you like to enlighten me about the Lady of Third Manor?"

One of the men with a deep scar in his right cheek spat at my feet. "Blueblood. She didn't tell us you were a witch."

"What did she tell you?"

"All she had to tell us was the price for bringing you to her," said the middle one whose left eye was half closed.

"How did you know where to find me?"

"Didn't," grunted the third. "Gave us the name of the boat you were on. We've been waitin' for months for it to dock."

I sat back on my heels and dragged my knife tip through the sand in front of me, thinking. I had been hoping and praying to saints and gods I didn't believe in to avoid this type of homecoming, but it seemed whatever sliver of luck I had managed to scrap by on had run out seven years ago. There had been a least a dozen witnesses to the event that landed me on Brune's ship. I had been held in jail for ten days before my sentence was delivered, but I could imagine what was whispered over the rim of tankards in the days that followed. No lady, or lord for that matter, of any of Three Manors had come to see me. The sentence had been delivered in the dry, papery voice of the Council's secretary between the bars of my cell. But of course, they would have heard about the details. It was possible that one or more of them had been keeping tabs on Brune's ship to know when I was coming back to the city. But why not arrest me at the dock? Why send three street hounds after me?

They wanted to get to me first, quietly.

Why? To prevent panic?

I need to find Franc and get the hell out of this city. The thought made me briefly sad. I had considered this city home, had carved out comfort from the shadowy corners. I had been happy. Which means you can do it again. And this time it would be easier, better, because Franc would be with me.

I looked at my hand which was still leaking blood. The blue sap had smeared over my palm and the sluggish drips of blood turned purple as they moved through it. There wasn't enough to left to do anything with. I'd have to leave them and hope I could find Franc before they found me again. I looked over my shoulder at the brick on the ground behind me and then back at the three still-struggling men whose eyes would have killed me by now if they were capable of it.

"Sorry, fellas. We're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way."

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So sorry for the delay in posting this next part! But I hope it was worth the wait. I'd love to hear your thoughts :) Thanks for reading!