After the night of the heist, the Caps had fewer men to guard the safehouse. M'yu snuck back in through the window he'd left cracked when he left. The sun finally disappeared as he gently lowered the pane—still unlocked, just in case. It was always good to have a back door.

Voices rose and fell throughout the house, and he used them as guides as he ghosted back to the room Aevryn had left him in. Slipping inside, he leaned against the door with his lip bit. The windowless room was dark, and M'yu rested in the security of the shadows for a long moment.

Aevryn's voice rose down the hall, and M'yu spun back to the door, digging for his lock picks. It was sloppier, louder work than a simple unlock routine from the engineer's linkcard would have been, but M'yu had jimmied it without tools earlier. Making quick work of it, he stepped back, flicked on the light, and dumped the contents of his pockets into the side table drawer.

He had just shoved it closed and stepped away when the door opened.

Aevryn filled the frame, a parcel crooked in his arm. His icy eyes swept the room.

M'yu dropped onto the bed. "Finally. Was starting to wonder if I'd hopped from one jail to another."

Aevryn stepped inside the room and closed the door.

M'yu's throat tightened, but he nodded at the package. "What'd ya bring me?"

"Where did you go?"

"Go?" he cocked his head, feigning ignorance.

The distance between them disappeared in three sharp steps. "Perhaps we should set some things straight between us."

M'yu ducked out of Aevryn's shadow, popping to his feet. "Nothing to straighten."

"Ah? And the bruise on your face is nonexistent as well?"

M'yu reached up to where Dahnko had punched him, and Aevryn caught his wrist, fingers tighter than a skeleton clawing to life. "Let us lay some ground rules, shall we?"

"Let me go," M'yu gritted out.

"Rule One: if you want something from me, you ask it of me. I do not respond to threats or demands." His eyes bored into M'yu's skull. Teeth grit, Myu twisted his wrist but couldn't shake Aevryn loose. "Ah, yes." Aevryn leaned in closer. "I also don't respond well to my House members trying to outmaneuver me. I have been betrayed before. The traitor never gets the upper hand." Brow-raised, he waited.

M'yu sneered. "Please let go of me."

"We'll have to work on that tone." He released M'yu and stepped back. "Rule Two: you do not lie to me. In fact, so far as it does not endanger another person, we do not lie at all."

A scoff escaped M'yu's mouth. Aevryn tilted his head. "Something funny?"

"Just know how straight and narrow all you Caps are."

Aevryn eyed him. "I do not appreciate you impugning my integrity. And if you say 'Caps' at Court, you will never be counted as anything more than as an uneducated, down-slope street thief."

M'yu threw his hands to the side. "I'm sorry. Did you not read that label on my prison file?"

"Are you planning on being this difficult the entire time we work together?"

Everything ached: M'yu's head and mouth and face, his burned skin and growling stomach. The long run had left him shaky; the whole world seemed to be shifting beneath his feet. Control, he demanded, and blew a slow breath out. "No." He dropped back to the bed. "What do you mean, work together?"

Aevryn's gaze searched him. "You should have rested instead of gallivanting around the city."

"I have all night to rest."

"No, we do not." He tossed the package to the bed. "You will wash and change into these. We have dinner in an hour. Next time I tell you to stay put, I expect you to be exactly where I left you. In fact, next time I tell you to do anything, I expect it to be done to the tee, without question."

"And here I was believing you didn't want a slave."

Aevryn's eyes pierced him with frosty cold. "I don't. I want a student."

M'yu's nose scrunched. "To learn what?"

"Well that depends on you, doesn't it?" Aevryn raised a brow, then turned back toward the door. "Clean yourself up. I'll be back soon. And one last thing." He glanced back and tipped his head. "We do not do magic in my House. I found the remnants of 'witchcandy' in the coat you so kindly left me last night. I should not like to find any more."

The door clicked shut behind him, M'yu's heart thumping in his chest. His fist hit the mattress. "Rotting Cap," he hissed, then flopped back onto the bed. All he wanted to do was sleep—sleep and wake up back in his hideout, where him and Karsya and his friends belonged.

Teeth gritted, he rose, grabbed the bundle of clothes, and slipped into the bathroom.

* * *

M'yu was jimmying with the ridiculous suit when Aevryn came back. "I would ask if you were ready," the man said, "but evidence points to the contrary. Come here."

Sleeve between his teeth, M'yu muttered, "I've almost got it" and glared at the mutinuous buttons.

Aevryn sighed. "We do not have time for your arguing." Crossing the room, he made quick work of the buttons on the other sleeve. "Do you think perhaps you could refrain from biting your new suit?"

M'yu scowled, and the fabric fell from his mouth. Aevryn buttoned that sleeve too, then went to smoothing M'yu's wet hair. M'yu jerked away. "What, are you grooming me?"

"It needs done by someone. Stay still."

M'yu dodged Aevryn's second attack on his hair. "It's clean. What more do you want from me?"

"Boy, I do not have time to play games with you right now. You are entirely unprepared for this dinner, and if I had it my way"—his hand darted in one way, then reversed, causing M'yu to duck into it—"we would not be attending."

"Then let's not go."

Aevryn snorted. "Were that it was that simple. The Magnate insists on personally thanking the hero that saved his niece. Goodness, did no one ever teach you how to hold still?"

M'yu dodged another interfering hand. "I thought the Caps were in charge of the Magnate. Tell him no."

"If you're going to use such general terms, at least call them 'Capitalfolk' instead. You'll sound charmingly rustic rather than irritatingly ignorant." Aevryn scored another hit on M'yu's hair, smoothing back locks that were perfectly happy sticking up. "And I may outrank the Magnate, but besides having ten times the wealth of any of the Noble Houses, he also keeps peace here in the Gloam and sits comfortably in the Tsaright's breast pocket. There." Aevryn stepped back. "Good thing they're expecting you to look banged up from the fire, or else your bruise would raise unwelcome questions."

M'yu smirked. "I thought you said you don't lie."

"I said we don't lie if it will bring harm to another, and we won't have cause to lie anyway. They won't ask about the bruise, and you"—he pointed—"will not offer up any information."

M'yu's arms crossed. "And if they ask about how the fire started?"

"They might ask you to speculate on the attack. You're good enough at dodging questions, I know," he said, eying him, "to keep your opinions to yourself. It's not an interrogation. Be polite, hold your tongue, and you might just survive." Aevryn sighed, looking him over one more time. "Alright then. Let's go."

"Wait!" M'yu said, and the man turned back. M'yu's hands fisted, then released, as if silently grasping for the right words. "If I do well tonight—" He crossed his arms, bit his lip, and looked away.

"You'll get your things when they don't smell like sweat and smoke. Now come."

"It's not about my things!"

Aevryn's brow drew. "Then what, boy?"

M'yu swallowed. The prideful lump in his throat didn't disappear, and he swallowed again. This is why I'm here, after all. To work their system from the inside. "There's a girl, younger than me, that got picked up. She's in the Magnate's jail." M'yu squared his shoulders. "I want her freed."

Aevryn's expression locked into place. "Ah."

"What? You can free me but you won't free her? I'll pay you back for the bail. I'll behave, blow this dinner out of the atmosphere, call you Capitalfolk whatever name you want called. She doesn't deserve to get sold off."

Aevryn pressed his lips together. M'yu stood there, trying to hide the quiver of his muscles, shoulders straight. Finally, the man dipped his head. "We can discuss the matter after dinner. Let us focus on the one at hand, though. If you don't 'blow this dinner out of the atmosphere' as you say, you might not have another dinner to attend."

"I don't care about attending dinners."

"You should." Aevryn paused, then shook his head and extended his arm out the door. "After you."

Steps tight, M'yu left the room. The hover was waiting on them outside, and as they rode to the Magnate's dinner, Aevryn peppered M'yu with instructions. M'yu struggled to keep up with the list of rules as the image of Lania, cold and shivering in a tiny concrete cell, dominated his mind. His teeth picked at the sore in his mouth. Control, he demanded. He would blow this dinner out of the atmosphere, and he would earn Aevryn's respect and trust, and he would get Lania free. Anything less was unacceptable.

"Are you listening, boy?"

M'yu's head popped up. He rubbed at his pants. "Don't speak unless spoken to. Keep a civil tongue. Use the fork on the left first. Don't get clever. Say sir and ma'am and don't dare call anyone by their first name, including you. Don't bother trying to figure out titles. Call myself Mykta and nothing else."

"Hmm. Well, then." The hover slowed, magnetic whine dying down. M'yu prepared to rise, but Aevryn caught his wrist. "Listen. The Magnate will serve du'chirep—what you call witchcandy. You are a minor. You are not to eat it; you politely decline on those grounds if pressed."

"Witchcandy's illegal for minors?"

Aevryn's nose twitched. "It's supposed to be illegal for everyone."

The hover door opened. Aevryn released M'yu and stepped gracefully down into the lights pooling out from Gloam Hall. M'yu followed him.

Gloam Hall at night made the Magnate's frosted cake house look like a child's snack. Twisting colonnades reached for the stars, the ceiling draping the posts in elegant swoops and curves. Ice-skinned statues smiled down from the lintels. In the windows, thousands of electric candles flickered and danced. The lit path to the door was free of snow and ice; M'yu wondered how many hours and how many servants it had taken to clear the winter for tonight. It wouldn't last. Tomorrow it would snow again and be just as slick as ever.

Servants in white suits bowed and opened grand double doors for them. As Aevryn and M'yu passed inside, another hover whirred in behind theirs and stopped. The door lifted, and out climbed a man with shoulders like boulders. As he straightened the cloak to his Capital Knight regalia, a boy with watery eyes and an upturned nose slipped out behind him.

"Ah, thank you," Aevryn said just a bit too loudly, and M'yu's head snapped around. A servant pulled the Cap's cloak from his shoulders, while another waited at M'yu's elbow like a well-trained dog taught to sit before taking the treat. But M'yu was used enough to smiling at things that rattled him, and he did so now as he unbuttoned his new coat. The servant slipped it off and hung it up, and M'yu caught up to Aevryn striding down the gold carpeted halls.

As they approached a descending staircase, Aevryn flashed M'yu his linkcard. M'yu fumbled for his own as Aevryn handed the card over to a servant. The servant swiped the card over a podium and handed it back to Aevryn with a bow. M'yu passed his over as well.

Aevryn stood at the top of the steps and surveyed the room below like a cat preparing to pounce. M'yu followed his gaze. A table spread with place settings and flowers—how did you get flowers this deep into winter?—took up the center of the room. At the table's head reclined a man with gold, slicked-back hair and silk-covered fat rolls that spilled out of his chair.

A woman with impossibly silver skin shimmered in a seat to his left. M'yu knew some strains of the witchcandy lent themselves to physical alteration, but he'd never seen a change so thorough and seamless. It had to be supplemented by make-up; that, or she'd eaten enough witchcandy to kill a den of thieves.

On the silver woman's left, a girl M'yu's age twirled an orb of witchcandy light around her hand. Her onyx hair curled in stray ringlets around her face, and her lips shone red like rare summer apples. Her fingers danced with the grace of an expert pickpocket. When she sighed, her whole body rippled with boredom, from her pursed lips down past her gently sloping shoulders.

An elbow jostled M'yu's arm. He looked up to Aevryn's raised brows and followed his gaze to the servant holding his linkcard out to him. M'yu snagged it, cheeks warm.

"Focus," Aevryn muttered. "These people will eat you alive."

The servant at the podium raised his voice and read off the screen. "Presenting Duke-Prince Aevryn z'Daras, a Capital Knight and head of the House of Gold! With him, Mykta z'Daras, son of the House of Gold."

Aevryn stepped down, but M'yu's feet were rooted to the ground. He'd never had a last name in his life; street custom was for only true-born children to get one. Foundlings were lucky to be gifted a first. That announcement made him sound like something he was not—a legitimate child born to noble parents who wanted him. Not a baby found in a rich woman's dumpster, picked up by a streetgirl out of pity and grief.

"You can go in now, my lord," the servant whispered. The man stood subserviently, hands clasped, but his eyes were narrow and mouth tight with envy. M'yu was a streetboy. Him and this man both knew it, no matter what his linkcard said.

Aevryn was halfway down the stairs, the glittering light of the world below already washing over him. The stone Karsya had polished for him burned beneath his neckline. The Houses can't take anything from us we don't let them. 

M'yu thumbed the stone, straightened his shoulders, and strode down the stairs. Tonight, the only person whose opinion of him mattered was Aevryn's.