They say the sun shines on the just and the unjust alike, but in Graywatch, it mostly just pisses on both. That morning, or close enough to noon I could lie about it, found me blinking like a hungover mole at the sky. Actual blue. Actual sunlight. Not filtered through fog or drizzling sleet or that lovely damp haze that made Graywatch feel like it was always sweating out a bad memory. No, this was sunlight proper, and it made my skin itch.
I didnât trust it. Sunlight in this city didnât feel like warmth. It felt like a lie.
Still, I stood in it like a fool, coat pulled tight more out of habit than necessity. My hat was tugged low over my brow, a half-salute to nobody. The streets glistened without rain, clean in that way things look when theyâre just hiding the grime better than usual. The air smelled like citrus and rot. Somewhere, somebody was cooking with lard and lemon peel. Somewhere else, someone was bleeding under a stairwell. Graywatch had a gift for duality like that.
I didnât have a plan. That was the worst part. I always had a plan, or at least the shadow of one stitched together with curses and spit. But the usual moves werenât working. The questions I asked slipped through peopleâs teeth like they didnât hear them, and the truths I tried to drag into the light came up empty-handed. My instincts were limping, and the streets werenât talking back.
But I couldnât stop. Not with Fessy still gone. Not with Penny wringing her hands raw. Not with Kathy pretending she wasnât scared. Not with something in me: a cold, relentless ember, telling me that this girl mattered. That maybe this one was different. Maybe this one I could bring back.
So I walked. Let my boots find the rhythm, the old soldierâs march in the bones, even if the war was over and I didnât win. I didnât know where I was headed. I let the streets decide. Sometimes they know better than I do.
And sure enough, I ended up somewhere unfamiliar. That was rare. Iâd walked every alley in this damn city since I came back. But this one? This was a hole cut out of a hole. A side street tucked behind another side street. No signage. Just a door the color of old blood and a faded placard hanging at a crooked angle. The name burned in black paint: The Supply Dump.
Of course it was.
Inside, the light was dim, the way it should be. A few tables. Dust motes. Smell of tobacco and polish. The kind of bar where you donât come to talk, just to forget. And behind the counter, polishing a glass that didnât need it, was a lizardman with scales like old bronze and eyes like river stones, dull, heavy, unmoving.
He didnât say anything. Didnât need to. I knew him, even if I didnât. He hadnât been in my unit. Hell, probably not even in my war. But some people wear the same ghosts on their back, and you know them by the way they nod when they donât nod at all.
His hands moved slow and deliberate. He reached under the bar, past the usual rack of bottles, and came back up with the good stuff. No label. No price tag. Just a bottle that looked like it remembered better days and worse nights. He poured a double, didnât look at me, didnât speak. Just set the glass in front of me and stepped back.
It hit the wood like an offering. Like a peace treaty signed in silence.
I sat. I didnât thank him. I didnât ask questions. I wrapped my hand around the glass and stared into it like it might answer for all the things I couldnât. And for a heartbeat, just one, the bar filled with more than the two of us. His ghosts took their seats. Mine followed suit. No introductions. Just recognition.
I hadnât earned that drink, not yet. But I took it anyway. The hunt for Fessy wasnât over. Hell, it wasnât even properly begun. But I had a drink in front of me, an ache in my ribs, and the quiet company of a stranger who knew too much and said too little.
I sat hunched over the bar, my fingers coiled around the glass like it owed me rent. The whiskey had bite, but it didnât bark loud enough to drown out the static buzzing behind my eyes. Pain and exhaustion danced in my ribs, but neither had the decency to take the lead. The ghosts were quiet for once, maybe nursing their own drinks in the corners of the room. That left me alone with the facts.
Gods, the facts.
Fessy. Just a name scrawled on a missing girlâs soul. A barmaid with soft eyes and too much hope for a city that grinds girls like her into cobblestone. Her sister Penny worked the alleys for coin and survival, and she had more fire than most. Trouble was, fire couldnât stop rot. And this city rotted deep.
Fessy had her sights on a glittered mirage: Caelix Rusiren. An illusionist. Young, charming, and just dangerous enough to look romantic when youâre desperate for a new life. He didnât wear a villainâs cloak, he wore a smile and silk cuffs, promised the moon, then dragged her through the stars to a dive dressed up as a dream.
The Velvet Clover. Sounded like a place that served wine in gold-rimmed glasses and let you pretend your life wasnât circling the drain. But the deeper I dug, the more that name curdled in my mouth. A fancy façade slapped over rot and ruin. Underneath it all? Tunnels. Sewers. Passages carved out by greed and used by gangs who liked to keep their hands clean by dragging bodies through the filth.
Thatâs where she vanished. Somewhere beneath that velvet lie.
Caelix was no lone act. His strings were being pulled, maybe not hard, but enough to see the tremble in his fingertips. The Guild of Arcane Practitioners had their fingerprints on him, light and faded, but there. Maybe sanctioned, maybe rogue, maybe just tolerated because they had bigger fish to fry. Either way, he wasnât just some street performer playing coin tricks. He was bait. Flashy, charming bait.
And then there was the Sanguine Veil. Gangs love names that sound like poetry stitched from nightmares. This one fit the bill. Blood-colored velvet hiding the blade. They moved through those tunnels like rats in silk, trafficking whatever they could peddle in shadow. And at the head of it all? Belsursin Cruic. Mage. Leader. Bastard.
He had presence, the kind that doesnât shout but still clears a room. And he had goons, plenty of them. Iâd danced with a few. Left some of them snoring on stone and others groaning through broken ribs. But when I met him face to face, he didnât look like a man searching for a missing girl. He looked like a man who had seen too many just like her and never learned their names. But that twitch in his eye when I said âFessy,â that half-second of confusion before the mask slid back into place, told me what I needed to know.
He didnât know her name, but he knew her fate. I didnât walk away from that fight so much as crawl. They let me live. That wasnât mercy. That was a message. And it worked. I heard it loud and clear, every bruise and cracked rib humming the tune. But they made one mistake.
They let me breathe.
Now the question sat like a stone in my gut. What next? I couldnât just waltz back down there without a plan. The tunnels werenât some battlefield where I could swing my fists until everything quieted down. I needed allies. I needed leverage. I needed to think like them.
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But thinking like them meant becoming like them. I took another sip. Let the burn settle behind my eyes. No. That wasnât the path. I wasnât built for cloak-and-dagger. I was built to punch holes in problems. But this one didnât have a face yet. Not one I could reach. Still, all the answers were buried in that underbelly. Somewhere between the stink of the sewers and the illusions of the Clover, the truth curled in on itself, waiting for someone foolish enough to drag it into the light.
Iâd just have to be careful next time. Careful wasnât really my style, but hell, maybe Murk was right. Maybe I needed softer shoes. Or at least a sharper blade. I swirled the whiskey, watched it catch the light. Fessy, Iâm coming. Just gotta crawl through hell a little smarter this time.
****
Iâd gone through most of the bottle and none of the answers. The whiskey was cool and the ghosts were warm, and every clue Iâd collected felt like a nail in someone elseâs coffin. Probably mine. The one thing that kept rising from the slop like oil on water was that I had to go back. Back under the Velvet Clover. Back into the dark. Back to the place where Fessy vanished and the bruises on my ribs learned how to hum.
I couldnât walk through the front door. Not with this face. Not with this frame. Graywatch might be full of liars, but it never forgets the truth of a silhouette. And mine stood out like a thundercloud on a sunny day.
But the sewers... they werenât whispering either. I didnât want to go crawling back in without a plan, and every time I thought of doing it solo, the ache in my spine reminded me how that ended last time. It wasnât until the third drag of something earthy and slightly criminal that I realized I wasnât alone. The scent had been tickling my senses for a while, like memory and mischief rolled in cheap spice, and now it was thick enough to taste.
I turned slow, like the bottle had to give me permission, and there he was. Three feet plus of trouble, perched on a stool that wasnât made for him, boots not quite reaching the footrest. Murk. Pygmy troll. Bard. Probable thief. Definite pain in my ass. He puffed his pipe like a nobleman at a funeral, mug of something dark and bitter resting in his mitt. When he caught my eye, he gave me that shit-eating grin that could probably get him stabbed in six districts.
âWell, Tallface,â he said, blowing a smoke ring that somehow curled into the shape of a rat and then flipped the bird. âYou always drink this much when youâre thinking, or is this a special occasion?â
I didnât answer right away. Just took another pull and let the burn do the talking.
He leaned back and made a show of stretching. âI had a little chat with the girls while you were doing your best impression of a corpse. Pennyâs sweet on you, you know. And Kathyâs got that look, like someone sharpened her heartbreak into something pointy. You picked up more strays than a gutter bard.â
I smirked. âSays the troll whoâs still following me like a cursed song.â
âNot followinâ,â he corrected. âPartnerinâ. You keep forgetting that part.â
I grunted, which was halfway to agreement.
He lowered his voice, eyes flicking around the room out of habit, not fear. âI figure youâre on a case. Missing girl. No body. Lots of magic. Whole place stinks of rot and ritual. You got your fists and your fire, sure, but I got something better.â
âOh?â I asked, lifting an eyebrow.
He grinned again, pipe dancing in the corner of his mouth. âA route. A real one. Not the main crawlways like where they jumped you. I know the old ways. Forgotten crawlspaces. Service ducts the gangs havenât mapped yet. I used to slip through âem when I was runninâ tonic for a hedge witch. Even got a charm or two thatâll keep the wards sleepy. No magic lock in this city keeps Murk out for long.â
That got my attention. I drained the last of the glass, rough and slow, and let the silence hang between us. Then I dropped a few battered coins on the counter. The bartender, that old lizardman with eyes like hollow brass, nodded once without saying a word.
I nodded back. Some folks talk too much. The ones whoâve seen war and whiskey donât need the noise. I slid off the stool with a grunt, bones protesting the motion, and reached for my coat. Murk hopped off his own perch and tugged his pipe free with a little theatrical flourish.
âSo,â he said, blowing a puff of smoke in the shape of a dagger this time. âWe goinâ sewer-diving, or you need another drink and a nap?â
I looked at him through the haze of smoke and doubt and the dull roar in my skull that never quite stopped.
âYou lead,â I said. âBut if this turns into another ambush, Iâm using you as a shield.â
He gave a theatrical bow, one hand on his chest, the other gesturing toward the door.
âSoftest shield youâll ever find.â
And with that, we left the ghosts behind and stepped out into the daylight. I didnât trust the sun, not even on a good day. But I trusted Murkâs smoke trail a little more.
****
The sky had started bleeding. Not fast, not in a hurry. Just a slow bruise of crimson spreading across the rooftops, like the city was trying to remember how to die quietly. That old saying, red sky at night, sailorâs delight, used to mean something to someone, somewhere. But in Graywatch? A red sky just meant the sun was clocking out and leaving the streets to settle their own scores. It meant the clouds were stacking out west like bruisers in a backroom, and the rain would be along soon to wash the blood off the cobbles and into the gutters. Everything got swallowed eventually.
Murk led me to what looked like nothing more than a crooked culvert tucked between a butcher's wall and a half-collapsed shrine to a god no one prayed to anymore. Just a thin stone slit in the side of the cityâs bones, barely wide enough for a child, let alone a quater-giant woman still sore from her last dance with death.
âSeriously?â I muttered, eyeing the gap like it had personally insulted me.
âWider on the other side,â he chirped, already slipping in like a rat that knew all the shortcuts. âJust breathe shallow and suck in your regrets.â
I gritted my teeth and pushed in after him. It scraped my coat and cracked my shoulder, and for a moment, I thought I might just wedge in place and die of embarrassment. But then the walls gave way, and suddenly I was standing in a corridor that didnât belong to the city I knew.
It was a relic. Stonework cut so fine youâd miss the seams if you blinked. Barely a whiff of rot or runoff. Just the dry hush of still air and time collecting dust. A few bones here and there, rats, maybe. One looked suspiciously like a boot. But mostly it was clean. Too clean.
I glanced sideways. âSewer smells too good, Murk. I donât like it.â
âThatâs âcause it ainât a sewer,â he said, bouncing along with his stubby legs and soft footfalls. âWhen the dwarves first partnered with the surface kings to build Graywatch, they carved out these maintenance tunnels. Ran all kinds of mechanical guts through here: valve levers, pressure chutes, old access flues. Mostly forgotten now. Never made it onto any maps.â
âAnd you know about them... how?â
He just tapped the side of his crooked little nose, winked, and said nothing. That wink told me more than a story ever could. It said he wasnât going to answer, and I wasnât going to like the truth anyway.
We walked on. The tunnel curved and narrowed, then widened again, a maze of stone intestines under a city that never stopped digesting itself. Eventually, we came to a door. Ironwood, reinforced, no handle on our side. Just a slot with old rust around the rim and something dark dried near the threshold.
Murk stopped and faced me. His face was shadowed, but his pipe flickered like a lantern behind enemy lines.
âThrough that door,â he said quietly, âweâre back in their world. Close to the Velvet Clover. Close to the Sanguine Veil.â
The name sat heavy in the air. He let it settle before he went on.
âThis stretch used to belong to another crew. Donât know their name, probably donât matter. Long dead. Happens a lot down here. One gang builds the house, another moves in when the bones cool. City comes down every few years with steel and fire to clear the rats out, but...â
âThereâs always more rats,â I said.
He gave a sharp little nod. âAnd always more tunnels. Thereâs coin to be made in the spaces between. Between the guilds, between the walls, between the breath you take and the one you wish you hadnât.â
I looked at the door.
I didnât want to open it. Not yet. Not because I was scared. Iâd done scared a long time ago. No, I didnât want to open it because once I did, I wouldnât be able to pretend anymore that this was just another missing girl. Just another case.
Because it wasnât. It had started to matter. And that was always the most dangerous thing of all. The pipe smoke thickened. Murk stood still for once.
âReady when you are,â he said.
But I wasnât.
Not yet.
Not quite. And that was where we stood, beneath a city that forgot to love the light, staring at a door that didnât want to be opened.