“They’ve earned a break.” His tongue probed the side of his fat mouth before he turned to spit on the floor. “After all, it’s a very involved investigation, yeye qondai? My pryde could be here for months doing what yours could not.”

Kumo came up behind Zaethan, popping his knuckles—a series of bursts Zaethan knew too well. He bit back a volatile swell of curses at Wekesa’s brazen disrespect and instead straightened his spine, plastering a grin on his face.

“You’re a fairly gifted man, Wekesa.”

“High praise from our Alpha Zà. Zullee, accepted with honor,” he sneered, translating for the Unitarian sentries.

“Which is why I just can’t understand,” Zaethan folded his arms and paced through the gathering as the sentries shifted out of his way, “how a gifted man like Wekesa keeps overlooking one fundamental principle.”

“Uni, go ahead. Share with us, Zaeth.” Wekesa freed the dice and laced his fingers in his lap, lowering his voice when Zaethan halted near his shoulder. “Speak, while they still listen.”

“The Jwona rapiki is free to waste his own time in Bastiion, like a weak, sniveling yancy.” Zaethan bent until his chin hovered inches above Wekesa’s scar. “But he keeps forgetting he’s not free to waste my time. Each member of his pryde is mine. Their time is mine. So, since the Fate writer is free to do as he pleases, his warriors will not rest until he assumes each of their posts and personally relieves them. And for every instance of the Jwona rapiki’s disobedience, I will transfer one of his men to join our forces at the border of Hagarh.”

Undertones of humor evaporated from the lake of faces. For the mingling of Darakaians and Unitarians, both sentry and pryde, this moment was critical. Zaethan was Alpha Zà, and he needed to hold his ground in the only manner he had left—targeting those under his own influence to punish the one currently outside it.

“Ho’waladim.” Zaethan reached over Wekesa for the other alpha’s nearly empty glass and downed the remaining fluid. Slowly, he replaced it in front of him. “As is due you.”

Turning, Zaethan nodded to Kumo as he exited the building, aiming straight for his apartments.

“I would have punched him for that,” Kumo said, hurrying after him. “But you know, kàchà kocho. Whatever works for you, Ahoté.”

“Instruct Zahra to follow Wekesa. Unseen. And put Jabari back on Dmitri’s guard tonight, he’s on assignment for me,” Zaethan rattled off as they neared the gate. “Meet me after dark. Bring Takoda.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I’m tired of these games. My father’s guest is wearing out his welcome.” Zaethan squinted in the growing heat and levelled with his beta. “We need to use his own tactics against him.”

Four nights, Àla’maia watched them stalk the streets of Marketown. Four nights enveloped in cloud, she refused to light their way and bled her tears for their misfortune.

On the fifth, the moon turned radiantly optimistic, casting her brilliance over the assembly of trading stalls. Unabashed, Àla’maia shone her confidence in Zaethan’s pursuit.

“Owàa’s lover is with us tonight, Alpha Zà! Finally, she blesses our quest!” Takoda hailed over a shoulder, shifting his head of braids to the side to avoid a low-hanging clothesline.

“Uni, that she is,” Zaethan concurred, surveying the rising silhouette of buildings on either side of the bustling alley. A few blocks back, a hag had insisted she saw movement up there the night prior, though she’d been peddling pipe marrow at the time—and of ill quality, by the look of her current stock. If the Pilarese trader two tents down hadn’t confirmed the sightings of a cloaked figure sweeping the rooftops throughout the ghetto, Zaethan might have given up on his hunch that the killer wasn’t traveling at street-level. Marketown and the Drifting Bazaar were the most heavily trafficked areas the killer had charted, according to Zaethan’s markers across his maps.

Wekesa’s valley pryde was the highest ranked in Bastiion, second only to Zaethan’s own, and he didn’t believe that the lack of progress in their investigation was a coincidence. The more he considered it, the more Wekesa’s delay seemed intentional. After all, once the killer was named, the valley pryde would be forced to end their investigation and, consequently, forfeit their permission to remain in the Proper.

Meaning, if Zaethan wanted to remove Wekesa from his city, all he needed to do was hunt down the reason the other alpha had been sent for in the first place. It was a strategy that directly defied his father’s orders, but Zaethan decided it was best to sort out the finer details on the backend.

Besides, if he allowed the Jwona rapiki to extend his stay in Bastiion, it might not be long before Zaethan could no longer claim the city at all. Or the pryde inside it.

“You don’t believe in the Fates, Ahoté. Or their imprisoned.” Kumo’s great shoulders shook as he laughed steps ahead. “Ano, we do this by might. Kwihila rapiki mu Jwona!”

“Victory can write over fate, cousin, but I’ll take all the help Àla’maia wants to give,” Zaethan retorted, dodging the clothesline. “Keep your eyes high. If what the hag says is true, that’s where victory will show itself.”

“Uni,” Kumo agreed, then jogged up the tight street to relay the same to Takoda.

Watching Kumo squeeze his breadth between the stalls, packed with hagglers and even stingier merchants, reminded Zaethan of years past. When they were cubs, his cousin used to visit Bastiion on occasion. The first time they’d explored these very streets, Kumo returned to the palace with two black eyes for the price of one. By Marketown’s standards, that was a bargain.

They followed Takoda down another, narrower alley, though no less crowded. Even nearing midnight, women dragged their children from one merchant to the next, bartering with fervor. The divergence of classes here in Marketown never ceased to amaze him. As Zaethan passed a booth of baubles, an off-duty kitchen maid screamed at a noble’s wife, who had just ripped a shiny object from a night-caller’s grasp. One dressed in soiled linen, the second in silk, and the third a combination of the two. It was remarkable how quickly the classes forgot their stations in a vendor’s tent, and how much more quickly they recalled them upon leaving.

Beyond Kumo, Zaethan saw Takoda duck when a broken bottle whizzed overhead. From a cloud of smoke, a ragged-looking man stumbled out of a dirty tent, bowling into several passersby. Another hunk of glass followed his departure, shattering across his yellowed, pipe marrow-stained tunic. Cloying vapors pooled in the street when a larger man, red in the face, erupted from the tent and hurled a bucket next.

Kumo’s forearm covered his mouth as they neared the bumbling fools. “Depths, that’s rancid!”