“Eh, break it up!” Zaethan pushed past his beta and through a group of gawking bystanders. “Uni, you!” He pointed to the second man. By the severe jaundice of his eyes, Zaethan didn’t know if he’d even comprehended the order.

“Ow! Shtàka!” Takoda flinched when something hit him. “He said break it up, you stoned scumbucket! This yancy’s puffed higher than dandi pollen. Depths!”

Blood trickled from Takoda’s temple. Zaethan grabbed the lowlife and twisted his arm, inspiring him to spew the contents of his stomach onto the cobblestones. Kumo doubled over once he saw the man’s vomit. Were she to ever challenge him again, Zahra should just eat a spoiled breakfast, and his beta would fold at the sight of it.

“A night in the guardhouse should sober him up,” Zaethen said grimly. “Come on.”

Zaethan reared back when the man’s head suddenly bobbed to the side with a crack, knocking him out. Releasing the unconscious bum, Zaethan knelt and picked up the clay tile that had landed near his boot.

“Kumo, Takoda!” he barked. “The roof—we’ve got movement!”

Without hesitation, Zaethan sprinted down the alley in the direction of tumbling tiles. He spotted a launder’s ladder and scaled the rungs to a second-story balcony, nearly tripping over a lady’s underskirt in the process. Climbing onto an awning, he hauled himself atop the clay roofing and scanned the patchwork of Marketown’s skyline. There, to the east—a dark smudge leapt from one building to the adjacent. Squinting, he realized it was not one smudge, but two.

They were moving too fast to catch up from behind, but he wouldn’t need to. These streets wove an intimate network Zaethan learned long ago. Tracking their trajectory, he ran north, skidding along old tiles as they buckled beneath him. He briefly lost his balance on a section of unstable framing, slashing his shin on a makeshift gutter. Panting, Zaethan pushed forward with the last ounce of his endurance as the dark smudges became cloaked figures and continued their race over the rooftops.

Jumping off a higher platform, Zaethan caught his arms around the second body. In an awkward barrel hug, he gripped the figure’s torso as they rolled down a slope of loose slats and rickety tilework. When their combined weight hit a particularly weak spot, he and the masked figure fell together through the planks and onto the floor of an abandoned upper room.

Zaethan groaned, cursing as a pang shot through his elbow. Blinking, he readjusted his hold. He’d landed on the perpetrator.

“Get off me, you clumsy buffoon!” a husky feminine voice wheezed under the weight of his body.

Immediately Zaethan sat up and ripped the hood off a head of ashy hair, the moonlight overhead revealing the y’siti’s delicate features.

“You really are a cockroach!” he snarled, drawing a blade and whipping it up under her chin. “Everywhere I look, I find you scurrying about. And to think, your act the other night with Salma almost had me fooled.”

“You just let him get away! I’ve been tracking him for weeks, and tonight I nearly had him!” the witch shrieked, disregarding the knife he held to her throat. “Weeks of progress, for nothing! Are you really so delusional? I was chasing him, you fool!”

“Why should I believe—”

“Ahoté!” Kumo called in search from the roof.

“Ah, Alpha Zà!” Takoda’s head manifested through the hole in the ceiling. “You catch a—uh…Alpha Zà?”

“Uni, I’ve caught an al’Haidren.” Zaethan’s confirmation echoed through the vacant space.

“Huh. Bit problematic, yeah? What’re you going to do with her?”

“Get off me!” The y’siti bucked under his hold. “Every minute you waste, we invite another slaying. Do you want that on your conscience, Kasim?”

“Right…” Panting, Kumo joined Takoda above. “…right behind you, Ahoté.”

“She insists she’s innocent. Same search as we,” Zaethan yelled back without taking an eye off the wriggling witch. Even with his knees pinning her limbs to the floorboards, her efforts boosted him inches off the ground. She wasn’t fatigued in the least.

“Na huwàa tàkom lai na huwàa. Same with y’siti, yeah?” Kumo called through the busted slats.

Zaethan glared down at the y’siti and considered his cousin’s counsel. Wekesa’s threat to both his position and his pryde in Bastiion was imminent, and trusting her again could be his undoing—or perhaps his salvation.

Her lustrous eye flicked to Kumo overhead. “What did he just say to you?”

“He said, ‘It takes a hound to hunt a hound.’”

She swallowed. “What does that mean?”

His blade inched off her ghostly flesh. Rolling back on his heels, Zaethan eased to his feet.

“It means you are either with us or against us.” He clutched the knife in his hand. “So, which will it be…Hound?”

TWENTY-FOUR

Luscia

   Considering the coveted view from Luscia’s private terrace, a stroll through Bastiion’s illustrious Drifting Bazaar was long overdue. Merchant rafts draped in bright hues and mixed textiles littered the murky waters. The scent of foreign spices hovered in the air, the source of each sharp aroma tucked under tarp and canvas as their peddlers slumbered in the bowels of each buoyant stall. Though the bay was sleepy and the hour dark, the industrious grid of floating booths looked much how she’d imagined.

Present company excluded.

Fortunately, the three Darakaians kept their distance, and while Luscia hardly appreciated playing the hound, it was the better alternative. Kasim had been crushing her lungs when posing the two options—neither preferable—and the lack of air hadn’t assisted her decision-making skills. Climbing over a snug swing bridge to the meager gangway of another stall, Luscia hoped she’d chosen wisely.

“We already passed this booth,” one of his men grumbled—the one with shoulder-length braids. His beads chattered as they crossed the crude bridge behind her. “Shtàka, is she just taking us in circles?”

“Wewe huwàa…na y’siti tàkom lai na y’siti, yeah?” The huge one, Kasim’s second, answered the other warrior.

Luscia understood little Andwele, but the bits she pieced together were not flattering. She couldn’t decide if being called a dog, as opposed to a member of the undead, was an upgrade or a demotion with the Darakaians.

Kasim shifted restlessly in her periphery when Luscia paused and assessed a stack of crates. She needed a higher vantage point. Encumbered by their ordinary limitations, she’d tried to chart a path the Darakaians could follow, but it was like hauling a sack of opinionated potatoes through the maze of makeshift waterways.