“You’re trying my patience,” Kasim warned in her ear. “I can still revise the terms of our agreement. You already failed to fulfill your end of one bargain—don’t make this the second.”

The hilt of his kopar pressed into her lower back, just above the crest of the trousers she’d procured for tonight’s outing. Apparently, Kasim was still cross from their dispute that morning, when he’d again howled to use the wraiths. Instead, she’d handed him a curved staff and tied rocks to his ankles.

He’d floundered miserably.

Kasim really had a hard time letting things go.

“I failed at nothing, Lord Darakai.” Luscia heaved a sigh and reached around to ease the cool metal back toward his middle. “I cannot speed your own rate of learning. That—” She peered higher, toward a potential landing. “—is your own affliction. You requested I lead this party, yet are proving to be a terrible follower.”

“I lead, witch. You are just my means to an end.” Kasim pivoted in front of her, puffing his chest out at her chin. A pleasing, smoky tang of camilla and cedar doused her nose.

“This continued infatuation with semantics is exhausting.” Luscia retreated and inhaled the briny odor of the bay. “If you wish to succeed tonight, silence your sounding alarm and do shut up.”

She twisted away, putting her back to Kasim. Cocking her head, she listened to the sounds of the night. The tide lapped the docks, bins and boxes creaking in the routine sway. Beneath the rudimentary layers of sound, emerging snores carried a rumbling baritone through the darkness.

With an impatient huff, the other al’Haidren murmured something under his breath.

“I asked for quiet,” Luscia repeated sternly.

“Shtàka. No one said a word!” he barked, folding his arms. “Some y’siti ears you’ve got.”

Luscia stretched her neck and tried once more, but the rapid whispering increased. She spun in place. The big one, Kasim’s beta, shrugged to the slender Darakaian in front of the gangway. Neither man’s lips were moving.

Low voices swarmed her ears when the relentless buzz engulfed her mind.

“Niit. Niit, heh’ta!” She shook her head violently. Luscia scrambled for a vial inside her cloak, but it slipped from her fingers with a tremor, shattering across the planks underfoot. “Heh’ta! Make it stop!”

Clutching her temples furiously, she tripped into the leather folds of Kasim’s jacket. This couldn’t happen, not here. Not with witnesses. Panting, Luscia gripped the buttery, weathered arms of his coat as the buzzing grew to a roar.

“Ahoté!”

“Alpha Zá!”

Through the whirring symphony, she recognized the measured, high-pitch whine as Kasim released the kopar from his hip. She felt his shoulder rise under her fingertips. Luscia lifted her face and met his gaze, tense under each puckered brow. Her lips parted, to ask for aid, when a loud pop jolted her limbs. Her head snapped toward her spine. Ringing flooded her ears.

Kasim’s eyes widened as he stumbled away from her on the narrow platform. “Depths…”

Suddenly, her vision erupted in threads of light.

Energy from the Other shimmered throughout the Drifting Bazaar, dancing faintly on a gentle breeze. A single source of brightness in the shadows captured Luscia’s focus. The thread, brilliant against its brothers, shivered around her torso and into the distance. Hesitantly, fearfully, she turned to watch it slither past the two Darakaians at the edge of the swing bridge.

Sensing her attention, it twitched erratically. An eerie light that she alone could see flickered over the waters.

Instinctively, her limbs rebelled and leapt to the call. Luscia dove past Kasim, toward the stack of crates, and vaulted overhead after the pulsing guide. The ball of her foot grazed the beta’s shoulder for balance when she crossed the bridge in midair. Landing, Luscia rolled into an explosive sprint. She hardly heard the Darakaians yelling in her wake.

As she bounded across the rickety planks to another stall, the ringing eased and opened to pages of sound. Abruptly the shining thread convulsed and switched to the east, pulling Luscia through an open window of a vacant booth. Frantically, she skidded overtop a cluttered counter and through a swath of stale, moldering curtains, tumbling into the open.

A scream fractured the haze in her mind.

Luscia jumped to her heels. With a spark, the lumin shuddered fitfully toward a floating ghetto across a vast waterway. A system of rigging connected posts on either side of the channel. In a rush, she ran up the nearest post, freed Ferocity, and cut loose a cable. Cording it around her forearm, she swung and, with eager footwork, treaded the side of a freighter until she met the roofing.

Atop the unstable structure, the threads flashed in and out of focus. Between eroding, clustered stalls, the lumin pulsed around a circlet of darkness, even under the abundance of a full moon. The darkness shifted aside in the form of a cloaked figure to reveal a whimpering child. The pale hue of the young boy’s hair shone as he struggled to escape his captor’s grasp.

A sound of fury broke through her lips. Luscia abandoned the freighter and carved her Najjani blade through the air. Despite her speed, the cloaked figure whirled responsively, tossing the boy aside and catching the tip of Ferocity at their shoulder instead of the throat. Luscia’s knee cracked as it made impact on the platform before she clumsily rolled to a crouch.

Tightening her grasp around the hilt of her blade, Luscia sprung after the figure. A gloved hand released their bleeding shoulder and they ran west. Lurching in the figure’s direction, Luscia stopped at the cross-caste’s wail of pain. Looking back, she saw a pool of dark blood soaking the planks beneath his little body where it escaped a deep gash along his arm.

Luscia growled in frustration as she watched his captor disappear in the distance, only the glint off a pair of fine boot buckles under the moonlight marking their departure. Hurriedly, she moved to the boy, who was no more than six or seven, judging by roundness of his scraped, tear-streaked cheeks.

“Shh.” Luscia tore a strip off the hem of her undershirt and bound his arm tightly. It was so small. “Shh, waedfrel. We are safe now. Wem, yes, it’s going to be all right.”

Within minutes, the Darakaians tore through the alley of freighters, stopping short at the sight of them.

“Wh—” Kasim panted, bending over to catch his breath. “Which way did he go? Depths, why didn’t you follow him?” His tied locs swished erratically as he gestured to the emptiness.

“Because he’s losing blood—a lot of it.” Luscia scooped up the boy, caressing the back of his shivering head. “I made a call. Deal with it.”

Kasim all but snarled at her, though she knew his malice was misdirected. He wanted to catch the cross-caste killer almost as much as she did, if for different reasons—reasons she suspected had more to do with the scarred man in Salma’s tavern than the lives of Boreali innocents.