Margarita Surprise's foot slipped as she rounded the corner, the sole of her boot skidding on a wet stain of unknown origin on the cobbles. She teetered, windmilling like a character in a stage farce, and her flailing hand scraped the bare plank wall of the building, tearing skin and driving splinters into her palm, but she found no handhold to catch herself. The platform soles and high heels of her boots were horrible for balance, and with her running speed, the direction change, and the slip she went over, slamming into the cobblestones with bruising force to her knees and left forearm.

Get up, she screamed in her mind, sucking in breath. Get up! The sudden loss of momentum was deadly; stopping had caused her body to recognize just how her legs were hurting, her chest and throat were burning. Panic, though, drove her to overcome it, and she pushed herself up off the ground. Pain speared through her right hand as the pressure thrust the splinters in deeper, but also through her left arm, and she was suddenly afraid she might have done worse than bruise it in the fall.

I can't think about that! She had to move. She had to move! She could hear the pounding footsteps not far behind her, her pursuers closing in.

Or was that just the hammering of her heart, of her blood in her temples?

Margarita wobbled a bit as she regained her feet, and her first couple of steps were more like lurching staggers, but she managed to get moving again in the right direction. Her chest heaved, sucking in great gasps of air as she tried to keep moving forward, get her speed up to, if not a sprint, at least something faster than walking down the debris-strewn alley. The outlines of everything seemed blurred, smeared together like a bad watercolor, and it actually took her a couple of seconds' panic to realize that it was because her pince-nez had slipped off her nose and were now dangling from their chain, bouncing against her side as they swung with every step.

How did it come to this? sobbed in the girl's mind. I was the hunter. How did I end up as the prey?

~X X X~

Hudson Valois had a bad reputation in Tuthilltown. He lived alone in a shack that had become vacant when one of its previous occupants was hanged for burglary-with-assault and his widower had watched the drop, gone home, tied a noose to a beam, and joined the felon in death. He largely kept to himself, did his drinking alone, and only went out to shop at the market or visit the stews. No one knew where he got his money, but everyone took note of the fact that Whitetail Jack, head of the shakedown gang that took a cut out of most business in the slum district, never gave Valois any of his usual swaggering taunts when they happened to meet, and neither did any of his Tuthilltown Boys.

It was, therefore, a little unusual for him when he stepped onto the blood-soaked ground of the abandoned slaughterhouse yard, sunset streaking the sky rust-red behind the chateau spires to the west, that someone called out his name in what could only be a challenge.

He spat a curse through his ragged moustache and spun to face the girl who'd come in behind him.

"What the hell d'you want?" he snapped, cracking his knuckles. Behind him, he heard a couple of snickers from the two men who'd been waiting for him, two of Jack's boys who'd brought the horse and wagon.

Undaunted by his obvious anger or the goons behind him, the girl took two steps forward. He'd have put her age at around nineteen, with a pixie face and reddish-brown hair in a bob cut. Her dress was an unremarkable brown, but the skirt was short to show off thigh-high platform boots, their sides slashed to display crimson tights and tied with bits of green ribbon. His first impression was that someone had sliced a librarian in two and bolted her torso onto the legs of someone of a…somewhat older profession.

Then she took out a slim pale-wood wand and the costume sort of made sense. Magicians pretty much tended to dress however they liked, regardless of the winds of fashion.

Valois knew about that. He liked his black slouch hat, and wore it even though it was over forty weatherbeaten years old, the leather stained and cracked. He'd taken it off the first man he'd ever killed.

"What is it you want? Sunlight's fading fast." Indeed, the Rune he wanted to cast was most effective at twilight and he didn't want to have to wait another day to finish his work.

"You're one of the Archmage's former servants, Valois. A murderer who used your magic to help attack those who wouldn't submit right away. Do you remember what you did in Geyser Park?"

As it so happened, he did remember. The village had refused to bow to the Archmage and sheltered then-Princess Martelle in her escape from his forces. Calvaros had responded by making an object lesson of the place, sending five of his servant magicians to raze the village, slaughtering every man, woman, and child there and burning the place to ash. It was, Valois recalled, a memorial now. Dominic Spasso had once visited the abbey there that kept the eternal vigil, but he'd always had a taste for such jokes.

"I see," he said. "So it's revenge you're after, then?"

"It's justice I'm after. Someone has to put an end to your plotting."

Valois hawked a glob of phlegm into the soil. The stupid girl probably had no idea what she was even doing there. Still, there was only one way to deal with that kind of adamant sort, and that was the direct way.

"Fine," he grunted. "Do your worst."

His wand dropped into his hand from a wrist sheath up inside his right sleeve, similar to the one on his other arm for a throwing knife. The girl raised her wand and began to inscribe the first strokes of a Rune onto the ground.

Valois's own Runes inscribed on the inside of the slaughterhouse gates came to life instantly.

They were wards, Runes that he'd put up in advance. The first rule, after all, was to cover his own arse, and he took that seriously. This was his workspace, the residue of all the death and spilled blood over its years of operation nearly as good as a sacrificial altar, and he wasn't fool enough to leave it unguarded. The first use of magic by anyone but Valois himself or his familiars triggered the wards, two Runes springing ablaze and beginning to summon bound minions.

He immediately started preparing a Rune of his own nevertheless, since overconfidence usually was a working synonym for dead.

Valois was still behind her pace, but his attacker was nowhere near finished with her own Rune when the first phantom and skullmage spilled out of the wards and headed for the girl.

~X X X~

Margarita swung around another corner, figuring that changing directions often was her best chance of keeping out of her pursuers' line of sight. She crossed a winding lane and plunged down a short path, only to realize that that particular alley ended abruptly after twenty feet in a short flight of stone steps that led down to the riverfront.

Fear spiked, and she nearly froze up, but managed to beat the panic back and go forward, clutching at the wet brick wall for balance as she tottered down the stairs. When she got to the bottom, she saw that she had only two options: to dive into the murky, polluted water of the river, or to try to make her way along the narrow brick ledge of the retaining wall.

Neither way seemed particularly promising, but she figured that her clothes would only hamper her in the water; the river was a good thirty yards across and Margarita wasn't at all sure that the things there were any less dangerous than her pursuers.

Gingerly, she edged out onto the ledge. It was slick with river slime where the water had lapped up over it, and the fetid air turned her stomach as she began to work her way along. Her back was pressed flat to the bricks as she fought for balance on boots that might have been the worst possible footwear for what she was doing. So focused was she on not toppling forward that she didn't realize that there was nothing behind her until she was trying to lean against that nothing and fell back into a shallow alcove. Margarita learned what it was she'd fallen against the hard way when her skull cracked against the bricks behind her. She let out a sudden yelp of pain, then clamped her jaw shut, tears welling in her eyes, praying that she hadn't just given herself away. Clenching her teeth together, she tried to slow her panicked breathing and draw in air in long, slow inhalations in the hope that he oxygen-hungry wheezing wouldn't bring down the attention of her pursuers.

~X X X~

She saw it just at the last instant. Maybe it was the flames wreathing the phantom's sword, or maybe it was the unnatural blue glow of the ghost-knight's body, a color one would not expect to see without it meaning something.

For whatever reason, though, the girl realized that something was wrong, and turned her head just in time. Valois cursed under his breath as she flung herself backwards, just avoiding the phantom's first attack, a vicious sword-slash that rebounded off the earth in a spray of dirt.

What did happen, though, was that the girl's partially-finished Rune began to flicker and waver, its structure beginning to collapse.

She barely rolled out of the way of a second chopping slash that carved into the slaughterhouse ground, and this completely broke the last of her concentration. It might have been the fear or the mental effort needed to focus on remaining alive, but either way she was unable to maintain the concentration needed to hold the mana of the unfinished Rune in place. The green light faded, flashing outward into the air.

The other monster summoned by the second warding Rune, the skullmage, rattled forward threateningly, but the magician ignored it, as well she should; its magic was only capable of harming astral entities like the phantom, despite its own physical form. It didn't matter, though; the phantom would be more than enough. Valois almost felt pity for her as she scooted backwards, staring up in fear. The ghost-knight slashed down at her again, and it seemed that it had actually learned from her earlier frantic efforts to evade it, for its cleaving blow was not a directly vertical chop but came down at a diagonal she couldn't roll away from.

In a last, desperate attempt to save herself, the girl threw her wand up as if to parry. The burning flamberge struck it dead-on, the slender piece of wood shattering under the impact. But for some reason, perhaps because the girl had just been channeling mana through it, or perhaps she had actually enchanted it sometime in the past, when the wand broke there was a soundless explosion, a sudden rush of magical energy.

A creature of substance wouldn't have been affected at all; the girl certainly wasn't and neither were the skullmage or Valois as he felt the edge of the mana wave brush across him. But the phantom was a purely astral creature, even its sword a construct of magical force that used the energy of its flaming blade to harm what was physical. Instead of cleaving on through and into the girl, the sword was flung back by the blast as was the phantom itself.

Valois had to give the girl this: she reacted fast to the new events. Seeing the phantom tossed away, she rolled over onto her belly, planted her hands on the earth to push herself up, got one foot square on the ground, and lunged to her feet almost like a sprinter might have. In the next instant, she was in a full retreat, sprinting out the slaughterhouse gate.

Whirling to face the men by the wagon, Valois roared, "Don't just stand there; get after her!"

He could almost see the words, "But she's a witch!" forming on one man's lips, but they died there, unspoken. After all, she was running in terror, while Valois was right there, staring him in the eyes and obviously capable of doing a whole lot worse than the chit could manage.

His partner showed more brains.

"You want her alive or dead?"

"Alive's better, but either way works. Now get going!"

They didn't wait, but took off running at once. He'd have preferred to send the phantom, even summoning more of its ilk to help; the undead were relentless in their pursuit. But he couldn't afford to have familiars running through the streets, lest they attract the attention of the authorities.

The Tuthilltown Boys were good with their clubs and knives. If they got their hands on the girl, they'd handle her readily enough. And they knew the streets and alleys of the slum, ruled it like their own little kingdom, while all logic marked her as an outsider.

Come to think of it, weren't there rumors about a couple of us getting killed recently? He hadn't really given it much thought, as the kind of people who made up the Archmage's remnants weren't exactly strangers to violent death. Valois hadn't even bothered to mark the names before establishing it was no one he had regular contact with. And yet now this girl had showed up, challenging him to a duel of magic, calling him out on his past crimes…

Well, just maybe there was more to the rumors than chance, after all. Some self-appointed vigilante, probably someone who'd suffered at the Archmage's hands—or more likely, her family had, given her age. Of course, a magician might well change her outward appearance, and society being what it was even hundred-year-old women might well pick a teenager's face, but Valois would bet the girl was close to her actual age: anyone powerful enough to have lived long enough to use youth magic wouldn't have just blundered in on him without a plan.

He shrugged and spat another glob of phlegm. It wasn't his problem, for now, and sunset was fading fast. Focusing his will, he set out to do the work he'd originally begun.

If he ran out of time and had to wait because of the girl's interruption, then she'd better pray that the Tuthilltown Boys killed her cleanly instead of bringing her back. Valois had learned one lesson from the Archmage at Geyser Park: when somebody crossed him, he made sure they ended up as an example to others as to why that was a bad, bad idea.

~X X X~

"Dammit, Jean, where'd she go?"

Jean scowled at his partner.

"What do I look like, a fortuneteller? We know she came this way, so let's find her."

"She's a witch, though. What if she uses magic?"

"She's a witch who just ran scared from Valois. Which one d'you want to take your chances with, huh?"

"Yeah, but she isn't here. Where'd she go?"

"How about down?"

Jean pointed towards the river.

"You think she tried to swim for it?"

"She wouldn't be the first. Remember that little weasel last year who tried to shave a few off Jack's cut?"

"Oh, yeah, that fence." His broad face stretched into a nasty smile. "Got caught in that current in the middle, run down to Edge's Bend, bounced around in the eddies, and was tossed ashore for the mudlarks to strip bare. Think the chit did the same thing?"

"Looked a little prissy for it to me, but who knows when people get scared. Let's go check it out, George."

They walked down the steps, stopping at the edge of the filthy water. An experienced eye could see what they'd mentioned, how the river seemed to run faster in the middle, while the more polluted runoff swirled in stagnant eddies that lapped against the embankment.

"No sign of her in the water. She wouldn't have been that far ahead of us."

"She hiding underwater? Or get sucked down?" George suggested.

"Maybe."

Jean looked left and right at the ledge that ran along the embankment. He saw no figure clinging there, where they would have been out of sight from the shore above. He looked down again, at the brickwork and at the water.

"I guess she got sucked down."

"Valois's not going to be happy."

"She'll catch up on shore eventually. They all do; this river doesn't keep its dead. But we'd better go make sure she didn't duck into some building on the way over, or else he's really going to let us have it when she doesn't wash up."

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

They turned and clomped back up the stairs, leaving nothing but the river flowing by in their wake.

~X X X~

Margarita let out a long breath as she heard the two men clump noisily away. She'd been—was—literally trembling with fear as she'd tried to shrink back as far as possible into the little recess without letting a toe peek out or a wisp of skirt catch the breeze and give her position away.

From what she'd heard, though, she'd been successful. Hopefully, they thought she had been foolish enough to go into the river, where an unknown fate would await her. It had been lucky she hadn't tried it, not in her cumbersome outfit and being an indifferent swimmer at best. Even without knowing about the treacherous flow she wouldn't have wanted to risk it.

But if not into the river, then where could she go next?

The alcove she'd hidden in was little more than that, a recessed space with a flat, solid back wall. Probably it had been built for some architectural reason, whether because the arched top was good for something or if some original plan, later discarded, had meant to place a sewer outlet or access tunnel there. Whatever its virtues as a hiding spot, it was not an escape route.

Gingerly, making sure to maintain her balance, Margarita leaned out so she could see down the embankment. The ledge stretched off both ways, but it wasn't as easy as just picking a direction. If she kept on the way she'd been going, it looked like it was at least a hundred yards in that direction before she'd reach a break in the ledge, likely for another flight of steps or other way to get back up to the shore. Going back meant less than a tenth of that.

Arms and hands hurt as they were, she'd have trouble taking advantage of such handholds as there might have been in the brickwork. Above all, she wasn't sure that she could keep her balance in her high-soled boots on the wet, narrow row of bricks, not for that distance.

Not sure? she thought bitterly. No, I'm absolutely sure that I can't. Margarita's panic was ebbing a bit now that she wasn't in any direct danger, and with rational thought came full awareness of just how bad her situation was. Fear could drive a person to extremes they'd never have otherwise confronted, merely by presenting the alternative as far worse.

She'd have to be doubly careful, though. She'd have to work her way back to the stairs, but more than that she'd heard them say that they'd search the nearby buildings—which meant that they'd be lingering in the area, able to see if they'd happened to be in the streets at the time she passed by, and that would put her right back at square one, only tired and hurt besides.

Her legs were trembling as she made her first step out onto the ledge, trembling from exertion, from the pain in her head, arm, and hand, and from the ebb of her panic-driven adrenaline rush now that the immediate threat had receded and her fear was more cerebral than visceral.

Not yet! Margarita barked at herself. You can't give way yet! Gritting her teeth, she took the next step, sliding her lead foot forward and bringing the second one out onto the ledge. This time she was facing the wall instead of the river because she didn't want to stumble when she got to the steps the way she'd fallen back into the recess, for fear she'd slide right down into the water. The solidity of it reassured her somehow, the rough brickwork against the side of her face and hands as she edged her way along. She drove her fingertips into every chink and crack in the mortar, trying to give herself any edge or extra protection that she could to keep her footing.

Once, she swayed a bit and her left arm screamed at her when it had to take her weight, and she was forced to hold her place for a couple of seconds while the red haze cleared from her mind. She had no room for doubt any more—it was definitely fractured, making it all the more important for her to get to a place of safety where she could give herself magical healing.

One more step, she told herself edging forward another foot or so. Just one more step. It became a mantra, repeated over and over in her mind. She couldn't think about the journey. She just needed to focus on one step at a time, and sooner or later she'd get there. And she did. Finally, shakily, after several long, agonizing minutes she stepped off the ledge onto the steps, wobbling slightly as the sheer relief of making it safely washed over and through her.

That was when a big hand reached out, fisted itself in the front of her dress, and yanked her the rest of the way up the steps.

~X X X~

The girl sagged in Jean's grasp as she lost her balance, her shins cracking against the steps as he dragged her up to the alley, then spun her so that she was slammed up against the wall, hauling her to her feet by main force.

"Thought you were so smart, sneaking along that ledge, didn't you?" He shoved his forearm under her chin, across her throat, applying choking pressure. "Too bad you forgot about footprints. I couldn't see where you were hiding, but I could certainly tell which way you'd gone. So I sent George down to cut you off if you went the other direction and waited here for you myself. Looks like I'm the lucky one today, since we put a half-crown on which one of us'd get you."

The girl, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky that she'd picked this direction. George was still a little scared of her, what with her magic and all, so he'd have been sure to just crack her over the head or stick his knife in her right off, then shove her body into the river and call it good. Whereas Jean had no problem taking the extra time to put her out and haul her back to Valois like the necromancer wanted. That'd mean a much slower and more painful end for her. But Valois would be happier with Jean that way, and that was more than enough to justify it for him.

~X X X~

Margarita wanted to scream, but she couldn't; the crushing arm across her throat sealed that off as effectively as it was stifling her breath. She'd been trapped, played by the two street roughs, and had walked right back into their clutches. The knowledge of how she'd been outsmarted made her feel almost as sick as the awareness of her situation did, the realization that she would soon be in Valois's hands.

It was that thought, though, the idea of falling into his grip, that galvanized her. Bad enough that he was a necromancer and murderer, but if he learned the truth—that Margarita had once been one of the Archmage's remnants herself, sent to the Silver Star Tower to find and free their master's soul but had ultimately turned on them and was now hunting her old compatriots—she would be very lucky if even death afforded her a respite. A skilled necromancer never thought of death as just an ending.

The sudden terror drove Margarita into a frenzy. She struggled, squirmed, tugged and clawed at the man's arm and kicked at his legs and feet. None of it worked, though; he was much stronger than her and more skilled in this kind of violence as well, as shown by how he stood with his hips angled away from her so there was no chance of a knee to the groin connecting.

In fact, her frantic struggles were doing nothing other than tiring her out faster, wearing her down so that her oxygen was running out that much sooner. Spots danced in her vision, leaving Margarita at the edge of consciousness. Her hands fell from his arm, strength ebbing.

There's no way to break his grip. He's too strong, even if I use both hands against one of his. She needed some kind of weapon, but she didn't have one, not even the broken stub of her wand which she'd dropped in her flight.

A weapon…

In a last, desperate inspiration, she reached for his waist, stretching towards the knife he wore on his belt. If he'd been choking her with his hands she'd have never made it, but with his arm bent there was just enough range for her to hook her fingertips around the end of the handle and yank it free. Margarita's fist clamped as tightly as it could around the hilt, the pain from her injured palm barely penetrating her clouded awareness. With the last of her dwindling strength, she rammed the knife into the thug's belly, the underhand plunge angling the point up under his ribs. She only realized that she'd found the heart when he collapsed, his weight falling onto her and dragging her down beneath him to the alley floor.