I relaxed my grip on Pike's throat, shaking off the mantle of the Heart of Stone. The world reasserted itself with sudden, violent clarity. The stench of burning flesh filled my nostrils. The freezing wind whipped my hair into my mouth, and I gagged on the taste of blood. I stumbled away from the carnage at my feet, doubling over as Pike's blade twisted in my gut. Charred body of god, the pain.

I dropped to my knees and crawled forward, using my slim blade to slice Pike's shirt into rags. I set my teeth and pulled the knife out of my stomach, pressing the makeshift bandages down to staunch the blood.

I stumbled from body to body, picking up matches. Five knifed street thugs in an alleyway might look like gang violence, but five knifed street thugs surrounded by matchsticks—well, I didn't know what that would look like to a Justice or the city guard, but I feared that, for a Master at the University, it would bring to mind a certain a mercurial Re'lar with a hidden past, a penchant for fire, and training in hand-to-hand combat. I moved quickly, terrified someone would come to investigate the smell.

I dug through the boys' pockets for anything that implicated me. I took the opportunity to lift loose change and whatever I could pawn, feeling more than slightly disgusted with myself. I have no defense for this behavior, except to say that the habits I developed on the streets of Tarbean have always been the hardest to break. And I suppose, all things considered, it was the least of my sins.

I slid the few items worth keeping into the pockets of my shaed—two jots, five drabs, a good steel knife, and an iron amulet meant to protect its wearer from demons. I wiped blood off of the amulet, turning it over in my hand before tucking it away. Why fear demons, I wondered, when there is already so much to fear from the hearts of men?

Afraid of being seen (or worse, recognized), I took to the rooftops. The corpse burned merrily at my back, lighting my way.

I tied the rags around my stomach, trying not to think about how quickly they were soaking up my blood. The wound was narrow but deep, and the rust on the blade had me worried. I needed antiseptic, and anesthetic if I could get it. I limped from one rooftop to another, grateful that the buildings were packed tightly together in this part of the city.

There. I half-climbed, half-fell from the rooftop onto the narrow sill of an apothecary shop window. I slipped pins from my cloak, groping at the latch. It was old and rusted, no trouble for an accomplished thief. Under other circumstances, I could have broken in within seconds. As it was, my fingers were numb from the cold and I was lightheaded from blood loss and pain. I fumbled with the latch for what felt like an hour, but was probably mere minutes.

Finally, the window swung inward and I tumbled through. My fall was broken by several shelves in quick succession. Glass bottles crashed around me and shattered, loud enough to wake every shopkeeper and housewife in Imre.

A bottle of alcohol landed blessedly close to where I lay on the packed dirt of the shop floor, gasping for breath. I wasted no time in uncapping the bottle and pouring its contents over the open wound. Pain seared through me like wildfire in a dry wood, then was gone.

Invigorated by the pain, I staggered to the shelves at the front of the shop. I limped past tiny jars of ophalum and mhenka, searching frantically for a safer palliative. Even in my state, I was not desperate enough to seek relief from denner resin or devil's root.

I grabbed a glass bottle full of dry tennasin powder and ran for the window. I heard the door to the shop fly open just as I reached the rooftop across the street.

I headed for the river, resting only when I was nestled in the shadow of the great stone pillars of the bridge to the University. Finally safe, I unwrapped the bloody bandages around my stomach and examined my wound.

I swallowed what I hoped was two scruples worth of tennasin, nervously recounting its symptoms in my head. Anaesthetic, vasoconstrictor. Can cause delirium and fainting. I pulled a needle and gut from a small case in my pocket, thankful for once that experience had taught me better than to travel without it. I started sewing immediately, afraid to wait for the tennasin to take effect. Fortunately, it worked quickly. By the time I tied off the thread, my body had gone pleasantly numb. I cut up my shirt to bandage the wound and stumbled into the Omethi to wash off the blood.

In hindsight, this was probably the worst thing I could have done. I was too numb to feel the cold, and too disoriented to realize it. Submerged to my chest in frigid river water, I watched my body grow clumsier with only a mild, incoherent curiosity. I remember staring at my shaking fingers and wondering why no one had mentioned this was a side effect of tennasin. I might have died in the river that night, if not for the deepening lethargy that accompanies the onset of hypothermia, which prompted me to crawl to the riverbank and under the rescuing warmth of my shaed.

My reaction to the tennasin was far stronger than it should have been. To this day, I do not know whether it was brought on by blood loss, overdose, or a strong allergic reaction. Whatever the reason, within an hour I had been seized by a complete and terrifying delirium.

My heart raced, denying me the salvation of sleep, and yet I felt as if I were in a terrible dream from which I could not wake. I dreamed I was in Tarbean again, being chased by older boys with bottleglass knives. I dreamed the Chandrian had come for me at last. I dreamed the Masters had discovered the corpses in the alley (was it five? or was it a dozen? a hundred?). I dreamed I had been expelled for malfeasance. I dreamed they had hanged me by the fountain in Imre. Sim and Wilem and Fela had been there, and Elodin and Kilvin and Elxa Dal. I had seen fear in their eyes, for they finally knew the truth of me.

Worst of all, I dreamed I had been discovered by the other students, sleeping under the bridge in filthy rags. I drowned in shame and self-hatred and fear, so much of it I thought I would die.

One dream was not like the others. I dreamed Auri had found me, shivering and crying and so terribly afraid. She had knelt before me and washed my bloody skin with water warmed in the afternoon sunlight of a distant meadow. She had swaddled me in a blanket made of hearthstone, heavy and safe and warm. She had laid her head against my chest and told me the most lovely stories about the most ordinary things. The owls were bickering again, which was causing some consternation among the other creatures in the Underthing. But she was certain they would come to an agreement, like old couples will do. The fireflies had danced for her on the bridge. They had been lonely before she came, and they were such terrible show-offs.

Her words created a world in my head, a world I so desperately wanted to exist that knowing it did not had made it difficult to breathe. I had cried. She had kissed away my tears, one after another, and I had finally fallen asleep to the warm, fleeting touch of her lips on my forehead, my cheeks, my neck, my lips …

I woke to the worst headache I've ever had in my life, and the sound of birds chirping in the bushes nearby. The sun was just about to rise. I reached up to rub the sleep from my eyes and froze, startled to see that my hands were perfectly clean. A thick woolen blanket slipped from my shoulders as I sat up and prodded the tight, clean bandages wrapped around my stomach. The bloody rags I'd been using were gone, along with the tattered remnants of my shirt.

My lute case was perched on a rock to my left. On top of the case was a change of clothes. Pinned to the white linen shirt was a scrap of parchment. Two words were written on it in flawless cursive. My Ciridae.