of the work.
He went off Fione’s blueprints she drew up in bed, and the two had revitalized the city—a major pipeline system allowing for indoor bathrooms not just in the palace, but in every home. Running water to cook with, to bathe with. The effects were immediate; the people became healthier and had more time to spend with their families and on rebuilding their lives. The watertells became more efficient, hissing faster and delivering messages at untold speeds. Thanks to Yorl’s knowledge of beneather stonework, the buildings of Vetris were three stories taller now, allowing for more space and more shops. Connecting bridges to the buildings, such as he’d seen in Breych, allowed foot traffic to be split between the roads below and the bridges above. It was a wondrous and strange outline to see on the horizon at sunset, but Lucien felt proud of it.
The temple, of course, was remade. But Lucien’s stipulations of a free worship meant that it belonged both to the New God and the Old God, to the beneather spirits and the celeon morgus. Lawguards patrolled nigh constantly, yet it was naive to say there were no conflicts among the people—the tensions still ran high. But Lucien stood for none of it and installed punishments severe enough that the intolerant now thought thrice.
As he walked the streets, he fended off as many roving bands of merrymakers as he could—women offering him fruit from their stalls, shopkeeps holding out legs of cured lamb to him, a girl with a flower basket floating a ring of lilies over his head with a giggle. It was harder to blend in to a crowd now, what with his eyepatch, but part of him was at peace with it. He no longer felt the need to skulk around in Whisper’s gear, stealing trinkets and redistributing the wealth to the poorer. He was helping in far more overt ways, on his own accord, and that required no disguise.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t hear the call of the shadows anymore.
He managed to slip away down an alley, cleaner than the ones he remembered but no less cramped and surreptitious. A new city meant a new layout, one he hadn’t memorized as well as he’d liked, but he’d taken to using such breaks to wander, to map in his head the streets and curbs he loved so much. His boots clicked down the cobblestones, around puddles of piss and piles of discarded junk. The smell of horse dung and old vomit was almost a welcome perfume—it’d been quite disturbing to walk the alleyways at their clean, odorless inception.
And then he heard the footsteps behind him.
He whirled around, convinced it was another overeager citizen, but the alley behind him was empty. Nothing but cobble. He shook his head and chalked it up to a stray watertell hiss and continued his way down the narrow path. It branched out into a little plaza with a snake fountain, a newer one replete with silver binding and fewer gems. With water so plentiful in homes, people rarely used the fountains anymore, but this left them to be admired, and this he did for some time before crossing the plaza into another alley.
The former prince was so busy mentally tallying the left turns of this alley that he almost missed the soft rustle of fabric behind him. He whirled again, and this time his suspicions did not fade.
“Who’s there?”
Crime was crime—ever-present as long as mortals were present—but he’d done his best to catch the swindlers and conmen who tried to prey upon the rebuilding people. He didn’t want to use magic against such criminals if he could help it—preferring mortal methods. He gripped the white mercury sword at his side, knowing to draw it would be pointless in such a small alley.
And so he ran.
And the person behind him ran, too, footsteps echoing.
He raced through the alley, throwing trash bins and paper piles to the side to distract his stalker. They were fast, and good—he could hear them leaping over the debris easily, redoubling their pace.
But he was better.
He called his crow form and flung himself over the wall to his left, white feathers whirling in his wake as his feet touched ground and his cloak streamed behind him. His human legs pumped again, ducking around a butcher’s blood run and through a stretch of low, drying herbs on twine. He was losing them—he was sure of it. Their footsteps were fading.
And then he swung himself around