Little Jonno, like Gnyphe, was a streetling. He was short and wiry, still young enough for his cheeks to be slightly rounded despite a streetling’s spare diet, with sandy hair and light skin. Startled, Little Jonno ducked into a shadow made by the second-floor overhang of a nearby building, nearly melting into the darkness; had Gnyphe not seen him hide, she might have thought the side street was empty. She put her hands on her hips, impressed with the boy’s reflexes.
“Jonno, it’s me, Gnyphe. Also, Tactan,” Gnyphe said. Tactan waved.
Little Jonno’s face emerged from the shadow, a dusting of freckles on his light brown cheeks making him appear dirtier than he actually was. He looked Gnyphe over, then raised an eyebrow. “How do I know you’re not just some changeling here to suck out my brains?”
Gnyphe rolled her eyes and looked up at Tactan. “That’s a tough one. How do we convince Little Jonno of that?”
Tactan scratched the side of its head. “Well, I’m pretty confident that changelings don’t actually suck people’s brains out—and I’m not aware of any stories of changelings that have the capability of mimicking a jhar-voor, so—”
Gnyphe interrupted, “You’re being literal. I was thinking something along the lines of, ‘Eat your brain? That’s not even a snack!’” She kicked at a shadow on a nearby wall, her foot passing through and coming out of the shadow behind Little Jonno to strike his butt. Little Jonno jumped up with a yelp, then grinned and wrapped Gnyphe in a hug. Gnyphe tightly hugged the boy back.
“That was mean,” Jonno said into Gnyphe’s shoulder. “But thank you for coming today.”
“Glad to help,” Gnyphe responded, feeling a little better. She looked around, but didn’t see much—the side street should have continued to the market, but it was blocked off at the end by a wooden gate. There were also strange scratches on the stones of the wall next to them—claw marks?
Gnyphe’s neck prickled. She pushed Little Jonno away, then slipped into the shadow she had kicked Little Jonno from, emerging from a shadow farther down the alley. As Gnyphe looked around to take stock of her situation, she saw a creature the size of a street dog drop off the underside of the second-story roof overhang and land just where she had been standing. The creature was very furry, with a prehensile tail that more than doubled the length of its body and long, curved claws on its front paws, the inner edge claw on its right particularly long and wicked. The creature turned its bearlike head to reveal multifaceted, bug-like eyes that glimmered iridescently. A long, white scar lounged across its right eye. The creature growled, lips pulled back to reveal a red mouth full of ivory fangs.
Tactan knelt down to rub the creature’s furry head between the ears, dampening its threatening aura. “Hello, Kraw! What were you doing up there?” Kraw responded by shaking Tactan’s hand off and sniffing at him.
“And here I thought you abandoned poor Little Jonno,” Gnyphe said dryly.
Kraw turned toward Gnyphe, stared, then walked to her. The kekeblin walked on two legs, his body held horizontally. He pointed up at Gnyphe with his overlong claw. “Had you caught. Tricked. But you cheated. Would have gotten you if had not given you time.” He sniffed Gnyphe’s feet. “You went new way today. Not pass by butchery.”
Gnyphe sometimes wondered why her language made Kraw sound like he was chewing on rocks. When he spoke to other kekeblin the sounds they made flowed like a long, burbling stream. Tactan managed to sound normal, even erudite, when speaking linga fide, and its mouthparts were much less human than Kraw’s muzzle. Gnyphe smiled ruefully. “You know there’s no rules on the streets.”
“Why travel different way?” Kraw grunted. “Trouble?”
“Tactan wandered off and got distracted—I didn’t think it would be as interested in the brothels as it ended up being. I helped keep things subtle enough that we didn’t attract the attention of the Guard.”
Glancing sideways at Tactan, Kraw stated, “You are weird.”
“I was actually thinking about that today—normalcy is defined by a sort of average commonality, correct? With these humans spreading across the landscape like mycelia, thus setting normal, that by definition makes us both weird. We are the weird ones, Kraw, and all the humans are normal!” Tactan declared with genuine glee.
Little Jonno scratched the side of his nose. “I don’t get what the bug is saying.”
Tactan’s pleasure turned into annoyance. “Not a bug!”
“Whatever, bug man,” Little Jonno retorted. This made Kraw chuckle with a long, low series of keks.
Gnyphe rolled her eyes while her friends bickered and scanned the alley for loose stones. She collected a few and stacked them, using as few as she could for the base to make the pile as tall as possible. She didn’t expect the stone stack to last long, but she felt simple pleasure whenever she found one of her stacks untouched several days later. She noted a wide, flat stone near the wooden gate at the end of the alley and crouched to grab it, then paused. She rested a hand on the gate and felt its rough, unfinished texture, a rolling surface created by warped wood poorly fitted together. She distantly felt, like an echo just barely heard from far off, a sense of frustration over poor craftmanship, and wondered where it came from. She had previously attempted several trades to see if she had any unearned skill with them—carpentry included—and hoped that a discovery would lead to insights about her past, but ultimately found dead ends. Yet she still, on occasion, found echoes of thought telling her she was missing something. . .
Gnyphe shook her head as the noise of the market reentered her mind, stirring up her darkness and driving out strange musings on wooden gates. She was getting distracted—she’d made a promise to Little Jonno. And they didn’t want to return to the Chamberpot too late. “Let’s go,” Gnyphe said abruptly. The gate was locked, but with a flick of her wrist Gnyphe had her lockpicks in her hands and, a moment later, it was open anyway.
The first thing Gnyphe saw after opening the gate was a camel’s butt; they had entered the back end of a stall selling pack animals. Gnyphe stepped around the camel, avoided a pile of dung sitting beside some horses, and got a good look at what she could see of that day’s market and the explosion of activity it contained. The huge plaza was made to feel small by how crammed together every person and temporary stall was. A thin road snaked between each line of vendors and, even in the small stretch that she could easily see, Gnyphe saw every kind of person: Goshites with blue-tinged skin, their black fingers handling fruit; travelers from Broken Paladane with spaulders sewn to their coats, condescendingly looking down on other shoppers; men and women from the Brown Forest in their dappled brown-and-green clothing haggling over arrows; and Kahghurg nomads with round hats and boar-tusk necklaces exchanging a goat for some rabbit meat from a group of kekeblin merchants that didn’t have a stall, just a square marked by rope lying on the ground. Gnyphe even saw another jhar-voor, this one blue, unmissable with its white eyes and teardrop-shaped head riding the crowd, only matched in height by the rare Fummian human.
Framing it all, sitting high above Chapelport’s middle like a mother eagle crouched over her nest, the Ebon Crown. The city of Chapelport was constructed in several districts that snaked along the end of the Quillback’s only mountain pass, ending in a port district. The Ebon Crown was the sole airborne district, resting on a series of massive stone bridges accessible only by elevators that lined two steep Quillback mountains. It was home to Chapelport’s elite—wealthy aristocrats, clergy, and government officials belonging to a church or Chapelport’s city patron—and sat directly above the Chamberpot district, so named because all of the city’s sewage flowed through before finding its way into the ocean. The unique placement and design of the city, combined with the height and tight clustering of the Quillback mountains, meant that most districts in Chapelport only got direct sunlight for half the day, resting in shadow the rest. The two exceptions were the Ebon Crown, sunny (and cold) all day; and the Chamberpot beneath the Crown, constantly dark save for a few short hours each morning and a brief period in the afternoon.
Gnyphe’s gaze was pulled back the the market and its mad energy, stilling her body and exciting her darkness. She noticed the shadows of the pack beasts around her beginning to twist and curl.
“Hey! What are you doing? Thieves!” a high-pitched voice barked. Gnyphe glanced in the voice’s direction and saw an older woman with dark skin and white hair angrily waving a record book. “Get out before I call the Guard!”
Little Jonno piped, “I’m sorry! I got lost and my sister helped me find my way back. The gate was unlocked, so we thought we could find our way to our parents through here.” He lied with the quickness and sincerity of a child born to a life of begging.
The older woman’s scowl softened, although it never approached anything friendly as she eyed the group. “Just get your way through here quickly, then, and don’t try coming back. Out, right there,” the woman lifted the rope separating the animals from the market path. Gnyphe smiled and nodded at the woman, then ducked under the rope. A moment later, she, Little Jonno, Tactan, and Kraw were swallowed in the crowd.
As they walked, Gnyphe glanced back regularly to ensure that she didn’t lose Tactan—the jhar-voor was liable to get distracted and wander off again. She smiled when she saw a furry head resting on Tactan’s shoulder: Kraw was riding on Tactan’s back.
Tactan leaned down and spoke loudly so Gnyphe could hear it over the cacophony surrounding them. “He does not understand that I am not a palanquin.”
“I will not be trampled by human herd,” Kraw said loftily. “No warrior’s death.”
“Jonno, look out!” Gnyphe grabbed the little boy by his shoulders and pulled him out of the way of a large man with angry eyes. She wished that she could throw the boy up on Tactan’s shoulders as well; Gnyphe knew how to weave through a crowd, but Little Jonno kept bumping into people. He’s going to give himself a black eye, Gnyphe thought, irked that she felt like Jonno’s annoyingly motherly sister. But Kat’s not here right now, so someone has to mother him.
“Jonno, where are we going? Did you already have a present figured out?” Gnyphe asked.
Smiling, Little Jonno patted his now-bulging pocket. “Yep! I was just collecting the money for it.”
Gnyphe rolled her eyes. So that’s why he kept running into people. “No pickpocketing while I’m around, Jonno—I know Kat’s told you to stop a hundred times now. If I recognize the people you stole from, I’ll make you give them their things back.”
Little Jonno pouted. “But I can’t afford to get Kat a gift any other way.”
“Well. . .” Gnyphe said, without ever finishing the statement. What could she say? The boy was right. However, Gnyphe noticed that Little Jonno, with his slender fingers no longer slipping into stray pockets, began sliding through the crowd as easily as she did. In the span of ten minutes they crossed to the middle of the market, an open circle lined with stalls and centered on a fountain, and stopped in front of the stall of a flower merchant. It was a large, wooden structure with a roof and half-walls; it appeared more permanent than its neighbors.
“Welcome to Vander’s Flowers,” the man behind the stall’s counter said brightly. He motioned toward the painted sign above him. “No flowers smell better or last longer! Now, who am I serving today?”
“Name’s Little Jonno,” Jonno pointed a thumb at himself, then flicked it at Gnyphe. “That’s Gnyphe.”
The vendor looked at Gnyphe and blinked. Then, quickly regaining professional courtesy, he smiled and said, “Like the kitchen knife? It’s a nickname, right?”
“No, that’s my name. Spelled with different runes, though. I made it up myself,” Gnyphe responded. Which was true—after stealing several books and discovering that she could read, Gnyphe had picked the strangest combinations of runes she could find and named herself after a common item. It seemed fittingly symbolic, even if learning she could read turned into another dead end. Since most people in Chapelport could read, discovering that skill didn’t reveal much about her missing past.
The vendor smiled and nodded, then turned his attention to Little Jonno, who was strutting up and down the stall, pointing at various flowers and asking questions about them. Gnyphe drifted closer to the stall, taking herself as far out of the passing crowd as she could, and let her attention wander. Near the fountain, there was a one-eyed man with a dancing black bear. The man strummed a small lute with one hand and smiled as he deftly pushed a bucket around with his feet and a gathering crowd dropped coins in. The bear, for its part, seemed to be enjoying itself, as it accented every other movement with a contented growl.
“Kat’s going to like the flowers, but I think she would have rather been here to see this with us,” Gnyphe said to Tactan and Kraw. Tactan absently nodded in agreement, its widening eyes focused on the bear.
“Warrior-heart,” Kraw responded. “Won’t ask for help—unless no option.”
“It would be nice if we could offer some help before she reaches that point,” Gnyphe said. Kraw’s words frustrated her because the kekeblin was right—Kat would probably even get annoyed that they were “helping” Little Jonno get her a birthday present. She would say he was perfectly capable of doing it himself—and if he wasn’t, she could do it for him.
“A Mezzite!” Tactan squealed. It whipped off into the crowd with a surprised grunt from Kraw, leaving Gnyphe alone with Little Jonno and the flower vendor. Gnyphe turned around and decided to observe Jonno’s haggling rather than chasing after the jhar-voor—after all, it literally had Kraw hovering over its shoulder to keep an eye on it. Given how Little Jonno had handled himself earlier with the older woman, and with how lively his hands were in a crowd, Gnyphe hoped to find his haggling entertaining.
“Minyre’s Tears will set you back five golden tithes each,” the vendor was saying to Little Jonno as he pointed at a flower with paper-thin, curling petals that were richly lavender. “And a silver tithe for a vase to match their beauty. They are among my most delicate of flowers.”
Little Jonno balked. “Five golden tithes for a flower? Just one? You want my arms, too?”
The vendor shrugged. “Novain’s truth, you will not find a fairer price. I have many other options that are far more affordable.”
Little Jonno patted his pocket with a frown. “I don’t know what I got on me, but it doesn’t feel heavy enough to be even one silver tithe.” He took a deep breath from the Minyre’s Tears arrangement and coughed into it. “That smells strong! Kat would like it for sure. Do you have something else like it?”
The vendor hastily shifted the flowers away from Little Jonno, then pointed across the stall. “They don’t have the same shape as Minyre’s Tears, but you could try some lilies, or daffodils, or roses, all of which have been bred for purple variations. Or I could help you pick another color if you have a particular message you’re trying to share—the same color on different flowers has different meanings. Red for love on the rose, of course, if you’re trying to woo your little sweetheart. . .”
Gnyphe couldn’t help but laugh. The vendor looked at her, confused, as Jonno’s face twisted into disgust. “Gross! No. This is for my big sister. I want something that says, ‘I love you even though your farts smell like toad burps.’”
“I’m not aware of any culture that has worked reactions to toad flatulence into flower symbolism,” the vendor said dryly.
Little Jonno leaned in conspiratorially. “You know that girls fart, right?”
“My wife is pregnant with our sixth child, all girls so far,” the vendor responded, eyes distant. “There are many secrets to the fairer sex that no man should learn.”
“What are those over there?” Gnyphe asked, pointing at a vase of flowers on the far edge of the counter. Their petals were long and thin and tightly bunched together, making each flower look like a round cloud set on a droopy stick. Most of the flowers’ petals were yellow and gold, blending from one side of the flower to the other in a subtle but pleasant transition. Some flowers in the same vase featured other color combinations: pink to red, orange to purple, and one green to teal.
“Vroash dandelions,” the vendor said. He picked a yellow one out and offered it to Gnyphe. “Their colors make them unique, but they make terrible dyes and grow everywhere down south, so they aren’t worth much. You can take the yellow one as a sample if you want.”
“That’s ‘cause dandelions are weeds,” Little Jonno grumbled. He glared at Gnyphe as she took the flower from the vendor and sniffed it with a smile
“I’ll give you two a moment to discuss your options,” the vendor said with a nod. He walked to the other side of the stall.
“These are nice, and they’re what you can afford,” Gnyphe said.
“I can’t afford any of the good flowers because you stopped me from stealing! If Kat has a bad day, it’s your fault.”
“Stopped him from what now?” The vendor looked up from a display he had been reorganizing.
Gnyphe kissed her teeth and used her yellow dandelion to point at one of the pink-and-red ones, hoping to distract both Jonno and the vendor. “Kat loves pink, right? And I don’t see any other flower that looks like one of these color-changing dandelions. It’ll be unique—just like Kat. How much is this one?”
The vendor scratched his jaw, eyeing Jonno suspiciously. “For you, a half-copper tithe. That includes some paper to carry it in. If you have some pewter tithes, I’ll surround it with greenery.”
Gnyphe had no idea what the actual value of these flowers were, but half-coppers and pewters were easy to come by. She looked down at Little Jonno who, she was surprised to see, had little tears glistening like crystals in the corners of his eyes. Gnyphe squeezed the little boy’s shoulder and reached into her pocket, then pulled out a silver quarter-tithe. “How many of the dandelions will this buy?”
The vendor smiled. “For Vroash dandelions, you would be incredibly generous. Tell you what, for that I’ll give you a dozen pink-and-reds, some blue-and-teals for contrast, and I’ll even include a nice wooden box with wreath lining to turn the whole thing into an arrangement. A bargain’s a bargain!”
“Deal,” Gnyphe said, dropping the coin in the man’s hand. He stowed the money under the counter and then set about preparing the flower arrangement, whistling as he did so. When he finished he handed the little box with its flowers and greenery to Gnyphe. Gnyphe set her Vroash dandelion in the box with the others.
“Tell your friends!” The vendor added. “Oh, and don’t forget to sprinkle those with water at every meal—just wet your fingers and flick them at the petals. Helps them stay perky a few extra days.”
“Thank you,” Gnyphe said. She turned and knelt beside Little Jonno, who was crouched on the ground with a dissatisfied expression and poking at a beetle. She pushed the dandelions into Jonno’s hands. “Kat’s going to love these. And she’s going to know just how much her little brother loves her, and just how grateful he is that she’s taking care of him.” Gnyphe tousled Jonno’s hair.
Little Jonno looked at the flowers, sniffed, and wiped his nose. “Yeah, these will do fine.” He looked down and whispered, so Gnyphe had to strain to hear him above the crowd, “Thanks, Gnyphe.”
“Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t mention it. This was all your idea—all Kat needs to know is that we escorted you and she’ll be happy.” Gnyphe stood and looked around, but didn’t see Tactan’s towering form over the crowd. She sighed, then decided to wait for the jhar-voor to come back rather than go hunting for it in the bustling market. She crouched again. “Is Kat doing okay?”
Little Jonno looked to the side. “Just. . . work.” Little Jonno’s face screwed up at the word. “Kat might be sick—she tries so hard, but she can’t always be choosy with whatever man’s got the tithes.” Little Jonno spat on the ground, his voice dripping with poison. “I hate them.”
Gnyphe felt ill at Jonno’s words. Kat worked a good area near the Bright Road, a bridge over the Chamberpot—but still under the Ebon Crown—for Ground City folk looking to get to the Lower Docks without risking a trip through the Chamberpot. The clients that passed that way were good, relatively speaking, but that didn’t change the fact that the most consistently available men of the area, sailors and other hard-working types, weren’t always honest about their health when looking for a bed to share. Gnyphe took one of Little Jonno’s hands and squeezed. “We’ll find her a good alchemist if that’s the case.”
“Why does she keep doing it? She doesn’t like it,” Little Jonno said. He stood and looked Gnyphe in the eyes, challenging, as if he somehow expected Gnyphe to actually have an answer—and knowing that he didn’t really want one, not unless it changed Kat being a prostitute. His hands, both holding the box of flowers, shook slightly.
Did he think he was going to change his sister’s mind today, Gnyphe wondered, if he got her a good enough birthday present? A small part of her loved Little Jonno for his single-minded wish, while the rest of her groaned at his naïve plan. Gnyphe smiled sadly and squeezed Little Jonno’s shoulder. “Your sister has a good little brother, Jonno.”
A commotion in the crowd grabbed Gnyphe’s attention. She stood and looked back to see Tactan’s head cresting a sea of people, moving directly toward her—and right behind it, a bullish, hairy, angry Mezzite woman with a prominent tusk on each side of her mouth. Holding Little Jonno’s hand, Gnyphe joined pace with Tactan as it dashed toward the market exit, dancing around pedestrians and stalls. Kraw was still on the jhar-voor’s shoulder, his ears perked in pleasure.
There was a sound of cracking wood behind them; Gnyphe glanced back just in time to see the Mezzite woman explode through a vegetable merchant’s stall, sending wooden splinters and green leaves everywhere. “My cabbages!” the merchant wailed as the Mezzite woman barreled past him. Shadows writhed and made wolfish shapes in ecstasy of chaos, visible only to Gnyphe.
As Gnyphe and the others dashed out of the market entrance and into a normal Chapelport street, rushing past surprised people in their flight, Gnyphe looked up at Tactan and said between breaths, “What did you do this time?”
“I asked a harmless question about the role of tusks in mating!” Tactan huffed in annoyance.
Copyright © 2025 by David Ludlow
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