Home, stinky home, Gnyphe thought to herself. She couldn’t explain why, but once she stepped into the cool shadow of the Chamberpot, felt the weight of tons and tons of stone suspended in the air high above her head, she felt her darkness begin to fall asleep again. It was a mixed comfort.
The road that Gnyphe, Tactan, and Little Jonno walked—Kraw still clung to Tactan’s back—rolled nearly as much as the waves that lapped against Chapelport’s docks. Fluttery lanternlight pushed back the darkness on the streets and left deep pools of shadow where the road dipped or where a guttered-out lantern had yet to be revived by the torchguard. The second-story overhang of the Chamberpot’s buildings wasn’t as pronounced as in the Ground City, making each block of homes look like they were pulling themselves upward, away from the smell seeping up from the ground, and making them feel taller than their average two stories; it also had the effect of making the alleys between buildings much narrower. Gnyphe kept a watchful eye on the area around her, ready to disappear into a shadow at the slightest movement, but walked easily all the same. She was with her friends, in a group, near the Chamberpot’s entrance, and there were few others wandering the street. If anywhere was safe in the Chamberpot, it was here and now.
That didn’t stop Gnyphe from moving quickly, however. The Chamberpot as a whole only got sunlight two times during the day. First, when the sun rose above the waves of the Lower Docks and flooded the eastern side of the city with rays of deliciously warm light, drenching the Chamberpot buildings closest to the docks and at least illuminating the roofs and some streets of those farther in. Second, now, was when the sun was nearly directly overhead, shining light down through the thin spaces between the bridges of the Ebon Crown, brightening the nicer parts of the Chamberpot and leaving the rest of it in a dusk-like state. This light would wane as the sun fell and begin to dip behind the tall Quillback mountains lining Chapelport’s bent mountain pass, leaving the Chamberpot in darkness until the next morning. Gnyphe knew she and Kraw could handle themselves when the Chamberpot’s night life began to fill its (at the moment) largely empty streets, but, if she had to be about at night, she preferred Tactan to be safely in their shared home, Little Jonno wherever he and Kat were holed up.
“I think she’s going to like these a lot. We’ll put them on the sun window, away from the bars so no one can grab them, and the morning breeze will fill the room with their smell,” Jonno said, holding the flowers before him.
“Window?” Gnyphe asked, brows raised. Had Kat and Little Jonno moved off the streets without her learning about it? She hadn’t seen Kat or Jonno for a few weeks—Kat worked a prostitute’s schedule while Jonno scrounged and begged, and she and Little Jonno regularly changed which alley they lived in for their own safety. It led to disconnects from time to time.
It used to be that such weeks would pass in a painful blink of an eye for Gnyphe, busy as she was pursuing fruitless clues and leads into her missing past. Lately, time’s passage was just painful as she aimlessly wandered the streets with Tactan, hoping against hope to find a new lead.
“Rabbit food, that,” Kraw said, his nose pointed toward the flowers.
“No!” Little Jonno replied, holding the flowers as far away from the kekeblin as he could manage. Kraw keked slowly in amusement.
“How close are we to meeting Kat?” Tactan asked.
Gnyphe looked at Little Jonno. “Where are we meeting Kat?”
“We moved into a room near where Kat. . . works from,” Jonno said. “She saved up enough to. . . I don’t know, give away the tithes we had to someone who don’t care about us at all. Have less food to eat for a week or two. We were doing just fine without a room.” Little Jonno sounded disgusted by the word.
“So you meant a real window?” Gnyphe said, heart soaring for her friends. “You aren’t streetlings anymore!”
“I did think flowers were a strange gift to brighten up an alleyway,” Tactan said.
Jonno didn’t look enthused about the change. “She makes me take baths now! Once a week! She’s a slave master.”
Kraw grunted in agreement. “Truly terrible.”
“You don’t take baths, Kraw,” Tactan said, poking at the kekeblin’s nose, which made Kraw sneeze. Then Tactan straightened. “You don’t take baths! Disgusting! Get off my back. No more free rides.” Tactan flicked its large hands toward Kraw’s face and the unperturbed kekeblin dropped to the ground. He loped on all fours until he was between Gnyphe and Little Jonno, then folded his front claws together by his chest and walked on his back legs alone in a quick waddle.
“I’m very excited to see it,” Gnyphe added. She wondered how he had forgotten to mention this when he’d found her the day before and asked for help with Kat’s birthday—moving off the street was a big change for Kat and Jonno.
Little Jonno’s expression fell, his eyes widening and his mouth tightening. Tactan noticed it first, followed his expression down the street to an apartment building—one of the ground floor rooms had its door broken inward. Tactan pointed, said, “Is that one of your neighbors? This area could probably use a few more Guard patrols.”
“Kat!” Little Jonno cried. He broke into a sprint, box of flowers held tightly to his body.
Tactan paused, then exclaimed, “Oh! That is your new home!” Only then did the jhar-voor start running.
Kraw and Gnyphe, on the other hand, acted almost as quickly as Little Jonno did. Kraw easily caught up with the boy, bounding on all fours beside him, teeth bared and tail curled in preparation for a fight. Gnyphe took note of the shadow she was standing in, then another on a wall between two torches near Kat’s home. Gnyphe let herself fall into the shadow she stood in—a thick shadow, not entirely obscuring, she slid through it easily—then came feet-first out of the wall shadow. She bent her body in the air, landed in a crouch, then dashed in front of Kraw and Little Jonno, holding her hands out to stop them. “Shush!” Gnyphe hissed.
The red in Kraw’s multicolored eyes seemed particularly vibrant, emphasizing the white scar over his eye. “Kill invader,” the kekeblin whispered.
“Maybe, but be quiet about it. If the intruder is still there, don’t alert him to our presence, okay? Take the advantage of stealth, if we haven’t lost it already?” Gnyphe glared at the two of them, then fixed a careful eye on Little Jonno. “I want you to stay out here with Tactan. Neither of you are allowed to go inside until Kraw and I check it out.”
“But Kat could be in trouble!” Little Jonno hissed, his face reddening and more tears threatening to leak out the corners. “I can’t just stand outside!”
“You can, but you won’t just stand around,” Gnyphe whispered. She glanced around the unusually empty street—she should have sensed something was off. “Keep an eye out. Look for someone suspicious leaving, or someone else coming in. You can do that, right? For Kat? Just don’t attack them—you let me and Kraw know before you do anything, ok?”
Sniffing, Little Jonno nodded. The boy looked even smaller as he hugged his box of flowers to his chest, squashing some of the Vroash dandelions.
Gnyphe patted Little Jonno’s cheek, then looked up at Tactan, who had caught up while Gnyphe was instructing Little Jonno. “You caught enough of that?”
“If that’s where I’m needed,” Tactan said, nodding. “Jonno, you’re going to need to teach me how to keep a good watch. I’ve never observed a human do it, but since stealth seems to be an important aspect of it, that could mean that I’ve only been around masters of the craft.”
Kraw swayed his body side to side, an agitated motion, while Little Jonno led Tactan to a shadowed alley across the street with good visibility of the area. Little Jonno disappeared almost immediately, then reappeared as he helped Tactan find proper cover in the shadows. Gnyphe looked down at Kraw and jerked her head toward the apartment. “Let’s go. Quietly.”
Kraw nodded. “Attack Kat? Deserve coward’s death. We will sneak.”
“Don’t hurt anyone if you don’t have to,” Gnyphe said. Kraw’s response was a grunt.
The door lay on the floor of the apartment. Its latch was broken and wooden splinters covered the floor. Kraw paused at the entry to Kat’s home and sniffed the floor, then lifted his torso to sniff as high up the doorframe as he could reach. He bent his tail in a unique shape, glanced back at Gnyphe, and padded into the apartment. Gnyphe followed behind him.
Little Jonno had mentioned earlier that his new home was a room; Gnyphe might have considered calling it a large closet. It was lit by two lanterns, one on each side, with some bedrolls leaned against the eastern wall. Cabinets were set in the far wall, a cooking area crammed into the western wall. The room was centered around a small table, knocked on its side and featuring a broken leg; it rested on top of a frayed rug with bloodstains on it. Gnyphe couldn’t tell how fresh they were from sight alone—and the general stink of the Chamberpot prevented her from telling by smell—but the way Kraw’s lips curled back a little more over his fangs made her assume they were fresh enough. Her heartbeat quickened. What would they find on the other side of that table?
Then Kraw rested on his haunches, paws on his belly, looking almost disappointed. “Kat blood, not fresh. Two smells, not Kat, not Jonno, on the doorframe—intruders. All gone. No vengeance, for now.”
Gnyphe had already come to the conclusion that the apartment had to be empty, mostly because there was nowhere to hide. Still, she crept slowly around the room, opposite from Kraw, and tried to keep the gnawing worry in her stomach at bay as she drew closer to seeing the other side of the fallen table. Where’s Kat?
A knife stuck out of the table’s face, its blade bloody with a dried trail running down the table. Something glittered near where the blood trail met the rug. Gnyphe knelt and smoothed out the folds of mussed fabric, then gasped.
There was a finger on the ground with a ring still on it. Gnyphe easily recognized the ring—Kat always wore it when she wasn’t working a street—a simple, silver band with a dark, glittering, polished Quillback stone set in the top. Other than Little Jonno, it was the one thing of value she had.
The worst possible outcomes leaped into Gnyphe’s mind. She felt tears burning in the corner of her eyes and hunched her head, willing them to stop. Her friends wouldn’t be ashamed to see her cry, but she couldn’t let herself yet—she didn’t know what had happened to Kat. Kraw padded his way over to her, sniffing avidly and walking on his hind legs, then pointed his nose at Kat’s finger for a moment. Kraw rubbed the side of his head against Gnyphe’s shoulder.
“These are marked for death. We find them,” he muttered.
Gnyphe nodded.
Kraw continued, “Many smells. But still, I can tell. A few hours. Not terrible for trail.”
Gnyphe wiped at the corners of her eyes and took a deep breath before looking around the room. “There’s no body; she may be alive. She clearly put up a fight. . .” Gnyphe stared at Kat’s finger for a moment. It lay on the rug, pale and still, cold, in complete antithesis to everything that Kat had been. The darkness in Gnyphe’s belly expanded. Instead of shifting in agitation as normal, the darkness radiated anger and. . . hunger, but not for food. An idea of catching up with whoever had done this and hanging them by their own entrails crawled into Gnyphe’s mind.
Gnyphe shuddered and looked away from Kat’s finger. You do not own me, she thought inwardly. She had repeated those words many times before. She forced herself to look up, away from the blood, and stared through the open doorway to the street. “Could you find them?”
Kraw grunted, then walked out past the threshold. He crouched on all four legs as he pressed his nose to the foot-worn stones of the Chamberpot’s streets. He hopped forward, sniffed again, then hopped again. In a few moments, Kraw was out of sight, following a scent trail. Tactan and Little Jonno then emerged from their hiding spot and hurried over.
Kraw will return if he finds something, Gnyphe told herself. No need to act rashly. On instinct, she took Kat’s finger—the coolness of its flesh created a feeling of clammy wetness that made Gnyphe’s skin crawl—and shoved it in her pocket. To protect Jonno, she told herself, and wondered how many things Jonno would have to tell himself to make it through the day. Just before Little Jonno and Tactan entered, Gnyphe jumped into the doorway and pressed her hands against the frame. She looked Little Jonno in the eye. “I won’t stop you, but I want to warn you. . . brace yourself.”
“By the Dark,” Tactan said, covering half its face with one hand.
Little Jonno looked around Gnyphe, his face red and shiny. “I see blood.”
Gnyphe nodded.
“Is she behind the table?”
Kat’s finger in Gnyphe’s pocket felt like an iron weight. Gnyphe cleared her throat and answered, “No.”
Little Jonno stared with unfocused eyes for a moment. He whispered, “I always worried that one day, after leaving, she would never come back. Instead, someone came to us and took her away,” then collapsed to his knees, tears dribbling from his chin. The box of flowers slipped from his fingers, scattering petals on the stone floor.
Gnyphe and Tactan knelt to pick Little Jonno up, then, with the light failing and nowhere nearby to go, they pulled him inside his ransacked home and rested him on his sleeping pad. Gnyphe sat next to the boy and held his hand as he squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. Find us something, Kraw. And please let it be her, or be a sign that she’s alive, Gnyphe prayed. She didn’t have faith in any of Chapelport’s many gods—more out of a lack of interest than anything else—but she hoped that one of them would hear her.
Meanwhile, Tactan stepped outside to collect the battered flowers that Little Jonno had dropped.
#
Biggins crouched on a rooftop, feeling the cool stone through his rag-wrapped feet, and stared down at a ground-level apartment on the other side of the street. He’d originally returned to clean up, make it look like the girl had just disappeared, but it seemed that her crowd had already found out she was missing. Biggins narrowed his eyes. It was a dangerous crowd, judging from the oversized claw and bright scar on her kekeblin pet. Biggins was relieved that thing wasn’t around when he and Skimps had nabbed the red-haired girl; he felt a stab of fear that the creature was hunting for him right now. But the big man consoled himself. After all, he and Skimps had passed through many of the most wretched parts of the Chamberpot—not even a kekeblin could track something through that smell. Right?
Biggins marked the double square on his chest with his thumb and middle finger to ward off ill luck. He watched as the tall jhar-voor strode out of the small apartment, ducking its head to avoid hitting the doorframe; Biggins felt a moment of excitement. With the kekeblin gone, if the scary-looking jhar-voor left then the small streetling girl should be no match for him—and by the cut of her raggedy robe, she was a streetling nobody, the exact type that Cesteel was looking for anyway. Her, and the boy. . . Hopefully that would be all of the red-haired girl’s human friends, all gone into the Pool with her and there’d be no one left to remember her—other than the jhar-voor and the kekeblin, but who in the Guard would pursue a lead from those two monsters? In the Chamberpot, no less? No no, that would effectively tie up all loose ends.
Well, Biggins would remember them, and Cesteel, but then that was the point if they were to ever understand how the Pool worked. And Biggins and Cesteel weren’t going crying to the Guard about some missing kids. Especially not Cesteel. Not after rebuilding from the stone up after some. . . creature destroyed the old believers. So the records told, and, like a decent Quinten, Biggins appreciated good records.
Biggins frowned deeply as the jhar-voor knelt, picked up some flowers, and entered the apartment again. Let all be all and know nothing, Biggins cursed, tugging on his beard. He wished Skimps were there; Skimps, not a believer in the Quintenssion, or anything really, didn’t understand that curse, and that made Biggins feel smarter than Skimps. He didn’t consider himself a good Quinten, but he did believe that he was furthering true knowledge and experience in his own way. His mother would be ashamed of this kidnapping business; she probably would disown him if the old crone hadn’t kicked the bucket a year or so back and left him with nothing—forced him to join up with Cesteel, dirty his hands for a few tithes. Good riddance to the old bag, Biggins thought, then felt some guilt for the sentiment.
Another hour dragged on. What little noon sunlight that had leaked through the Ebon Crown’s bridges into the Chamberpot dissolved, ushering in early dark. It seemed clear now that the humans weren’t going to be left alone. Biggins wondered if it would be worth it to just try and smash the job—run in quick under a cloak of shadows and snatch the boy and girl, then disappear into the alleys and sewers before the jhar-voor could do anything about it. Probably wasn’t worth the risk. Biggins didn’t know what the bug-monster was capable of anyway.
Rotten luck, that’s it, Biggins thought, preparing himself to go. Never good to leave behind anyone who might come sniffing around for a missing urchin. Well, Biggins wasn’t looking to risk his neck more than necessary to clean this up. Sometimes Cesteel just had a feeling about grabbing certain riskier targets, and there was no helping it. Or explaining it, as she’d say something about the Pool leading her. Dusting his hands, Biggins rose to walk away, then ducked again as a pale, ghostly girl stepped out of the apartment and looked around, giving Biggins a clear view of her face.
Biggins paused. He blinked, then looked again. Her features, though obscured by shadow, were unmistakable.
“Kraw?” The girl said.
Even that voice— Biggins thought. This was not Cesteel, but it was scary how much this girl made him think of Cesteel. Bizarre. Biggins hunkered down on the roof, out of sight, and chewed a nail while he made his thinker think as hard as he could. If only Skimps were here to bounce a few thoughts off of. . .
Biggins suddenly realized that it had grown dark enough he couldn’t see his hands anymore.
Not worth my time, Biggins reluctantly thought, then crawled backward. First and foremost, he needed to return and report. He hopped onto a nearby rooftop and looked around, then pulled out a firetube—a glass cylinder filled with bright, but not burning, firebeetle feces—and walked by its light, dropping to the ground of an alley a few houses later.
Perhaps the new ghost-looking girl would be a perfect candidate for the Pool, too. He wondered what Cesteel would think about this rare find.
Copyright © 2025 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 