In the Chamberpot, “mountainside” was a very literal description: it referred to either of the city district’s sides that touched a Quillback mountain. Both sides had the thickest and widest parts of the Ebon Crown bridges directly above them, and the torchguard only put forth token efforts to keep the torches and lanterns of mountainside Chamberpot alight; as a result, they were often cave-dark, even when other parts of the Chamberpot had some light.

Kraw moved comfortably, padding along with his claws raised so they didn’t click on the cobbled stones. Gnyphe followed swiftly, silently behind. She was used to the dark of the Chamberpot, accustomed to trusting senses other than her eyes to help her navigate—although she still made use of what little her eyes could see when there was even the barest spark of light. And where Gnyphe’s own senses failed her, something about the shifting of the darkness in her stomach helped her to maintain an awareness of her surroundings; however much she hated her darkness, she found some of the abilities that came with it too useful to ignore.

The Chamberpot’s stirring nightlife shivered in response to their passing, cloaked figures stepping back into alleys and open doors slamming shut. Once or twice Gnyphe thought she felt someone following them, but Kraw’s route through twisting alleys quickly lost any pursuers.

Chapelport is like the story of the mad alchemist who turned himself into a devil, Gnyphe thought, remembering an aged book she had stolen, the feel of its dry and crinkling pages in her hands. With the sun, this city is warm and friendly and inviting. Then night comes along with claws and fangs of iron. For parts of the city, the sun never comes.

Gnyphe had long gotten over her concern about walking around unarmed. The feelings the darkness in her stomach sent to her, let alone her dreams of becoming a monster, were more than enough to keep her from even touching a dagger—but because she could pass through shadows, she never needed one. Kraw was aware that Gnyphe would disappear if they were attacked and knew to plan accordingly.

Sounds occasionally gurgled through sewer grates composed of bars affixed in metal rims, set in the center of streets and alleys; a foul stench rose from them that raised the hair on Gnyphe’s arms. It smelled like the entire city, at once, had decided to relieve itself, and everything was flowing through the same street of the Chamberpot. When the scent became too much, Gnyphe wrapped her face cloth around her nose and inhaled the cinnamon she had rubbed in it to cover the Chamberpot’s smell; normally she only did this when travelling within a sewer.

Their pace ground at Gnyphe as she felt the minutes slide by like sands falling through an hourglass. She recognized the area they were moving into—when she raised her face cloth off her mouth, the usual sour scent of the Chamberpot was coupled with a taste of ash in the air. They were nearing the crematoriums.

This information itself didn’t add to Gnyphe’s concerns. The least likely place for a living Kat to be brought to was a crematorium—or, at least, the buildings weren’t worth the time to search before other, more horrible places in the area, places she only knew of for having scoured the Chamberpot top to bottom in search of her past. Places that only existed in the shadow of a crematorium, a shadow the Guard and other normal folk felt and avoided even in the darkness of mountainside Chamberpot. A sense of restlessness surrounded the area, as if it were brimming with spirits on business.

Kraw stopped under a torch, pressed his nose nearly to the ground, and began sniffing. Then he sneezed, rubbed his nose with the back of his furry paw, and said, “Here. Trail no good. Where found torn dress, though.”

Frankly, Gnyphe was amazed that the kekeblin had been able to track any scent this far. “What exact spot?” Gnyphe said.

Kraw pointed with his tail at a broken stone edging the road; Gnyphe crouched beside it and pulled out a firetube to reveal yellow fibers still attached to a jagged edge. She kissed her teeth, looked around her, then began stacking nearby stones as she thought. Kraw continued sniffing as she did so, ducking in and out of alleys as he moved down the street. A few minutes later he returned and flicked an ear, the kekeblin equivalent of a shrug; a slight rocking to his torso revealed his agitation. They both knew that Kat’s time was limited, but also that some fates were worse than death.

Gnyphe glanced at the buildings that surrounded them. This was one of the least inviting Chamberpot streets that she had ever walked. Stark stone walls sullenly huddled in place, each holding very few windows, and those windows that were present were small and barred. Each door had a thick lock that said, It would take too much effort to break me. Try the next guy over. And though she couldn’t see it, she could feel the nearby mountain, cut away to provide more room for the city and stone for the bridges above.

“There’s a brothel nearby—an illegal one. The patrons there can do almost whatever they want to the girls,” Gnyphe said, feeling bile rise as she thought. “Maybe one of Kat’s customers wanted more, paid for her to be taken. . .”

The darkness surrounding Gnyphe became almost palpable. For a moment she felt she was in her dream again, swimming in shadow almost made liquid. The darkness in her stomach trembled and she saw herself stepping through shadows and dancing around brothelers like a demon, disemboweling them with ease.

Stop, she thought. They deserve it, but. . . that’s not me. I don’t want that to be me.

In her mind’s eye she saw the same vision, but with Kraw doing the killing.

“I said go away,” Gnyphe whispered. “He can live with it—I’m glad he can. But that won’t be me.”

Her darkness trembled, then stilled again. Gnyphe let out another breath.

Kraw growled, long and low, his eyes appearing very red again, luminous in the reflected firetube light. “Show me.”

Gnyphe nodded and stood, reviewed what she remembered, and ran down the street. She slowed again several alleys later, stowed her firetube, waited until she felt Kraw brush up behind her, and said, “Two intersections down, turn right. Watch out for sentries—this place is heavily surveilled.”

Clicking sounds told Gnyphe that Kraw had decided to scale the building they were next to, his claws easily clinging to the uneven surface and lines where stone was mortared together. She looked up and said, “Wait.”

The clicking stopped. There was silence in the darkness.

“Don’t kill anyone if you don’t have to. It might put Kat in danger. Make sure she’s safe first—get her out if you can. Better, get me to help get her out. Then, if you need to. . .”

A frustrated growl, then Kraw finished climbing the building.

Gnyphe focused on the area around her, shifts in the movement of air, any sounds her ears picked up on, and worried. She hoped that Kraw found Kat; then they would know where she was, that she was alive, and they could try to help her. She hoped that Kraw didn’t find Kat; what a terrible fate to befall her friend, even if she survived! But if they didn’t find Kat here—then where did they go next? Every moment lost could be the difference between Kat living or dying, experiencing some terrible abuse or barely escaping it, and Gnyphe’s only direction was to assume one of these places had gobbled her up.

Little Jonno must be so scared, Gnyphe thought.

Gnyphe felt something nudge her leg. She immediately pushed herself backward and, with effort, melted into the darkness cloaking the wall behind her, then came out of a wall farther down the street, breathing hard. She could use pure darkness like she used shadow, but she avoided it when possible; passing through true darkness felt like she was trying to force open an enormous, heavy door. It left her exhausted.

“Gnyphe,” Kraw’s voice rumbled.

Gnyphe narrowed her eyes, then whispered, “You snuck up on me.”

“Thinking too hard, you. Someone else, you could be hurt.” Gnyphe heard clicking noises and knew that the kekeblin was allowing his claws to hit the ground as he walked back to her, to let her know where he was. Inwardly she chided herself for letting her guard down. Kraw continued, “Empty.”

“Empty?” Gnyphe whispered.

“Read,” Kraw said, and something crinkled in the dark. Gnyphe fished around in her cloak for her firetube again; in its light, she could see Kraw gripping an ink-stained, crumpled piece of paper with the end of his tail.

Gnyphe took the paper. “This illegal and immoral establishment has been closed by the order of the Chapelport Guard. Its owners and patrons have been sent to hang,” she began. “If you wish to dispute this matter, please present yourself to the Chamberpot Guardhouse near the Lower Docks side of the Bright Road—” Gnyphe stopped reading and pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose. What wonderful, terrible timing the Guard had. After a moment she looked down at Kraw. “How long?”

“Old smells, nearly gone. Week, maybe more.”

Gnyphe kissed her teeth. Then there was no chance of Kat having been there. Where was she? Who had taken her? Gnyphe thought of everything in the area she was aware of and began organizing it from most to least likely to kidnap a prostitute.

“We may have a long night ahead of us, Kraw.”

#

Tactan glanced out the doorway again, then resumed lounging. Little Jonno snored softly on his sleeping pad nearby—Tactan wasn’t certain whether the boy had fallen asleep again naturally or as a defense against further questions. Granted, Tactan was growing tired itself as time dragged on, but it could put this body in stasis after Gnyphe and Kraw returned. It’s not like my mind needs the rest, Tactan thought, wishing it had another body in the area. But it wasn’t wise to put too many eggs into one bucket, as the humans liked to say. Tactan could easily imagine certain advantages to having two of its jhar-voor located in Chapelport. . . But it only had three, which meant Tactan would be committing most of its bodies to a single location. Too risky.

But I’m finding so much to learn here! Tactan thought. Little Jonno had been a wellspring of clarifying information, so much so that Tactan began to wonder if Gnyphe really knew the answers to Tactan’s earlier questions. Of course humans weren’t required to exchange currency to spawn offspring! What a silly thing for Gnyphe to believe. It made no logical sense whatsoever.

Now, what was more interesting was that human women, upon successful procreation, grew their offspring within them, just as the voor did, and even expelled the offspring from their own bodies, also like the voor, but somehow human woman normally survived the ordeal. . . very curious. Although, if they really do only produce one—ah, what’s the word again—child at once, usually, there would be no reasonable explanation for how many of them there are if the human mother perished like a voor parent, so it only makes sense that humans can go on having children for years and years. Tactan felt a longing sensation that surprised it. It kept thinking about the families it had seen earlier and felt a strange emptiness. It would die if it ever decided to spawn sporelings—no voor had spawned sporelings in Tactan’s lifetime, but its parental memories told it the experience was slow and agonizing as well.

Silence dripped by like beads of water falling from an overhang.

I’ve been following Gnyphe around for too long, Tactan thought seriously as it grappled with feelings that somehow both filled it and made it feel empty. Tactan wondered if it were time to wander off somewhere else. I’ve heard the skinchangers in the deepest parts of the Brown Forest are quite interesting. . .

Little Jonno snored loudly and rolled over. Tactan turned its attention back to the boy and felt guilt for having considered leaving. Regardless of where it went in the future, leaving Chapelport now would entail abandoning its friends, something it would not do.

There was a rustling sound. Tactan turned around and said brightly, “Ah, four humans with dark cloaks and covered faces! I’m going to get mugged again, aren’t I?” Then Tactan remembered Little Jonno and thought, Oh. . . his body is perishable. Right. Tactan pulled itself to its feet and balled its hands into trembling fists; it shook them at the approaching humans, hoping to scare them off without actually needing to fight, as it stepped into the street. “I definitely know what to do with these!”

#

As the sun began inching its way above the ocean, warm light flooded over Chapelport once again, cascading through the streets and pooling on the eastern sides of buildings, overflowing, then pouring off edges in sideways-streaming waterfalls. Men, women, and children stood on the flat-topped roofs of buildings, drinking in the light before beginning their days. Lanterns and torches set out by the torchguard, almost as if the thick light were actually streaming water, began winking out as the Chamberpot woke up to the brightest part of its day.

But in the alley where Gnyphe stood, near to the partially excavated, concave side of the mountain, morning just meant that total darkness was lightened into shadowy twilight.

Gnyphe slipped out of a shadow and shook her head at Kraw. “Just dogfighting and cockfighting. No people.” The fighting ring had been a long shot, but Gnyphe had begun to run out of ideas; their search was growing dangerously close to one for closure rather than rescue, though Gnyphe refused to confront that fear.

Kraw swayed slightly on his hind legs, then rested his front paws on the ground to balance on all fours. Even the stoic kekeblin was showing signs of exhaustion.

“We need to return. Collect Little Jonno and Tactan—take them to my home,” Gnyphe mumbled, hoping that Jonno wouldn’t despair at their failure. She set off down the alley and Kraw followed, ears drooping and tail curled under him. Even the darkness in Gnyphe’s belly seemed drained after a long night of regular agitation, now sitting as a heavy, still lump.

Despite how tired she was, Gnyphe couldn’t give up the idea that she would find Kat alive—after all of her time spent searching for her own past, she knew plenty of places in other parts of the Chamberpot where Kat could have been taken. Assuming Kat was in one of those places. Unfortunately, the Chamberpot held more secrets than anyone could ferret out in a lifetime, but Gnyphe didn’t have a lifetime to search. At best, Kat’s life was now being measured in hours. And Gnyphe was tired enough that she had no choice but to rest—if she continued to push herself, she would make mistakes, which could put her own life, and Kraw’s, at risk.

Memories of Kat flashed through Gnyphe’s mind as she walked. Her friend was outgoing, independent, and resourceful. She could be tough and severe, but also loving and caring—particularly with Little Jonno. She was the kind of woman who could survive under any circumstances. Gnyphe had to hold on to that belief—if life was an option, Kat would cling to it until her fingers were torn off.

Kat’s finger weighed heavily in Gnyphe’s pocket. She wished she had thought of a better comparison.

“Spare a tithe?”

At the sudden sound, Gnyphe instinctively ducked into a shadow between two sputtering lanterns, but froze before passing through it. An elderly woman with a wart that covered half of her left brow was hobbling down the road, supporting herself with a crooked cane. The woman held out a hand and smiled gumlessly toward the shadow Gnyphe had ducked into, but not quite at Gnyphe herself.

“Tithe? Spare a tithe?”

Kraw bared his teeth, but Gnyphe stepped out of the shadows and waved a calming hand at him. She eyed the woman. The odds that she knew anything about Kat were lower than Kat being kidnapped by dogfighters, but at this point Gnyphe hoped that anything was possible. “Do you spend much time in the streets around the crematorium?”

The old woman shrugged, looking Gnyphe up and down as she did so with one bright eye—the other was clouded over. “I walk many streets. Maybe I see things, maybe I don’t.” She hobbled to the nearest wall and slid down it with a sigh, ending with her elbows on her knees. Her voice had a rasp indicative of long years of drinking and smoking. “What do you want to know?”

“We’re looking for a missing person,” Gnyphe said.

The beggar woman stared at Gnyphe eerily. “You talk like a woman, but you don’t look like you’ve reached your womanhood yet. There’s bad men about—and worse.”

Gnyphe rubbed the bags under her eyes—she wasn’t thinking straight. This was just a random beggar woman. Even if she had been around when Kat’s kidnappers passed through with her, would she have noticed anything other than sounds in the dark? If she saw them dragging Kat under a lantern or torch, a smart beggar woman would have turned and run. This was a waste of time. Gnyphe kept walking.

“They took my babies,” the woman said sadly.

Gnyphe paused. Almost certainly whatever the woman said was unrelated—or made up, a ploy to convert pity into money—but she was looking for someone who had been taken. And she needed a break. She sat on her heels, back to a wall, and looked at the beggar woman.

She continued. “A girl and a boy. They took both of them. I’d been looking after them so long I don’t much know what to do now that I’m Old Frumps alone again. Both got bit by the sewer rats when they were little, got the lingering cough. Not much good for labor or. . . trollkin eating. Why would anyone take them?” Old Frumps’ wrinkled face crumpled into a frown and small tears leaked out of the corner of her eyes.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Gnyphe said, and she meant it. The yawning pit where her memories were supposed to be ached. Her parents—what had they looked like? Were they the kind of people to spend years in grief and misery searching for their lost child, or had they given up when the pain was too great to bear?

Gnyphe refused to let Kat’s story end with the same questions that so many other streetlings’ stories ended, the same way her own story might have ended for whoever had waited for her until waiting was too much. Gnyphe pitied the old woman; she tossed a copper tithe to Old Frumps.

Through her crying, Old Frumps snatched the small coin out of the air like a snake struck a mouse. “Thank ‘ee, thank ‘ee.”

Kraw grunted and began walking away. Before following him, Gnyphe asked, “A long, yellow dress. Was being carried or dragged. Lots of red hair. Does that sound familiar?”

Old Frumps shook her head. “I seen no such person, but many street children disappearing of late. More’n usual. Not much to say what happened to ‘em. Few, very few that do come home. . . something wrong with them.”

Gnyphe couldn’t help herself. She tossed another coin toward Old Frumps and asked, “What’s wrong with them? The ones that come back?”

 “Thanks, much thanks.” Old Frumps fumbled with the coins, hiding them somewhere within her patched clothing, then fixed Gnyphe with a serious stare. “Not lying, this Old Frumps. I seen it with my own eyes. Streetlings—even little ones—wandering the streets, wide-eyed, like they’d never seen none of this before. Their minds are gone. . . don’t remember nothing. Smart urchins, once knew how to live as good as the roads can give, now they heads empty. Now. . . maybe my babies. . .”

“Heads empty. . .” Gnyphe whispered. She knew that feeling well herself—her own head felt as if so much that should be there had been stolen.

“Gnyphe,” Kraw said.

It was difficult, but Gnyphe pulled her eyes away from Old Frumps and looked at Kraw, standing down the road. The kekeblin was very serious, with his ears pointed forward and his tail whipping occasionally.

“We go. Jonno wait, Tactan wait—Kat wait,” Kraw grunted.

Gnyphe forced herself to her feet and stumbled after Kraw, mind racing. Kat wasn’t a streetling anymore—if someone was kidnapping urchins and doing strange things to them, taking their memories away, they’d have no reason to snatch up Kat. Right? It sounded crazy—it sounded too much like exactly what had happened to Gnyphe.

A fire lit in Gnyphe’s heart. Perhaps what had happened to her had happened to Kat. If so, this was the best lead she’d had in years—and in helping Kat, she could discover her own past. In fact, it would be a wonderful breakthrough if—

Wonderful. Guilt rested uncomfortably in Gnyphe’s stomach, like a buildup of too much acid. Was she really hoping that her friend had been kidnapped and her memories stolen?

“Old Frumps never lie!” Old Frumps shouted as Gnyphe and Kraw walked away. “I want my babies!”

Gnyphe shivered, but from the words of Old Frumps or from the darkness stirring again in her belly she couldn’t tell. She pulled her cloak a little tighter. “That was creepy.”

Kraw nodded in response, then said, “Hungry.”

“There’s a bakery between the Lower Docks and the Chamberpot, not far out of our way to Kat’s apartment. I’ll buy us some food. Little Jonno and Tactan should be hungry, too,” Gnyphe said. Meanwhile, Old Frumps’ words, Many street children disappearing of late. More’n usual, echoed in her mind.

Kraw grunted.

Gnyphe tried to distract herself: “Maybe there are some other kekeblin we can speak to in the Chamberpot?” At Kraw’s glare she added, “Obviously they wouldn’t have taken Kat, but maybe they smelled something.”

Kraw shook his head. “Watchers and Seekers don’t like the Chamberpot. Noses sensitive. Strange, me.” He fell silent again.

Their minds are gone. . . don’t remember nothing. Gnyphe shivered. What other guesses did she have? Maybe slavers had taken Kat, but that was unlikely—slavery was illegal in all of northern Karna until the icy lands of Goshen. Kidnapping streetlings in the Chamberpot and shipping them to the icy north couldn’t be profitable. The Quorum—Chapelport’s governing body—had long spoken of cleaning up the Chamberpot, but they would never attempt to do that by kidnapping and experimenting on streetlings. Of course not—and if either case were true, why would any of the streetlings return at all, memory loss notwithstanding?

Maybe whatever had happened to Gnyphe—whether it was a cult, a gang, a mad alchemist, or an undead wizard kidnapping children and erasing their memories—was happening again, and had dragged Kat away.

Or maybe the connection only seemed so obvious because Gnyphe was desperate for her own lifeline. She did, after all, only have the words of a random street beggar supporting that theory.

Don’t make this about you, Gnyphe told herself. First, Kat.

---

ID Table of Contents

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