Local belief held that it was good luck to enter the city of Morning Star during the few seconds of sunrise on cloudless days in late winter and early spring when the sun first appeared in the east and before its rays had a chance to extinguish the morning star in the west. Angus Lok entered the city at such a moment but he didn’t believe in luck.

The city on the red lake glowed pink and golden in the early light. Angus entered by the West Gate, and as he was traveling without horse, pack, or serious weaponry he was waved through without examination. The Morning Guard’s interest had fallen on a group of mounted Half-Bluddsmen. In an earlier life Angus might have stepped in to aid the fierce yet nervous-looking clansmen. In this life he slid quietly away.

The Star, as the city was known to its residents, was split in two by the Eclipse River, which ran north from the lake. Entering by the West Gate placed you in the West Face of the city and to cross to the East Face meant taking a short ferry ride or crossing one of the half-dozen bridges and paying the Lord Rising a copper penny for the privilege. Angus Lok was just fine where he was. It was the poorer half of the city, peopled by fishermen, workmen, beggars, bidwives, mercenaries, men-at-arms, prostitutes and market traders. He knew this place, knew its streets and its dangers, knew where to go to get the best ale in the city and where to avoid unless you were spoiling for a fight.

The area just north of the gate was known as the Crater. A shanty-town of wood huts, tents, cabins and lean-tos had been raised in a bowl-like depression on a mound above the Eclipse. Spring was flood season and not all the streets were passable. Angus took what routes he could. Boards had been laid across the mud in some places. In other places the brown red mud flowed like lava, its surface slowly hardening to crust.

Money was Angus’ first order of business. Since Ille Glaive he’d been spending coin raised in the sale of his sword and he was down to his last coppers. Normally money wasn’t a problem. The Phage were many things and poor wasn’t one of them. Any city in the North, most large towns, some villages and even some one-room alehouses on the road: Phage gold could be had in all of them. The brotherhood held wealth in many locations. A word in the right place to the right person and a purse with enough currency to live on for a year would be dropped discreetly into your hand. The Phage hoarded Sull gold, Forsaken gold, Forsaken property, Bone Temple riches, treasure sneaked from failing kingdoms, jewels given for services rendered, and others taken when debts went unpaid. They sat on their wealth like an old, suspicious man, stashing it in different places so that no one could get everything if he died.

Morning Star was the Phage’s main staging ground in the North. There were rooms in this city that, if you were to enter them with a lamp, you’d swear you’d walked into an enchanted palace made of gold. Angus had been in those rooms—they were belowground, always belowground: you could not trust the weight of gold on wood planks nailed across a frame—but they were not his destination today. Phage currency came at a price. Take it and you would be tracked. Somewhere someone would stick a pin in a board and think to himself, There is Angus Lok.

Even now, careful as he had been, Angus rated his chances of evading the eye of the Phage as low. This was their city. Even if the Morning Guard had not marked him, a walk down any street might be enough. Angus knew to avoid certain places—the arms market in the west, the scribes’ quarter, river gardens, and courthouses in the east—but you could not plan for a chance encounter on an unlikely street as someone who knew or worked for the Phage was out buying fresh fish or hothouse melons for his or her family. Angus accepted this risk. There was a point in most missions where stealth had to be cast aside.

The shortest route to the money-lending quarter required crossing the silk market. Angus foresaw no problem with this and entered the colorful tents and stalls of the largest clothing market in the North. It was early and vendors were still setting out their wares. Merchants and bidwives were draping their stalls with red-and-gold ribbons, bolts of turquoise cloth, embroidered belts and boned bodices, horn-and-paper fans, fake jewels, silk purses, lace collars and straw hats. Angus felt the skin on his face tighten as he walked between the stalls. A hole opened up in his chest and it was suddenly difficult to breath. Stopping, he put a hand on a tent pole for support.

“What’s the matter, lovey? Too much of the black stuff last night?”

Angus raised his head and regarded the woman who spoke. She frowned, not unkindly.

“Need to get some food and tea in you.”

He pushed himself off from the pole and left without a word. The quickest way out of the silk market was to retrace his steps south. So that’s what he did. As the stalls thinned, he began to breathe more steadily and by the time he was clear of the market he was back to normal. Or something like it.

He had not expected ghosts.

Any man who had daughters and who traveled away from home carried directives with him at all times: Daddy, I need ribbons. Daddy, can you bring me back a dress? Father, not that I really, really want a purse, but if you were to get one make it red. Angus had been to countless markets in countless towns and cities and always—always—he’d spent time shopping for his best girls. It made him stupidly, grumpily happy. Baffling conversations with stallholders concerning the girls’ ages, sizes and tastes. Paying through the nose for goods that to him looked like pieces of tat. Swapping vaguely embarrassed looks with fellow men. Most of all, it was the pleasure of anticipating his daughters’ delight. Often he bought them something extra, some little surprise, because after they’d opened their expected packages it created unexpected delight.

And delight meant laughter and kisses and hugs.

Angus shut away the memory of his girls. He could not live and think about them. He simply could not live.

Taking the river route to the money-lending quarter, he skirted the banks of the Eclipse. Fishermen were casting nets and mudmen were digging the margins for clams. After the Eclipse left the city it flowed into a delta. Some of its waters streamed north to flood the extreme southeastern clans, some flowed east to fill Drowned Lake at Trance Vor, and one outlet, legend said, flowed northeast to the Night River and to the Heart of the Sull. Angus considered this legend as he walked. It seemed as good a place as any to rest his thoughts.

The money-lending quarter was quieter and more orderly than the Crater but it was doing just as good business. Trance Vor, Morning Star’s closest neighbor, was a rich but lawless city, unstable in many ways. Smart Vor money went west for safekeeping. The mine owners and landowners who earned it weren’t prepared to trust it to the whims of the notoriously volatile Vor Lord. Vor’s loss was Star’s gain, and Star’s banks and moneylenders were some of the richest in the North.

Angus moved swiftly through the cobbled streets. Custom suited him here. The rules were keep your head low, do not look anyone in the eye and do not acknowledge acquaintances. When he came upon a small blue door with the sign of three tears drawn upon it in white chalk, Angus glanced over his shoulder and the entered the building.

Sitting behind a desk, sliding beads on an abacus, was a beautiful ebony-skinned woman. Two mirrors positioned at angles to the room’s only window, provided her with an unobstructed view of the street. A slender rope strung on a series of loops connected her left wrist to the latch on the door. Only fools and first-timers thought they entered Morning Star banks uninvited.

The woman lowered the latch, barring the door to the outside world. Raising an eyebrow she waited for her customer to speak.

Angus knew the woman and knew that she knew him, but form had to be maintained so he spoke his name and business.

She smiled, displaying even teeth. “I remember you now, Angus. Of course. Sit. Sit. Would you care for a glass of wine. No. Of course not. I see.” Her voice was soft and aimed to charm but it was all business underneath. “Of course you realize that I can only release a portion of your funds. Your original request was that they be split between the Star and Ille Glaive.”

Angus nodded, though in truth he recalled paying extra for the privilege of being able to take his nest egg—in its entirety—from either location. This was not a place for disagreement or threats though. Break the woman’s neck and he would never gain access to the saferoom behind her desk and therefore not receive a penny of his money. The bank’s security was layered like an onion, and just as the woman watched the street, someone else watched the woman from the saferoom.

“A third, is that all right?”

He told her it was. During his twenty-five years in the Phage he had managed to set aside a small sum for his family, enough to provide modest dowries for the girls and to keep Darra and himself comfortable in their old age. Now only one future he currently imagined resulted in him growing old.

The woman tapped on the inner door with fingernails as long as needles. She was admitted into the saferoom and the door was closed behind her. In under a minute she returned. Sitting, she slid a small cloth bag across the table. “I’ll need you to sign the ledger,” she said, indicating the book and stylus that lay next to the abacus.

“I already did.” Angus took possession of his money—silver, judging by the weight of it.

The woman checked for his signature and found it. He could see her wondering what, if anything, the other dates and signatures in her ledger might betray.

He let her worry for a while before asking, “Do you know where a woman called Magdalena Crouch lives?”

Of course she shook her head. Discretion was a reflex in her line of work.

“Maggie Sea? Delayna Stoop?”

She stood, indicating the meeting was through. Angus made her wait on that also, taking his time finding a safe spot on his body for the new purse. By the time he reached the door she was impatient for him to be gone.

As he went to touch the door handle he winced. “Damn arm. They stitched it but it still isn’t right.”

The woman gave him a perfectly disinterested look. Her gaze flicked to the door.

He didn’t move. Rubbing his elbow, he said, “I think one of the stitches is about to pop. Shit. Who’s a good surgeon round here?”

Distaste crossed the woman’s lovely face. She gave him a name and address to be rid of him.

Angus let the door slam shut behind him. The surgeon’s address was to the north, so that’s where he headed. He purchased a fried fillet of trout stuffed in a hard bread roll from a street vendor and ate as he walked. Morning Star was fully awake now and its streets were jammed. A chaos of mule-drawn carts, dog carts and horse carts made it imperative to watch your feet. Angus gave way for carts but not men. He didn’t know the exact location of the surgeon’s house but the woman had mentioned Spice Gate, so he followed his nose.

As he turned from a narrow street onto a open boulevard, he got his first glimpse of the Burned Fortress. It dominated the north of the city, bridging the Eclipse. The river disappeared beneath it, subducted underground for four hundred feet. Some said that was how the river got its name, for the fortress literally blocked it from sight, but Angus knew the Sull had once held this river and the land surrounding it and had named the river Lun xi’Cado, Hidden by the Moon, before the fortress ever existed.

The fortress itself was not a pretty sight. It had been burned and parts of its exterior casing stone had hardened to glass. Other sections were the matte black of scorched earth, and there were some places near the base where you could still see the original tan-colored stone. History gave two versions of the burning. In one, Magrane Stang, the fifteenth Lord Rising, had set light to the fortress to harden its soft sandstone walls against the armies of Trance Vor. In the second version, Stang had set light to the fortress for no other reason than to see it burn. Angus was inclined to believe the latter. The past Lord Risings of Morning Star had not, on the whole, been sane.

Angus had no interest in the current Lord Rising or the politics of the Burned Fortress and the river gardens. They were relics of another life. The great scheming machine that was the Phage would continue rolling forward without him.

Reaching Spice Lane, he cut west away from the river. Scents of pepper, vanilla and lemon filled the air, making the day suddenly smell like Winter Festival. Angus purchased a sliver of fresh ginger and a cup of quince water from a girl with a handcart. He drank the water and returned the cup and then chewed on the ginger as he walked. It was his intention to gift the surgeon with fresh breath.

The cart girl had provided excellent directions to the surgeon’s address, and he arrived at his destination by midday. Signs of saws cutting bone and leeches attached to earlobes lined the street. Angus walked the length of the district and back. Passersby looked sickly. An unusually high portion had limps. The bank woman had named a surgeon who was not only located dead in the middle of the street, but also appeared to be middle in rank as well. His house was more modest than some, better than others, and his sign, though not old, did not look especially new.

Angus waited in a doorway across the street and watched for someone to enter or leave. When the better part of an hour had passed and the house remained undisturbed, he crossed over and rapped on the door. A small viewing window slid back in the door’s upper panel, revealing a pair of youthful but bloodshot eyes.

“I’m here to see the surgeon.”

“He’s not here. You’ll have to come back.”

Angus made a calculation. “You’re his apprentice. Maybe you can help.”

The young man who the eyes belonged to shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

Angus shook his new purse. “It will only take a minute and I’ll pay well. No questions asked.”

Thinking took place behind the eyes.

Angus said, “If the surgeon comes back before we’re finished I’ll just tell him you and I are old friends, and you can keep the money.”

No man or woman should ever agree to collude with a perfect stranger, yet to Angus’ constant amazement they did.

A bolt was drawn and the door swung open to reveal a short and burly youth with twice his share of facial hair. “Be quick.”

Angus obliged. The boy looked strong and he had a nice weapon fastened with correct tension at his waist. He was standing in a square hallway with two doors leading into the house’s interior. The boy glanced nervously from door to door.

“What say we go into the kitchen?” Angus suggested. “That way we won’t disturb His Highness’s domain. Hurry, now, I’m hurting up a storm.”

The boy acquiesced, turning to open the door at his back. Angus followed. The boy hadn’t asked for his money yet. He was making a lifetime’s worth of mistakes.

Angus was led into a narrow kitchen with a door and two windows at the back that opened onto a tiny walled courtyard. The adjoining wall was lined with heavy shelving. At the corner of the room, a flight of stairs led belowground to what appeared to be, judging by smell alone, a root cellar. A chopping block laid with fresh green herbs and a wet knife told exactly what the boy had been doing before he was disturbed.

The boy cleared his throat. When he spoke his voice was lower and more formal, possibly mimicking his master. “What appears to be the problem?”

Angus moved to the chopping block, pushed back the left sleeves of his coat and undershirt, exposing the entire length of his forearm, and rested his knuckles on the table.

The boy’s mouth fell open.

“It burns,” Angus said, looking the boy straight in the eye. “I need something for it.”

Nodding absently, the boy regarded the foot-long scar that ran from an inch above Angus’ wrist to the tender inside skin of his elbow joint. Proud flesh had formed two thick ridges along the original wound and the scar was hard and raised and shiny. “Looks old,” the boy said, tentatively touching Angus’s arm—but not the scar—with his index finger. “It healed clean.”

Angus pushed down his sleeve. “If you could give me something for it.”

The boy’s face changed as he finally understood the request. It was possible a shade of disappointment slid across his eyes.

Angus moved so that the coins in the purse clinked.

“Blood of the poppy?”

Angus nodded softly. “Whatever you have.”

“Two silver pieces.”

The boy was finally thinking. Angus laid the cloth purse on the table and pulled apart the drawstring. Dozens of small silver coins streamed onto the chopping surface. Looking carefully at the boy, Angus pushed three coins his way. It was probably more than he earned in six months.

“I’ll get the poppy.” The boy moved around the kitchen, pulling a set of wooden steps from the corner by the stairs and setting them under the heavily laden shelves that lined the kitchen’s east wall.

“What’s your name?” Angus asked as the boy climbed the steps and sorted through various pots and glass vials.

“Jeddiah.”

The boy was busy and did not think to ask the question in return, and Angus Lok never volunteered information. “Is your master tending anyone with badly burned hands? A woman.”

Jeddiah’s head shook. “No.” He’d pulled down a jar, uncorked the stopper and sniffed. Satisfied with the contents, he descended the steps.

“Have you got something for a sore gut while you’re there.” Angus sent him up again. He liked his subjects distracted. While the boy considered the appropriate remedy, Angus said, “Do you know most of the surgeons on the street?” The boy nodded as he reached for a jar. “And I bet you talk with the other apprentices?”

Locating what he needed, the boy jumped down. “I see them, yes. What’s it to you?”

Angus let his gaze drift to the table. The purse was still open, its contents glittering in the dim kitchen light. “You can have it all if you find me the woman with burned hands. A doctor in this city will be seeing her. She needs stitches and skin flaps removed. Burn care. Ointments. The hands are in a bad way. Talk to the other apprentices, find out who’s tending them.”

The boy placed two jars, one glass, one made from glazed brown pottery, on the table. He was eighteen or nineteen and if Angus Lok had to guess he’d say the boy’s master was working him too hard. The swollen veins in his eyes were from lack of sleep.

“Why do you want to find her?”

Angus knew the boy was his then. “She’s my sister. She’s led a less than perfect life…” Angus let the sentence trail off, letting the boy write his own end to it. Prostitution, thievery, stupidity: whatever appealed the most. “With the burning it’s gone too far. My father and I are trying to find her, bring her home.”

The boy’s glance moved from the coins to the glass jar containing the blood of poppy. Angus could almost hear what he was thinking: This man and his family are deranged. “What’s her name?”

Angus made a seesaw motion with his head. “Magdalena Crouch, though you understand she may use other names.”

The boy wasn’t about to admit he didn’t understand. He nodded curtly, with force.

“Maggie Sea. Delayna Stoop. She usually picks names that have some relation to her real one.”

“Like Magda Kneel?”

Angus smiled. “Just like that.”

The boy’s glow was touchingly girlish. A noise from the front of the house halted it midblush.

Angus scooped up the purse and the coins spilling from it, slid them inside his coat and moved to the back door. “In three days I’ll walk down this street at noon. If you have an answer come out and meet me.”

The front door creaked open and a voice rang out. “Boy!”

The boy rushed to the table, pocketed the remaining three coins, and then picked up the two jars and thrust them at Angus’ chest. Angus accepted them, though in truth they had slipped his mind. He opened the back door.

“What does she look like?” the boy whispered.

Angus slid outside. “Why me, of course.”

The boy looked surprised. Perhaps he wasn’t so foolish after all.

“Three days,” Angus reminded him in parting.

Clouds were closing in from the north as Angus scrambled over the courtyard’s back wall and into the alleyway behind the house. The jar containing the sore gut remedy had cracked as he crested the wall and he emptied out the powder as he walked. It was, fortunately enough, the color of dirt. He set the empty jar on the ground against a nearby wall and transferred the second jar containing the blood of poppy to the interior of his coat. Reaching the end of the alleyway he turned south. He needed to find a place to stay. Somewhere in the maze of the Crater would do.

Angus Lok ghosted through Morning Star as the day turned cold and gray, not sparing a thought for the dangers that either Magdalena Crouch or the Phage could visit on the boy.