I handed her the picture of the thug at the Underbridge. It had come out as powerfully as I’d hoped it would. High contrast, the background full of energy and motion, his expression complex, equal parts rage and shock and even a little bit of shame, like on some level he knew what he was doing was wrong. Not because he was a decent person, but because the camera scared him. The thought of someone seeing what he was doing made him think twice, and I caught that single instant of self-doubt.

“This is breathtaking,” she said. “I’m proud of you. When was this?”

I told her the details. She picked up the phone, barked at whoever answered: “Gang attack on the Underbridge today. Head down there, get some eyewitness accounts, write it up for page three. Play up the angle that this was an organized effort; something is going on. Go talk to the precinct captain to see what they’re doing to protect people. No, you don’t need to bring a photographer. We got the shot already.”

She slammed the phone down, and frowned, and then looked up and smiled at me. “Right place at the right time, or you went looking for this?”

“The first one.”

“Well. Luck is half of catching the shot. The other half is being prepared—having a good eye and ear so you know it when it’s coming.”

She handed me two twenty-ruble bills, and rubbed my head. I nodded gratefully. I didn’t know why the great Cass Otterby had decided to take an impoverished othersider gutter kid under her wing, but she had, and I was damn lucky.

My parents had moved to Darkside from the Waterlands during the plague called the Great Rot, back when I was just a baby, but like a lot of people who flooded into the city during those years, they got the Rot and died on the way. Before that they’d fallen in with a caravan of migrants, which included two men, a couple, who’d befriended them and taken care of them while they were sick. I was an infant and I had no one to take care of me, and the choice was either leave me by the roadside or raise me as their own. Luckily for me they did the latter.

Pop was beaten to death by thugs who hated othersiders, when I was three. Da was arrested a year later, allegedly for using an illegal magical ability, and died in a camp. I don’t even know their real names. I was so little. They were only Da and Pop to me. The faces I see, when I think of them . . . I’m not even sure if they’re really theirs. I only know I still have the warm, safe, loved feeling I had when I was with them.