She cracked the door and slipped out into the damp, oppressive heat of early afternoon in summer. Alt Coulumb’s founders in their infinite wisdom built their city on a marsh—that was one reason, said the city’s oldest myths, their land came so cheap. Rivers still ran beneath the pavement and underground, but pave a swamp and you’re left with a paved swamp. Two steps out into the sun, and she sweated through her shirt. The city smelled of stone and fish and flesh and thick nose-burning spices. Not every restaurant on this street was a smuggling front, Cat thought. Probably.

She slid a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and tapped them against her palm, spun the box, tapped them again. Fewer people smoked than used to, here in the fire-god’s city. Cat herself never started—reaction to her dad, a shrink would probably say, if she went to one. But stepping out for a cigarette was a good cover.

She faked a cough, pressed her fist against the badge through her shirt. The badge’s corners bit her skin. Okay, she told them. Let’s go.

Silver shadows rose from the surrounding rooftops, and leapt. Soundlessly they flew and soundless fell. Cat remembered a cruise she’d taken once to see whales. When the leviathan breached, the spray rose twice the height of her boat’s mast, and sunlight rainbowed through.

The Blacksuits—not quite black anymore, though the name stuck—landed lighter on the restaurant roof than the spray had on the ship’s deck. Cat barely heard them, and her ears were sharper than most humans’. Three Suits geckoed down the building’s walls, spread-eagled above windows, slick silver skin adhering to the brick.

Metal flashed from the alley behind the restaurant.

That was her cue.

She looked both ways, crossed the street, stepped into the pizza place. The bell above the door jangled. The walls looked as dirty from inside as they had through the window. A devotional calendar hung on the wall. Two months had passed since the last page was turned.

“Hey,” she said, letting her accent thicken to its old richness. A girl can leave Slaughter’s Fell, but the fell never quite leaves her. “Gimme two slices of pepperoni and a cup of coffee to go.”