Aev fell from heaven in a granite blur and flared her wings to arrest herself one foot above the deck. She landed with a soft tick of talons on wood, but her weight still set the ship rocking.

“Can I help?” she asked.

Raz swore in a language Cat did not recognize, and removed his cap. “I think you can, at that.”

13

13

Matt half-hoped their plan, concocted over drinks at lunch—their scheme, to be honest—would end as so many others did, in a third (or fourth) round of beers and someone’s finally remembering they all had shops to open come morning. Public displays of civic fervor were no fit pastimes for small business owners. Leave adventures to kids dumb as they’d once been, a new crop of which the Quarter sprouted every year and ate faster.

But Corbin Rafferty did not calm. The idea stuck in his mind like a fishhook in the lip, and he would not stop wriggling long enough to let others pry it out. He took to the street, and Matt followed.

Determination straightened Corbin’s weaving path. He visited taprooms and tea shops whose owners he knew, and regaled them with his plan. He met customers on sidewalks and outside construction sites and playing ball on public courts, and in each venue he proclaimed: I’ll bring the Stone Men for you all to see. Come to the market tonight at nine. The message took them as far as Hot Town before Matt noticed the Crier following them, a bow-shouldered man in guild orange. He dropped into a convenience store, waited for the Crier to pass, then stepped out behind him.

“You want something.”

The Crier spun and stumbled and caught himself on cracked pavement. He had to look a long way up to meet Matt’s eyes. “Just a story.”

“You have the story already.”

“One witness is nice; twenty would be better. If your friend—or his daughter—calls the Stone Men, and they come, that’s news.”

“Maybe they won’t show.”

“That’s news, too.”

“Come tonight, then,” he said. “Stop following us.”

Matt didn’t wait for the Crier’s answer—walked past him, instead, to join Rafferty, who was haranguing a demolition guy, regular customer of Matt’s, a big round man who bought a dozen eggs every other morning. Every day Matt expected to learn the demo guy’s heart had burst. Maybe he didn’t eat all the eggs himself.

Rafferty burned out around four in the afternoon beside a bratwurst stand—sat down on a dirty bench and leaned over his knees, head bobbing. Carriage wheels rattled over uneven cobblestones. Matt set a hand on Rafferty’s back, but the man didn’t react. Matt didn’t worry. Rafferty’s flare-ups came and went like heavy traffic down a poorly paved street, leaving torn ground and deep holes behind.