Shadows moved through the smoke, shadows with the faces of hyenas and water monsters, talking in raised voices she couldn’t make sense of over the ringing in her ears. Orfeus had the wits to duck away. She limped, slowly but surely, bundling her cloak over her shoulders. She was shivering. It was lucky her cloak hadn’t burned up. Lucky her earring hadn’t melted into her skin, lucky her eyes hadn’t boiled past the point of healing, lucky the worst thing she got was agony.

Orfeus leaned up against the shelter of a building and then jerked away. Heat at her back. Even the trees were burning, and it was then, staring at them, that she really realised. The gardens in the town square were fierce with fire. This was horrifying, bigger than her mind could fit. This was her town burning. This was a bigger smog debt than she could ever repay.

Orfeus coughed, coughed and then started laughing without knowing why, and then she looked for the Wolf. “He’ll be easier than the others,” she explained to herself, nearly pitching over before she steadied herself. “If he kills me, at least he’ll be sad.”

There was too much noise and smoke and light to really make sense of anything this close to the Hub. Orfeus limped away. The fires died down as she got further away, but the night sky without fires looked blank and empty, somehow more horrifying. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears, a fast and unsteady rhythm. It was hard to drag enough air into her lungs, hard to think. She clung to the path she could see in front of her: one step, then the next, every other concern crumbling into ash in her wake.

Faol had said his Leader would have the answers she’d been looking for, and Orfeus had an idea of how to find this Luga, now she had nothing left to lose.

Halfway to her house, she stopped and squinted: the Wolf was there, standing conferring with the others. Well. That was fine.

Orfeus walked up to the three of them. She wasn’t used to walking without swaggering. They turned to look at her as she limped out of the smoke, and Faol put his hand on his knife.

“Good evening.” Her voice rasped. Orfeus cleared her throat and tried again. “Good evening.” It seemed important to do this right.

Was anything important, really?

“What’s your plan this time?” said Hyena, steadying their gun. Their face under the hyena mask was streaked with soot, and the Shark had some scorches on their plain grey clothing, but it looked like the bounty hunters had gotten away without any worse injury. The Wolf was a monument, a monster, a madman free of harm.