Izza’d never seen anyone last this long against one Penitent, let alone two: she had thought the stone watchmen invulnerable to everything but Craft. This winged figure was no Craftswoman, though. She did not drink the light around her, or wrong the ground on which she stood, or crackle with eldritch sorcery. She was brilliant, and she was doomed. The Penitent bore down, and she bent under its sheer strength.

Izza should have run. In a few days she’d be gone from Kavekana anyway. But when she stood, instead of slipping away across the rooftops, she slid onto a fire escape, and clanged down five stories to drop from ladder to cobblestone street, shouting the whole way, “Stop! Thief!” She ran across the street behind the fight, still shouting, to the shelter of the alley opposite and inland. If she had to run, she might be able to lose the Penitents in the warrens. Might. “Stop!”

The Penitent’s head swiveled round to Izza. Gem eyes gleamed, and Izza felt herself seen: five six and skinny and scared, standing in the open on flat ground before monsters. She stopped breathing.

A silver streak struck the Penitent in the side of the head, and again. One jewel eye went dark. Stone crunched. The statue swayed, stumbled, and fell. It lay twitching across from its brother with the broken leg.

The silver woman stood over them both, cradling her useless arm. One wing hung from her shoulder at a bad angle. She limped around the fallen Penitents and away, up Izza’s alley.

As the woman left the street, her silver tarnished and broke. Black cotton shirt and denim pants showed through widening gaps in her mirrored carapace, and pale skin too, bruised and dirt smeared. One human eye, also green, paired with the eye of emerald fire. Blond hair, cut short. Muscle and sharp lines. The wings melted last, and the silver woman was silver no more. She lurched down the alley, clutching her injured arm, favoring the side where the Penitent hit her. She swore to herself, words too low for Izza to catch. Their eyes met as the woman passed, black into green and back again.

That should have been the end of it. The woman limped half the alley’s length, gait weaving and uneven, then stopped, slumped against a red brick wall, and bent her head to breathe.

This was not Izza’s problem. She’d helped enough already. Time to run.

The Penitents’ cries rose to an impassive sky. More would come soon to aid their comrades.

Izza knelt before the woman. Green eyes stared through strings of golden hair, not at Izza but around her, refusing to focus. Sweat slicked the woman’s face, and she breathed so heavily Izza thought she might throw up. Izza snapped her fingers twice in front of those green eyes. “Hey,” she said. “Hey. We need to get you out of here.”