She pulled at the ring with her body and with her soul, making it theirs, this bit of gold, this shared moment in the dark. To steal a man’s wallet from his front pocket you pressed against his thigh in place of the wallet’s weight. To steal a man’s soul, you pressed against him with your dreams and visions, so he wouldn’t notice when his own lost color. Moving the ring, she remembered home fires, and her mother’s smile with the one broken tooth in front, and her first breath of free ocean, and her dad’s stories about the rabbit in the moon. Dreams they could share. He answered her, confused, confusing, currents and colors of dream all blended into opium brown: blood-tinted waves, a high winding wail on seashore, a girl’s lips soft on his, her hands on his skin, and fire, everywhere, the smell of human meat like seared pork—

The ring came free, and she staggered back. The man groaned in the dark, and groped blindly for something he couldn’t remember having lost.

Izza stumbled, struck a cot, and the thin man within it cried out in Iskari, “No, don’t, not the kitten, not the kitten, not her!” Across the dark room, a voice lower than she’d thought a human voice could be moaned like the breaking of the world.

The ring burned in her hand. She forced it into a pocket, buttoned the pocket. Tried to remember who she was, where she was. Izza. Five foot six or so. Thin girl from the Northern Gleb. Not a sailor, not a soldier, not a man, not—

“Who the hells are you?”

Shit.

She’d forgotten about the stairs.

A broad Kavekanese woman stood in the stairway door, lit by the lantern she carried. She stared at Izza with wide black eyes.

Izza held up her hands, and stepped out from the shadows. The stammer she needed wasn’t hard to summon. “Cap’n Deschaine sent me. Looking for a pilot of ours gone missing. We ship out come dawn and no one’s seen him since he snuck off to get high a few days back.”

“They let you upstairs?”

“They had his name on the roll down at the door.”

“Who let you up?”

“Fat guy, I dunno who.” Most gangs had a fat guy, and most crooks had no problem blaming the fat guy when something went wrong.

“Let me see the key he gave you.”

Most of these places used chits of some kind to separate the folk that paid from those that didn’t. A key made sense—easy to check. Then again … “Didn’t give me a key.”

“No. Of course not.” A good guess. Lucky amateur, that was all. So knocked around by stealing soul that she forgot to check the exits. Good thing Nick wasn’t here, he’d never let her live this down. “Let me see the token.”