The temple, of course, was remade. But Lucien’s stipulations of a free worship meant that it belonged both to the New God and the Old God, to the beneather spirits and the celeon morgus. Lawguards patrolled nigh constantly, yet it was naive to say there were no conflicts among the people—the tensions still ran high. But Lucien stood for none of it and installed punishments severe enough that the intolerant now thought thrice.

As he walked the streets, he fended off as many roving bands of merrymakers as he could—women offering him fruit from their stalls, shopkeeps holding out legs of cured lamb to him, a girl with a flower basket floating a ring of lilies over his head with a giggle. It was harder to blend in to a crowd now, what with his eyepatch, but part of him was at peace with it. He no longer felt the need to skulk around in Whisper’s gear, stealing trinkets and redistributing the wealth to the poorer. He was helping in far more overt ways, on his own accord, and that required no disguise.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t hear the call of the shadows anymore.

He managed to slip away down an alley, cleaner than the ones he remembered but no less cramped and surreptitious. A new city meant a new layout, one he hadn’t memorized as well as he’d liked, but he’d taken to using such breaks to wander, to map in his head the streets and curbs he loved so much. His boots clicked down the cobblestones, around puddles of piss and piles of discarded junk. The smell of horse dung and old vomit was almost a welcome perfume—it’d been quite disturbing to walk the alleyways at their clean, odorless inception.

And then he heard the footsteps behind him.

He whirled around, convinced it was another overeager citizen, but the alley behind him was empty. Nothing but cobble. He shook his head and chalked it up to a stray watertell hiss and continued his way down the narrow path. It branched out into a little plaza with a snake fountain, a newer one replete with silver binding and fewer gems. With water so plentiful in homes, people rarely used the fountains anymore, but this left them to be admired, and this he did for some time before crossing the plaza into another alley.

The former prince was so busy mentally tallying the left turns of this alley that he almost missed the soft rustle of fabric behind him. He whirled again, and this time his suspicions did not fade.

“Who’s there?”