It was just the two sisters inside the priest’s home. Their father had plotted a triple kill for the night, Arn and Rayan taking out a different priest while Cyrus would assassinate the most public of the targets, a magistrate who spent far too much time traveling to nearby brothels to remain safe from the Vagrant’s blades. Mari followed Stasia to the door, on their way passing overturned furniture and claw marks on the walls. With the strength of her Lioness form, she had easily broken in the front door, purposefully attacking when the priest was believed to be sitting down for his evening supper. His guards had been few, and easily killed. None put up any sort of real fight.

“We did good,” she said, and led the way out the mansion entrance with long, feline strides.

Sometimes Stasia carried spare clothes with her in a pack; other times they hid an outfit nearby so Mari might change and walk home incognito. Mari dashed rooftop to rooftop before dropping into the tiny indent between two wealthy mansions. Her bone plates receded, her fur fading away as soft, chubby flesh took its place. Naked as her birth, she took the plain green dress out of the stashed rucksack and pulled it over her head. She had one arm out the sleeve, and was working the other arm through, when her sister caught up with her. Stasia pulled the mask down from her face as she talked.

“I don’t think anyone heard us, but it won’t be long before someone notices the mess you made of the front door.”

“Then we should hurry before that happens.”

Stasia nodded in agreement, then slipped past Mari to where they had hidden a long brown coat beside Mari’s dress. She pulled it on, the thick leather easily hiding the twin axes belted to her hip.

“I’ll meet you at home,” Mari said. Wind blew across her skirt, and she fought back a chill. Though the wind was cold, that wasn’t why she shivered. It felt like her blood were aflame.

“Are you sure?”

Mari didn’t look back when she answered.

“I’m sure.”

Vallessau was known as the City on the Cliffs most everywhere else on Thanet, and for good reason. While time and human persistence had steadily flattened out huge swathes of land near the beach where the docks were built, the outer ring of the city steadily rose higher, culminating in a U-shaped ring of cliffs and mountains surrounding the majority of the populace. The ritual sacrifice they had interrupted weeks ago had been along the southern end of this ring, off one such white cliff. Mari traveled toward that end, which sported dozens of roads carved into the cliffside. Homes teetered off wooden platforms. Huge towers rose high above them, ringed with windows and lanterns to form shining beacons to travelers along the main road coming from the southern portion of the island.