Before departing East, I first had to make my way North, to my home city of Mainzburgh. Today, it is one of Aquamere’s great centers of industry; in that time, it was a free city of the Confederation. But no matter the time and place, it was, is, and always will be a shining beacon of greed and criminality.

  The ride north from Castle Azure took me two weeks; the summer months meant that nights were short, so much of my time was spent hiding from the sun in caves, abandoned shacks, the underside of bridges, and the occasional inn I could count on to not ask too many questions. With her swifter pace and head start of several days, Hilda was almost certainly all the way to Ostland by the time I made it to the northern shore.

  I knew how to stay clear of the kingdom’s main thoroughfairs from past experience, but I must admit that those long hours of waiting out the sun produced in me an intense anxiety; how would a random group of wandering peasants or travellers react to finding a demon straight out of their children’s bedtime stories lurking in some hovel?

  Fortunately, I went mostly undiscovered, and soon enough I was riding through the vineyards and tulip fields on the outskirts of Mainzburgh proper. The city shone bright with lantern-light all through the midnight hours, unlike the peasant villages I had passed along my way, which went to bed with the sun and stayed that way unless something very loudly provoked them.

  As with any great metropolis of the time, the great Pentemples towered over every other structure, but these were so much lipstick on a pig: money was the only true god in Mainzburgh.

  I passed through the south gate, using the last of my groats for the toll. As the tenements of wood and stone rose up around me, I slowed my horse to a trot, joining with the evening’s traffic; the merchants moved their wares to and from the port at night, so as to avoid cluttering the roads with carriages during the daylight hours. One had to keep their head on a swivel to avoid a pile-up.

  Fortunately, I had little issue navigating those streets. Mainzburgh had been my home, and I’d been everywhere from the musty basement of my old orphanage to the rooftops of its tallest churches.

  That night, my destination was down a back alley, narrow enough that I had to tie my horse to a post and continue on foot. The establishment I sought had neither light nor signage, but I recognized the chipped olive paint on the front door all the same. I gave it four knocks at just the right rhythm, and in two heartbeats I heard about five different locks un-latch before it swung open.

  “Sig!” Shouted Bruno, my old fence. “Where in sweet Umbri’s name have you been? You’re more than a week behind schedule, you know!”

  He looked like he'd seen a ghost, because in more ways than one, he had. Bruno was a couple inches taller than me, which made him quite short, but he was solidly built, with a clean-shaven head and a bushy ginger beard.

  I could not help but smile, despite myself; Bruno was the first familiar face I had seen since Carmina had died. “It is good to see you again, Bruno. May I come in?”

  Unlike the superstitions, vampires needed not be invited into a residence to enter. But I preferred to indulge all the same. Bruno nodded immediately, stepping aside. “Right this way!”

  I entered, sinking into the familiar confines of Bruno’s place as he shut the door behind me. The man ran his many dubious ventures out of his cabinet of curiosities, a pawn shop littered with all matter of eye-catching rubbish. I strutted past a wooden barrel filled with rusty swords and a bust of the Princess of Tridentia, to take my seat at the stool in front of the cashier’s desk, which was just about the only place to sit in the whole establishment.

  Bruno finished re-locking the door, before entering to join me. “Now have you got the bounty, or what? And where are the rest of your crew?”

  I did not turn to face him. “They’re dead, Bruno.”

  That stopped him dead in his tracks. “What?”

  “Metz, Jura, and Carmina are all dead. Hilda betrayed us; I’m going to kill her.”

  He swallowed, wringing his hands. Bruno usually had an easy trickster’s confidence, but that night I noticed him on-edge. No doubt he detected something off in my countenance; now he had some explanation as to why. “Well, that’s… that’s just terrible! I’m so sorry for you, truly, you and Carmina, well… I never knew a tighter bond in all my years in this business.”

  His words rang hollow to me. I found myself staring at the curios he had behind his counter, which all shared a religious quality; elaborate prints of the Pentiad, Sayedi prayer rugs, and little ivory sculptures I would later come to recognize as Ostlander bone totems. It was all a petty distraction from Bruno’s true faith; the cabinet of coins and forged documents he kept under the desk itself.

  “How did you make it out, when the rest didn’t?” He asked.

  “I cut a deal with the Duchess Azure. Turns out the whole affair was a ploy by the bride’s father to ruin the wedding; he’s as much to blame as anyone else.”

  He swallowed, understanding that I was going after Bloem too. “So what do you need me for?”

  I reached into my knapsack, pulling out the Duchess’ necklace. “Give me the cut for this, the same one you promised the whole crew. Then double it.”

  He had the gall to balk at this. “Double it? This isn’t a char—”

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  “I know you make five times that number when you sell it on the black market, Bruno.” I cut her off, relishing the stunned look on his face. “I’m not thick. You’d be out of business otherwise.”

  He sighed, crossing his arms. “Well, if you did cut a deal with the Duchess, then the authorities won’t be on the lookout for that string of jewels, and I’ll have a much easier time selling it… but how do I know all this rubbish about revenge is even true?”

  I sneered at him, stepping off the stool and getting in his face. I did not need to grab him, or draw my dagger; my posture was enough. “My sister is dead, Bruno. I’ve worked with you for damn near a decade by now. Pay. Up.”

  I think, looking into my eyes, he saw some hint of my transformation: my gift, as my dear sire liked to call it. He swallowed again, smacking his lips, brow dripping with sweat as he went behind the desk. I followed him there.

  He fetched the lockbox key out of his pants, and spent a few seconds counting out the exact amount I was owed. It was a generous sum indeed, five hundred ducats, about as much as we’d gotten from the bank job after debts and laundering fees. I pulled the coin into my knapsack, satisfied at the jingling.

  Bruno looked almost sick, parting way with all that coin. “Will you be needing anything else?”

  I looked him in the eye. “Is my old room still available? You didn’t discard my wardrobe, did you?”

  He nodded his head, quite enthusiastically. “It’s all there, yes. I’ll lead you to it, right this way!”

  I let him past me, and in that moment I used some slight of hand to palm one of the little trinkets off his desk, a black glass pentacle with Mundi’s ivory dagger inlaid in the front.

  Mundi, of course, was the de facto patron of sleuthing, thieving, and general skullduggery, in addition to their many other duties. I, however, had never been much of a religious type before my transformation.

  I think the Duchess’ words still stuck with me, when she blessed my quest in the Emperor’s name. In this life, I knew I was damned, but perhaps some small part of my soul could be saved from the Emperor’s grasp if I carried one of his killers with me.

  And of the Five, who better for me than the one who lacked any set gender?

  My apartment above Bruno’s shop was exactly as I remembered it, save for the two weeks of dust covering most every surface. The old crook hadn’t even bothered to make my bed, though I could hardly grudge him that offense, as I hadn’t made it either.

  Carmina had certainly made hers, though. We shared the room, humble as it was; there was very little we didn’t share. The window sill was covered in prizes from all our most spectacular scores: a tooth Metz had lost during our seizure of the good ship Spirit of Etrium, a pentacular chalice from the Cathedral of Joanna the Beautiful, and of course a ten-ducat coin from the Mainzburgh bank job, which had unwittingly doomed our crew.

  As I placed my hands on her top bunk, so well made, I thought back to the last thing she’d said to me, before she’d slid her shiv out from her sleeve to try and break free of a castle guard twice her size.

  Trust me, Sig.

  I had trusted her. She was the only one I ever could trust, in that life of constant struggle we both shared. And she was gone.

  And I was alone.

  It was here that I allowed myself to weep, again.

  An hour later, I exited the chamber completely transformed. After two weeks of travel and hiding in my road leathers, I must have appeared to Bruno like a lifelong brigand, someone who’d cut your purse and throat in the blink of an eye.

  But with a little makeup, fixed hair, and an appropriately cut dress, suddenly I was the Baroness L’escale, the belle of the ball I’d had the pleasure of playing during our crew’s last and most tragic of scores.

  This was my talent, the thing that made me the greatest thief to ever live; I could wear any outfit or identity like a custom-tailored glove. Noble, merchant, peasant, beggar, thug, priest, man, woman, they were all just costumes to me, and I delighted in trying on as many as I could, and making my marks prance about the stage in accordance with the script I had written for them.

  Bruno, who had nearly dozed off against the wall with his arms crossed, tried his best to hide how impressed he was. “Going out on Mainzburgh’s streets at this late hour, dressed like that… You really have nothing left to lose, Sig.”

  I chuckled. “You sound like my father, Bruno.”

  “You never had a father.”

  “But if I did, he’d sound like you.” I stepped forward into his personal space, and my grin grew wider as I watched his face flush red. I shan’t mince words: I could be absolutely gorgeous when I wanted to be. “I left a horse tied up down the alley, but I won’t be taking it with me. Consider it extra repayment for these final favors.”

  He furrowed his brow at that. “I have no use for a horse, Sig.”

  “I know you don’t, but the local butchers certainly will.” Mainzburgh was famous for its meat pies; of course, no one cared exactly what sort of meat went into them.

  Ever greedy, Bruno uncrossed one of his hands to place it against my cheek. “All that being said… Are you sure you’re not up for another parting gift? I get the feeling I won’t be seeing you again, for a long time… if at all.”

  I knew precisely what he meant; I took his hand in mine. “I suppose so… but I think you’ll be the one giving, not me.”

  He balked at that. “Sig, I don’t get underneath my lov—”

  I cut him off, my tone jovial. “Oh, you misunderstand me Bruno! You see, I had a long trip… and I’m dreadfully thirsty.”

  On my two week’s journey, I had to feed three times: twice on cows, which taught me that anything other than human blood was liable to make me vomit, and once on a peasant boy who’d stumbled into my hiding spot on a nightly stroll. From that latter example, I learned that my bite injected the victim with a rather potent sedative.

  A first-time victim was liable to doze off for hours on end after a mere few moments. Repeated feedings off the same subject would dull this effect, but would simultaneously engender an addiction to the bite itself, and a strange adoration to the vampire doling it out. This is how our kind cultivated the coteries of mortal thralls that follow any worthy vampire lord everywhere they went.

  I, of course, had no interest in making Bruno my thrall, nor had I any idea that I could do such to him at the time. After drinking my fill of him, I set him down gently on the floor, where he’d doze for a few hours and awake the next morning from his strange dream, thankful he didn’t have a hangover.

  From there, I collected my trunk with the rest of my wardrobe, and the coinage he’d so generously donated to me. I’d have more than enough funds to buy my own cabin on a ship bound for Ostland.

  I had heard all the same lies the settler lords and charter companies spread to would-be freeholders about that far-flung land. Now it was time to see the truth of it, and have my revenge.