The ambient noise of the Hollows—the drip of water, the distant coughing of the sick—seemed to fade as Mara ran an oily rag over the firing mechanism of her rifle. Her hands moved with the precision of a master clockmaker, a ghost of the life she might have had.
Borrun watched her, nursing a cup of bitter herbal tea that was forced into his hands.
"You have good hands, girl," the dwarf rumbled. "That rifle is a piece of junk, but you treat it like a masterwork. You learned from a smith?"
Mara didn't look up. " I learned from a technician. My father."
Elian stiffened slightly beside her. He stared into the small fire burning in the oil drum, the flames reflecting in his dark eyes.
"He worked the filtration pumps in Sector 4," Elian said, his voice low. "Kept the sludge moving so the Artisan District didn't smell the shit from the Sump."
"Honorable work," Borrun noted.
"It was dangerous work," Mara corrected, her voice sharpening. "The main pressure valve blew out five years ago. It took his arm. Scalded half his face."
Borrun grimaced in sympathy. "A tragic accident. The Guilds have compensation funds for such things..."
Mara let out a short, harsh laugh. It sounded like glass breaking.
"Compensation?" She finally looked at the dwarf, her eyes blazing with old anger. "The Company cited 'operator error.' They fired him the next day. Said he damaged company property with his negligence. They stripped his pension to pay for the valve repairs."
Borrun went silent. The tea in his cup suddenly tasted like ash.
"He didn't die right away," Elian added softly. "It took two years. The infection... the rot. We couldn't afford the healers. We couldn't even afford the pain tinctures."
"I joined the Watch for the stipend," Elian confessed, looking at his hands. "I thought... if I put on the blue coat, if I earned a wage, I could buy him the medicine. I thought if I served the law, the law would protect us."
"But the law didn't care," Mara said, snapping the rifle back together with a violent clack. "The law is written by the people who owned that valve, Borrun. The law said my father was a broken cog, so they threw him away and slotted in a new one. Elian put on their uniform hoping they'd see him as a person. I picked up this rifle because I know they never will."
Borrun looked down at his own armor—the heavy plate that marked him as a protector of the peace. For forty years, he had arrested thieves who stole bread and debtors who couldn't pay their Guild fees. He had called it justice.
"I..." Borrun started, but his voice failed him. He looked at the siblings—one trying to fix the machine from the inside, the other trying to break it. Both broken by the same indifferent gears.
"He was a good man," Elian whispered. "He taught us that a machine is only as good as its smallest part. He used to say, 'If the screw fails, the engine dies.'"
Mara stood up, shouldering her weapon. She looked at the sprawling shantytown of the Hollows.
"Look around you, Borrun," she said. "We are the screws. And the engine is dying."
The heavy silence that followed Mara's words was broken by the harsh scrape of metal on metal.
Gale was sitting a few yards away, using a massive iron wrench to tighten the seals on a jury-rigged water purifier. The black fur on his arms was dusted with a permanent layer of pale ash. He worked with a brutal, efficient strength, the muscles in his back shifting like coiled springs beneath his leather vest.
Borrun watched the panther beastman. In the upper rings, Borrun only ever saw his kind hauling cargo ships into the docks or turning the massive crank-wheels of the central elevators. Beasts of burden.
"You have a delicate touch for a Soot-Strider," Borrun grunted, the city slang slipping out before he could catch it.
Gale stopped turning the wrench. His ears pinned back, and the air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. He turned his head, fixing his glowing green eyes on the dwarf. The jagged scar on the left side of his muzzle pulled his lip up into a perpetual, slight snarl.
"The Watchmen call us Soot-Striders," Gale rumbled, his voice a deep, vibrating bass. "The factory overseers call us Draft-Cats. But my grandfather was born under an open sky, on grass that stretched further than your dwarven trains could run in a week."
Gale stood up, wiping engine grease from his paws with a filthy rag.
"We are the Oromi. We were hunters. Nomads." He looked up at the crumbling brick ceiling of the Hollows. "Now we live in the dark, hauling the coal that keeps your pristine streets lit."
Elian looked at the deep, ragged scar on Gale's face. "Is that where you got that? In the coal yards?"
Gale traced a claw over the ruined flesh. "Foundry Four. Lower Sump. I was twelve. They used us to haul the crucible chains because dwarven steam-winches were too expensive to maintain. A link snapped. The cable whipped across the floor and took half my face with it."
He tossed the greasy rag into the fire. It flared up, casting sharp shadows against the cavern walls.
"The overseer docked my pay for the week because I bled on the iron plating," Gale said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "He said a Soot-Strider was cheaper to replace than the cable."
He looked pointedly at Elian, then at Borrun.
"Your father was a broken cog, Watchman," Gale said to Elian. "To them, my people are just oil for the gears. We burn up, and they pour more in. You want to know why I follow Mara? Because she's the only one who handed me a rifle instead of a shovel."
Gale picked up his heavy wrench and tapped it against his palm. "Tychus is out there. The plotters are out there. I'm done resting."
"He's right," Mara said. "The shift changes in an hour. It's time to go up-city."
Mara threw a crude, hand-drawn map of the city rings onto the crate. She tapped a heavy finger on the clean, grid-like streets of the Artisan District, then dragged it down to the chaotic, spiraling mess of the Sump.
"If all four of us try to crack Warehouse 4B, it's a slaughter," Mara said flatly. "The Artisan District is patrolled by Iron Guards and private mercenaries. They have magical wards on the perimeter fences. A Watchman, a rebel, a dwarf in plate armor, and a seven-foot Oromi? We'd set off the alarms before we even picked the first lock."
"She's right," Elian agreed, studying the map. "It has to be a surgical strike. In and out. Find the ledger, find out what the real weapon was, and vanish."
Gale crossed his massive, furred arms. "And what about Tychus? If the warehouse is a dead end, he's our only lifeline. The trail gets colder every hour. If he skips town, we're all hanging from the gallows."
"Then we split up," Elian said, looking at the group. "Mara and I will take the warehouse. I know how to bypass standard Guild security runes, and she can pick the mechanical locks. We move quiet."
Borrun frowned, his thick brow furrowing. "And leave the beastman to tear the city apart looking for the rat?"
Gale's lip curled, baring a glimpse of sharp white fangs. "I know where Tychus drinks. I know his safe houses in the slag-yards. I can track his scent through a sulfur storm."
"And what happens when you corner him?" Borrun challenged, stepping closer to the massive feline. "If he sold you out, he's armed and paranoid. You walk in fueled by rage, he puts a bullet in your chest before you can ask a single question. You need someone who knows how to interrogate a suspect, not just break their neck."
Gale glared down at the dwarf. For a moment, the air was thick with tension, a hair's breadth away from violence.
Then, surprisingly, Gale huffed, a low, rumbling sound in his chest. "You think you can keep up in the lower levels, Watchman? It's not paved streets and shiny boots down there."
Borrun strapped his heavy iron pauldron back onto his shoulder and picked up his mace. He looked Gale dead in the glowing green eyes.
"I've walked the beat in this city for forty years, Oromi," Borrun said, deliberately using the tribe's true name. "Just point the way."
Gale paused, the use of his people's name catching him slightly off guard. The snarl faded into a stiff nod.
Mara loaded a fresh stripper clip into her rifle and pulled her cloak tight. She looked at Borrun. "Keep an eye on him. He thinks with his claws."
"Keep an eye on yourself," Borrun replied gruffly. "Don't get my partner killed, girl."
Elian checked the cylinder of his revolver, sliding it into his shoulder holster. He looked at Borrun, offering a tight, respectful nod, before turning to his sister.
"Ready?" Elian asked.
Mara pulled her hood up, her eyes shadowing over. "Let's go steal from the rich."