A storm had brewed outside The Black Dove just as insidious plans brewed within. The slick alleys thatching the water front were thick with rain, and shadows that started to look too much like people after awhile. The whole plan stank of disaster. And girl hair, whiskey, and fish – he let those distract him.

Hava moved through the alleyway with something like grace – a long-limbed ibis plucking its way through the thick of scraps and snarls of wire littering the glistening mud behind Rutger’s House of Pain. The sheet metal stacked against the brick retaining wall squeezed the alley inlet down to a sliver; he had to slip through sideways, slick leather coat dragging against the swollen wood of the weaponry shop.

His thoughts strayed to her blouse snagging on a spiral of chickenwire or leg and stocking both sliced up by a slivered edge of brass. Fabric in tatters, metallic blood blending with the tides of dead fish and salt heaving in from the shores. She would be soaked, he would be, the whole world was and always had been. A bony hand slipped back down the dark corridor, slipping on splinters and iron until it slipped around the meat of her arm.

The Dove was just down the waterfront from the apothecary, yet still it was slow going because had to keep pausing to stop and look back and say her name. His fingers quaking at satchel straps. He shouldn’t worry so. It was her idea, anyhow.

He didn’t dwell on the fact that she had nothing to do with any honorable retribution. That she just wanted money, that she must not care for his small vengeance one little bit. He didn’t think on much beyond the roar of rain on tin roofs, the stink of old smoke prowling around the buildings, the steady placement of each step even though he couldn’t see an inch beyond his nose.

Old Rose sprang to life at night like a nocturnal beasty prowling out of his hole. Wolves, he couldn’t help but think – yet they helped, these wolves. No one would look askance at a few people shifting around in the corridors between the shops. Lie, slur, smile, say they were toasted – Murmur had the charade going for them both. The sharp scent fell off her in waves, he could feel it rushing away in her blood beneath her too-warm skin.

Shook’s Apothecary looked so different from the back; just any other knock-kneed building, storm-warped wood teetering up right. Yet when he eased up close, the acrid scent of so many herbs and unguents leaked between racks, pungent as ever even muffled by the wet earth and ozone. The red lamp at the front glowed always, the ruddy light barely perceptible as it sent of watery rays into the storm. No lamps glowing buttery beyond the oil paper windows, as far as Hava could tell. Scarred fingers slipped across the walls until they dipped into the shallow depression he knew too well. A door, a backdoor – a quiet rattle of the slick knob – a locked door.

Hava wanted to believe this was a perfect crime, though he knew there was no such thing.

“I don’t believe any soul is about. Storms make the old man’s bones ache,” he hissed, trying to find her in the dark though she couldn't be too far past the end of his arm. “Shall you try the front first, see if anything stirs or greets you? They are tricksy folk.”

Out in the dark, in the salted air of Old Rose, Murmur was a rat again. Little thing slipping into shadows, following a man made of darkness it seemed. She scrambled over debris, her gait as rodent-like as one would expect blue eyes flashing in the darkness of her face where the lanterns could not reach. Like a rat who picked through rubbish, stole from rich man or poor man Murmur’s mind was not on the comlicated quandries that she wondered this strange new Mug man might have been feeling. It was about the next scrap, the next morsel, about the cats with claws waiting to strike and the terriers and their sharp teeth.

She jumped but a little when a hand so dark closed around her arm it could have been made from the shadows themselves. But it was just Havek, no cat with claws (though he mewled her name like one in the darkness) or terrier with teeth then. At least Murmur hoped so. And it wasn’t the time to think it, but how strange it was, his skin on hers the contrast. When Murmur’s little hand had closed around Muriel’s or one of her brothers there was always pale white against nut brown, light against dark. But there was just as much difference between her and Havek. Dark against darker. Anaxas, Mugroba, Anaxas. But now was not the time.

As they approached Shook’s, the little thief from her cat burglar days sprung to action. There was no emotional significance to this place like there was for Havek, no stench of blood in her head. She disected it like he might a body on a table in the galley of a ship somewhere, some other life. Points of entry: the door, the windows on the bottom and upstairs, shimmy up the drainpipe.

She nodded in Havek’s direction, to show that she was listening. “Round the front. Good idea.”

In Anaxas, trusting people kept keys hidden in places outside the house, it was often worth searching under door mats. But this was Old Rosie and Murmur doubted there would be anything left in a person’s home if they employed that tactic. Still at least there were no servants to worry about.

“They don’t keep dogs or banders or nothin do they?” she said softly before loacting a route to the front of the shop. “Stay ere. I look less suspicious than ye do. Big scary mug man an' all that.”

She was just a girl. Just some girl. She didn’t need a name, no one would want it, not with her face bowed and that coat boxy over her shoulders. Murmur scanned the street for passers by, for someone sober enough to ask questions. But at this time, in Old Rose Harbour such a person would be rare as star dust.

Satisfied, she looked up at the windows, cupped a hand around the glass and looked in, found no stirrings in the darkness. And if there was after all this. An old man, a few boys? Havek had his machete and Murmur had legs enough to run. They didn’t know her from the golly goddess Alioe if it came down to it. Havek could look after himself.

All business she returned to Havek. “No one about I don’t think. But no points of entrance I’m happy wif neither. I think we might afta break something te get in. But we’d best be quiet in there. More exposure’n I’d like round that front. Not that I reckon many people round ‘ere would do th’ dutiful neighbour thing. But I reckon, keep quiet as we can all the same.””

Murmur studied the door and put a finger to her lips. “Smashin windas’ll rule out any possibility of em not knowin’ they been broken in te. But if we’re lucky an’ we make enough mess of everythin and not just what we came ‘ere for they might just think it were kids or summin’.”

Grinning a little, her business face fell and the old Murmur surfaced, little Murmur who was taught that breaking and entering, pick pocketing and scamming were all just children’s games she looked at him. “That is, if yer not plannin’ te do somethin’ theatrical. Writin a fuck ye note or somethin’”

She mimed scribbling on a piece of paper, “Dear Shook, Ye were a terrible boss an’ ye stank o piss. Love from Havek. An’ I mean if ye wanna, go fer it. Just mind ye don’t link me te anything.”

She stuck a little pink tongue out at Havek and gathered up her hair, tucking it under her red cap.

“Right, now, do ye wanna break sommat or shall I?”

“Why, I would never...” Hava wasn’t aware he could blush – but alas, his heat climbed his neck and pooled over his face when Murmur went on about a note. “Seems quite foolish.” When he’d written it this morning, he hadn’t been expecting to –

Thought about, turned it over and over as he’d quietly rearranged spices on dust-choked shelves. Rob it clean, or burn it down, maybe replace the aromatics in the brazier with alioeander blossoms and bail. Anyone of those things could’ve been done, but Hava Alu was a good man. He settled for sweeping the floor instead.

“I suppose petty vandalism isn’t beyond me,” he said quietly, rooting around in his satchel. “I would hope in a place like this they’d keep up tally on things.”

So there was no reason to be careful at all, was there? Hava nudged aside the compact of syringes, the machete, the books, all the other trappings of a life that wasn’t his anymore, until his fingers curled around the worn thin fabric of Ekua’s headscarf.

“And I’m certain the contents of adding machine will be missed. They’ll notice, no matter how careful we are.” The quivering had slipped away from him. Every movement was cool and thoughtful, steady in its slowness as he wrapped his fist with the scarf, twining it over and over itself at the wrist. A tiny inlet of black glass halfway down the backdoor – Hava imagined it as the vessel for secretive eyes to blink into the night, spying faces as friend or foe and all sorts of contraband nastiness trading hands.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d punched something. Meek and still, any spark of aggression was always quiet. But recoil of the glass breaking, the splintery crack of it, the jolt of pain skipping from his knuckles up his arm. The noise was muffled by the roaring storm. It was nice. So nice he gave a splintery bark of laughter, the sound still low but foreign to his ears.

Hava couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder to her, almost grinning, but he was sure she wouldn’t be able to see it through the pitch night and the veil of salty rain hissing between them. Directing himself back towards the door, he snaked in one long arm through the jagged opening he’d made until his searching fingers found the cold metal of the door knob. It might’ve looked a bit like he was being eaten, plunging wrist to shoulder into the gullet of some hungry thing, his cheek ground against the door. He jiggled the knob until it turned, clicked, and the door sprang open under his weight.

Snaking his limb back out sprinkled more broken glass at their feet.

He couldn’t see anything in the complete dark beyond the door, though the familar scent of dust, dank, and an all too strong scent of mint – the scent of something being hidden – permeated the damp air. Hava slipped inside, movements all slow and careful – not because he was cautious, per se, but because he’d rather not crash into a tower of crates and send them all spilling. He leaned against the door, pressing it back against the wall. He may be a thief, but he was loathe not to be polite.

“After you, miss,” he piped pleasantly, bobbing his head into a bow. “Step quiet, knives out, and all that.”

The shop was all quiet, save for the moan of the breeze and gentle tapping of rain against the roof. Darkness slithered in from the broken window, hiding harsh shards of glass. The door didn’t creak, was too well cared for to behave like any poor ruffian’s door. No, this was a shop, and shops were supposed to be cared for, especially those with somewhat illicit dealings and back doors facing into dark alleys. Shadowy, massless darkness greeted the pair as they stepped in, the stiller, rainless interior having a different quality to its bleak.

Stepping inside, Murmur would be the first to notice the floor. Not that he boots were any more sensitive than the next person’s, but her step welled up a small dust cloud. After seconds of coughing, she would recognize it to be something more than than dust; spices and hot pepper stung her nose. Luckily, the dampness and humidity of the rain made it scatter less than it might normally, but Murmur was in for sniffles and unpleasant breathing for a good chime or so. The culprit was a mishandled stack of satchels, having spilled onto the floor at some time during the creaking and moaning of the storm. It was a clear sign of Havok’s absence, and an inauspicious beginning.

Still, there was nothing to see stirring within the apothecary, only the sound of rain.

“You’ve done this before,” smiled Murmur, watching Havek break the glass with an expression that clearly betrayed the fact that she was impressed. A true Viendan urchin who watched Basin fights for fun who could be entertained by acts of violence and vandalism. But you had to take your enjoyment where you could on those grim streets, there was never all that much to be found.

As Havek left the door open for her, Murmur bobbed a little curtsey, “Thank you sir,” she grinned playing the little lady and the gentleman before breaking and entering.

Of course, all pretense of good breeding went right out of the window as the dust kicked up in her face. “Son of a-“ she hissed, jumping back out of the stinging cloud and giving a small cough. As she jumped, her back made contact with the tall figure of Havek, at this moment strong and unmovable as a tree with it’s roots deep into the soil and she gripped his arm to steady herself, feeling her nose running and wiping it on the sleeve of her coat on her free arm.

“Fuckin’ pepper dust or sommat,” she said, her voice thick with the spices. “Weren’t expecting that,” she let out the squeak of a sneeze and then another as the herbs lingered still around her nostrils.

Spitting on the ground she gave Havek’s arm a reassuring sort of squeeze, standing under nothing but her own support again. “I hope it ent poison or nothin’…it tastes like shit.”

Fiddling in her pocket, she pulled out her knife- turning back to the task at hand after that unpleasant little interlude. Her blue eyes, now slightly misted with water, scanned the shop- dark shapes and dancing shadows but a heavy silence, both reassuring an ominous. She stepped forward, body moving around, knife pointing to the left, to the right.

“Looks empty enough,” she said in a low voice, eyes still darting about the shop, daring so much as a rat to poke his head from out behind a sack. "I'll get the money from the register. An' I might help meself to a bit o' baccy too. Ye know where they keep that important cargo dontcha. An' any of these here herbs an that which'll fetch a lot."

Hava stifled a sneeze or two in the crook of his elbow, lone eye spinning about the room to find the culprit. He thought of a dozen wretched things, little traps to fend off thieves -- ground glass, lye, dried alioeander. Things were already going sour, not a moment inside. The Mugrobi bit of him, the moral and sensible bit, was going on about omens.

He touched the place that she had touched, fingers dragging anxiously over the wet leather. The faint pressure of herv against his chest made him pause, shoulders stiffening, blinking down at her shape in the dark. He was glad when she moved away.

"Ea," he hissed. "Just pepper, nothing more. You'd know if it was poison." Mostly because she wouldn't be talking; her throat would be too busy swelling shut. He shivered, couldn't help it. Portents and long shadows did him no good.

Squint as he did, nothing was clear in the damp darkness. His hand pressed against the closest wall, unsure of moving to far forward. He remembered the layout of the shop the best he could, hugging the wall as he moved. Hava couldn't see much, never could when it got too dark. One eye working for two, the one still living wasn't even that healthy. Shapes, suggestions of objects in the dark, he could only follow Murmur's sound. He twisted his head like a radio dial sifting through static, ears following sound, picking out her footsteps from the battering rain.

"The tobacco is behind the counter, all bound and stuffed in one of them niches in the wall...if you see any saffron or lavender, it'd be best to take them as well."

Hava raised a spindly hand in the blackness, flexing his fingers experimentally. Monite buzzed on his tongue, but he halted before speaking, hesitant. No use spooking her all over again.

"I...ah. I'm going to...magic. Right. Please don't be alarmed."

His eye flickered closed and he focused on the spell, willing the room to brighten as he hissed the spell of Lamp.

The shop moaned in the night, storm picking up around it as the pair continued into their unlawful entry. The wind picked up, the eaves groaned and the walls hissed as poorly jointed and warped wood let air inside. It was a night for neither man or beast, let along a small woman and her one eyes protector. Still, nothing stirred, nothing was seen in the lingering black. Everything was, in itself, silent. Only the world outside was living, was loud.

Havek's lips tingled as the words for Lamp fell off of them, like they themselves were being set alight. His fingertips itched like a sunburn, and his throat seized but there soon was a bulb of bright, soft light. The feelings the incantation summoned soon faded, but the false warmth left in its wake the chill of its absence. If Havek saw the spill of pepper as ill omen, the unstoppable, all encompassing shiver the summoning of his little lamp almost screamed 'go back, turn around, there is nothing good for you here...'

The light, gentle as it was, illuminated the shop dully, weaker than a candle. The floor was clean, recently swept, where the spices had not fallen. The walls lined with spices so familiar to Havek in his time working there, but a close inspection would show things were poorly cared for. Shook's shop lacked something that was hard to notice, f or anyone who had never been there for a length. There was a disorderly quality to the air, the packing and moving of things that were normally so thoroughly cared for.

Murmur shivered as the light appeared from nowhere, no stronger than the flicker of lamplight or the faint glow from a single flame but still strange, potent and mysterious to the human girl. She didn't like it when they did that, any of them, useful as it could be- when that light flickered all she felt was that loss of power, of Fendin's poor damaged brain and of scared helplessness akin to having a knife pressed against the hollow of her throat. What was wrong with just lighting a fire?

Subtle changes, tiny shifts in the atmosphere were lost on Murmur and she found her way to behind the counter sniffing away the discomfort of casting by taking interest in the spices, saffron and lavender were apparently useful. She found the tobacco as per Havek's instructions and busied herself by pulling packets from the shelves, letting them tip onto the floor.

"Cumin," thud, "Dill," thud, "garlic," thud, "lemon grass," thud, "Are you sure this place heals people? Seems te me it just makes em dinner."

Laughing softly as she ran the toe of her boot in the pile of herbs now forming on the floor she found the saffron finally and tucked it into her coat, smashing a glass cabinet with the handle of her knife. There were a jars and jars of honey, so she tipped a few out, went about spreading it across the floor, across the walls, on the counter top.

"Ye gotta try this, Trouble," she smiled, licking one of her now sticky fingers- wishing she had a slice of bread to go with it, she was starving "I'm findin it theraputic an' I don't even work here. Wan' me te call em all Dickheads all spelt out in Oregano?"

The soft burn of the spell on his lips muted the rest of the shop for a moment. The little orb of light floating at his fingertips was the crux of everything. His gaze strayed around the dimly illuminated shop -- something, something, made his very blood shiver.

He almost didn't hear her ruckus over the white noise of worry rising. He smelled it first, the cloying sweet honey.

"I...what are you...please be quiet." Hava's low voice dropped to a hiss, sharpened with a sudden rush of nerves. "Something is not..." Not right, he wanted to say. But then again what about this was? He wasn't too far from her to begin with, but he moved closer through the dim lit dark, behind the counter.

"Knife out, teeth out. If you please, miss." It was like a robbery with a child, smashing things and soaking herself in stickiness. While the whole vandalism bit wasn't without allure, the flash burn of the spell and the eerie disarray quelled whatever mischievous bit of him had been out and about. Hava was recoiling back in his shell, wanting very much to be somewhere not here. Sap and glass crunching under his boots, it was wince-inducing, every slight sound seemed so much louder than it was. Portents, omens, divinations.

The fever pitch of the storm didn't help any. No sailor worth his salt didn't get on edge during a storm, with dry feet or otherwise. Nothing seemed right. Something, something would go wrong, he could feel it in his bones and --

His free hand snatched Murmur by the wrist, the Lamp spell lurking about his fingertips illuminating the gesture.

"Do not lick that. Could be a brewed syrup or somethin', somethin' they give children to make them retch, Or somethin' else horrible...or..." Or, a more rational bit of him said, it could be honey and nothing more.

It could just be the bones old storm pathos gnawing at him, making him see portents in spilled bags of pepper and girls lapping honey from their fingers. He steeled his nerves the best he could, stilling the quivering in his fingertips, slipping his hand away from her to work on the bleak beast of the adding machine. He pulled a lever bolted to the side and the drawer rattled open with a mechanical wheeze, jangling quiet with coin. His hands were soon thick with them as well -- shills, hats, concords, it didn't matter -- and then his coat pockets were, too. He fished the machete from his satchel and laid it on the counter, close at hand in case of...in case of he didn't know what.

After a tense bubble of silence, a sigh hissed through his teeth. "Epa'ma," Hava muttered. "The storms rattle me to the core. Remind me of things. Dead and buried things, that's all they are." He raised his hand up, to light the space between them. A tight smile twitched the corner of his lips. "Write whatever you desire, miss. Mercy knows I would never. I'm far too moral."

Shaking off her wrist, Murmur stuck another defiant finger in a pot before holding the sticky digit in Havek’s face, “I know what ‘oney tastes like, Mister Trouble, de ye see me vomitin? Look try some it’s good,” she waved the finger a little before pressing it to his nose and laughing. But she put the honey jar down all the same and turned her attention back to making more of a mess. “It’s better’n dead an’ buried things at any road. Ye should let the dead bury the dead, that’s what I say.”

Technically of course, it wasn’t Murmur who had said that. It was Muriel, that day when old Salty Richards had come in from the Arova not with a boat ful of herring but with the remains of Lena Muck. Murmur had clenched her fists together til they were bloodied and Muriel, arms always full with some baby or other had unstuck her little sisters palms and wiped them down. “Ent no use cryin’ littleun,” said Muriel in her hushed mother’s voice- Muriel had mourned what had been their mother months if not years before, “Let the dead bury the dead.”

Really, Murmur wasn’t sure what that meant to this day. But it sounded good advice when coming from Muriel in that hushed motherly way. Let the dead bury the dead.

“Too moral. Yeh. Model citizen ye are,” said Murmur, walking two of her fingers alongside the machete, still sticky with something that most emphatically did not taste like anything other than honey- it wasn’t the honey that Murmur needed to watch out for, it was the fingers she ate off after all. Grubby little human fingers perfect for lifting things they shouldn’t, robbing things that weren’t theirs, dark deeds in dark places. Like what she was doing now, spitting into a handful of red ochre grabbed from a shelf and with the paste scrawling FUCK YOU into the walls.

“I’m doin this fer you anyhow,” she whispered, standing on tiptoes to finish her work of art. “Gotta trash the place, an’ they wont fink ye done it- if yer as moral as ye say ye are- if we just make a beeline fer the stuff, they wont need te ask too many questions, ye know?” and then she looked at him, frowning suddenly. “’Alf of them coins in the register are mine.” For all the smiling and the strange sense of camaraderie robbing a place could induce- just look at what happened with Seth- he was still someone she had just met and would get a knife in his hip if Murmur didn’t get her dues. She turned back to her lettering, sticking out her tongue as she tried to remember which way round ‘K’ went. Man on his side, one leg kicking, one arm waving. But which leg, which arm?

When the words were finished she beamed at them, “Best letters I done in years,” she said proudly putting a hand under her chin, smearing it red, red hands, red face almost like she had cut herself on the glass, vivid red spilling everywhere. “Ent many humans can read an’ write. My Ma’s friend, ‘e taught me. Lotsa cussin’- he were that sort, names o fish fer the shop…an’ my name...that were the first. We spelt it out. Mmm uh err mm uhh err. Over an over til I got it right. My name. All written down by my own ‘and. Ink, coal, carved into wood.” She stuck her knife into the counter and started to carved D…I…C…K…S “They don’t like us ownin stuff, the gollies. But I own my name. I can write it down whenever I like.”

She looked around, in the darkness, only faintly illuminated- suddenly feeling what had made Hava nervous, the quiet and the storm and the fizzing air that might have been the mona around Havek. “C’mon. Gotta move quick. Ent time te stop fer chats an’ tea an’ biscuits. Where are them crates, Hava?”

“It can go contrary, you know,” Hava muttered as he swiped a swathe of ocher from her palm. “Names, that is.” He finger painted a severed fish head next to the proclamation of DICKS. “S’pose one can’t much like names, being named Trouble and all that. Names own you, sometimes. Predestination and all that. Could it have something to do with why you or I are where and why we are.” Scrawling a twisty coil of fishy entrails all along the counter, chewing his lip. The picture of pensiveness. “All those whats and wheres and whys of things. Just threaded on all inevitable, just because of –“ some selfish whore “—your name. Everything must mean something. Nothing I know is too small or pointless, really...”

He leaned over her work on the counter, bringing the Lamp down to illuminate to scrutinize it. His anxiety bitten visage lit up quick as the light on his fingertips. “How lovely!" he whispered.“Those are perfectly good letters. Nothing twisted ‘round the other way at all.” He was smiling, in spite of himself. Crawling shadows, torrential storms, fear thick as dust in his nostrils, and yet a girl scrawling curses all over his previous place of employment was somehow grand. “I suppose it’s good your name isn’t spelled anything like that.” Red wet fingers painted her name onto the counter beside it, looming just beneath the fish’s viscera. He smudged her out just as quick as he’d laid her down, M-u-r-m-u-r becoming nothing but a red red smear.

She was lettered! Strange thing, curious thing. He turned to her, light held aloft to illuminate her face.

“Ah.”

That was all he could manage. A soft puff of breath, barely a syllable, but it engulfed all the feelings of revulsion, shock welling up hot and fast in his breastbone. Sole eye bounced from her red smeared throatfaceneck down to the counter top, where his dark fingers were still poised in the incarnidine muck left of her name.

Panic burst open in him, every pore dampening with it. His ocher stained hand snatched the machete from the counter, quicker than flies. Nothing is too small, nothing is pointless. Blackness loomed, the sea roared, they were sticky with red, a dank reek reigned.

“Oh, Hulali bless...” Hava hissed. The look on his face suggested that a hatcher was looming just over Murmur’s shoulder, needle-mouth gaping wide and fixing to chew her to pieces. Gotta move quick, no time for tea and chats. Without a word, without explanation, his fingers laced around her wrist again and he guided her swiftly to the back of the shop from whence they’d came.

“They’re back here. The crates...” Blank voice, fractured words. He relinquished her again, sharp and sudden as before, to gesture to the towers of crates looming against the walls of the cramped back room, the ones on the floor nestled against their knees. They all looked balefully identical, just as they had before.

“Search quickly. I would very much like to...to...” He trailed off, vaporous, absorbed in eyeing the black entry to the apothecary proper before him and their shattered entry behind him. The broken backdoor rattled uproariously in the storm wind. Machete pommeling rolling in his fingers, buzzing with nerves.

“I do not like this, miss.”

She grabbed her own wrist once Havek had released it, a slightly annoyed expression on her face. This Mug certainly was grabby, but only at her wrists thank goodness. Still she didn’t enjoy being pulled along like that, it put her in mind of scruffy alley cats holding bedraggled kittens by the haunches in their teeth. It was probably a kind gesture but bedraggled kittens can walk by themselves without any assistance.

“Nor me,” she said still rubbing her little bony wrist, “ent much I like. But yeah…ye ‘alf expect these sort of things te go tits up dontcha? Ent nothin’ allowed to be easy, is it?”

Turning round she gave Hava a little smile, spreading that gap toothed smile wide, cold air whistling in the space where her front teeth should be, making her gums feel strangely cold. Something tasted wrong, and it wasn’t just alien spices floating on the air. “We’ll be fine,” she nodded firmly, talking more to herself than anyone, “I stolen a billion things before. Admittedly, nothin’ this big, an not from right under Silas Hawkes nose. But really. ‘Ow Bad can these Bad Brothers be? I met two, done a job fer em an’ really they was just a load of old golly ponces. I love stealin from golly ponces.”

How bad can these Bad Brother’s be? She tried not to think about that mess the mugrobi golly had made in that house. That brother, tied to a chair, bleeding everywhere.

“An’ come te tSearch quickly? An’ what exactly am I lookin for?” she said, hand on hip, looking at the tower of boxes going right above her head. They were pretty large, by Murmur’s standards at any road. She could fit quite comfortably in one and stowaway somewhere. That might have been an easier way to get where she was going than riding on the back of opium money.

“If it’s all mixed in wiv other stuff I ent gonna know the difference,” she pointed to herself, “Me, Murmur. Me, fish monger. I can tell ye the difference between a cockle an a periwinkle. But some kind of medical syringey thing…whoosh,” she mimed the concept going over her head with a still red stained hand.

All the same, she clambered onto one set of crates to reach another, taller stack, with a strange uncharacteristic amount of grace. Confisalto dancers twirled on stage, balancing on the tippy tops of their toes and Murmur could climb up a drainpipe with the same level of skills. They used to walk on roof tiles when they were younger, the Muck children, drop fish heads through chimney pots of men who’d stopped with their mother, treading lightly so as not to disturb loose slates or to slip and fall. It drove Muriel damn near to distraction, especially when they wouldn’t come down. Murmur grinned as she remembered Muriel running out of the shop, hurling handfuls of mud and fish guts at the roof trying to get her siblings down from their place crouching on the chimneys, giggling as they shared stolen sweets between themselves.

There were inches and inches of dirt between her fingernails which she used to claw under the wood, hoping the damn thing wasn’t fixed shut.

It seemed as though this time, the luck that had carried the oddly well-matched pair had now run out. The crates were shut with bolts, heavy and large. One didn't just leave valuables sitting unguarded, especially in troubling times like these. Everything else in the shop, while rare or expensive, was ultimately replaceable. Some of these crates, however, were worth more to their defender than mere money. In order to get to the lower ones, the top would have to be first removed, impeding the searching efforts. However, the pins were not locked in. It was a moments search to find the slot, pull out the small bit of metal and lift the lid, if one had the strength to actually pull the boxes down.

However, this first crate was not too difficult to open. When merely lifting had proved impossible, Murmur's figers had brushed the cold metal of the pin and with out much effort, was able to open the topmost box. Within was not the loot they were hoping for, for inside the first crate was glassware, phials and flasks, ampoules and bottles. Each was wrapped delicately in cloth, those on a few of these the cheap fabric had pulled away revealing the delicate vessel within. The crude writing on the inside, recognizable to Havok, was the ship date. It was a few days after the shop had come into it's more... hidden cargo. A little deeper into the pile and they would likely find what it was they sought.

At that moment, whilst the pair came closer to their ill-desired spoils, there appeared a light out from the storm. In the front windows there was a shimmer, a glitter of light and rain, but the light did not quaver. It passed the front of the shop and paused, hanging like a ghost for a moment that stretched on, then passed by far more slowly than before, turning the shops corners, disappearing into the darkness of the storm-sheltered alley.

Being attentive to one's surroundings was a virtue. And it can be very difficult, when all of you is zeroed in on one thing. The ghostly light's lingering glimmer went unnoticed, by Hava at least. That eye was none too keen in the first place, and his focus was directed at another thing entirely.

"Murmur, be..."

Maybe Hava didn't know who he was dealing with, exactly. Maybe he missed the grace, the confidence, the sure footing. All he saw, all he knew, were precarious feet, the small dark hands, hang of hair, the rumple of skirts. Saw someone younger than she was, though he didn't know Murmur's age either. A little girl just like a million million other little girls.

Soft steps dragged him away from his post by the backdoor, hovering close to the tower of crates. Illuminated fingers hovered up to her, as did his gaze.

"What do you see?," he whispered into the gloom.

Hava didn't hesitate for an answer. She was right, after all. Whatever secret was in there, she probably wouldn't be able to divine trash from treasure. He scaled the boxes, slick boots balanced precariously beside her on the crate, shoulders brushing through coats.

Only glass, only bottles, only paper and twine. A slow his slipped through his teeth. Worthless, all of it. He held the Lamp up to the water-swollen lid of the box, gaze skating over the jumble of letters branded there. Loshis 12.

They were close to something, he knew. Just how close was the question.

"It is nothing of use..." he growled. "Ah...here, let me..."

Hava inclined his head to the box beneath their feet before hopping back down onto floorboards. He knelt alongside it, fingers slipping against the wood for the edge of a pin.

"Ah. Excuse me, miss. P'ea."

Murmur wasn’t listening though, as Havek clucked like a mother hen, not as he came to join her on top of the crates. Her head was turned, like some wild animal caught in the lamplight of some hunter, filled with awe but also with leg shaking, lip trembling terror. Her lower lip fell from its place by her top lip as she gaped slightly as the slant of light hovered and danced like spirits passing in the night, its disappearance no more comforting than its appearance.

“We ent alone,” she said in a low voice to Havek, pointing towards where the light had passed to. “Light just come in, from a lantern maybe? Or it’s magic. An’ I don’ like it either way.”

She jumped down from the box, landing like a stray cat before pacing in front of the door like a cagey tiger, poking her head into the door way, knife firmly raised. This was madness really, the fun of trashing the shop was dwindling slightly what with the impossible task of the crates and the ominous threat of danger looming thick in the air “We need te work quickly. Get out of ‘ere as soon as we can. Whatever we do, we do it quiet like.”

Coming back to stand by Havek, she hissed like a kitten, “The honey on the floor an’ the mess in there will at least let us know if someone is comin in. But if this goes south, we take what we can an’ we run…we don’t, we don’t fight. Not Bad Brothers, even if we get out of a fight- which we won’- runnin a Bad Brother through with a knife is worse than a death sentence, I heard whispers last time I were here.”

The was a shrewd look in her eyes, that she didn’t know what Havek was capable of. Sure he seemed kind but there were eels and bander wolves wherever you turned, a hug could turn into a knife in the back without a chance for your heart to take another, last beat.

“The job ent gonna go South,” she said firmly, wiping her knife on the cloth of her dress, not a word of what she said for Havek, all for Murmur, trying to imagine a compass in her head, pointed North, always headed towards North ”I ent gonna get let it go South.”

"What do you mean we are not---?" The rest of the sentence withered away. Hava tensed like a coiled spring, gaze shooting around in the darkness though he knew he couldn't see a damn thing. Jitters started up again, shivering down to his bones. "Where was -- did you see where it went?"

Fading in and out as his nimble fingers picked at the pin fastening the crate. Too many things flickered through his head, all of them revolving around blood. Hers, or his, or theirs (whoever they were). "I am so sorry for...for suggesting this, miss. It wasn't your battle to fight, I never should have...mentioned anything about..."

Just who on Vita did he think he was? Havek Alu was not some plucky orphan from a make believe book, toiling right under the nose of the big bad, escaping unscathed. And, as far as he knew, Murmur wasn't either.

"I -- just --- keep away from the door, girl," he hissed, and the sound was mostly swallowed by the rain. "If anyone gets bled, I would prefer it wasn't you."

The pin clattered to the floorboards and his hands scurried around the edges of the box. His fingers brushed the damp metal nails tamping down the lid, and something in him winced. Red on her throat, red on his hands, glass underfoot, the crates locked up tight. So many godsdamned omens tonight -- and for not the first time, Hava wished that his fine Mugrobi reasoning would shut the fuck up for two seconds.

Movements swift and almost too practiced, Hava wedged the machete blade under the lid. He wrenched it up by the handle, heart fluttering like a bird against his ribs at the protesting groan and shiver it coaxed from from the nails.

“Heh,” Murmur smiled wide at what Havek said, quite forgetting the time and the place. What a strange, nice thing to say. He didn’t want her to get all bled out and stabbed into little pieces.

“No worries mister, I pushed the idea on ye, an’ I can look after myself right enough.”

She looked at the boot of her shoe, all dusted up with spilt herbs and sticky with honey, “An’ yeah…uh…ye know…thanks.”

Right, mortal peril. Easily distracted by nice words and pretty compliments, Murmur wrung her hands out, while Havek busied himself with the boxes willing him to go quicker. This wasn’t supposed to go like this, burglars weren’t supposed to push their luck, Mal had always said that. Get in and out as fast as you can. But Murmur hadn’t pictured so many crates all set out like this, all locked up and stacked away. She hadn’t thought. And if they paid for it, if their luck ran out…Murmur didn’t know, didn’t care to know much neither.

“A light,” she said, “Come up around this way,” she traced out the path where it had gone with skippity fingers, “Tell ye what. We’re gonna need a stiff drink or two when this is done, my hearts poundin fit te burst.”

Going up to the crate she ran a finger along it, “Gotta get some of these moved. Gotta be a trolley or a pulley or summat round ‘ere. Shook ent the sprightliest of men I ‘ear. They gotta get them shifted somehow.”

"Right..." he breathed, could barely stand to breathe. “So...it probably went around into the alley...?“ It could always be nothing. Could have just been some drunk with a lantern wandering about, nothing to be biting the bit over.

Being so impossibly quiet all the time seemed impossibly loud in situations like this. Hava lurched up from the crates, as his heart lurched up into his throat. No smiles for him, he was throughly anchored in the here and now, skin humming with fear.

He guessed being at the wrong end of a knife so many times was supposed to make you feel braver, stronger, more capable the next time -- but every time he'd just end up ripped and hacked and mangled. But always alive, more or less. Less and less and less, as of recent.

"I doubt he has been moving any of them. So such is doubtful. It would surely be loud thing, anyhow...” And this was about the time when he was wishing wick magic wasn’t so pitiful. Weak light, watery light. It felt so fidgety and disorganized, all of this, fluttering from one thing to the next. Nothing cool or methodical about any of this. “The best idea to me would be laden ourselves with as many as we can carry -- if we can ever find the cursed things.”

If they’re even still here, a little voice chimed in.

“The ship date on that top one is about am month past. Close to when I...they’re close. They must be.” How much of what they said was true? How much was just self-assurance? The ratio was probably staggering. He was teetering up on the lowest box again, reaching up towards the one Murmur had opened. He stuffed the machete away in the satchel, for a moment. It was only filled with glass and phials, anyhow. It couldn’t be too heavy.

But a bit too heavy for a gimpy arm, maybe. He teetered under the weight, body staggering to the right. Almost fell, almost, would have if not steadying himself. He eased off the low crate gracefully as he could manage, which wasn’t very graceful at all.

“We must keep moving them -- I have reason...well, slight reason...to the think pertinent stuff is in lower crates,” he hissed after easing the crate onto the floor; caution aside, the glass pieces still rattled menacingly. “Get the next one, would you? If it’s too heavy for you I’ll...assist.” The last bit was faltering, unsure. That arm would rather he not do anything, but he’d rather she didn’t know that.

(( Got permission from Calmwolf to continue. ))

Once the moved crate ceased its portentous tinkling, and Havek's words had melded with the gloom, his one eye saw some writing on the lower crate. FRAGGEL IMPORTNINT - probably a misspelling rather than the brand of an unlikely merchant.

Meanwhile, the light Murmur had seen earlier crept slowly into the back alley, swaying drunkenly. The rain died down, slightly, just enough to hear the clanking of a lantern and a sodden voice.

"Hooo.. er," it said, low with gravelly sickness. The non-words were followed by a wretched cough, a gurgle, and a splash that surely was not rain. "Fuuu.. uh.. uck."

As the foreign sounds from the alley crept on the air, Murmur pulled at Havek’s sleeve fiercely, several times. “It’s back,” she hissed. “It sounds like a drunk…but still…shit. We need te move quicker. An’ we can’t risk no one seein us leave neither.”

She clambered up in order to reach the top crates, arms wrapping around it like she were enveloping the box in some sort of hug, before grunting gutturally as she lifted . It was not light, all this wood and glass, but Murmur did her best- she was young and healthy without busted up limbs and had shifted crates of shellfish, bundles of nets and other such wares as a girl.

“We gettin’ any…nnnrrruh…closer?” she said, trying to set the crate down quietly as she could, but failing as the contents chinked merrily from inside.

Murmur went for another box, sliding it into her arms which were stretched around it, her chin stretched to rest on it. Her suspicions were correct obviously about being able to curl happily inside one of these boxes. But Shook’s wasn’t in the way of human trafficking, obviously, though the Bad Brothers and their big bad deeds were legendary.

They used to play at gangs in the Dives of Vienda, all the little boys running around, whooping. The rule was no girls allowed, but since Murmur’s brother was one of the bigger boys she got to tag along. ‘Thas our littlun, me Ma says I can’t leave her. She stays.’ And little Murmur would stand solemnly in the doorway of whatever shop they were robbing, chewing on a piece of crust while the boys stuffed sweets into their pockets. It was an idyllic view of street crime, one that didn’t match up to the reality of the Bad Brothers, all that blood, all that danger of silly things like maps and needles.

“Bloody…nnnrrruh…” she put the box down besides it, shaking her arms as they began to ache. “Reckon I’ll be mite sore tomorrow.”

Another box, another grunt. Her mood began to worsen with all of this heavy lifting, with aching bones. This was supposed to be…oh what had Havek said? Doable, very doable. Just who the heffing heck did they think they were? Gimpy mugrobi, tiny little girl or slick thieves? In and out like shadows, not if the state of the shop was anything to go by, not if you judged the way Murmur’s heart kept hopping against her throat. And she still wasn’t entirely sure if all this was worth it.

"Oh, Hulali bless..." Hava heaved a sigh of utmost relief. No Brothers, no angry little apothecary boys, no Kathis stumbling about with his shattered slack-jaw and bloody stump. He had never been happier to be in the presence of some sloppy alcoholic.

"Yes, yes...they must be here. Somewhere..." and he trailed off, pensive and vaporous as he had in the fish market that morning. Excuse me, miss, I think I know you. Somewhere.

Except he didn't know her at all, not beyond that theological intangible form of knowing.

"You don't have to..." flimsy voice, meek. Tiny thing, she didn't need to be lugging down all these crates -- perhaps they were heavier than he thought. All this dark, all these quiet noises, he was here just as he was there, with other small girls snuffling around in the dark doing things they probably shouldn't.

"It's going to be alright," he said. Quiet, too splintery-awkward to quite be soothing, but at least it was a try. He didn't quite know why -- she sounded so small, so young. Could have been Akee, or Ama, or anybody. He stalked about the crates she'd moved, crouching down, slipping the machete in the gap, cranking it up against the flimsy nails. Mechanical, methodical.

"We shall get a drink after this." Creak!

"Just like you said." Crack!

"The sun will be up in a few hours..." Creak!

"We shall get breakfast." Crack!

Using that bizarre 'we' word again. It was infectious. He didn't know how much truth he placed on those words. It was more like trying to smooth down the fur of a bristling kitten. Whether or not the flea bitten little thing would nip and scratch him away was another matter.

Easing off the lid nearest to him, Hava gestured to the door with his illuminated palm. "Get the door, would you, miss? We don't need some guttered beast stumbling in here."

Kippers,” she said firmly, “I wan’ kippers. They do em on the pier, smoked in barrels in the mornin’, sold all wrapped up in flat bread.” Murmur recalled trying to steal a kipper straight from the grill, earning second degree burns and a clip round the ear for her trouble. “They’re good.”

But Murmur smiled a little at him, if Havek could pretend to be soothing then Murmur could pretend to be soothed, even if the splinters caught and slid under skin and her smile was a half hearted distracted affair.

“I tell ye mister…ent much better than eatin smoked kippers on Haverton pier. So long as ye don’t get trouble from the bastard seagulls,” she added darkly, spitting on the floor at the mere mention of bastard seagulls, stole anything from a person’s hand they would. Shiny things, sweet things, they had a knack for going for anything you really wanted.

She nodded at Hava’s insistence that the door be closed, knife gripped tight as she headed past him, back into the shop. Beyond the reaches of Hava’s light, things got slightly darker as she reaccustomed her eyes to the overwhelming gloom, though they’d never been amazing over long distances.

The broken glass glinted in the moonlight and Murmur tread carefully over the sticky, peppered floor to the entrance still left ajar. Hopefully anyone walking past would not notice the broken glass- a sure sign of disturbance within.

In the dim glow, nails glinted, stripped of rust as they were yanked from cheap lumber. The lid flopped off readily, and, like a tumble with her legs spread wide, the crate and its mysteries were theirs to take. Inside, more anonymous glass equipment lurked under scraps of canvas and sailcloth, much like the other crates; however, among the tinkling sounds of glass, there was a distinct thud of metal. A steel box lay in there, about the size of a loaf of bread. It was heavily locked.

The sky opened up again, seeming to spew out more rain in one thunderous second than it had the whole night. It drowned out the sound of rummaging, but it also made the drunkard’s ramblings inaudible. Sheets of water veiled the lantern, too, but it appeared to grow fainter before it vanished entirely--either ‘round a corner or snuffed out.

"Kippers," he echoed. Hollowly, quietly. "Kippers and whiskey do not sound like a very good breakfast, I fear."

That's what he said instead of calling out in excitement about the strange metal thing, first. These things are best handle with poise and restraint.

"Miss Murmur!" a hissing stage whisper, poking through the recesses of the shop. "I believe I have found...something." Hava delicately shifted aside the medley of glass bits, balancing all the flasks and beakers and phials around him on the floor like a chemist's tiny tea party. Only then did he lift out the box, laying it across his lap. Something, yes. Certainly something, only he didn't know what.

He skimmed the sphere of light across the lid, the sides, eye skipping to find some sort of identification. He shook it -- minutely, cautiously, listening for the hint of a clink or rattle. A small safe stuffed with birds and concords, maybe, or filled with vials of bizarre liquids.

Hava teetered to his feet, clutching the lockbox against his chest.

"I dare ask, is that creature still slinking about out there?" he called softly, peeking his head out from the back. "Also...ah." Hava did a quick inventory of the shop, as he had for about two months now, remembering Shook's gnarled hand gesturing to the nooks in the wall, the black label things on higher shelves.

"He kept apah leaves bundled up in this gilt box under the counter -- you know what those look like, yes? -- and this lockbox...thing...shotha and chrove heart poppy bulbs and...truth weed in the window box." That was his anyway, he thought. Planted and grew it, he did. That bit wasn't stealing at all. "Stuff your pockets with whatever you can. Strange crates or no, such will profitable."

“Breakfast of kings that is,” said Murmur, before the prospect of a discovery was relayed and the young human woman felt the tight noose of trepidation loosen, if only a little. They’d been in here so long now, or it felt like an age at least, while her heart beat a thousand times in her chest like the flutter of a mousebeat in the paws of a large alley cat time itself drip drip dripped by like each grain of sand in an hour glass queued up to jump to its doom individually

“Somethin’?” she hissed back. “What kind o’ somethin’? Somethin’ don’t mean nothin’. Is it a good somethin’? I mean, a turd in a box is a somethin’ as well but it don’t mean I can retire to them Muckylucku islands or whatever theys called on the back of it.”

She set about her own task, discerning in the dark what was trash and what was treasure. Crouching behind the counter she closed a fist around the Apah leaves and let out a low whistle. She knew about the golly drink chan, but of course had never tried it- load of old posh toffin crap that it was. For one, with what money? And also, all that hallucinating? Sounded too much like bastard magic if you asked Murmur, she much preferred sticking to whiskey, at least you knew where you stood with whiskey. The apah leaves were put in her blouse, nestled quite comfortably between her bosoms. She took the box like he asked, and a handful of other stuff which she hoped were what he wanted.

From the window box, she took the time to look out to see if there were anyone still lurking about and from what she could make out, it was clear as day. So she yanked the plant up by the roots and stuffed it in her pockets.

“Seems clear te me,” she said, poking her around to Havek with a little playful jump of energy. “What’s that?”