It was hard for Lirssa to shake off the cold. Stretching was painful. The back protested, joints crackled, and in the end a shiver would still slice down her spine and to her numb toes and purple fingertips. A series of yawns sucked in the cool, misty air of the morning and another chill shook her shoulders.

With care, she wrapped up her things, a few small books, juggling knives and glass balls, in the cloak to stash away once more. When things got better, she would return the cloak, hat, and peacoat to the inn. Somebody else could use it in their need. Right now, though, she needed them. She did not need them on her when she went to find Elliott. Beneath the crate, tucked in the sewer grate, she left it. The only thing still on her was a small pouch that held a key and the few coins to her name.

A morning fog swirled about her as she walked the awakening streets. Hinges creaked open tired doors as laborers began their determined daily lives. Lirssa avoided even the possibility of touching them, ducking in alleyways when the press of people was too great. Impulsively she ran, tried to make a game of missing people, stumbled once when she felt a shove inside, and cursed whomever was working magic at that hour. At least there wasn't a scream.

The building that held Elliott's flat had its own departures. An wrinkled, steel gray haired woman with a pinched faced, chubby child squalling on her hip, calling a farewell to a slip of a girl with sallow cheeks and raw, red fingers. Washerwoman by the looks of her. Lirssa stayed pressed by the stairs until the door closed, until the entrance was free of people, and then slipped inside and ran up the stairs to the top floor where Elliott's rooms were.

There were four doors on that floor. Just as Lirssa turned from the height of the stairs, Elliott's door opened. "Good morning," he murmured and stepped back, rubbing his hand over his brown hair. Mahogany eyes were sleepy still.

"Guess you knew I was comin'." Lirssa felt a little sour turn to her stomach.

"Not to be too obnoxious, Lirssa, but I have no little talent, and I have used your gift several times. It is like I can smell you." He closed the door and motioned to the small hearth in the corner with its ashen embers just barely whispering the latent heat of a fire the night before.

She knew what he meant, but the sour was coming into her words. "I couldn't bring myself to wash this morning." If she could have climbed into the ashes, she would have to soak in that warmth. She had to find a place. It was getting down right silly.

Her stomach grumbled. A sidelong glance from her huddle before the fire, but it didn't look like Elliott had noticed. He sat on the couch and rubbed the bridge of his austere nose. "So, you have come to finally accept instruction, Lirssa?"

"I haven't earned much to pay you, but my other tutor is taking a break, so I can pay you what I woulda paid him." It was too little. What would he think" "Three coppers an hour."

"Too much, Lirssa, by the looks of you, you could use those coins yourself." The smile held an aristocratic air of authority even if he lived in such simple circumstances. "What of all your connections, Lirssa?"

"They have their own problems." She spat out. "Take it or leave it. I'll find someone else." Another seizure in her belly and its echoing grumble.

Elliott flicked a hand and a kettle filled with water. He bade with a nod for wood to move into the hearth, and no motion at all the flames began to renew while the kettle settled on its hook over the reborn flames. "Hmm, no doubt you could, but let me see if I can put these in terms of your world. My training you aids me, Lirssa, in that I do not have to worry of you being used against me — again. In fact, you would be doing me a favor. One could say I should be paying you."

It was a valid point. She could see it. She could also see he was manipulating the facts. Well, she had manipulated truths in her time, recently in fact that had cost her a very dear friendship, a mentor, a father figure. "Well, payin' me isn't right, and you know it. Just playin' with me you are, but you're right. I'm trouble and I'm dangerous." The darkness she had felt when Mason barely touched her, not even skin to skin, made her tremble again.

Elliott leaned forward, a mild nod as a cup and saucer with a spoon arrived near Lirssa from the small kitchen area. In it were some herbs, a spiced tea from what she could smell, and a half slice of bread upon the saucer. "Having trouble lately, Lirssa?"

She was too hungry to refuse the breakfast, small as it was. The smell of the tea improved when she added the heated water from the kettle. "I think, well, people are usin' the cursed gift when I'm walkin' the streets. Not even touchin' me. And...sometimes, they only have to be near and not touch my skin and stuff happens."

Elliott tapped at his chin. He smiled, looking very much like a tired priest with a penitent member of his flock. "No more delay then, Lirssa. Eat and we will start. Any magic user reaching out to a source may stumble upon you if you are nearby, which I assume is what is happening. That," he nodded, "cannot happen."

Sipping the hot tea, she heard the determination and fear.

The inn was never warm anymore, at least, not in the heart sense. She certainly had warmed her body in preparation for another cold night sleeping beneath the skies. Falling asleep in the Teas "n" Tomes was not an acceptable alternative with that grouchy old owner there. Working for a few hours straightening books on the shelves had been the only thing to subdue him. Not that she minded terribly, but it was obvious he was not going to accept a second episode.

There was no bitterness. No business owner wanted a rag-tag street urchin sleeping in their buildings. It was bad for business. On the plus side, Miss Rena had been there and the prospect of earning a night inside an apartment had been discussed. Something to look forward to on the next day, working out the details and making sure things would be safe enough.

Her fingers curled about her sides, tucking them beneath the comfort of her arms. Safe. That was the hardest. Plotting and planning was useless while this curse lay upon her. She could not be an actress when any moment she might have to touch someone with magicks. There was nothing to do while she could not protect those around her. The streets were safest for now until she learned ? even if winter was coming fast. It was hard to battle the offer of a night inside a place though, and rightly earned.

The streets blurred one into the other, but she knew her way even around the edge of the West End. A tickle at her nose, the cold causing it to run, she drew out a small square of cloth, what was left of the motley, and used it as a hanky. It was soft and though now abused, it carried memories and wishes. She would get back to that time bright time. Fingers clenched into fists, the cloth crushed in one, and she set them beneath her arms again as she walked on.

Ali had found over the years that running and meditation had a lot in common. After the first half-mile, he felt the thousand thousand cares and concerns of his daily life fall away, felt his mind subsumed into a vast humming silence. He might have called it "OM' if he were a member of that faith, but he was not; and so he thought of it merely as a place to think.

And so he did, thinking through the bigger problems of his life. There was Michael's escalating attempts to reach his wife. There was the nagging issue of the boundaries between Rekah's freedom and her safety, and the swift judgments others so easily passed on what they were trying to do for her. There was the shop, and his ideas on where he wanted to take it. There was the Zoltar's Fortune machine's harping on his nonexistent relationship with the Bubasti, and the question of how much truth lay in its predictions. There was Lucien's rage, and its effects on Fio. There was his hope for children. There was Fio's child's soul, trapped in a soulgem without a clear known way for him to free it. There was"there was so much.

All these thoughts and more occupied him as he passed out of the WestEnd, running along the road beside the river. Dante's nails clicked on the pavement as the greyhound ran with him, easily keeping pace. He'd worried, originally, that his runs would be too much exercise for the dog; that he'd overwork and possibly injure the animal. But Dante was only half dog"and whatever the other half was, it had impressive endurance. He'd taken the dog out on longer and longer walks, then on a series of progressively longer runs. Dante showed no signs of unhappiness or ill health, so he'd added the dog to his daily ritual, and he seemed to look forward to it as much as Ali himself did.

A rumbling dray pulled by a pair of oxen flashed past on their left. For a moment, the air steamed with all their collective breaths"his and Dante's, the oxen, the swarthy driver who lifted a hand from his whip to wave a fleeting hello. It was cold this morning, and just past sunrise. The weak sunlight lay flat on the ground, fought unsuccessful battles with every shadow. He'd worn a jacket, then compromised with a pair of shorts; sweat played along the interface of his skin and the air, sending flashes of heat and cold through him with every step.

After crossing the Highbridge he turned left, headed deeper into the city's heart. On his right, past the smoothly bunching rolling shoulder of the hound at his side, was the city cemetery. A low stone wall shielded the nearer graves from view. Farther into the cemetery, line of sight from the street encouraged grander displays. A series of low black marble headstones were flanked by a magnificent depiction of Taw's" Melek, the peacock angel of the Yezidi. Dragged out of his musings, he slowed to look at the big carved monolith"

"and that was when he saw it.

A flash of white, tucked in behind the monolith. Only the smallest glimpse of it was visible; if he'd been running, he wouldn't have seen it. He stopped, chest heaving, Dante panting at his side, and squinted at the little bit of white, trying to puzzle out what it was.

A hand, he realized. The watery sunlight picked a hand out, loosely curled among the fallen leaves. That was a person, out there.

As he bolted for the cemetery gate, he found himself praying that it was a prank, some jest badly played by half-grown children with nothing better to do than to skulk around cemeteries late at night. He'd found too many bodies since he'd come to Rhydin: Ewan's Sunny, and the farmer nailed to the Eye's wall, were only two of the more recent examples. He could and did detach his emotions, was able to step back from the moment when he had to. That didn't mean Rhydin hadn't provided rich fuel for his nightmares.

An iron gate screamed thinly behind him. He ran through rows of the dead, back toward the towering bas-relief of Taw's" Melek and that small white hand. Please, please, please"

Ali dropped to one knee when he reached it. The owner of the hand was a tiny, thin girl, folded into herself like she was trying to ward off the cold. As he rolled her carefully onto her back he got a good look at the face under lank strawberry-blonde hair and revised her estimated age upward; the face was thin and pinched with privation, too old for her build. In her teens, possibly. She was familiar, though he couldn't think why; then he remembered her, standing on the porch of the inn, yelling imprecations at him and Lucien as they fought in the street below. Lisa?" Perhaps. There were no immediate signs of life. He knelt over her, head bent, stroking her cold, cold cheek; mourning in a moment's silence over a girl he hardly knew as the greyhound panted clouds of steam into the air beside him.

A minute passed, perhaps, before a sigh washed over the inside of his wrist.

Ali jerked back, startled, then bent over her again as field medic training kicked in. Three fingers pressed against the carotid artery found a pulse on a second attempt, weak and thready. After half a minute, she exhaled again. Hypothermia, the coldly logical part of his mind said. Slowly warming water baths indicated, monitor heart rate and breathing to avoid organ- and life-threatening shock.

Another option"a perfectly reasonable one, to his mind (never mind the fact that you're kneeling in the middle of a graveyard, whispered that coldly logical self) would be to enlist the aid of Haze's necromantic spells and give her some of his own life. It made sense. It would be easy, and quick, and he could take her back to his and Fio's apartment to rest afterward. Fio wouldn't turn her or indeed any child in need away. He set a hand on each of her cheeks, feeling the bones so delicate and fine under the skin; sighed out a deep breath, shut his eyes, called to mind the runes strung together on barbed wire and torment that were Haze's favored means of quick-casting"

"and snatched his hands away from her face in the instant before he could have unleashed them, gasping. His palms stung, as if he'd slapped a wall as hard as he could. Beside him, Dante whined, ears flattened. Something else was going on here. Something was very wrong, and she was going to die if he left her. He was sure of it.

All the girl's weight seemed no more than paper in his hands, as he gathered her up, slung her across his chest with her face pressed into the fever-heat of his neck. He was already shouting for the Watch as he reached the street, and half a block back toward the WestEnd, he was rewarded.

A shining white head turned down the street, a white brow arched superciliously over a glowing red eye. Black lips parted to show sharp white teeth in a sneer of disdain, a "what the hell do you want?" as plain as if it had been spoken aloud. But the drow was wearing the studded leathers of the Watch, with a serviceable steel sword at his side; and even better, he and Ali knew one another. Treemma. Fear, in the Ilythiiri language. He was an utter bastard. He was a ferocious poker player. Ali had never been so glad to see his snarling face.

As he reached the drow, Ali was already panting out instructions. "Go"go to my apartment, please. Take the dog with you. Tell Fio I've got Lucien's friend with me, the red-haired girl, I don't know her name"Lisa" Found her in the cemetery. I'm taking her to Kyrie's. Tell her to meet me at the north gate"Fio doesn't know the way past that. Please," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"Ali," repeated the elf in a bass voice far too deep for his tall and slender frame, 'says that he has found Lucien's friend Lisa in the city cemetery in some distress. He says he is taking her to Kyrie's, and he asks of his wife Fio that she meet him at the city's north gate."

Ali nodded, passed the end of Dante's leash over. He and Treemma parted ways: the elf loping gracefully toward the depths of the WestEnd, Ali running north, toward the Abbey and the hope of help from the Priestess. Please, please, please, he pleaded with his goddess into the silences in his head with every stride. No more death. No more dying.

It was odd. It was all too odd. In all her years of tumbling and acrobatics she never felt so". She felt like the scarves she juggled; fluttering almost insubstantial things. Where had she been" What had she been doing" Nothing worked like it should. A pulse.

Somewhere over there. It was hard to say really as there seemed to be no up or down or left or right. But there seemed correct. There had been something. A tug and gone. Was it a step or a leap to get there" What was the pattern" Another pulse. Faint but steady. It pattered like a heartbeat. Turn and walk or skip and jump" How far was it' Start with the step. Follow the beat.

As Ali ran through the streets, the denizens of Rhydin were stirring from their slumbers or going to seek them. Rituals that heralded the beginning of day or the end of night needed to be performed. They set up their altars or lay on their biers. Words of power or words of nonsense were muttered in lips and spoken in minds and hearts. Those who had the talent, who reached out to objects that held power felt the flickering passage of something more pass by. Some would fear it, shrinking away, and others would grasp at it, hungry for the energy there. It was those foolish ones who paid the price. Screams punctuated the air. Windows cracked at once peaceful homes. Flames and smoke gusted up chimneys. Just a few, just the reckless few, who had dwellers far too eager to question why. These were the unheralded messengers trailing in Ali's wake.