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‘You try it, next battle. Hold the bloodstars in your hand and push the animor at them. They pop like sausages!’ He laughed once, and then shaped himself into the altogether more sombre figure of the wolf. He trotted to the edge of the roof and leaped off.
    Velody sat there for some time after he had gone. ‘Like sausages,’ she repeated in a murmur. She never would entirely understand the Creature Court.
    Darkness fell more solidly around her, and there would be no battle this nox; she was sure of that now.Still, she felt that shiver of a premonition she had spoken of with Ashiol days ago. She could not get over the thought that something was coming, something bigger and badder than she had seen before.
    When Velody looked down at her hands, that spidery pattern was back, violently dark against her very pale skin. She felt a crushing weight on her chest, the air itself squeezing tighter around her.
    Work, that was what she had to do. She would go below and finish the trim of the dress for the Duchessa, and when her needle finally stopped moving, she would feel better. More human. More herself.
    Perhaps by the time morning came, she would be able to sleep without dreaming of dead men.

4.
Heliora
    H ow did it start, for me? I followed him home.
    I was eleven and living on the streets (that is a story you will hear more than once, so many of us started out this way). I was a thief and a stray, and I put every spark of strength I had into pretending I was a boy.
    Being a demme is all bad, on the streets. You get used up and thrown aside or you have to spend half your beggings on cosmetick so you can at least get paid to whore. I preferred stealing.
    One day there was this lad, dark-haired and glowing. A complete shiny-blood; you could see it in his eyes and his swagger. He had no right to be hanging around Cinquilene — what the frig did he think he was up to? Only the dirt and the rats lingered here.
    I could see bulge of his purse as he joked with his — companion? Manservant? Wretched toff. I wanted to hurthim, wanted to wound him. Wanted to see his mouth gape in surprise when he saw his purse had been lifted by a sneak ten times faster than he was.
    But I didn’t steal it. Instead, I followed him home. I expected he would make his way to a fine Great Family house — high on the Avleurine, or the Alexandrine, where the shiny-bloods gather to count their coin. Instead, he wandered deeper into the maze of slums and streets jammed between the Avleurine hill and the Lucian theatre district.
    They were chattering all the time, those lads, though I only had eyes for the dark one, even then. The manservant was as full of himself as his master, and they cuffed and pawed at each other, sniggering as if they had some great secret.
    An alley turned into a tunnel, and still I followed, down into the depths of a place I had never known existed, underneath the city itself. We walked down in darkness until we passed a ruinous heap and, beyond that, the quiet cobbled streets of a silent underground town, all empty streets and abandoned shops, like the breath had been sucked out of it.
    The Shambles, yes, I know that now. At the time it was like I had stepped into another world. Which of course I had.
    â€˜Oh look, it’s Tasha’s cubs,’ said a mocking voice, cutting through the cool air of the underground stone city. My boy (I already thought of him that way, pathetic but true) tensed as a lithe older lad leaped down from the roof of a ruined awning to land on his hands and feet as if they were paws.
    â€˜Get stuffed, Barthol,’ said the red-haired manservant, doing his best to sound unimpressed.
    â€˜You’re not anything,’ said the older lad, sneering down at him. ‘Not worth a centi, either of you. Someone should teach you respect for your betters.’
    â€˜There are two of us and one of you,’ said my boy, dark and glorious. ‘If you want to chuck your weight