The rain in Valdrin never fell clean , By the time it reached the Lower wards it had already dragged through a mile of smoke and soot , smelling of coal instead of anything as simple as water.
Cairon had stopped noticing it years ago.
He moved through the alleys the way he moved through most of the city — like he already knew where every loose cobble and blind corner was, Rain slicked his trench coat to his shoulders his breathing mask hid most of his face, leaving only his eyes above the strap: black, with a thin ring of gold around each iris, barely noticeable since he got old enough luckily no one stared at them anymore.
Trailing Behind him, struggling to hold the pace, came the reason he was out in a weather like this .
A scrawny boy couldn't have been more than thirteen, swallowed by a coat two sizes larger than his build and a scarf tightened so many times around his neck he could barely turn his head. He had a satchel clamped to his chest like it was the only thing keeping him upright, and he was limping behind barely catching up to cairon.
"Move faster, Vynn."
Cairon's voice was pitched to carry exactly as far as it needed to barely audible .
The boy flinched, nodded, and hurried, boots squelching. "I'm trying , Just -—"
A whistle cut him off. Metalic, distant, official.
Cairon stopped so fast Vynn nearly slammed into his back.
His hand sleekly found the dagger under his coat without seeming to move at all, and his eyes went to every shadow around them scanning every nook and cranny .
"We're still being watched," he said, low.
Vynn got anxious looking around clumsily his eyes went wide. " Who? The Ironclad? I don't even see them -—"
"Doesn't matter." Cairon already had the boy's sleeve, already steering him toward the mouth of a side alley. "Keep moving. Stillness is what gets people caught, we gotta leave. "
They went deeper into the ward , past buildings abandoned so long the rot had a smell all on its own — wet plaster, old rust, something sweetish underneath. They reached a warehouse, it looked like every other dead building on the block: sagging roofline, boarded windows, a door that a stranger would swear hadn't opened in years.
Cairon knocked three times on a panel low near the foundation, in a rhythm that meant nothing to anyone who hadn't been taught it.
Nothing, nothing happened for a couple of seconds. Then the wall groaned and slid back along a track no one outside would ever think to look for, opening onto a passage lined with old gearwork and lamps that had seen better decades.
"Inside." Cairon didn't wait to see if the boy would argue.
He argued anyway, just with his feet — hesitating at the threshold, eyes on the dark ahead. "Are you sure this—"
"Less questions for now . It's just safer than out there. Hurry inside . " Cairon visibly fed up , didn't look back. "If you'd rather ,You can stand in the rain instead,waiting for whoever is looking for you."
That decided it. Vynn slipped through, and the panel ground shut behind them, sealing the storm outside where it belonged.
The chamber past the passage was small and low-ceilinged, lit by oil lamps that left more of the room in shadow than out of it. Maps covered one wall, pinned so many times over the plaster underneath had gone soft as lace. Crates sat stacked in the corner . Under all of it lingered the smell of wet earth and rust that never quite left a place like this.
"You're late."
The voice came out of the dark , following it came out a shape unfolding itself from the shadows, broad enough to block what little lamplight reached that corner. His face was hidden behind a mechanical respirator, brass gone dull with age, a thin hiss of copper tubing keeping time with his breath. Belts and holsters crossed his chest like he'd be going into a war anytime soon.
His eyes found Vynn and narrowed. "Who's the stray kitty?"
"Don't know and don't care ,
Wanted by the Ironclad , they turned all the lower wards upside down looking for him, I checked the poster myself." Cairon pushed his hood back. Water ran off his hair onto the cracked stone. "He's with us now."
Marek snorted. "Doesn't look like much."
"I can hold my own, please i just gotta hide . I will keep to myself and will find something to eat by myself. " Vynn's voice cracked on the last word, which rather undercut the point, but he said it anyway, chin up, satchel clutched tight enough to stop his breathing.
Cairon didn't quite smile, but something in his face eased. "Look He's too young. He's obedient And he listens — which is more than I can say for half the men that are with us."
Marek grumbled something Vynn didn't catch and let it drop. He walked into a door framing behind him going in front of a board he jerked his chin at the map, red ink threaded through it like a wound that hadn't closed. "Ironclad hit one of our safehouses last night. Burned it flat. We're running short on places to disappear to."
"Nothing new , We adapt , We always do." Cairon's eyes stayed on the map a moment putting his finger along the red crooked line . "What about the shipment?"
Marek nodded toward the crate. "All there. Weapons, rations. And this time they sent us something extra you'll want to look at, I couldn't figure out what it was . "
Cairon pried the lid with a crowbar left leaning against the wall .
Perfectly placed inside were , Knives, a few pistols, and underneath them a row of glass vials filled with liquid so pale silver it looked poured from moonlight rather than mixed by hand. He lifted one, turning it against the lamp. It hummed , just enough to feel through the glass.
"What the hell is this?"
"Apparently yet another alchemist's work." Marek didn't sound happy about it. "Written inside was a note , [ it can drop an Ironclad soldier where he stands. ]
I asked around nobody has seen anything like it ."
Cairon pocketed the vial without another word, his face giving nothing away. "Then tonight we try it."
---
The rain poured even more heavily making the air even damper .
Cairon's crew moved through the back alleys toward the convoy route, six of them counting Vynn, boots quiet on wet stone. Ahead, steam wagons rumbled into view behind a line of four masked Ironclad soldiers , the kind of procession that didn't bother hiding what it was guarding, because it never occurred to the men escorting it that anyone would be foolish enough to try attacking it .
"Stay sharp." Cairon crouched behind a stack of crates, voice pitched just above the rain. His eyes tracked the convoy's approach without blinking.
Vynn crouched beside him, a small blade shaking faintly in his grip. Cairon's hand landed on his shoulder,
"Breathe kid , relax your shoulders and You don't move unless I tell you to , and even then you're support the others , don't move in the front . Understand?"
Vynn nodded. The shaking eased, if only a little. "I won't mess this up sir , don't worry. "
The corner of Cairon's mouth twitched — not quite a smile, but close enough that Vynn would remember it later. "Good."
The convoy rolled into range. Cairon raised his hand, held it, then dropped it.
"Now."
Marek's charged dropping 2 cone shaped metallic grenades . For half a second the street went white, then it was noise a bang and then started the shouting, the crack of gunfire, Ironclad formation breaking apart as Cairon's crew came out of the dark at them.
Cairon put the first man down before the soldier had finished turning, his blade went in and out in one motion through gap in the neck , already pivoting toward the next with the same knife reversed in his grip, suddenly throwing it before he'd fully decided to throw it.
In his mind he was thinking , Something had been building in his chest since the fighting started , he'd noticed it but set it aside, the way he set aside most things not paying any attention to them . But it hadn't gone away. It had gotten even worse, a pressure behind his ribs like he'd swallowed the storm outside instead of just walking through it.
Suddenly an Ironclad soldier stepped into his blind side with a blade already coming down,
"Cai behind you ", Shouted Marek
Caught off guard , Cairon turned around, and the pressure in his chest stopped building and simply left him.
It came from somewhere under his skin, from his hands, from nowhere that made any sense, suddenly a wall made of something like water took the soldier off his feet and threw him the length of the street. When it passed, the cobblestones were dry again everywhere except where Cairon stood, and he stood there drenched to the bone, arms still raised, staring at his own hands in a daze.
The street had gone quiet enough to hear the fire crackling.
"What in hell was that?" Marek's voice, when it came, was not steady.
Cairon didn't answer right away. He turned his hands over once, twice, watching them like they might do it again . When he finally spoke, his voice had gone rough at the edges. "I don't know." , "But I feel like it will happen again ."
" He he he , and he said I won't find him anytime soon ,… "
High above the wreckage, someone was watching .
With a bizarre bronze mask .
His gloved hand rested on the roof's edge, and on the back of it — just visible in the last orange light of the burning wagon — a sigil had been worked into the leather itself: a serpent, coiled tight around the base of a cup. The watcher fully amused made no move to help, or to stop it.
He only lifted two fingers and traced a small, exact shape in the air above the street, the way a person signs their name to something they mean to remember signing.
Then the roofline was empty, and no one below had ever known to look up.
Bizarrely, the heavy rain suddenly stopped , as if leaving with him.