The carriage dropped them off at the edge of the street where Ysolde's clinic sat.
It was a modest building. Single storey, plain stone, a small painted sign above the door. A few patients waited outside on wooden chairs in the morning air.
Ysolde was near the doorway speaking with a patient when she saw them. She raised her hand and waved them.
Then Aarav saw Lily.
She was inside near the front desk sorting something and looked up at the sound of them arriving.
Ugh. Why is this young lady here.
He had not forgotten about Lily.
Rajan and Veer spotted her at roughly the same moment and their faces did the opposite of Aarav's. Within thirty seconds they were talking. Lily's expression was considerably warmer with them than it had ever been with Aarav, which he noted without surprise.
He turned to Ysolde, who had finished with her patient and was looking at the three of them.
"Lady Ysolde," Aarav said. "Do you do psychotherapy?"
Ysolde looked at him. "What? No I don't. I'm not experienced in that field." A pause. "Did something happen?"
"Last night there was a murder in our neighbourhood. I saw the body. I had a nightmare afterward."
"Another victim?" Ysolde's expression shifted.
"Yes. Another one."
She studied him for a moment.
"Let me finish with my patients first. Then we'll talk." She turned back toward the clinic entrance and added without looking at him, "Did you eat breakfast?"
"Not yet."
She stopped. Turned back. Looked at all three of them properly. "Any of you?"
"No," Aarav said.
She called into the clinic. "Lily give the leftover breakfast to them."
"Thank you, Lady Ysolde."
"Also," she said, already moving back toward the door. "If you want to help with the clinical work while you wait I can pay thirty Drel. Between the three of you."
"We would be glad to," Aarav said.
---
The clinic work was simple. Helping patients in and out, carrying things, keeping the waiting area organised. Between patients she occasionally said something to Aarav about what she was doing and why, small pieces of Elorian medical practice and cultural context delivered matter of factly.
Aarav listened to all of it carefully.
Lily brought out the breakfast. Bread, tea, some preserved fruit. Aarav ate it with the specific gratitude of someone who had been skipping the first meal of the day to stretch what remained of the packaged food in their bag. He hadn't fully noticed until now how much he had been operating on not quite enough. Rajan and Veer ate beside him and said nothing about it either. They all knew.
---
When the last patient of the morning had been seen Ysolde gestured for Aarav to follow her to a small back room. Two chairs, a low table, a window looking onto a narrow alley. She sat and looked at him with the calm attention.
She was not a therapist. She said so again plainly at the start. But she listened as Aarav described the nightmare. The barren land, the dead trees, the fog, the blood coming from the chapel door, the door beginning to open. He left out the murmurs because the murmurs connected to the Cathedral and he wasn't ready to discuss that with anyone yet.
Ysolde listened without interrupting. When he finished she was quiet for a moment.
"Seeing that kind of violence leaves an impression," she said. "The mind processes it at night when there's nothing else to occupy it. What you're describing is not unusual." She looked at him steadily. "Come back if it continues. And try to eat properly."
"Thank you, Lady Ysolde."
He stayed seated a moment, then said, "I have a quick question. Is it possible for a deity to give bad luck to someone if that person disrespects them?"
Ysolde raised an eyebrow. "That's an interesting question after a nightmare."
Aarav said nothing.
"In my experience I have never heard of gods punishing people with bad luck for simple disrespect," she said carefully. "People disrespect gods constantly and most of them live ordinary lives. But I won't say it's impossible. I've seen things in my years that I can't fully explain."
"Thank you," Aarav said. "That's helpful."
He stood and excused himself.
He was almost at the clinic door when Ysolde's voice came from behind him.
"If you encounter the serial killer. Run to a church, a temple, or a police station."
Aarav stopped. "Yes. I'll keep that in mind."
He would. He also kept in mind the gun tucked against his hip under his shirt and the decision he had already made quietly and completely about what he would do if whatever was operating in the North West Borough appeared in front of him.
He said none of this and left.
---
Rajan and Veer were outside. Aarav's eyes crossed Lily's without intention as he came through the door. She was watching them leave with the same careful measuring look she always had. He couldn't do anything about it. He didn't know the source of that wariness and had no way of addressing something he couldn't see the root of.
He smiled at her briefly. She didn't smile back.
He turned and walked on.
"We should go to Jamie's manor now," he said to Rajan and Veer. "Start early, finish early."
They took a carriage to the South Borough.
---
Jamie received them at the door. Walked them through what remained. Ground floor today, main hall last. Everything finished by evening so the staff could begin decorating tomorrow. He answered Aarav's one question, handed them to the head servant, and disappeared into the manor.
The ground floor had the drawing room annex, a wide entrance corridor, a small receiving room near the back that hadn't been properly cleaned in months, and the main hall saved for last.
Aarav moved through the receiving room and looked at the objects on the shelves as he worked.
A detailed bronze horse figure. Decorative painted plates on the wall. A gold faced clock on the mantelpiece ticking with the quiet confidence of something extremely expensive.
Walking money. Every single room is just walking money arranged on shelves.
---
Elizabeth appeared mid morning, sent to check on progress, and fell into step beside Aarav in the corridor with her arms loosely crossed.
"The merchant council is coming," she said. "Three members. Two noble families from the Central Borough. And the Tax Collector and Mayor of course and some other noble people."
"Sounds important," Aarav said, not stopping work.
"For Father it is," she said flatly. Then after a moment, "Tell me about your journey from Silva. Properly this time."
Aarav kept working and told her a story.
It was entirely fabricated. He built it as he went, giving it the uneven texture of something real. Specific enough to feel true, vague enough to never be verified. By the end of it her expression had settled into genuine sympathy and she said she was sorry quietly and meant it.
"It was what it was," Aarav said.
She stayed a while longer asking smaller questions before a servant called for her from deeper in the manor. She excused herself and left.
Aarav glanced sideways. Rajan was working along the far wall, his face completely neutral in the specific way it went neutral when he had thoughts he had chosen not to voice.
Aarav turned back to his wall and kept cleaning.
---
By evening the manor was done. Jamie came through the finished rooms and nodded with visible satisfaction. That was it. No payment mentioned. Aarav had half expected it and said nothing. They collected their things from the servants' hall.
Elizabeth appeared at the manor entrance just as they were leaving. She looked at all three of them and gave a small nod that was more genuine than formal.
"Thank you," she said simply. "Genuinely."
"It was our pleasure," Aarav said.
She lingered for a moment as though she wanted to say something else. Then she didn't. They left through the gate.
Three days of labour, not a single Drel. Have some humanity Jamie.
He let it go and kept walking. Then they took the carriage to cathedral.
---
The evening preaching was already underway when they arrived at the Cathedral. They found seats in the middle pews. Aarav clasped his hands in his lap and listened with his full attention, eyes on the Bishop, completely still.
Rajan glanced at him once. Then again.
Veer leaned slightly toward Rajan and the look that passed between them said everything. Neither of them had ever seen Aarav sit this still for anything that wasn't directly useful to his immediate survival.
Aarav ignored them and kept listening. He had made a promise. He intended to keep it.
---
The night classes started and ran for three hours. Bible first, then language, then basic mathematics. The language portion moved through Elorian script in careful repetition. The mathematics was simple but the Elorian numerical notation was slightly different from what Aarav knew, interesting in the way small differences in familiar systems always are.
Veer got two fraction problems wrong, corrected both, and looked unreasonably pleased with himself. Rajan completed everything without comment.
At ten the bell rang and the hall emptied.
---
They bought food from a street vendor near the Cathedral steps and started back toward the North West Borough. The streets had the same held breath quality as the previous nights.
They were perhaps halfway home when the noise reached them.
Shouting first. Then a sharp crackling sound with a brief flash of orange light from a parallel street. Then running footsteps, fast and uneven, and behind them heavier footsteps in pursuit.
Aarav pulled them sideways behind a stack of wooden crates at the mouth of an alley and peered around the edge.
A figure in a dark hood was running hard down the parallel street. Three police officers gave chase behind him, one with fire curling around his fingers in short controlled bursts, hitting the ground just behind the hooded figure's feet.
Aarav pulled back.
"Some police are chasing a guy," he said quietly. "It might be the serial killer. Should we help?"
Veer looked at him. "I mean we can help. But can we though?"
Rajan reached into his shirt and showed the grip of his gun. "We won't know if we don't try."
"Okay," Aarav said. "Let's do it."
---
They moved fast through a side street cutting ahead of the chase. Aarav calculated the angle and chose a street where the hooded figure would have to pass. They reached it with perhaps thirty seconds to spare.
Aarav pressed against the wall at the corner and held out his hand to Veer.
"Give me the knife."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Just give it to me quickly."
Veer handed it over.
Aarav crouched low and waited. The footsteps grew louder, the hooded figure's breathing audible now, ragged with effort.
The figure came around the corner.
Aarav drove the knife into the back of the lower leg just above the ankle in a short precise cut and pulled back immediately.
The figure's leg gave. He went down hard, momentum carrying him forward across the stone, hands scraping as he tried to catch himself.
Aarav was already out of cover, knife up. The hooded man twisted on the ground and swung at him from below with something in his hand that Aarav didn't fully see. He threw himself sideways by pure reflex. The attack passed a hair from his side. His heart was hammering.
Then the chains appeared.
Thick bands of glowing metal materialised from the air and wrapped around the figure in two seconds flat, pinning his arms and locking his legs. The man struggled once and stopped.
"Young man." A deep voice from behind.
Aarav turned.
Several officers had come around the corner fanning out around the bound figure. One stood slightly apart from the rest. Broad, straight backed, breaded. The inspector, Aarav assumed.
"You did a good job," the inspector said, looking at Aarav with genuine assessment.
"Is he the serial killer?" Aarav asked.
"Correct, good guess. Your contribution allowed us to catch him. It will be remembered." He turned to his officers. "Bind him further. We need to extract information."
Two officers moved forward with additional restraints. The hooded figure said nothing, lying completely still, face turned against the stone.
The inspector looked down at him. "Finally. One of them."
Aarav caught it immediately. "One of them?"
"Our investigation suggests there are more." The inspector glanced at him. "He is one of several."
The fear settled into Aarav's chest cold and specific. A group operation. Multiple killers moving through the same streets, targeting the same category of people. The same category he and Rajan and Veer belonged to. They had been walking these streets every single night. His heart is hammering.
The inspector crouched in front of the bound figure and reached for the hood.
Then the fire started.
From inside the figure's clothing, from no visible source, blooming outward in a sudden violent orange that had nothing accidental about it. Not catching fire. Burning deliberately and completely from the inside out. The chains held but had nothing left to hold within seconds.
The inspector stepped back sharply. His officers did the same.
In less than ten seconds nothing remained but the empty chains lying on the stone and the smell of something destroyed thoroughly and on purpose.
The street went very quiet.
Aarav stared at where the figure had been.
Organised enough to burn their own people before they could be questioned. This was not a group of opportunistic killers. This was something with structure and people at the top of it who had made a deliberate decision about what information was worth a human life.
The fear in his chest didn't leave. He kept his face still and said nothing.