A wailing golden cloud, beautiful and deadly, roiled in the ever-black night-side sky, but Valens didn't bother gazing at the shining storm with his eyes.

Deceptive, limited, bothersome things, eyes. Eyes could not see the pitch-black landscape past the horizon, where a newborn outcrop of jagged bedrock jutted from the earth in the destructive cloud's wake. Eyes could not see miles of torn whitehair meadows or the muddy creek far west, which the magic cloud had dragged a half mile beyond its banks.

No, Valens's eyes couldn't see much of the damage caused by the nightmarish clouds, which now drifted too high in the Trellis-less heavens to tear up much below. His worldholder magic, on the other hand, showed him plenty. The plume of rogue magic promenia particles extended a quarter mile past the boundary marker he placed six months ago and stretched five miles into the night-side wilderness. Its discordant, silvery ringing, so maddening, painful, and wrong, rolled across the devastated land and between Valens's aching ears.

Thank the Eternal Radiance that no one lived out here in these parts, where no Trellis light nurtured edible crops. Farmers settled farther north, south, and far west beneath the glow of night-side Trellis Isles or east beneath the day-side Trellis Proper. No cities weighed against Valens's sense of the land, just rock formations, forests, and lakes.

Good, no need to be selective about the promenia he destroyed. He looked forward to not hearing Cerasus whine for once about damaged public works. Damaged public works and Valens's refusal to explain to his Praetor's satisfaction how and why promenia roads, bridges, and dams in another provincia came to be damaged in the first place.

Everyone was a critic.

Eyes still closed, Valens claimed all the healthy promenia particles wafting above the rogue particle cloud. Then he proceeded to do what every worldholder did best from the earliest moment they kindled their magic.

Crackles and pops sizzled in the night-side heavens as the rogue promenia caught within his destructive field exploded. Valens's inner vision flared incandescent white and then glittered as brilliant sparks showered down from the bruised night-side sky and burned out before they reached the earth.

He tightened his hold, edging his field in by careful measures to follow the golden cluster as it shrank. He must not draw his promenia too close, or the corruption would spread and his particles would join the lethal cloud.

The task took an hour, and Valens enjoyed every moment of his work. Little in life satisfied him more than the sight and sound of dying particles. He even opened his eyes at the end to witness the cascade of golden sparks directly as the dangerous cloud faded into the eternal night and at last disappeared.

He stretched and blinked up at the now-empty starry sky, then cast his senses into the wilderness once more.

One down, fifty or sixty left to go. Afterward, he would enjoy a quick supper scavenged from the land, and after that, he would focus on the careful task of piecing together new, healthy promenia. He needed to replenish the particles the rogue cloud corrupted.

Valens loved being a worldholder.

After living in poverty all fourteen years of his life, Domi was used to having no food in his belly, no coin to his name, and no name in the Compendium. Still, he never felt so dirt poor in all his life as when he padded into the dye-house's dim lobby and found himself beneath the hostile weight of the shopkeeper's gaze.

The ageless silver-haired sorcerer behind the dye-house's peeling wooden table eyed Domi's knee-length black tunica with a curled lip. No one knew the old man's true name; everyone called him the Dyer. "Get out, Pullatus."

Domi sighed. Little in life reminded a person of his lowly place quite like a dyer's scorn. When even a reviled throat-stainer offered naught but sneers for a poor boy's ambitions, that boy could only be one thing: A Pullatus. Filthy black-clad street scum. The lowest of the low.

But people looked down on him all the time, so he shrugged. If he gave up every time some arrogant dunce sneered and called him a Pullatus, he would have starved or frozen to death in a gutter long before now.

He ignored the command to leave and, weaving between three grimy cots, approached the Dyer with a broad smile. "I'll wear my finest observance attire when I show off your hard work, Promerenti," he said, using the respectful term to address a Trueborn Lightbearer mage. "I'll dress up in the longest pale-blue tunica I've got."

Not that the other tunica Domi still owned—a childish short deep-blue scrap few would call clothing—outshone these black rags. No one would mistake the thigh-length dark shirt for a respectable man's calf-length bright tunica, let alone a rich gentleman's pastel tunica, flowing to the ankle like water. If he managed to persuade the Dyer to sell him a dye-job, he would need something far better to wear with the fake laurel.

Domi tried not to stare at the silver-haired Lightbearer's own laurel as the Dyer's stony eyes sized him up, but it was hard. The sorcerer's whole neckline glowed, after all. From beneath the collarbones to the hollow of the throat, delicate lines under the Dyer's flesh gleamed brilliant green against deep-mahogany skin.

Domi saw that kind of luster once in a jewel he snatched from a quiet mansion. The emerald, big as his thumb, had perched on a velvet cushion, backlit by a magic promenia lamp that set every facet alight. The old man's laurel glowed the same vivid green as the gem, but the tracings winding around his collarbones like a lady's emerald necklace gleamed with an inner fire.

Domi shifted from foot to foot, nerves fluttering in his belly. He had never seen a lifeholder before, or any kind of Lightbearer, but the green laurel meant only one thing. The sorcerer could heal, poison, or change Domi with a mere thought.

Or rip him apart from the inside out.

Domi shivered, and his legs quivered with the urge to throw himself on the ground and grovel. Gritting his teeth, he locked his knees and stiffened his spine. He needed a laurel of his own to pull off his next endeavor, and for that, he needed a dye-job. The Dyer couldn't grant him a real laurel—even a lifeholder lacked the power to turn a Pyrrhaeus into a sorcerer—but a fake laurel should do the trick. He just needed to blend in long enough to get into the Collegium, get the stone, and get out.

Heart pounding, he forced himself to lift his eyes and meet the sorcerer's steel-gray gaze as the lifeholder said, "Your finest rags won't help. I can change the skin, and you can change the clothes, but naught will change the stench of the street." The old man flicked a hand toward the door. "Get out."

Domi didn't budge. "What's it to you?" He kept his voice light and playful. It never paid to disrespect his betters, even someone as hated as a dyer. "My gold not good enough?"

The lifeholder's eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint, but now a tiny spark of interest glinted in the gray gaze. "Gold? What gold can a Pullatus claim?"

Domi reached into the pocket of his tunica and curled two fingers around the coin. "This little friend of mine," he said with a sly grin, holding the shiny gold up to the Trellis light filtering through the window.

The coin had been on his mind all the way to the dye-house. He longed to take the gold home. Home safe and sound into his ma's stash. Home, with luck, before the next shake-down risked depriving him of his hard-earned wages and landing him behind bars.

"That can't possibly be yours."

"It is now, Promerenti." He leaned one elbow on the man's peeling pine counter and slid the gold across the rough surface with one finger. "Haven't you heard of the Regis Heres Pullati?" Everyone knew valuables touched by the hands of the Crown Prince of Scum transferred ownership faster than a rat climbed a pipe.

The lifeholder blinked. Then the old man's wrinkled face twisted in resignation. "Oh." He plucked the gold from Domi's fingers and held the coin up to his eye, studying its tri-hand stamp. "I did not recognize you, young Erus."

Erus. Much better. No one ever bothered using the polite honorific when talking to Pullati, but there were perks to being Merula Nocticola's foster son. This jerk might have been a sorcerer, but he was also a hated dyer. All the lowlives in the city depended on the so-called Rex Pullati, leader of the local criminal underworld, for their ill-gained livelihoods. Even this one.

"I am, of course, pleased to do business with your family," the Dyer went on. The gold disappeared into the pocket of his long mint paenula.

Domi winced, starting to reach out for his coin, then sighed. Fine, he would consider the gold a down payment.

He leaned his other elbow against the scratched wood, ignoring the bite of a chip against his arm as he plopped his chin down into his palms and grinned. Now they were getting somewhere.

"So, what color laurel will you give me? Red like a starholder would be nice. Or violet like a forgeholder. They would go great with my luxurious black hair, right?" He would play with a lock of said black hair for emphasis, but his short raven mop barely skimmed his ears. Helped keep the lice at bay, though he smelled constantly of the coconut oil his ma used to treat his hair.

The Dyer shook his head. "You cannot afford even mindholder blue, young Erus," the old sorcerer said, "let alone starholder red. The black of a worldholder is also out of the question. But yes, forgeholder purple may be within your means."

"How much for your lovely green?" A lifeholder physician might make a decent disguise. Physicians went everywhere, after all, among sorcerer-born Promethidae and magicless Pyrrhaei alike. Well, except among the Pyrrhaei in the gutters, of course. Even other Pyrrhaei commoners would love to see a Pullatus like Domi die. The lifeholders never bothered to visit the ill or injured of the criminal underclass.

Domi's fingertips found and peeled free a bit of pine, and the lifeholder scowled at the damage.

"If you bring a hundred more of these—" The Dyer patted his pocket where the gold had disappeared and then nudged Domi away from the table. "—I'll make you look like my own grandchild, with the brightest apple-green laurel—"

"A hund—"

"That's a discount, young Erus."

"A discount? That's robbery." He might as well buy himself a whole highborn wardrobe for that much. He glared. "I thought I was the thief here."

The Dyer placed a hand over his heart. "I would never cheat the Regis Heres Pullati or your esteemed mother."

Domi gritted his teeth. "It will take me some time to collect that much." And if he waited too long... No, he needed to stay positive. This would work. It had to work. He clenched his hands at his sides. "But fine."

The lifeholder grinned a toothless smile. Gross. If the man could make a magicless Pyrrhaeus's throat glow green like a lifeholder or violet like a forgeholder, couldn't he fix his own teeth?

"Come back when you have it, young Erus." The old man winked. "And do visit the bathhouse before you return. I'll deduct the cost of the bath from your dye-job if you come back scrubbed down."

Domi sniffed his armpit and then glared at the lifeholder. Rude. He was a bit dirty but didn't smell that bad yet.

"Here," the Dyer added, "maybe this will help." His hand flicked.

Domi's gold coin sailed back to him, and the boy caught it with a snort and slipped it back in his pocket.

The lifeholder tilted his head toward the door. "Now, kindly get out."

With his errand at the dye-house concluded, Domi proceeded into the street and through the slums toward the heart of the city.

The forum wasn't the best place for thieving. That honor went to the domus mansions out near the city's protective promenia walls, where the most expensive trinkets could be found. The forum came in a close second place, however. There, people meandered for hours with their purses full, preoccupied with errands to market stalls, fancy lounges, seedy wine bars, and communal ovens. And the best time to rob people in the forum fell right after Dimming, before their eyes adjusted to the reddened, diminished light or their ears to the distracting, pattering Rain.

Domi glanced up at the sky and grinned. Almost time.

Above, the Trellis's web of golden light separated the blood-red sun from the world below, painting the sky a wash of daytime violet and bathing the land in magical warmth. Beyond the blazing net, two of the Wandering Eyes crossed the heavens. Pitch-black, the planets hovered like pupils before the bloated crimson iris of the sun.

Domi brushed the wooden bulla amulet he wore around his neck as heavy clouds heralding the daily eve Rain gathered in the violet sky and hid the sun and planets. He whispered a grateful prayer to the Eternal Radiance for the god's protection from the Wandering Eyes and the three inner planets' night-side kin, the Devouring Eyes. Then he added another prayer for the new Princeps Worldholder, who brought Dimming and Brightening, Rain and fair weather, in the Eternal Radiance's name.

He hoped the young royal would live longer than the boy's mother. The Trellis's erratic crackles and flares as the magic device passed from the dying woman to her heir two days ago had sent everyone ducking for cover. Domi never wanted to witness a light show like that again.

He breathed a contented sigh as the light of the Trellis at last faded above. Dimming had arrived. Brilliant white gold dulled to a softer amber glow across the sky-wide lattice, and the weak crimson light of the ever-present sun soon dominated the heavens. Within seconds, the violet daytime sky faded to evening burgundy.

The clouds opened. Domi grimaced as their bounty began to patter around him, dampening his thin tunica. He would give anything for a paenula's protective covering or an extra layer or two of tunicas. It shouldn't have been this chilly before Germinating season arrived, but the weather these past months had been bizarre, too sweltering one day, too windy the next, and too frigid a week later.

He regretted pawning off his warmer clothes. Domi shivered as he scanned the crowd, searching for a hint of telltale dark fabric. He needed to get rid of the coin before some watchman snagged the gold and him alike.

The first flitter of black through the sea of colors and neutrals proved fruitless. The shadow was not a Pullatus at all but a toddler stomping in blood-red puddles under her amused father's watchful eye.

The second hint of dark clothing, this time behind a wine merchant's cart, offered him a better opportunity to rid himself of the coin, but it still wouldn't work. The older Pullatus, Bunias, wore his reddish-black sleeve rolled down. Catching Domi looking, the gap-toothed boy inclined his chin and winked. Then he sauntered around the cart in an exaggerated manner, ensuring everyone noticed him eying the wine jugs with a sly, greedy grin. Sure enough, a watchman took the bait and pounced on the youth a few seconds later to haul him off for a quick search. And the rest of the Pullati sprang into action.

Domi's third lead proved far more promising. He caught a glimpse of black fabric behind a food stall, and Auca strolled his way, her right tunica sleeve rolled halfway up her forearm. A scrape on her dark-olive cheek suggested a recent pat-down.

"Any luck?" the waifish girl asked in a low mutter as she passed by with a casual brush of shoulders. She breathed a quiet whistle as he slipped the coin into her palm, and the gold disappeared into her muddy tunica. "Nice."

"That goes to the Rex. But spread the word. I'm calling for a lift starting today. Half to me, half to my mother. Pass the word, and tell everyone to pick up the pace."

"Half to you?" she whispered, already moving away.

"Yeah. You know why."

Her expression darkened to the fear, sorrow, and desperate hope they all shared. "Yeah." She flicked a concerned glance at him. "Be careful. Your ma doesn't like you snatching." Then she vanished.

And not a moment too soon. Hands closed on Domi's shoulders, and a harsh grip swung him toward the bakery wall. An instant later, one of the rough hands squished his face against damp limestone by a fistful of his hair, and the other patted his body and rifled through his clothes. City watch.

The fine officer of the law released him a moment later with a disgusted sigh. Domi suspected she seethed with disappointment as much over the lack of a good excuse to lock up a filthy Pullatus as the lack of coin to "confiscate."

After all, it cost money to sip spirits at overpriced lounges instead of slumming it at wine bars. Why waste her own coin when she could snatch some from a snatcher? Domi rolled his eyes.

"Have a great day, Erus," he said, but the watchwoman was on her way. So was Auca, halfway across the market lane to drop the coin into the hand of another Pullatus with a half-rolled right sleeve. Before the watchwoman got a chance to grab her, she darted back into the crowd, and both Pullati faded into the city chaos like eidolon spirits.

Domi shrugged his shoulders to dispel the lingering sensation of the watchwoman's grip on his body. Then he rolled up his right sleeve.

A smudge of crimson caught his eye; he had scraped his elbow on the Dyer's pine table earlier. Just great. Now the black rags would have yet another stain. He spared the cut a glance before scanning the market anew.

He had perhaps thirty minutes before a watchman decided to try another search. Time to get to work.

Sure enough, another Pullatus darted up to him at the signal and dropped three bronzes into his palm. "Step it up. Big lift underway. Half to the wine bar like usual, the rest to the mill. You know what it's for. Spread the word." And he disappeared.

Domi grinned. Auca moved fast. "Will do, my friend. Will do."