Valens ran through the endless night.

He didn't know what chased him. Not anymore. He spotted a swarm of clivias at one point, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Every bestia in the night-side seemed to be after him, now. He almost wanted to extinguish the promenia light hovering a few feet before him so he wouldn't see whatever horrors approached. Almost.

Sharp leafy protrusions sliced his cheek as he ducked under the cyan arm of a towering manicon. Great, now illusory magenta waves at the edge of his vision and the stench of cinnamon would plague him all day from the treelike organism's mild hallucinogen. Why must night-side life be poisonous or, more often, useless? Why not edible or at least pleasant for a change?

There was little to do but hunker down and wait for the creatures hunting him to pass. Thank the Eternal Radiance he wore his clivia blues; the silky tunica and paenula, woven from the fur-like filaments of the night-side bestia, ensured the heat-sensing creatures would not detect him. He hoped.

He dropped into a crouch at the base of the cyan manicon, careful not to scrape his face on the leaves again, and yanked his paenula's hood over his head. Valens would prefer a deep cave he could burrow inside to hide; the thin fabric separating his face from the air offered flimsy protection from the bestias that sought him.

He held the edge of the fabric up over his mouth and grimaced as vibrant pink waves began to lap at the corner of his eye.

Valens loved his job, but Eternal Radiance, he hated when his work took him out of the borderlands and into the true night-side. Why did every bestia seem ten times more intelligent here and the swarms of the creatures humanlike in their cooperation? Back home, beneath the light of the Trellis and the sun, they behaved like mindless beasts.

He grumbled under his breath, grateful night-side life couldn't hear, and reviewed his actions to figure out where he misstepped.

His plight started at supper. His meal—sweet corn and wild jicama root harvested under the Primus Trellis Isle before Valens returned with his food to the wilds and his work—had ground to a halt with a centumpeda's arrival. That had likely been his error; he should have enjoyed his meal at the waystation under the Trellis Isle's bestia-repelling light, but impatience overcame better sense.

Like all bestias, the centumpeda—a nightmarish cross between a snake, vine, worm, and centipede—lacked the ability to digest the day-side crops or, for that matter, him. Still, right around the point the creature wrapped one of far too many tentacle-like legs around his ankle and tugged him off his feet, he decided not to take any chances. So he had hacked at the slithering bestia with his machete and fled deeper into the night-side forest. Only the light of the glowing promenia he sent a few feet ahead of him had illuminated the tangle of crystalline not-trees.

Alas, other centumpedas soon joined the first, followed by a bestia he had never seen before, which resembled a flying obsidian torque. The creature pulsed with a green light, and soon all its friends joined it in the hunt. Then the clivias drifted near when he made the mistake of pausing to dissolve another patch of rogue promenia.

And now they were all after him.

The scent of cinnamon puffed in his nostrils as he covered his mouth and nose with the cloth and waited. The woods rustled, and somewhere a creature emitted a woodlike creak. Something chittered, and crystalline branches clinked in the chill gale like icicle wind chimes and stilled.

At last, silence descended.

Valens rose from beneath the manicon and straightened his paenula. No bestias lingered, thank the Eternal Radiance, but now he lacked time to deal with any remaining rogue promenia if he wanted to return home in time for the Rite of Remembrance.

Not that he wanted to attend, but Cerasus insisted every year and accepted no excuses. So Valens pulled his half-gnawed jicama from his paenula pocket with a sigh, and crunching on the sweet apple-like root, nudged his floating promenia lamp to scout the black expanse ahead.

He chewed as he hiked toward where the weight pressing on his senses told him he would find a skyhaven, a skychariot, and a ride home.

Even with faux-marble walls and peeling gold-leaf doors, the pawnshop Domi visited at the edge of the slums outshone the dingy dye-house. The business needed a respectable veneer if its owner wanted to attract decent people hoping to make honest coin.

Not that all the pawnshop's customers obtained the collateral they brought through the shop's doors by legal means. Citizens hoping to make a little coin to pay bills or put a down payment on their first market stall mingled with more... creative entrepreneurs. The pawnbroker not only let the occasional trinket of questionable origin slide but also helped out Pullati down on their luck now and then.

After all, the Appraiser had once been a Pullatus himself and remained one of the few success stories their kind could claim. Legend said he had pawned off so many stolen goods that he bought a pawnshop of his own and clawed his way out of poverty.

Legend also said he killed his only competition here on the narrow, winding street of Via Fetutina. Domi wouldn't ask questions so long as the Appraiser paid him the same courtesy.

"Dominulus Lodicis," the gnarled old man said with a broad grin as the boy stepped into the pawnshop's bright, lamp-lit interior.

"May the Eyes devour you, don't call me that," Domi groaned. His full name was embarrassing. It was less an actual name and more a cheesy inside joke between his ma and this old geezer.

He had heard the story over and over his whole life. The Appraiser himself found Domi almost fifteen years ago, abandoned in the forum wrapped in some fancy blanket. Still a Pullatus back then, the Appraiser meant to steal the blanket and leave Domi for the authorities to collect. Then the post-Dimming Rain began, and Domi started howling bloody murder the instant the first raindrop splattered on his face. The Appraiser had glanced at the fancy blanket. He'd glanced at Domi, shrieking on the comitii basilica steps. And so, in a moment of pity, the Appraiser went ahead and snatched babe and blanket alike and delivered both to Merula Nocticola. Hence the name.

It was one thing to be called the Regis Heres Pullati out on the streets. The nickname commanded a certain respect within his community even if it dubbed him "Crown Prince of Criminal Scum." But it was another thing for his adoptive mother to name him "Little Lord of the Blanket." It was embarrassing enough that everyone knew he had been found swaddled in some prissy bit of cloth like a dunce. Did his ma also need to commemorate the eve the Appraiser found him, chucked out by his unknown parents like garbage, in the forum?

"Why not? It's the name your ma gave you, isn't it?"

"Yes, and the Eyes devour her for it, too."

His fingers crept up to his wooden bulla necklace. He didn't mean the words, of course, and sent up a silent prayer to the Eternal Radiance to shield his mother from harm.

Prayer offered, he lowered the bin of flour and trinkets to the floor with a grunt and eyed the colorful tile beneath his feet. "I see you got the chipped mosaic replaced. Nice."

"Yeah, some young fool came in and pawned off his whole wardrobe for quick coin," the Appraiser said, stepping around his white faux-marble counter. "So I sold off a tunica or two for repairs."

Domi glared. "That was collateral."

"Please, it's not like you're ever going to repay the loan. Now, what have you brought me this eve?"

"Four golds' worth of hard-earned trinkets."

The Appraiser lifted the lid and sneezed at the puff of flour. "I'll be the judge of that." He scowled at the layer of barley flour and then glanced up at Domi and blinked. "You aware you're bleeding all over my fine floor?"

His "fine floor" was a patchwork of tiny tiles arranged in the likeness of heaping piles of gold, silver, bronze, and copper coins. The mosaic was the gaudiest thing Domi had ever seen, and he dealt in gaudy things.

"Yeah." His right sleeve clung, cold and damp, to his wrist. Gross. "I'm fine. Tiny scrape. It will close. They always do."

"Dominulus—"

He grimaced. "Only my ma gets to call me that, and only when I'm in trouble."

The Appraiser grunted. "You don't think you're going to be in trouble when she finds out?"

"About the elbow?"

"Sure, that too, but you know what I mean."

Domi sobered. "Probably, but you know why I'm doing it."

The Appraiser sighed. "I do. I just wish I knew what you're after. Care to share?" At Domi's flat stare, the old man grimaced and raked a hand through shorn tight gray curls. "I'll throw in a few more coins."

"Thanks," Domi said, swallowing.

"Don't thank me. Survive the break, and pay me back." He flapped a hand at Domi. "Now, begone. I need to put this fine dole away before observance. Come back tomorrow for your coin."

"Will do," Domi said, starting for the door.

"And cover that arm before your ma sees or you bleed out like an idiot."

Domi rolled his eyes. "Sure, I'll do that too."

He took his leave, striding into the crimson evening light toward the wine bar, his ma, and home.