Jett didn't know why she'd told Karno her name. He didn't need it, but something about the wolfkin dealer had settled her just enough to let it out. Maybe it was just the simple nostalgia of talking tech with someone who skirted the law, someone who ran in similar circles as she had once done in her old life.

In the end, it didn't really matter—her plans were already swinging into motion. She would probably never see him again.

Putting Karno out of her mind and suppressing the whirl of emotions in her chest, she padded into the safety of her room at Hiyfa's warrenary once again, closing the door gently behind her and exhaling a calming breath, glad to have clean air again. Gathering herself, she retrieved the custom snooper module from her pack and set about splicing it into the set-up of her rig.

It took the better part of an hour after removing the case and rearranging the guts of the machine to accommodate the multitude of connections that the snooper required, its tendrils reaching into every subsystem of the computer and jacking aggressively straight into the howl-net. The little cloud of subroutines inside it would ride those waves across the city, hunting for anything Jett instructed them to.

Satisfied the wiring was correctly soldered back together, she booted up her machine and went to work. A new root menu skulked unobtrusively at the bottom right hand of her screen now, labelled with what to a casual observer would be a meaningless splurge of numbers. Jett clicked through to it to initialise the snooper's systems. A series of fields sprang up on her screen next, several dozen optional categories from names to addresses to account numbers, purchase values and product traces. All she had to do was punch in the relevant information, and the tenacious little piece of tech would do the rest.

First, she utilised the snooper to brute-force her way into the Conclave's planning directory and started scrolling through the overviews of each city district. Right at the bottom of the list amongst a graveyard of abandoned, derelict names, to her amazement, she actually found a listing for Belforra—the district name she'd extracted from Fisker. She blinked. And opened it up.

Then she spat out a curse.

Nothing. The Conclave's own databases told her nothing about the place. There wasn't even a grid reference. The listing provided a measly three sentences, outlining an unremarkable quarrying sector of the city, mostly home to beaverkin workers and a smattering of other citizens, long since abandoned.

Jett dug her claws into her headfur in frustration. It didn't take a genius to work out that someone had expunged the real records of Belforra from the database, leaving a vestigial name with nothing tied to it. Rolling her tongue around her teeth, she pulled up the relocation orders signed off by both Fisker and Zanzihar and scanned them. Not a single one of them mentioned Belforra, but she hadn't really expected them to. The wolfkin were covering their tracks well.

So she was left with the felkin designate. She didn't have a lot to go on, but knowing his name and his occupation would be enough for the snooper to get started. Her claws clattered across heavy keys, and a handful of seconds later, the snooper whirred industriously. The screen flickered, and for a moment, she wondered if she'd underestimated the power requirements, but then a surge of data burst across the monitor. Jett's eyes widened.

"I'll say this for you, Karno," she murmured. "You don't screw around with your gear."

Going back a full month, the module had wrenched free every purchase Zanzihar had ever made across three different stamp holdings registered under different names. But such rudimentary measures wouldn't fool the high-end snooper module Karno had provided. It could trace back through the hoops of misdirection, linking every line of text on this screen to the dead felkin.

At a glance, the history the snooper pulled up looked normal enough. Most of Zanzihar's purchases in the weeks leading up to his untimely disappearance were concentrated around the Conclave and a nearby Silk district where she assumed he lived. Delicacies of food and liquor with prices that made her eyes water scrolled down the screen—how much did these designates make for their trouble—along with less regular purchases. She saw service charges for repair work, receipts from local cafes and restaurants, and the occasional splurge on some absurdly priced finery from the nearby clothes bazaars.

But nothing that fit the bill.

Jett continued scrolling through those records, moving closer and closer to the date of the felkin's untimely demise, finding more of the same in page after page of geometric green typography. Her eyes began to hurt, but she persevered. There had to be something here. She entered the last week of Zanzihar's life, laid out before her in a code of transactions, and a sinking feeling settled in the base of her stomach.

It wasn't until she was trawling through his bank transactions the week before his untimely demise that she found what she was looking for. Zanzihar almost emptied his considerable accounts in a manner that would have thrown up red flags to anyone paying attention.

She checked the time stamp. The felkin's massive stamp withdrawal happened five days before his death. Those days were suddenly devoid of the frivolous spending that had so characterised him, the physical barkstamps needed for something that he didn't want on an official record. It looked an awful lot like a bribe.

After that, the only transaction that the snooper module could find was a tram carrier ticket to Palharr District—her home—stamped the day before he was murdered. She frowned. Her claws clacked along the keys, and she set the snooper's hunting systems into the howl-net, scrabbling and scraping into the private correspondences of the Conclave designates. Most of it consisted of dryly worded notes to subordinates and memos to colleagues, but Zanzihar's correspondence evaporated much the same as his voting attendance. In the Conclave records, there was nothing to indicate he had any concerns.

But the snooper module didn't stop there. The tenacious machine clambered along the thick bundles of wiring that snaked under the Silk in a great, splurging web, looking for any trace, any scrap of communication or barkstamp purchase. At length, it ripped its way through the defensive hunter-code of Zanzihar's personal computer rig at his Silk residence.

It was there that Jett found a single, heavily encrypted message sent along a private channel to none other than Fisker himself. It was date-stamped three days before the felkin's death and headed simply with the word: URGENT. Jett's heart shuddered in her chest, and she inhaled deeply through her nose before opening the file.

Fisker,

I am aware you do not wish to hear this, but I am afraid your duty to your district means you have no choice. We have been lied to.

I have seen it with my own eyes. The proposed site is not what it seems. I cannot tell you any more over the howl-net, but this cannot be allowed to continue. You will have to trust me.

When I have compiled my full case, I will bring my findings to the Resettlement Committee and the Conclave Assembly. When it comes to that, I will need your support and that of our colleagues who have been party to this.

I will return to the Conclave soon. Say nothing and await my instructions.

Zanzihar

By the Peace and Fire.

She copied the message to her rig and then closed it down, her eyes wide. The "proposed site" mentioned in Zanzihar's memo could only be Belforra. It had to be. With that massive withdrawal of money, he had somehow polished paws to charter passage there, and he had not liked what he found. But before he could tell anyone, the wolfkin had murdered him.

What did you find? Jett felt her claws tightening in frustration as she stared at the screen. What's out there?

She was tantalisingly close, but there was no more information to be mined. She still didn't know where Belforra was. Even if she could figure it out, she couldn't just hop on a tram to go sightseeing. And even if she could get there, she didn't have the slightest idea what would be waiting at the other end. Whoever had helped Zanzihar probably wouldn't be giving out any more favours since news of the felkin's demise spread. Just trying to find this mystery smuggler could take her days—weeks even.

She rubbed her eyes with both paws. So far, everything had been down to her, but she was at her limit. Sooner or later, the wolfkin net would spread, would trace her to this district, and the noose would tighten fast. She couldn't afford to go traipsing back and forth across the city, trying to retrace all of Zanzihar's steps, hunting for a smuggler and trying to find out what might be waiting for her at the other side if she ever made it to Belforra.

Jett realised with a twinge of nausea that to go any further, she needed help. Realistically, there were not a lot of people she could ask. Letting out a resigned sigh, she swept a pad of barkpaper from her pack and started writing.

***

Jett stepped off the tram carrier with her stomach flipping in protest over what she was about to do. Her letter to Bronco had been terse and carefully worded, giving away nothing more than what she wanted him to know.

The quillkin couriers that crisscrossed the city could be relied on explicitly, she knew that much, but she had no idea if the vulkin would turn up. If he decided to show the note to his superiors, she might just have served herself up on a silver platter.

Have a little faith, Jett, she reminded herself. If Bronco wanted to turn her in, he could have done it by now. He was the only person in the city who knew where she was hiding out.

She stepped off the tram carrier and out into the Gjornharr district, a place as close to home as she dared to go right now. It was similar to Palharr, with plenty of foxkin for her to blend in with, somewhere she knew well enough to beat a hasty retreat into the back alleys if she had to.

Her eyes continually scanned the crowds nonetheless as she stepped into the flow of people that headed towards a small food market nestled in the southern edge of the district, away from the busiest thoroughfares but still with enough crowds to conceal her. Not wanting to draw any undue attention, she was clad simply in the same body wrap and kilt, with her pack slung down to conceal the longclaw buckled against her back. She spotted a few patrols of armed vulkin guards circuiting the market, but they were on the lookout for brawls and theft, and none of them looked twice at one more foxkin in the flow of citykin.

Jett kept her head down regardless. Knowing there could well be wolfkin eyes hunting for her, she made an effort to stick to the thicker clogs of bodies that moved up and down the streets until she eventually peeled off into the scintillating smells of the food market.

A series of strung awnings protected the dozens of stalls from bad weather, their vendors loudly announcing prices, banging cooking utensils on hastily scribbled boards with prices that changed by the day. The whole place seethed with life.

The nerves came stronger now. She would either find Bronco waiting for her as she'd instructed, or in the next couple of minutes, she'd be dragged kicking and screaming to the nearest lawhouse. Breathing in a deep lungful of the richly scented air, she picked her way through the throng towards the northern edge of the market.

Making a show of examining stalls and hunting for wares, Jett went deeper and deeper, past the point of no return as she took a circuitous route to reach the meeting place she'd advised Bronco to use. One vulkin patrol walked right past her while she had her snout buried in a selection of ceramic pots. She dodged another by accepting free samples of a truly vile brew of local lasher that had her coughing her way down the next side street.

She neared the centre, walking down a tight, busy street packed with shops and bars, having to take the time to purchase a small bottle of rosewine to purge the taste of the samples from her mouth. Tossing the bottle deftly into a nearby trash basin, Jett straightened up, took a deep breath, and ruffled her paws through her hair.

Not long now, she thought as she turned to continue.

Then she stopped. Her eyes darted left and right, but only solid walls and shopfronts greeted her. Indecision snared her to the spot for a precious second.

A pair of vulkin watchguards were coming in the other direction, moving at a leisurely pace, chatting to one another as they cast their eyes over the stands.

Then one of them looked right at her.

Jett accidentally met his gaze. A golden-furred, bulky specimen, his gleaming brown eyes narrowed on her. His nose twitched suspiciously. The guard turned for a moment, tapping his companion on the shoulder. Panic began to well in her gut, and she braced herself to turn and run.

A looming shape suddenly stepped out to bar her path, blocking the watchguards from view. Before she could react, two arms shot out, grabbed her shoulders, and an instant later, Jett found herself bundled into a dark alley.