Illando didn't argue with the voice in the back of his head that told him this wasn't right, but he didn't listen to it either. Sometimes history just needed a little... editing. He just pressed on with his task, grimly determined to purge every trace of Hera's mad schemes from the enforcer files. Every piece of it made him sick; every glimpse a distraction he no longer wished to tolerate.

The shadowy nature of her plot meant she hadn't kept physical records. That made the job a little easier, but her toxic legacy still infested enforcer ranks. From the cryptic howl-net messages between her and her allies in the Conclave, to dense medical reports, to construction prints for the Belforra facility, to deployment orders, to even the structure of the enforcer hierarchy – it was all a reminder of a past that the enforcers needed to put behind them.

Much to Illando's annoyance, it also turned out that his predecessor had been a lot more savvy with technology than he was. Noelle helped coordinate the enforcer technicians, and now he strode among them as they worked in the cavern of the command hearth, battering away at hitherto unknown firewalls that protected the last, stubborn bastions of Hera's dreams.

He threw out much of her organisation along with those damnable secrets. Packs were split, with new leaders assigned despite an ever-diminishing pool, creating smaller, nimbler units that he could spread across the city to have eyes in every shadow. He impressed upon those he trusted to trust their instincts; to use their judgement. Wildhearth had too many fires now for him to micromanage them.

"How much longer?" he muttered to the technician seated in front of one of the hearth's enlarged screens. Massive computing rigs and their rectangular processing stacks spilled out from its flanks, making the air sizzle and filling his nostrils with a faint burning scent.

"The Belforra construction profiles..." The wolfkin paused, clacking a couple of keys on a tertiary keyboard. "Three hours until the shunt will break down the hunter codes they left in place. Relocation site allocations three through twelve should be gone in the next hour."

"Good." Illando shuffled the stack of copper etchings in his paws, examining the new one on top. "When you're done here, link in with Farler. We need a new deployment rota for the north spiral districts." He handed the etching to the technician. "Start with Inchlore, Dreadrike and Sunspoke."

"Aye, sir."

At that moment Noelle exploded into the command hearth. Illando whipped around at the sound of battering footpaws to see her hurtling towards him, dodging and jinking as she went. She collided with one unfortunate enforcer, sending them both sprawling, but before anyone could react, she was on her feet again. With the other wolfkin cursing in her wake, she raced over to him, her face frantic.

"Illando – I... sir!" Noelle arrived at his to a halt, panting for breath.

He felt his hackles spring up with apprehension. "What is it?"

"You gotta get down to the training pits, right now," she babbled. "Ferrow and Lykas were gettin' all up in each others faces about the changes. Then Ferrow started callin' him traitor; he's callin' her a coward for going along with it-,"

"Noelle," Illando snapped, grabbing her by the wrist. "What's happening?"

"They're about to go at it, boss, and it ain't gonna be a practice scrap, that's for damn sure. I think they're gonna rip each other to pieces!"

"Fang'n'Fire," Illando swore and dumped the stack of etchings on the table, the technician forgotten in an instant. He broke into a run, shooting from a standing start so quickly that he left a stunned Noelle far behind. Enforcers glanced at him in surprise as he bolted through the command hearth, but he didn't even spare them a thought.

He went skittering around a sharp bend to the left, into a sloping downward passage that led to the practice areas where the enforcers could test their mettle against one and other. As he drew closer he could here the loud swell of voices rolling up towards him. Chants; barks; even wagers. His eyes widened when he realised what must have been happening.

Illando's suspicions were confirmed when he burst into the training pit. A low, long space, it dropped away down a flight of stairs into a flattened out plateau, filled with target ranges, obstacle courses and grit-surfaced sparring rings. He could see a gathering of easily fifty enforcers encircling one of the smaller sparring areas, chanting raucously. Near the back he saw Gensher's form jutting up, watching proceedings without a care in the world.

He cleared the stairs in three immense bounds, landing, rolling upright and sprinting straight towards the crowd. When he reached Gensher he jerked to a halt, eyes blazing as he thumped his comrade on the shoulder guard. The other enforcer turned and his face brightened in recognition.

"Illando! Just in time."

"Just in time for what?!"

"Seems Ferrow didn't take kind to Lykas shooting his jaws off about the changes you were making. They got into and... well, only one way to settle it now, eh?"

"Gensher," he growled. "Tell me they're not-,"

"'fraid so. Fight till blood or yield. Should be good." Gensher ginned at him. "Dunno what you're worried about. I reckon Ferrow'll sort your problem out for you, nice and permanent."

"By the Peace and bloody Fire!" Illando exclaimed in utter disbelief. With fury surging in his veins, he grabbed Gensher by the shoulder and yanked him a long. "Wipe that stupid smile off your face. We've got to stop this before those two idiots kill each other!"

Gensher let out a huff of disappointment, but the big enforcer fell in behind him as he barged his way through the ring of baying wolfkin. Affronted voices died as heads turned, finding the thunderous face of their new leader. Illando shoved bodies carelessly out of his path until he broke through the ring, and his eyes widened at the sight waiting for him.

Ferrow and Lykas were circling each other with murder in their eyes, clad in only their light chest wraps and under-leggings – no armour to speak of. Both pack leaders were big, powerful specimens and vicious fighters – if they played this madness out, no one would be walking away from it in one piece.

"What in the Fire is going on here?!" Illando roared, his guttural voice ripping across the air and instantly silencing the clamour of the onlookers.

The would-be combatants froze. Lykas's head snapped towards him, teeth bared, while Ferrow flinched taking a furtive glance in his direction before fastening her gaze to her enemy once more. No one spoke.

"I asked a question," Illando continued, his voice lowering to a venomous snarl as he took a step forward onto the grit of the training ring. "What is going on?"

"Matter of honour, sir." Ferrow bit the words out.

A growl reverberated in the back of Lykas's throat as he looked back at her. "Honour? What would a paw-licking bitch like you know about honour?"

Illando was already moving. He saw the tell-tale tension in Ferrow's limbs as she prepared to spring; the corresponding brace from Lykas as he prepared for the impact. Illando launched himself between them and twisted sideways, jamming a forearm beneath Ferrow's gaping jaws as she flew forward. He managed to get in the way, but he couldn't set his footpaws to stop her momentum, and he went stumbling back, crashing into Lykas.

Then everything around him was gnashing teeth and flailing claws.

It was a special kind of fool who got between two wolves with a score to settle, and it turned out Illando was just dumb enough to do it. He snarled in pain as a claw raked his upper arm, but he twisted his body, bucking violently to ram a hip into Lykas. The other wolfkin stumbled back just long enough for Illando to properly steady himself.

One paw shot out, grabbing Ferrow by the collar of her bodywrap. He pushed hard, the muscles in his right arm bulging as he held her back. Then he reached out with his other to catch Lykas by the scruff of his neck as the other pack-leader charged forward. Corkscrewing his body to one side, he managed to rotate Ferrow's struggling form out of Lykas's path and use the male wolfkin's momentum to send him barrelling past. He went stumbling out of Illando's grasp.

Gensher was waiting for him. The big wolfkin fastened one brawny arm around Lykas's throat and yanked him upright. With his other paw hooked under the pack-leader's armpit, Gensher heaved him bodily away, a bored expression on his face.

"Get him out of here," Illando barked to his comrade. "Toss him in one of the cells and lock him in till he calms down."

"Boss." Gensher gave him a stiff nod, still looking a little put out at being robbed of a good fight. He turned and stomped off, baring a thrashing, swearing Lykas through the crush and out of sight.

"This isn't over!" Ferrow screamed, still fighting to get loose of Illando's grip.

The cry wrenched his attention abruptly back to the other pack-leader. Disbelieving fury battered beneath Illando's skin as he turned and took a firm grip on her bodywrap with both paws, pulling her close until they stood eye to eye.

"Not another word." The acid in his voice cut straight through her anger, and he saw the glint of fear in her eyes. After a moment Ferrow's struggles stopped. Breathing heavily she stood there, and when he judged she'd calmed down enough, he released his hold on her.

"Sir, Lykas, he-,"

"I don't care, Ferrow," he snapped, cutting her off. "Whatever he said, whatever he did, this is not how we deal with things. Not anymore. I need every able-bodied wolf I can get."

"It was till blood or yield."

"Don't take me for a fool. Neither of you were going to yield and you know it. You wanted to kill him."

She bristled. "He's dangerous."

"Enough." Illando pointed to the exit of the training pits. "Go home and cool off. Don't come back until you've got your brain back inside your skull."

"Illando..."

"Either go home, or I'll find a cell for you as well, do you understand?"

Ferrow scuffed a footpaw petulantly against the grit. "Yes, sir." With her head hanging, she turned and slouched away. The onlookers parted around her.

Straightening up, Illando cast a furious eye over the crowd that had gathered. He recognised a lot of veteran enforcers here, some loyal to him, others less so, but all who should have known better than to encourage this farce.

"So this is what we are now?" he spat contemptuously. "All of you were going to stand by and let this happen?"

No-one spoke. Several of those closest to him had the good sense to look chastened. Illando shook his head in disgust.

"I don't care where your loyalty used to lie," he continued. "Hera is gone, and I am here now. Things are going to be different, and you're all going to get used to it. You're going to get used to it, because you are not a gang of mewling pups rolling in the muck like savages. You are enforcers. Start acting like it." An awkward shuffling of footpaws and subdued, apologetic mutterings greeted his proclamation. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, fighting to get a grip of his rage.

"Now get out of my sight," he hissed. "All of you."

***

Loyalty, Illando reflected, was turning out to be a double edged sword.

It was a quality he admired – even demanded – of those under his command. Loyalty, however, was also his biggest problem. The Pack-Leaders on his side were loyal to him, so much so that they would, and had, killed their former comrades under his command. When faced with wolfkin like Lykas, that sentiment remained.

And Lykas, for all that his loyalty might have been misplaced, still had the backbone to stick to his convictions. Illando almost respected it.

With the incident narrowly avoided, and Farler and Gensher under strict orders to keep the pair apart in future, Illando took a moment to step out of the hustle of the command hearth, his blood still pounding. He climbed the stairs that led to the relative quiet of his office, breathing deep to bring his violent urges back under control. He punched his ID code into the keypad on the doorframe, and after an obliging clunk of disengaging locks, the heavy metal door swung open.

He'd moved things around, stamping his mark on this inner sanctum as much as the rest of the compound. There were several more chairs to accommodate meetings of his senior officers, and he'd dispensed with Hera's collection of knives that had once sat on the formidable desk. A new computing rig squatted on the left side of it, its bulky, matte black case glinting under the light, with four spherical cooling stacks protruding from the top. He'd also added a couple of etchings to the back wall to make the place seem less cold, with artistic renderings of a snarling wolfkin warrior and a design that depicted Wildhearth's skyline from the south.

One thing that survived his remodel was the colossal map display of Wildhearth that filled almost the entire far wall. Constantly being updated, it was the closest thing to a live map you'd find, showing the great, bulging, mass of the city, with dozens of districts spilling out from the Silk in the centre.

He had hoped for a moment of solitude, but instead he discovered that Noelle was waiting for him. The technician looked a little uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly from footpaw to footpaw and clutching a thin file of crisp barkpaper.

Illando raised an eyebrow. "You're not supposed to know the code to get in here."

"Codes are my job, boss," Noelle replied smoothly. "Quite a scuffle down there?"

"It's under control," he said, loping past her to slide down into his chair.

"Yeah, I heard." She rotated to keep her eyes on him but didn't move from her position.

"Then you can get back to work."

"I think you should cast an eye on this." Noelle raised the file in one paw and gave it an inviting wiggle. "Got an incident report bumped up the chain from Karshae's patrol."

"Karshae?" Illando frowned and reached out a paw, clacking an arrow key several times until the screen displayed the day's duty rosters. "She's working Gjornharr."

"Yup."

"And what'd she find that kicked up enough dust for to sling it our way?"

Noelle replied by moving across the room and dropping the file on the table in front of him. Illando eyed her balefully for a moment, then scooped the folder up and flicked it open. It only took him a few seconds to see why the enforcer patrol had felt this would be worthy of attention. A murder, and a bloody one in the Gjornharr docks. Illando had more than his share of violence as an enforcer, and he could read it like music. One glance at this report and he could see this went beyond any gang dispute or debt collection gone sour.

"Seems like someone was trying to make a point," he murmured. His eyes flickered up to Noelle. "The local watchguards?"

"There's a pack-leader called Ellewyn who's leading the investigation. Dunno how far she'll get though."

"Incompetent, is she?"

"Not her at least, but Gjornharr's a right firestorm at the best of times. Her seniors don't have much of a handle on it and some of them could do with a firm kick up the arse."

Illando made a non-committal noise and closed the file, leaning back in his seat and clasping his paws together in front of him. One dead body, brutal though it seemed, was still slim pickings to justify an enforcer deployment directly.

"Do they have any leads?" he asked.

Noelle shrugged. "Only that they've had a lot of disappearances in Gjornharr over the last little while. More than usual, if you track back the numbers. I did a little digging, and turns out Gjornharr isn't the only spot with a ghost population on the rise." She inclined her head to his computer rig. "I shunted the rundown to your personal files. Take a look."

A smile crossed Illando's face as he leaned forward again, claws dancing over the keyboard. It was a pleasant feeling, having someone close by who could take some initiative. Noelle's instincts and intelligence certainly made up for her lack of physical size. The screen flashed to his personal directory where a logline blinked expectantly.

He opened it up, and scanned Noelle's reports with an expert eye. The screen of his computer rig flickered as he scrolled through the pages, picking out dates, times and locations and mapping them out in his head. A frown slowly deepened between his eyes.

"What do you think?" Noelle asked.

Illando didn't reply straight away. Instead, he stood up from his desk and crossed the room to the immense map display of Wildhearth. After taking a moment to order the incidents in his mind, he began punching location markers into the machine. Dark crosses began to appear in the outer districts, starting at the run-down underdocks of Feltspaw District, before etching a patch in a lazy arc to the south-east.

By the time he'd finished a dozen districts across the west and south spirals bore the crosses, like marks of shame. From Palharr to Gjornharr, Denneke to Lowbattle, to the brutal melting pot of Helsfur and even as far as the seething southern docks of Whaveloda, the trail showed something far more sinister than the supposedly random disappearances suggested.

"I think it's time for us to earn our keep," Illando muttered, gesturing to the arc of incident sites. "There's something going on in the out there."

Noelle moved up alongside him, casting a sidelong glance at her commander. "Ain't there always?"

"More than usual." He spared her a wry smile. "Call it intuition."

"So what're we looking at?"

"Only the Whaveloda incident was officially reported and logged as an abduction." Illando tapped the relevant mark on the map screen with one claw. "But I think, if we do a little digging, we're going to find a lot of these souls didn't drop off the world willingly."

"These patches ain't exactly the safest spots, boss," Noelle reminded him. "Plenty of folk go up in smoke out there."

"But most of them don't get reported." He shook his head, folding his arms. "If some gang runner gets a knife in the ribs, nobody takes it to the watchguards because they know what happened. The kin out there know the world they live in. They're going to the guards now because they're scared; because they don't know what's happening."

"Did the watchies follow up on the abduction case?"

"According to the report they hit a dead end. Whoever reported it took off. Guess they got too twitchy around the watchguards." Illando grimaced. "Or somebody came back to finish the job and we're about to find another body."

Noelle's muzzle crumpled in thought as she examined the map. Paws on hips, she cocked her head to one side. Her jaw twitched, and he waited for her to finish whatever febrile analysis was going on behind that squinting expression. Eventually she let out a frustrated huff of breath.

"Fangs," she muttered. "You're probably right."

Illando nodded grimly.

"Get that Pack-Leader, Ellewyn, on the howl-wire," he ordered. "And tell her to expect some company at the Gjornharr docks tonight. We're going to take a closer look at that murder scene."