Stay here and don't get into trouble. As M'yu wound through grimy back alleys, he pretended that Aevryn had meant 'in the Gloam' and not 'inside this locked bedroom in the safehouse.' After all, if he hadn't, surely the lock wouldn't have been that easy to pick. Kids half his age could have finagled that door.

M'yu shivered and rubbed his arms. The coat Aevryn gave him had been too new and too nice to blend in here. The shine of the shoes was bad enough; they nearly shimmered among all the garbage and brown ice. Shoes he needed, but the coat he'd left in the room, along with the new linkcard Aevryn could use to track him.

I have business to finish up here, Aevryn had said. I'll be back later. M'yu wished the man had been a little more specific on how long 'later' was. In any case, he figured it meant he needed to hurry.

The alley teed off. M'yu glanced one way and then the—

A hand snatched his collar and pulled him up into the glare of one of his crew. The boy's breath plumed hot against M'yu's face. "What're you doing showing your mug around here?"

M'yu raised his hands. "Dahnko, I can explain—"

Dahnko shoved him against the wall. "Think we've had enough of your pretty word games."

"It's not what it looks—"

"What, you don't got it in good with the Caps now? You not wearing squeaky clean shoes?" He leaned in closer, teeth grit. "You think I didn't see that? We're not stupid."

"Course you're not stupid," M'yu said, struggling to keep his breaths even. "You're smart enough to see I would never—"

A fist slammed into M'yu's face. "I am sick and tired of you telling us what we think! Lania rots in jail and you live it up! Bet the only reason Karsya didn't get caught was 'cause she doesn't hang on every word that drips from your capping mouth!"

Dahnko swung, but this time M'yu ducked. The boy's hand rammed into the icy stone, and he called out. M'yu shoved him off. "Lania's in jail?"

Dahnko snarled. "Like you didn't know." He lunged, but M'yu sidestepped, kicking his leg out from under him. As the boy fell to the ice, M'yu took off. He half-ran, half-slid through the alleys, racing for their hideout.

He skidded onto their lane. Jumping up, he snagged one of the falling boards that served as their makeshift ladder. The wind raked across his skin as he climbed into the abandoned loft.

Raggedy blankets slid past his shoulders. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he froze. "No. No, no, no."

It was empty. All the stockpiles, all the pallets, all the people—gone. Ashes smoldered in their makeshift hearth; an abandoned game of capture-stone rested like rubble in the corner. "Karsya!" he called.

His only response was the rats skittering in the wall.

He raked his hair back. They could be anywhere now. Given enough time, he might could track them down—or at least he could have before everyone in the Gloam thought he was hanging on the Caps' coattails.

He sank to the ground. This was the best hideout he'd found in two years, and they'd left so fast they hadn't even pulled down the blankets that blocked out the cold. The afternoon sunlight slanted in through broken slats, and M'yu looked around again as if they might just reappear.

But nothing moved other than the dying light. They were gone—maybe for good, if he really was going to the Capital. He sucked on the sore in his mouth, then rose, striding over to the fire. They could take care of themselves in the meantime. They'd just have to lay low. He'd taught them well enough how to haunt the rich districts, how to nick the linkcards, and more importantly, how to get rid of them before the Magnate brutes tracked them down. His finger dipped into the ash, and he stepped back to write.

GOT INTO THEIR NEST.

Dahnko might not believe him, but Karsya would. And even if they didn't, even if they spent every day from now until then thinking he was a traitor—they would know better when he brought the Caps's system crashing down around their own heads.

UP WITH THE INNOCENT. -- M

Wiping his hands clean, he strode to the corner where his pallet usually was. His friends had stripped the room clean, but he was careful—even with them. His nail wedged between where the wall connected with the trim, and he slid it across. Usually he did this with his body blocking the rest of the room, late at night when everyone was asleep. Now, as the board came loose, there was no one to hide it from. He let it clatter to the floor.

The space behind hosted a smattering of emergency items. Deep in one corner, stumpy stalks of witchcandy grew on the mostly desiccated body of a rat. On the other side was his hoard: an unused linkcard he snuck from the morgue; an extra set of lockpicks; a rusty pocket knife; a handful of hard candies he saved to raise spirits. Nothing lit faces up in hard times like an unexpected sweet. He bit his lip. Lania was especially fond of the green ones. He had planned to sneak her one after they pulled off the heist.

Swallowing hard, he began stowing the treasures in his pockets. His fingers tripped over a polished stone buried amid the sweets, a piece of twine wrapped around it to make it a necklace. Chest tight, M'yu drew it out. Karsya had polished it herself and given it to him shortly after she'd run away from the Magnate and his mother had taken her in. They'd both been ten, maybe. He rolled it between his fingers. Jewelry is just prettied-up rock, she'd said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. The Houses can't take anything from us that we don't let them.

Even now, she often wore hers. When rich folks were being snots, she would glance at him with a knowing look and rub the stone with her thumb—a way of both thumbing off the system and reminding him. M'yu had always worried the thing made him look girly, but he slipped it on now and thumbed it himself. "Down with the powerful," he muttered and tucked it beneath his shirt.

He checked his pockets, then scowled. His gloves must've been one of the things they took off him at the prison. After using the knife to tear a strip off one of the blanket hangings, he came back to the stash and harvested the mushrooms, careful not to let them touch his skin.

A mouth was acidic enough that a case of Rot there could more-or-less be staved off by saliva—long as you didn't use too much and weren't plum unlucky. M'yu probed the sore in his own mouth, tongue running over rings of deeper and deeper scarring. Witchcandy liked flesh, its spores almost invisible, its survivability on organic matter barbarically high. Skin contact almost always resulted in a case of Rot, and Rot almost always spread. If the fever and hallucinations and sores didn't kill you, the spreading eventually would. It was how most of the Magnate's mushroom farmers, men like M'yu's uncle, died.

But sometimes it took a bit of poison to kill a hive of rats. Jaw tight, M'yu carefully wrapped the dangerous witchcandy into a bundle, stored it in a separate pocket, and put back the board. Then he left out a back entrance, only his ash-drawn message and a green sweet beside to mark his passing.

The sun had almost dipped behind the mountains that towered around the Gloam, and M'yu cursed. Doubling his pace, he headed for the part of the Gloam where the mushroom workers and their families lived. He kept his head down, almost regretting not grabbing his coat. At least that had a hood. But the gathering darkness had other people just as eager to get off the streets, and no one else accosted him as he made it to the street his mother lived on.

He froze, then ducked behind a house. She stood in the doorway of their shack, platinum hair swaying around her face, patched skirts swishing around her ankles as she waved kids playing in the street inside. There were new faces in the bunch—two, three maybe? He wasn't for sure. One of them might have been here last time he'd come, but it was so hard to remember when he only ever got glimpses from a distance. She scolded the last of them, then kissed him on the forehead as he came inside. With a wary glance around the street, she moved to close the door.

And then M'yu did something he hadn't in two years. "Mom!"

The door froze before her face peeked around it. "M'yu?"

He put a finger to his lips, glancing around at her neighbors, but their houses were also shut for the night. He hurried down the street, and she slipped outside. The door closed behind her, but she held onto the handle, almost like it was anchoring her. M'yu drew up short. She stood tight, leaned back slightly from him. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again. There were more wrinkles on her face than he remembered. Small holes riddled her lips where the flecks of witchcandy had eaten away at her. Past that, she was still beautiful, though; she'd always been too pretty for the Gloam. She had a grace that made men who had no business seeing her look. M'yu's fist tightened.

"Baby, you shouldn't be here." She looked around the neighborhood just like he had.

M'yu swallowed past the knot in his throat. "I won't be anymore. Got a lift out of the Gloam."

He didn't know what he hoped to see in her face. Disappointment for abandoning them? Pride for breaking out of the slums? It certainly hadn't been fear, her clutching the doorknob tighter with one hand and her robe with the other. Her voice lowered. "Do they know?"

"Of course they don't know," he hissed. She eyed him like you eye a shaky ladder, and his lips twisted. Digging through his pockets, he tossed the sweets and unused linkcard at her feet. "Make it last. I don't know when I'll be back."

She quivered—from the cold, M'yu told himself. That's why M'yu was shaking too. "All these months," she said. "All the gifts. It was you?"

His breath plumed on the air. Jaw tight, he looked away, looked back. "Exactly who did you think was dropping packages on your doorstep? Some friendly Cap?"

She started to say something, but M'yu held up his hand. He started to tell her goodbye, to yell at her for letting the neighborhood throw him out, to thank her for adopting him, to promise her it would all turn out okay. To warn her, to rail at her, to tell her he loved her. All the words jammed in his throat in an angry tangle, and instead of saying anything, he turned on his heel and left. He broke into a run, and some of her neighbors peeked past their curtains, but he just ran harder and faster until his childhood home was a speck behind him and he'd turned onto a new road.