Alofax winced as the cold air snapped at his face, he uttered a colourful curse before abandoning his search for the night. She was proving hard to find, let alone kill.

He turned back to the makeshift campsite to rejoin his oldest friend; the man once called Ganger. The burly man sat hunched as he stoked the embers of their fire. He crouched down next to his companion and produced an old deck of cards from his tattered pocket. “Fancy a little game?” He asked.

“Not in the mood, Al’. Not tonight,” said the man, as he looked into the flames. The city slums still lingered in his accent.

“Oh come on,” Alofax insisted as he dealt out the cards, his glowing eyes lent the cards an uncanny green sheen as he flicked them in turn to his lap and to his friend. “Ten sterling to the winner. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you can still beat me one-handed.” 

The burly man looked up from the fire, and they both laughed.

Dilly flared her Glamour. She pledged the warmth from her tiny room and focussed it into her forefinger and thumb, they shone a bright red as she pinched the end of the cigarette that hung from her lips. She inhaled and the cigarette lit with a quiet crackle. She quenched her Glamour and shook her hand to cool it, steam trailed from her fingertips as she took another drag. The room returned to the natural soft darkness of the early morning, save for the glow of the cigarette between her lips. She flopped her forearm on to the top of her head and lounged back against the door, careful to keep her smouldering hand away from the blanket she was still mostly wrapped in. A small flower of frost had bloomed, briefly, on her window. Dilly shivered as the flower started to melt, it revealed the cities’ looming walls beyond the pane as it died.

      Both moons stared down at Dilly as she looked up and out of the window at the haphazard shapes of the ruined city walls, she did not meet their gaze.

 With her left hand, Dilly pulled the rags that served as her bed up around her chest. The floorboards squeaked in protest as she moved on them. The room was small, barely two by two. Her feet could nearly touch the opposite wall from where she was slouched. Her racing pulse began to slow as the ‘bacco took effect. The hot smoke filled her lungs, she could feel the fog settling in her head, and purging the echoes of the dream from her mind. She relished the haze as it returned her agency over her anxious thoughts.

Dilly sat, swaddled in her sweaty sheets, and smoked until she could no longer ignore the whimpering. With her mind stilled and her smoke extinguished, she rolled lazily across the floor and out of her bed. She pulled on her canvas trousers that, although too big, had only a few small holes in them. A gangers’ rope through the loops kept them around her boney waist. She tucked the excess leg-length into the ankles of her jackboots. The extra trouser-fabric helped wedge her feet into the recently laceless boots. She gave the once-white top she slept in a cursory sniff and ran a hand through her short, unruly scarlet hair. Finally, she tucked another cigarette behind her ear and opened her bedroom door.

Dilly creaked across the hall and entered the room opposite hers. The baby was sobbing quietly in his sleep, Argentine lay on the floor next to him. She looked small and old as she curled around the squalling baby. Dilly picked the swaddled baby up, her breath misted in the air as she soothed him with her warming Glamour. He was only two months old, according to Argentine. Dilly certainly didn’t know any better. She just knew he was small, scared, and all alone. Well, not alone anymore.

         Dilly tiptoed over the sleeping woman and back out of the room. Her new brother remained asleep as Dilly held him to her chest and crept back out to the hall and down the rotting timber stairs. She could feel the sharp spikes along his spine through the swaddling. It wasn’t much of a stain, and there was only really a faint taste to the air around him. Still, it seemed it was enough for this little boy’s parents to abandon him. Uppers, judging by the fine basket and blankets he had been wrapped in. Dilly tiptoed into the small kitchen. Using her free hand, she dunked a cloth into the bowl of bovine milk they had purchased, just as Argentine had shown her. Dilly offered the rag to the baby’s mouth and instinctively he sucked on the wet cloth. Dilly fed him, and rocked him, until the sun started to shine through the cracks of the great-wall above. Her brother didn’t wake.

“You’re up early, Rosie”  Argentine said as she waddled down the stairs, left foot before right as she negotiated each step. Her crooked old form seemed more imposing when she was awake and mobile. 

Argentine was the only one to use Dilly’s given name. Most people just called her ‘Dilly’ after the Piccadilly citygate where she had been found.

“Sorry if I woke you,” whispered Dilly “I tried to be quiet. I was awake and figured he’d want a feed before long. He’s sleepin deep again now”.

“The little monster was awake half the night,” Argentine said. “I’d say he misses his parents, but I doubt he ever felt love from the sort of folk who would abandon a child by the wall” 

“Can  uh … can we afford the Bovvy milk? Tithes due soon isn’t it?” 

Dilly didn’t quite blurt it out, but the question didn’t emerge as eloquently as she had hoped.

“The Tithe is fine. I told you, girl, you’re not my only little helper.” Argentine waved her hands dismissively at Dilly. “Honestly, I wish I’d never mentioned it to you. That basket will cover his milk for months. It was real wood, I got twelve pieces for it! Eisner nearly took my hand off, the old crook. He prob’ly swindled me. Still, its enough coin to keep babe in milk without dipping into our pockets. That’s all that matters.” Argentine plucked the baby from Dilly’s arms.  “Thankyou Rose. But please don’t come into my room again unless I ask you to.”

“Shame your other ‘helper’ wont change nappy rags” laughed Dilly as she stood up. “Either the offal wagon is early or he’s filled that one”.

The door at the other end of the kitchen creaked open. Huster walked in, bleary eyed, followed by Sam and Barkly. At thirteen, Huster was a few years younger than Dilly. He was taller than her now, but still skinny. He wore his blue top with a grey scarf made from an old cloth. His trousers were a tan brown and on his feet he wore oldrope sandals. He had long, ashen hair, blue eyes and pale white skin. Like Argentine, he was a Blank. Sam and Barkly, like the baby boy, were stained. Barkly was as much canine as boy and poor Sam looked like a piglet that walked on its hinds, Dilly often wondered how he could even see through the wrinkled skin on his face. The two younger boys, now about six, had lived with Argentine for about four years. Dilly couldn’t taste their stain anymore. If Huster could, he didn’t let on. The three boys slept downstairs in the big room next to the kitchen. Dilly was allowed her own room upstairs, because she was the oldest.

Huster walked past Dilly and over to the pantry. He performed an exaggerated sniff as he passed her.

“Cleaning your teeth with smokes again then, Dil?” He flashed her a smile. “You heard the rumour?” he continued before Dilly could come back with a quip of her own.

“What rumour?” said Dilly, The Shades were rife with hearsay and she had long since given up trying to keep on top of the gutter-gossip.

“Well, y’know how up cliffside they bury their dead, ‘stead of burnin’ em like we do?”

“Hot off the Papalcy Press, that bit of news?” Dilly jeered.

“Yeah, well,” Huster leaned into Dilly to whisper in her ear loud enough for everyone to hear “ ’parrantly their dead ‘av been getting back up an’ wandering round the Uppers – causin quite the stir ‘parrantly. Call ‘em Reborn, they do. Some powerful Glamour gone done it, they -.”

“Just sounds like a story to scare naughty kidders!!” Dilly interrupted as she clumsily pawed at the two feral boys bouncing around her legs.

“Well. How else would you explain the lack of Kinguards in Shadetown then huh?” Huster asked. “ ’parrantly they’ve all been pulled back to guard the graveyards in case it ‘appens again and -” He opened the pantry door and his voice trailed off. “Looks like its mushrooms for breakfast lads, dinner too if we’re lucky” His voice was upbeat as the two young boys bounced around him, but his smile was strained now. 

Dilly knew the pantry was all but bare. She touched the smoke tucked behind her ear, a pang of guilt washed over her. Dilly used Papalcy broadsheets as smokepaper, and the fung she smoked grew readily in any damp shadow south of Wrack Street. But time spent sourcing smokes was time she could spend getting food.

“None for me thanks, I ‘ad a smoke for breakfast!” Dilly laughed. “Besides, I don’t eat when I’m working. Keeps me sharp!”.

 ***

Dilly closed the timber door of Argentines’ house behind her. The wind whipped through the alley, it was biting. She wrapped her adoptive mothers’ woollen shawl around her shoulders and up over her hair. It covered her head and mouth and went all the way down to her knees.  It helped a little, but the wind would always manage to whistle through the coarse weave of the shawl.

         Dilly pressed her back against the door and looked left and right, up and down the narrow, wet, alley. The sun had broken over the remains of the main city walls but Offal Alley remained dark, it was cast in a permanent gloom by the ramshackle guts factory that gave the alley it’s name, and its smell. The building was flanked on each side by vent pipes that coloured the street with foul air from withn. The Shades were alive now, Dilly could hear the distant thrum and clatter of early morning commerce in the street over. Offal alley remained empty though, no one braved the smell unless they absolutely had to, even the factory workers would enter via the offside-gate. Dilly clutched the shawl and slunk down the alley, to work.

Dilly’s mind raced as she walked. It was Lunae and she knew the Roths would have a wagonload of onions delivered at about midday and there’d be the usual carts of fungus from the undercaves; but they were all too cheap. It was hard to steal much of either without being caught, and she’d been caught too many times now. Dilly was known to all the main traders in the East Shade. The West-Shade fruit carriages wouldn’t pass for another day or so, besides, they would have Kingdom Guards keeping watch or, if she was really unlucky, an Archaeologist. There had been less guards present on the convoys in the recent weeks, but Dilly still didnt fancy the risk; good coin for fruit though, if you could fence them. Two apples or a single banna could fetch a whole piece if they were fresh. Still, too risky. Dilly sighed, it would have to be the vermin traps.

Dilly knew almost all of the trappers’ spots. Both the ratters and the birders would have emptied their traps by now to get their meat to the vendors before market, but they would have re-set them again for tomorrow night.  She started her hunt up high, she could be less careful with her Glamour above the city. The cold wind was even stronger on the roofs but a slight Glam and the sunlight, unimpeded by the tumbling architecture of the Shades, warmed her. She lowered her hood and felt the sun on her face.

Dilly clambered expertly over the clay tiled roofs, hardly needing to look where she placed her experienced feet. Behind her, the Wall hills loomed. The castle estates of the Kingdom Companies were nestled among the rocky outcrops of the hills. The fortresses looked down on the city below as seven kings sitting among the rockface, their single shared throne. The sun bounced and played off the coloured roofs and parapets of the castles. The livery of each of the seven houses was brandished on their flagpoles, banners, and bunting, but it was all just a coloured blotch to Dilly in the far distance. She hadn’t been within ten miles of the Uppers in her entire life.

Below the Uppers, demarked by a twenty metre steel-stone wall, Dilly could see the lower city. The Lowers were home to the thousands of wealthy families indentured to the Kingdom Companies. Below the Lowers, where the city walls cast their near-permanent gloom, was The Shades. The boundary between The Lowers and The Shades, hidden to Dilly on her current vantage point, was a less defined stretch of walls, oldstone, pubs and glam-houses.

Dilly’s gaze wandered around and down across the hotch-potch of rooftops and to the main city walls. She could just about see the Picadilly Gate from where she stood. The Picadilly Gate was one of the seven oldsteele gates that led out into the Motly. It was named after Picadilly Fa one of the seven Company Kings to first share rulership the city. Dilly had never bothered to learn the names of the six she wasn’t named after. Almost all within the city would live their lives without ever venturing through the gates to the Motly beyond, nor would they want to. Only the Archaeologists ever left the city, searching for relics of mankinds’ history. Though many said the Gangers had routes through breaches in the city walls and out into the Motly.

Dilly crouched down next to the first bird-trap. Failing to open it with her free hand, she tucked the cigarette she had been playing with back behind her ear and used both hands to pry the rusty mechanism apart. It opened with a crunch.

It was empty, save for some seed-bait, dried blood and a splash of white fecal matter. Dilly’s stomach growled as she swallowed the bait and pushed the trap on its’ side. With the bait removed, this one would need to look like a misfire. If she took too much bait the trapper would know someone was looting him. The second trap contained a plump pigeon, it was recently dead and probably fat enough to feed both Barkly and Sam. 

Dilly exhausted the rest of the steel traps on the roofs of the Glam district. Then, she moved on to the territory of a trapper she knew of as Shaniah on the flat roofs of the workhouses. Shaniah’s traps were handmade and more volatile than the other traps, Dilly had to be more careful with these. The first six traps, all empty, took her the rest of the morning to inspect. The seventh trap she looked in contained a young craw, no bigger than her fist.  She took no pleasure in wringing the poor things neck. 

Dilly tied the small bird to her belt, next to the pigeon, and lit her smoke. The sun was high now. The remaining Birdtrappers’ territories were more spread over the West Shade, away from the industrial smoke, and would take too long to investigate. There had been plenty of time for a rat or two to stumble into a trapper’s gear in the Unders, and she didn’t relish  the thought of having to kill another bird.

With her smoke pinched between her lips Dilly peered over the flat roof. The street in front of the building was well trafficked. A line of carts were queueing at the buidings gated door, ready to collect whatever was being produced within. The crooked alleyway at the back of the workhouse was empty. Dilly pulled her hood over her hair and crept down the oldiron ladder and off the workhouse roof. As her boots crunched onto the cobbled stone of the street, she slid across the alley and pressed her back against the cold masonry wall of the building neighbouring the workhouse. Dilly knew she was on the edge of the West district. She knew there was an old-door into the undercaverns behind the glamhouse on the Fleet Street, about two roads over, but she wasn’t familiar with the exact alley she found herself on. Dilly glanced up and down before pressing on. It was always best to move quickly and with purpose.

Dilly emerged from the alley and immediately recognised the busy thoroughfare as Lumber Street. The workhouse must have been the Fa fabric-stitchers. Dilly bore left and fell into step behind a tall man wearing a long tan overcoat, he carried a satchel in his left hand and walked with a slight limp. Head down, Dilly struggled to match his asymmetric gait. She watched the feet of those they passed. Until, suddenly, the limping man turned into a haberdashers with a faded grey timber frontage

Dilly peered from under her hood to find she was walking straight toward a monstrous looking Stain. He filled the path and he wore his Stain out and proud. He had no choice, his face was a mass of hair that, combined with his enormous bulk, gave him a beastly appearance. A flash of anxiety stabbed Dilly in the heart as she began to taste the iron stench of his Stain. Should she move and risk offending him? Or should she stand her ground? The Shades were a boiling pot, any small altercation, some perceived sleight, could easily bubble over into a fatal interaction.

Dilly raised her head, just enough for the shawl to fall away from her face, as if by accident, and reveal a tuft of her scarelt-red hair. Ruby-red hair, and her mothers’ crimson eyes broadcast that she was Stained too. She met his gaze and moved to the right, just a step. Not out of his way, but not in his way either. He passed her.

Dilly lowered her gaze again and the shawl fell back over her face. She exhaled and found her right hand under her hood, absent-mindedly toying with her right ear where her cigarette had been.

Dilly reached the old-door. A massive old-iron slab as tall as two men and built into one of the oldestones. The olde-doors were dotted all over the city, most were fixed shut but this one, its ancient hinges rusted stuck, was ajar enough for someone as slight as Dilly to slip through. Dilly kicked away the muck and gunge that plugged the gap and snuck in. She was going to have to wash Argentines’ shawl before returning it.

The air was pleasantly warm, albeit humid. The steel-stone floor had an inch of water pooled throughout. They might be ugly, but Dilly was glad her boots were watertight. She could hear water dripping and the scurrying of rat claws echoed around her ears. The cavern was almost pitch black. Dilly raised her right hand above her head and flared her Glamour. The red-hot glow washed down over her and lit up the cavern. A wave of rats splashed and scurried away from the bright light.

The diameter of the cavern was three times the height of Dilly, its walls were mostly smooth steelstone. Soil had poured and piled up through the few cracks where the ancient structure had failed. The cavern was warmed by the bio-fungus that fed on the minerals contained in the steelstone.

The traps weren’t hard to find. No one really ventured into the caverns and this trapper, Dilly didn’t know who ran this patch, made little effort to conceal the traps. Each trap she found had at least one rat in. One trap had something else in it, Dilly left that strange creature to its fate. She was careful to leave enough game that, when the trapper returned, they wouldn’t suspect they had been robbed.

Before long, Dilly had five medium sized rats tied to her waist to supplement the two birds. More than enough for an evening meal.

Dilly pushed back through the gap and out into the city. The afternoon was late but the dim sunlight was blinding after emerging from the cavern. Dilly held her hands out in front of her as she fumbled around in the light while her eyes struggled to acclimatise to the brightness. Her hands touched something soft.

         “FFUCCKK!!??” A voice screamed and Dilly felt a sharp smack against her left arm. The blow spun her off balance. Dilly reached back and steadied herself on the old-door, her hand sank into the grime that coated it. She heard the vegetation hiss and crackle as her searing hand, still hot with her Glamour, sunk into it.

         Her eyes finally focussed. In front of her was a skinny, wretch of a boy. He was no more than thirteen and a full head shorter than her. He was barefoot and all he wore, other than the ruddy brown canvas shorts that nearly reached his knees, was a filthy red cloth wrapped around his chest and upper arms. His breath steamed in the chill air. His long hair was a greasy tangle of grey. His eyes, fixed on Dilly, seemed to be nothing but furious black pinpricks in a sea of white. The bags around his eyes betrayed the hard life he led. He was rubbing his arm where Dilly had burned him.

“I…I’m so sorry..” blurted Dilly, her face was flush with anxiety and her heart was beating hard. 

The boy didn’t hear her. He was surrounded by Gangers, his Gang. They all wore red cloth around their arms.  

“Whats wrong, hangaraound??” They sneered. “Spooked by a Girl? “What a fukkin pussy” The boy was an aspiring gang member, a Hangaraound, or Prospect. He was looking to join, and therefore had something to prove.

“Wait” Started Dilly but there was no point. She knew there was no point. He was a thirteen year old Slummer, a ‘Hangaround’ trying to join a Gang, and she had embarrassed him. He had no choice. He had to fight  her.

They circled her. A tall young woman, about a foot taller than Dilly, blocked the entrance to the oldgate to prevent her escape into the caverns. As they circled, her would-be-adversary beat his chest and glanced around to his peers, looking for their encouragement. Looking for their confirmation; confirmation that this is what he had to do. It came in the form of a roar of “BELDAM”

The boy hopped from one foot to the other and turned back to face Dilly, his eyes two daggers, staring at her. Dilly glanced all around her, she was trapped. There must have been fifteen of them at least, a rabble of rags. Most of them were bigger than her. There was no way she could muscle past them, even with her Glamour. Stay calm, she told herself. She’d been in plenty of brawls before. He was only a boy. Dilly flared her fists, she’d just have to overpower him. Surely the Gangers would let her go. Wouldn’t they? Dilly raised her steaming fists in front of her.

“UHRECK!!!” The boy bellowed at the top of his lungs. The guttural noise caught Dilly off guard and she found herself unbalanced, falling.

No, not falling. Dilly was sliding. She was sliding across the cobblestones and being pulled, forward. It was as if an invisible rope was pulling her by her left wrist. She was being wrenched inexorably towards him. She dug her heels into the stones beneath her but to no effect. Her feet simply bounced and slid over the cobbles as she accelerated, faster and faster, towards the coiled spring of a boy waiting to end her.

 Dilly’s heart sank as the realisation washed over her, as she could taste the iron in the air. She was being pulled by the part of her arm that he had struck. It still stung. Having touched her, he must have met the condition of a pledge. He now had an uncanny control over her. Dilly knew she was helpless. The boy was like her, the boy had a Glamour.

Chapter Two