Today has been shitty, and Fredal is just as hopeless as every other small town or full city.

I have a rough understanding of each street and alleyway that leads to the main roads. If we had the time I'd scout the whole town myself and re-memorize each building and its corners one by one until they fit together like puzzle pieces, but memorizing the street names and the layout of the town isn't going to bring news of my sister to me.

We got here mid-afternoon, instantly splitting up into three groups and fanning out. Mal, Ozzie, Henry, and Alex headed north, and Benny, Amel, Al, Gabe, and Ethan went south, leaving Darius, Vlad, Garrison, Winston, and I to go west. Eleven bells rang not too long ago from the four chapels each built in a section of the town, and we're waiting in the alleyway near an inn where we first split up. Ten of us are accounted for and now wait for Mal's group to return. I'd be more concerned if I wasn't praying that their tardiness is due to having information.

I look around the corner again and spot them walking toward us. My shoulders sag when I meet Henry's eyes and find them not eager to tell us anything they've found. Another night of disappointment. Great.

At the back of the alley Darius is weaving a strand of fire through his fingers, the others flipping the sticks they carried with them from one hand to another. They've got it down with the focus and practice they've been putting in, or so I keep calling it even though I know it's to occupy their anxiety. It's weird seeing the trick being done by someone else's hands other than mine. Not even Fauna found the skill to be necessary, though she does have a few tricks up her sleeve that I don't have. We like keeping each other on our toes.

I come up beside Alister who is now doing the knife flip with a dagger. I fight my urge to snatch it out of his hand before he draws blood, but then he's turning his wrist, and the next thing I know the blade's in his other hand. Now to only work on what he does after the quick switch because widening your eyes and throwing your fists in the air is a good way to lose the fight.

"Ha! I did it!"

"Showoff," Gabe murmurs, his now broken stick threatening to do some real damage to his imaginary oncoming opponent. He broke it in half trying to catch it during one of his trials. Pretty sure the entire town heard him curse against a twig.

I open my mouth to suggest finding a less filled inn for the night when a low gurgling noise breaks the silence. I follow it, as does everyone else, to Winston who stands with one hand over his stomach. "Maybe we should find somewhere to eat."

"Did we eat last night? Or today?" Alex asks.

"Nope," I answer, realizing that the lack of food might be the reason for my current impatient mood. Hangry, as my dear sister likes to call it. "I know a decent place close by, and there's usually rumors running through it that we might catch something." No one answers, and I take it as an unspoken agreement and walk back down the alleyway to the street.

Papa Pernell's is a somewhat well-known tavern. They have the best seasoned food in all of Adaeric. There's the main floor, which is where most people enter due to its plentiful seating for travelers and townsfolk to all fit in without having to squeeze past chairs and tables. People often think that the only way in is through the glass door that has their name painted on it, and it is, but for those who want to go unnoticed, there's a black door in the alleyway on the eastern side of the building that leads down into a dimmed seating area with tables and booths that are always cast in shadows. The last place in Fredal that could give us answers.

I walk past the front entrance and head to the black door. I knock the coded pattern against the steel, wait three seconds, and then twist the handle and open the door. There's some sort of witch enchantment on it, allowing only those who know the code to enter. Fauna and I used to sit in the shadows and watch as drunks tried knocking the pattern in. It was entertainment for when we were bored, as well as a puzzle to wonder where Papa Pernell found a witch to lay the spell. Sometimes we'd even sit on the roofs in the afternoons to watch people pass and try to guess which of the passerbys were the witch in question.

We go down the short staircase leading directly into the rather big darkroom, and I walk to one of the wide booths at the back. One of them is taken, and since it's cast in shadows with only a single dim candle flickering in the center of the table, I can't see who it is who occupies it, but I pay them no heed and walk to the other side. I step to the side and let Darius slide in first all the way to the back. The Bhaltary fill in the rest of the seating, scooting all the way in until Garrison and I take the spots on the end.

The only thing that's lit clearly here is the circular walkway. It's hard to tell with little light, but the room is shaped in a circle rather than your normal square or rectangle. Booths run along the walls, and tables sit within the walkway's inner circle. In theory, you should be able to see all who sit, but again, it's dark. The conversations don't flow as loudly and regularly as they would on the upper level, but ears certainly hear more down here. There's a sense of normalcy to the mystery that surrounds us.

A waitress dressed entirely in white so you can pick them out in the room comes up to the table. She bears their mask too, hiding the whole right side of her face. Each mask has a single thing painted on it to distinguish each woman, rather than using their names. She has a red tear falling from the corner of her eye. Last I recall, she was the last woman who served me and my sister when we came here some years ago.

We order our food, and then she disappears behind a door that leads to another staircase to the kitchens. I could map out this whole property if I wanted to, but this is the last place my sister would be. She sacrificed herself to save the people she cares for, so no, she's not here. She wouldn't lead him here.

"How on earth did you find this place?" Winston asks. I can't see him, but I know that he's about two body lengths to Garrison's right based on where his voice came from. My eyes are good, but they're not that good.

"Really, Winston? You're asking him how he knows about a place like this?" Al counters from my shoulder. Kid's got a point.

"I was trying to break this awkward silence. Excuse me for being sick and tired of everyone's moping shit."

"I didn't find it," I answer, cutting off Al before he starts a petty argument. They seem to be the only types of ongoing conversation any of them can startup recently. "My sister did."

"Oh."

We lapse back into another silence, and it's only because I'm done with everyone's moping shit too that I continue. "Our father sent us on two separate missions in Adaeric. She had one here, and I was in Litchelle. I left a cycle before her, and on her way to do hers, she stopped in Litchelle and told me to meet her here when I finished. I did, and after tracking her down and finding her walking the streets with a limp and clothes splattered with still wet blood, she brought me here. Well, technically, she took me to the main level, but the owner told us that folks like us were bad for business. He hadn't noticed her still red hands yet, but when he did, he took us around the corner and gave us the code to get down here. Got a free meal out of it, along with a table full of desserts. It's against our vows to our Codex to agree to receive something without some sort of payment, so we snuck into his office and left a few rubies on his desk, and a note that told him where to go and who to ask for if he ever needed a favor. A payment of kindness for one given freely with no request for anything in return."

"Did he? Ask for a favor, I mean," Benny asks.

The waitress comes back with a few others and our food in their hands. I wait until they're gone before I nod, remembering the excitement on Fauna's face when he showed up on our doorstep, along with a small wagon carrying covered baskets of several food ingredients. He brought a whole small inventory of his kitchen with him, and we later found out that when he travels, he passes out food to those who can't afford to pay for it. I'm not sure why, but my sister was absolutely transfixed by him. I believe there was a time when she even called him our grandfather. It was in a good joke, and Papa Pernell laughed, but aside from our parents and each other, Fauna and I never had much of a family.

Words like Grandma and Grandpa or Aunt and Uncle or even cousin were foreign to us, and I think my sister had dreamed of a life where they weren't for so long that she tried it out on the first person who encompassed what one of those names meant. Papa Pernell is a kind and generous man who has the purest heart that I know of. I'm sure my sister isn't the only one to refer to him as family when they share no blood relation.

"There were some thugs causing trouble around town," I continue, recalling how his usually upward creased face had fallen as he sat in our father's office. "They broke windows, burned a few buildings, raped women and sometimes children. How we hadn't heard of their actions sooner, I don't know. We had our own spies walking the streets, and it seemed that they kept being mis led into other parts of town while the thugs raged their war. Our father sent her to deal with them, but I was stubborn and followed her back here against my father's wishes. He hadn't put me on assignment in a month, and I was anxious for a fight, so I snuck out. She yelled at me and punched me for the idiocy of going against him, but she didn't send me back. We took care of the thugs, paid for a good meal here, and then went back home."

"What did your father do to you when you got back?"

"Henry." Ozzie seethes.

"What?"

"He made me stick a knife through my hand." The whole table falls into hush that, in this room, draws the attention of everyone. It's hard to see, but I can picture each of their reactions as they imagine the horrible man he wasn't.

"He...a knife...through your hand," Mal repeats slowly.

I nod. "He told me to stab my hand in the one place where it would cause the least amount of damage, and without flinching I did, and then he told me to heal the wound on my own. There's still a two-centimeter indent on my bedroom wall from when I did it. I cleaned my hand, sewed it up, and watched as it soon became a scar." I hold my hand close to the candle's flame, letting the small scar on my palm be seen.

It's a fairly faint one that most people go without realizing it's there. I don't even think Kat knows about it, or if she does she hasn't mentioned it. I skipped over the part where he made Fauna do the same thing for not sending me back when I confronted her, as well as the part where we both nearly fainted at the pain and blood loss that the wound caused. We know how much blood a certain cut can make, but we didn't realize how little blood needed to leak for your vision to go blurry and your head hurt like you got smacked with a steel pole. I also skipped mentioning that Fey has a similar two-centimeter indent on her bedpost to where the blade pinned her to it. Sometimes I'll find her running her thumb along the scar when she's nervous, but she's learned to put her hand out of sight when she does it. It's not necessarily a cool scar story to tell.

"I have a scar from when Gabe shot me in the leg with an arrow," Henry chimes, sounding oddly proud of the fact.

"It slipped!"

"I wasn't even near the target! How did you miss it?"

"In my defense, how was I supposed to know it'd ricochet off the metal post and into your leg?" Gabe counters.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe by aiming for the bullseye."

"Guys-"

"Shut up, Mal." They say in unison.

They keep arguing, eventually dragging Alex, Ozzie, Winston, and Vlad into the debate. There's no need for me to act as if I'm paying attention, so I lean back and turn my head to eavesdrop on the other group in the booth next to us. I have no doubt one of them is doing the same to our conversation, but I don't think they're getting what they're looking for out of it.

"My hands were sweating!"

"Bullshit."

Rolling my eyes, I tune them out, ears straining to hear the rather hushed tones of our neighbor's voices. When walking over to sit, I glanced down at the foot of their table, finding no light hitting anyone's legs, which means they don't have our numbers. They could be scattered throughout the room for an advantage, but splitting your numbers into smaller parts usually will have you losing a few of them. It's why we split up into fours and fives when we search the cities and towns.

They didn't talk when we approached, so they either didn't want us to hear their own conversation, or they were sizing each of us up. The latter is the reason why our close walking proximity was tight. They could only size up to six out of the fourteen of us.

"And what of the Gypsy Sin?" A female, I determine, and Avyanan. She's speaking in what's clearly her first language, but one of her companions returns in the same language that he stumbles over just slightly.

"Left five days ago." A deeper voice, male, and not Avyanan. "Wind's in their favor."

"How long?"

"A cycle going north," a third answers. His speech is flawless.

"That's cutting it close to the timetable."

No one answers to that, and I lean back forward and force myself to eat. Not that it's necessarily hard. Papa's chicken is always beautifully spiced and juicy, along with the potatoes and corn buttered beside that. I pull my hood lower, lean into the shadows, and then pull down my balaclava to take a bite of the chicken, fighting the rising moan in my throat. Ethan has no such restraint and lets us all know just how much he's enjoying the meal. My gaze drifts to Garrison, his eyes barely visible, but I still see the message within them. He heard the other booth's talk and he didn't understand any of it, but he's determined it must be something.

I shrug a shoulder in silent response. They're likely thieves or pirates who plan on raiding a ship. The Gypsy Sin, if that's the believed name of the vessel. We have no need for pirates, but if they somehow have news of it leaving at three days sail from this point, then they must know the news of other happenings within the same distance. They might have news of where Xaxias was last.

I turn towards Darius, still ignoring the hostile talk going around our table. I don't need to see his face to know that he wants to talk to them. We haven't had a single lick of luck in finding anything that'll lead us to her, and we're getting desperate. They may be pirates, but pirates are always easy to pay off and bribe with riches, and Gods know that he's full of that. We can't necessarily access those riches at the moment, but I have enough gold coins in my pocket to satisfy them enough. At least, that's what I'm hoping for.

I finish my chicken, pull my balaclava back up, - I hate the extra step to eating – and once again listen to the quiet words.

"Your mother dislikes this grand plan of yours." They've switched to the common tongue, likely in favor of the one who isn't fluent in their language.

"My mother dislikes the debt I'm fulfilling, and to whom I vowed it to," the female retorts, her words clipped and thoroughly drenched in disdain.

"Is the lady true as ya' say? Ya'...friend." Another man, but younger by the pitch of his voice. Likely the same age, possibly a year below Alister.

"She's a pain in the ass who makes me laugh."

"So she's your twin then?"

That makes three men and one woman. She seems to be the leader of their group. Captain, if I'm reading between the lines correctly, and assuming they are, in fact, pirates. The younger male gave it away. He doesn't carry the accent of any land, but that of the sea. Couldn't be a sailor with the way some of his words slur and others cut short.

"If we were twins, I'd be twice the badass I am now. And on the topic of my mother-" her voice goes sharp and cold again, but also quieter "-she's not Comandante of the Devil's Pride. She can stick to her finery and jewels all she likes so long as she leaves me the fuck alone. I'm not abandoning my father's dying wish – nor my own to set sail wherever - and to whomever, I wish to."

"Deepest apologies, Comandante."

They continue talking, and that's when I catch the slight slip of the accent lingering in the rest of their words now. She, of course, has no accent, as she learned to snuff it out whenever she's off of her ship or away from her port. I can't remember the last time I saw her, but I do remember developing somewhat of a crush while training on her father's ship. Fauna went total cupid on me, but no matter what she or I did, the Comandante's daughter never took a liking to me. I think I almost pushed Fey overboard for making me look like a fool in front of her once. It ended with us fighting on the deck and everyone else dismissing their duties to watch our newly teenage legs move as if there were decades of experience in each movement.

It's only been five years since then, but it seems like far longer now that I hear her voice. And her father's death is something I was sure to have heard of before now, but even some things slip past our ears. I loved that man. He was kind and funny and rambunctious, but just as willing as my father to prepare his child for the harsh world she'd one day find herself in the middle of. He taught us how to sail and navigate the stars to know which way was north and how to calculate the distance to home. We learned how to spot a storm before it hit, and how to climb the shrouds quicker. The heavy ropes we used to build up our arm strength, and the constant shifting of the waves pushing the boat this way and that increased our balance. It took us a while to get used to the still earth ground when we docked three months after we first set sail, and we soon missed the sea over the land.

My hands itch towards the small knife under my arm again, but I close my fists and instead leave my knee to bounce.

This will be fun. For me, at least.

*****

After dinner, we retreated into the alleyway. The door to Papa's darkroom is not far off, and I keep one eye on it as I pace in the shadows. The full moon will be here in four nights, but the sky is clear, so there's enough moonlight to light up half of the alley.

My fingers need something to do, so I pull out a bronze coin and start fiddling around with it. I've been out here for only five minutes, but I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins. If I had the time, I'd probably run the perimeter of the town to try and get rid of it, if not dampen it so I'm not so antsy. We've gone cycles without getting anything close, and though this may not be more than a friendly reunion, it's still lighting a spark in my chest.

The door opens, and I take a step back as four figures walk through, heading in my direction as I predicted she would. Patrols are likely out, waiting for just about anything to interrupt their boredom with. The Dark Materials Market is mainly based back in Litchelle, but smaller bases run about Ker, one of them being here in Fredal thanks to its closer to the coastline location, though the cliffs keep products smaller as it's hard to transport them here.

The female leads the group of them, her eyes downcast and hiding her face. "Get word to the Maelstorm-" Before