[b]Gears[/b]’ grin widened at Marcus’s suggestion. [[color=f26522]“Other side? Sure. I know two ways around this rat hole.”[/color] She tipped her hat toward [b]Elora[/b]. [color=f26522]“Lady wants to come, she comes. Just keep up.”[/color]

[b]Piero[/b] gave the pair a quick nod. [color=00a651]“Do not start anything before we know what we are looking at.”[/color]

[color=f26522]“Then tell trouble not to start itself,”[/color] [b]Gears[/b] replied, already slipping away with [b]Elora[/b] through a side cut between soot-stained storehouses.

[b]Marcus’s Haunter[/b] received its instruction with a solemn nod before drifting toward the shadowed buildings, ready to follow anything that fled. [b]Hwicce[/b]’s blade came free with a soft rasp, while [b]Piero[/b] drew no weapon at all, though one hand settled beneath his coat as the three advanced beneath the broken red lantern. 

The voices sharpened as they neared the narrow lane.

[color=00aeef]“I told you, I don’t know when he’s coming back,”[/color] a thin, strained man said. [color=00aeef]“I did my part. I got the carriage. I brought you here. I was told to wait.”[/color]

[color=662d91]“And I was told nothing,”[/color] snapped the second voice. A woman’s voice, furious rather than frightened. [color=662d91]“I have been locked in this moldy closet for hours, I missed morning conditioning, my hair is a disgrace, and if you think I am missing the Derby because some gloved scarecrow paid you in coin, you have vastly misunderstood the scale of your mistake.”[/color]

[b]Marcus[/b], [b]Hwicce[/b], and [b]Piero[/b] reached the corner of the side lane. Through the cracked opening of an old service building, the scene finally revealed itself.

[b]Milo Wick[/b] matched Havel’s description almost perfectly. Thin, brown-haired, narrow face, left shoulder held a little higher than the right. He stood near the door with a cudgel gripped badly in both hands, sweating through his collar.

Across from him sat the Calabrese “little comet.”

Not a horse.

[center][img]https://ik.imagekit.io/maxxo/Little%20Comet.png[/img][/center]

A young woman in expensive, rumpled racing silks, with chestnut horse ears twitching above disheveled hair and a long matching tail lashing irritably against the dusty floor. One ankle was secured by a short chain to an iron ring bolted into the wall. It had not made her meek. If anything, it seemed to have concentrated her outrage into a sharper form.

She leaned forward in her chair, eyes blazing at Milo.

[color=662d91]“Open that door,”[/color] she hissed, [color=662d91]“or when Big Dom finds me, I will personally make sure he has to identify you by your shoes.” [/color]