The new Spark-Core in the horse's chest didn't hum; it rattled. Every few seconds, a puff of acrid, green smoke drifted back from the construct's joints, smelling of ionized copper and burnt ozone. Silas was right—it was a "Vulture-Core," scavenged from the wreckage of a scout-drone, and it was dying.
I drove through the "Grey-Alleys," the narrow veins of the city that bypassed the main Watch-stations. The sun was a dull, sickly coin behind the smog of the Middle-Rings, casting long, distorted shadows across the cobblestones.
Everywhere I looked, the city felt different.
In the Silt-Docks, the beggars usually looked at my carriage with envy or indifference. Now, they looked with hunger. I saw a group of "Leach-Snappers"—low-level informants—whispering at a street corner, their eyes darting from my iron-rimmed wheels to a crumpled piece of parchment in their leader's hand.
The bounty was already live.
Ten thousand silver. In the Deep-Sinks, that was enough to buy a life, a soul, and a way out.
"Don't look at them," I muttered, pulling my hat lower. "Just another fare. Just another street."
But the memory of the Soul-Trace—that flash of baking bread and laughter—was still stuck in my head like a splinter. It made the filth of the city look darker. It made the silence of my own life feel heavier.
I reached the "Chapel of the Fallen Gear" just as the midday bells began to toll from the High-Spires. The chapel was a ruin of rusted iron and shattered stained glass, a relic from the era before the mages turned religion into a state-regulated utility.
The father was there, huddled in the shadow of a headless gargoyle. He looked ten years older than he had last night. His silk cloak was torn, and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Ferryman," he breathed, stumbling toward the carriage. "I thought... I thought the Stalker got you."
"He tried," I said, not moving from the driver's box. I scanned the rooftops. The air was still, but the "Vulture-Core" was vibrating against my shins, sensing a disturbance in the local mana-flow. "Is the Trace safe?"
He patted the satchel. "It's fading. The vial... it's cracking. Without a stable containment field, her essence will leak into the atmosphere. She'll become nothing but a localized breeze."
I looked at the chapel. It was a Dead-Zone, which meant the Soul-Trace couldn't be sensed by scryers, but it also meant there was no magical energy to keep the vial powered. The child was literally suffocating in the silence.
"We can't stay here," I said. "The Hand has put a price on my head. Within the hour, the 'Rat-Catchers' will be crawling over this district."
"Then where?" the father cried. "The Spires are hunting us, the Guilds are hunting us—there is nowhere left!"
I looked at the horizon, where the "Industrial District" belched black smoke into the sky. It was the heart of the city's manufacturing, a maze of pipes, steam-vents, and deafening machinery.
"The Iron-Lung," I said. "The Great Forge. The background noise of the machinery is so loud it masks magical signatures. There's an old contact there—a woman who deals in illegal soul-containment."
"Can we trust her?"
"No," I said, snapping the reins. "But she hates the High-Mages more than she hates me. That's as close to trust as you get in Oakhaven."
As we pulled away from the chapel, a black crow perched on the gargoyle took flight. Its eyes didn't look like bird eyes; they were faceted, like cut glass.
A Scrying-Familiar.
I reached for the small crossbow bolted to the side of my seat and fired a bolt without looking. The bird exploded into a puff of black feathers and copper wire.
"They found us," I growled, kicking the Overdrive pedal. "Hang on. This horse is about to see how much life it has left."
The carriage lurched forward, the green smoke from the horse's chest turning into a thick, poisonous cloud as we raced toward the smoke-stacks of the Forge.