July 31st, 2815

Derrick clutched his tracking piece in both hands, eyes quivering over the red marker that indicated the whereabouts of his precious device. Abraham refused to take his eyes from the man. He'd not allowed himself a wink of sleep, unable to risk his asset escaping. He twitched restlessly, rigid in his booth seat at the corner of the inn.

Derrick sipped coffee and mulled over scrambled eggs and bacon. The officer did his best to ignore his poor company. He contently indulged in his spoils, exaggerating his pleasure with every bite and sip purely to aggravate the starving former captain. He placed the tracker out of Abraham's reach and picked up the newspaper.

Abraham gritted his teeth, folded his arms, and glowered at a spot on the wall opposite him. The smell of fresh breakfast wafted to his nostrils and roiled in his gut. His stomach turned upside down, but at the same time, begged for a taste.

"Ah, look. Five more groups of plague-bearers have been released from the walls this month," remarked Derrick. He turned a page. "Very strategic."

"Strategic?" Abraham choked. "It's barbaric. How many have been released total?"

Derrick swallowed a mouthful of his flat white drink. "Eleven, I think. Eleven known to the public. You were in the second group, two months ago. And you are the only one that's actually been stupid enough to come back."

"Eleven! What in God's name is Lord Pallis thinking? The plague is Ban-Ken's problem. He's playing god. It's madness, and it's wrong, and it is hurting people. What is—?"

"Hush!" Derrick threw down his drink and swept up his tracker: a small black screen that could be strapped around the wrist like a watch. He lowered his voice. "He's moving."

Abraham gulped and leaned over the table to look. He prodded a cloth napkin over a puddle of coffee.

The red marker sat at the corner of the screen in the form of a red arrow. It blinked, and with each blink, moved a millimeter. It changed to a simple dot as it came away from the edge of the screen, indicating that the recording device was within their range. Derrick looked to the staircase. He pointed, and Abraham followed his finger.

"It's with the girl," Abraham whispered. His nodded, and a trace of a smile faintly appeared. "That's good."

"It will be easier to take it off of her. As long as we can get her alone, and preferably outside. Can't just beat up a little girl in public, can we?"

"Beat her up! No, you can't beat her up. When you have a chance , you must take it from her gently."

"Gently," Derrick scoffed. "Steal an apparent silver gear gently. You just stay out of it, math boy."

Abraham frowned and studied the girl. He watched her slide a silver gear over the bar. His heart clenched. "She may have just given it away."

Derrick squinted at the tracker, then back to the girl. She took her change and pattered back to the stairs with a mug of coffee. She started very carefully up and stood still at each step to make sure the coffee was safe in its cup. "No, she still has it."

Abraham deflated in relief, slouching in his seat. He pressed the back of his hand to his brow. "Good... good..."

***

Alyn shouldered the door open and, eyes anxiously trained on the gentle sloshing of the black coffee between her hands, pressed into the room. Save for the hollow tick of the grandfather clock, all was quiet. Hughes rustled his hair with each even, sleeping breath, peacefully curled beneath his blanket. Alyn steadily shuffled to the bedside and set the coffee on the table. She returned to the door to push it shut, and squeezed behind the bed to reach the window. She pulled aside the curtain to squint at the sun, to check its location. Curtains, blinds, and shutters were starting to lift and pull out of shop windows below. Doors propped open. Dust blew through the empty street. A lone miner swung a pickaxe on his way to the outskirts of town.

Alyn dropped the colored curtain, returning their pretty room to gloom. Pale light flitted from gaps in the curtain's cover. The girl took a deep breath and half-consciously fingered the two vials in her pocket. She cleared her throat.

"Master Hughes." She raised her voice, "Master Hughes!"

She poked his arm, then shook him.

He startled awake and sat immediately upright, then reluctantly relaxed. His eyes swept around the room, and eventually, he glum look found the child. He lay back again and stared at the ceiling. He scratched his whiskers.

"Master Hughes, it's past eight. I-I wasn't sure how long yous planned on sleeping, but—"

He jolted out of the bed, as though flung from beneath, and tumbled over into the narrow lane between the bed and the window. He swore and spat and cursed and struggled to free himself from his blanket and rise. His arms braced against the wall and he breathed at such a pace that Alyn feared he would pass out.

"Are you—?" Alyn began, brows pinched with concern.

His eyes locked on her, frightened. "Potion," he said.

Alyn's face fell. She pointed to the coffee on the bedside table. "I bought you a coffee. I thought we might talk... Because I ain't feelin' so good about bein' your apprentice when you don't trust me with anything, and I—"

"Now is not the time for your stupid insecurities!" Hughes snapped. His hands clamped to his head. "Give me the potion, and then we'll talk."

Alyn squinted. "You're lyin'. Ah'll give it to you when you tell me what it's for."

He planted a foot on the bed and forced it out of his way. It knocked the table, and the mug fell to its side. Black coffee spilled to the floorboards and splashed the bed sheets. "Did you give it to me last night?"

Alyn squeaked and hunched her shoulders at the sudden movement. She averted her eyes. "No, sir! I—"

"You little shit!" Hughes barged around the bed with the lean and intent motion of a starving lion. "Hand it over."

The girl stepped backwards, right to the wall. A hand dipped into her pocket. "I want to know why you take it. That's all. I just want to know what it's for." Beneath a couple of gears, her fist clenched around the vials.

"Give it to me," Hughes snarled, and his eyes turned to slits, "now."

Alyn's breath shuddered. Her heart palpitated at the pace of hummingbird wings. She straightened her back and stood her ground. She raised her chin. "Tell me what it is, and I'll give it you."

Hughes roared and smacked a hand to his brow. He seethed to the grandfather clock and ground his teeth together. "You are too bold, Alyn Smythy. I need it. It is prescribed to me because I need it." He stalked towards her, claws outstretched. "It is not your business why."

Gears cascaded to the floorboards as she yanked the potions from her pocket. "Stop," Alyn commanded. She held them out to her side. Hughes froze and his eyes flicked between them.

"I'll drop them," Alyn warned.

Hughes spat and clenched his fists by his waist. His jaw strained. "Alyn Smythy, you are overstepping your rights," he snarled and resentment crept from his throat. "You are an apprentice under my command, and you will behave accordingly."

"Why won't you trust me?" Alyn wailed. "Master Hughes, I just want you to trust me!"

Hughes slowly extended a hand. "Give me the potion now, or I will hurt you," he growled. He trembled furiously in the effort of his own restraint. The tips of his ears flooded red. "You are making me... very angry."

Alyn whined. His quick turn to anger scared her. What was in the potion that made it so important? "Please, sir. It's a simple question, and it'll make me feel better, and..." She screamed and hurled both vials to ground as Hughes' scorching fingers wrapped around her neck, hotter than fire. They seared into her skin.

She flailed and kicked her legs and clawed at his iron grip in desperation. He raised her by her throat. Her tears cascaded from her cheeks and dissipated at a touch to his fingers.

"Stop it!" Alyn cried weakly, choked and afraid. Her throat tightened. It seemed to cave in on the inside. Her legs uselessly hung. She clung to his wrist. "You're hurting me!"

He sneered, teeth bared, vicious and dangerous and volatile. His grip tightened, just enough to stop her from breathing. He tilted his head. "You're lucky my gloves are on," his voice was aggressive and abrasive, like the snarl of an animal trained to kill. "Elseways, you would be dead." He slammed her to floor and pinned her neck to the boards, sending a painful jolt throughout her entire body. "DEAD."

His fingers clawed her skin as they withdrew and he leered down at her from his full height. "We are through, brat. Find your own way back to West Haven." His coattails flared as he kicked one of the gears on the floor. Aimed at her face, it drew blood from her cheek. He swiveled on his heels, snatched his boots, and swiftly stormed from the room. Alyn held her breath for a moment longer.

The sound of his footsteps receded down the hall, and turned heavier when boots yanked over stockings. Alyn shuddered into breathing, sucking shaky gasps of air through her tortured, swollen throat. Tears welled in her eyes and she gingerly poked at the burn plastered around her neck. One cruel handprint. The gear circled to a stop on the floor, and the last angry hint of Hughes' presence extinguished. Coffee dripped solemnly to the floorboards in aggravating time.

Drip... drip... drip.

Tick, went the clock, tick, just out of phase.

Alyn's ears pounded. Her head spun. Blood tickled her jaw.

Her heart throbbed so hard that it hurt. Ccurled on her side on the floor, she stared at the door.

In an instant, she bolted to her feet and scrambled to collect the gears across the floor and shoved them into her pockets. Glass from the vials crunched under her boots and she ran as fast as her braced legs could carry her out of the room, through the hall, and down the stairs where she fell down, down, down, head over heels. Her shoulder twisted beneath her, her knees battered the carpeted steel, and her nose crunched against the tavern floor at the bottom. She held her shirtsleeve to stem the blood and recovered quickly. With a slightly more lopsided gait, she lurched for the saloon doors out of the tavern. Her heart fluttered and her stomach dropped and she stumbled dizzily onto the street.

Hughes paced the length of his caravan with a fresh potion vial, knocking it back as though his life depended on it. He climbed to the steering platform and snarled at Patriot to move. Patriot startled at his tone and quickly started forward at a brisk pace, nickering with concern.

"WAIT!" Alyn cried. She shouted out and ran after them all the way to the edge of the town, when her legs would carry her no more and she wobbled a last few steps and fell to her knees, exhausted by her own distress. He'd be back, she thought. He couldn't just leave her there.

But, he had.

The child stared, unfocused, at the caravan through watering eyes as it shrank into the horizon and took her hopes with it. I've gone too far, she thought. This is the end.

There would be no more adventure. There would be no fighting, or saving the world, or blacksmithing, or being a hero. She knew exactly what there wouldn't be, and it left a distasteful cotton feeling in her mouth. It mingled unpleasantly with the blood on her lips.

Then came the bleak realization of what there would be; a lost orphan street rat, too far from home to know how to return, with no one to guide her. She had five golden gears, a silver, and a handful of bronze. Perhaps that could get an adult anywhere, but an unaccompanied child would only be accused of thievery, and would inevitably be stripped of the riches. That was how the world worked.

Her hands limply hung in her lap, and her eyes meekly raised to the sky. She would have given anything in that moment for Master Octienne to have been there to help her home and console her and take her back as his alchemy journeyman. He had always told her that she was lucky that he was lenient. He said that another master might not tolerate her boldness, and, indeed, Master Hughes did not.

Alyn wailed and doubled over, elbows tossed to the cobblestones to bruise. Charcoal dust rose into the stale air. The girl longed for Octienne and his kindness. She whimpered and clenched her jaw and pressed her forehead to her fists and her fists to the ground and ignored the dust as it settled around her and stained her skin and her clothes. Her chest swelled, her eyes shut, and her cheeks ran wet with sorrows. The handprint on her neck burned an eternal punishment, bright red and blistering, and reminded her that she was too bold and too arrogant and too insecure and too useless to be kept. Discarded and left behind, her entire body felt beaten and weak and wasted. Even the force of her own sniveling was too much. The girl curled up in the road and gasped guiltily for breath, afraid that she didn't deserve it. The blacksmith was long gone, and he wasn't coming back. He wasn't coming back.

A shadow fell over her. A wave of coolness, mixed with the invasive odor of cigarettes and cheap cologne.

"Hello, sweet," purred a calm, rich voice.
Alyn opened an eye and recoiled at the sight of the decorated green jacket. She shielded herself with her arms and scrambled back.

The man bent and smiled and stepped on her shirt to pin her in place. "You have something that belongs to me."

He reached for her and she screamed and the world spiraled to black.

A/N: A part of Book 2 is available on my profile. :)