The docks remembered thunder.
It lingered in the timber, a shiver down the bones of Lavandia's piers, echoing in the slack ropes and stacked crates. The alley had quieted no more shouts, no more metal teeth but the smell of burnt ozone was stitched into the air with fish and tar.
Leona scooped her fallen coat from a snoring grunt, shook sardines from the fur trim, and swung it over her shoulders. The white ruff framed her jaw like frost. The last freckles of lightning crawled off her knuckles, blinked out, and left only the soft jingle of bracelets.
Sight stood amid shallow puddles that no longer glowed. Steam climbed from his scarf and sleeves, dwindling to a silver breath in the night.
Sight: …You sold me to them.
He didn't raise his voice. It wasn't a question. The words lay on the stones between them like a blade wrapped in cloth.
Leona let a laugh start and then strangled it with a sigh.
Leona: Business. Bad business. I was broke, they were angry, and you—
[She gestured at him, at the puddles, at the cracked cobbles.]
—looked like someone I could nudge and you'd just… move. I misjudged. Doesn't happen often.
Sight said nothing. The lantern above them jittered, and the light wrote hard lines across his eyes.
Leona: …Come on. Dinner. I owe you that much.
She didn't wait for permission. She turned, coat flaring, and started toward the yellow warmth spilling from a door farther up the quay. Sight followed after a beat, boots whispering on wet stone.
They chose a smaller tavern tucked between a cooper's shop and a sail loft. Its sign, a painted crab with crossed hammers swayed on chains and groaned quietly to itself. Inside, lamplight pooled on scarred tables, and the windows were open to the tide; the sea leaned in to listen.
A broad-shouldered woman behind the bar nodded at Leona the way people nod at trouble they know by first name.
Barkeep: Leona Canon. Thought the Black Tides would've pawned your bracelets by now.
Leona: Aw, Ula. I'd never let anyone touch my jewelry. My heart? Maybe. My drink? Never.
Barkeep (Ula): You paying before or after the storm you bring in?
Leona slapped a few coins on the counter with theatrical sincerity, then jerked her chin at a corner booth.
Leona: Kitchen special. Two plates. And your good bottle.
Ula eyed Sight, took in the damp scarf, the quiet eyes, the way his shoulders carried a weight heavier than sodden cloth.
Ula: You feed strays now, Leona?
Leona: Trying something new.
Ula snorted and disappeared into the warm mouth of the kitchen.
They sat. The wood creaked. A lantern crackled and shed a curl of smoke. Sight rested his forearms on the table, fingers still nicked red from where lightning had kissed them. Leona propped a boot on the bench and leaned back, the queen of nothing acting like it was a throne.
For a few heartbeats, neither spoke.
Then the food came two heavy bowls of herb stew thick with potatoes and clams, a board of sliced bread still steaming from the oven, and a plate of fried calamari dusted in salt and pepper that made Sight's stomach answer for him out loud.
Leona (grinning): Eat. Your face looks like you're trying not to.
Sight hesitated, then reached for the bread. The first bite put a softness in his jaw that wasn't there before. He spooned stew like a man refilling a well, careful now, not the storm he had been in the first restaurant. Even so, the food vanished quickly; the muscle memory of hunger had long fingers.
Leona poured herself a glass from Ula's "good bottle." Amber light climbed the curve of the glass like a sunrise. She raised it.
Leona: To not dying in alleys.
Sight lifted his water.
Sight: To… paying before starting trouble.
Leona barked a laugh that made two sailors glance over and grin without knowing why.
They ate in the quiet that only happens when mouths are busy and hearts are trying to keep pace. When a lull finally stretched long enough to make room, Sight set his spoon down.
Sight: Why the Black Tides?
Leona rolled the glass along her palm and studied the pale arcs the lamplight drew on it.
Leona: Because I owed them. Because I like expensive bottles and I liked them faster than work would have liked paying for them. Because the world doesn't give out kindness for free, and I learned to take before I'm taken.
[She shrugged, the coat's fur brushing her cheek.]
I could make excuses. I've got plenty. You've heard better from worse people.
Sight: I haven't heard many people.
Leona squinted at him, then huffed a laugh.
Leona: Right. Forest boy. Fell-out-of-the-sky boy.
Sight's shoulders twitched almost invisibly at the phrasing. For a breath, Leona thought she'd gone too far. Then he nodded.
Sight: Two years ago. They found me in the forest. I woke up in a bed that smelled like herbs and wood. Lily cried because she thought I was a ghost. Her mother made soup. I remembered my name. Nothing else.
Leona tilted her head.
Leona: What does a name feel like when you don't have anything attached to it?
Sight searched for a word and found his hands instead, spreading his fingers on the table as if the answer was written in the scars.
Sight: Like a handle on a door I can't open yet.
Leona looked away and poured again to cover the way that line stepped under her ribs.
Leona: Hah. Poetic. Careful. People pay extra for that in the wrong parts of the city.
Sight: You were going to sell me for a bottle.
Leona: Not just a bottle.
[Then, softer.]
A good bottle.
He stared. She surrendered with a groan and dragged both hands down her face.
Leona: Fine. I was a coward who chose the easiest path between me and a drink. Proud?
Sight: No.
Leona: Thought so.
Sight: You saved me.
Leona blinked. She covered the way that struck with sarcasm, as always.
Leona: "Oh, so now you want to pay me back with your gratitude? Careful. I charge by the minute.
Sight almost smiled. The lantern threw a small gold into his eyes. They almost didn't reach his mouth, but it was there.
Sight: I don't forgive you because you're funny.
Leona (dry): Because I'm gorgeous, then.
Sight: Because you could have walked away.
The words were simple. They walked across the table and sat in front of her and wouldn't be moved.
Leona looked at her glass like it had done something rude.
Leona: Don't do that.
Sight: What?
Leona: That… quiet kind of mercy. I'm bad at standing under it.
She threw the liquor back and hissed through her teeth like a cat and a saint at once.
Leona: Gods. Ula, what is this, varnish?
Ula (calling from the bar): You asked for good. That's good. Drink slower.
Leona: No.
They ate again because people who don't know what to do next often eat. Sight worked through the last of the bread, tearing it with careful fingers, while Leona mapped the tavern in glances out of habit: doors, faces, knives that weren't meant for butter.
On the next lull, she leaned forward, elbows on wood, chin on the heel of her thumb.
Leona: So what's your plan, rookie?
Sight: Keep moving. There's bound to be answers somewhere.
Leona: That sounds like what people say right before they trip into a hole and call it destiny.
[She waggled a finger.]
Lavandia rule number one: plans that start with 'bound to' end with 'bound up.'
Sight: What's rule number two?
Leona: If someone offers you a free miracle, check your pockets afterwards.
Sight: You offered me a free dinner.
Leona: That's not a miracle. That's penance.
Sight: What's rule number three?
Leona: Never trust a smiling fishmonger. If the fish is smiling, something's wrong.
Sight: That's oddly specific.
Leona: You'd be surprised how often it comes up.
A pair of sailors at the next table were playing cards with the careful gentleness of drunks who thought the deck loved them. One whispered to the other, not nearly quiet enough.
Sailor: —heard there's a price on a name. Steel Crown's after some boy—white hair—
Sailor 2: Keep your voice down. Bounty rats hear that, they'll crawl right out of the walls.
Leona's eyes slid to Sight, then back to her glass.
Leona: Rule number four: if you've got a price on your head, change your hair or your head. Preferably the hair.
Sight: I like my hair.
Leona: Of course you do. Fine. Scarf up.
He tugged the scarf a little higher on reflex.
Leona: Rule five: if you insist on being obvious, don't walk alone.
Sight: You offering?
Leona blew out a breath and let the truth be heavier than her jokes for once.
Leona: Yeah. For a while. Until you find your door with the handle.
Sight: There's a bounty. Won't that make walking next to me dangerous?
Leona: Everything's dangerous. Walking next to you just makes it interesting.
Sight: Is that rule six?
Leona: Rule six is don't make a list so long you forget to live in between.
Sight looked at her like he hadn't considered that forgetting was possible when there was so little to remember. Leona looked at him like she hadn't considered she was capable of saying something that wasn't a joke.
Leona: Anyway. Logistics.
[She clapped her hands softly and counted on bracelets.]
Beds, coin, work, and not getting stabbed. You've got none of the first three and entirely too much chance of the last.
Sight: I can work."
Leona: You can break crates with your fists. Which is a kind of work. But it doesn't pay unless someone's paying for the broken.
[She tapped the table.]
There's docks labor in the morning—honest coin if you want to sweat for it. There's also the relic market. Very dishonest coin.
Sight: Relic market?
Leona: Magic junk. Some of it is real, some of it is stories dressed in brass. Lavandia deals in both.
Sight: You work that world?
Leona: …Sometimes it works for me.
He waited. She waved the rest away like smoke.
Leona: Point is, you need coin. And I need to not owe anyone with anchor tattoos. If we stick together awhile, we solve two problems. Maybe three if you count teaching you how to not get electrocuted on your own puddles.
Sight: How?
Leona leaned in, eyes bright with mischief and knowledge, which were the same thing in her mouth.
Leona: You expand in instead of out. When you call water, you're making a field. Pretty, grand, dramatic. Makes you a lighthouse for lightning. If you focus, pull tight—threads, not sheets—shock has fewer highways.
Sight: Threads.
Leona: Tiny rivers. Braids. You ever woven hair?
Sight: No.
Leona: Good. I'll show you. On the condition you never tell anyone I taught you braids.
Sight: Deal.
Leona smirked despite herself.
Leona: And footwork. You throw your whole soul forward; it's beautiful and stupid. Keep your weight over the heart of your stance. Watch.
She slid out of the booth and onto the plank floor, boots soft. Without thinking about the eyes around them, she raised her fists and let her body find the Lightning Tiger line: one hand high, one low; hips braced; breath narrow as a blade.
Leona: You saw Number One. That's a straight-line release. But without this—
[She sank through the stance, ankles stacked, spine a string that a god might pluck.]
—it's just a punch with sparks.
Sight stood because she was a gravity that pulled people into motion. He mirrored her. His shape was good; anything he did with his body looked like it had been waiting to be done.
Leona nudged his foot with her boot.
Leona: Closer. If someone sweeps that, you move with it, not over it. You're not a tree, rookie. You're a reed that can pick up a house.
Sight adjusted. The plank floor approved with a small sigh.
Leona: Now breathe. In on guard, out on move. Don't lock your jaw. You take electricity better when you're not clenched like a miser.
Sight breathed. The lantern smoke drew a straight line up, as if the air itself agreed.
Leona: Good. Now—
[She flicked a finger at his scarf.]
—never let a man with sparks see where your skin is wet. Cloak your water. Threads, not sheets. Think…
[She squinted, searching for a word he'd own.]
Think of rain that never touches the ground.
Sight closed his eyes. The small damp in the wood, in the wool at his neck, in his hair he felt it, not as a tide but as beads on a string. One by one, they lifted, obedient and discreet, and settled into a faint halo no one else could see.
Leona felt it anyway. She got a chill up the arms she pretended was a draft.
Leona: Hah. You learn fast. Annoying.
Ula rapped the counter with a ladle.
Ula: No forms in my dining room. Break a chair with your tai-what and you're buying it.
Leona: It's Lightning Tiger, Ula.
Ula: It's chairs.
They sat again, and the tavern let out the breath it had been holding watching the beautiful people be dangerous.
Leona reached into her coat and slid a small paper packet across the table. The seal was a drawing of a lighthouse.
Sight: …What's this?
Leona: Ferry token. If we need to get out fast, this buys us space on a little boat called the Moss Gull. She's ugly, she's loyal, and she owes me three favors I haven't collected. Don't lose it.
Sight tucked it into his scarf like it was a letter from a friend he hadn't met yet.
A shadow hovered at their table Ula again, with two folded slips of paper, edges still damp from ink.
Ula: Before you get too comfortable, you should know the scribes at North Gate printed these.
[She set one in front of each of them. A rough sketch of Sight's face stared back—white hair, calm eyes, scarf. The word SIGHT ALBAR marched above a number that made Leona whistle.]
Plenty of rats will chase that amount until they drown.
Leona: Rule seven: when the city writes your face, don't let it see your face.
Sight touched his own name with a fingertip, as if making sure the letters wouldn't move if he did.
Sight: The King smiled when he heard it.
Leona: Kings always smile with other people's pain.
Sight: I'll make him stop.
Leona believed him in a way that unsettled her. She shook it off.
Leona: Tomorrow, we get you a hood. And coin. And a map that doesn't lie.
Sight: And then we leave.
Leona: So decisive.
Sight: The longer I stay, the more nets will be thrown.
Leona: Fair. Dawn, then. We'll go by the west road. Less eyes. More gulls.
Sight: Gulls are loud.
Leona: So am I.
They paid Leona without flinching and climbed the narrow stair to the small rooms Ula rented to people who returned keys. Sight's room smelled like salt and soap and old wood. The window faced the harbor; the moon had dropped a coin on the water and forgotten it there.
Leona leaned on the doorframe.
Leona: I'll knock you up before dawn.
Sight: Wake me up.
Leona: That too.
She started away, then stopped and looked back, the hall light making a ring in each yellow eye.
Leona: Hey. Rookie.
Sight: What.
Leona: Thanks for not hitting me.
Sight blinked.
Sight: You punched harder.
Leona smiled, small and not for anyone else, and left.
The night folded itself, neat and heavy. Sight sat on the edge of the bed and unwound his scarf, laying it like a banner over the chair. He flexed his hands. Lightning had left its little teeth; they would fade. He let the window in and went to stand in it.
Lavandia breathed. Masts drew a forest of lines against the stars. From far across the marina, laughter rolled like a low wave; a sailor sang a song with three chords and more honesty than tune. Somewhere, a metal press clanked posters for a name made into a number.
Sight (thinking):Fell from the sky. Name like a handle. Door still shut.
He lifted his palm. The damp in the room gathered the tiny fog of breath and sea and wood. He braided it, just as Leona had said: threads, not sheets. The air around his knuckles shimmered barely, like heat above a road. He held it until his breath trembled, then let it go.
Sight (thinking):Threads.
He slept with the window open and a gull on the sill.
Dawn dressed the roofs in rose. The harbor yawned, stretched ropes, shook off dreams. Ula's stairs complained, and then Leona's knuckles tapped twice on Sight's door like a drummer warming up.
Leona: Rise and run, rookie.
Sight was already up, scarf tied, the ferry token tucked safe, hands loose at his sides.
Leona looked him over and made a face.
Leona: Do you ever look like a mess?
Sight: Yes.
Leona: Liar.
They ate fried bread and eggs downstairs while Ula gave them the kind of look reserved for children you hope grow out of it. Then they stepped into the waking city.
Lavandia in morning was a different beast than Lavandia at night. The streets were bright and full of bucket water. Shopkeepers scrubbed stoops. Delivery carts rattled, spilling the clink of bottles and the thud of sacks. The train station at the north end breathed steam and caged pigeons flew above it like misdelivered letters. The lighthouse at the eastern point blinked pale in the coming sun.
Leona took the lead without saying she was doing it. Sight watched everything without saying he was. They bought a cheap hood from a stall that also sold rain capes and advice.
Vendor: Storm coming later.
Leona: When isn't there.
They sold the Black Tides' dropped chain for scrap to a man with a smile too sharp to trust and bought strips of dried cuttlefish and a map with ink that didn't smear when Leona licked her thumb and tried.
Leona: Honestly shocked. This one won't get us eaten by a marsh.
Sight: You've been eaten by a marsh?
Leona: Metaphorically.
They skirted the busier docks, kept to streets where the buildings leaned together like neighbors whispering, avoided the North Gate where posters went up faster than birds on crumbs. A pair of cutpurses shadowed them for a block; Leona yawned in a tone that meant "try it" and the cutpurses reconsidered.
On a quiet stretch where ivy had decided a wall was a good idea, Leona slowed.
Leona: One more rule.
Sight: Eight?
Leona: Doesn't matter the number. If you don't know the dance, follow the beat. Watch feet. People lie with mouths. They tell the truth with boots.
Sight thought of the envoy's soft shoes and the mage's steady ones and nodded.
They reached the west road, a ribbon of stone that climbed toward hills shaggy with grass and wind. The sea was a shoulder to their right, vast and casual. The train gave a parting whistle like a bird bragging. Behind them, Lavandia folded itself into distance a patchwork of red tile and whitewash and rumor.
Leona set her hands on her hips and squinted into the bright.
Leona: All right, partner. Any last-minute confessions before we walk into whatever this is?
Sight: I don't like thunder when I'm asleep.
Leona: Noted. I'll tell the sky to be polite.
Sight: And you?
Leona: I… hate the nickname Crazy Tigress.
[She shivered theatrically.]
Feels like a barkeep named it.
Sight: What should people call you?
Leona considered, tasting options like wine. Then she blew a strand of hair off her cheek.
Leona:Leona works. Or Canon if you're about to watch something explode.
Sight: Leona, then.
They started walking. Their shadows went long and then fat and then normal again as clouds tried on outfits. The wind picked up and Leona's coat snapped like a flag. She looked over once and caught Sight with his eyes closed, the faint shimmer of thin braided water around his knuckles, practicing while walking without tripping.
Leona: Show-off.
Sight: You told me to braid.
Leona: I told you never to tell anyone I taught you braids.
Sight: I haven't.
Leona: Good. Keep that sterling reputation of mine intact.
A cart rattled past, its driver gawking at the pair: the white-haired boy in a hood and scarf and the woman in a fur-trimmed coat who walked like a storm with boots. The driver made the sign people make when they think they've seen a story. Maybe he had.
At the first rise, Leona stopped and turned. Lavandia threw coin-flashes off her windows and masts even from here. The lighthouse winked a goodbye. The tide slid its tongue along the beach and pretended it didn't care.
Leona (quiet): I'm not coming back for a while, am I.
Sight: You decide.
Leona looked at him, then at the road ahead, then back at a city that had fed her, failed her, and kept her alive by daring her to be worse than her worst day. She stuck out her hand like she was bad at goodbyes and worse at hellos.
Leona: All right, rookie. Partners. Until the door opens.
Sight took it, grip warm and exact.
Sight: Partners.
They walked on. Behind them, Lavandia breathed and gossiped and started rumors about a white-haired boy and a woman who punched lightning into the sea. Ahead, the road bent around a hill and promised not to be boring.
A gull followed for a while. Then it turned back, because the city had fries.