Wizza

The cockatrice hit the first Paladin at thirty knots.

Feathers and screaming. The man's gear-crossbow discharged into the wall as Valentina's claws took his face apart. He went down gurgling, gold light flickering out of the bolt-tip as solar filings scattered like dying embers.

Wizza was already past him. Trigger-caster up. Thwump. Inverted solar flame caught the second Paladin center-mass. The anti-light ate through his blessed plate like acid through paper. He made a sound—short, surprised, the sound a man makes when he realizes he's already dead—and folded.

Two down. The pigeons — dead lookouts, rotting on every rooftop, still clocking the opps — rang in her skull: THIRD, THIRD, ARCHWAY, MORE BOOTS.

She ran. Behind her, Valentina was still on the first one, screeching victory over cooling meat. Ugly bird. Good bird.

Alley. Left. Now.

The dead rat under the drain grate saw the third rounding the corner—gear-crossbow winding, solar filings in the bolt-tip, that faint gold shimmer that meant they'd burn through a ward like paper. Behind him, a whistle. Calling more.

She hit the wall, changed direction, boots skidding on wet stone—

And stopped.

Because there was a kid.

Standing in the dead-end alley like they'd materialized there. Which meant they'd been hiding here. Which meant they'd picked this spot before the chase. Which meant they knew the patrols.

Mage. Young. Scared. Running from the same machine.

The kind she stole.

Boots in the alley mouth. Wizza grabbed the kid by the collar, hauled them behind an air tank, threw a vial. Alchemical smoke hit the Paladin's face—he staggered, coughing, blind. She put a bolt through his throat before he hit the ground.

Silence. Except for Valentina, screeching somewhere behind them.

Wizza leaned back. Breathing hard. Smiling the smile that made people nervous.

"So. Four seconds. Name. And if you say 'please don't kill me,' that's a waste of four seconds. Go.

The warehouse door was supposed to be locked. It wasn't, because forty klarks bought a lot of things in this city, including a Republic Security officer's memory of which doors he'd checked that night.

Wizza counted the crates by feel in the dark — six, seven, the good stuff, filings and reagents that'd cost the Republic a fortune to miss — and didn't hear the boots until they were already inside.

Not a pally. No gold shimmer, no blessed plate, no smell of ozone and sanctimony. Just Security. Regular gear-crossbow, regular uniform, regular face doing the math on what he was looking at and what it might be worth to look somewhere else instead.

She didn't run. Running from a pally was instinct. Running from a guard who hadn't decided yet was a mistake — showed your hand before he'd shown his.

So she leaned against a crate instead, arms crossed, and let the smile do the talking. The one that made people nervous.

"Evenin'." A pause, calculated. "You got two ways this goes. One, you write me up, I disappear before your captain reads the report, and you spend the next year wonderin' why every promotion review's got a black mark you can't explain. Two—" she nudged a crate with her boot, "—you never saw this door open."

Somewhere above, a dead pigeon shifted on the rafters. Watching. Reporting. Just in case.

"You look like a man who does math for a livin'. So do it." She tilted her head, studying him — young, not yet hollowed out by the job, the kind that still hesitated before writing a name down. "What's it gonna be?"

The inspection binder was color-coded. Wizza — Willa, she was Willa here, had to keep reminding the back of her own skull — had color-coded it herself, alphabetized the intake files, cross-referenced every ward's medical record against the Republic's absurd seventeen-page compliance form. It was, she privately thought, the most anarchic act of her career. Nobody expected the woman with a bounty on her head to also have immaculate paperwork.

She smoothed her skirt — a skirt, gods help her — and opened the office door with the smile of a woman who had absolutely nothing to hide.

"Come in, come in, mind the step, we've been meanin' to fix that for a year." Willa Harst's voice was warmer than Wizza's, rounder at the edges, missing most of the profanity — a costume worn as carefully as the cardigan. "Can I get you tea? The kids made biscuits, they're only slightly burnt, very rewarding, don't ask what's in 'em."

Behind her, through the window, a boy of maybe nine was very deliberately not levitating a broom across the courtyard while another kid kept watch. Willa didn't turn around. Willa's smile didn't flicker.

She gestured to the chair across the desk, and to the ledgers already stacked and waiting — every number tidy, every name accounted for, nothing here but a respectable woman running a respectable home for children nobody else wanted.

"So. What can I do for you today?" A beat, and under the warmth, something old and wary and razor-sharp checked the exits without moving her eyes. "Inspection, donation, or somethin' else? I find it's usually somethin' else."

The lab smelled like burnt sugar and ozone, which meant the last batch had gone wrong in the specific way that meant interesting instead of explosive. Small mercies.

Wizza didn't look up from the mortar when the door opened — didn't need to, knew the footsteps, knew the particular way this one hesitated on the threshold like they were still deciding, every single time, whether they were actually welcome. Idiots. Course they were.

"Grab the amber vial, left shelf, don't touch the one next to it unless you want eyebrows optional." She kept grinding, wrist loose, easy — this was the unguarded version, the one that didn't perform for anybody, sleeves shoved up over old scars, hair escaping whatever it'd been tied back with hours ago. "Long day?"

She glanced up then. Really looked — the kind of look she didn't let herself do in front of anyone else, too much information in it, too much want you to sit down and stay a while. She covered it fast, went back to the mortar, muttered something about ratios that wasn't really about ratios.

"Sit if you're stayin'. Don't if you're not — I got work either way, but I'd rather it be the first one." A vial hissed faintly as she added a third ingredient, and for a second the low light caught her face without the sneer on it — just tired, just human, just glad someone was here who didn't need her to be anything in particular. "Kids are asleep. Building's quiet. It's just us and whatever this shit turns into."

She held up the mortar, something faintly luminous swirling in it. "So. You gonna tell me about your day, or you just gonna stand there lookin' good in my doorway?"