She shouldn't have done it. Evie told herself that at least three times on the walk back home, the last time as she was unlocking the narrow little door that led to their flat above the shop. She should have turned around the moment she saw him. Should have feigned distraction, pulled that cool, dismissive persona over her like a cloak and walked the other way. Should have left him standing there with his awkward questions and soulful eyes and that quiet, unspoken hope he carried around like an idiot.
But she hadn't.
She'd let him walk with her. She'd answered his questions, even if they were about lettuce, and worse - she'd laughed at one point. Not enough to matter, maybe. But too much not to.
Maker's breath, she was unravelling.
The scent of herbs and last night's ash greeted her as she stepped inside. Tai was in the little kitchen nook, leaning up against the bench sharpening a knife. He gave her a look-over as she set the basket on the table.
"Right, let's see what you've managed." He wandered over and started rooting through her purchases. "Bread looks good. You remembered the fish. Well done. You also remembered… lettuce."
She made a face. "I was told it was necessary."
He smirked, tossing it down onto the chopping board. "Yes, but I know how much you hate it; I thought you might have conveniently forgotten about it."
Evie didn't answer right away. She busied herself with her boots, placing them by the door, careful not to glance back. The basket was fuller than it needed to be. She'd lingered longer than she should. She'd let him linger longer than he should.
And now she was keeping it to herself.
She'd never done that before, not with anything that mattered. Tai and Kieran and Hirik were her people, her family, forged in fire and fury and long-simmering plans. They'd bled for each other. Lied with each other. Never to.
Yet here she was, omitting.
Tai was already slicing onions, flicking the blade with that same easy grace he used with his daggers. "Kieran's gone through another set of entries. Found something about a shipping schedule tied to the Mirantine docks. Looks like they were funnelling blackmail payments through a wine merchant."
Evie pulled out a chair and sat, rubbing at the ache in her calves. "So we go after the merchant?"
"No," Tai said, shaking his head. "Too public. Too exposed. We follow the paper trail back, see where it started. Hirik thinks there's a central list somewhere. A master ledger that catalogues what's kept where. If we find that, we know what kind of leverage we actually have."
She nodded, pulling the hairpins from her hair and setting them on the table, one by one. "How many people are we talking about, in total?"
"Too many." Tai tossed the onions into a pan. "Some nobles, sure. But a lot of them are regular folk. Scribes. Shopkeepers. Blackmail doesn't care if you're rich, just if you're vulnerable."
Evie folded her arms on the table and rested her chin there, eyes closing for a moment. "If we release it all, chaos."
"If we burn it all, no leverage."
"If we keep it, we're no better."
Tai glanced over his shoulder. "We'll figure it out."
She wanted to believe him. He made it sound simple, as if it was just another mission, another wall to scale or safe to crack. But the stakes were rising. The Crows would be circling tighter now. Caterina would be furious. Lucanis…
Evie opened her eyes. "You ever think about what happens when this is over?"
"Every day."
She watched him stir the pan. "And?"
"I want to sleep for a week. Then maybe buy a horse."
She huffed a laugh. "A horse?"
"A really ugly one. With one eye and a name like Turnip."
He grinned at her sideways, and she smiled despite herself. But even as Tai talked, and the flat filled with the scent of garlic and something sizzling, her mind slipped back to the market. To brown eyes watching her with careful hope. To the sound of her own voice laughing when she should have said nothing.
She felt guilty for not telling Tai. But worse, she felt guilty for not running.
Tai worked the pan with practised ease, sleeves rolled up, humming something off-key as he stirred.
--
Evie sat cross-legged on the floor, ledger pages spread out around her like the petals of some paper flower. Kieran leaned over the table, eyes sharp and fingers tapping a measured rhythm beside a map they'd unrolled earlier that afternoon of one of Treviso's lesser-known districts, dense with hidden alleys and second-storey walkways.
"There's a pattern," he said quietly, just loud enough to pull Hirik's attention from the corner where he was dismantling a crow-shaped brooch. "These safehouses aren't just random boltholes. They're… logistical."
"Staging points?" Evie asked, flipping a page without looking.
"Exactly. They hold coin, weapons, papers. Some are for moving goods, others for passage. I've marked four I believe are connected to their cross-city communication routes. Runners. Caches. If we cripple that-"
"We slow everything else down," Tai said, not looking up from the pan. "Can't stab people in the dark if you can't get the blades where they need to go."
Hirik gave a soft laugh. "Or pay the people doing the stabbing."
Kieran smiled faintly. "We won't be able to hit all of them. Not yet. But if we strike two -here, and here-" He tapped a pair of red marks on the map, near the Merchant's Reach and the Glass Row. "-we create a break in the chain. Enough to force them to reroute. And while they're scrambling, we strike again."
Evie nodded slowly. "And we leave the same calling card. No deaths. No names. Just Crows, bound and silenced."
"And one with a dick on his face," Tai added, deadpan.
"You are not doing that again," Evie said, reaching for a handful of pages and swatting him lightly with them. "We are waging a strategic dismantling of a criminal empire, not vandalising a Chantry."
"Art is protest," Tai declared, flipping a fried onion into his mouth. "You said so yourself."
"I said art is resistance. That's not quite the same thing."
"It's adjacent," he said around a mouthful of food.
Evie shook her head, but she was smiling. For a moment, it felt light. Almost ordinary.
But when the map was cleared and the food set down, the tone shifted again. They ate quietly, reading over the notes, refining entry points, discussing watch rotations, signs of enchantment on the entrances, when to strike, and how long it might take the Crows to adjust.
-
The reek of lamp oil and scorched iron still clung to the air. The weapons - racks of blades and bolts - were slathered in grease, some smeared so thickly it dripped in viscous trails to the floor. Everything was useless. Dangerous to even try to use.
Lucanis crouched beside one of the sabres, testing the hilt with gloved fingers. It slipped from his hand with an almost comic ease and clattered to the ground. No one laughed.
Caterina stood at the centre of the room, gaze fixed on the great oak chest planted squarely on the stone floor like a trophy. It gleamed under the light of Viago's torch, polished, reinforced, and, most notably, locked.
Teia approached it with a furrowed brow. "That's… not one of ours."
"No," Illario murmured, crouching to examine the heavy lock. "And it's not simple work either. Look at the pins, altered, precision-filed. Picking this would take..."
"Too long," Viago finished from the adjacent doorway. His voice echoed strangely. Then they heard the sound of splashing water.
The bucket hit him squarely from above, sending a small cascade of water over his head and down the collar of his coat. He sputtered, torch clattering to the stone as Teia jumped back from the surprise spray.
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Then Illario, voice very dry. "Well, that's new."
Viago stood, sodden and blinking, water dripping from the end of his nose. "They booby-trapped the door."
"To what end?" Caterina snapped, though her tone remained measured. "It doesn't delay us. It doesn't harm us."
"It mocks us," Lucanis said softly, standing upright. His eyes had not left the chest.
He circled the thing slowly. Big enough it would've taken two, perhaps three, to haul it inside. They'd set it down carefully. Deliberately. A message.
Caterina exhaled slowly. "The Crow posted here was alone."
"A newer cache," Teia confirmed, checking the perimeter again. "Low profile. Hadn't even been stocked in full yet. They shouldn't have known about it."
"Clearly they did." Illario tapped the lock once with his blade. "This - this thing - took time and planning. They didn't stumble on us by luck."
Viago peeled a wet sleeve off his forearm with a disgusted grimace. "And someone took the time to rig a bucket."
Lucanis finally knelt by the chest and picked the lock, opening the lid. It gave way to another locked chest, smaller and more intricate. He undid it. Another. Then another.
Five layers deep, he muttered, "Shit."
"What?"
Lucanis looked up, voice clipped with disbelief. "There's more."
Caterina crossed to him, jaw tight. "How many more?"
He leaned forward, calculating under his breath. "Ten… fifteen... maybe twenty more boxes. Nesting. All likely locked."
Teia stared. "So they brought this monster chest, filled it with increasingly smaller chests, and locked each one?"
Lucanis glanced up, voice bone-dry, "It's a... very dedicated insult."
Viago wiped water from his eyes. "We are being hunted by children."
"Gifted ones," Illario said, almost with a smile. "Or just clever little shits."
"No," Caterina said, gaze still locked on the box. "Not just clever. They're patient. They hit us and vanish. They observe. They toy with us. We're chasing phantoms."
Lucanis remained silent, unlocking boxes and watching his reflection warp across the chest's polished surface. There was something about this. The gall of it. The flair.
Lucanis had picked locks under moonlight in enemy fortresses, through arrow wounds and under threat of poison - but these? These were... artistic.
He bent over the latest miniature box, the nineteenth, twentieth - he'd lost count - and eased the final tumbler into place with a satisfying click. The lid creaked open.
Another box inside.
He exhaled a sharp breath through his nose. "They are having fun," he muttered.
Caterina didn't respond, arms folded, expression unreadable. Viago stood behind her, still damp and extremely irritated, tapping one foot against the stone floor. Teia was crouched beside Lucanis, watching with the bleak patience of someone expecting nothing good.
"How many are we at now?" Illario asked, flipping the lid of the last discarded chest with the flat of his dagger.
"Twenty-one," Caterina said.
The final box was no larger than a coin purse. Delicate, carved wood, dyed black with subtle gilded inlay. It looked almost like a keepsake, too fine to be a prank. He opened it carefully, fingers slowing in the final stretch.
Inside was a single folded note. And a peanut.
Lucanis stared. The others leaned in.
Caterina took the note with a gloved hand, unfolded it with precision, and read aloud.
"Your security is nuts."
Illario barked a laugh. No one else did.
Viago turned away, dragging a hand down his face. "I hate them."
Teia plucked the lone legume from its velvet resting place and held it up between two fingers. "They brought this all the way here just for the punchline?"
Lucanis took the note, reading it again. The handwriting was neat. Crisp. Script that spoke of tutors and structured lessons, absolutely not the scrawl of a gutter-born thief. He read it a third time.
Just a ridiculous pun.
"Where is the Crow who was stationed here?" Caterina asked. Her tone was flat, dangerous.
"He's in the storeroom," Viago said, wringing water from his hair. "Still groggy. No serious injuries."
Caterina strode from the room.
Lucanis lingered. He stared at the locks scattered around them, at the fine craftsmanship, the waste of skill, the commitment to mockery. He couldn't deny it, there was something admirable in it. Even fascinating. They hadn't just stolen and ruined supplies; they'd made fools of the Crows. Not with blood, but with imagination. And patience.
He turned toward the storeroom. He needed to hear what the guard had to say. Because he was beginning to think these weren't just clever saboteurs. They were meticulous. Precise. And, somehow, still joyful.
The Crow sat slumped in the chair, hands resting on his thighs, shame etched deep into every line of his face. His uniform hung awkwardly, loose at the collar, sagging strangely at the sleeves and front.
Lucanis leaned forward slightly, noting the distinct absence of every button from throat to belt.
"Was this… how we found him?" he asked, glancing at Teia.
She nodded once. "Every single one. Cut clean through the thread. No damage to the fabric."
Viago made a low, incredulous sound. "Why? What does that even accomplish?"
Caterina stood to the side, silent as the grave. Illario paced a short distance away, fidgeting with a coin.
Lucanis turned back to the Crow. "Tell us."
The young man swallowed, still clearly rattled. "I… I heard nothing. No doors. No steps. No voices. I was standing just over there-" he motioned vaguely toward the far wall, where weapon racks now hung half-empty, "-and then… nothing. I woke up on the floor beside the chest. That's it."
"No pain?" Teia asked. "No bruising?"
"None I can find. Just… gone, like I blinked."
Lucanis exchanged a glance with Caterina. "They subdued you without a sound and then stayed long enough to… cut off your buttons?"
The Crow's face flushed red. "Yes, ser."
"And set a trap for Viago," Teia added. "And grease every weapon. And build a puzzle box monument to their own arrogance."
"Not arrogance," Caterina said coldly. "They wanted us to open it. That chest was some kind of message."
Lucanis stood slowly, walking the perimeter of the room again. He couldn't help glancing at the floor beneath the chair - no signs of a scuffle. No damage to the surroundings. The attackers had been deliberate. Precise. And then… ridiculous.
"They're children," Viago muttered. "They have to be. Or at least mentally stunted."
Caterina's gaze slid to him, sharp as a knife. "Or they want us to think that."
Lucanis looked back at the Crow, who couldn't meet anyone's eyes.
"Did you see anything?" he asked. "Anything at all before you went under?"
The man shook his head.
"Any sounds before you lost time? Whispers? Boots?"
"No, ser. It was like the shadows swallowed me."
Illario let out a long sigh. "They're winning. And we're stuck wondering if we're fighting a gang of prodigious young masterminds… or some extraordinarily irritating little shits with too much time and creativity."
Lucanis looked again at the crow uniform, now gaping down the front like a poorly dressed puppet. Buttons. Of all things.
"It's the shift in behaviour that unsettles me most," Teia murmured, eyes narrowed on the buttonless Crow. "The first lot of hits were surgical. Cold. Professional. No signature, no ego. But these last two…"
Lucanis leaned against the table, arms crossed. "The face drawing. The lockbox. And now cutting buttons off a man's coat."
Viago looked over from where he was inspecting the chest again. "Why start acting like fools now? What changed?"
"It's not foolishness," Caterina said, quiet but firm. "It's intentional. And that's what makes it worse. They've proven they can be precise. And now they choose not to be."
Illario scoffed, twirling a dagger between his fingers. "Or they're unravelling. Getting cocky. Happens when people start winning too easily."
"No," Lucanis said. "This isn't unravelling. It's... calibrated nonsense. They want us off balance. They want us irritated. Distracted."
Viago frowned. "So they're using pranks as strategy?"
"Or it's multiple people," Teia suggested. "One with discipline. One without. A mentor and a younger protégé. A team with different temperaments."
Caterina's gaze stayed fixed on the map. "Or they're just tired of hiding and decided to start laughing while they burn us down."
No one had an answer to that. Not one they liked, anyway.