Scene 1: Return to the Predator's Maw
The caravan crawled into Ebros slowly, like a sick beast knowing its lair will bring no relief, but with nowhere else to go.
Lyra sat between two bales of dirty wool, pressing her back against the wagon's wooden side. Her eyes were half-closed—to an outside observer, she might have seemed dozing, lulled by the rhythmic swaying. But beneath her lids, in the darkness, thoughts darted like rats in a burning barn.
The smell.
It hit her nostrils first—a mile before the first houses, half a mile before the gates. That unique, unmistakable smell of Ebros, which she knew better than any password or map. Smoke, but not from campfires or firewood—bitter, from burned coal and cheap peat that heated Lower Ebros. Slops. Rancid oil from cookshops. The sour stench of beer dregs. Human sweat, fear, urine, and—over all of it, a thin layer like mold on stagnant water—the smell of death. Not of corpses, no. The one that always hung over the city: the smell of possible death, lurking in every alley.
Lyra inhaled it through her nose, and her body reacted before her mind could process anything. The muscles in her shoulders tensed, the fingers of her right hand clenched into a fist, her left slid to her belt where, under her jacket, hung the dagger with the raven on the guard. Habit. Reflex. The cage she had grown up in opened its maw and waited for its prey to step back inside.
Only now, breathing this smell in fully, did Lyra realize a simple and staggering thing.
The last few days—they weren't a dream.
The thought was strange, foreign, as if coming from outside. She ran through the events in her head: the roof in Ebros, the Razors' chase, the man in the cloak on the neighboring roof ridge, his voice, his words, his raven pin. The "Old Oak" inn. The carriage. Aina with her icy eyes and hot water. The bed. Food that wasn't taken away.
A dream. A good dream.
If Lyra could remember ever having a good dream, she might have believed it. But she couldn't remember. Not one. Even in earliest childhood, before the world shrank to the size of rooftops and alleyways, her dreams were either blank—gray, empty—or terrifying. There were no good ones.
So—reality.
"Hey, lad, you getting off?" A hoarse carter's voice yanked her from her stupor.
The wagon had stopped. Around her was already the city—not the outskirts with gardens and vacant lots, but real, lower Ebros. A narrow street squeezed between the blind walls of warehouses. Above, strips of sky crossed by laundry lines. Somewhere further, invisible, the market rumbled.
Lyra jumped to the ground. Her feet met a familiar surface—cobblestones worn smooth by thousands of feet, with puddles in the ruts and sticky mud in the cracks.
She nodded to the carter—he wasn't looking at her anymore, busy unloading—and dove into an alley.
She needed to get out of sight, find a corner, look around, remember herself.
The alley led to a half-ruined arch, beyond which began a wasteland piled with garbage. Once, a house had stood here—burned down, collapsed, leaving only one wall with black window hollows. Lyra climbed inside, sat on a pile of broken bricks, back against the wall, facing the entrance.
And here, in the silence broken only by distant city noise and the rustle of rats in the trash, she allowed herself to think about him.
The Earl. Carl Nowenstein.
She had seen many aristocrats. They appeared in Lower Ebros: either passing through in carriages with curtained windows, or extremely rarely—under guard, when some high-born lord fancied an "dangerous" outing. She remembered their looks well. Cold, sliding over the filth, over the beggars, over her—as if she were furniture. Sometimes with disgust. Sometimes with lazy curiosity, like at a caged animal. Sometimes with that particular, hypocritical pity that made you want not money, but to spit in their face.
He was different.
Lyra closed her eyes and summoned his face in her memory. Tall, broad shoulders, a bearing that those who hadn't carried weapons never had. Eyes—amber, piercing. And in those eyes—cold. Not that contemptuous, walling-off cold. A different one. The cold of a predator assessing its prey. A familiar cold. She herself looked like that at potbellied merchants before lifting their purses.
But in that cold, there was nothing but truth.
He didn't pretend to be kind. Didn't hide his assessment behind a smile. Didn't try to buy her with cheap mercy—"oh you poor child, let me help you." He came and said directly: I need you. Here's payment. Here are the terms. Agree—work. No—look elsewhere.
Honest. To the point of insolence, to the point of teeth-grinding—honest.
Lyra ran her hand over her jacket, felt the pin beneath the fabric. The silver raven—cold, smooth, real. Then the dagger. Then the bag with food and silver that Aina had thrust upon her at parting.
She hadn't refused. Hadn't backed out. Hadn't told him to go to the demons, as she would have with anyone offering her "work" in Ebros.
Why?
The question hung in the empty air of the ruined house. Lyra opened her eyes, looked at the dirty floor, at her boots—worn-down, but sturdy, nothing like the ones she'd run the rooftops in a week ago.
Because he didn't lie.
She couldn't explain it in words—not the right words, not the right vocabulary. But with her body, her gut, that animal instinct that survives where reason falters—she felt the truth. He said what he thought. Offered what he had. Didn't try to deceive, didn't try to use her the way everyone used everyone in this city—setting you up, robbing you, stabbing you in the back when you were no longer useful.
He said "tool." And in that word, insulting to anyone else, for her was salvation. A tool isn't betrayed for nothing. A tool is cared for as long as it works.
A deal. Dry, cold, without a drop of "kindness." But honest.
And kindness... What is kindness in Ebros?
Lyra remembered the rare "kind" people she'd encountered on her path. The old woman who gave her a crust of bread, then called the guards because "orphans need to be placed in a home." The drunken craftsman who took pity on "the girl" and wanted to take her home to "warm her up"—she ran when he tried to corner her. The market woman who pressed a copper into her hand and crossed herself afterward, buying off sin.
Kindness in Ebros is the right of the strong. Or the weakness of the foolish. Or the hypocritical payment for an easy conscience. Risk—always, everywhere, in every scrap of food, every night's shelter, every trusting step.
Here, in the deal with the Earl, was there no risk? There was. Of course there was. Aristocrats play games where pawns die by the thousands. His enemies weren't street thugs, weren't crooked guards. Someone else, higher, more terrible. She'd seen it in his eyes when he spoke of the Academy, of the mage, of how "there are no right moments."
There was risk. But there was also payment. And the payment wasn't charity. The payment was respect. The right to be a tool, not garbage.
Lyra smirked—briefly, joylessly, with just the corners of her mouth.
A tool. Good word. Honest.
She stood, brushed brick dust from her trousers. Peeked out from behind the wall—the wasteland was empty, only rats rustling and crows sitting on charred beams.
The city waited. Ebros breathed its stench and noise somewhere beyond the warehouses.
But now she wasn't prey.
Lyra adjusted the bag on her shoulder, checked that the dagger slid out easily. In her pocket, against her heart, lay the letter to the mage no one could find. And the silver raven—cold, calm, real.
Fortune favors the bold, she thought. It wasn't her thought—someone else's, dropped casually long ago. But now it fit.
So far, fortune was on her side. She had survived where others died. She had been chosen by one who could have chosen anyone. She had been given a chance rarely given to anyone.
Lyra stepped from the shadow of the ruined wall into the gray light of the Ebros evening.
Scene 2: An Old "Acquaintance"
Lyra moved through Ebros like a needle through loose fabric—silently, precisely, leaving behind only a faint stirring of air that no one noticed. She knew this city. Knew every inhale, every exhale, every hidden pain in the ribs of its crooked streets.
But the deeper she went, the more the fabric of reality around her changed.
Lower Ebros was ugly. Lyra had always known that. Dirty walls, crooked shutters, puddles in which floated things that didn't want to be called water. The stench here was thick, dense as stew—a mix of sweat, cheap rotgut, fried onions, and something else with no name, that seeped into your skin and stayed there forever.
But Lower Ebros was alive. It breathed, traded, cheated, fought, bred, and died—and in this bustle was its own crude, cruel logic. Here, everyone knew their place. Here, you could hide in the crowd, get lost, become one of many.
The slums were another world.
Lyra crossed an invisible boundary, and the air changed. The stench remained, but something new mingled with it. The smell of decay. Not death—that smells different, sharper—but decay itself. Rotting wood, rotting cloth, rotting life. Hovels here clung to each other like the sick seeking warmth in a common pile. Crooked walls roofed with rotten straw and ragged cloth, windows stuffed with sacking, doors that didn't close because there was nothing to lock.
There were few people here. Or rather, few you could call people. Shadows—that was the right word. They sat on thresholds, rummaged in garbage heaps, picked through rags. Some watched her pass. Their gazes were empty, like fish on a slab. Others didn't look at all—and that was even more frightening.
Lyra caught herself walking slower than usual. Caution, ingrained in her bones, demanded she crouch, blend in, become a shadow among shadows. But her clothes—those very clothes, sturdy, clean, smelling of lavender and soap—screamed louder than any voice.
White crow.
She smirked to herself. There were many crows in Ebros, and they were all black with soot and grime. A white crow here was a death sentence. The first thing hunters notice.
Lyra dove into the shadows, pressed herself against the wall of a half-collapsed shed. Listened. Somewhere far off, beyond the hovels, voices could be heard—drunken, angry. Somewhere a child cried—quietly, hopelessly, the way they only cry here, knowing no one will come. Somewhere wood creaked, and that sound was worse than any scream.
The main danger here—the Razors.
Lyra knew this gang. Not the most fearsome in Ebros—higher up the city, there were creatures even more dangerous—but for the slums, they were what the wolf is to the sheep. The sheep here, however, were skinny, mean, and sometimes bit back, but that never stopped wolves.
She remembered their gait—swaggering, arrogant, with the habit of striking first. Remembered their faces—the kind that stick in nightmares.
Why did they want me then?
The question hung in the air, but there was no answer. Someone in Ebros had wanted to find her. Before the Earl. Someone else. And that someone had paid the Razors to catch her.
Lyra clenched her teeth. That didn't matter now. Now the main thing was not to get caught.
She slid onward, keeping to the shadows, using every ledge, every garbage heap, every hole as cover. The old habit—being invisible—returned with every step, flooding her body with a familiar, almost pleasant tension.
Target—Corvin. The mage with different-colored eyes, who didn't drink, hid from everyone, and no one could find.
Lyra swore mentally. She had no idea where to start. In Ebros, finding someone meant questions. Questions to those who'd seen, who knew, who'd heard. But questions cost money, and sometimes your life if you asked the wrong person.
She could just wander the slums, listening, looking, hoping for luck. But luck was a fickle mistress, and time was the one thing she had in short supply.
Don't put it off until the day after tomorrow, the Earl had said.
Lyra stopped, leaned her back against a wall, closed her eyes for a second.
A plan. Need a plan. At least one.
And then she remembered.
Hector. Blind Hector.
The old man who lived in the very heart of the slums, in a shack no one touched, because touching Hector cost more than it was worth. Blind—literally: eyes under a film, lids half-closed, pupils invisible. But he saw more than any sighted man.
Lyra had known him about three years, since she first came to the slums on business. She'd been about eleven then, looking for a place to fence stolen goods without getting knifed. Someone whispered: "Go to Hector. He's blind, but he knows everything. And he won't cheat you—it's not worth his while."
She went. Hector sat in his shack, sorting through some roots, and seemed to be sleeping with his eyes open. But when she entered, he turned his head precisely toward her and said: "Sit down, little one. Tell me."
From then on, she came to him for leads. He gave her merchants' names, routes, times when the "careless" carried their purses in plain sight. She worked. Nine parts out of ten went to him. The deal wasn't fair—she knew that—but in Ebros, there were no other kinds of deals. But he never sold her out, never set her up, never took contracts on her head. In a world where betrayal was the norm, that was worth a lot.
A few times, he'd offered her "more complicated" work. Not thefts—something else. She refused. Something in his voice when he spoke of it made her spine prickle with cold. He didn't insist. Didn't even seem disappointed. Just nodded and went back to his roots.
A mystery, Lyra thought of him. There were many rumors about Hector. Some said he was an exiled cultist. Some said a fugitive mage whose eyes had been burned out for dangerous experiments. Some said he was just a crazy old man lucky enough to go blind in time and become a "saint" to the locals.
Lyra didn't know the truth. But she knew one thing: if anyone in the slums might have heard about a strange mage who didn't drink and was hiding, it was Hector.
She sighed, adjusted her bag on her shoulder, and dove into the labyrinth.
The path to Hector's shack was winding, and Lyra zigzagged, checking for a tail. Three times she stopped, listening to the silence. Twice she changed direction, avoiding suspicious sounds.
The Razors could be anywhere. If they were looking for her, they'd be combing the slums—this was where she was best known.
Finally, the familiar path. Sparse bushes, surviving by miracle. A rotten fence. And beyond it—a shack clinging to the brick wall of a burned-out warehouse. The door—old, dried out, but sturdy. The window covered with something that had once been cloth.
Lyra looked around. Not a soul in sight. Only the wind chasing trash across the wasteland.
She approached the door, knocked the signal—three short, pause, two more.
Silence.
Then—shuffling footsteps. The door opened a hand's width.
From the crack wafted herbs, dried mushrooms, and something sour, medicinal. And—familiar, slightly musty smell of old age.
"Come in, little one," a voice creaked.