Aurélie moved like smoke through shadow, her steel-gray eyes fixed on the figure ahead. Dr. Zip H. Scatyl was easy to track despite his quiet steps—that white medical coat, so pristine against the weathered stone, stood out like a bone in a coal pile. He slipped between buildings with the hunched, purposeful gait of a man who knew exactly where he was going and had no interest in being followed.
The alley opened onto a narrower passage, then another, winding away from the festival noise until the music and laughter faded to a distant murmur. The smells changed here—less food and flowers, more damp stone and something else, something sharp and mineral that caught at the back of the throat.
Aurélie's hand rested on Anathema's hilt. Not drawn. Just... present. A promise.
Up ahead, Zip slowed.
He had reached a junction where two alleys crossed, and in the niche of a crumbling wall, a figure stood at a small food stall—just an ordinary stall, the kind that appeared at festivals, serving simple fare to passersby. An old woman with a weathered face ladled something steaming into clay bowls. The customer—a young woman with long dark hair and the sturdy build of a farmer's daughter—accepted her bowl and turned slightly, laughing at something the vendor said.
Zip pressed himself against the wall, peering around the corner with an intensity that made Aurélie's skin crawl.
She closed the gap.
Ten feet. Eight. Five.
He didn't move. His entire attention was fixed on that young woman—the curve of her neck as she tilted her head back to drink, the way her fingers wrapped around the warm clay, the pulse beating in her throat with each swallow.
Zip's own fingers twitched at his sides. His lips moved, forming silent words. Counting, perhaps. Measuring.
Aurélie stopped two feet behind him.
She cleared her throat.
The sound was soft—barely more than a breath—but Zip's entire body seized. His shoulders drew up toward his ears. His spine went rigid. For a long, frozen moment, he didn't move at all.
Then, slowly, impossibly slowly, he turned his head.
His wide, yellowish eyes found her face. The irises darted—left, right, up, down—taking in every detail, cataloging, calculating. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
Aurélie raised one eyebrow.
Not dramatically. Not with theatrical judgment. Just a single, elegant arch of dark brow above steel-gray eyes that held all the warmth of a winter sea.
Dr. Zip H. Scatyl opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Ah," he managed. "Ah. I... we... that is to say..." His voice was soft, sibilant, the voice of a man who spent more time whispering to corpses than conversing with the living. "This is... not what it... appears."
Aurélie's eyebrow remained exactly where it was.
Zip's thin fingers fluttered at his sides, and for a moment she thought he might reach for one of those scalpels hidden in his sleeves. But no—he was simply... gesturing. Ineffectually.
"I was merely... observing," he continued, the words tumbling out in a rush now. "The local customs. The festival preparations. The... dietary habits of the indigenous population. For medical research. Purely academic. Strictly professional."
The young woman at the stall had finished her drink and was walking away, disappearing down another alley. Zip's eyes tracked her for just a fraction of a second before snapping back to Aurélie's face.
"Of course," Aurélie said.
Her voice was flat. Completely, utterly flat.
Zip swallowed. His Adam's apple bobbed in his thin throat like a fish on a line.
"I should... return to the group," he said. "Yes. The group. They'll be wondering where we've gone. Wondering about... about us. About me. Wondering."
He took a step backward. Then another.
Aurélie didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched him with that same expression—judgment carved from stone and frozen solid.
Zip turned and walked away. His pace was measured, controlled, the walk of a man desperately trying not to run. The white coat disappeared around a corner, and still Aurélie didn't move.
She stood in the alley for a long moment, listening to the distant festival sounds, the faint pulse of drums from the cliffs, the scurry of some small creature in the walls.
Then she narrowed her eyes, hand still resting on Anathema's hilt, and followed at her own pace.
Not chasing. Not yet.
Just... watching.
---
Back at the edge of the market, where the crowd thinned and the view of the temple opened up, Marya and Bō-Zak stood in a pool of silence amid the chaos.
The temple caught the light in flashes—gold, perhaps, or polished stone—as the mist shifted and swirled. Marya's golden eyes traced the lines of it, the way it clung to the cliff like a prayer carved in stone, the terraces and stairways and hidden chambers all folded into the rock's embrace.
"A cost," she said, not looking at him. "From you?"
Bō-Zak had been mid-swig from his gourd. He lowered it slowly, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth—that particular smile, the one that said I'm about to be charming and evasive in equal measure.
"A man's entitled to his secrets, love." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Especially when those secrets involve ceremonial robes that make him look like a disappointed llama."
Marya turned to face him fully. Her golden eyes, so like her father's, narrowed with the focus of a blade being drawn.
"So you are the Condor."
The smile flickered. Just for an instant—just long enough for Marya to catch it—before settling back into place.
"Now where would you get an idea like that?"
"The way you move. The way you watch the sky. The way your shadow..." She gestured vaguely at his feet, where the condor shape stirred in the dim light, visible only as a deeper darkness against the stone. "It doesn't lie the way you do."
Bō-Zak looked down at his own shadow. The condor stared back—accusing, perhaps. Or amused. With that spirit, it was hard to tell.
"Fair," he admitted. "Fair. But before we get into the whole 'ancient spirit vessel' conversation, I should probably—"
"THERE YOU ARE!"
The shout cut through the market like a cannon blast.
Bō-Zak's head snapped around. His eyes went wide.
Three figures were barreling through the crowd, knocking aside streamers and dancers and an unfortunate chicken with equal disregard. At the front, a stout man with a jet-black bowl-cut and a face like thunder led the charge, his leather alchemist's tunic flapping behind him. Behind him, a frizzy-haired man with wide, panicked eyes stumbled and windmilled and somehow kept moving. And bringing up the rear, a bald man with a too-small tunic and a manic grin spun and hopped and barked with each step.
"WE FOUND YOU!"
Casper Saul's voice could have cracked stone.
Bō-Zak turned back to Marya, a strange expression on his face—part panic, part resignation, part something that might have been relief.
"Well," he said. "Gotta—"
He never finished the sentence.
The three monks hit him like a wave.
Casper grabbed his left arm. Rayan—spinning, barking, impossibly fast—grabbed his right. Trizzy, arriving slightly behind and slightly sideways, grabbed onto Casper's shoulder for balance and contributed nothing to the capture but a great deal of panicked breathing.
"Got him!" Rayan crowed, his high-pitched voice carrying that perpetual note of manic glee. "Got him got him got him! Woob-woob-woob!"
"You absolute disaster of a monk," Casper growled, his face inches from Bō-Zak's. "Do you have any idea—any idea—how long we've been looking for you?"
"Long enough to mess up your hair?" Bō-Zak offered. "Wait, no, that's impossible. Nothing could mess up that hair."
Casper's eye twitched.
Trizzy, still clinging to Casper's shoulder, peered at Bō-Zak with his wide, perpetually surprised eyes. "The ritual's in three days! Three days! You can't just—you can't just hide!"
"I can and did. Ask anyone." Bō-Zak's feet were actually leaving the ground as the monks hauled him upright. "It was a very good hide. Top-quality hiding. You should be impressed."
"We're not impressed!" All three of them said it at once, then looked at each other in surprise.
Bō-Zak grinned at Marya over his shoulder as they dragged him backward. "Well, this has been—"
They ran.
The three monks, carrying the kicking, protesting former monk between them, tore through the market like a force of nature. Streamers tangled in their wake. Dancers scattered. The chicken, already traumatized, launched itself onto a rooftop and refused to come down.
"—lovely!" Bō-Zak's voice faded into the distance. "Absolutely lovely meeting you! We should do this again sometime when I'm not being kidnapped by fashion victims!"
"WE'RE NOT FASHION VICTIMS!"
"I MEANT THE ROBES, CASPER, THE RITUAL ROBES—"
The sound of their arguing faded into the festival noise, swallowed by drums and laughter and the general chaos of a people preparing for the most important celebration in thirty-three years.
Marya stood alone at the edge of the market.
She watched the spot where they'd disappeared for a long moment. The corner of her mouth twitched—just slightly, just enough to be almost a smile.
Then she shook her head, took a long breath, and vanished into mist.
The gray particles scattered on the breeze, drifting up toward the temple, toward the cliffs, toward whatever waited in that ancient place.
Behind her, the festival continued. The lanterns glowed. The drums pulsed. And somewhere above, in the San-Zekai Temple, the seals waited for a Condor who had just been dragged away to put on very embarrassing clothes.
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