Step one: Money. Orphan had a glint in her eye as she crept to the edge of a rooftop and placed Roux just right, so that he could look down at the tables below. There were several clusters of people hunched over cards, dice, and little figurines carved from stone and wood. Each person at a table took turns to make a move, and every now and then a table would erupt in groans and celebrations all at once. Roux found it fascinating. Some men walked away from the tables substantially richer. Others walked away with nothing at all, their steps aimless and drifting, as if they were not quite willing to get home.

  The lemon on the roof watched as Orphan, now a little hesitant, approached one of the tables. The men noticed her, took one look at her condition, and angrily gestured for her to leave. Orphan said something, asking if she could play with them. Another angry gesture, and a sharp word. The girl lowered her head and tried one more question. One man moved as if to stand up. She fled.

  A few minutes later, a panting Orphan collected Roux, and they walked a safe distance away from the tables. She was fuming.

  "They didn't even let me near." She spat. "As if a person like me would only rob them blind!" She huffed, then hesitated. "I mean, we was trying to rob them blind, but they didn't know that. They just assumed it! Bunch of no good, dirty rotten, bell-ringing, pot-scrubbing, lice-eating," she kept grumbling for quite some time. Roux, who still wasn't quite understanding the situation, patiently waited for her to get it all out of her system.

  "Blegh." She finished lamely. "So what now? I thought that was gonna work, but we're missing two things. First, I need to look more... respectable to even approach the tables. Second, I need some money to enter the first couple of games. There's no friendly "first one's on me" happening here.

  "Can you earn it somehow?" Roux asked. "The entry money, I mean."

  "Hmph, no way to earn money as a dirty orphan. Nobody trusts you to work for them. Nobody even gives money if you beg. They think I'm somehow faking the dirt and the smell. Pieces of dung-flavored, filthy rotten, stinky pieces of-" Roux let his mind wander as he waited for the girl to finish cursing the whole town. Money. He'd never had money yet. He understood the concept though. From the rooftops, they could see market stalls where people handed over shiny coins, and the stall owners would in return give food, decorations, weapons, all sorts of things.

  "Orphan?"

  "-slimy pieces of no good, flea-ridden—hmm?"

  "Who has lots of money, that we could take if the person suddenly needed to leave?"

  "Huh?"

  "Those buildings there," Roux gestured towards a bakery, a jewelry shop, and a clothing store. "If the people had to leave in a hurry, could we get money from one of those buildings?"

  Orphan didn't respond straight away. She sat on the roof, a pensive look on her face, surveying the scene.

  "Not the jewelers," she said slowly, "the city guards would be on us in seconds. They don't mess around. No trial or anything like that for street kids. They just rip you in half and dump you in the river. That's what the Settlers were telling me the other day, anyway. That leaves clothing and food. We can grab money from their counters, but the things in the shop will also be good..."

  "Both?"

  "Both is good. We'd have to be fast. How do you plan to scare them away?"

  ***

  An hour later, Orphan sat casually on the ground, near the door of the bakery. Begging softly to passersby, enough to be heard, not enough to be a nuisance. There was an art to it. Occasionally a guard would walk by, giving her a hard look, but they let her be.

  Across the square, a walking lemon was making his way toward the bakery.

  "Good day," he said assertively to nobody in particular, "just passing through." He wove through the crowd, almost getting stepped on a few times, before reaching the entrance of the bakery. "Hello there," he began in his spoken voice, before switching to his soul-scratching mental communication, broadcast to anybody nearby.

  Get away from the bakery.

  There was an uproar. Crowds screamed, and everybody ran in different directions. It was a stampede. It was chaos. The people became a maelstrom of confusion and panic. In the midst of it all, a small girl stepped into the bakery, filling a sack with as many breads, pastries, and pies as she could. She climbed over the counter, found a tray filled with coppers, some silvers, and two gold coins. Her eyes grew wide, and it was hard not to hesitate. It was more money than she'd ever seen. She dumped the tray into her sack, then headed out the door, ready to go to the clothing store next door. It was finally time to get rid of the rags she was wearing.

  She stepped out of the bakery door to see that the market square was almost finished emptying out. There weren't so many people to hide amongst. Worse still, across the square she saw some guards marching in. There was a focus to their march. Their footsteps sounded heavier than they should be, carrying with them a kind of inevitability. Time to go. Now.

  Orphan sprinted to the left, aiming for a street on the opposite side of the square to the marching guards. Her heart was pounding. With her back turned, the footsteps sounded even worse, like she would never get away. She was about to reach the corner when she heard more marching, and saw shadows lengthening down the very street she was about to turn into. She was surrounded. Dashing back the way she came, she burst back through the door of the bakery, running for the counter. She was almost at the back door when it opened, and an imposing figure in gleaming armor stood before her, just paces away. She looked in his eyes and could not find an ounce of pity. There was nothing soft in his gaze, as he swiftly drew his sword and started swinging a quick thrust toward her. It wasn't a disarming type of swing, he was going straight for the kill.

  Don't you dare.

  Roux's invisible voice thundered in the heart of the guard. He faltered mid-swing, quickly spinning on his heel to face this new foe. Orphan took the opportunity to slip away, not out onto the street this time, but up the stairs of the building. Above the bakery were living quarters for the bakers. Orphan ran into a bedroom, then scrambled out the window and up onto the roof above. Up ahead she could see a long line of connected rooftops, almost like a highway leading to safety. The problem was, that line of connected rooftops didn't include the one she was currently standing on. She quickly scrambled over to the different sides, trying to see if there was anything nearby she could climb, jump, or swing to. Nothing at all. She caught glimpses of the streets filling up with more and more guards. She couldn't believe it. It was a bakery! They were taking this way too seriously.

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  Thud.

  Orphan looked behind her and saw a long plank connecting her roof to a building across the street. She didn't hesitate. She dashed across the plank, leaping onto the tiles on the other side. She saw a boy hiding in the shadows of some nearby crates, dressed in rags just like her. Her face lit up in relief. "Hiya Ferdie!" He nodded to her, then both of them ran and leaped from building to building. Sometimes the rooftops were touching, and they could simply run across. Other times there was a narrow gap and they had to jump. It was better to not look down. A few times some planks had been set there for a long time by the street urchins, to maintain this hidden road above the city.

  Somewhere along the way, Roux joined them, running and leaping alongside the children like he was born to a life on the streets.

  "Roux!"

  "Who- what is that?"

  "That's my lemon!"

  "We did it!" Roux shouted.

  Orphan whooped, and Roux joined in, then Ferdie as well. It probably wasn't smart, to howl and holler as they continued to run across the city, but they couldn't help it. The feeling of being alive was intoxicating. Blood was rushing through Orphan's veins. She felt like she wouldn't sleep for a week. They kept running for a long, long time.

  They didn't go to Orphan's rooftop hideout this time. It was too close to the shops they had broken into. This time they picked their way to the other side of the Freefer territory. Ferdie led them to his own little spot of safety. It was a large collection of half-rotted crates sitting on a flat roof. It looked like a pile of garbage, but that was just a careful facade. Climbing inside, Roux and Orphan saw a tidy little room with an awning to one side, keeping most of the rain off a little cot. Ferdie sighed, taking his cap off and hanging it on a rusty nail sticking out of one of the walls of his abode.

  "So what were you doing in a bakery, Orphan? And why were the kings guards surrounding that place? What in all flaming bells was going on?"

  Roux studied Ferdie more closely. He was about the same height as Orphan. About 12 years old, he had that same 40-year-old look in his eyes too, born from a life without safety on the streets. He picked his nose.

  "Ferdie, you saved me. You really did." Orphan replied, still getting her breath back. "I can't believe what we've done. We can't ever go back to that part of town." She reached slowly into the sack she was carrying, and pulled out a very squished bun. Orphan and Ferdie stared at the bun. There was cream on the top.

  Orphan tossed the bun to Ferdie, and brought one out for herself. She offered one to Roux, who politely declined. He didn't have a digestive system. He was a lemon.

  Roux kept watch as the orphans stuffed themselves with breads, sweets, and pastries. Eventually they lay down, groaning, laughing, and crying in equal measure. It seemed such an experience that Roux promised himself to learn how to eat pastries one day. He still had that magic in him, the power to change. But if he used it all up, he would cease to exist. Better to be more careful with it, going forward.

  Suddenly Ferdie flinched, looking up.

  "What is it?" Orphan asked. Roux looked up too. The sky was blue, with a few fluffy clouds drifting by. Nothing seemed to out of the ordinary. Roux was about to look away when lighting spread across one of the clouds. Purple lightning. For a brief second, the cloud lit up, and a very clear silhouette came into sharp focus. It was a bird, but it must have been the size of a building. The purple lightning almost seemed to be coming from its claws.

  Just as quickly as it had come, the lightning vanished, and so did the silhouette of the bird. The three had all seen it, and were speechless.

  "I heard people were seeing monsters in the sky," Ferdie said, "but I didn't believe 'em. I guess I do now."

  They all looked suspiciously at the fluffy white clouds, drifting on across the city. The rooftop didn't feel as secure as it did a few minutes ago.

  ***

  Maewynh stood over a large scrying disk, hands on either side of the basin as she looked through her creature's eyes at the sprawling city below. Her nose wrinkled in disgust. Cities were vile, stinking things. They brought out the worst in people. She couldn't imagine a worse place to live. Why didn't everyone build towers in the forest? Well, not her forest of course. Stepping foot into her forest was a death wish. Just ask the skeletons forming a perfect circle in a three mile radius around her tower. Maewynh shrugged. Maybe there wasn't enough forest for everybody after all.

  She stayed there, eyes glued to the basin, trying to find anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all. There was nothing. Her hands tightened around the edges of the basin. Her back hurt from leaning over. She'd been at this for three days now. Having such a strong disturbance in her fate weavings, she assumed there would be some giant monster here. Some "look at me" creature made of glowing lava or something. Instead she found a dirty old city. She gnashed her teeth in frustration. As soon as she found so much as a hint of a powerful magic creature she was going to tear it to shreds. How dare it take up her time and energy! How dare it draw her focus away from her forest! "Whatever is at the center of this," she said with a glint in her eye, "is going to feel pain. I am going to invent new ways to suffer." An involuntary giggle rose up. Then a chuckle. Then, since nobody was around, she gave in to full cackling. The sounds of her laughter echoed through an empty forest, devoid of all life. Far away, in another kingdom, a jolt of power flared and purple lighting lit up the sky again.