The air in Whitestone tasted of damp earth and coal smoke, a familiar, gritty mix that clung to Marlow’s lungs. He moved like a shadow through the narrow streets of the lower city, his worn leather boots finding grip on slick cobblestones.

  Behind him, were the clangs of iron-shod heels of the pursuing city watch. The weight of the stolen coin pouch bounced against his chest, tucked inside his patched leather jerkin. He grinned despite the sting in his lungs. That merchant hadn't even noticed until Marlow was halfway down the street.

  He turned sharply into a side alley, barely wide enough for a grown man's shoulders, and ducked low beneath a sagging line of laundry. A wooden bucket clattered down from above as he brushed it with his shoulder. Damn. That’d give them his trail. He glanced back - two guards, in green-tabarded livery, crested with the white stag of Lord Aldwyn Alagaster, pounded after him.

  Marlow hurled himself forward, lungs heaving. He wasn’t tall - hadn’t had the chance to be yet - but what he lacked in size he made up in wiry speed. He was born in these alleys, and knew every twist and turn.

  A crate blocked his path, some broken thing reeking of old fish. He didn’t slow - one step, two, then up - launching himself over it with a practiced grace. Except this time, something snagged. A splintered edge bit deep into the meat of his thigh. Marlow landed hard, staggered, and cursed through gritted teeth. Blood trickled warm down his leg. No time. No time for pain.

  The guards were closer now, their boots hammering in unison. He pushed off the wall, turned a corner, and there - salvation. A crumbling passage, half-choked with rubble and shadowed by the overhang of a collapsed roof. No grown guard would squeeze through that. Marlow did.

  He scrambled inside, diving for cover. Stones shifted under his hands, cutting his palms. The passage narrowed and the sound of the watch grew muffled behind him. He didn’t stop until the alley spilled out into a crooked courtyard choked with nettles and cracked paving stones. He collapsed behind an old cistern, chest heaving.

  For a long moment, there was only the rush of his breath and the rhythmic pounding of blood in his ears. The wound throbbed with every heartbeat, sticky warmth soaking into his breeches. He let his head fall back against the stone and laughed softly. A rough, breathless sound. Still got it.

  It was his sixteenth birthday today. Some lads might spend it in a tavern, chasing skirts or getting knuckled by their fathers. Not Marlow. His gift to himself was a fat coin purse and one more day not caught. Not bad, all things considered.

  He untucked the pouch from his jerkin and poured its contents into his palm. Silver glinted dully in the grey light - more than a week’s wages for most in the lower city. His fingers curled around it possessively. It would go to the Silver Daggers Guild, of course. Their cut always came first. But he’d keep a little for himself. Enough for warm bread. Maybe even honey. Honey was a rare thing in Whitestone.

  Marlow stood with a wince and looked up at the courtyard's rooftop. He picked a path with his eyes, memorising the ledges and handholds. A moment later, he was climbing. Up the cistern, over the awning of a shuttered shop, and onto the slanted slate roof beyond.

  From here, Whitestone spread below him in tiers - the lower city sprawled in chaotic webs of smoke, stone, and shouting. Laundry flapped like flags above narrow streets. Children ran barefoot. The scent of roasting meat mixed with the sharp tang of quarry dust. The upper district loomed beyond, clean and precise. Pale buildings lined with straight roads that led to the castle, whose towers caught the late sun. The white stag banner of Lord Aldwyn Alagaster fluttered from its ramparts. The difference between here and there was not just stone and wealth. It was air. Up there, it smelled of roses and promise. Down here, it was sweat and coal smoke.

  Marlow crouched low, his eyes tracing the familiar lines of the city - the places only thieves knew. There, a jeweller who forgot to latch his shutters. Two blocks east, a baker’s boy who'd trade gossip for favours. And the old brewhouse, where the Silver Daggers met on cold nights, firelight flickering against damp walls and whispered plans.

  He rubbed at the blood crusting his leg and tore a strip from his sleeve to wrap the wound. It wasn’t deep, just messy. He'd had worse - a snapped rib once, when a butcher’s boy caught him lifting apples. That one took weeks to heal. This? A scratch.

  “Not today, boys,” he muttered, casting a glance back toward the direction of the guards. He imagined them now, huffing and red-faced, baffled by his disappearance. Perhaps one would claim he turned into a rat. Another might curse his mother. Let them.

  The sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the rooftops. Its gloom extended down into the alleyways below and across the cobblestones.Time to head home.

  Marlow swiftly crossed the rooftops, his limbs loose and sure despite the pain in his leg. He leapt from one building to the next, wind in his ears, the city unfolding beneath him. Children waved from below, their faces bright with admiration. He winked at them. They knew who he was - not by name, but by spirit. One of them. A ghost in the eaves.

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  Marlow spotted the crimson mark just as he swung down from the roof’s edge, landing in the narrow alley behind Spinner’s Row. Fresh paint, still wet, dripping a little down the soot-streaked brick: a single blade, painted blood red, scrawled quick and low where only keen eyes might catch it. His pulse raced.

  Crimson Blades.

  He crouched, letting his fingers hover just over the mark. Not even dry. They’d been here minutes ago, if that. Territory marking was an old trick, a warning to rivals: we walk here now. The Blades had no business this close to Silver Dagger turf. Not unless they were itching to break the unspoken truce that kept the lower city from collapsing into an open blood feud.

  A whisper of movement caught his ear - the scrape of boot leather on slate. Marlow melted into shadow, slipping behind a stack of splintered crates and broken barrels. His eyes scanned the alley's edge, the rooftops above. There - a flash of crimson scarf as someone vaulted up and over a ledge.

  Bold, he thought. Reckless, or deliberate. Either way, trouble.

  He lingered only a moment longer, then turned and slipped deeper into the alleyways, moving quick and silent, careful not to leave more than a trace of his passing. If the Blades were sniffing around Silver Dagger turf, someone would need to know - someone older, harder. He might be good, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think he could handle that mess alone.

  The streets changed as he moved west. The bustle of the lower city faded, replaced by ruins and neglect - half-rotted, windowless buildings, their bones picked clean by time and scavengers. Here, at the very edge of Whitestone, between the river and the great quarry, stood the derelict tannery.

  Marlow slipped through a loose board into the darkness beyond. The smell was worse than usual - wet hide and old blood, but beneath it all was something familiar. The scrape of metal, the whisper of plans. Home, if you could call it that.

  The Silver Dagger thieves guild had no banners, no throne rooms. Just shadows, silence, and a shared promise: look after your own, or die alone.

  “Oi,” someone called from the far corner. “Thought I heard a rat.”

  Marlow straightened, brushing dust from his sleeve. “Just me, Callun. You can sheathe that butter knife.”

  A tall man emerged from behind an old curing table, a dagger balanced loosely in one hand. Callun was rough around the edges, his beard flecked with grey. He’d been a Dagger since before Marlow could walk.

  “Still breathing, then?” Callun grunted, giving him a once-over. “Heard you were dodging the watch again.”

  Marlow offered a grin. “They’re slower than they look.”

  Callun snorted. “You’d know, you little alley rat.”

  He stepped aside, letting Marlow pass. The tannery had been gutted and rebuilt from the inside out - tarpaulins strung overhead, crates and barrels turned into makeshift tables and bedding. The smell never quite left, but the space was theirs. Safe. Or safe enough.

  A handful of Daggers sat scattered about - Grint, the hulking brute with fingers like sausages, sharpening a curved blade with delicate care; Nerissa, watching from the shadows, with unreadable eyes. And Keyla, her face all sharp lines, already halfway through a roll of cards with two younger boys, tossing glances at Marlow as he passed.

  He ignored them for now, heading straight for the back room where Gareth sat.

  The guild’s leader wasn’t the oldest, nor the most dangerous, but what he said mattered. If the Silver Daggers had a spine, Gareth was it - all sinew and secrets, with a voice that never rose above a murmur but could carry across a crowd if he wanted it to.

  He looked up as Marlow entered, one brow lifting.

  “Well?”

  “Crimson mark, half a block from Spinner’s Row,” Marlow said without preamble. “Still wet. Someone was staking turf.”

  Gareth’s fingers drummed the table. “Which side?”

  “East wall. Nearly in our turf.”

  That gave him pause. “They want us to see it.”

  “Or they’re trying to start something,” Marlow said, folding his arms. “You think the truce is slipping?”

  Gareth didn’t answer. Not right away. Just stared at the map spread across the table - a rough sketch of the lower city, inked in faded charcoal. Lines marked out guild paths, safe routes, watch patrols, and disputed streets.

  Finally, he spoke. “Keep your head low. And your eyes open. We’ll send someone to wash it off.”

  Marlow nodded, though a flicker of irritation sparked in his chest. That was it? A warning to stay low? He'd brought back news worth gold, and they still treated him like a kid skulking in from curfew.

  He turned to leave, but Gareth’s voice stopped him.

  “Good work, Marlow.”

  The words were simple, but they caught him off guard. He paused, gave a small nod, and slipped out.

  Back in the main chamber, the others watched him with a mix of appraisal and amusement. Keyla beckoned him over.

  "Happy name-day, Marlow," she said with a crooked smile, tossing him a piece of bread.

  He caught it with one hand. “Stole me a birthday gift already.”

  “From who?”

  “Some merchant with more gold than sense.”

  She laughed, low and approving. “That’s our boy.”

  Marlow grinned, settling onto a crate with a groan. Pain flared in his thigh, but it was distant now. He tore into the bread and watched the others - the way they joked, fought, leaned on one another. Keyla with her easy grin. Callun laughing at something Grint said. Nerissa, always half in shadow, watching everything. They were a family, of sorts.

  Born in the storm, they said - found as a newborn wrapped in a blanket on the temple steps, the night the heavens cracked open and rain drowned the streets. No mother, no father. Just the storm and the city.

  The guild had taken him in. Not gently, not kindly - but it was more than anyone else had offered. He earned his place the way all orphans did: with quick hands, a sharper tongue, and the willingness to bleed.

  The Silver Daggers were all he had. And if war came with the Crimson Blades - he’d fight for them.

  Because orphans didn’t get real families. They got chosen ones. And this one, for all its rough edges, was his.

  Today he was sixteen. Still free. Still running. And tomorrow, he’d steal again.