The cushion was just the wrong shade of blue, Apollo thought. Not that she was usually picky about these things. And not that it wasn’t comfortable.
She sat curled up on the cushion, wrapped in one of the silk robes Delta Delta bought from goodness knows where and sold for goodness knows how much. The light of midday was filtering through the fine linen roof of the teahouse that she left uncovered when the sun was shining. Shafts of sunlight illuminated dancing flecks of dust in mid-air.
Apollo Ridley sipped her tea. She looked the same as anyone else in there, whiling away the hours idly. Well, not quite the same. She lacked the extra eyes, the extra-sensory appendages, the curling tendrils of the other clientele. But if they were asked to pick out the pre-eminent ranger of the Static, the warrior who had faced Kin Garamos and lived to tell the tale, the sword for hire in their midst, the chances that anyone in that building would have pointed you towards the unassuming red-haired woman in white silk nestling in the corner nook were close to zero.
Close to zero because of course, Delta knew.
The curtain that led to Delta’s simple quarters was pushed aside by an elegant hand. The tall woman that followed it – and Apollo was tall, but Delta was tall – was dressed in silk that was just the right shade of blue. She smiled at Apollo with her heavy-lidded eyes as she attended to the soberly-dressed men who had just arrived. Her colorless hair draped down the sides of her face like the silk that enveloped Apollo.
She finished with the men and padded over to Apollo noiselessly.
“How’s the tea?” she said, smiling coolly.
“Incredible, as always,” Apollo said. “You’re a miracle worker, Del. Last week I wouldn’t have believed…”
“You’re always welcome here, Apollo. You know that,” Delta said gently, kneeling on the cushion opposite Apollo’s. “It’s restorative, isn’t it?”
“I feel as if I could face an army,” Apollo said. Delta shook her head with a smile.
“Always fighting. Stay here, my friend. You don’t have to fight.” Delta extended her hand and pressed Apollo’s reassuringly.
Apollo pulled her hand back. She had tried that. Always, though, her palm itched for the hilt of a sword. Delta knew that battle ran hot through Apollo’s veins like steel in a crucible.
“Delta… don’t make me say no,” Apollo said. “It makes me feel like a monster.”
“We’re all monsters here, Apollo,” Delta murmured. Then she sat up straight, suddenly. Apollo began to speak, to apologise, but Delta shushed her.
“What is it?” Apollo asked.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Something’s coming.”

There was an ear-splitting yell from outside, and a middle-aged man, well-dressed in a red-collared official tunic, stumbled into the teahouse, clutching at the entrance curtain, tearing it half-off the rail. Instantly, Delta was on her feet, catching the man as he twisted, stepped again, and fell forwards.
In the lower back of the man, in the center of a blossoming flower of blood, a razor-sharp crossbow bolt protruded like a solitary dead tree.
“He’s gone,” said Delta. “Poison.” She plucked the bolt from the stranger’s back, and the pointed head of the bolt was completely black.
The teahouse emptied quickly, without any one person making the decision to disappear.
Apollo sprang upright, white silk swirling about her.
“Where are you going?” Delta said.
Apollo said nothing. Slipping her feet into a simple pair of sandals she stalked out into the market. Something toxic on the air stung the back of her throat. Other than that, everything was business as usual. It was as if the murdered man had simply dropped into a pit in the earth and been forgotten. People of all shapes, sizes, hues brushed past her, dressed in countless exotic fashions.
But something was wrong. The angles weren’t right. She looked at the dirt in front of the teahouse. There they were, his last living footsteps. She stepped into them, then turned 180 degrees. There was no clear shot. Not through the press of people, the stalls and the crush of bodies. The bowman would have to be superhuman.
Then she realised what was bothering her, the niggling detail.
The bolt was angled downwards. Shot from above.
Apollo kicked off from one of the wooden beams that framed the teahouse and grabbed hold of the slats on the roof of the stall opposite, pulling herself up easily. As she swung her leg up, there was a tearing sound, which she ignored.
Running over the wooden roofs of the stalls, a figure clad in billowing robes. He moved with incredible precision, stepping the incredible distances from beam to beam as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Slung across his back, Apollo recognised the steel curve of a crossbow.
She gave chase, but it was obvious the strange, weightless figure could outpace her on these rooftops. As she paced along the edge of a linen-roofed food stall her foot slipped on a splotch of guano and off the narrow beam.
First, the patrons of the stall were shocked when a sculpted leg tore through their roof. That primed them for the following shock of the rest of the woman it was attached to dropping through, landing on the long bar table, upturning the wooden bowls. Apollo pulled her elbow, dripping, out of a bowl of bug broth, and turned, looking right into the eyes of a woman whose jaw opened out into twitching, bony mandibles.

When Delta caught up to her, Apollo was carefully counting out coins into the big paw of a peach-fuzzed, ruddy-faced gorilloid.
“There you are!” she said, gliding over. “What have you done to my silks?”
Apollo looked down at the robe sheepishly. A long strip had torn off up her right leg while she climbed up the stall, and the rest of the silk was stained and coated in mud, stew and noodles. Apollo dripped miserably.
“It was too long,” she said. “It dragged.”
“A shame,” Delta said with a sigh. “You wore it so well. Finished here? Good, good. Run along,” she remarked to the gorilloid.
“Run along!” the gorilloid said, and knuckled away in a huff.
“He moved like… it was impossible,” Apollo said. “He made six foot leaps like he was stepping over a puddle!”
Delta’s brow furrowed. She linked her arm with Apollo’s and pulled her away from the indignant stall owner. “I’ll replace your roof,” she said airily. “Come down to the teahouse some time.”
She led Apollo back to the teahouse, and pulled open the curtain. The corpse lay in front of them. “Ah, yes,” Delta said. “Let’s move him out of the way.” Together, the two of them dragged him inside. Apollo was about to lay him down in the center of the room when Delta grabbed her arm.
“No!” she said, then bent down and rolled up the rug where Apollo was about to let him fall. “Leave him on the floorboards. No need to spoil the rug.”
Apollo dropped the body on the bare boards with a shudder.
“Get the watch and get him out of here,” Delta said. But something wasn’t sitting right for Apollo. She knelt down beside the corpse. “What are you doing?” Delta asked.
“Searching,” Apollo replied. “I don’t know what for yet, but- ah!”
The man’s neck was protected by a narrow cravat. Apollo had pulled the end of the thin scarf out from where it was tucked into his robe. On the corner of the scrap of cloth, about the size of a thumbnail, was an intricate pattern of golden thread, a tiny ring crossed by three interwoven strands.
“A tailor’s mark,” Delta said. “What does that tell us?”
Apollo shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t tell us anything.” She groaned, frustrated, and stood up. “What kind of clerk doesn’t even carry identification, though? No papers, no cash even.”
“One who doesn’t want to be identified,” Delta said. She pulled Apollo’s wrist. “I smell trouble. Leave this alone. Let’s call a watchman.”

The watchman was very little help to them. His questions were largely pedestrian details.
“So this is the weapon?” he said, picking up the black thing from where Delta had dropped it.
“Careful!” said Apollo. “It’s poison!”
The watchman turned sharply, throwing the poison bolt away with a yelp.
“Did you scratch yourself?” Apollo asked. He shook his head. Apollo sighed, relieved.
After some time, the watchman was ready to make his proclamation: “I believe this man was murdered,” he said. He held up the black crossbow bolt between finger and thumb. “Murdered with this.” He thought for a minute. “Motive unknown.” He held up a hand towards the rooftops of the stalls that Apollo had chased the assassin over and said something that Apollo didn’t hear, distracted by a flash of gold inside his sleeve. Her hand whipped out and grabbed the man’s wrist, unthinking, and studied the golden pattern.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the watchman said, pulling his arm away. “Laying hands on a city watchman is a serious offence.”
“I thought I saw something on your arm,” Apollo said, her mind racing. “I thought I saw a scorpion.”
“Did you get it?” the watchman asked. Apollo shook her head.
“I think it went inside your cloak,” she said. The watchman yelped again and began struggling to pull the cloak off, throwing it aside. Apollo, keeping her hand by her side where he couldn’t see, made a frantic string of gestures to Delta.
“Is it on me? Is it on me?” the watchman asked, turning back and forth. Apollo stood so he couldn’t see Delta checking the sleeve of the cloak and grabbed his shoulders.
“Stand still. I see him. Hold still…” she said, batting the imaginary scorpion off the guard’s neck. “Tiny little guy. Of course, those are the ones you have to look out for.”
“Wow, that was close. Thanks for spotting that, miss…?”
“Ridley. You’re welcome,” she said. Out the corner of her eye she could see Delta nod at her. The gold she had seen was the same intricate design the clerk had had on his scarf. “Hand me the cloak,” Apollo said to Delta. Delta obliged, the brown cloth draped over her long hand. “Thank you so much for helping us out.” She slipped the cloak’s hanging sleeves over the watchman’s arms and helped him shrug his way into it. The watchman spun on the spot.
“No problem, Miss Ridley. We’re always on duty,” he said. “And call me Rob.”
Apollo laughed. “Quite a name for a watchman,” she said. Rob looked at her quizzically.
“Why?”

Two stout men removed the body after Rob left and loaded it onto a wooden cart. As they rattled away, Delta looked up at the darkening sky and sighed.
“That’s a whole day’s trade gone,” she said. “And I don’t expect people will be lining up outside my door tomorrow morning.” She turned around and saw Apollo sitting on a table. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m struggling to reconcile this gold thread business,” Apollo said.
“It’s a tailor’s hallmark,” Delta said plainly. “I don’t sense anything else.”
“On the clerk and the watchman both?”
“Don’t you mean Rob?” Delta said. Was that a hint of sarcasm? “So it’s an official tailor. One that does lots of government work.”
“You won’t hear any different, will you?”
“Different to the most likely explanation? I suppose not,” Delta said. And that was the end of it, and she turned and swished back into the living quarters behind the shop.
Apollo snarled. She got up and stalked out of the front of the shop, following the path the cart had taken away from the shop. It was simple enough to follow the deep tracks of the cart’s wheels as they twisted through the alleys of the market, and before long the cart was in sight, pulled by its grudging beasts of burden. Around this time of night the market began to empty, and the shadows grew deeper, heavier around her. She cursed herself for not picking up her cloak. Clad in white silk she could hardly have made herself more obvious. That was if anyone happened to be looking for her.
She ducked into an alcove in one of the rare permanent walls in the market as one of the mutant men pulling the cart turned around, letting his side of the cart fall into the dirt. She watched through a crack in the mortar as he pulled a pipe from his pocket, tapped it a couple of times, and struck a match.
“You still smoking that juk?” his companion asked. The big mutant shrugged.
“Maybe I am,” he said. Slowly, another thought scudded across his brain, then his face, then his lips. “That Delta’s a fine piece, in’t she?”
The other nodded, grunting in affirmation, their quarrel forgotten. Apollo resisted the urge to scoff. If they only knew.
It wasn’t long before a watchman’s helmet glinted in the light from the pipe.
“Good work, lads. Now here’s your scrap, and scram!” said the helmet. Apollo’s eyes narrowed. Now something was afoot. She pressed herself closer, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of the watchman’s face under the shadow of the helmet’s heavy metal brow.
Must have pressed a little too hard. A chunk of loose masonry, the mortar worn by time and scraped away by unscrupulous bakers to fill out loaves, came sliding away from the wall with a grinding, followed by a loud crash as it fell from the wall.
“Bloody hell! Where’d she spring from?” the big mutant said, his pipe dropping from his jaw.
“You idiot! You jukking idiot!” the watchman said, and Apollo caught a glimpse of a serpentine tongue flicking the air. “You let her follow you?”
“Well, we didn’t know she was there,” the other mutant said reasonably.
“Forget that! Kill her!” the watchman hissed. The two mutants looked at each other and shrugged.
“If you say so,” said the big one, cracking his knuckles and squaring up to Apollo. The smaller, nimbler of the two reached to his hip and pulled a dagger from his belt.
Apollo sighed and put up her hands, ready to fight. What she wouldn’t give to have her sword with her…
The big mutant came in with a clumsy right hook that Apollo redirected easily as the watchman turned tail and ran. She dropped to the floor to avoid a jab from the smaller mutant’s dagger and aimed a kick into the big one’s ribs, sending him staggering backwards.
The dagger came for her again and again, narrowly missing each time. Her silk swirled about her with every movement. She batted aside another rapid knife strike, grabbed his wrist with her other hand and drove her knee into the back of his hand, forcing him to drop the knife. She pulled him towards her and spun around, using the momentum to throw him against the wall that had betrayed her a moment ago.
“Here, I know you!” the big mutant said as he wrapped his arms around her chest in a powerful bear-hug. “You were in the tea-’ouse with Delta!”
Apollo struggled, but the giant’s grip was too powerful for her to muscle her way out of. The smaller mutant picked up his knife in his good hand and sneered.
“Lucky for you, I’m ambo-dextrous,” he said, grinning.
“Doesn’t seem lucky to me,” said the big one.
“You’re right. Lucky for me, I guess.”
Apollo sighed. She had to get the clowns. The big one had her arms, of course, but he had completely failed to consider-
She swung her legs up, smashing a wood-soled heel into the face of the smaller mutant. He recoiled, swinging his knife wildly until he staggered into a post, fell down on his back, and laid still. While Big was still processing what happened, she took advantage of the break in his concentration to slide down, lever herself free of his grasp, and drive a quick shin into his knee, bringing him down to her size.
“How…?” the big mutant asked. Apollo grabbed his rough sackcloth shirt and pulled him into her fist coming the other way. A stained incisor sailed through the air and embedded itself in the dirt.
“Who do you work for?” Apollo asked.
“The Watcsh!” Big said, blubbering through his sore, bleeding mouth. “I don’t know! They just paysh ush to take the bodiesh!”
“Of course. Useless.”
“Not, not uselessh!” Big said hastily. “That Watcshie who ran off, I can give you hish name!”
Apollo’s blood, up until this moment magma-hot, froze instantly. A Watchman paying off thugs in the street like this would undoubtedly have friends higher up. The gravity of her situation pressed down on her. She stood up, taking the pressure off the big mutant.
“Do- do you have any note from the ‘Watchie’?” she asked. Big shook his head. Of course they’d be too smart for that. “Did he give you anything – did any of them give you anything at all?”
“Just the shcrapsh,” Big said. “Do you want ‘em? That’sh ushual for getting beat up in alleysh. Short of findersh’ fee.”
He unhooked a small coinpurse from the rope that served him for a belt and offered it to Apollo.
“I don’t want your-” she said, then broke off. The coinpurse was drawn shut with a fine golden string. “Where did you get that?” she asked.
“One o’ the Watcshie’sh gave it us,” Big said. Apollo snatched it and pulled it open, quickly tipping the scrap inside out into the mutant’s outstretched palm. “Don’t you want the shcrap ash well? It’sh not that nishe of a purshe.”
“Do yourshelf- yourself a favour, big guy. Shut up for a while,” Apollo said, patting him on the shoulder.
As she walked back to Delta’s, Apollo turned the purse inside out. Sure enough, inside the lip of the opening, it was there: a golden ring crossed by three golden strands.