Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Mina and I arrive at work early the next morning.
The Ink District still wears its magic openly: tattoo parlours with symbols fading across their shutters, signwriters’ windows filmed with dust and old printworks converted into cheap apartments. Glyphs curl across brickwork and beneath bridges—half graffiti, half prayer.
The Bounty Hunter Depot is quiet, just the way we like it.
The building is beautiful: grand sandstone, colonnaded, with LADIES and GENTLEMEN carved above separate entrances. Once a public bathhouse, it retains its tall, single-glazed windows, now cobwebbed with hairline cracks and leaking cold.
I have never understood how anyone can inherit something lovely and simply let it rot.
Inside, the high ceilings, off-white tiles and arched ironwork survive beneath peeling noticeboards and scuffed furniture. The faint smell of damp plaster mingles with old paper, wet coats and overbrewed tea and coffee.
The main hall is almost empty, though voices drift from beyond the pillars where a few hunters prepare for the day.
Without drawing attention, I grab a steaming mug of black tea and sink into my usual corner with the brown leather sofa that sags six inches when you sit down and demands steel thighs to escape.
The radiator behind me gives off just enough heat to take the bite from the air. Mina, happily tired after a morning of uphill ball-fetch, dozes against it with her head resting on her paws.
I checked her pads before we came in. No cracks, no grit lodged between the toes. The wax did its job.
I keep my eyes on my mug and let the conversation reach me.
Eavesdropping yields more than direct questions ever have. People rarely speak to me—certainly not freely—but if I sit still and become part of the furniture, they forget I am there.
“Aye, that attack, it’s tied to the government lot. I’m sure of it,” a woman says, her voice high and certain. “It’s—”
“Nothing to do with the Overseer,” a man cuts in. “Terrorist group, pure and simple. They were unlucky with the timing, that’s all. The police were only in position because he was in town.”
“Have they arrested anyone?”
“No, of course not.” He gives a short laugh. “Bone District folk look out for that lot. Lift supplies for them, hand out food. Nobody’s betraying the Resistance.”
Neither of them wonders how the roadblocks went up quite so fast. I was standing inside one, and I have been turning it over since.
A few more theories surface and are quietly dismantled before the subject shifts.
There is a big job today. The Overseer has released extra funds, so it must be substantial. He wants the group’s leadership taken alive and delivered to court.
That explains why so many hunters have arrived early.
The pinboard holds only a handful of bronze chits, nothing worth my while.
“Elmo, how are you doing?” Collin, another hunter, joins me. He has been here for at least fifty years and is decent enough. More importantly, he treats me like a person.
“Morning,” I say into my mug.
“I’ve been thinking about the jobs you take,” he begins without preamble. “Have you ever been assessed for antisocial behaviour? Personality disorder? Psychopathy?”
I keep the mug against my lips to hide my smile.
He is, politely, asking whether I am a serial killer.
Most hunters cannot fathom why I accept child contracts. If you saw one hunter consistently taking a particular type of target—say, elderly women with cats—you would wonder.
You would see a pattern.
Collin presses on, unfazed by my silence. “You’re very unusual.”
It seems he has followed precisely the same line of reasoning I have just rehearsed in my head.
I sip my tea.
“You know,” he continues, “a friend of mine has no empathy at all, yet when I moved house, he turned up with his truck, worked all day and asked for nothing. My so-called best mates never showed, but Samuel did. So I thought, if you ever need to talk…” He glances down at his hands.
“Unless I’ve offended you.” He raises both hands. “In which case, I’ll shut up.”
Only Collin could say this to me. He is seasoned enough to be unafraid of what I am—or what he presumes me to be.
“Was this a dare?” I ask.
“No. Just curious.”
“I’m all right, Collin, but thank you.” I glance down at my tea, then back at him. “I mean it.”
“Right. It’s just—you seem lonely. Standoffish. And I know things have been difficult, with everything, the way people treat you…” He shifts his weight, suddenly awkward. “I want you to know I’m here.” He hesitates. “Also, you’ve got lovely eyes. Grey. I noticed.”
And then he spoils it.
“Psycho girls are always the most interesting,” he adds with a laugh. “I’ve got a platinum chit. Cracking job. Speak later.”
I watch him retreat.
Mina sleeps on, though I would wager one eye would have opened had he stepped any closer.
“Hunter.” The Depot manager appears with a chit. “Here.”
I flip it over.
A girl, fifteen. Alive preferred. Lethal force authorised to prevent escape or public manifestation.
The authorities want to question her, but not badly enough to risk half the city witnessing her magic.
“Normally, I wouldn’t send this your way.” He turns away. “We’re slammed with platinum jobs and need full teams. You’re the only experienced hunter available to move immediately.” He glances back. “Try not to kill this one.” Then he leaves.
I have never been the only hunter available. Not once. The name on the chit reads Sarah Summers.
The plane will not be back yet; the turnaround is too tight.
Frightened families run, and a runner can take days to find. Weeks, sometimes.
That might actually work in my favour.
I tap the chit against my thigh, thinking.
I need to send a message.
But first, I need information.
The Depot’s record room spans two storeys and holds thousands of volumes, every family in Elyrion catalogued by hand. It is ridiculous. One terminal search would give me everything in seconds, but we are not permitted terminals.
Instead, I pace the shelves and trail my fingertip over cracked leather and faded cloth spines until I reach the S section and begin in earnest.
Dust stirs whenever I pull out a volume. Pages whisper beneath my fingers, thin and dry with age. The weak light strains through the tall windows, forcing me to squint at cramped handwriting and faded annotations.
The address comes easily. Relatives, known connections, a grandmother two streets away.
The mother takes longer, because the mother is not there.
The father is listed. The child is listed. Where the mother’s name should sit, the paper has been scraped back to the fibre and written over in a different hand: unrecorded.
I hold the page up to the window. Whatever was underneath it is gone.
Records are never perfect. Clerks are careless, ink fades, families lie. Any of that would explain a gap.
None of it explains a blade taken to the page.
Somebody paid for that. Not a great deal, probably. A clerk in this building earns less than I do.
I copy the entry as it stands and tell myself it is nothing.
It is another child from the Bone District.
My eyes burn as I close the final book. I slip my notes into my coat pocket, and Mina falls into step beside me.
We leave on foot. Taking the car would only mean hunting for somewhere to park.
Several streets lie between the Depot and the coffee shop. The cold stings my cheeks after the stale warmth of the stacks, and Mina’s breath puffs white as she trots at my heel.
Snow from yesterday has turned grey at the kerbs, churned into gritty slush by boots and tyres. In a few hours, it will be gone entirely.
The coffee shop offers nothing fancy because no one here could afford it, but the menu lists one unusual item: a cappuccino.
Nobody orders it. Nobody arrives with the exact coins ready either, because nobody here has spare change to be exact with.
That is the point. Two ordinary things no one does, done together.
I approach the counter.
“A cappuccino, please,” I say, placing the exact coins beside the till, “and a pastry.”
The barista’s hand pauses for half a second before she sweeps up the coins without meeting my eyes.
The order, the phrase and the payment together form the signal: pick-up required.
The staff have no idea what they are helping with. The story shifts with the rota—medicine for the Resistance, perhaps, or contraband along some black-market route. A useful misunderstanding, illegal enough to explain the secrecy and ordinary enough to be believed.
Never children.
I choose a corner table with clear views of both the door and the window, then wait.
Nobody challenges Mina. She should not be inside, but the staff have chosen not to see her.
Better not to provoke the mad bounty hunter.
The coffee arrives.
The barista sets it down, gives the mug one small unhurried turn, the way you might straighten a picture, and goes back to the counter.
The handle is the clock. Straight towards me is twelve.
She has left it at ten.
Ten days. Ten days to find the girl, learn her routine and get her to the airfield. Long enough to seem natural, but not so long as to arouse suspicion.
Everything after that runs on standing instructions: the same gate, the same hangar, the agreed window on the tenth day. No names. No locations.
If I fail to find Sarah in time, there is a different order for that.
Now for the worst part.
I have to drink the coffee or look suspicious.
I lace it with sugar and brace myself. I haven’t been able to stomach this bitter sludge for years, yet I drain the cup. The heat scalds my tongue, and the coffee settles badly. My heart thumps a fraction too fast as nausea creeps into my throat.
Too much caffeine, too quickly, on too little food.
I rise, ignore the barista and step back into the cold.
A woman sits beneath the coffee shop window, wrapped in two mismatched coats, one hand extended. Her fingers are red and cracked where they emerge from the sleeves.
“Food?” she asks.
“It’s only a pastry,” I say.
“It’s still food.”
I give it to her. She breaks off a piece immediately and stuffs it into her mouth.
I continue down the street with Mina beside me.
A man crossing towards us thinks better of it and crosses back. Two women fall quiet as we pass and start up again behind us. Somebody’s mother pulls a child in by the sleeve.
Everybody sees me. Nobody looks.
Today, that is exactly what I need.