The chipped stone bit into my palms as I scaled the tenement wall. Dublin throbbed below, a raw nerve stretched tight. Not from the fighting, not yet. It was the *other* thing. The shadow slipping between alleys, faster than a man, leaving whispers and fear in its wake.
“Blast,” Crowley exhaled, swiping whiskers free as the biting Galway autumn blew until knuckles bled. He didn’t bother looking at the wound. Concern was a luxury we couldn’t afford.
“My sister will burn otherwise,” Osgováy claimed, breath fogging the air. Her eyes, the color of peat, locked onto mine. A plea, stark and brittle.
I felt, at some instinctive degree, felt the tremor in her words, the desperation. “What’s changed?”
“They’ve taken her to the Rotunda. Said she’s mad. Speaking of… shadows.” She glanced nervously at the rooftops. “They never mentioned shadows that move!”
A boy snuffed out a candle in a window across the lane. Lost music swelled from a hidden gramophone until a merchant coughed, grim. The air tasted of coal smoke and something wilder, something ancient.
“Do the voices come tonight, Liam…you hear more then speak ever?” Old Man Hemlock, the weaver, stopped threading his loom. The room fell silent save for the rhythmic click of his shuttle, which had now ceased.
“Voices are for fools and priests.” I dropped to the cobblestones, landing softly. The rebellion was supposed to be about independence, about throwing off the King’s yoke. It wasn’t supposed to be about chasing rumors of a black cat, or… whatever *that* was.
“Dust devils follow us,” Hemlock whispered, eyes tracking something beyond my shoulder.
“Find sparrow gold!” Osgováy urged, grabbing my arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “It’s the key.”
I traced the lines of the map she pressed into my hand. Amber light pulsed beneath the faded ink, revealing a network of tunnels beneath the city. “What is this?”
“They vanish to black when truth touches…” she replied, her voice barely a breath.
I scanned the alley. A single, crimson bloom clung to a crumbling brick wall. Unexpected. A defiance of the November chill. I plucked it, turning it over in my fingers. Its petals felt like velvet.
“The general seeks an instrument,” Crowley rasped, appearing from the shadows. “Something to… distract.”
Her breath bloomed, frost, on the frigid air.
“Their oaths?” I asked.
“Broken,” Crowley replied, a grimace twisting his face. “He offered safety. Peace. For a price.”
I pocketed the flower, tracing the map with a calloused finger. The tunnels. The flower. The shadows. It didn’t make sense. Not yet.
“Do as you taught,” Osgováy murmured, her eyes fixed on a flickering lamplight.
I hadn’t expected this. Not this tangle of folklore and gunfire. Not this… beast.
“It follows, my niece,” Hemlock said, his voice strangely hollow.
“Still-still,” Crowley breathed, watching the rooftops.
The beast moved. A black ripple in the gloom. It wasn’t a cat. Not anymore. This was something older. Something Dublin had forgotten. And it was about to make this rebellion a lot more complicated.
