I’m up and over the bar in the wink of an eye.

A kitchen maid shrieks as I sprint by her, clutching a pitcher of cider to her chest so she doesn’t spill it. The tavern’s back door is just ahead of me, thrown open by my prey already, and I stop after I exit, looking down the empty space between two buildings secured together by thick ropes above the water.

Left or right? Left, there’s a bridge. There he goes around the corner.

Here I am, chasing some poor little rat of a tavern keeper down the cramped, dirty alleys of Calnevari Bay. When I catch him, and I will catch him, he is going to be having an even worse day than he’s already having. This I promise to myself. The Star of Advuri, or whatever it’s called, had better be worth a king’s ransom.

Ahead of me, I see rat boy ducking and weaving through the crowded bridge as quickly as he can, disturbing most of the people he’s passing between. The residents of the Bay of the Sea Devils are a diverse bunch, but shouting in alarm tends to sound the same no matter what language it’s in. Then they notice me coming and make a wide berth, panic on their faces. The ones who aren’t fast enough get bowled over.

He makes a sharp right turn down another catwalk, and I’m just a few paces behind him. But when I round the corner I lose sight of him, feel a jolt of panic. Then relief, when he comes sprinting out of a tiny house ahead of me, and instead of chasing him through it I just leap the fence between us. And land on a chicken coop. I stumble, fall, roll to my feet in a puff of feathers and agitated clucking.

I chase him down a ledge, around two more corners, across a flimsy bamboo footbridge laid over the canal beneath us. He’s a nimble little rat, I’ll give him that much. And he knows all these shortcuts and hidey holes in ways I never will. I have no clue where I am, where we’re going, or what I’ll encounter when I get there. I need to close in and catch him, and I need to do it fast.

But that’s not happening. The bridge he takes is too crowded, a big stone one with street vendors lining the sides. Try as I may, I can’t mow down all these people fast enough to close the distance, not while he’s slipping through them like a fish swimming against the current. My heart drops when I see he’s headed for a three way intersection.

Fuck. Think fast.

There’s a little produce stall. A barrel of potatoes. I grab it with both hands, hurl it over the heads of the people in front of me. But I overshoot, and it lands in front of rat boy rather than on top of him. Regardless, the barrel explodes, sending splinters flying and potatoes pouring over the narrow street. It cuts off his path ahead, forces a narrower decision upon him. He pivots left, stumbles a bit on a few potatoes, and I gain.

I sprint after him into a house, whose occupants cry out in surprise as we barge in on them. He leaps like a monkey through a tiny window, and I lower my shoulder and blast right through the wall.

Now I have him. We’re in a long alleyway with no doors or junctions to the left or right. He may be agile, but no normal man can out-sprint me. I gain and gain, and just as I’m about to lunge for him, he hits the ground and slides into a drain at the base of the wall on our right.

Did he go into the sewers? No. This place is built on a gods forsaken swamp, there aren’t any sewers. I look up at the roof of the building he slipped under, judging the height. Then I back up a few paces, settle into a good stance, break into a sprint and leap with all the strength I can muster.

My fingers catch the ledge of the roof, and I pull myself up without too long a time spent dangling. As I walk across the roof to the other side, I see another mob of people milling up and down the bridge it faces. Wonderful. I’ll need to spot him in the crowd.

Anxious energy builds up in my belly as I search. Every second without him in my sights makes it worse. There. He’s up ahead some distance, looking furtively through the crowd behind him every few moments. But he doesn’t see me, because he isn’t looking up.

This is already working much better than trying to chase him. He relaxes, stops looking over his shoulder so much, proceeds to walk across the bridge at a more casual pace. It’s a simple thing to follow him up on the rooftops, keeping him in view as I clamber up onto higher roofs and jump down to lower ones. The only tense moment comes when I have to leap across a chasm between two buildings, but only because I’m worried about the roof not bearing my weight when when I land on it.

My little rat heads for a complex built around the massive trunk of a tree. Stacks of slipshod homes encircle it, forming a courtyard of sorts, the cubical dwellings all leaning on each other for support like drunkards. There is a single point of entry, an archway at the end of the suspension bridge leading up to it, and it’s guarded by a group of shirtless, tattooed men with weapons on their belts.

Apparently they know rat boy, because after a few short words, they step aside to let him through. I doubt they’ll show me the same courtesy. I could sneak around them, find some other way into this residential fortress of theirs, but I don’t feel like it. I feel like getting this shit over with as quickly as possible.

If a few thugs get hurt in the process, oh well.

I hop down from the roof I’m on, land on the bridge and crouch for balance until it’s done swinging. The eyes of the tattooed men are on me the moment I appear, watching me approach them with hands on their weapons and scowls on their faces.

The biggest of the group steps up to me once I’ve crossed the bridge, a bald fellow with a broken nose and a milky left eye. He looks me over, gives me a snort like he isn’t impressed.

“Da fuck you want,” he says.

My headbutt caves his face in. His companions all stare in shock for a moment as he falls over backwards like a felled tree and lands flat on his back, eyes crossed, blood streaming out of his ruined nose. Then their blades are out and they’re swooping in on me.

There are tricks when it comes to engaging multiple opponents. Keeping them in front of you. Making them get in each other’s way. Putting your back to something, to prevent yourself from being flanked. Always striking the nearest target. They fall for each and every one of them. They swing at me, and their shabby weapons ring against First Legion steel. I land any counter I want, at will, my blades slashing through weapons and flesh alike. It’s over in a few moments.

I see rat boy across the courtyard. He sees me too, his eyes bulging as a fresh wave of terror sweeps over him. He turns and runs again, toward a cluster of apartments to his right. I mutter a curse and take off in pursuit, without bothering to sheathe my swords.

There’s shouting behind me as I sprint for him, but I don’t stop to hear who it’s coming from or what’s being said. My stride eats up the distance between us in a few breaths, but he’s already scampering up the steps to the apartments’ next level. I take the stairs in two bounds, to cut him off, but he slips away from me again, ducks into one of the homes. I march up to it and kick its door in.

It shatters into toothpicks. Rat boy, who was standing just on the other side of it, bleats out in alarm as the remains of the door slam into his back, making him tumble to the floor. The room’s only other occupant is an old man in an armchair, who jumps at the sight of me striding through his doorway with weapons drawn. Which is understandable.

This old man has a scraggly beard, and a round gut pushing out the front of his tunic. There’s a big book in his lap. And there are stacks of books on either side of his chair. Actually there are books all over his tiny home, lining the floors, crammed into shelves and piled on top of his kitchen table. But my eyes are drawn to the amulet around his neck, a bright opal set in polished gold. Aha.

He trembles as I approach him, and reach out to touch that amulet with the tip of my bloody sword.

“You must be Old Gredder,” I say. “And this is the Star of Advuri, I’m guessing.”

He covers the amulet with his hand, gripping it tightly against his chest. His other hand reaches out to grab my wrist, and when he does so he leans forward, lower lip trembling as he fixes me with a pleading look.

“I don’t know who you are, or how you found me. But, please,” his voice shakes, as he chokes back a sob. “Please don’t take this away from me.”

That makes me raise an eyebrow. This reaction isn’t something I expected. “Is it valuable enough to die for?” I ask.

His jowls quiver, and the hand around my wrist tightens, pushing the point of my gladius harder against his body. “To me it is.”

“Why.”

He releases the amulet, and my arm, taking the book in his lap and lifting it a little. When he does so, I see a pair of tears forming at the corners of his eyes. But he’s smiling.

“Because it’s magic. I can’t read without it.”

“…What?”

He claps the book shut, holds its cover up to me. “Do you know this language?”

I don’t. I’m presuming it’s Rakethi, based on the way the letters look. It’s certainly not Ecean, I can’t even read the title. I shake my head no.

“Give me your hand,” he says.

My eyes narrow at him for a moment, but I sheathe one of my swords and hold out my now-free hand. He snaps the Star of Advuri off his neck and places it into my palm, closing his hand around mine. I feel a strange tingling in my eyes and also in the back of my head, but it’s gone a moment later.

“Now what do you see.”

I… See Rakethi. But now I can read it. The Shepherd’s Journal.

His eyes are on mine, a smile growing on his face as he watches me comprehend what I’m looking at. “Miraculous, isn’t it?”

Well, I’ll be damned.