“I could wear my new tunic,” Jiro said.

Rakesh frowned. “Then The Hangman will smell us coming from a mile away!”

“What if we sneak through the old tunnels to get into his building? You know, go all the way down where all the rats live.”

“Those are about to collapse. They’d kill us.”

Jiro and Rakesh sat at their decaying table surrounded by the familiar, humid darkness, and speculated. Gekko moved about in the background, scowling as he scrounged for dinner like the hungry rats that always darted through the room. His pale white face moved like a specter in the darkness.

“We must do it tonight,” Jiro said, leaning forward. His eyes gleamed, alive with new purpose and life. “While it’s fresh in our blood. You can’t let things fester. Ideas, if you don’t act on them, move to someone else. This one is ours. You were blessed to see that The Hangman received a special box. We must act, and soon!”

Rakesh grinned. “Yes, my friend. Tonight, freedom could be ours. That box surely holds something. The Triad has blessed us.”

In the background, Gekko dropped a pan and cursed.

The loud, metallic clang that resulted sent a physical jolt through Rakesh. For a moment, he questioned his own sanity: Had he lost his mind to try to sneak into The Hangman’s house? Had the disjointed life of Iskawan finally sank into his blood? Perhaps, like Jiro, he had started to straddle a fine line he didn’t even know existed. Maybe his sanity was slipping away like a loose, wet rope and he didn’t even know he was losing it!

“Dinner,” Jiro said, planting his palms firmly on the table. “Let’s eat before we go. We’ll need nourishment and energy before we find our path to freedom.”

Just like that, all of Rakesh’s doubts dissipated at the sound of Jiro’s cheer. Even if he had lost part of his mind in agreeing to try and secure the box, it was better to have this kind of hope than to listlessly endure the cyclical, unending days of Iskawan.

As he searched for the food he had hidden somewhere in their shelter, Jiro spouted out more ideas, every one more outrageous than the last until they became too ludicrous for the others to entertain.

“You’re insane,” Gekko cried.

“Perhaps,” Rakesh concurred. “But better to be filled with hope and madness than nothing at all.”

Gekko drew in a deep breath, then let it all out in one long swoop. He shook his head, as if in regret. “I’ll lose both roommates tonight if you do this.”

“Don’t cry for us, Gekko,” Jiro said.

“Now I’ll live all myself. Both of you are going to disappear just like the Vakums that have been vanishing lately. Who will I play games with?” he snapped.

“Trade my clothes for something nice,” Jiro said, rolling his eyes before he tossed a dried, crumbling piece of seaweed into his mouth and laughed.

Gekko scowled and slipped into his portion of their shelter, the far corner where he often chose to sulk.

Everyone in Iskawan sulked. Or so it appeared. With only a few floating orbs and the occasional fairy light flitting by, the shadows made even someone’s sincere smile appear like a grimace.

“Rice,” Jiro said, dumping something for Rakesh into a wood bowl carved from a plank of wood they’d found abandoned by the south wall. “Our usual delicacy.”

Falling silent, Jiro seemed to inhale all of his stale rice at once, even though the taste was not to be relished. Everything in the prison-city tasted like the damp air. Like old metal and mouldering wood. Even the water, brackish and dank, had a mineral taste.

Rakesh’s rice ground beneath his teeth. The old grocer man, who distributed the food when the supply carts came, often filled the rice with small rocks to make the weights heavier and gain himself more money. No one protested; what did it matter, anyway?

Rakesh ate quickly, set his bowl aside, and stood. “Gekko, are you coming?”

A distant mumble sounded. Rakesh and Jiro waited, but Gekko made no further response.

“Asleep already,” Jiro said with a shake of his head. “We’ll go without him.”

Three fairy lights zipped into their apartment when Jiro peeled up an old floorboard, rummaged around, and extracted two gritty knives.

“Not the best quality,” he murmured, running the pad of his thumb along several nicks along the edge. “But enough to defend us.”

Rakesh thought of The Hangman’s considerable girth and gulped. Nonetheless, two minutes later, the two friends stole off into the murky city, Rakesh following Jiro through the shadows.

Passing silently through Iskawan wasn’t new to either of them, but moving with mutual planned intent was. Everything they did felt loud. Every step seemed to be the wrong one.

Rakesh kept his knife close to his side under his tunic, to keep it from glinting off a passing fairy. The Vakums weren’t aware enough to know or care what they were seeing – perhaps not even that Rakesh was a man running past them – but there were others with sharp eyes and sharper tongues that would report to The Hangman anything suspicious or possibly indicative of escape attempts. Men were willing to do anything to improve their station.

“You’re good, yes?” Jiro asked under his breath when they turned a corner, bypassing an old woman who rarely left her porch.

The woman’s eyes constantly scanned the darkness, strangely empty despite being lucid. Every now and then she’d emit a shrill cackle into the darkness.

“Fine,” Rakesh returned, his tone hushed.

Jiro grinned, his teeth gleaming under a glowing orb as they crossed a main street, leaving the heady stench of refuse behind.

“Good.”

A small market operated ahead, the calls of those attempting to barter their pathetic wares ringing through the night. The end of this cycle would come soon enough – for those still attempting to hold onto the patterns of daily life instead of giving into the vague existence of just moving through Iskawan. Jiro and Rakesh wandered through the market, pretending to be interested in the meager wares set out on crooked tables.

Someone laughed. A tinkling sound followed.

Rakesh had to slow his pace as Jiro’s eyes trailed over a table filled with rare glass beads. The owner scowled, leaning close to his treasures.

“A tunic for those?” Jiro asked, then strode away laughing at his own strange humor that no one but him seemed to understand.

Rakesh glanced over his shoulder, saw the man snarl, and hurried after his friend.

“I don’t know about this venture, Jiro,” Rakesh murmured, shuddering. “Maybe we should wait and do it another time.”

A heavy feeling seemed to exist throughout Iskawan tonight, he thought. Tonight seemed deeper and more complex than most nights, as if the darkness here could permeate his cold bones just like the seemingly eternal mists.

Jiro didn’t break stride. If anything, he moved faster.

Rakesh hurried to keep up.

“When else would you do it?” Jiro asked. His face had fallen into hard, flinty lines.

“Tomorrow?”

“You’ll lose courage. Besides, what if he moves the box? No, it must be tonight.”

A current of shame moved through Rakesh. Hadn’t this been his idea after all? He couldn’t back out now. No – he didn’t want to back out now. Not when the tantalizing promise of freedom lay ahead.

“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I, uh, lost my head for a moment in the mist. You know how it is.”

“Courage, Rakesh. This could be our great moment.”

Finally, the outside of The Hangman’s house loomed in the great darkness inside Iskawan. The glowing orbs closer to the main part of Iskawan didn’t extend this far, leaving passing fairy lights and the distant, feeble glow from the lights on the main road to illuminate the building’s exterior.

Rakesh pointed to a dilapidated shack that sat across the street from The Hangman’s place.

The friends snuck inside. Enough boards existed to hide their presence, but not to keep a person seeking refuge alive.

Yet no one would want to live this close to The Hangman.

“We wait,” Jiro murmured. “For the cycle to close.”

The subtle movement and calls from the streets slowly died down. Both Rakesh and Jiro kept their gazes glued to the outside of The Hangman’s house, as if they could will him to never return again. The lack of any movement, sound, or fairy lights surely meant he had left the premises again or was sleeping inside.

Rakesh felt a surge of hope. Perhaps this was their night, and the Sacred Triad smiled down on them.

“Now,” Rakesh said, when the overwhelming stillness of Iskawan seemed to pull him to his feet. “Now is the deepest moment of the night.”

Jiro stood, scrambling up after him.

Like wraiths, they slipped across the street, gliding into the night behind The Hangman’s house. A series of old pipes, once connected, ran across the back of The Hangman’s house. Gathering all of his courage, Rakesh grabbed the first one he countered and hauled himself up.

Jiro followed behind, surprisingly spry. No one in Iskawan held much weight on their bodies, as if the darkness had sucked all their substance from them. Still, Jiro appeared to have more strength than Rakesh expected from his skeletal frame.

Once on the rooftop, Rakesh crouched. The shoddy shingles felt gritty and cool on the bottom of his bare feet. He pointed out three holes, but only one big enough for them to slide through.

Jiro grinned his acceptance. Rakesh moved first.

The edges of the hole seemed to swallow his body, pulling him farther into the building’s top story. The edges dug into his skin, but he ignored the pain and continued through. With a quiet thud, he landed on the floor in the darkness. Jiro did the same, making the same muffled sound.

Then total silence. The silence of The Hangman’s house surrounded them.

Both paused, waiting.

Was The Hangman home? Did he hear them enter?

At first, Rakesh couldn’t hear anything but the steady thrum of his own heartbeat in his ears. Slowly it faded, pulsing into quiet. When no shadow sprang out to attack them and no gravelly voice called for their death, Rakesh relaxed.

Jiro reached over, tapping him on the arm and pointing to the other side of the room where two fairy lights buzzed, alighting amongst the rafters and shedding just enough light for the two intruders to make out the vague shape of things. They stood on the top floor.

A table with four legs – a rarity. Its hard wood hadn’t even given into the rot and decay that plagued the rest of the wooden artifacts in Iskawan. Even the glass windowpanes remained whole, none broken or cracked.

There were no adornments or curtains in the room, just a bed on the ground, a wardrobe on the far side of the room, and an assortment of things made of iron that hung along one wall. Rakesh spotted a pair of manacles, a long iron tongue, and the glint of a sword, and shuddered. The two of them descended slowly from the top floor, down a rickety set of stairs. No signs of life permeated the bottom floor. Once there, Rakesh breathed a sigh of relief. Escape from the bottom would be far easier.

The box had to be there.

Jiro drifted across the room, picking at this and that as he went. Rakesh moved off to the right, toward a wooden chest beneath the window. He lifted the lid carefully, testing the old hinges. They emitted a slight groan as he slipped his hand inside.

At first, he felt silk. His heart pounded. There was enough fabric in this chest alone to get him down the wall, for certain!

The temptation to pull the fabric free almost overcame him, but he stuffed it away. Losing focus would only jeopardize his greater mission.

Rakesh carefully moved his hand through the rest of the chest. He encountered hard, iron-like things. There were sharp, razor-like lances, and a metal ball with spikes sticking out of every available space. Weapons, for sure. Torture devices, no doubt.

Rakesh quickly retracted his hand and backed away.

Jiro appeared at his side, moving as quietly as a fairy-fire. His eyes glowed as he clasped Rakesh by the shoulder.

The wooden box, the object of their quest, rested in Jiro’s hands.

Rakesh sucked in a sharp breath. Emphatically nodding to indicate his recognition of the object, he reached out to touch it. His fingers rubbed along the edge of the rough wood.

Possibly, just possibly, it housed his destiny inside.

Jiro put a finger under the lid and pried it open.

The door to The Hangman’s house slammed open. Rakesh reared back, a scream in his throat. Jiro jumped, rattling the box.

Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by dim light from the fairy-fires buzzing outside, was The Hangman. His bald head, massive shoulders, and bulging arms seemed to enter Rakesh’s very soul.

“Miserable wretches,” The Hangman boomed. “You think you can pull off anything in Iskawan that I wouldn’t know about? You’re fools. Then again, all of you here are fools. You’re half-Vakum yourself, choosing to wander in this darkness.” He gave a bark of his laughter, his expression twisted in a snarl. “And now you’re going to regret trying to make a fool out of me.”

Rakesh felt his captivity all at once. One moment he was staring at The Hangman, the next he was face-to-face with three other men. They seized him and shoved him into the ground by several pairs of hands. He tried to stand and scramble away, but a sharp kick to the ribs sent him reeling. He collapsed just as a fist found his back, jarring the hope out of him. His entire body rattled with the blow.

Nausea welled up in his stomach, hot and fast. He seemed to become the pain. A blow to the jaw. A crack at his ribs.

“Stop.”

The Hangman’s rolling voice again filled the room. His aides ceased, leaving Rakesh in a heap on the floor.

Rakesh peered out through one swelling eye. He spied Jiro also on the ground, half-conscious and moaning. His lip was bleeding, spilling bright crimson droplets onto his chin.

“The Hangman is not a man you should cross,” The Hangman sang, stepping forward.

The glint of a metal weapon sparkled in the darkness. He tapped it against his open palm. Rakesh started at it, attempting to regain his scattered, pulsing thoughts.

A sword.

“I think, in order for you to anticipate what is coming for you, you should have a little . . . preview of what I will bring to those who cross me. My hope is always that you can teach the next generation of idiots what not to do, but no one in Iskawan ever really learns, do they?”

Jiro choked back a shriek when The Hangman leaned down to caress the side of his face with his fingertips.

“Simple, stupid idiots. The Hangman will teach you the ways of Iskawan. Too bad you won’t live through it to be a better citizen, eh? I think we’ll start with your ear.”

As fast as a flash of lightning, The Hangman turned, grabbed Rakesh’s ankle, and jerked him close. Rakesh bit back a scream. Spears of pain, hot as lances, bolted through his body as he slid across the floor, colliding with Jiro. Sweat broke out across Rakesh’s brow and trickled down the sides of his face. He prayed a silent, desperate prayer to the Triad.

The Hangman’s teeth gleamed bright right above him, his teeth sickly yellow in the dim fairy lights. He grabbed Rakesh’s hand, squeezing it until the joints popped.

“You don’t need that finger, do you?”

Rakesh met The Hangman’s steely, cold gaze. A thousand replies spun through his mind. Desperate thoughts.

He wasn’t fighting for his freedom for himself.

The Hangman grabbed him by the neck with one hand and hauled him to his feet.

“Let the fun begin.”