Kit stumbled off the gangplank, her sea-legs betraying her after weeks adrift on the relentless swell. The stench of brine and rot crashed over her like a breaker, sharp and unyielding. Before her loomed Crownspire, a jagged silhouette against the bruised sky—a maze of spiraling towers and crooked lanes ascending from the murky depths of Kingswatch Bay to the unassailable citadel crowning the bluff. There, the Virgin Queen held court from her Bronze Throne, her decrees as capricious as the tides, binding the realm in silken chains of piety and power.

She had never beheld such chaos. Dockhands strained under crates from distant galleons, their guttural curses blending with the keening of gulls and the sharp barters of fishmongers hawking their slick, iridescent hauls. Kit felt herself diminish in the crush, a shadow among giants, as she adjusted her threadbare breeches, the rough weave hanging loose on her wiry frame. Beneath her shirt, the bindings bit into her skin, inflamed by flea welts—a ceaseless itch, a vigilant secret. What had been simple in her angular youth now required constant artifice; her body had ripened at the cruelest hour, forcing her deeper into this masquerade just as oblivion called.

At nineteen, while Provincial girls bent under the weight of husbands and heirs, Kit had wandered more leagues than grizzled veterans twice her span. Yet this metropolis rendered Elmshenge’s bustling fairs a quaint hamlet, forgotten in the dust.

She shoved a stray auburn lock beneath her cap and wove through the labyrinthine streets, sidestepping gutters choked with offal and the gaunt beggars huddled in alcoves like wraiths. Glowfeathers flickered in wrought-iron sconces, their ethereal light pushing back the creeping veil of bloomclose. Her hand grazed the hilt of her slender dagger, woven through her belt—a relic of necessity, its blade forever stained by that desperate parry.

A full moon’s turn had elapsed since she’d fled the Provinces, and isolation clawed at her like famine. The troupe had been her kin: a boisterous clan of illusionists, conjuring wonders on ramshackle platforms under starlit skies. That bond fractured in an instant of rage, when she’d met a lecherous lordling’s advance with steel intended for stagecraft. No remorse shadowed her—only the echo of pursuit, a bounty that might have trailed her across the foaming expanse.

A hulking brute shoved by, his scarred bulk grazing her shoulder, and Kit recoiled, her heart thudding as his eyes lingered, probing. Fool, she scolded herself. Tarltons don’t flinch; they seize the spotlight. Meg’s ghost whispered: Claim the part, or the crowd claims you. So she straightened, adopting a cocksure saunter, poised to prowl Low Crownspire’s underbelly like a vixen amid the coops.

But hunger demanded precedence, her belly a hollow roar after endless shipboard gruel.

“Oi, lad!” A grimy urchin thrust a sheaf of pamphlets, his hair greased like a lamp wick. “Sir Alaric’s triumph at Danvor! By the Shroud, he dispersed the hellfog and routed the corsairs—hailed a paladin born!”

Kit dismissed him with a flick, but he trailed her like a persistent fly amid the din. “Not to your taste? Then heed the shadow prowling the stews—ripping through courtesans under cover of night, gone before bloomclose fades!” He shoved a page at her, its crude engraving twisting her gut: a taloned form hulking over a mangled silhouette.

She pressed onward, pulse quickening at the omen, yet he persisted. “Or gaze upon Annapurna, the Zindari siren, bold in the Queen’s own halls, weaving spells of desire over the highborn! A farthing for the scandal. And if she stirs not your blood, behold the monstrosity she dragged from forgotten lands!”

This halted her. The woodcut depicted a curvaceous enchantress astride a behemoth, its form inflated to lurid extremes—primal, almost carnal in its dominance. Something stirred in Kit’s memory, fragments of fireside yarns warped into this grotesque allure.

“They swear it’s vast as a barn,” the boy crowed. “Snout like a viper, tusks of bone, ears billowing like storm sails, limbs sturdy as elder trees.”

Kit cocked her head, veiling intrigue with indifference. “And what manner of beast is that?”

“An elephant, guv. Legendary as a griffon, bellows to shatter spires.”

“Hm. I’d fancied it ungainly—a bull mated to a serpent, brute force sans elegance.” She scanned the sheet, letters blurring in her scant literacy, pilfered between acts. But the image resonated, evoking realms beyond her banishment.

“Farthing, was it?”

“Farthing apiece, ha’penny the bundle.” His gaze implored. “Ain’t sold a scrap all bloomtide.”

She delved into her concealed pouch, trading coin for paper. He sketched a ragged salute.

“Call me Nubs,” he said, waggling a stunted digit with a gap-toothed grin, then vanished into the throng to harry a rumbling cart.

Kit stowed the pamphlets, the shadow’s likeness coiling in her thoughts like smoke. Across the lane, a sign groaned in the breeze: a frothing tankard beside a steaming pie, a weathered sackbut nailed betwixt. Evading a ponderous wagon and vaulting a trickle of sludge, she shouldered through the tavern’s door, lured by the haze of hearthfire and savory steam. Yet as she stepped inside, a chill pricked her neck—she glanced back, locking eyes with a shrouded watcher in the gloom, their stare keen as honed steel.

###

Not sure who that cliché shrouded watcher is or what the fuck they’re doing, but Grok figured it improved the scene.

Anyway, for contrast, here’s the original scene I wrote.

I’ll let you be the judge.