Sterling grunted as their leg started to cramp from where they were wedged, two arms bent and legs askew, halfway down the Second Master Arcanist’s chimney.

Quick, light footsteps tapped across the cut stone floor below and beyond the sooty chute, and a body rolled into the grate. It launched itself upwards towards Sterling. Thrusting out their hands, legs braced against hard black walls, back pushing into cornerstones, Sterling caught the slippery fingers, runny with widge’s blood, and hefted upwards.

Stone set her feet against the chimney walls and crabbed her ways towards the open sky filtering through the open top, stepping briefly on Sterling as she went, leveraging herself out of the narrow chute with an unnecessary backbend.

Sterling shook out their seized leg and shimmed out after her.

‘Well,’ Stone said, clapping her hands and sending flecks of still wet widge’s blood flying, ‘I think that will do nicely.’

As she hummed in satisfaction over a job well done, Sterling stretched out their limbs – both of them unhurriedly loitering on the Second Master Arcanist’s roof, under the hazy glow of the night dragon’s viridian tail. Its watchful eye circling high in the Pendragon twilight. The few that were wakeful and about glanced up and kept moving. Not because Pendragon saw many engaging in light gymnastics on the roof of the Second Master Arcanist’s house, but because Sterling and Stone were couriers and normal citizens tended to prefer to avoid the sorts of deliveries that Sterling and Stone were hired to dispatch.

‘Send him a message,’ Sterling imitated, in a parody of a husky menacing voice, which belonged more to the manager at the Viridian Bank or the Lord Assassin than the bookish First Master Arcanist. Still, the man wasn’t above intimidating his colleague out of applying for substantial grant funds, so perhaps some menace was warranted.

‘That we did, Stubby. That we did.’

Sterling glowered at the nickname. It was especially insufferable to bear considering that Stone was not only their twin, but she was shorter one by dragon’s fire! Stone’s orange painted mouth pulled into a teasing grin and she reached up to pat Sterling on the head.

‘Let’s get out of here, Stubbs.’

Sterling removed Stone’s hand and, with an answering little smile, used it to propel her off the roof with a careless shove. A thump and an indignant cry rose up from the cobblestones below like music. Sterling grinned over the edge at Stone and jumped down beside her.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Sterling teased back, pulling Stone to her feet, brushing a little soot and rubble from her shoulder, though smears of black and red still decorated every other part of them both. They were halfway down the street when the Second Master Arcanist stumbled home, hankering for a glass of aqua pura after the rowdiness at the Green and Glass. His wail of anger and terror echoed out of the house and across several blocks, rising in volume and in distress. Lights flashed inside, and fireworks burst from the chimney, through the windows and exploded out the door, showering the street in fanciful sparks. Swirling in and around the night dragon’s tail, they pinwheeled into letters and then into words. KISS YOUR COURIERS.

Then the sparks fell away into darkness.

‘Maybe we should be telling them not to kill us, instead.’

Sterling shrugged as they turned away, ‘Where’s the fun?’

The Second Master Arcanist’s howl descended into loud curses, swears and threats against all persons and gods he knew, further crashes and bangs still rattling out of his abode.

Sterling and Stone clattered away, giggling like children. Behind them, a final puff of red smoke billowed out of the Second Master Arcanist’s chimney; the signal that their message had been delivered.

*

Noon was cresting the dragon’s tail before Sterling and Stone rose after a job like the one from the night before. The detritus from their excursion still littered the necessarily sturdy table that served as both dining table and home to all things that did not find a place elsewhere. Money in their crooked little house and place of business, despite their continued employment from the banks of city, lived, for the most part, in the back drawers, in strange forgotten pockets and at the bottom of shoes than found its home in any large, warded vault.

Dressed somewhere between an under-thing and a Dondarian swamp witch, Sterling floated out their hidden doorway in the cramped laneway between a potioner and a wine cellar and hopped across the ways to the baker’s, the several different pairs and lengths of socks they were wearing slipping down their legs as they went. They snuck back into the house with warm, freshly baked bread only moments later.

Stone was reclining lazily across the chaise lounge a customer had liberated for them as payment for a job. It being far too long and large for any wall, they had haphazardly shoved it into their kitchen, dining and business room, near the table.

Ripping the soft bread in half, Sterling tossed some at Stone and collapsed with their own half in a mismatched grandly carved chair, throwing up a leg on the table. They toed a stack of letters with a knife sticking out of them with their over-socked foot.

‘Any prospects?’ Stone enquired, tearing chunks out of the loaf, chewing on some and throwing others into the fire, which belched appreciatively.

Sterling grunted.

‘Well, I have a proposition for you,’ came a foreign voice from the dark doorway.

A pale grey and black form stepped out of nothing, out of shadow, into the warmth of the kitchen. Smoke was bleeding from his edges, striking auburn hair and green eyes the only real colour in him, until they too were washed in grey. Slowly, as the twins watched with careful eyes, his features leeched their way back into lustre. The fire spat embers, which swirled around his feet.

‘Speak, then,’ Stone commanded curious, one flawless brow arched. She grabbed the fire poker from its stand with one hand and, without waiting for permission or reply, speared it through the hazy body. It passed through harmlessly and Stone’s brow crept down again, a smile curled in satisfaction.

The not-quite-there man looked down and stepped sideways, the poker parting the smoke and leaving the man whole again. Stone lowered her chosen weapon.

The half-spectre gave them the barest hint of curled mouth, barely a smile at all, in more amusement than offence. Quietly, he said, ‘I want to send my regards to the woman who imprisoned me for five thousand years. The Soul Witch; my sister.’

Sterling whistled lowly as the fire shivered at the name. Stone gave the man a wide, feral smile and pointed at the door, ‘I will confer with my associate, if you will wait. Thank you.’

Their visitor faded without a word into shadow, though Stone did not wait long enough to see, brow already puckered in thought as she stared calculatingly right through Sterling. Sterling cracked their knuckles.

‘The Soul Witch,’ Sterling mused and then whistled again, ‘We gon’ die.’

Stone’s finger whipped up to point darkly at Sterling.

‘I hate that bitch,’ she said and stood abruptly.

Sterling picked at their nails. ‘Yeah,’ they reluctantly agreed. ‘You know she owns half the souls this side of the city, dragon’s eye knows what she does with them and the night dragon’s getting dimmer by the day.’

Stone nodded along and followed on with, ‘And she’s never once hired us for a job, even though we’re the best couriers in town.’

Sterling snorted at their sister, who stopped short and dared Sterling to continue. Sterling shrugged, ‘What does she need us for? Everyone’s already terrified of her. She literally deals in souls. And she’s a witch.’

They made a gesture that Stone interpreted to mean that those things usually spoke for themselves. Stone paused in making her rejoinder, her steel-capped boots clinking against the floor. ‘Hey, didn’t you?’ She started, shooting her twin a curious and concerned look.

‘No, I sold mine to anyone that was willing to find in exchange for sparky over there,’ Sterling replied, finishing her thought for her. They pointed a loving finger at the kitchen hearth. The fire let out a cheerful little puff of embers and smoke.

‘Worth it,’ they decreed, bestowing a proud, little smile upon the shifting flames.

Then, flapping a hand at the door questioningly, Sterling changed topics without another word about it, a soundless query sparking in their eyes and settling in the curves of their face.

Stone stared into the flame, which stared back unsettlingly, and repeated, ‘I hate that bitch.’

‘Sounds like we have an agreement to me,’ the man’s voice came again, and he stepped out of nothing into the space behind Sterling, who snatched up the knife from the pile of letters and threw it point blank through the visitor’s chest. It blew straight through and stuck in the wall. The man’s face dropped into bewilderment.

‘Is this how you treat all your clients?’

Sterling grinned at him, all teeth, and Stone ignored him, still searching the bright glow of the fire for inspiration.

‘So,’ Sterling said, dislodging their feet from the table’s surface and scattering the pile of letters to the floor, leaning forwards towards their sister, ‘How do we do this? Can you even intimidate someone with an aesthetic, if it’s their aesthetic? Or are we leaving the widge’s blood at home?’

Stone looked up from the fire, heavy business in her face, and asked, ‘What are you offering?’

The man’s green eyes seemed to glow, even as one faded to grey, and he gave them, a short but respectful dip of the chin.

‘Helle,’ he said in introduction, ‘And I am offering balance to the Halls of Time for one, a burning and bright night dragon for another…’

There was shift in the air and then between his fingers was a small orb with orange light flashing about inside.

‘…And Sterling’s soul.’

       Stone was in front of him, snatching up the orb and back before Helle could blink. Sterling was on their feet, clearing the table, putting some things away in their places and just dropping others to the ground, where they rolled away into dark corners unseen.

‘You know, I’m not much of an altruist, but for the night dragon I’ll do it.’

Helle eyes shimmered in a way that said he didn’t believe that for a second.

Work started the very next day.

*

Versicoloured rain splattered down to slick the cobbles and the night dragon’s tail could not burn bright enough to even pierce through the clouds. Stone traipsed across the city, uncaring of the wet or the way it was dying hues into her skin and hair, popping in on every single glass blower listed in Pendragon’s business registry.

Sterling was kept busy mixing paints, sewing clothes, brewing boosters to temporarily enhance aspects of a person, the kind that were integral to their line of work, and employing the meagre sorcery that the twins possessed into getting it all done as quickly as possible. Their main work besides was crafting fool’s fire with the help of their faithful kitchen blaze and dying the splits of light. Ghost candles, or soul’s light, being both expensive and against their aims to obtain. Sterling’s artificial forgeries were almost flawless, their own soul providing an excellent model.

Helle, walker of shadows and a courier in his own right, he who delivered souls to the Halls of Time, waded into being on them both, though he mainly watched Sterling as they worked on the fire, a spark of artful appreciation in his eyes.

Their method of delivery, etched onto a spare wall with an ember brush and hidden against malicious eyes with a coat of secret sealer, had several parts to it. Helle’s brows jumped high on his forehead when saw it, hissing through his teeth.

‘You don’t do anything by halves, do you?’

Stone crashed through the door before Sterling could give more than a cursory smirk, her wet hair slinging drops of hue onto the floor.

‘The glass blowers will cover us, we need only say the word. Other than that, we have a good thousand to start,’ she crowed with an ear-splitting grin, wringing the dye out of her braided locks.

Sterling’s eyes flicked from Helle to Stone and then to the fire, where they reached out and plucked a crackle from it with their fingers and tossed it into an empty wine bottle, lined up with at least twenty others, half of them glowing with fool’s firelight. They gave their twin an answering look of devious delight and said to Helle, ‘Overhand or underhanded, couriers deliver the message.’

*

While Sterling was at ‘work,’ Stone cajoled Helle into using his growing corporeality to peruse some ancient tomes in the Pendragon Archives. Peering over the menu from a nearby shop that served slowly rotating arrays of meat and vegetables under unnecessarily bright arcanists light bulbs, on bread worse than what Sterling and Stone could bully out of their little kitchen fire, Helle’s eyebrows crept slowly, incredulously upwards.

‘Shouldn’t you have done that before you started the job? As in when you were planning it? Before now?’

Stone spared him a long, weighted look, without a word.

Helle dropped the menu back onto the shelf of papers where he’d found it, grumbling to himself, ‘No, of course not. Pardon me, I must be stupid.’

Stone’s lips curled up. She continued to stare without a word, the feeling of chilled spiders creeping their way across Helle’s shoulders, until he tripped sketchily from the house with the feeling of her eyes on the back of his neck.

He returned defeated three days later. His hair was bleached with dust, his form bleeding in and out of tangibility, the scent of an entire libraries worth of old parchment doggedly billowing out of his clothes.

‘There’s nothing,’ he announced to the dark room, oscillating between vindication and disappointment. He was not granted much time to be either. A bundle of red material flew his way from one of the corners of the room, hitting him on the chin before dropping fluidly into his spread fingers.

A booted foot planted itself down on the arm of Sterling’s chair. Stone, swathed in similar crimson with the raven-winged cap of a messenger perched darkly on her dark head, pulled the laces tight and ribboned them into a knot.

‘Always a possibility. Plan B,’ she responded with a nod towards the plan ember penned into the wall. It re-wrote itself accordingly.

An identical hat whipped towards Helle, his fingers snapping up to catch it lest history repeat itself.

‘No,’ he offered in protestation, before Stone turned and fixed him with another of those indecipherable looks that read of things like scrying and compellment and a question or several that probably started with ‘Do you want…?’, though none of those things adequately described the way rationality and real seemed to shrink into the smallest space in Helle’s fifth toe when she gifted him one.

Perching the hat precariously on his head, shaking loose clouds of dust and literal ages past, he wrapped himself in crimson and tried to remember that he was dealing with professionals. Couriers sent messages, with extreme vengeance, messengers sent mail…badly. A ruse based on that premise, he admitted to himself with great reluctance, had some shine of genius to it.

Knocking the cap into more secure footing, resigned to this fate he’d made, he answered Stone with a yielding, ‘Plan B.’

*

The Soul Witch’s house was a palatial dump. Her golden villa squatted on the edge of the red river, huge spherical courtyards spinning around and spilling out of the sharp, shining inclines shooting up towards the night dragon’s viridian tail. Water pulled from the river splashed down from the upper reaches into ponds dotting the border. She never bothered with gates when she could ward floor to wall to the sky above. Complicated wards, Sterling found, were often the easiest to fool.

They passed through the courtyard and into the house with barely a prickle.

The jewel and copper wrought door was open and the floor beyond was inlaid with gems, the walls dripped opulence, and every surface was littered with sparkling trinkets. Actual dragons, Sterling thought severely, had better taste than this.

They snatched up a diamond encrusted apple from a bowl of similarly bejewelled fruit and their face scrunched miserably at the thought of its tackiness, its uselessness and the money that someone had sunk into making it. Without hesitation, they pocketed it to show to Stone later.

It wasn’t hard to find the vault.

The halls converged on the middle of the house like a compass pointing inwards, every single sconce and lamp flickering with the power of ghost candles. In the centre was the vault. A room filled, floor to ceiling, with shelves, rows, stacks, rolling piles of souls. The night dragon and the Halls of Time would not see a single one. They had been claimed by the Soul Witch, bought, traded or sold, swallowed by an old compact with the city. Any unclaimed soul to the South-East of Pendragon Middling belonged to the Soul Witch.

She collected them, sold them for exorbitant prices, built her kingdom upon them, used them as baubles to fill her home and, it was rumoured, used them to condition her curled copper hair.

Sterling picked one up.

‘What a nerve you have? Touching my little trinkets in my little house,’ a purring, reverberating, undulating, lazy voice said from behind them.

Sterling was curious but afraid to ask what the voice thought classified as big. They pivoted around, smiling politely and whipped out the little dusting cloth they had prepared from the tiny apron they had stitched together the day before. They polished the orb with a flourish.

The Soul Witch stood, almost floating, in the doorway, pale yellow eyes glittering predatorially. She pushed a string of curls away from her face imperiously, a patient, pointed, potentially lethal expression sliding onto her cattish face. She looked healthier than Helle, as one might expect of the one who usurped and stuck him inside a statue for five thousand years.

Sterling put the orb back amongst a pile, flapping the cloth and saying, in faint accents from Dondar, ‘Madame, you need a cleaner.’

Everyone knew the best cleaners were Dondarian.

The Soul Witch’s tongue flicked out and she hissed like a pond snake, but she evidently thought better of it, saying to the air in a murmur, ‘The chandeliers are terribly dusty and there is toad skin all over the workshop.’

With a considering grunt, a wrinkle of her nose and dainty clap, she was gone elsewhere. Sterling checked, a little morbidly, to see if they’d started spurting blood, checking their reflection in the polished orb. Determining that they had miraculously come out whole, they hummed to themselves and went off in search of a chandelier or two, the only one the wiser that the orb they had polished glowed a little less authentically than before.

*

Stone abandoned Helle in front of a strange house, a book and ember pen clutched in his hands. Taking a deep breath, he straightened his shoulders and pulled the messengers cap down low. He rapped on the door.

‘Census,’ he intoned apathetically.

*

Helle was tired after the first block. The number of signatures in his book barely scratching the surface of the number of inhabitants in Pendragon Southing, let alone the entire city. Several blocks later, the book was several times heftier and Helle had the dull itch to claw his own eyes out.

*

At the end of the third day, he had to forcefully cease from rolling his eyes at the inconvenience of his own revenge lest he send himself into a coma at the sight of his own brain.

*

By the third week, he was actually starting to enjoy it, after Sterling had re-framed the situation in their typically short-mannered way by asking what pretexts he was using to obtain signatures. Upon hearing he’d been using one alone, they had uttered a vaguely astounded ‘Wow’ and coupled it with a look that said they’d never heard anyone say something so profoundly disappointing and misguided before. Helle took that as explicit permission to improvise.

‘People against toad cruelty.’

‘Arcanist Sandwich Society.’

‘Pendragon bi-annual raffle.’

‘Soul collector. No, that S-O-L-E, like shoes, you know.’

And his personal favourite, ‘Down with the monarchy.’

Pendragon did not and had never had a monarchy. Surprising amounts of people signed anyway.

*

A city’s worth of souls…

Helle hefted the growing book of signatures higher up his chest, booting open the door to Sterling and Stone’s crooked little residence, the thought idling in his mind.

‘That’s a lot of souls,’ Stone remarked deadpanned from beyond the doorway, as though reading his mind. The sound of rolling glass dislodged from the open door greeted his feet as he attempted to pass the entrance, several orbs full of glistening souls light tinking out of the doorway and onto the cobbles. He shooed them back inside with a foot.

The twins were sitting in the kitchen, braiding each other’s hair, surrounded by a hoard of kaleidoscopic glass and glimmers.

‘Holy dragon’s fire,’ Helle exclaimed and a grin bared across Sterling’s pearled teeth.

Wading into the doorway, scattering spheres, eyes flicking from the piles stacked up underfoot, to those lounging across every available surface and dripping down the stairs at the back of the room, Helle could hardly believe how many there were.

‘Ain’t done yet,’ Sterling said, pushing out a chair for Helle, sending collection of ghost candles trotting.

‘A house full of souls,’ Helle mused aloud, rolling a sphere with his toes.

Sterling lay back to stretch their arms along the table, Stone’s feet in their lap, and they both looked at him with glittering, mirthful eyes.

‘That’s a lot of souls!’ They crowed at him in unison and fell into peels of swaggering laughter.

*

It was almost done.

Sterling and Stone sat under the night dragon, arms tucked about each other, as shimmering flashes flickered up the chimney from the house below. Neither flinched as Helle appeared beside them.

The dying glow above cried out to Helle, as did the powerful souls beneath him.

‘Make it burn,’ Stone said, with a crackle of ferocity.

Helle’s face split into a vicious grin.

Through the windows below soul’s light blazed, opalescent. With a snap and a surge, Helle’s fingers clicked together and the dragon’s watchful eye glittered down. Light speared across the evening sky and the night dragon burst into viridian flame.

A hiss of shadow slid across the rooftops from the golden palace and the Soul Witch glided out of it, frazzled copper hair dripping trails of phosphorous wash. Dye and blood ran down her fingers to burn holes in the tiles of the roof.

The twins, wisely, dove behind the chimney stack at the sight of her.

‘Well, apparently that rumour is true,’ Helle heard Sterling mutter before they were aggressively hushed by Stone.

His sister’s eyes flicked disinterestedly over to the chimney stack.

‘My compliments to your couriers,’ she said with fire and ice and steel lacing the grit of her teeth, ‘I will have my souls back now.’

A faint popping sound raced across the air from the distant palace and Helle shook his head vindictively, ‘I’m afraid it’s far too late for that.’

The wards around the palace glinted auriferous against the darkening sky and then drifted away in showers of phantasmagorical cinders and ash. Red smoke poured over the top of the red-running waterfalls and down to pool across the courtyards.

Excited whoops and cheers rose up from behind the chimney and then cut off abruptly, leaving behind a sheepish ring in the air and the impression of two people trying very hard to paint themselves into shadow.

Helle sighed through his nose, a fondness washing through him.

His sister’s eyes narrowed. She threw out an imperious hand, as though to blast through the chimney stack to the figures hiding there and strip the skin from their bones.

‘Those souls are mine, this city is mine,’ she started nastily, and then stopped. Her hand wavered, the light of the night dragon piercing through it. On the horizon, her golden palace started to diffuse.

Helle’s grin turned as the night splintered through her form. Sweetness flooded his tongue and the world around them started to glitter as Helle’s power drank from a river long parched, the eye of the night dragon glinting gloriously across the water.

‘All souls and their contracts are dissolved.’

The Soul Witch’s palace flowed molten, down from spired needles into the crimson river.

‘All material possessions are dissolved.’

Her form flickered in and out of shadow, colour leeching from her, yellow and reds to palest grey. Helle remembered well the pain of the grey wakefulness and its desolate ghost hood, the years to which she had condemned him to live it. His grin stretched wider.

‘Body included,’ he sentenced gleefully.

The Soul Witch spat and rattled at him like a snake, fury whirling across her face, ‘Haunt you and curse you!’ she shrieked, even as the colour stripped from her hair and her body was lost to darkness, ‘When I win my body back, five thousand years will seem like a dragon’s fucking blink.’

Helle waved daintily at her. ‘My regards to you, sister,’ he farewelled, full blush and power welling within him.

She screamed at him, piercing the earth and sky with sound of it, and was taken by the night.

The twins crept out from behind the chimney stack and took in the glowing sky. Sterling whistled appreciatively, ‘Nicely done, excellent climax.’

Helle touched the back of his neck bashfully and several new lights shot into existence above, twinkling signals in the sky before falling down in glistening stardust. KISS YOUR COURIERS.

Stone jabbed Sterling in the ribs and pointed, the two snickering and catcalling, holding out their fingers to catch the silvery soot.

‘Well, I think that will do nice–’ Stone started proudly when a peck dropped onto the edge of her dark braid and she choked, coughing up the words still left in her throat. A second brushed gently over Sterling’s cheek.

Helle’s voice was warm and full as he said, ‘Thank you.’

Soon, the Pendragon river shimmered gold under the dragon’s green tail. Sterling snickered to themselves and both Stone and Helle looked at them in question. A faint blush was dusting their cheeks, but they still crowed across the rooftops, ‘A hall full of souls!’

Helle and Stone re-joined in sync, beaming grins flitting across all their faces, ‘That’s a lot of souls!’