Kael Shadowleaf
The Name
Shadowleaf is not the name he was born with. It is the name the Muddy gave him, a joke, initially, about how a boy with no money and no family still managed to slip through every situation like something that was not quite there. He kept it. Whatever name his parents used, he has had no use for it in years.
Early Life: The Muddy
Kael has lived in the Dock Ward his entire life, which gives him the specific competence of someone who learned everything from the ground up and nothing from a school. He knows which warehouse foremen accept bribes and which ones report to the Archon's office. He knows the tidal patterns in Copper Bay well enough to know which alleys flood and when. He can name every ship currently docked by sight from two hundred yards.
He met Riya when they were children — in the specific way that children with nowhere to be and no adults paying sufficient attention end up in the same spaces at the same times. She was already taking other street kids under her wing by the time he knew her. He was already picking pockets by the time she knew him. They have been a kind of low-key mutual problem ever since, which is as close to family as either of them gets.
Hearthfast Altani. Woman of negotiable affection. Dock Ward, Asthareth.
He tried to pick her pocket when he was nine. She caught him by the wrist — her reach is surprisingly long for someone standing four feet tall — assessed him in about three seconds, and offered him a deal: a pallet in the cellar, two meals a day, and the use of her address, in exchange for fifteen percent of whatever he brought in. She has renegotiated the percentage twice since then. He is currently at twenty-two.
Jonquil is not his mother and has never claimed to be. She is, however, the person who taught him that how you move through the world is as important as where you end up. She told him when Klick's jobs were beneath him and when they were worth his time. When he came back from Daran's Crossing muddy and out of breath and clearly in a situation, she let him in without a word and put the kettle on. She has opinions about Lothar Firebringer that she delivers in the specific tone of someone who has been right for some time.
Former street rat. Currently serving three years of hard labour in the copper quarries west of the Brass Gate.
Ganar was always the one with the plan — detailed, enthusiastic, delivered with the specific energy of someone who has not yet fully considered what happens if the middle part goes wrong. Kael went along with most of them. He drew the line at the Etherite orb.
The statue of Asthareth in the Bridge Ward is a civic monument, a deliberate exercise in cultural assertion by the council that approved it. The orb in its outstretched hand glows with captured rift-crystal light and is technically removable in the way that things attached to public monuments in daylight on market days are technically removable. Kael told him this. Ganar had a plan for all of those specific concerns. The copper quarries west of the Brass Gate are run by a guild consortium and described officially as correctional labor. Kael visits when he can. Ganar is already drafting the next plan.
Klick: Fence and Contact
Gris merchant and fence. Operates from a navigational instruments shop in the Bridge Ward. Also buys things that people need to not have anymore and sells them to people who need to not be asked where they got them. He is fair, reliable, and genuinely interested in good value for both parties, which makes him unusual among fences.
He connected Kael to his first real jobs, paid honest rates, and eventually introduced him to Lothar Firebringer, which Riya has never forgiven. Klick considers the introduction one of his better business decisions. He considers Riya's ongoing hostility a reasonable cost of doing business.
Vokra Tharn. Operates a Riftdance ring out of a legitimate-looking import business in the eastern Bridge Ward.
Riftdance is Fey Crystal powder, ground rift-crystal from infernal or fey sources, smoked or dissolved and consumed for a hallucinogenic effect that users describe as beautiful and physicians describe as progressively destructive. It is illegal in Asthareth under the Lampkeepers Guild's rift-crystal monopoly, and enforced by the Scarlet Libertines. The city guard enforces the prohibition as a public safety matter; the guild enforces it as an economic one. Both arrive at the same outcome.
Kael started as a bodyguard for small-time dealers moving product in the Dock Ward. He was good at it: reads rooms well, de-escalates before violence is needed, knows when not to be present. He was promoted to full enforcer, which is more money and a different category of problem. Lothar is not careless and not particularly cruel. He is running a criminal enterprise in a city with a growing authoritarian bent, which means his tolerance for mistakes is calibrated against his own exposure rather than anyone else's wellbeing.
The Job
Daran's Crossing is a small trading settlement east of The Starfall River, close enough to Asthareth to be within the city's commercial orbit, far enough to occupy a grey zone in the Archon's Guard coverage. Every transaction between Asthareth and Daran's Crossing passes through a Guard checkpoint on the Bridge of Stars, the only crossing of The Starfall River on this side. Lothar's product route therefore runs through specific gaps in shift rotations that Kael has spent months learning.
Olgut was a dealer with a regular customer base and a notable failure to remit his percentage on time. The collection job was supposed to be simple. Kael had three recent successes behind him and had started reading situations based on expected outcomes rather than current evidence. He underestimated Olgut's guards. The resulting noise drew a city watch patrol. Olgut, his strongbox, and his Riftdance supply were arrested.
The Pursuit and the Greymire
Olgut's guards, who correctly identified Kael as the proximate cause of their current problem, pursued him out of Daran's Crossing. The Greymire Bog lies between Daran's Crossing and The Starfall River, a low-lying marsh fed by runoff from the surrounding slopes, reliably terrible underfoot and useful to anyone who knows it. Kael got lucky, the guards didn't.
He came back across the Bridge of Stars at dawn, on a grain cart, buried under sacking. He sent word to Riya from a public notice board in The Stone Ward using the code they have used since they were twelve.
Tonight: The Salty Leg
The Bridge Ward is the only entry point on this side of The Starfall River. Anyone leaving the Bridge of Stars gate can be watched from above. Kael hid out at The Salty Leg , which sits right at the south end of the Bridge of Stars, at the edge of Lothar's operational territory, because it is where a man in Lothar's position would expect someone in Kael's position to not go. It is not safety. It is the wrong kind of obvious, which is close.
He is also, if he is honest, slightly hoping that Riya's presence will do some of the ambient intimidation work for him while he figures out what to tell Lothar.
Riya has been saying for two years that Lothar was going to get him killed or arrested or both. She has not said I told you so yet tonight because he looks genuinely shaken, which is rare enough that she is giving him a minute. She will say it. She is just waiting for him to have a drink first.
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