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that would be gone, and only the stars of the Rim—sparse, insubstantial—would accompany a slender crescent in the west, lighting her way home.
    For a moment she almost went back into the shop, panic tightening her throat. Help me, she would say, I’ve been at work longer than I should have, please walk me home.... But home was a good distance away and Gresham would be busy—and besides, he had already expressed his total disdain for her fear of the night, often enough that she knew any plea to him would fall on deaf ears. You carry wards enough to supply the damned city with ‘em, he’d say scornfully. Women have walked the streets with less, and made it home all right. Where’s your sense, girl? I have work to do.
    With one last deep breath of the shop’s dusty air, taken for courage, Narilka forced herself to step out into the night. The chill of the autumn evening wound around her neck like icy tendrils—or was that her fear manifesting?—and she drew her shawl closer about her, until its thick wool managed to ward off the worst of the cold.
    Was she overreacting? Was she being unreasonable? Gresham had said it so often that now she was beginning to doubt herself. Did she really have any concrete evidence that the risk to her was greater than that facing other women—which is to say, that a female should always be careful and keep moving, but most survived the night?
    As she passed by the silversmith’s shop she stopped, long enough to catch sight of her reflection in the smooth glass storefront. Thick hair, onyx-black; smooth white skin, now flushed pink from the cold; lashes as thick as velvet, framing eyes nearly as dark. She was delicate and lovely, as a flower is lovely, and fragile as a porcelain doll. It was a face mortal women envied, men would die for, and one—neither man nor mortal, but an evil thing, Erna’s darkness made incarnate—would destroy, with relish.
    Shivering, she hurried onward. The faster she went, the sooner she would get home. In the inner streets of Jaggonath there were still people about, crowds enough that she could imagine herself lost among them. But they thinned as she left the commercial districts, leaving her feeling naked in the night. She had to keep moving. Her parents must be worried sick by now—and with good reason. She looked about herself nervously, noting the abandoned streets of Jaggonath’s western district, the tiny houses set farther and farther apart. The road had turned to mud beneath her feet, cold enough to chill her through the soles of her shoes but not yet frozen enough to be solid; her feet made rythmic sucking noises, painfully conspicuous, as she walked. She felt like a walking target.
    The Hunter. That was what they called him. She wondered what he was, what he had once been. A man? That was what the tavern girls whispered, between giggles and mugs of warm beer, in the safety of their well-lit workplace. Once a man, they said, and now something else. But with a man’s lust still, corrupted though it might be. Why else were all his victims female, young, and inevitably attractive? Why would he have such a marked taste for beauty—and for delicate beauty, most of all—if some sort of male hunger didn’t still cling to his soul?
    Stop it! she commanded herself. She shook her head rapidly, as if that could cast out the unwanted thoughts. The fear. Don’t! She would make it home all right, and everybody would be very relieved, and that was that. Her parents would be furious at Gresham for keeping her after dark and they would write him an angry letter, which he would promptly ignore—and then it would be over. Forever. No more than a memory. And she could say to her children that yes, she had been out after dark, and they would ask her what it was like, and she would tell them. A fireside story like any other. Right?
    But you are what he wants, a voice whispered inside her. Exactly. You are what he sends his minions into Jaggonath to