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Fizz kicked Brann's chest with his tiny furry paws. A small leather purse slid out, the same soft heavy sound John had heard in the back room of that green door. Fizz dragged it to John like a thief with a grin and put both paws on it. "I require a drumroll. Let's see what's inside."

"No drumroll," John said. "Open it."

Fizz bit the tie with a small pop and spilled the purse into his paws. One coin big and yellow rolled to John's boot and spun there, ringing itself out. A gold coin. Not many men held one. Fewer men held two. There were also silvers —brighter, smaller— maybe sixteen, maybe twenty. Fizz's eyes went huge. He hurled his face into the pile and came up with two silvers stuck to his cheek.

"Jackpot," he whispered, holy. "Snack fund. Soup fund. Emergency pancake fund."

John put a finger on the gold and slid it back into the purse. "It's a gold coin. Where did you get it?" John asked Edda.

"Its the bounty for capturing you," she said. "We were paid one. The other after we deliver you. We are owed the other and will not collect it."

"Who gave you the bounty?" John asked.

Edda explained everything to John. Fizz listens with an evil smile. He got an idea.

Fizz made a small scandalized sound. "We can find the steward. We can collect double. No Triple. Interest."

"No," John said. He tied the purse and pushed it into his own coat as if it were just a rock. "We do not walk to a house with who knows how many guards on our tails. We live. We get stronger. Then we will take our revenge. We use this to eat and to buy important things."

Fizz sighed in a long, theatrical way that made Edda glance up despite herself. "No," he said. "It is my money. John, I want to spend it alone. You can keep it for me. But I will ask for it later."

"Okay," John replied. "It's yours."

Fizz thought to himself, "John's birthday is coming, I will buy him a good gift with the gold coin."

He rummaged again, fast and neat. He came up with the copper mesh, a small oil vial that smelled like the bad tea of the alley, two small uncommon knives with no names on them —good little tools but not good enough in front of Fizz holdings rare dagger— and a short length of rope that did not trust its owner. "Useful," he said, satisfied. "Tools for our crimes of goodness."

Edda had already moved to Rusk. She did not search him with grief. She had liked him about as much as he had liked himself, which was not much. She removed a coin, a silver one; she took his knife; she rolled him like a sack of grain and did not groan. She worked fast and she worked quietly and she did not look at John unless she had to.

"I need a cart," she said, tone all work now. "You will hear a wheel. It will creak once. If a city guard asks, they will be told I am moving broken furniture for a cousin. They will not ask a second time. They do not like my cousin." She said to John.

"Good," John said. He lifted his hand again and the little void flickered one more time, just to remind all present that it was still in the room even when it was not. Then he shut his palm and it shut too.

He looked down at Brann and Rusk's dead bodies again. He did not say anything to them. He did not kneel. He did not spit. He did not bless. He did not curse. He just looked and let the weight sit where it wanted to sit and did not argue with it.

Fizz hovered at his shoulder and, for once, did not make a joke to shift the weight. He pressed a paw to John's sleeve. "Let's move," he said, small. "Before the city gets nosy."

John nodded. He tucked the purse deeper. He slid the mesh into the small bag because copper is useful. He picked up the little bell and handed it to Edda because she would use it better than them. They don't need it.

Edda took it and the look she gave him was not thanks and not fear and not anything a child would draw in a book. It was a work look: "you gave me a tool which was ours; I will use it for you; do not hover." He respected that.

He turned. He did not hurry. He walked back the way he had come, out of the clean strip, into the long V of lamp light, into the ordinary noise of evening that had been waiting politely outside the lane while men argued with air.

Fizz followed, one last look back, one last small spark flicked to the edge of a dark smear on the stone that was not as big as a man might think. It hissed and went out. He nodded to himself, satisfied in a very neat way, like a cat tucking the edge of a blanket with a paw before lying down.

They crossed back into the moving world.

Half a street away, a woman opened a shutter to shake a rug and did not see them. A boy ran by shouting a song about buns. The clock with one hand pointed straight at night now. The river wind came up the lane and touched John's face and took nothing from it. His face said he was thinking about something deep.

Fizz could not keep quiet forever. He sped up, came in front of John's nose, flew backward again like a bossy firefly. "First time you killed a human?" he said gently.

John's jaw worked. "Yes."

"Do you need to stop and be sick on a wall," Fizz asked without teasing.

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