Cereña gasped, the envelope in her hands fluttering to the ground. Time seemed to return to normal as the man and her sister rolled into the other fighters. They all fell over like bowling pins. Suddenly Pelegryn and Gerard were there, dragging the various men apart by their collars. The crowd murmured, now subdued with the infamous tavern owner and his massive bodyguard front and center. Cereña rushed forward as well, grabbing her sister by the arm and dragging her through the crowd into Pelegryn's office and slamming the door shut behind them. In the darkness, the single oil lamp seemed to flare up brighter for a few moments.

    “What in seven hells was that?” Cereña's voice was shrill in the silence of the office, and Minette cringed away from her. The elder woman's eyes were silvered around the edges with tears. Her hands hung near her hips, wringing the stained and torn emerald dress. Cereña ignored her, pacing in front of Pelegryn’s desk. Her mind reeled, trying to rationalize what she’d just seen. “What just happened? Why would you get in the middle of that? And why,” she punctuated the last question, slamming her hands onto the desk and looking over at her sister, “aren’t you bleeding out on the floor right now?”

    “I-” Minette whimpered, still worrying at her dress. Her whole body shook. Cereña wanted to rage, to pace, she wanted answers… Though it very much pained her to do so, Cereña took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. For her sister’s sake, she had to keep her head. At least as much as anyone could after witnessing what should’ve been impossible... Another breath, and she rolled her shoulders back as she straightened. She needed something to do. Something normal. A third breath and she turned, took two steps towards Minette, grabbed her by the shoulders, and gently guided her to the chaise. It still felt faintly warm from where she’d been laying there just- was it just five minutes ago? It seemed like entire lifetimes had passed. After Minette was settled, Cereña immediately began to examine her. In moments her mind had settled into the familiar rhythm. This was something she’d done numerous times after her fights, both to herself and for some of the other fighters she actually liked. Though she was no healer by any stretch of the imagination, Cereña could dress and assess minor wounds almost in her sleep by now.

    There was what looked like a small bruise forming on Minette’s delicate cheekbone, probably from an errant limb in the pile as she’d been caught under the fighters. However, the mark came off as a smudge of dirt when Cereña ran her thumb across it.  Her sister winced several times, the tears quietly falling down her face now, as Cereña’s slender fingers prodded and probed nearly every inch of her torso and head. Strangely enough, there seemed to be no other wounds. Cereña paused. This was bizarre. Minette had been in the middle of a good-sized bar brawl and somehow came out completely unscathed? But… Her right hand hovered near her sister’s shoulder, shaking ever so slightly. She gulped, steeled herself, then gently pushed Minette’s shoulder forward and away, facing her so that she could examine her back.

    There, just a hand’s breadth to the right of her spine and nearly equidistant from her ribcage and the curve of her hipbones, was a perfect horizontal slice roughly two inches wide. The skin beneath looked perfectly smooth and pale, unblemished.

    Minette's dress and apron were all torn and dusty from the tavern floor. Her braid was now an unkempt mess instead of its usual perfectly tousled, undone look. But there wasn't a scratch on her.

    Cereña stuck her fingers into the hole left behind by the knife, and Minette nearly jumped out of her skin. “Sorry,” Cereña mumbled, steadying her left hand on Minette’s shoulder as she probed the rip again. The fabric was cleanly cut, the fibers very obviously severed by a sharp blade. Though she pulled the fabric in every direction,  nowhere could Cereña see any sort of damage beneath. “How in the gods’ names…” It shouldn’t be possible. She didn’t know how it was possible, but Cereña had seen it with her own eyes. The knife had crumpled, like paper, against Minette’s skin.

    Unable to stop herself, Cereña scooted back as far as she could on the chaise. Her hands gripped the sides of the chair, knuckles nearly white as she processed just what exactly that meant…

    Minette was unnatural… Minette was a Nazari…

    It couldn’t be true. This was her sister, someone she’d known her entire life. Before she could even remember, Minette was there. The one constant thing in her life. This was the person who had sang lullabies to her as a child, who she’d looked up to since she was old enough to walk. Minette couldn’t possibly be… Cereña would’ve known...

    The office door burst open as Pelegryn entered, his normally expressive features unreadable. Something about that unnerved Cereña even more, and she felt the need to stand. Her hands felt hot, clenched into fists now that she didn’t have the chair to grip. Pelegryn shut the door behind himself, turned to the two women clearly in distress in his office, and simply said, “Our guests are leaving. Gerard and the girls are ushering everyone out.” Cereña gaped, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping air. Minette merely nodded, using her torn and stained apron to wipe beneath her eyes. It came away with a smudge of black from the rim of kohl around them. “Not a word of this, to anyone. Have I made myself clear? Good. Now Rini, darling, please take Minnie here to bed. She’s obviously had a very long night.”

    Cereña bristled at the pet names. When she’d been nothing but a toddler, Minette had taken to calling her ‘Rini’ because she kept pronouncing it as ‘suh-rini-a’. She’d hated it. And ‘Minette’ wasn't exactly the easiest name for a child to say either. They hadn't used those names in years, not since Minette had insisted on her thirteenth birthday that she was now a teenager and therefore too old for ‘kid names.’ Of course, Cereña had immediately asserted that at nine she was also too old, and they had agreed to not use the nicknames again. Pelegryn, however, had since used them whenever he felt the need to be subtly condescending. Cereña noticed, and ignored him.

    When Cereña's made no move to follow his command, Pelegryn sighed and took Minette by the hand, gently helping her stand and guiding her out the door. Minette allowed herself to be led, still shaking

    Cereña stood frozen for a moment, watching. Pelegryn was never one to get overly worked up, but this complete ignorance of the night’s events was odd… Then again, she felt strangely detached herself. Like this whole thing was happening to someone else. Or in a dream. Shaking herself, she started to follow their retreating forms, but was stopped at the doorway by Gerard. He held out a familiar manila envelope to her.

    “Thanks.” She took the envelope she’d all but forgotten in the chaos of the fight. It was a little worse for wear, trampled and bent along one of the corners. Even this, which had avoided much of the scuffle, was damaged. How was it possible that her sister was not? She stared intently at the envelope, willing it to giver her answers.

    “Watch yourself around that one, lassie.” Gerard’s deep, thickly accented voice startled her out of her staring contest with the paper. He rarely spoke, and though she'd known him for years it still surprised her every time she heard the rich lilt of the Southern farmlands come out of his mouth. When she looked up at him with a raised brow, he nodded towards the stairs, where Pelegryn and Minette's feet were disappearing up to the second floor that housed the living spaces. “There's somethin’ a wee bit off about all this. Just watch yer back, aye?”

    “Of course.” She felt the beginnings of a smile tug at her lips. He was a brute, and Pelegryn's personal bodyguard, but he had a good heart. She couldn't even count the times over the years that he’d been her sparring partner, or carried her or Minette on his broad shoulders as they followed Pelegryn around one of Avaricé’s various summer fairs. She thought of him like a kind of big brother, so she knew he understood when she added, “Pelegryn's involved. I don't trust that man as far as I can throw him.”

    Gerard chucked, patting her on the shoulder. It felt almost like being pounded on by a giant hammer, but in an oddly comforting way. “Take care ‘o that sister of yers too, lass. T’might seem like she's different now, like a stranger, but she’s still yer kin. She’s gon’ have a hard ‘nuff time hiding it. Don’ let her do it alone.”

    Cereña flushed “I-,” she began, but a sharp look from Gerard down his slightly crooked nose silenced her protest. He was right. She’d forgotten for a moment, in her panic about Minette's strange new ability and the subsequent revelation about just what exactly that made her. Sheepishly, she nodded. Gerard chuckled quietly again and with one large, meaty hand he nudged her towards the stairs. The gesture was far more gentle than should be possible from a man of his size. At the foot of the steps, Cereña's paused and turned back to the grizzled bodyguard. “Thanks.” A slightly awkward pause, then, “Night, Gerard.” She disappeared up the steps as well, clutching the envelope to her breast.

**********

    Minette couldn't get warm, and she couldn't sleep. Her whole body shook with tremors, despite the warm, late Spring night and the blankets wrapped around her like a cocoon. And her thoughts raced around inside her head like wild dogs after a rabbit. Nearby she could hear the slightly uneven breath of her sister, pretending to be asleep. They hadn't said a single word to each other since Pelgryn had escorted her up here, Cereña slipping in like a ghost a few minutes later. She wanted to roll over and rouse her sister from her feigned slumber, to say something… Anything.

    She had magic. That much she knew for certain. She had felt it ripping through her as the knife had come towards her flesh, had reached a point of impact and then crumpled away from her skin. It was something she had felt before, she now realized, but not nearly so powerfully. Occasionally she had felt small ripples of it when chopping vegetables in the kitchen, though until now she’d thought she was daydreaming. She did that fairly often, and she tended to be a little clumsy. She was honestly surprised she'd never cut herself during one of her many reveries, but now it seemed that may be impossible.

    The second thing she knew was that she was Nazari. A very dangerous thing to be in Avaricé. She didn't know how, but considering she had no clue who her father was and her mother had taken all of her secrets to the grave it wasn't really surprising. Minette sighed, pulling her blankets more tightly around her body. She didn’t know what to do… She supposed she just continued on with life and hoped that no one had really noticed what happened in the chaos of the fight. Or, if nothing else, that no one mentioned anything to the authorities.

**********

    Bright sunlight streamed through the small window, dust motes dancing in the beam. Cereña blinked rapidly, adjusting to the brightness. She stretched, feeling the mattress give against her back, then rolled over and swung her legs off the bed as she sat up. The small room was sparsely decorated, mostly things the sisters had collected over their years. A few posters from the street fairs whose art style had caught Cereña's eye, some figurines of princes and damsels that Minette had loved to play with as a child. And books. If there was one thing the sisters agreed upon, it was books. Though they were something most of the common folk could only access in the few libraries strewn about Avarice’s four outer districts, Pelegryn's lucrative business had allowed Cereña and Minette to amass a small collection of tomes that were lovingly distributed across nearly every shelf in the room along with the small writing desk along the wall opposite the girls’ double bed.

    Minette was gone already, and Cereña groaned inwardly. Of course she couldn’t just lay low for a few days, Cereña thought as she stripped off her nightclothes and donned a long tunic in a rich olive color over her brown leggings and leather boots. After she'd checked the hidden pockets in her boots to be sure the knives she kept there were still secure, she grabbed a large book bound in thick brown leather that was sitting on the small shelf next to her bed and headed downstairs.

    The inside of the Crossed Keys always seemed absolutely cavernous at this time of day, devoid of anyone but the staff dusting and cleaning up the mess from the previous night. They mostly pretended to ignore Cereña as she crossed the room to the kitchen, but she didn’t miss the sideways glances that were exchanged when they thought she couldn’t see.  She took a bowl of fruit and a large muffin from the huge wooden table that would soon serve as the staging area for trays of food as customers came in for lunch. Still glancing around for Minette, she attempted nonchalance as she flopped into a large, worn red armchair next to the fireplace. The fire was burning low, more for ambience than warmth, but Cereña still enjoyed the feeling of heat that tingled along her skin. She opened the book and settled in.

    She got only a few pages before the whispers began, exactly as she’d expected.

    “Did you hear that the baker’s son was arrested?” A pretty brunette with olive skin and bright, blue eyes asked her companion. Cereña scowled over the top of her book at the two gossips sweeping and dusting on the far side of the common room. The other woman, who wielded her broom like a scythe, was slightly portly with dishwater blonde curls. Cereña vaguely recalled her being named Hilde. “They say he was caught breathing fire into the ovens, like some sort of dragon.”

    “Nonsense!” Hilde exclaimed, “That scrawny thing a dragon? I doubt that very much! What I heard was that he was tumbling with one of the Weaver girls and she discovered he had tiny horns underneath all those brown curls atop his head. Poor thing.” Cereña saw Hilde and the other girl shaking their heads out of the corner of her eye.

    “The evening shift said something weird happened with Minette last night too. That gang fight they were all raving about? She got in the middle of it.”

    Shit.

    “So what?” Hilde huffed, using her broom to whisk up some cobwebs hiding high in a corner.

    “So she got in the way of the business end of a Silver Viper’s blade and walked away completely unharmed.” The dark haired young woman pointed out, her movements jerky with excitement. “Bené said he saw the knife himself.”

    Cereña schooled her face into one of mild concentration as she stared at the lines of text blurring on the page before her. She could feel the pointed glances from the two women, and she knew they were still talking, but everything had suddenly narrowed to a single word in her mind: Go.

    She had to find Minette.

    Cereña waited as long as she dared, until the two women drifted into the kitchens in anticipation of the lunch crowd that would soon show. The second their backs were turned, she sprang up and headed out the door.

    The streets of Avaricé were congested, full of vendors selling their wares and patrons who stopped to observe before moving on. As she moved down the wider, more populated streets, she cursed quietly under her breath. She couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to assume that no one had noticed last night’s debacle.