Torches flushed the streets amber in the main routes of the city, gold flickers trickling between cobblestones and fading into black.

Deeper, there were no torches. The only light that touched the narrower streets turned them indigo, the moonlight highlighting everything in square cut white lines and glimmers across glass panes.

A point of orange appeared in the night, and briefly lit up Mars' dark eyes as she drew in a final inhalation from her tobacco stick. Smoke wafted down the silent road and wisped into just another grey flutter beneath the white bath of the moon.

Movement across the road. A door opened, and light fled out from an alleyway door onto the figure of a ratty old man. He entered, and the door shut.

Leather creaked as Mars made an unseen gesture to the equally unseen men with her, and the group of three moved across the road at a casual saunter to go and knock quite politely at the door.

"Who is it?" a sharp voice demanded from somewhere behind it.

"Mars," she answered.

There was a long moment of hesitation, and then the owner apparently decided he'd rather his door remain intact, and opened it just a little.

One of the brutes with her shouldered it open further than the man intended, and he held it open for Mars to enter properly.

Not quite in her usual boiled leather, the four skulls still at her shoulders, though the black tunic had been replaced with a simple leather strap across whatever breasts she had, and she'd donned a pair of loose, plain cloth trousers strapped to her muscular hips by a thick belt, tucked into her usual knee-high boots with the children's skull kneecaps. She bore a scar over her stomach - the circle and puncturing straight line symbol of the Collegia encircling her navel.

"Wh-what can we do for you, Domina?" the man asked, nursing his ribs where the handle had bashed him.

"Show me your cyanide," she told him, looking over her shoulder at the many rickety shelves supporting his various, usually illegal, wares.

"C-cyanide?" he answered, creeping around his desk in the centre of the room. "I don't sell cyanide..."

"And I'm the King of Nyrthlond," she sneered, spitting quite directly onto his dusty floor. "Show it to me."

He looked at her a long moment, and then suddenly tried to bolt for the back door. One of her men thundered after him, twisted him off his feet and smashed him through his chair. She reached into her belt pocket and produced the vial cap given to her by the King, and passed it to the second.

"Look through everything, and if you find a vial with this kind of cap on it, bring it to me."

He nodded, holding the cap in one very broad palm, and began to rifle through the shelves, not much caring what he smashed in the process.

The trader watched them from his squirming position under a thick boot. "I don't sell cyanide!" he insisted. "Not unless I'm asked to make it!"

At that point, she turned with a vial in hand, and plucked the top off to pass to the man looking for it. "And have you been asked to make it?" she asked him, receiving the cap back with a nod of agreement that it matched the one they had with them.

"W-why do you want to know?" he demanded. "What's it to you?"

She gestured to the man holding him, and he promptly obeyed and began punching the trader in the stomach.

"He'll stop when you tell me," she told him, leaning over to his money drawer and plucking up the cloth bag, beginning to share out the contents into three piles quite casually.

"Yes!" he answered without any gap for punching to continue. "Yes, I was asked to make it."

"And you sold it in one of these vials," she continued, pointing to the one she'd taken from the shelf.

"Yes," he answered. "For nine thousand."

"High price," she mused, peering into the bag itself. "I'm not seeing nine thousand in here."

"I won't tell you where it is, neither!" he responded.

"That's fine," she answered, jingling the bag. "I'll settle for this and the receipt of sale. Then we'll call it even."

"Third drawer down, s'all my records."

She leaned down to find said records, and turned several pages until she got to the one she wanted. Her brow shot up.

"A woman," she mused, turning her head to him. "S'this bitch look like? A name's only half useful if there are two Jira Tulfield's in this city."

"She looked a bit like you, Domina," he answered. "Th-that is, dark hair, darker skin. Black eyes. Had a nice voice, younger than she looked."

"And you delivered it to this address," she clarified.

"Yes, Domina."

She sniffed and tilted her head some, gesturing to the man holding him and twisting herself off the desk. A short scream and a splatter of blood later, they gathered their share of his profits off the desk.

"Clear it out," she told them. "Take all of it and find that nine thousand, and put this place up for sale as a proper merchant holding. One of you get back to the Collegia and tell Zand to take this name to the other Captains. I want this whore alive."

"Yes, chief."