Chapter 17: The Collared Walkers
Coyote sat in the Central Hall of Haven. R’Yussa stretched beside his chair, violently fluffy and purring as if the world had been made for his comfort. The great cat rested his head against Coyote’s knee, warm and heavy, eyes half-closed. When Coyote scratched behind one enormous ear, R’Yussa leaned into the touch without restraint.
Coyote let him.
He had already asked around about Ophelia and Eric. Nothing useful. No one had seen either of them in a long while. He expected nothing, but missing even a slight chance would have been worse.
The Hall moved around him. Drink. Smoke. Burnt fat. Old wood. Voices rose and fell near the bar.
Mireal found him. She stopped beside the table, her eyes softening for half a second before they sharpened.
“You saw the Keeper,” she said.
Coyote nodded.
Her gaze moved to the fresh scratches on his neck. “You should be more careful.”
“I was. That is why they are only scratches.”
“You have never cared about your safety.”
Coyote gave a faint, humourless smile. “No. But you have always been stubborn enough for both of us.”
Mireal sighed, reached into her pocket, and placed a folded piece of waxed paper in front of him. He opened it. Dry berry biscuit. Sweet first, then dry, then the sharp edge of berry at the back of his tongue. Same as always.
R’Yussa rumbled softly and pressed closer.
Coyote chewed, watching the room without seeing it. The Keeper had listened. That mattered. They could reach the Great Council records, if anyone could. Now Coyote had to wait, which was where his better qualities began to fail.
He rubbed his thumb against the edge of the waxed paper, grease settling into his skin. Then he looked up at Mireal, still beside him, and smiled.
“Thank you.”
“You and Dorian will never change,” Mireal said quietly. From her, it sounded like an accusation. Or a blessing.
Coyote leaned back slightly. R’Yussa shifted with him, settling again, entirely content. For a moment, Coyote rested his hand on the cat’s head, fingers sinking into thick fur.
The first time he had come to Haven, he had been thin. Quick. Stupid enough to try. The Library had been quiet. Too quiet. The kind of place that made everything feel watched even when nothing moved. He had taken something small. Foreign-looking. Sellable.
He had not made it three steps before a hand settled on his shoulder.
Heavy. Certain.
“You took something that does not belong to you.”
The Keeper’s voice had been calm.
“For your first time, I will forget it. Steal from Haven again, and it will be your last theft.”
Little Coyote had looked up.
The Keeper’s eyes had not changed. Only deepened.
Dorian had stood a few steps away, red-faced and furious in a way that had not helped.
Coyote had put it back.
He had never tried again.
R’Yussa pressed his head harder into Coyote’s knee. Coyote scratched behind his ear.
“Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “I’m behaving.”
Coyote left the Central Hall through the door that led to the Quarters. The noise dropped behind him almost at once. Beyond it, a narrow corridor stretched ahead, lined with doors to the retired Walkers’ rooms. The air was still, carrying the faint smells of old cloth, cigars, and polished wood. He walked without hurry, counting doors by habit more than memory, and found the right one on the second pass.
The door was open.
His old tutor sat in a rocking chair, one hand on the arm, the other holding a newspaper low enough to show he was not reading it. He was all bones and creases, with wild white hair, round spectacles, and a beard gone thin. A half-empty bottle stood on the floor beside him.
Coyote stepped inside and waited.
The old man did not react. The paper did not move. The breathing was too even. After a moment, Coyote reached out and lowered the newspaper a fraction.
The old man’s eyes opened at once.
“You are getting slow,” Coyote said.
“You are getting rude,” the tutor replied, voice dry.
Coyote set a small wrapped bundle on the table between them. Then he pulled out a chair and sat.
The old man unwrapped the bundle with deliberate care. Inside was a jar of rich green buds, sealed tight and deeply fragrant.
He opened it, smelled it once, and looked up. “Expensive.”
“Yes.”
“Nicked?”
“Gifted,” Coyote said.
“That means nicked politely.”
Coyote gave a small shrug.
The old man kept the jar within reach.
“You look worse,” he said.
“I am improving.”
“Unconvincing.”
Coyote’s mouth twitched.
Silence followed, familiar and easy. The room was clean enough, stripped of anything worth taking.
Clean did not belong to his first world.
The brothel was the opposite. Narrow rooms, thin walls, cheap perfume and sweat layered over something always going bad beneath it. Voices carried too easily. Laughter that meant nothing good.
Coyote’s mother had worked there. He had never known his father, only that the man must have been a Walker.
Coyote had never understood why she kept him.
He remembered fragments, more than anything clear. Hands. Movement. His mother’s voice changing when it had to.
She died when he was still small enough to be moved out of the way, and the brothel’s birds had taken him in. Whether it was kindness or habit, Coyote had never wished to dig too deeply. He preferred to stay grateful for food and shelter.
When he was five, he found the mirror.
Unregistered. Hidden badly in one of the birds’ rooms. Used when someone needed to move quietly.
Little Coyote followed the Call before he had a name for it. His nose started bleeding at once, answering the sudden pull. The mirror reacted too fast and swallowed him before he understood what was happening.
Panic. The force of it. The pain when something went wrong inside the crossing. Not clean pain. Not a cut or a burn. A splitting pressure, as if the mirror had changed its mind halfway through taking him.
The birds dragged him back by his arms while his leg remained caught somewhere cold and bright.
He nearly lost it.
After that, the Madam looked at him differently. Not as a child. As something useful. She found him a teacher.
The man in front of him.
The birds called him Boozer. No one remembered his real name. Not young even then, already drinking too much, but steady enough to open a mirror when it mattered. He moved people. Goods. Illegally, of course.
Coyote’s real name existed only in official papers. Boozer had named him Coyote. Said the boy looked like a half-starved black coyote. Sharp-faced, all bones and teeth, always hungry for something. The name stuck.
That was where Coyote learned. Not the rules. The gaps between them.
Boozer shifted in his chair, watching him now, and the memory loosened its grip.
“You are thinking too much,” he said.
“That is new,” Coyote replied.
“It will get you killed.”
“It usually does not.”
“Usually,” the old man repeated.
Coyote leaned back slightly.
“Boozer, I need to ask you something.”
The old man looked up, interest returning.
“That is worse,” he said. “Go on.”
“Purple collars,” Coyote said. “Shiny. Identical.”
The old man did not answer at once. He leaned back, the chair creaking softly, and watched the ceiling for a moment, as if sorting through old rooms.
“A few years back,” he said, “I met one. Maybe two.”
Coyote said nothing.
“Walker. Purple collar. Not subtle. Clean, shiny, same as you described.” He paused. “The collar stood out wrong. Too bright. First thing I thought, he was trying to hit on me.”
He gave a short laugh.
“Clearly, a man with serious problems of judgement.”
Coyote almost smiled.
“He bought me a drink,” the old man added.
That drew a faint shift in Coyote’s expression.
“I remember him because he was wrong,” the old man went on.
“How?”
“Too eager. Came up like he knew me. Started talking about routes. Money. Said I could make a fortune if I worked with them.”
“Nothing unusual in that.”
“No. It was the way he said it.” The old man frowned slightly. “Same tone every time. Like a line learnt too well.”
“Scripted.”
“Worse.”
He shifted in the chair. “I told him I was not interested. He kept going. Same offer, circling back each time. Would not let it drop.”
“And?”
“I hit him.”
“That usually helps.”
“It did. For a moment.” The old man looked back at him. “He stopped. Looked at me like he had no idea where he was. Asked who I was.”
Coyote’s expression did not change.
“Then it passed,” the old man said. “And he began again. Same little speech. Like nothing had happened.”
“You left.”
“I left him in the bar.”
He paused, then added, “On my way out, I ran into his mate. I can’t remember if he had a collar. He was heading straight for the one I had just hit. That was enough for me.”
Coyote watched him.
“Accent?” he asked.
The old man shook his head once.
“Maybe. Or maybe I stopped listening.”
“Not drunk,” he added. “Not like that. Drunk has a rhythm. This had none.”
“Chemicals?”
“Maybe.”
“Magic?”
Boozer’s mouth tightened. “Possible. Badly done, if it was.”
Coyote left Haven with more in his hands than he had brought in.
The collared bastards had been operating for years. They had tried to lure Walkers first. And when that failed, what? Kidnapping? Breaking them? Using them?
Or worse.
If they were collecting Walkers, Ophelia had not been an accident.
Coyote’s mind went to her before he could stop it. Not as he had last seen her, sharp-mouthed and alive, but as a function in someone else’s machine. A route. A key. A Walker taught to open mirrors when ordered.
Hope moved in him before he could stop it. Thin, unpleasant, badly timed.
Maybe Ophelia was still alive.
He reached his apartment in Rustwing Alley by evening.
Ophelia’s bags were still in the living room. They sat where she had left them. One strap had fallen loose across the floor. Coyote looked at it for longer than sense allowed.
Then he sighed and left the bags untouched.
Not tonight.
He opened his brass mail device and read through the messages he had missed over the last few days. Most were fines for small administrative violations: using reflective energy in public, minor crossing activity in the Government District, failure to submit movement confirmation. The Great Council loved a fine. It gave bureaucracy something to do between ruining lives. Coyote deleted them without a flinch.
A few messages were job offers, but nothing worth the trouble. Poor money, bad routes, clients who used the word “simple” far too early.
Only one caught his attention. A client wanted an item retrieved from Epinalium. Coyote read the message twice.
Epinalium was a small inhabited world built mostly underground. Old tunnels. Deep chambers. It had only two known mirrors connecting it to other worlds. One could be opened, but at a cost that bordered on suicide. No Walker Coyote knew had ever managed to unlock the second one. Years ago, forcing the first open had nearly killed him, which had felt excessive even by his standards. Very few Walkers could reach Epinalium at all.
Which explained the price.
Coyote replied at once. If the mirror he had opened years ago was still functioning, the job had just become possible.
Then he closed the device, crossed the room, and dropped into bed without undressing properly.
Sleep took him badly.
Later that night, two strangers passed Coyote’s apartment for the third time.
They walked slowly, pretending to talk, but their eyes searched the area with care. Doorways. Windows. Rooflines. Shadows.
When they passed beneath the streetlamp, the light touched their necks.
For a moment, purple shone there.