The rain in the city of Mnemos always tasted faintly of copper and lost regrets. It fell in sheets across the staggered, overlapping rooftops of the Lower Wards, washing the grime from the cobblestones but doing nothing to cleanse the desperation of its inhabitants. Lyra crouched behind a gargoyle whose stone face had long been eroded by the acidic drizzle. She pulled her dark cloak tighter around her slender frame, her eyes fixed on the heavily guarded balcony across the narrow alleyway. The estate belonged to Lord Vane, a nobleman who dealt in illicit, high-grade memories. And tonight, Lyra was going to rob him blind.
In Mnemos, magic was intrinsically tied to the mind. Memories of joy, profound sorrow, or intense passion could be siphoned, bottled, and sold. The wealthy consumed them like fine wine to experience secondhand thrills, while the poor sold their happiest moments just to afford a loaf of bread. Lyra was a Siphon, born with the innate ability to draw these memories out without the clumsy, painful mechanical extractors used by the government. It made her the best thief in the Narrows.
She checked the mechanism on her wrist—a brass gauntlet fitted with an array of empty glass vials. Taking a deep breath, she stepped off the ledge. She didn’t fall; instead, she manipulated a minor memory of ‘weightlessness’ she had stolen from an acrobat earlier that week, letting the sensation wash over her body. She drifted across the gap, landing silently on Vane’s balcony.
The lock on the heavy oak door was complex, a puzzle of gears and magical wards. Lyra bypassed the gears with a pair of iron picks, then pressed her bare fingertips against the glowing blue ward. She closed her eyes, feeling the magical signature. It was tied to a memory of fear—a guard dog’s snarl. She visualized a piece of raw meat, projecting a counter-memory of satisfaction into the ward. The blue light flickered and died. The door clicked open.
Lord Vane’s vault was a sensory overload. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stacked with thousands of vials. Some glowed with the warm golden hue of childhood laughter; others pulsed with the deep, angry crimson of battlefield rage. Lyra ignored them all. Her client, a shadowy broker in the Undercity, had paid her for one specific item: a hidden cache of blackmail material Vane was keeping in a safe behind his desk.
She made quick work of the safe, swinging the heavy iron door open. Inside rested a velvet box. But as Lyra opened it, she frowned. There were no ledgers, no crimson vials of illicit affairs. There was only a single, perfectly smooth vial forged from starmetal. Inside, the memory didn’t glow like the others. It swirled violently, a brilliant, blinding silver storm that cast harsh, dancing shadows across the room.
“What are you?” she whispered, entranced. She reached out, her fingers brushing the cold glass. The moment she made contact, a jolt of pure, unadulterated energy shot up her arm. She heard a voice in her head—a woman’s voice, regal and terrified. *’They are coming. Hide the truth. The Chancellor is—’*
Before the thought could finish, the heavy wooden doors to the study blew inward in a shower of splinters.
Lyra spun around, snatching the silver vial and shoving it into her leather pouch. Standing in the doorway were three Inquisitors. They wore long, ash-gray coats and porcelain masks entirely devoid of features. In their hands, they held Null-Staves, weapons designed to rip the memories straight from a person’s skull, leaving them a hollow, drooling husk.
“The Siphon,” the lead Inquisitor hissed, his voice a mechanical rasp. “Surrender the Emperor’s property.”
“I don’t think so,” Lyra shot back.
She tapped a vial on her gauntlet, shattering a memory of blinding, midday sunlight. The room erupted in a flash of brilliant white magic. The Inquisitors cried out, shielding their eyes. Lyra didn’t hesitate. She vaulted over Vane’s mahogany desk, sprinting for the balcony. She dove out into the rainy night, expecting to hit the adjacent roof.
Instead, a hand lashed out from the shadows of the balcony, grabbing her cloak and yanking her hard to the side. Lyra tumbled onto the slick tiles, her hand flying to her boot knife. She found herself staring up at a young man with disheveled dark hair, wearing a worn coat that looked like it had once belonged to the Royal Guard.
“Quiet,” he hissed, pressing a finger to his lips. He held up a strange, intricate brass sphere.
The Inquisitors burst onto the balcony, their Null-Staves crackling with dark energy. The stranger twisted the brass sphere. Instantly, a localized illusion snapped into place around them—a memory of an empty, rain-swept balcony. The Inquisitors looked right through them, their masked faces swiveling in confusion.
“She went for the lower wards!” one of them shouted. They fired their grappling hooks, swinging away into the mist.
Lyra let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She leveled her knife at the stranger’s throat. “Who are you, and why shouldn’t I gut you for grabbing me?”
The young man slowly raised his hands, a weary smile touching his lips. “My name is Orion. And you shouldn’t gut me because you are holding a memory that will get you killed by morning. I’m the only one who knows how to open it.”