Midnight in Brink City.

A mass of red painted lips, cigarette smoke, and sequined stoles crowded the wide sidewalks of the big island: the young and foolish, ready for another night of debauchery, heedless of the dangers beyond our borders—and within it. 

Once the sun went down, Brink City was jazz and liquor and underground cabarets that reeked of forbidden magic. Bicycles wove around the white taxis that clogged the streets, darting through the haze of neon light like schools of tropical fish. The theatre crowd was calling it a night—pearls, heavy perfume, and a maid to scold or bed at home. The civilized hours were for islanders to make their coin and enforce their laws, but nights like this—heavy with humidity, the moon full and hanging in the sky like a ripe melon— these hours belonged to markers who had work to do. Moonstruck hours owned by the mages across the Channel, selling tangle in dens filled with the herb’s salty, vegetal smoke. It belonged to the street carvers with magic in their blood who’d tye a gnot on you if you asked nicely—and paid up.