Chapter 4 The Rumor

Rooftops made the world feel lighter. The city’s stink didn’t reach this high. From above, alleys sprawled with patched roofs, backlit by pale dawn. Daisy crouched at the edge, knees to her chest, scanning the frost-glazed tiles for movement.

Her satchel dug into her shoulders, packed with every tool she owned: baton, three wire traps, a vial of her mother’s fading tonic. Heavy. The familiar ache pressed between her shoulder blades—an echo of the worry she carried every hour. She pictured her mother’s trembling hands. The grayness beneath her eyes. The breaths that came too shallow, too slow. Sometimes Daisy woke in the night, fearing there would be no breath at all. Steeling herself, she drew in the bracing air. Cold and sharp. She let it steady her. If she could catch one of the giant rats before sunrise, maybe she could earn enough for another week of tonic: enough to keep her mother fighting. Desperation tightened in her chest. She scanned the roofs, waiting for movement. Ready.

She spotted it: a rat, bloated and mottled, with a scabbed ear and a tail twice as long as normal. Its eyes burned red—not pink, but glossy and wet, like fresh blood. It clung to a drainpipe, twenty feet up, staring at her.

Daisy had hunted rats all her life. They ran, hid, and fought only when cornered. This one held her gaze, as if measuring her worth.

She wet her lips, inching closer along the slick roofline. The rat flicked its whiskers and vanished down the pipe, quick as thought.

Daisy muttered a curse. She scrambled after, boots scraping tiles, reached the gutter, and peered inside. Empty. She dropped to the next rooftop, landed hard, and scanned. A flash of red darted down the alley.

She slid to the gutter, swung over, and landed between rusted chimneys. Here, rooftops narrowed—close enough to hear alley conversations drifting up. A muddle of polished vowels. Gutter slang. The guttural curse of a fishmonger arguing with a baker below. Laughter burst out from nearby, untroubled and rich, blooming through the air. The sharp tang of coal smoke, cabbage, and something sweet from a distant bakery. Daisy caught the sound of glass shattering. The wet slap of laundry being wrung out somewhere farther off. She crept to the edge. Up here, the city’s layers pressed close: high-born voices soared over cracked tiles while, far below, a child’s cry folded into the clatter of carts. She looked down.

Two nobles, no boys, maybe fifteen—reeled through the alley. Their velvet coats were soaked, ripped at the seams. One gripped bottles, his stride careless and loose, the other sported a black eye and held himself stiff, chin tilted as if daring anyone to challenge him. They staggered together, trading slurred insults.

"I am telling you," the bruised one said, his words clipped, each syllable pronounced as if he were reading from a schoolbook. "The menagerie is real. Saw it with my own eyes."

"Yeah, right. You seen double with all that posh rot in your brain," his friend shot back, voice rough, vowels flattened. He grinned around the mouth of the bottle and snorted. The effect made him sound half-mocking, half-playful.

"Shut it. My cousin’s friend—what is his name, the tall one with the scar?—he snuck in, did he not? Came back able to heal burns with a touch. I swear it."

"That’s a load of horse dung, mate," the friend cackled, almost sing-song, wagging his bottle.

"No, listen. They keep them in cages. Magical beasts. You drink the blood, or steal the heart, or whatever—and then it is yours. That is how the lords keep control."

He lowered his voice, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder. "Everyone says strange things happen near that place. People go missing, or come back different. They say even the guards are scared to walk the halls at night."

A flicker of memory brushed the edge of Daisy's thoughts: the scent of something strange carried on the night air from the heart of the city. Too wild to belong to any animal she knew. Sometimes, at dusk, the wind carried a metallic tang—almost like blood—threaded through with distant whispers that vanished if she listened too hard. She remembered her mother's stories. Quiet warnings of things meant to be hidden. Things that could twist fate itself—a beast glimpsed once on a midnight roof, eyes burning silver. Or footprints that appeared in the frost and melted as soon as you saw them. Just the mention of a menagerie made something cold snake beneath her ribs, as if the air around her had thickened with invisible threat.

Daisy’s mouth went dry. She crouched lower, focusing every sense, and listened harder, every muscle tensed and ready to react.

“They say Lord Ravensworth himself guards the place. No one gets past the front gate unless they’ve got an invite or a death wish.”

“Or a hole in the head.” The other one burped, then started to pee against the wall, untroubled by Daisy’s silent vantage.

The rat with red eyes skittered behind them, unnoticed. Daisy watched it dart beneath a pile of crates. Then it froze. Waiting. Like it knew. Something about the way it moved—sharp, clever, almost purposeful—made Daisy shiver. Its gaze flicked toward the shadows, and in that moment, Daisy felt an uncanny resonance with the boys’ conversation about the menagerie. As if the rat itself were somehow linked to those whispered rumors and dangers. For a heartbeat, she wondered whether the stories of magical beasts and the rat before her were intertwined. Whether this creature was a sign of the menagerie’s reality rather than just another prize to catch. Maybe it hid secrets as old and strange as the city itself. Secrets tied to her quest and her mother's fading hope.

The nobles staggered on, their voices fading into a song about girls and gold and the joys of not having to care.

Daisy stayed on the rooftop, mind racing. The story was probably a slum rumor. Except that those boys believed it. If there was even a sliver of truth... The memory of her mother’s voice drifted up. Raspy and tender. Mixing with the tang of old lemon and herbs from the tonic she carried. That scent clung to the edge of every hope. Without it, her mother’s strength flickered. With it, she held on. Whatever magic or strange beasts filled the menagerie, even a whisper of such power tempted Daisy. Only something extraordinary could save the person she loved most.

If such power existed, strong enough to upend everything, she’d claim it. For her mother, for her family. For herself.

She squared her shoulders, narrowed her eyes, and watched the red-eyed rat until it vanished.

The city woke. Market bells clanged, the sound ringing sharp against the rooftops. A baby wailed somewhere, fading behind the smell of coal and the sweetness of rising bread. Daisy set her jaw. The market bell echoed; its tone thickened, deepening to a metallic note, almost like a warning. For an instant, everything hushed. On the tiles beneath her, the frost seemed to crackle. Daisy's heart slammed in her chest. A cold ripple crawled up her spine. Somewhere in the hush, a shadow slipped across a far rooftop—a shape too quick to name. Too large to be a rat. It trailed a smear of crimson across the melting ice. She couldn't shake the sense that something was about to break loose. As if the air itself held its breath, waiting for the world to tip. Far below, the bell gave one final, distorted peal. Above the city, crows erupted from a chimney in a black cloud, swirling into the morning. Daisy strained to listen, breath held, her silhouette poised against the paling sky. In that stillness, the city and Daisy seemed suspended between what had been and what was coming. The spell of waiting remained unbroken.