Penny Onehole was struck by those words, remembering for the first time in years how, once her feet had healed and her fever cleared, Fong had bought her new clothes and given her money to take a ferry across the bay. “Go and find your father,” he had said. “This is no place for you.”

With money for travel to Saint Raymond, she’d crossed the fog-wracked water on a day that she discovered, upon arrival at the other side, was warm and breezy. Breathing deep her freedom, she made her way from the docks at Oak Landing to the stagecoach office, sitting prim in the shade, watching the fresh horses being harnessed to the very coach that would take her to safety. At least the Mormons had been clean. When she had first arrived in Saint Raymond, with everyone so polite and smiling in that weird Mormon way, she had never expected to long to return to that place.

A voice spoke from behind her, saying, “Sweet thing like you, hard to forget,” and Penny turned to see a scraggly-bearded man leering at her through an open window. His face was familiar, and just as the memory surfaced – this was the man she’d knocked down on her flight from the flophouse where she’d awakened weeks before – she was yanked to her feet and came face-to-face with a well-dressed, short, pale man who smelled very good. His hair was slicked back, his thin moustache stuck out to the side in points like two long, thick rat whiskers. Penny had seen him before, watching him through peep holes at Fong’s as he’d threatened her protector on repeated visits, the threats diminishing in strength as the opium took hold.

“Rivard,” she breathed.

“I paid good money for your fiery little cunt,” he purred, caressing her face. She could feel that nobody was watching them. Rivard’s reputation was as pervasive as the fog that choked the city across the bay. His hand closed over her throat. “So lucky for me, the one day I step across the bay, to find you. I haven’t been here for years. Do you see that man holding my hat?”

With Rivard’s hand crushing her throat, Penny could only glance in that direction.