This week, I read the cards and created a ‘scoundrel’ (a musically inclined rogue named Evyn Nightsong demanded my attention when I pulled that prompt) who wants to escape a broken hideout (destroyed by a rival gang while he was out delivering messages), but he must repair the damage he’s done. Although I drew a setting, as I began thinking about Evyn and his talents, I realized that he’s more than a rogue. He’s a minstrel. After the local band of ne’er-do-wells that ‘adopted’ him falls, he realizes he is the reason the gang fell, and why he was away from their hideout when it happened. To redeem himself, he must prove he isn’t a snitch.

Evyn’s Background:

Evyn is a rogue with a minstrel’s talent. He grew up on the streets of Noxport, another orphan left on the street no sooner than his unknown mother weaned him. Taken in by a local band of vagrants, Evyn’s first memory is on the street begging for coins, as his master held his leash. By the time he was eight, he was running messages for the group, a cushy life for a street rat as he kept almost half the coins he earned and pinched squirreled away behind a brick in the chimney on the roof of the warehouse hideout.

~~~
The first thing Evyn noticed were the silence.

The docks was never quiet. Even ‘fore dawn, they muttered and hiccupped and coughed around him: wagon wheels clattering over damp cobbles, gulls shrieking as they circled the harbor, sailors cursing at ropes and each other, chimney smoke rising as the wind rattled tiles loose. Somewhere, always, someone tried to play a tune and started a fight.

But this morning, the district were silent.

Evyn crouched behind the chimney of a building across the alley and stared at the ruin below. His home were gone. Not empty. Not abandoned. Gone.

Half the roof’d collapsed. Smoke still curled from blackened beams, and part of the gathering room’d fallen through to the floors below. Evyn’s fingers gripped the neck of his lute.

“No,” he whispered, “no, no, no.” He’d been away for six hours. Six hours. That were all.

Bix’d sent him out ’fore midnight with three messages sewed into the lining of his coat: first to the dockside, next to the old mint, then across the city to a fence who paid in silver and never smiled. Evyn complained about the cold, and Bix’d threatened to throw his boots into the stove and make him run the route barefoot. He laughed. He’d always laughed, ‘cuz he knowed Bix’d do no such thing. Now he had no family left to hear him. Evyn scrambled across to the hideout, climbing down through the broken roof. He landed in what’d been the little band’s common area.

The smell struck him first. Wet ash, scorched wood, spilled ale, and blood. Taking a sharp breath, he looked around the once-familiar room. A chair lay overturned beside the hearth, the long table split down the middle. Broken bone dice glittered in the rubble like tiny teeth. What was left of the curtains that once hid the passage to the stairs still smoked. And on the wall, under the soot, a painted wolf’s print. The mark of the Night Wolves.

Evyn swallowed. The Wolves’d never dared attack their hideout before. Not openly. Bix’d led his Black Birds for nigh on twenty years, and even the Wolves knew better than to start a blood feud with them. So why now?

He searched the wreckage. One body. A boy younger than Evyn named Pell, who’d taught him how to palm a coin without looking. Pell lay near the stairs, a knife wound beneath his ribs. Evyn knelt beside him.

“I’m sorry.”

Pell didn’t answer, his dead eyes stared into oblivion. Evyn looked around and saw the broken body of Ace, his wounds reeking of retribution. He wondered who done it. The others was all missing. Evyn searched through the rubble til his hands bled. Bix. Mara. Old Venn. Little Sable. Skrie. Everyone. Gone.

He found Bix’s cup under the rubble. That same dented metal cup the ‘Shifter’d held when Evyn were little enough to need a leash. The memory crashed in on him.

Rain. Mud. His own bare feet. Bix’s gentle hand around his wrist. The metal cup in their fingers.
“Smile, little rat,” they told him, stroking his hair. “People give more to a little that looks like they ‘preciate the generosity.”

He’d been too young to understand the words, but he remembered the warmth of their tone. Bix’d found him on the steps of the orphanage ’fore anyone else did, then adopted him. That’s what Bix called it. Not charity. Adoption. Like they did with all the lost waifs they found.

By seven, Evyn’d stopped begging and ran messages instead. He were small, quick, and forgettable. He knowed which alleys flooded and which constables drank too much. He’d slip under carts, shimmy up drainpipes, and cross half of Noxport without being noticed. And he had his music. At first, it’d been a battered whistle. Then a penny flute. Then a fiddle missing a string. Finally, when he were thirteen, Bix’d stolen a lute for him.

Evyn taught himself to play. He learned music could open doors lockpicks couldn’t. A guard’d be looking out for a pickpocket, but a song invited coin. A tavern keeper might distrust a stranger, but he’d welcome a minstrel. So, Evyn turned into both. Rogue when the alley demanded it, minstrel when the door needed something softer.

He’d even taken the name Nightsong because it sounded better than Evyn Ratboy or Evyn Streetrat. He smiled at the bitter memory.

Then he noticed the chimney. The brick. His brick. Evyn climbed onto the broken hearth and reached into the chimney. His fingers found the loose stone and pulled it free. The hiding place were empty. His savings was gone.

For seven years, almost half of every message fee he kept’d gone into that hole. Copper at first. Then silver. Once, a even gold chip. Gone. Evyn sat among the ashes. That hurt more than the destruction. Not because of the money. Because someone had found it. Someone had known. He stared at the paw print painted on the wall. Then a terrible thought came. The messages. The routes. His routes. Evyn’d been carrying secrets for years.

He’d never snitch on the Birds. But maybe someone thought he had. He remembered the last messages Bix’d given him.

“Take this to the old mint,” they’d said.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the only one I trust to get it there.”

He’d left, grinning. Six hours later, the hideout were gone. Evyn stood staring at the wreckage. The answer dawned on him as he thought about recent events. He weren’t away by accident. Someone’d arranged it. Someone’d sent him away, so he’d survive… or so he’d look guilty.

He spent the next several days searching. The Wolves vanished from their usual haunts. Evyn visited taverns where he’d played, alleys where he’d robbed, and rooftops where he’d slept. He listened from the shadows more than he talked in the light.

By sunset on the third day, he’d learned three things: The Night Wolves’d attacked the hideout; they was looking for something; and ’fore the attack, someone’d told them when he’d be gone. That third bit almost broke him.

Evyn knew who could’a given over that information. Him. Though not on purpose, he’d been sloppy. For weeks, he’d moaned about his message runs in front of others, gloated about knowing every route in Noxport. And once even whined about Bix’s habit of sending him off at night. A boast here. A joke there. Little things. Harmless things. Except they wasn’t harmless.

He went back to the hideout after dark on the third day. The bodies was gone. The ruin were worse at night. Evyn sat on the broken edge of the common-room table, pulled his lute from its case, and played a soft tune. The song had no words; it were a piece his fingers’d found years ago, when he first realized music remembered things people forgot. He made a melody for the gang. For Bix’s laughter and stolen bread, for sleeping under warm blankets while icy rain hammered the roof and chill winds blew from the sea.

His fingers shook. He stopped. What would he do now? If he joined another gang, they’d ask if he were the snitch. Every gang in Noxport knowed what’d happened. The Black Birds had fallen. Evyn’d been the only Bird missing when it happened. That made his skin itch.

He could run, leave Noxport, like Skrie likely had; she’d squawked about leaving before. He could take his lute and whatever coins he had left and disappear up the trade road toward Oftsee. But he looked around the ruined hideout.

The Black Birds’d given him everything. A name, a bed, a family. And he’d help destroy it. So he stayed to build it back again. The first repair took three days. Evyn stole timber from abandoned warehouses to patch the sleeping cubbies. The second repair took two weeks, when he stole enough to bribe a mason. The third took a week.

He found the hidden cellar entrance after clearing rubble from the lower levels and emptied it stone by stone. He didn’t find survivors; instead, instead found his family’s belongings. Sable’s red scarf. Venn’s spectacles. Mara’s silver comb. Pell’s knife. Evyn pulled each item into the light. Then he found something else. A message with his name tucked away under a floorboard. He broke the seal.

Evyn—
If you’re reading this, then I’ve made a mistake. You’re right to be angry. Don’t come looking for us, I’ve sent the others away. The Wolves know about the ledger. They think you have it. You don’t. But someone wants them to believe you do. Take the hidden path out of the city.
Trust no thief who asks where you keep your music.
—B.

Evyn read it twice. Then a third time. He’d heared of that ledger. Every gang in Noxport whispered about a book that had all the names, debts, bribes, payoffs, and secrets going back decades. He’d never seen it. But someone convinced the Wolves that the Birds had it. And someone’d made them think Evyn knew how to find it. He looked down at his lute.

“Where I keep my music.”

His mind raced. The hideout were gone. He only got back some of his money from Ace’s pockets. The gang were gone. But the Wolves was looking for something. What if they’d looked in the wrong place? He picked up his lute. The scarred wood and old strings felt familiar in his hands. He’d repaired the bridge twice. This time, he noticed a tiny seam at the end of the pegbox.

He frowned. He’d had the lute for three years. Three years. He’d never seen that seam. Evyn pulled out Pell’s knife, working the blade into the groove at the end. The panel came loose. Inside were a roll of oilskin. His heart pounded as he pulled it from the cavity. He unfurled the skin and found the ledger. Names. Dates. Payments. Locations. And at the bottom of the last page, a symbol he knew. A Night Wolf paw print.

But under it, another mark. A Black Bird claw.

Evyn stared. The ledger belonged to both gangs? The fall of the hideout weren’t a raid—it were a purge. Someone wanted the ledger destroyed, and that someone wanted Evyn blamed. Footsteps outside tore his attention from the evidence in his hands. Evyn rolled the ledger and stuck it back in the hollow. The door creaked open as he snapped the cover back into place.

Three figures entered the hideout. Night Wolf masks. He stood, reaching for his knife. Then stopped as the tallest figure removed their mask. Bix looked at him. Evyn grabbed the table as his knees almost gave out.

“You’re alive.”

“Indeed,” Bix said.

Evyn laughed once, almost a sob. “You let me think—”

“I needed you to think I was dead.”

“You could’a told me.”

“If I had, you’d’ve done something stupid.”

“Because I always do something stupid?”

“Exactly.” Bix looked around the partly rebuilt room. “You stayed when you should’ve left.”

Evyn nodded. “I caused this.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I gave ’em the routes.”

“You gave them scraps. They already knew more than you did.”

“I should’a seen.”

“You were a boy doing a seasoned scout’s work.”

“I ain’t no boy,” he looked up, angry.

“No,” Bix said quietly. “You’re a minstrel.”

Evyn blinked.

Bix nodded toward the lute. “You always thought being a thief meant being quick with your hands. It doesn’t. A thief survives by knowing what he wants. A minstrel survives by knowing what the people need.” They stepped closer. “You made everyone in this city listen to you with your song. That’s your talent.”

Evyn looked at the lute. “So what do we do?”

Bix smiled. “We sing.”

The next evening, every tavern in Noxport heard a new song. Evyn stood on a stage at the largest inn in the city, dressed in his best stolen coat, lute shining beneath the lanterns. The song told of a gang destroyed by greed. A crooked wolf, a black bird’s nest, and a scroll that would burn a dozen reputations to ash.

But Evyn never sang names. He didn’t need to. By the second verse, every thief in the room knew who he meant; by the third, the Wolves had arrived. By the fourth, the city watch arrived too. And by the final chord, half of Noxport had heard enough truth to become dangerous.

The Night Wolves scattered, and the ledger disappeared into safer hands. They learned Skrie’d taken care of Ace, the corrupt snitch who’d sold Evyn’s routes before the hideout had burned. And the Black Birds rose again.

Not as they had been. Never as it had been. Pell was gone. Mara and Skrie had disappeared. Others would never return. But Bix rebuilt the gathering room. Venn replaced the roof. Sable and Evyn repaired the chimney.

He replaced the loose brick. This time, he left the hiding place empty. The coins he’d recovered from Ace’s pouch went elsewhere; some into the new hideout, some into food, some into toys and instruments for littles with no families. And some went into his pocket, because Evyn Nightsong remained a thief, though he were figuring out what kind of thief he aimed to be.

Weeks later, when the first chill rain fell over Noxport, Evyn climbed onto the roof and leaned against the warm chimney. Below him, music drifted from the common room. Someone were playing his song. Badly. So likely a little.

He smiled. Then he raised his lute and played along. The city listened. For once, Evyn didn’t hide. He spent his childhood learning how to disappear. Now he were learning something harder.

How to stay.

Under the fixed chimney, where his first family had once kept him safe, the Black Birds’ hideout glowed beneath him. Evyn Nightsong played until midnight. The song carried over the rooftops.

This time, it sounded like home.