The wooden seagull pressed hard against Nives’s palm, its wet contours digging into her skin as she navigated the canal alleys of the Drowning Wards. The hem of her borrowed midnight gown trailed through greasy puddles, heavy with muck. Each gas lamp threw skewed amber beams across the salt-rotted pilings. The smell of dead cod and rotting pilings rose sharp in the chill air. The iron gate swung open on oiled hinges, followed by the warped timber of the front door. Faro sat hunched over the scarred pine table, knotting twine across a torn fishing net. The weak glow of a single oil lamp cast his face in a familiar, gentle light. He looked up, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Nives! You’re back, cara. I was starting to worry. The gala… was it dreadful?” His voice, soft and warm, was a lie. Every syllable a dagger. Nives stood frozen in the doorway, fingers clamped around the whittled bird. The dark smear across the figurine's tail caught the yellow lamplight. Faro slowly straightened, his brow furrowing. He saw the gown, the weariness in her posture, and then, his gaze dropped to her hand. To the small, blood-streaked seagull. The easy smile vanished, replaced by an unfamiliar stillness. “Nives?” he said, his voice now a low murmur, devoid of its usual lilt. He took a hesitant step towards her. “What… what is that?” Her voice, when it came, was a brittle whisper. “This, Faro?” She held it up, letting the lamp’s glow catch the dark, sticky crimson. “This is the truth. The truth about you.” He offered neither denial nor excuse, holding entirely still under the swinging lantern. It was the face of the man she had seen in the gardens, the swift, merciless predator. “The magistrate,” she said, her voice turning sharp. “Killed in the estate gardens. A knife to the throat. And then I found this in the soil where he fell.” She flung the carving onto the table. It spun once, then landed with a soft thud, its blood-soaked side facing him. “This little bird you carved this morning. This whittled toy you chipped out before dawn while pretending to be a penniless net-mender.” Faro’s gaze flickered to the carving, then back to her face. A flicker of something, pain, regret, crossed his features, quickly masked. “Nives, it’s not…” But before he could finish, a crash ripped through the silence. The front window, a pane of ancient, wavy glass, exploded inward, showering the floorboards with jagged shards. Cold, damp air, thick with the stench of cheap oil and desperation, rushed in. Dark figures poured through the gaping hole, their faces obscured by grimy scarves, their hands gripping heavy cudgels and rusted blades. “Lantern House! We’re taking it!” a gruff voice roared. “For Salvi!” Nives seized a heavy ash broom from beside the hearth. “Get out of my house!” she yelled, stepping directly between the intruders and the table. She lunged forward, swinging the broom like a battle-axe. Faro, however, moved with an unnatural speed. “Nives, no!” He grabbed her, pulling her back just as a thug’s cudgel whistled past her head. The man, surprised by Faro’s sudden intervention, stumbled. Faro, seemingly off-balance, *tripped* over his own feet. His arm flailed wildly, catching the thug in the chest with surprising force. The thug grunted, sailing backward through the shattered window with a guttural cry, landing with a splash in the canal outside. “Oh, dear! Clumsy me!” Faro exclaimed, rubbing his hand as if he’d merely bumped a shoulder. “He was just in the way!” Nives watched in disbelief. It looked like an accident, a ridiculous, improbable accident. Yet the force… it was too much for a ‘clumsy’ man. Another thug, larger and more menacing, charged in. Faro, still ‘recovering’ from his ‘fall,’ somehow managed to *slip* on a patch of spilled water. He spun, his foot sliding out from under him, and his other leg shot out, catching the charging thug in the shin. The man screamed, his leg buckling at an unnatural angle. He crumpled to the floor, clutching his kneecap, his blade clattering uselessly. “Oops! A bit slick here!” Faro said, barely suppressing a wince. He glanced at Nives, a wide, innocent-looking smile plastered on his face. “Must’ve been that leaky bucket again. Always getting underfoot!” Before Nives could process the bizarre display, a high-pitched, frantic shriek echoed from the back of the house. “G-ghosts! The wards! They’re working! The spirits are here!” It was Zanni’s voice, thick with terror. Moments later, a series of clattering bangs and howls erupted from the hallway. A small, ragged figure, no older than seven, bolted into the room, clinging to a grease-stained satchel. He was followed by three more of Teodoro’s men, who stumbled into the doorway, entangled in a mess of fishing nets and rattling pots that had suddenly, inexplicably, swung down from the ceiling, entangling their legs. “The spirits of the sea protect this place!” Zanni cried, appearing in the doorway, waving a dried fish head like a talisman. He saw the child. “Enzo! You made it! The wards held!” He didn’t notice Faro making a subtle, almost imperceptible hand gesture that caused a heavy wooden beam above the entangled thugs to creak ominously, then drop with a sickening thud, pinning them firmly to the floor. Nives watched, her broom forgotten, as the chaos unfolded. Faro, her ‘helpless’ husband, was a whirlwind of ‘accidents,’ each one incapacitating a thug with improbable efficiency. Zanni, her ‘superstitious’ friend, had somehow rigged the house with a series of tripwires that were anything but random. Young Enzo cowered behind Zanni, gripping the back of the smuggler's vest. The last standing thug, a gaunt man with a scarred cheek, lunged at Faro with a rusted shiv. Faro, with a theatrical gasp, *tripped* again, falling backward into a stack of empty crates. The crates toppled, pinning the thug underneath with a crunch of splintering wood. The man let out a choked cry, blood bubbling from his lips. Nives glared at Faro, who was dusting splinters from his wool trousers. “Really need to watch my step, don’t I? So much for helping.” The thug beneath the crates coughed, a wet, rattling sound. His eyes, fixed on Nives, held a horrifying gleam of triumph. “The docks,” he rasped, his voice barely audible. “The whole damn district… your husband… he ordered it. Every single shipping magnate… slaughtered. He’s the one who bled Illicia dry.” A final, bloody laugh escaped him, and then he went still. The broom slipped from Nives’s grasp, clattering to the floor. Her gaze snapped to Faro, his face now devoid of its clumsy innocence, replaced by a stark, terrifying grimness. The quiet was unbroken except for the lapping of the canal against the exterior pilings. Faro met her gaze without flinching. The posture of the clumsy fisherman was gone, replaced by a ruthless, calculated stillness. Between them on the planks, the bloodied gull lay beside the fallen crates, and Faro did not reach out to pick it up.

Accidents and Tripwires