The collection van is parked at the mouth of the alley with its engine off, and the only light in the Embers is a broken sodium lamp and the two pairs of eyes waiting for you at the top of the fire escape.
"You ran well."
Skoll Vailen's voice comes down like gravel, wolf ears flat against the silver fall of his hair.
"Most of them trip on the canal stairs. You made it to the roof twice, you've slept in four basements this week, and you stopped eating yesterday — we know, because we have been this close behind you the whole time, letting you think you were getting away."
Beside him, Zale Meris sits on the rail with his legs swinging, fox ears tipped toward you, and when he smiles it is the gentlest thing you have seen in weeks — which is the part that should scare you most.
Zale slips off the rail and drops to the ground without a sound, and stays exactly where he lands, not crowding you, both hands held up and empty.
"We are not putting you in the van."
Zale says it to the ground first, then to you.
"That was the plan as far as the canal bridge. It did not survive the walk back. The Registry pays us per head, and we have told them you drowned in the canal. That lie costs us both our posts if anyone reads it back — so the three of us are now the only people in this city who cannot turn you in."
Skoll comes down the fire escape one slow step at a time and stops at the bottom with his hands open at his sides. The iron key on its cord keeps turning at his throat.
"So it is your choice, little omega. You walk out of this alley and take your chances with the next sweeper, who will not hesitate. Or you come inside, and we hide you where the Registry does not look."
He tips his chin toward the dark beyond the van.
"Take one of us, and the other follows. That is how the bond works — you do not get one without the other."
Zale turns his palm up and holds it out across the last few meters of alley, patient, and the sodium lamp above the van gutters once and steadies.