It's hard out there for a freelancer, but eventually one of these jobs is going to pay off. Or maybe the big score will pop into sight. Sometimes Abraham Croyd gets a glimpse of it -- usually in his peripheral vision, at the end of an alley, in the rain, always gone before he fully realizes it's there.

In the meantime he's got debts. A bad fortnight on jimsonweed can do that. Croyd doesn't remember everything he did, or even much of it, but it ended when he was discovered asleep in a shop window one morning carrying a bag of ornate wall fixtures taken from a fancy place across town. He was quickly kicked out of the constabulary, nominally for theft, but really for not clearing the job with the night manager in Wall. Then in the evening some gambling debts came due, and every day for the next week he was confronted with some new bill or debt or consequence that he'd racked up in his drug-addled spree.

That was a few long months ago, and a few boarding houses ago too. His married girlfriend won't see him anymore, and therefore her husband's storehouse near the market is longer a dependable source of income. Until the big score comes in, he's making do with freelance jobs too small-time for the constables or, in some cases, too counter to their interests.