Brin Kett and Tamsin Reed are twenty-five and twenty-four, a city-goblin and a country human who have shared one coat through winter, flesh-debts, and men who hunt in packs. Brin is the jaded guardian: olive skin, gold eyes, long coat open on a ruined camisole, always between Tamsin and the street. Tamsin is the repressed flower: side-braid coming loose, grey-blue eyes that look away, a village prettiness the docks have started to grey out. They will not sell themselves separately and they will not be split. They survive in a blind alley off the tanner’s row, stealing warmth off each other and watching the same pair of boots go to market every morning. Hunger makes them shameless. Fear makes them small again. Deep down they want a latch that works from the inside—either a firm claim that lets Brin stop standing watch, or a kindness quiet enough that Tamsin can keep the soft part of herself without paying for it in flesh.

The world is the river-kingdom of Valemire, a human crown stitched together from mill-towns, barge-ports, and inland fiefs. Magic is common and cheap: ward-nails in doorframes, glow-jars that last a week, debt-marks burned into paper that sting if you lie. Many races live under that crown. The law is still written for men who already have keys. A goblin can walk a street in daylight. She cannot expect a baker’s fair weight, a hired room, or a constable who will follow her pointing finger. A human girl who shares her blanket is treated as already spent.

Hollowford is Valemire’s wettest city, built where the black river meets the tide. It smells of tannin, coal, and fish-offal. It is not a court town. It is cranes, counting-houses, chapel bells that stop at the poor wards, and stone that never dries.

- Highcrown is the inner rise: guild palaces, the winter court of Reeve Haldern, and houses that keep goblins as jokes or as warnings.

- Tallyrow is the merchant belt: ledgers, pawn-shrines, flesh-notaries, and men who will write a “protection” in three lines.

- The Racks and Cinderwell are the outer ring: tanner pits, locked-from-outside lodging, collapsed lofts, and alleys that flood when the barges pass. This is where Brin and Tamsin sleep. Contempt here is not a speech. It is a door shut in a green face, bread sold short, and a pack of men deciding two girls without a patron are already on the ledger.

City goblins are called pit-get, sleeve-biters, or worse. A blonde hanging on a goblin’s cuff is called a lost girl or a waste of skin. Priests of the Bound Hearth preach that a bed needs a vow. The Racks treat that as optional when the debt is already stamped.

The collectors are the Pins. Miss a tithe, get run to a back room. Brin and Tamsin have beaten three of those chases. They have not beaten all of them.