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Contents
Prologue: A Bold Sort of Lie
PART 1: Ashes
1 – Cunning
2 – Kindness
3 – Monsters
4 – Marvels
5 – Fire
6 – Folly
7 – Descent
8 – Deceit
9 – Student
10 – Safety
11 – Gutter Justice
PART 2: Embers
12 – Truth
13 – Rumors
14 – Bargain
15 – Barter
16 – Distraction
17 – Focus
18 – Strategy
19 – Opportunity
20 – Secrets
21 – Discovery
22 – Broken
PART 3: Smoke
23 – Mischief
24 – Manners
25 – Conjuring
26 – Vanishing
27 – Loss
28 – Lass
29 – Burning
30 – Breaking
31 – Savior
32 – Shivers
33 – Failure
34 – Faith
35 – Ugly
PART 4: Flame
36 – Dangerous
37 – Despair
38 – Invasion
39 – Invincible
40 – Lineage
Acknowledgments
About Chandler J. Birch
To Kelsey, who fights and cares and does what’s hard.
And to Mom and Dad, who believed.
Prologue: A Bold Sort of Lie
NIGHT had come, and the fog came with it: a thick fog that clutched and grasped at things, and would crawl down your throat and sit heavy in your belly if you let it. Lampposts presided over every street corner in this neighborhood of Teranis, though they did little good. The dark, rather than being pushed back, flowed around the gaslights like a vast river around stubborn stones. The fog swarmed up the poles and enveloped the lamps, and their pale yellow glow seemed bottled within a cage of pure glass.
A man stood beneath one of the lampposts, unperturbed by the fog and the dark and the clinging cold. He was dressed neatly, in a long black greatcoat and a tall hat, and he held a silver-handled cane. The features of his face were indistinct, blotted out by the fog and, perhaps, by something else as well, something difficult to put one’s finger on. There was a sort of slipperiness to him, as if most of him could be changed at a moment’s notice, and those parts that couldn’t be were not important anyway.
Only two things about him were clear: his eyes, which were bright as candles, and his hands, which were gloved in black. The third finger of his right hand was missing.
He was standing quite patiently, and had been doing so for a quarter of an hour without shifting from where he stood. If someone had been watching him, they would have been impressed at how well he kept himself still, and at how little he minded being kept waiting—for he had exactly the air of a man who was being kept waiting.
In fact, someone was watching him, and she was impressed with his stillness. She had been creeping around him in a wide circle ever since he arrived, and she was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, he really had come alone. That would be convenient and more than a little unnerving, since it was entirely unprecedented. Promises, in her experience, were just a bold sort of lie.
Twenty minutes had passed since the man’s arrival when she finally gave up. If he was a trap, and she felt more than a little certain that he was, then she wasn’t clever enough to spring it safely. And if he wasn’t a trap, then she had found something quite rare indeed.
She came up to him. At last, he moved.
“Good evening, young lady,” he said pleasantly, as if they were meeting at the party of a mutual friend and he was delighted to make her acquaintance.
“Evening,” she said cautiously, peering closer at him. It was odd, up this close, how his features registered in her memory; and she found herself trying to memorize the details of his face. The shape of his nose, the color of his eyes, the lines around his mouth. But then she blinked, and she could not remember any of it. When her eyes flicked open again, the face was entirely unfamiliar.
“You will exhaust yourself trying to do that,” he said softly.
“Who are you?” Her hand had moved to her side. There was a pistol in the pocket of her coat, a small one that she touched rarely.
“A friend,” he said.
“I know my friends’ names,” she said, and chided herself for being too aggressive.
He didn’t seem affronted. “Perhaps it would be better to think of me, then, as someone sympathetic to your cause.”
She pulled her hand away from the pistol, searching his face again without meaning to. He was like the hollow place left by a lost tooth.
“I have money.”
“Please,” the man said, lifting a hand. “Keep it. I have no need of money. I give this freely . . .” He peered at her. She tried to read the emotion on his face, but the slipperiness kept her from finding anything at all. “Although now that I meet you, I wonder if, perhaps, I could impose.”
She tensed. This part of the conversation had a familiar rhythm to it. “What is it you want?” she asked, preparing to walk away. Or run, if she needed.
“A lock of your hair,” he said. She thought he sounded like he was smiling.
The woman frowned, feeling perturbed in a way she couldn’t fully articulate. She wrestled the feeling down, knowing immediately that such a reaction was silly. This was a trifle.
She ran her hands through her hair and offered him the strands that came loose. Individually they were almost colorless, bleached by the fog and the dark, but twined together they became pale red, like a line of distant fire.
He took them and, almost reverently, slipped them into the pocket of his greatcoat. He leaned forward on his cane and said, “You will find the proof in his bedside table. In the second drawer, beneath a hidden panel. Do not presume to touch the thing, or it will go poorly for you.” He stood straight again, looking at her impassively. “That is all you need to know, I am sure, to reduce his little kingdom to ashes.”
She looked at his face, trying one last time to see it for what it really was. “Any particular reason I should believe you?”
“None I am willing to admit.” He strode into the fog, and in a moment it had blotted him out entirely, as if he had never been there at all.
PART 1
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Ashes
ASHES was cheating, and he was pretty sure the man sitting across from him was going to figure it out soon.
“Hurry along,” Ashes prodded. “Figure I’ve started growing whiskers waiting on you. These cobbles’re cold, eh?”
&n
bsp; The thick-faced man across from him grunted, glaring at Ashes before looking back at the cards in his hand. He was a massive individual, with biceps bigger than Ashes’s thighs and a ferocious mustache. He had the look of a surly bear, and wits to match.
“Y’need some help? They’ve got numbers on, but by the seems of you, numbers weren’t a favorite subject.” Ashes flashed a vicious smile, but his eyes flicked left and right, looking for exits. The alleyway where they sat was secluded enough, but all it took was one overcurious copper wandering in and wondering if Ashes was as illegal as he looked. Going for a third hand of Rob the Moon had been imprudent, but the man kept demanding double or nothing, and Ashes couldn’t stand to pass up a mark who begged to lose more money.
Besides, no one had ever called Ashes prudent.
“Something got you in a hurry?” the man grumbled, eyes still darting between the cards on the ground and those in his hand. “I didn’t think bastards had much in the way of schedules.”
“I dun’t figure what me schedule’s got to do with the price of whores in Yson,” Ashes snapped. “Maybe I’ve an invitation to tea with the Queens so’s I can woo their princess, or a powerful need to move me bowels sometime before me balls drop. Care to move along a mite?”
Ashes could have sworn the man let out a low growl. It would have been amusing except for his size. Ashes developed a sudden, acute awareness of how well his own skull would fit inside the man’s palm.
“Fine,” the man said, slapping a card against the cobbles. “Face of Judgment, red. Unless you’ve some manner of magic up your sleeve, I’ve just won.”
Ashes smirked. “Funny you ought to say that.” He laid his card down atop the man’s, moving with exaggerated carefulness. The Face of Cunning in black. “I’ve got all manner of magics up me sleeves, by the seems.” Ashes spread his hands and screwed his face into mock amazement. “Would you look at it—that’ll be thirty pence to me, I think? I’m a generous sort, so I figure I’ll count ’em. Wouldn’t want you taking off your shoes just to count some bastard’s money.”
The man’s eyes bulged at the sight of Ashes’s card. “That’s impossible,” he muttered, looking at Ashes’s face, at the cards, and finally at his own hand. “That’s . . .” He looked again, intently now. Ashes imagined he could hear gears twisting in his head, creaking a protest at being called on to move.
“Impossible, eh, I heard you. Care to skip to where you open up that purse of yours and acquaint me with my—?”
Ashes didn’t even have time to take a breath before the fellow’s hand caught him in the throat. A moment later the wall smashed into Ashes’s head. His feet were off the ground, and the world had gone woozy and red.
“You cheated me,” the man said. His voice went up just a little, making it sound almost like a question.
“I’m sure I dunno wha—guh—”
“You gods-damned little liar!”
“Now, now,” Ashes gasped out, scrabbling with one hand at the man’s arm. His efforts there proved fruitless. “Mustn’t—get—rowdy—” His feet were level with the man’s crotch; Ashes aimed a desperate kick. The man redirected it deftly, tilting his hips to throw Ashes’s aim and slamming the boy against the wall again for good measure. Ashes’s vision started cartwheeling.
“I ought to kill you,” the brute snarled.
“Seeing as I won, maybe y’ought to pay me, yeh streperous miser,” Ashes spat, and was rewarded with another universe-shattering choke. Something in the back of his mind muttered that this had been a poor plan.
“I’ll not throw you to the sewers. Consider yourself paid.” The man drove his fist into Ashes’s belly, crushing out what little air the boy had left. The brute released his grip, letting Ashes fall in a heap on the cobbles. He heard, as though from far away, the man’s footsteps exiting the alleyway.
Ashes coughed a bloody trail of spittle. He grimaced, blinked twice. His vision had gone swimmy, and his thoughts seemed wrapped in muck, but there would be time to catalogue his wounds later. He set grimly to picking up the cards, making certain that all fifty-seven were accounted for and hoping his counting was not impeded by the ringing in his skull.
His head spun of its own accord once or twice more, and his knees smarted abominably, but even so, when Ashes stood and wobbled toward the alley’s end, he did so with a faint smile. He tapped the waistband of his trousers, making certain the brute’s wallet hadn’t fallen out. Still there, and it was fat enough to make Ashes’s grin even wider.
He’d chosen a good mark: smart enough to recognize cheating, eventually, and too stupid to notice Ashes’s hand inside his jacket. It had cost some bruises, certainly, but nothing came for free.
The boy paused before he exited, forcing his head to stop spinning. Stumbling through Lyonshire like a drunk was a sure way to get himself noticed, and noticed would be bad with a Denizen’s wallet tucked in his pants and no iron name on his person. He tugged his ratty collar up against his neck, hiding what he could of the livid hand-marks on his throat. He shifted his posture, his face, his attitude, and in the blink of an eye he seemed almost an entirely different person. An apprentice running errands for his master, perhaps, or one of Lyonshire-Low’s “accidental” children lost on the way home.
But certainly, certainly not one of Burroughside’s sneak-thieving gutter-rats. No, sir, not him. He was totally drab; that was the key. Invisibility was just being what people saw every day.
With his pretending fixed firmly in his mind, Ashes stepped onto Argent Street. The crowd was much thinner than he’d expected: there were only a couple dozen people in eyeshot. How long had he been in that alley? He checked the sky, and cursed inwardly as he marked the sun. Dusk was an hour away, maybe less. That wasn’t anything like enough time.
He sprinted down Argent Street, darting around gawking shoppers and pushy merchants. Sure-footed and confident, he slipped around the lowlier Denizens—anyone who looked dreary enough to work in a factory, or whose clothing only cost a week’s wages instead of a month’s—and whenever he spotted colorful tentlike dresses or long coattails, he slowed to a respectful walk, gave the wealthy Denizen a five-foot berth, and kept his eyes down. He drew stares once or twice, but no cries of alarm and no calls for police. That was all he needed.
At Strave Avenue he crossed to Wending Road, slithered through the gaps in the fence around Harrod Park, then leapt onto the back of a south-going carriage, and managed to go undetected for fully two minutes before the driver cracked his whip at Ashes’s fingers.
In merely fifteen minutes, he crossed out of Lyonshire’s posh territory and into Lyonshire-Low. He let out a relaxed breath as he crossed the border. Here there were no coppers prowling the streets, no Denizens to irritate, and—significantly—no Burroughsiders watching him as he scuttled behind a building and began to count his day’s take.
Twenty-six . . . twenty-seven . . . Face of Cunning. He counted again.
The second count came out the same, and he had to keep himself from shouting with triumph. Twenty-eight crescents. Bless the man who’d made money from paper! Denizens carried whole fortunes now and didn’t even notice when the weight disappeared!
He forced himself to calm down, but it was hard. This would buy him time and food, and he could always do with more of both. He tugged five of the notes out and placed them strategically about his person, then stuffed the wallet through a carefully torn stitch under the arm of his too-large coat. Nestled there, it would be invisible even to Burroughside’s numerous and talented pickpockets. He was liked well enough in Burroughside, but a lumin and eight would tempt anybody, and secrecy guarded better than a sharp knife.
BARRISTER’S coffee-house stood, technically, in Lyonshire, which was to say that it stood on the right side of the district boundary for police to come if Barrister called for them. Even so, Barrister saw few upstanding Denizens in the course of his business day. His clientele were dirty folks who walked in with oversized clothes and undersized moral comp
unctions, who could only afford cheap stuff and were unlikely to complain (and might, in fact, celebrate their good fortune) if they found stray rat tails in their soup.
The coffee-house was nearly empty when Ashes entered. Some of its occupants he recognized: Slippery Rafe and Iames the Fool muttering in hushed tones in a corner, and Quentin Cobb at the bar, and grizzly old Owan Meek sucking down alcohol that smelled strong enough to melt iron. None acknowledged Ashes except Barrister, whose eyes flicked to him at the sound of the door opening; immediately the man’s mouth went thin.
“You’d better have something better for me than that long face, boy,” he said, pointing a dirty mug at him, “or you’re wasting your breath and my time.”
Ashes pulled out a crescent and placed it on the bar. “Not properly religious of you, Barry. Where’s your Ivorish charity?”
“Buried somewhere underneath my Ivorish greed, more than likely.” Barrister cocked an eyebrow at the crescent. “Besides, if that’s real enough to pay for your food, you’ve got more than your fair share of charity for today. Your benefactor know you have that?”
Ashes smirked. “By now? Eh, I reckon he does.”
“He give you that red necklace as well?”
Ashes tugged his collar up to hide the bruises. “Generous bloke.”
Barrister picked up the crescent-note, testing its texture with his fingers. “You spending all this at once?”
Ashes nodded. “Chicken and bread. Put the change on something that’ll keep.”
Barrister nodded and disappeared into the back of the coffee-house. He came out a minute later with a loaf of bread, into which a dry breast of chicken had been stuffed, and hearty goods wrapped in newspaper. Ashes picked up the food almost before it was out of Barrister’s hands, tore a bite out of the bread, and reveled in it. Not more than two days old, he’d bet anything. It was glorious—far better than the scraps he’d survived on since he left his old crew. It felt as if he were tasting real food for the first time.
The Facefaker's Game Page 1
