by Claire Luana
The man behind her grunted, then shushed her. She felt an awkward pat on her shoulder. “No need to be afraid. If you’re here to do business with the Commander, we won’t hurt ya.”
Wren’s tears turned to a disbelieving laugh. The man was comforting her! He thought she was crying out of fear for the situation. More laughter bubbled up, bursting from her, mingled with more tears.
“What’s that?” the gravelly voice barked from ahead.
“Think mine’s lost it,” the man from behind her called out.
Thom’s hacking cough joined the chorus of her manic giggles.
“Think mine’s dying,” another said, from the direction of Thom’s cough.
“Better be a lot of gold in it,” the leader said while Wren continued to laugh.
Wren’s body ached when the horse finally stopped beneath her. She felt the saddle’s weight shift as her captor swung down from his saddle and then he was grasping her around the waist, hauling her down too. Her knees almost buckled as he set her on the ground, but he steadied her until she got her feet under her. She took unsteady steps forwards, longing to see the world around her. The smells of a cookpot and the sound of a crackling fire oriented her slightly. They were in some kind of camp. And that was the sound of chopping wood. The mercenaries were calling out greetings to other men, and other male voices, even a few female, called back.
“Sal!” a deep voice called out, with a hint of a Novan twang. “Did ya go fishing? What catch have ya brought me?”
“Folks lookin’ for the Red Badger,” the man replied. “Seems they have a need of your services.”
“A job! We’re getting a bit too fat around here anyway,” the other man called, his voice cheerful. That voice...it struck a chord in Wren’s memories. It was familiar somehow. “Take off those blindfolds. Let’s greet our guests properly.”
Wren’s captor took off her blindfold and she blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. He slit the cords at her wrists and she rubbed them as she looked around and saw her friends all accounted for. They were in the yard of a tidy village.
The man who must be the Red Badger strode forward, grasping hands with Pike. His hair was brilliant red and hung in curls around his ears. He was tall and broad, heavily muscled with a sword-belt buckled around his trim waist. He was handsome, Wren realized with a blush, extremely handsome, with angled cheekbones and fine brows crowning bright blue eyes. The feeling of familiarity wouldn’t leave Wren. She felt herself drawn to Pike’s side, longing to examine the Red Badger more closely.
“Welcome to the Warren, as we Badgers affectionally call it. You are?”
“Maximus Pike, Guildmaster of the Spicer’s Guild of Alesia.”
The redhaired man grinned at Pike’s title. His smile lit up his face, filled with straight white teeth. Except one. A chipped front tooth.
Wren’s knees went weak.
“I’m the Red Badger. But you can call me—”
“Ansel?” she breathed his name—half a prayer, half a curse.
Chapter 25
Suddenly, Wren was a little girl again, all knees and elbows, painfully thin, painfully naive. Even back then, Ansel had been a gatherer of souls—poor, unfortunate wretches like herself who flocked to the apparent safety in the shelter of his wings. She’d met him the same night she’d run from the orphanage, from the horror of a future she had been thankfully too naive to fully comprehend.
She hadn’t known back then, but Maradis was divided up into territories—gangs of thugs and ruffians ruled the streets, but below, in the shadows, feral children ran in packs like wolves. The Cyclones ruled the Lyceum Quarter, the Hounds of the Huntress everything from west of Nysia Avenue and north of Council Street. The Jackabees took the Central Quarter, the Harlequins the Guild Quarter. And the Red Wraiths, Ansel’s little gang, took the Port Quarter.
Ansel found her curled under the corner of a bridge, eyes red-rimmed with tears, nose streaming. The rain was pouring down in sheets that night, the street before her running like a river. Ansel wore a black rain slicker, its collar turned up against the wet.
He and two of his other followers came dashing out of the rain, laughing and cursing, pausing under the bridge for the rain to let up. When he caught sight of her, an electric charge went through her. His eyes were as blue as ice, yet she grew warm when they fell upon her. The only thing more striking than his blue eyes was his red hair. Wren thought it strange that the gods had chosen to paint this boy in such vibrant color when they left the rest of them mute brown.
“Hey,” Ansel called to her, ducking low as he approached, his hands out like he was calming a spooked beast. Which in a way, he was. “You have anywhere to stay tonight?”
Wren didn’t answer, only pulling her knees in closer to her body, tightening the grip of her shaking arms wrapped around them. She had been fooled once by such an offer. She wasn’t going to be fooled again. She finally managed an imperceptible shake of her head.
“We have a place not far from here,” Ansel continued. “Lots of kids like us stay there. Some girls too. It isn’t much, but it’s dry. You’re welcome to come with.”
One of the others, a dark shadow of a boy who looked half-Centese, groaned at him. “C’mon, Ansel. Ye can’t take in every stray. She can’t do nothin’ but sit there. Don’t need more mouths ta feed.”
The redhaired boy, this Ansel, didn’t answer, crouching low. He waited.
“’M fine,” Wren managed, her body shaking from cold. She didn’t like the look of that dark-haired boy.
“You don’t seem fine,” Ansel replied. “C’mon. Just one night.”
Wren shook her head again. People didn’t do nice things for free. She had learned that the hard way. If this boy was offering her something, he wanted something. She wasn’t a fool.
“Look,” he said. “Just an offer. We’re in a warehouse a few blocks down on Edmund and Seventh Streets. Says ‘Excelsior Soaps’ on the side in white. Can ya read?”
Wren nodded. She could read some.
“If you change your mind, you’re welcome,” he said, standing.
“You’re telling her where the Wraithhouse is now?” The dark boy groaned.
“Can it Nik,” Ansel barked. “She’s obviously not Cedar. Do I run this gang or what?”
The dark boy cast a sharp look back at her before the three disappeared into the rain like the wraiths they were.
Wren sat and shivered for a long while before unwinding herself and following them into the rain, towed by some invisible force that she only later recognized as Ansel’s gravitas.
The warehouse was just as he’d described it, sitting brooding and quiet on the corner, the white lettering on the side stained gray by the night’s rain. She crept into an alley around the side and clambered up a dumpster onto the rickety fire escape, creeping silently to the upper floors. From there, she peered in a window, squinting to see through the condensation fogging the inside of the glass. There were lanterns dotting the wide floor inside, and kids laid out on pallets and blankets. A deck of cards was spread across the cement floor between two kids, and a fire chugged in an iron stove in one corner. From Wren’s perch on the cold, sharp steel, it looked like heaven. She leaned closer, holding her breath, looking for the redhaired boy from before. Where was he?
A face appeared behind the glass, causing Wren to jump backwards with a cry, slamming into the railings of the fire escape. The redhaired boy pushed the window up with a creak. “It’s a lot warmer in here,” he said with a wry grin. He held out a hand into the rain. She looked from it to him. He had a chip in one of his front teeth. The chip had done it, in the end. It had given him an earnestness that couldn’t be faked. So she found herself putting her hand in his and letting him pull her through the window onto the balcony inside.
So began two fairly happy years, relatively speaking. Wren found her place in the Red Wraiths. The dark-haired boy, Nik, never took a shine to her, but the other orphans and street kids w
ere nice, even friendly. They taught her the ways of the world on the street—the best places to beg, which cuisiniers and bakers saved their day’s leftovers for the gang, the Cedar Guard’s routes, and more. Wren was a hopeless fighter, uncoordinated and small, but she turned out to have a fair hand at lockpicking and quickly excelled, becoming Ansel’s preferred partner in crime. She was lousy at pickpocketing, as she didn’t have the boldness the skill took, but she played the part of the poor waif or distraction very well with her big eyes and protruding collarbones.
As the months ticked by, she found herself drawn to Ansel more and more, like a flower’s face follows the sun. And it seemed he was drawn to her too. Ansel began picking her for solo jobs, and sometimes the two of them wouldn’t go right back to the Wraithhouse but would dart around town—running through the piers, swiping a cinnamon stick from a vendor, or sitting on the grassy hillsides overlooking Spirit Bay. And from the sidelong glances of some of the other wraiths, they began to notice too.
It all fell apart one bright October day. The air was crisp and clear, the chill breeze rustling dry leaves in a kaleidoscope of orange and red. The leader of the Jackabees, a cruel blond-haired boy named Harlson, had been testing the boundaries between their territories for weeks. It seemed he was ready to test his mettle against Ansel, because that morning, Nik ran in, reporting that he’d spotted Harlson and another Jackabee all the way on Longshore Drive, in the heart of wraith territory. Ansel, Nik, and two of their other toughest brawlers ran to meet the threat.
There was a dangerous glint in Nik’s eye that left an uneasy feeling in Wren’s stomach. So she followed them, keeping to the alleys and shadows. So she saw when Ansel met Harlson, confronting him about his encroachment. She saw when Nik turned on Ansel and the other wraiths—watched with horror as a horde of Jackabees appeared from the side streets to join the fray. She saw Ansel, battered and bloody, on his knees before Harlson, the other boy’s fist twisted cruelly in his beautiful red hair. Wren watched with white-knuckled fear, desperate to do something but knowing it would be useless against the might of the other gang.
Ansel finally held up his hands, admitting defeat. He smiled his chip-toothed smile, his teeth red with blood. “Whatcha want, Jackabee?”
“Half your territory. To the Raven Club.” Harlson announced gleefully.
Wren silently cursed. If Ansel agreed, the Jackabees would be only blocks from Wraithhouse!
“That it?” Ansel asked.
Harlson looked at Nik, who nodded at him, glowering at Ansel. “And your woman. That auburn-haired girl.”
Nik grinned toothily at Ansel.
Wren’s heart stuttered in her chest. Her. They were talking about her. Did Nik think she meant so much to Ansel? Was he doing this to hurt him? Emotions roared within her, fear and guilt and...hope. Did Ansel feel for her how she felt for him?
“Wren? She’s nothin.’ Ya can have her,” Ansel said. “Free of charge. What’re we really talking here? The Raven Club is too far.”
The rest of Ansel’s negotiations blurred in her mind, drowned out by the ringing in her ears. Ansel...had given her away. Thrown her out like trash, handed her over to that brute Harlson like a pair of old shoes. She flattened herself to the wall, her breath coming in gasps. She’d been a fool. Yet again. Trusted another man...cared for him...and for what?
She dashed down the alley and cut through the streets, away from the Jackabees, away from the Wraiths and Ansel and the Port Quarter. She kept running and running until her legs burned beneath her, until she crossed into the Guild Quarter. She never looked back.
“Wren.” Callidus snapped his fingers before her and she started, her eyes focusing on his pinched face. “What’s gotten into you?”
The color had drained from Ansel’s face, his brash bravado swallowed by the shock of her presence.
“Wren?” he asked, taking a shaky step towards her. For a moment, he was that boy again. The boy offering a hand in the rain, a chance. But it had been a mistake then. It would be a mistake now.
“No.” She shook her head, backing away. “No, no.” She bumped into the chest of the man behind her, the man whom she had ridden with from the bay. She turned to Callidus, to Pike, feeling wild and panicked, penned in by these walls of men around her, leather and muscles and swords. “We’re leaving. We are not working with him.”
“What’s gotten into you?” Callidus asked, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Are you ill?”
Thom was the one who looked ill, standing slightly to the side of them, his pale face covered with a sheen of sweat.
“He can’t help us,” she said, her voice shrill, sounding hysterical in her ears.
“A moment.” Pike grinned widely at Ansel, who was standing in stony silence, his muscled arms crossed before his chest.
Pike drew her aside, turning their backs to the other men. “Get ahold of yourself,” he hissed. “There is no other option. Don’t ruin this.”
“He can’t be trusted,” she whispered back, her breath ragged. “He will betray us.”
“How do you know? Do you know him?”
“He betrayed me once. I’m not going to let him do it again,” Wren said. “The answer is no. I’m out. We’re out. We find another way.”
Callidus was inching closer to them. “What in the Beekeeper’s name is going on?”
“Wren has history with this man,” Pike said.
“We can’t work with him,” Wren said, tugging on Callidus’s sleeve.
Callidus’s gaze darkened. “Wren, we were just hauled over half of Nova Navis blindfolded on horseback, and you’re telling me you want to turn around, pack up, and go find another horde of dangerous men to help us retake our country?”
“Please,” she said. “If you’ve ever trusted me, trust me now.”
Callidus seemed to consider and Wren held her breath, clenching her hands into fists at her side to keep them from shaking. Please, Callidus, she thought. Trust me.
Callidus’s shoulders slumped and he pushed his drooping hair back from his forehead. “Fine. We’ll find another way.”
Wren heaved a tremendous sigh, the tension draining from her.
Pike rolled his eyes and threw up his hands, letting out a string of curses in a language that sounded like Centese. “Just because you cupcakes refuse to work with him, doesn’t mean I do. You don’t think I’ve grappled with worse than this pretty boy? I’m staying.”
Wren’s mouth dropped open and Callidus glared at him. Pike was their manpower, their ride to find Lucas. But there had to be another way. Her mind spun, grasping for something, any way to get out of this. To keep their alliance with Pike and take back Maradis. Without allying themselves with someone who had thrown her away like a scrap of paper in the wind. She looked over her shoulder.
Ansel twisted his bottom lip between his fingers while he watched her, and the familiarity of it took Wren’s breath away. “We don’t wanna do business with anyone who doesn’t wanna do business with us. But, Wren, I’d like to talk to ya.”
“No, thank you,” she said firmly, taking a step back. It didn’t matter. She’d find a way later. They needed to leave. She patted Thom’s shoulder, motioning for him to move. “We’ll be on our way.”
And then Thom toppled forward, crashing to the ground.
Chapter 26
It was Ansel who caught him. In a blink, the mercenary darted forward, catching Thom and lowering his lanky limbs to the ground.
Wren’s mind moved sluggishly through the haze of surprise.
“What’s wrong with ’im?” Ansel asked. “He’s burning up.”
Callidus was at Thom’s side next, helping Ansel roll Thom onto his back.
“He’s got pneumonia, best we can figure,” Pike said.
“We told you not to bring him,” Wren scolded Sal, the bearded man, who was now craning his head to take in Thom’s prone form.
“We have a healer here who can look at him. Unless you’re still planning on leaving this
moment,” Ansel said, looking pointedly at Wren.
She bit her lip. Staying meant getting sucked into Ansel’s orbit. But they couldn’t drag Thom back to the ship now. Not until he was stabilized. Against her better judgment, Wren nodded quickly. “Help him. No favors. We can pay.”
Ansel motioned to a few of the other men, who picked up Thom’s limp body and carried him towards one of the strange huts. Wren followed, getting her first glimpse of the little town.
About a dozen wooden houses in a semi-circle were built right into the hillside, their roofs covered in grassy earth. They faced the leeward side, sheltered from the western winds. Forming the other side of the semi-circle were outbuildings that looked like a barn, a smithy, and a smokehouse. In the tidy open area between them were cooking areas, firepits, and in the distance, fenced fields that housed both livestock and sparring men.
Wren and the others followed the men who carried Thom into one of the huts. Inside, they found a cozy room adorned with oil lamps and dried herbs. A wizened old woman prodded at Thom, who had been transferred to a table. “Can’t have all ya in here,” she barked, shooing them back out the door. “I’ll summon ya if anything changes.”
Anxious not to leave Thom but recognizing sense, Wren backed out the door.
Ansel was standing outside, his eyes roving over her form. “Why don’t ya come with me? Warm ya up, get ya a bite to eat and some ale.”
“We don’t need anything from you.” Wren crossed her arms over her chest.
