And then my breath was cut off.
I threw myself forward, felt the cord dig deeper, felt a trickle of blood flow as the cord sawed into my skin. The man’s gasps ground in my ear and I jerked to the side, felt the cord cut deeper still. And then the grayness of the world focused even more, focused down and down until the only thing I could feel was the cord, the hot fire of not being able to breathe beginning to burn in my chest—
The cold metal of the dagger pressed tight against my neck. I still held its handle in my right hand, held it in a death grip.
As the fire in my chest seethed outward, sending tingling sensations of warmth into my arms, down deep into my gut, I twisted the dagger. Its edge bit into my skin, drew a vertical slice from the back of my jaw downward to my collarbone that stung like a sharp needle prick. I twisted, pushing the dagger outward as the man grunted in my ear, his breath a hissing stench, spit flying from his clamped teeth onto my neck. My focus on the world began to slip, the grayness seeping forward, narrowing to a hollow circle, to a point. Tingling hot fire filled my gut, seeped downward into my legs, into my thighs. A thousand needle pricks coursed toward my knees, through my shoulders and into my arms. The cord cinched tighter. My chest heaved, spasmed—
And then the dagger sliced through the cord.
The man grunted with surprise as his hands jerked wide. The knee pressed into my spine thrust me forward, sent me sprawling onto the dead woman. The man fell backward into the rank alley wall.
My gasp for air was like a warm, shuddering scream.
I lurched over the woman, stepped on her arm, felt it roll beneath me, but the motions felt soft and drawn out. As I fell to my side, I twisted, turned so that I landed facing the man.
He’d already thrust himself away from the wall, was already looming over me, descending, his face a grimace of hatred. His hands reached for me, the cord still twined around his fingers, its cut ends dangling as he reached for my neck.
I brought the dagger up from my side without thinking. The world was still too gray, too narrow for thought.
The dagger caught him in the chest. I felt it punch through skin, felt it grind against bone as it sank deeper, deeper, until it was brought up short by the handle. Then the man’s weight drove the handle into my chest.
I had a moment to see a startled look flash through the man’s eyes, a moment to feel his hands encircling my throat loosely, and then the pain of the dagger’s handle drove the breath from my lungs. I lurched forward, threw the man to the side, and rolled to my hands and knees, coughing like a diseased cat. Pain radiated from the center of my chest. Not the fiery pain of no air, nor the cold pain of the warning Fire, but the dull pain of being punched too hard, too fast.
I coughed a moment more, then vomited.
I was still hunched over, on hands and knees, bile like a sickness in my torn throat, when someone said, “Impressive.”
I jerked away from the voice, a tendril of spit and bile that dangled from my mouth plastering itself to my chin as I moved. I came up short against the alley wall with a thud, body tucked in so I was as small a target as possible. A bright flare of pain radiated from my bruised ribs. My hand went reflexively for my dagger, but it was still embedded in the man’s chest.
My heart lurched and I cowered lower, head bowed, arms wrapped around my knees. I was trembling too much to do anything more, too weak from the struggle with the man to run. So I cowered, eyes closed, hoping the voice would go away.
After a moment I realized I hadn’t heard retreating footsteps. I hadn’t heard anything at all.
I opened my eyes, aware of the wetness of tears on my face, and tilted my head, staring out into the alley through the matted tangles of my hair.
A guardsman leaned against the alley wall twenty paces away, the bodies of the man and the woman between us. It was the same guardsman I’d seen on the street before. His arms were crossed over his chest, his posture casual. He wore the standard uniform—breeches, leather boots, brown shirt, leather armor underneath—but no sword belted at his waist. A dagger lay tucked in his belt instead. The Skewed Throne symbol was stitched in red thread on the left side of the shirt.
Red. A Seeker. A guardsman sent to mete out the Mistress’ punishments, to pass judgment. Not one of the regular guardsmen; the stitching would have been gold instead.
A new fear crawled into my stomach.
He’d seen me kill a man, had witnessed it.
He watched me with a strange look in his eyes. A confused look that pinched the skin between his brows and tightened the corners of his mouth.
After a moment, his gaze shifted from me to the body of the man.
“Very impressive,” he said again, then pushed himself away from the wall.
I flinched back, my shoulders scraping against the moldy dampness of the alley’s mud-brick, my breath hitching in my throat. I tasted bile again, felt fresh tears squeeze through pain-clenched eyes.
I heard the guardsman halt.
“I didn’t come for you,” he said, his voice brusque but soothing. Reassuring.
I opened my eyes to narrow slits, just enough to see him, to watch.
He moved toward the dead man, knelt on his heels near the man’s head.
For a long moment, he simply stared at the man’s face, at the small trickle of blood that had leaked from the corner of the mouth. Then he spat to one side, his face twisted with contempt. “Vicious bastard. You deserved worse than this.”
He jerked my dagger free from the man’s chest and in a strangely fluid motion made three quick slashes across the man’s forehead. He stared at his handiwork a moment more, then turned on the balls of his feet until he was facing me, elbows on his knees, my dagger dangling loosely from one hand.
I watched the dagger carefully, aware of his intent look. I hadn’t realized how important the dagger had become to me over the last three years. I felt exposed without it, helpless.
I wanted my dagger back. Needed it.
The guardsman began swinging the blade back and forth, taunting me, and my gaze shifted back to his eyes. This close, I could see they were a muddy brown, like mine, like most of the people who lived in Amenkor, on the Dredge. There were scars on his face, lots of scars. Scars that ran up into his thinning, gray-brown hair. They made him seem hard, like worn mud-brick bleached by the sun.
“And you,” he murmured, the confused look returning. “You don’t seem dangerous at all. You’re what? Ten?” He leaned slightly forward, eyes narrowing, then shook his head. “Older than that, although you could fool almost anyone. Thirteen at least, maybe more. And you don’t talk much.”
He paused, waiting. The dagger stilled.
“Maybe you don’t talk at all,” he said finally, dagger back in motion, the action careless, as if he didn’t care.
I narrowed my eyes. “I talk.”
The words came out harsh and gravelly, like brick grating against brick, and they hurt—in my chest, in my throat. I wiped the thread of spit and bile from my chin and coughed against the burning sensation. Even the coughs hurt. Hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt before.
The guardsman hesitated, then nodded, the barest hint of a smile playing at the edges of his mouth.
“So I see. You just don’t talk much, do you?”
I didn’t answer, and his smile grew.
He turned his attention to my dagger, still swinging between the fingers of one hand. With a smooth gesture, he swung it upright in his grip, then stared at me over its tip. All traces of the smile were gone, his eyes flatly serious, expression hard.
“This is your dagger, isn’t it?” All hints of the reassuring, casual voice had disappeared. This voice was hurtful, threatening.
I cringed back. “Yes.”
He didn’t react, eyes still hard, intent. “It’s a guardsman’s dagger.”
My eyes flicked to the dagger tucked in his belt, then back. I felt my stomach clench and tensed, even though it hurt. In my head, I saw the first ma
n I’d killed leaning against the second story of the rooftop, hand outstretched, grasping for me, saw the blood coating his neck, heard the wet rasp of his last short breaths. And I saw the ripped-out gold stitching of the Skewed Throne on the left breast of his shirt.
For the first time since the night of the Fire, the thought of the first man I’d killed didn’t frighten me. Instead, defiant anger seethed just beneath the pain.
I glared at the Seeker. “Yes. But now it’s mine.”
He frowned. He wanted to ask how I’d gotten it, where it came from. I could see it in his eyes.
But he simply shrugged. “What’s yours is yours.”
He tossed the dagger low across the ground, metal clanging on stone as it struck the wet cobbles and slid to a halt just in front of me.
I reached out slowly and picked it up, unbelieving, the blood on the handle still tacky, my eyes on the guardsman the entire time. He didn’t move, just watched. But something had changed. There was a new, considering look in his eyes, as if he were judging me, coming to a decision.
I pulled the dagger in close to my body, kept it ready.
After a long, drawn-out moment, he stood. “I bet you know the warren beyond the Dredge like I know the scars on my own skin,” he murmured to himself. And then he tilted his head.
I shifted under his gaze, suddenly aware of the darkness of the alley, of the seclusion and the smooth fluidity of his movements.
“Go away,” I said, pulling in tight, ready to flee.
He smiled, a slow, careful smile, as if my wary stance had convinced him of something.
Instead of turning to leave, he crossed his arms again and said, “I could use your help.”
“Go away,” I repeated with more force, even though the suggestion piqued interest deep inside me.
“You can leave if you want,” he said, but he didn’t move himself, simply stood, waiting. It was like the dagger again. He was dangling escape in front of me, letting it swing back and forth, taunting me.
I glanced toward the potatoes scattered across the cobbles, barely visible in the light. Hunger twisted in my gut.
The guardsman shifted and I tore my gaze back to where he stood. He hadn’t moved forward, only shifted his weight, his eyes on me. “Everyone runs to the slums of the Dredge, you know. Almost everyone. Murderers, thieves, brawlers. Merchants who’ve lost their businesses, gamblers who’ve gambled away their lives. A few run to the sea, to the ships in the harbor and the cities they can take them to elsewhere on the coast, but not many. They come here. They think they can hide here. That among all this crowded filth, these warrens of alleys and houses and narrow courtyards, they can somehow disappear.”
He paused, still staring at me. Then he frowned, and his voice darkened. “And they’re right. Five years ago, before the Fire, they wouldn’t have had a chance. The Seekers would have found them, if we were sent after them by the Mistress. The Skewed Throne would have found them. But now. . . .”
His gaze dropped to the dead man in the middle of the alley, his eyes flickering with a black hatred, and I shrank back until my shoulders pressed against the collapsing wall.
“Now the Dredge is more crowded. All the merchants hit hard by the panic after the Fire are drifting here. All of their families. They’re desperate. And they have nowhere else to go. You must have noticed how crowded the Dredge has become, little varis.” He paused, glanced up, then nodded his head. “Yes. You’ve noticed. You live off of it, don’t you?”
The question struck like a physical blow, harsh enough to make me wince. I narrowed my eyes at him, jaw set, and said, “Yes.”
It came out bitter and hopeless.
He nodded again. “You know the Dredge and its underbelly. You live here. You can help me find these men that run.”
He paused, still watching me, letting the offer sink in. After a moment he pushed away from the wall and walked toward me, knelt a few steps away, so close I could see his scars clearly, could see his eyes.
I cringed back from him, from the heated danger that bled from him, that set all the warning senses I’d honed on the Dredge on edge except for one, the one I trusted the most: the cold Fire in my chest. That Fire remained dormant, and because of that I stayed instead of fleeing to the street, or in the other direction, deeper into the warren of dark paths beyond the Dredge.
“Do you know where Cobbler’s Fountain is?” he asked.
I nodded. I hadn’t been to Cobbler’s Fountain in years. It was too far up the Dredge, too close to the River and the city, to the real Amenkor. I’d be noticed there, my rags and dirty hair. It wasn’t good hunting ground.
“Good,” he said, sitting back slightly. “I can help you, and you can help me. Think about it. If you want to help find these men for the Mistress, come to Cobbler ’s Fountain tomorrow, at dusk. I’ll be there.”
Then he stood, turned, and strode from the alley, pausing at its edge to adjust to the sunlight before entering the crowd. He didn’t look back.
I waited for ten heartbeats, wary, then rose from my crouch, wincing as I drew in a deep breath. I approached the two bodies slowly, every movement sending dull pain across my chest and into my arms, still watching the far entrance to the alley, still uncertain the guardsman had left. A stinging fire burned in a circle around my neck where the dead man’s cord had cut into flesh, and a thinner line of fire ran from the back of my jaw down my throat from where I’d pressed my own dagger into my neck to cut the cord, but the pain in my chest . . .
I coughed again, hissed through clenched teeth as I knelt beside the man.
His face was strangely slack, his eyes open. Blood had filled his mouth, had leaked from one corner and matted in his beard. The guardsman had carved the Skewed Throne into his forehead, the cuts raw, with only a trace of blood. A single horizontal slash across the top, two slanted vertical slashes beneath, one shorter than the other. The man had been dead too long for them to bleed much.
I leaned over his face, breathed in his sour smell—piss and blood and sweat and something deeper, something rancid, like rotten butter. I stared into his vacant eyes, frowned as I brought one hand up to the scored line encircling my neck. There was no frigid flare of Fire in my chest now. No reaction at all. The danger had passed.
But as I stared into his eyes I felt again the coarseness of his beard on my cheek, heard his ragged, desperate gasps. I smelled his breath.
Anger grew, deep in my chest, a hard lump beneath the dull pain. An anger I recognized. I’d felt it many times during my life on the Dredge—for the wagon master who’d kicked me, for the nameless gutterscum who’d slid into my niche and stolen my bread. A hatred that was there and then gone. Fleeting.
But this time the anger, the hatred, wasn’t fleeting. It was solid. And the longer I looked at the dead man’s face, the harder it became. It began to take form, shifting and slithering.
I leaned closer, breathed in the rancid musk of the dead man even deeper.
And then I spat into his face.
I leaned back, startled, my spittle running down the man’s skin beneath one dead eye. I was strangely . . . thrilled, arms tingling as if with numbness, with cold. But I wasn’t cold. A hot flush covered me instead, lay against my skin like sweat.
I turned to the woman, a pang of regret coursing beneath the heated, sickening exhilaration. Then I crawled to the spilled potatoes, the dropped basket, and collected it all together, as quickly as possible.
I fled toward the back of the alley, away from the Dredge, trying not to think about the dead man, the woman, or the guard.
I focused on the pain in my chest instead. And beneath that, the still lingering anger, coiled now, like a snake.
Chapter 2
I WOKE in my niche deep in the slums beyond the Dredge to vivid sunlight outside, my chest bruised a livid purple-black. I moaned as I rolled into a sitting position, lifted up my ragged shirt, and examined the bruising. Every breath drew a wince, every motion a twinge, yet I prodded th
e edges of the bruise anyway.
I sat and stared at the basket of potatoes and thought about the round face of the woman the man had killed. The pang of regret returned, but I shoved it aside in annoyance and focused on the guardsman, on the offer to help him.
I frowned and pulled out my dagger, stared at the band of sunlight caught on the flat of its blade.
I didn’t need the guardsman. I’d survived without him since I was nine. I’d survived without anyone since Dove and his gutterscum thugs went after that woman and I refused to follow.
I frowned. I hadn’t thought of Dove since that night, tried not to feel the ghost of the throbbing bruise on my cheek where he’d punched me after I’d told him I wouldn’t help him catch the woman. I’d known he wasn’t going to simply rob her. He meant to kill her. I’d seen it in his eyes.
I scowled. I’d decided then that Dove had served his purpose. He’d taught me enough so that I could survive on my own.
I hadn’t needed anyone else then and I didn’t need anyone else now.
I hesitated. Except, of course, the white-dusty man. I needed him, relied on him occasionally. But that was different.
So I rose with a grimace of pain and crawled out into the sunlight through my niche’s narrow opening, the guardsman and his offer pushed aside. The potatoes wouldn’t last forever. I needed to hunt.
The Dredge is the only real street in the slums of Amenkor, running straight from its depths, across the River, and into the real city on the other side of the harbor. The Dredge is where those from the city proper mingled with those that lived beyond the Dredge, those that lived deeper, like me—the gutterscum. At fourteen, the Dredge was the edge of my world. I’d never stepped beyond it, never walked down its broken cobbles, past its taverns and shops, across the bridge over the River and into the city of Amenkor itself. The Dredge on this side of the River was Amenkor for me. I preyed upon its people, on the crowds of men and women who had somehow fallen on hard times and had been forced to abandon the real city and retreat across the harbor.
The Skewed Throne Page 2
