“You speak properly enough,” I said.
I’d finally stopped shivering—or at least my body had given up pretending it would ever feel warm again. Kor still wouldn’t light a fire, and with the approach of evening, the room was getting colder than ever, dark and dank. He didn’t seem to feel the cold. I was starting to think he didn’t feel much of anything.
“Sure, when I’m talking to the likes of you,” he said.
“The likes of me?” I asked, and gestured to my tattooed face.
“Point taken. Old habits, though.”
“What does it mean to be on the get?” I asked suddenly, thinking of Hayli and her baffling Cavnish that sounded half foreign.
“Means you got the coppers hot after you.”
I blinked.
“The police, dammit. It means you’re making a getaway.”
I smiled, because the idea of me and Zagger making a getaway from the police was that ridiculous. “Are we going to have dinner at anything like a reasonable time tonight?”
Kor threw his head back and laughed—hard—just for a moment. Then his humor vanished and he glared at me. “I’m not your grobbing nanny. You want chow, scrounge it up on your own. And if I hear the words dinner or reasonable come out of your mouth again, I’ll sew it shut. Got it?”
I returned the glare and pushed to my feet. “Right. Chow. I’ll try to scrounge some up without…getting…on the get.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“You’re a…” I bit my tongue on the word begging to come out. “So, no advice?”
“No. No tips. You’re free on the wing, kid. Figure it out.”
I stared at him, fighting down a surge of rage. I couldn’t remember a single time in my life when anyone—anyone—had called me “kid.” But I just took a deep breath and stalked past him.
He called after me as I reached the door, “One bit of advice and that’s it. Don’t ever call yourself, or anyone else, a Jixy. Got that? You’re a mage here. Don’t ever make that mistake or it’ll be your last.”
I shuddered and nodded, and pushed my way out into the eerie silence of the city at night.
It took me a few minutes to get my bearings just on the fact that I stood in an alley. Inky darkness trickled down the walls around me, and somewhere in the near distance the rhythmic clashing of a train pulsed and faded, pulsed and faded. A low, breathy engine whistle seared across my thoughts. South Brinmark. Of all the places I could imagine wanting to be at this moment, South Brinmark had to be absolute dead bottom of the list. South Brinmark at night, no less.
I wandered between the buildings until the alley spat me out onto an empty, narrow street. Gas lamps cast a weird greenish light on the broken pavement, reflecting in forgotten puddles and off half-smashed panes of glass in nearby storefronts. Somewhere in another back alley a tin rubbish bin lid crashed to the ground. I expected a cat; I jumped and stared when a half-naked child skitted across the street right in front of me.
I put my hands on my head and sucked in a long, thin breath. The cold made my lungs ache, but for just that moment, not of that mattered. This was my city, and I was terrified of it. Terrified, because I didn’t know it at all.
“Food dan’ come skipping down the street on its own, y’know,” a tiny voice said, close by my elbow.
I spun around, only to find Zip standing there, in my hat, fingers sticking out the holes in the bottoms of his pockets. My heart took off racing—racing, and it was just a kid talking to me. I took a little breath and steadied my nerves. I was only acting. Affecting an accent, adopting a dialect…it was just theater. I could do this.
“I heard in Brinmark it did,” I said. “You saying I got fibbed?”
I wondered if that meant what I thought it did. Wondered if people even said that down here. But the kid just grinned, his mouth as full of holes as his pockets.
“How’d you know I wanted chow?” I asked, giving him a little scowl.
“You sure perked up when someone crashed the trash.”
That had a bit of poetry to it; I nodded appreciatively. “Think they left any scraps?”
“Nope.”
“How’d you get so sure?”
“‘Cause I ate it all,” he said, proud.
“But didn’t I just see…”
“Nah, that weren’t me. You saw Bizzy. Say, I’m Zip. Got a tag?”
Tag, I thought. The word gave me pause. It wasn’t even a name to these people. It was both more and less than a name.
I frowned. “Not as I’m like to tell.”
“Ohhh,” Zip said, as if that made all the sense in the world. Then he swung around, squinting into the lamplight. “Well, you’d see more luck down round Trip’s turf, just by the sweet shop.”
“Tell me that again, and pretend you’re talking to a stranger,” I said.
“Right. Gan away down to the next lamp, then take this hand,” and he held up his right hand, “then that hand, this hand, and straight on till you pass the sweet shop. You’ll know it.”
I opened my mouth to ask him the name of the sweet shop, but he’d said it twice as if I’d know what it meant. So I just smiled and nodded.
“Thanks, Zip.”
“Yup,” he said, and scampered off into the shadows.
I had half a mind to call him back and tell him to take my boots to his father, but suddenly I couldn’t fathom parting with them. My feet felt half-frozen as it was.
Half-frozen.
I’d seen the old man’s feet. I didn’t know anything about half-frozen.
I buried the nagging guilt and set off to the south, reciting Zip’s directions aloud as I went to keep from forgetting them. My stomach gurgled woefully. That would be Tarik’s stomach, the one that kept expecting pumpkin bisque and fine claret wine to appear out of thin air.
The wind tore through the narrow street, sending my cap catapulting into the shadows. I scrounged through half-rotted bits of newspaper and broken bottles until my shaking hands found it again. When the rain started to fall, it took all my resolve not to sit down against the wall and curse everything and everyone I’d ever known.
I’d never wanted to feel sorry for myself quite as much as at that moment. But at the same time, I’d never felt so much scorn for myself either. I knew I had no right to whine, when I’d just seen what real poverty looked like. That didn’t keep the same thought from tumbling through my mind, though, over and over again: This was a mistake.
As the rain turned to sleet, I shifted my steps back to the north, and found my way to the alley where I’d left Kor. I shouldered my way inside the abandoned building and sat back down in my corner, shaking uncontrollably. My hands felt thick and raw, stiff and numbed to insensibility. I shoved them under my armpits to try to warm them up, but their icy skin only made me colder.
“Kor!” I hissed into the darkness. My teeth started chattering.
Kor was right. I was pathetic. I’d never thought of myself as weak, but I’d been out of the comfort of my palace for a grand total of six hours and I already wanted to give up everything and run back home. And now Kor had gone and disappeared, and he’d taken my greatcoat with him. Gad. He probably just wanted the thing for himself.
I shuffled my feet on the floor and doubled tighter over my knees, every muscle in my body aching from shivering. No one in Brinmark’s high society prayed, but right then, I found myself praying.
Chapter 2 — Hayli
Rivano was staring at me.
One minute I’d been dangling from Derrin’s arms, the next I was in my bed, waking up with the Clan Master’s face not five inches from mine.
“That’s right,” he murmured, like he’d been talking for a good long bit already.
A minute and I realized he had a hold on me, his hand tight on my shoulder. I blinked. Tried to squirm free but got nowhere.
“The worst is past,” Rivano said, sitting back and releasing me.
“Worst of what?” I gasped.
He smiled, j
ust. “The fever.”
“What’d I have a fever for? I never get sick,” I said.
“Likely from laying the gutter so long,” he said. “I’m surprised you didn’t end up sicker than you did.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I Shifted. And you told me not to. I div’n mean to.”
Five days. That’s what Derrin had said. I’d been missing for five days. What had happened?
Rivano measured me, quiet and thinking. He didn’t look skundered at me, but I knew better than figure that meant anything.
“Why did you?” he asked, soft.
I blushed. “I…I dan’ na. I was embarrassed. I got nervous about… about a boy.”
My face flared hotter than ever. Why was I telling Clan Master Rivano about my ridiculous fancy over Prince Tarik? But he just smiled, understanding warming the amber of his eyes.
“And then you ended up in the gutter a few days later? Typical Shifting sort of lag?”
The room went cold on me all sudden-like. I hunched down under my blanket.
“No,” I whispered. “No, I woke up before that.”
He leaned forward. “Hayli,” he said, and for some reason I jumped, like he shouldn’t have known my name. “What happened? What’s got you so unsettled?”
“They took me somewhere. It hurt…it hurt so much…”
The warmth in his eyes hardened into worry. His smile turned to stone. “What’s this? What hurt?” I couldn’t answer. “Can you remember where you went? What did they do to you?”
I shook my head. My whole body shook. “I dan’ na what happened! I dan’ na!”
He left me babbling like an idiot. I got to feeling that somehow I’d done something terribly wrong, only I couldn’t figure what. I lay still a few minutes more, slumped under my thin blanket, shivering and fighting back the burn of tears.
After a while I got so I could mostly forget about that horrible white room with its white lights and white coats—or, at least I could forget enough that it didn’t have me blubbering anymore. I stretched my arms out, careful, waiting for pain to tell me what had happened, but I felt nothing. So I hitched over to the edge of my bed and sat up, peering around at the empty barracks. Must’ve been midmorning, or mid-afternoon, or some time of the day not close to a meal, or there’d have been kids swarming all over like ants on sugar.
I couldn’t see Derrin anywhere about, so I buckled on my boots and scrammed from the Hole before he could find me again.
Brinmark had given up on snow and had got back to rain again, cold and hard and endless. I spotted a piece of ratty canvas someone had pulled off a supply box and wrapped it around my shoulders. It kept the rain off. Didn’t look like much, but I mostly didn’t care. Being warm and dry was so much more important than looking fine, no matter what Gem said. I never did understand why she fretted so much about what the high-streeters thought when they saw her. It didn’t mean a thing down here.
Not ten minutes out from the Hole, up at a corner of Chase Street where fine folks liked to parade about, I found Pika huddled in the hollow of a half-rotted crate. She sat with her chin in her fists, watching some stuffy looking lads on bicycles across the street. I didn’t think she’d missed me, but she kind of jumped when I slid under the shelter to join her.
“Hayli!” she squealed, and hugged my arm. “You’re better!”
“Better and better,” I said, trying best I could to push away the snaky tendrils of fear inside me. I nodded at the dandies. “What’s the story?”
She smirked. “Nothing interesting. But the boy with the spectacles is dreamy!”
I eyed the boy. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen, with great big spectacles that made him look a bit like an owl. Even the way he had his shoulders scrunched up in the rain got me imagining feathers sprouting from his head.
“Tosh,” I said. “He’s too old for you.”
She pouted and wriggled a little further under the crate.
“Well, they were gossiping about the Prince.”
I froze. “What’d they say?”
“Said he got in the spits on his birthday, and was so disgraced his family sent him off to Meritac instead of letting him gan away to Lamanstal with them.”
I was just glad Pika was still ogling the boy with the bicycle, so she didn’t notice how red my face got.
“He already meant to gan away,” I whispered. “That wasn’t…I mean…”
She laughed. Somehow I imagined my almost-mistake didn’t surprise her a bit.
“You’re wicked,” I said. “Did Jig or Anuk say aught about it…?”
She made a dramatic face and buried her head on my arm. “Oh, I heard all about it. Hayli! The Prince rescued you.”
“I almost had to rescue him,” I retorted, hot. “Anuk near took his head off! Bet he never expected that.”
We both laughed, and Pika let go of my arm. “Wish I’d seen that,” she sighed. “It would make such a story!”
“That’s just because you’re a silly thing.”
For a few minutes we huddled there under the crate, watching the boys. I didn’t hear a bit of what they said, though. Pika’s words kept chasing about through my head, till I’d gone and made myself silly as her. I blushed. It was ridiculous to think about it, anyway. He was the Prince. And even if he spoke to me kinder than most…and smiled that smile…
Stars, Hayli, wake up.
I shook myself, rattling the silliness out of my head.
“See you, Pika,” I said. “I’m ganna gan about.”
“What’ll Derrin say?”
I shrugged. “Dan’ think he’s bothering right now.”
“All open,” Pika said, quoting the motto of all the Hole rats who played urchins on the streets—keep your eyes and ears and hands open, always.
I slipped back into the rain and jogged down into the nearest alley, where I could be alone and have a good quiet think. The bitty little dutiful part of my mind nagged me to go back and face Derrin, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I still felt funny, like my brain had got too big for its case, and the thought of being in the Hole made my stomach turn odd on me.
So I wandered through the alleys, ignoring the rain and the cold and listening for folks who might be talking. At least I could follow Pika’s example and be useful that way. But no one was out. At least…
I turned onto a wide back street, littered with smeared newsprint and rotted boxes, and stopped, because there on the stoop of an abandoned old shop sat a boy.
He had his face tipped back, eyes closed and face pale as stone, and for half a second I got all panicky that he might be dead. Maybe he was just swacked. He wore a fine set of rags—black trousers and a black waistcoat, faded a bit to grey around the edges. Nothing to get green about, but I did want his boots bad.
I edged closer to him. Somewhere along the way my hand found the knot I’d made in my canvas wrap and tugged it free. Instantly the rain attacked me, but I didn’t have a mind to do a thing about it.
When I’d almost reached him I stopped, because my nerves had gone fitsy and I couldn’t stir my legs again. The boy wasn’t any as I’d ever seen around the Hole, and I knew all the kids there by sight at least. He wasn’t one of the toughs from the local mobs, either. I’d never seen him at all in my life. The city was full of strangers, but they were my strangers. This boy wasn’t. And somehow that thought had me all giddy with excitement and a tad bit of fear.
He sat up suddenly, his eyes locking straight on me. My heart launched into my throat and I jumped clear across the street, crouching back by a crate. A minute and I reminded myself to breathe, because at least he wasn’t chasing me down with a knife. He just sat there staring at me like he thought he was still asleep.
And I stared right back. He had a tattoo around his right eye like nothing I’d ever seen. White and bright as ice, even brighter because of the dark storm of his eyes. I couldn’t imagine how much it must have hurt to get it made. Still, a mark like that meant only one thing. Th
e boy was a mage, and worlds more powerful than a mage like me. More than that—he was worlds braver than me, flaunting what he was to the wide world, when so many of us just tried desperately to be ignored. I almost envied him that.
With the muscles in his arms and that strong still face, I wondered if maybe he was a sellsword. He had the look, though he couldn’t have had more than a year on me.
“You alive?” I called across the street to him, when I figured he wasn’t apt to knife me.
“Alive?” he said. “I don’t know.”
His voice sent a shiver through me. It was low and solid, with a wild lilt that called to oceans and cliffs, not the hills and trees of Cavnal. He tilted his head back, the grey light shining on the sharp lines of his cheekbones, throwing the rest of his face into shadow. His hair must have been nearly as pale as his mark, but it had been shaved short like a mercenary’s. The rain caught on its fuzzy edges and glittered like bitty shards of glass.
“You lost?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“You from around here?”
He narrowed his eyes, closing his lips just enough so I thought maybe he was smiling.
“No,” he said, finally. “You going to keep shouting at me from over there?”
I shrugged and picked my way toward him. He hadn’t stirred much, just enough to see me better, and he still had his arms all wrapped tight around his legs. Everything about him looked cold.
“What’s your name?” I asked him. He got that narrow look again, so I shrugged and added, “I’m Hayli.”
“You’ve got a name.”
“Wasn’t always on the street,” I said, and clacked my jaws shut.
“Mm,” he said.
Then he just turned his face back to the rain.
I shifted, impatient, and finally dropped to a crouch beside him. “So, you ganna tell me, or should I give you one myself?”
He twitched his fingers. I guessed it was like a shrug. For about two seconds I contemplated walking away and leaving him to himself, but curiosity had got its claws in me good and tight, and I couldn’t make myself go.
The Madness Project (The Madness Method) Page 16
