Cal ran through the alley as if his life depended on it. Or, at least, that’s what he hoped it looked like to his pursuers. It was early yet, the sun still working on cresting the tightly packed buildings, but the narrow bands of light that did peek over the roof tiles were enough to outline the fork that lay up ahead. Not that Cal needed the illumination--he knew every twist of Resben by heart. The left path would take him to the mines, while the right eventually dead-ended.

I hate this plan, he thought as he turned right, dashing around an elderly woman carrying a tray of steaming pastries. Old Neeka was late to the morning market, where nearly everyone else from this part of town would already be.

“The day is too young for that!” she cried after him, and Cal was inclined to agree. If he had any other choice, he would still be snug in his bed, or better yet, Trish’s.

A crash sounded behind him, and Cal glanced over his shoulder to see two large boys entangled with the poor woman, her pastries tumbled about.

Het, Cal cursed to himself, slowing to a jog. If he had known the oafs would be so clumsy as to run into Neeka, he would have warned her. Now’s your chance, another part of his mind said. Sneak past them and get out of this before it’s too late. But then Trell, the larger of the two boys, looked up at him, and the unbridled hate in his flinty eyes got Cal’s legs pumping again.

Perfect, Cal thought. Neeka didn’t look hurt, and though the same couldn’t be said about her fine fruit tarts, everything else was going how it should. At least that’s what Cal kept telling himself as he tried to ignore how wildly his gut was twisting.

The new alleyway was smaller than the first, and the further down it he went, the narrower it got, forcing Cal to pay attention to where he was putting his feet, especially when he had to jump a few broken crates and dodge a drain puddle he worried might be deep lest he break his neck before Trell had a chance to.

Cal rounded an elbow bend and, just as he knew it would, the alley stopped where the back of two shops met. He ran up to the end point before slowing and then walked side to side as he caught his breath. Without meaning to, his gaze lingered on the nearby doors, and he wondered if either of them might be unlocked.

None of that, he started with himself, but then an apple tart exploded against the wall closest to him.

Cal spun around and there they both were: the two big, Neden boys, with their black and white mottled skin, standing at the mouth of the alley. Even though they were only a year older than him at seventeen, they were both a head taller.

Time to play the part, he thought, plastering a smile on his face he didn’t feel. “Trell, Fen,” he said, nodding to each of the brutes in turn. “Fine morning.”

Fen, the smaller of the two--though not by much--didn’t move, while Trell cracked his neck as if savoring the moment.

“Can I, uh, do something for you?” Cal asked, trying his best to not let their silence unnerve him.

“Yes,” Trell said as he began to slowly stalk forward. “You can hold still.” The six-and-a-half-foot-tall boy was splattered with preserves and pastry flakes, which somehow made him look even more intimidating.

Without meaning to, Cal took a reflexive step back and when his heel hit the wall his heart popped into his throat. Calm down!

“You know,” Cal said, managing to dredge up the words he had planned to say. If Trell didn’t stay angry, the large boy might lose his nerve--hurting someone with a gate like Cal was a punishable offense--and then everything would be ruined. “It was just a bit of mouth play.” He smirked, as if confiding a secret among friends. “Nothing serious.”

“Do your kissing naked, do you?” Trell said, now only half a dozen feet away.

“Only when they ask nicely,” Cal said, widening his grin.

Trell roared as he covered the last few steps in one big stride, swinging for Cal’s head.

This is it! Cal thought, bracing himself for what he desperately needed to be a thorough pounding.

Just as Trell’s fist was about to connect with Cal’s face though, Cal’s legs gave out and he hit the floor right as he heard Trell’s punch connect with the plaster above him. Shocked to find himself on the paving stones, Cal’s body took over, and he scrambled on all fours under Trell’s legs.

“Stand up and take your licks like a man!” Fen called from where he stood at the alley mouth.

I’m trying! Cal thought, attempting and failing to get up on legs no better than soggy noodles.

Trell ripped his fist from the wall, and Cal turned at the sound.

“You want to get kicked unconscious instead?” the big boy said. “Fine with me.”

“Hey now!” a voice called from above.

Cal looked up, the sun in his eyes, and saw another Neden boy crouched on the lowest roof. Cal groaned inwardly--Raff was the last person he wanted to see right now. In fact, Cal had planned his little foray with Trell and Fen to coincide with his friend’s morning training so this exact situation wouldn’t happen.

Trell waved Raff away. “Go get your mom if you want,” he said, turning his gaze back on Cal. “I’ll be done by then.”

Cal held his breath, hoping Raff would do just that. His friend’s mom was the town sentinel and had the stone of a tiger in her core gate, meaning she could easily carry Cal’s beat-up body to the medic. He didn’t want to die in this alley after all.

“You’re not doing anything while I’m here,” Raff said, rising into a standing position, and Cal groaned again. Unlike Cal’s gate, which sat on his chest, his friend’s was smack in the middle of his black and white forehead: a straight, dark scar an inch and a half long that pointed up to his short hair and down to his nose. The mark was a constant reminder to all of who and what Raff was.

A pain in my ass, Cal thought.

“He deserves it,” Fen said, stomping closer, apparently no longer concerned with keeping Cal boxed into the dead end. He pointed a stubby finger at Cal. “The red snake slept with Trell’s betrothed.”

Hearing it aloud made Cal flinch, and not because of the racial slur about his Caas skin. Cal turned to Raff, watching his friend’s expression closely. After what had happened with Raff’s parents, Raff hated vow breakers, as well as the people they broke vows with.

Cal had hoped Raff wouldn’t make an appearance for this, but in case he did, Cal had chosen his target carefully.

I’m a heel, Cal thought. Not worth your time. Just go.

But Raff, dogged mule that he was, snorted the accusation off. “Cal has done some stupid things, but he wouldn’t cross that line.” He looked at the big boys flatly. “You’re wrong.”

“Wrong?” Trell said, his fists opening and closing, and from where he sat, Cal noticed the large hand that had hit plaster trailing dust. “I walked in on them this morning, wrapped around each other like a vine on a tree, and I’m wrong.”

Raff frowned at Trell’s vehemence but shifted his focus to Cal. “Tell him, Cal. Just a joke you two were playing. Some game.”

Before today, Cal would have thought that getting beat up would have been far easier than saying what he was about to say to his friend. He truly loathed himself that it wasn’t.

“I spent the night with Trish,” Cal said. He didn’t say it loud--that part he couldn’t do at least--but his voice was clear enough to carry.

Raff grew very still, his jaw tightening until Cal thought he would hear it crack.

“Like I said,” Trell gruffed. “Go get your mom if you want, but I’m not waiting for justice.”

Raff looked at Trell and then, blessedly, he turned around.

Cal dropped his eyes from the roof and sucked in a breath. He felt relieved but also sick, and he didn’t think it was from the impending pummeling. At least this way Raff won’t care when I can’t go with him.

“Enough interruptions,” Trell said. “Fen, hold him down.”

Cal felt Fen’s short fingers dig into his shoulders, and he would have thanked the stocky boy for it if it wouldn’t have given everything away. I hope I don’t wake up until Raff is already gone, Cal thought. I don’t want to see him look at me like that again.

“Kiss that pretty red face goodbye,” Trell said, and Cal closed his eyes, hoping that if he couldn’t see the blows raining down, maybe they’d hurt less.

But then, instead of him crying out in pain like he expected to, it was Trell’s howl that filled the alley. Cal’s eyes popped open and they bulged when he saw a knife sticking out of Trell’s right leg, the steel handle barely a foot from Cal’s face.

Trell stumbled back, managing to stay upright because his back hit the nearby wall of a shop while blood seeped through fingers he had wrapped around the wound. If it hadn’t been in the middle of morning market, Cal was sure the noise would have drawn someone to the alley by now, but that too had been part of his plan.

This wasn’t though!

Cal looked up again and saw Raff standing once more on the lip of the roof ledge, a second knife poised to throw.

“This one is for you, Fen, if you don’t let him go,” Raff said.

Fen immediately released Cal’s shoulders and then slowly circled around to Trell, all the while keeping an eye on Raff. When he reached Trell, Fen gave the big boy a shoulder to lean on.

Trell yelled at being moved, but this time he turned it into a shout. “The council will have your hide for this!” he screamed up at Raff.

Raff just shrugged, never lowering the second knife.

I’m the one who needs a knife in the thigh! Cal thought, watching as everything he had worked for, planned for, fell apart, and he had no idea how to put it back together.

Fen tried the door nearest them and it opened into what looked like a dark storeroom. With a grunt, he heaved Trell inside while the larger boy kept up his shouting.

“I’ll skin you both alive if I have to follow you to Kellingherth to do it! You’ll pay! You’ll bleed! You’ll--”

The door shut and all Cal heard now was muffled yelling behind it. Why didn’t I get closer to him? Cal thought. Maybe he would have stabbed me with the knife. It was a ridiculous notion. Taking the knife out of the wound would have only made it bleed more, and Trell, even raving as he was, wouldn’t have done that.

Cal heard a thump beside him and scrambled up, his legs working fine now. Of course, he thought bitterly.

Raff stood on the paving stones only a few feet away.

“Why did you do that!” Cal yelled at his friend, frustration threatening to turn into fear. Trell wasn’t going to be in any condition to hurt him now, at least not as soon as Cal needed, and Fen likely wasn’t willing to risk council punishment just to avenge a friend. “I had it under control!”

Raff kept staring at him, with those grey Neden eyes--eyes that said everything Cal didn’t want to hear.

“What are you doing wearing that,” Cal snapped, pointing at a leather wrist sheath that was just visible under Raff’s left sleeve.

His friend shoved the cuff of his long sleeve down and then grabbed onto Cal’s wrist, dragging him out of the alley.

“You said you had thrown it away,” Cal said. All he could focus on was his anger at Raff. If he thought about anything else...

“I didn’t,” Raff said, “and you’re lucky for it.”

Lucky, Cal scoffed. Right now he felt like the least lucky person in the world. If Raff had just gotten rid of his father’s spare sheath and throwing knife set they wouldn’t even be having this conversation. If Cal had just kept his legs under him, Trell would have been able to do some serious damage before Raff arrived. If Cal didn’t have a gate, he wouldn’t even need to worry about any of this. If, if, if!

They passed around the turn, neither saying another word until they reached the fork, a few pastries strewn around, at which point Raff roughly let go of his wrist, turning on him.

“Do you know why I saved you?” Raff said. “Even though you…”--his face scrunched up, though the line of the gate remained arrow straight--“did what you did?”

Cal rubbed at his arm where Raff had been holding him much too hard. “Because you delight in shoving your nose into other people’s business?”

“Because we leave in three days!” Raff said, giving him a push. “How are you going to attend the ceremony, let alone travel to Kellingherth if you get beat bloody by Trell? Did you even think about that?”

Cal nearly said it all. How that’s exactly what he had been thinking about. How he had spent months seducing Trish with casual looks and small notes, to make sure that the biggest and strongest boy in town wouldn’t just be willing to hit someone with a gate but would surely break some bones when he did. How his gambit ran up so close to the ceremony he didn’t think he would make it in time--ironically, it seemed to be the thought of him leaving that finally convinced Trish. And then after all of that, after making sure that his stupid, mull-headed friend wouldn’t interfere, Raff had done just that. Cal almost laid it all at his friend’s feet--it was on the tip of his tongue, something he had almost shared countless times.

If he did though, he knew exactly how Raff would react. His friend would be even more disappointed in him than he had been when hearing about Trish.

“Sorry,” was all Cal said, dropping his eyes.

“And you didn’t even try the baker’s door?” Raff said, starting to walk again. “Were you so tired from running your brain didn’t work?”

“Yeah,” Cal said, not knowing what else to say that wouldn’t incriminate him. “I’m an idiot.”

“You can say that again,” Raff said, giving him a pointed look as they neared the alley exit.

Cal was far from being in the mood. “Speaking of being an idiot, I can’t believe you stabbed Trell.”

Raff shrugged again. “He didn’t give me much choice.”

“Well, he’s right. The council is going to yell their heads off at you, if not worse.”

“Just for three days. I can handle it.”

“And your mom is going to be steaming mad.”

“More so that I lost the knife, probably.”

“Why? She hates your dad.”

Raff shrugged again, and the movement revealed the sheath he was wearing--a sheath Raff had crumpled up and tossed across the room after telling Cal about his father’s affair.

Seeing his normally single-minded friend wavering about his dad pulled Cal out of his own self-pity long enough for him to feel sorry for Raff. It also made him glad his own parents were still fiercely attached at the hip. Probably because if his father ever looked like he might do something particularly foolish, his mother didn’t hesitate to whack him.

I’ll need to find a woman like that someday.

Venturing into the streets, Cal saw that the day was moving on, and those who hadn’t already left their homes for work were doing so now. Many of the people wore thick clothing with miner aprons tied at the waist that hung over their buttocks and carried pickaxes in their hands. Walking near them, Cal smelled the vinegar they used to get the coal stains out of their garments and the tallow of the candles that they had stuffed in their pockets. The scents weren’t particularly pleasant, but they were familiar in a remarkably comforting way. So too were the bright stripes of color painted on the fronts of the wooden buildings that he and Raff passed, and the tiled roofs, with narrow, black chimneys, and above that to the west the Hollow Mountains, their high peaks seeming to stretch endlessly both north and south.

Not for the first time, Cal realized that even though he hadn’t been born in Resben, he truly did love it here.

Too bad they wouldn’t let him stay.

“Why’d you skip practice today?” Cal asked. Rationally, he knew that three days wouldn’t be enough time for him to come up with a new plan that was any good--hurting himself or running away would only make it obvious he was trying to avoid Kellingherth, which wouldn’t just get him in trouble but his parents too, and he couldn’t do that to them, not after everything they’d sacrificed to bring him to Neden. Still though, he wanted to know how today’s plan had ended so abysmally. He felt bad that Trell had a knife in his leg and he didn’t even like the boy.

Raff gave him a funny look. “Skip practice?” he said, like putting the words together was some form of blasphemy. “I didn’t skip.”

“Then how did you find me?”

Raff’s look didn’t change. “A blind pigeon could have followed the trail Trell and Fen left. I crossed it doing laps, and as soon as someone said you were involved…” He shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

Cal didn’t bother arguing the point. Obviously he couldn’t handle Trell. That’s why he had picked Trish. Well, that and Trell didn’t value her enough. Today’s escapade would either make the large boy realize that or make Trish realize she deserved better.

It really had been a good plan.

“But why were you doing laps in the western lanes?” Cal asked out loud. “You always start in the north.” Away from everything I had set up, he thought.

“Because Flance asked to join me today and west was closer for him,” Raff said and then narrowed his eyes. “You’re keeping track of my schedule?”

“Hardly,” Cal said, facing front. He had always been sure to avoid any attempts by Raff and Raff’s mother to get him to join in their ridiculous daily regimen, and making it appear otherwise now would only rouse Raff’s suspicions. “You talk about it often enough, how could I not notice.” In many ways that was true. The loon ran and swam and sparred with his mom so much it was downright unhealthy, that’s what it was. But what Cal couldn’t believe was that his plan had gone to tatters because his laziest friend had a sudden urge to exercise. He was going to have words with Flance.

Cal stopped in his tracks, barely noticing the people who walked around him. Could Flance know? Cal hadn’t told anyone his plans, not Raff, Flance, Ned, the girls he drank and danced with, or his parents. There’s no way Flance had figured it out, he’d been too careful. Cal abruptly realized that he wasn’t being careful now though, not with Raff eyeing him the way he was.

“Sorry about Trish,” he blurted, hoping the topic would distract his friend.

It seemed to work, as Raff gave a start and then looked away at the mountains. “Just don’t do it again,” he eventually said. “You’re better than that.”

It was Cal’s turn to pause awkwardly. After everything that had happened, he hadn’t expected a compliment.

“We should run,” Raff said suddenly, seeming just as uncomfortable as Cal.

“Run?” Cal said. “Why?”

“I told you, I didn’t get to finish my morning laps--I never even met up with Flance--and you need the practice.”

Cal shook his head. “I’m going home,” he said, walking past his friend. “If you want to run, go ahead. It’s not like you have to worry about Trell jumping me. You put two inches of steel into him. He’s getting stitches right now, not waiting around the corner to break my legs.” More’s the pity, Cal thought.

Instead of leaving, Raff fell into step beside Cal, face unreadable. At first, Cal ignored him, thinking Raff would dash off to meet up with Flance after a street or two. The longer his friend lingered though, the more Cal began to notice that he was acting strangely: walking with a bit of a slouch, cracking his knuckles every few moments, and looking at his feet more often than his surroundings.

“Are you…” Cal struggled to finish the sentence--it was almost too crazy to utter. His friend who trained every day, who lived to go to Kellingherth, who talked about being one of the stone lords someday, looked...nervous. “Are you worried about leaving?”

Raff immediately stiffened. “You’ve never said you’re worried, and you’ve done less than nothing to prepare. Why would I be?”

Cal let out a long breath. He hadn’t talked about leaving because for months now he’d assumed that he wouldn’t be going with Raff. He’d thought Trell would hurt him badly enough that he’d need at least a few months to recover. Months his classmates would spend getting ahead of him, which he would never catch up on--through no fault of his own, of course--and eventually, being bottom of his cohort, he’d get some easy job guarding a castle, like Raff’s dad had, while Raff was out toppling nations. He had never expected that him not talking about it might somehow undermine his friend’s confidence.

“I am an idiot,” Cal said.

Raff frowned, as if he couldn’t quite connect the trail of Cal’s thinking. “Does that mean you’ll go running with me?”

Cal laughed and put a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll run with you.”

Raff grinned. “Good,” he said. “We’ll go to Flance’s. Last one there is slave for a day.” And then, without warning, he shot away.

“You black-haired son of a mutt!” Cal called after him, earning looks from a few nearby people. You really are a pain in my ass, Cal thought, but this time he was smiling as he took off after his friend.