Chapter One

A PROPHECY

If you’re expecting a splendid opening, an introduction of pure wit that will instantly charm me in your mind, I am terribly sorry to disappoint you, good reader. The witty and wise have doled out their words over the millennia, each squeaking the rearranged words of those that died before them. I’ll tell you this: I suffer no blame for what I am, what I have done, nor what I will do. Blame the gone gods. Blame the ancients. Blame those that took what they wanted without care. No. The world was broken long before I came squealing into it, and I am nothing but a product of its shattered pieces. Those that tell you I broke it are either liars or cretins. And if you think this is a story of putting that puzzle back together, you may think again. A world like mine doesn’t breed heroes.

*

‘I don’t care if you don’t like it. You’ll earn this family a bloody crust!’ Ma Mattox cuffed me around the ear for my complaints.

It was laughable to call my situation a family. Ma Mattox was dubbed ‘The Mop’ behind her back, and it fit her like a silk glove. She was famed for mopping up children from the streets and cracks of Canarva and putting them to work. She had chosen the right place: Canarva was famed across the Holy Realms for its constant and churning spirit of toil. It was the furnace that powered the East, the foremen brayed proudly. If there wasn’t an ash field to rake, there was ore to be smelted, or a lava trench to be dug, there was always the good old-fashioned lugging of heavy things from one point to another. Or, if you were as lucky as I was, there was a baron or mogul or master to tend to. And if you were even luckier and born a baron, then it was to Ma Mattox you went to for stocking your mansion with its servants and lackeys, no matter how young. At fourteen years, I was a middle sibling in Ma’s twisted family.

‘A scullery whelp doesn’t have to like anything,’ Ma Mattox hissed in my ear. I felt as well as heard her words, but didn’t dare wipe the flecks of spittle away.

House servants avoided the blacklung and or being burned to death by a firefountain, but were instead left at the mercy of masters with unflinching southern standards and a penchant for expressing their disapproval with the backs of their hands. Or sticks. I still had the lump on the back of my head as proof.

‘You just do what you’re told, fetch the cooks what you’re told to fetch, and clean what you’re told to clean. Gone gods! Why do you need twice as much explaining as your brothers and sisters?’

My so-called siblings, more inmates to Ma Mattox’s prison, avoided my eyes and the attention of Ma. My only sibling by blood, Aberan, stood beside me. He was hushing me with a stern glare. The rich folk weren’t the only ones who were fond of a beating in return for a loose lip. At least Ma liked to keep her punishments to the ribs and other places clothes could cover.

‘You’re one I should have left for the gutters, Dwellin, I swear! Why can’t you be more like your brother Aberan? I don’t ever hear a peep out of him.’

‘Because he’s a mute, that’s why!’ I complained.

‘Enough!’ Ma cuffed me again. ‘I won’t have you ruining my good reputation. You know what happens to you if you don’t work how I say? I’ll have you raking ash-fields for the Blight factories by day’s end. Plenty of you orphans have gone to the fields at my bidding! Look at Golg—’

*

‘I–I’m sorry, but an orphan and a scullery worker? That is a rather… clichéd a beginning, don’t you think?’

Dwellin looked up at Grigio. ‘Like many in the Holy Realms, I didn’t chose my beginning. And you should know better than most, Grigio, the reason you scribes tell so many stories about us orphans and paupers is that our journeys to greatness are far more interesting than somebody born into silk blankets and a gilded cot. What struggle is there to carve a person?’

‘I…’

‘I’m glad you agree! Oh, and if you should interrupt me again, I’ll take your scalp and fashion a hat out of it.’ Dwellin grinned.

Grigio hurriedly dabbed his quill, managing to splash ink over his scaled fingers. He rubbed at them furiously, only smudging the stain across the paper. It was turning out to be quite the horrid day. ’Understood.’

The scribe flinched at the loud slap Dwellin gave her knee.

‘There’s a good chap. Now, as I was saying…’

*

‘Look at Golg, I say!’

Ma seized my chin and turned my head for me.

Golg was a feathered brute of a boy was too busy examining a speck of ash under his talon-like nails to notice his name. ‘A lowly Esfer lummox. Look how he’s worked himself up from waif to foreman of Wrekham’s stables. That could be you if you shut your trap for once and did as you are told.’

As I had slowly and reticently learned to do over the years, I bowed my head and swallowed my angst. Aberan felt for my hand, and I clutched my older brother’s fingers as we were marched on towards the mansion.

Ash had fallen in the night to paint every surface with a fresh grey coat. The shopkeepers were already awake and busy brushing the ash from their steps. A warm breeze from the hotlakes made the job irritatingly repetitive. Above Canarva’s tiled rooftops, the lingering clouds of steam and ash wore the pink shine of an imminent sunrise. They were thicker than usual that morning: the Great Watcher’s unmoving form was almost hidden. Only where the cloudtops stretched out in the high winds, could you glimpse the god’s colossal carapace. Black and jagged as ever. I bowed my head to its shape, just in case it was really watching. Couldn’t do any harm, in my situation.

Wrekham might not have been the wealthiest of barons in Canarva and the Ashlands, but his mansion sure pretended he was. I wasn’t certain if I’d ever see every room of the sprawling, tiered house. Its grey stone walls could have swallowed Ma’s tavern several times over, and fifty children like me called that ale-rotten husk home.

Ma Mattox shoved each of us into line while she doled out our morning encouragement. ‘You keep your dirty mouths shut and remember who you’re working for. I got a reputation to uphold, see! No talking back, no fighting, and absolutely no stealing,’ Ma snarled. Some of the older children snickered behind their hands.

‘Unless you can get away with it,’ one of my sisters muttered, and immediately got a clap around her ears for her words.

‘You almost didn’t the last time,’ hissed Ma. ‘And don’t forget: you get caught, I’ll sell your arse straight to the fields, remember? Don’t think I won’t take even a flake of blame. And don’t you be giving the younguns ideas. They ain’t smart enough yet.’

‘They shouldn’t be working at all, waifs like them,’ interjected a voice.

Ma turned on her chubby heel so fast her coattails whacked me and several others in the face. I stared past her hip to see a man in a linen cowl draped over half his face and the rest of his left side. What I could see of him was grey and grizzled. A ball of tangled metal clanked in the man’s hands as he toyed with it absently.

‘Well, if it isn’t the supposed saviour of Canarva. What are you doing sticking your nose into my business so early in the day, Riveno? Go be useless somewhere else, you old cretin.’ She shooed him away just like an errant hound.

Riveno stood his ground. He was a stocky sort, and tall enough Ma Mattox had to look up at him.

‘Making sure the peace is kept, is all, Ma. Making sure you aren’t forcing these younguns into something they ain’t fit for.’

‘It’s called work, Riveno. You should try it sometime. And how else is the baron to clean his chimneys? Is he supposed to clamber up the roof-tiles and sweep his gutters himself, hmm?’ Ma laughed heartily.

‘If there was any kindness in the world, he would do exactly that.’

She looked as if she would prod him, but something made her think twice, and she threw up her hands. ‘Yap yap yap, Riveno. That’s all you do these days. You’re an old fraud,’ she bemoaned as she returned to shepherd us towards Wrekham’s mansion. ‘Go back to hawking your ancient junk.’

Between the spindly limbs and underfed bodies of my siblings, I watched Riveno as long as I could. The warm breeze shifted the man’s cowl, betraying a dark eye and what looked like charcoal smudging his left cheek and neck. I wondered if it was the mark of the Blight, but he was turned and trudging before I could see any more of him.

Ma left us at the gates and stood between the shoulders of Wrekham’s mustard-clad guards. ‘Be good now, children!’ came her weakly-acted goodbye. Her hand flapped like a flag made of salt pork.

In a single file, we entered the mansion. Not the front door, mind you; such entranceways were for people who could afford fine shoes and lackeys to sweep the streets before them. We arrived via a porthole that barely had to crack open to admit our skinny bodies.

The baron’s head butler was a man with a face redder than the lava rivers and bald as a peeled grape.

‘Chop chop, youse wretches, and shake that ash off your trews before youse think about treading my carpets!’ barked Master Pitius, playing fast and loose with his claims of ownership. A southern man with a hatred for disorder and the constant dust of Canarva, he always looked moments away from a heart attack.

‘Same thing. Every morning,’ one of the other children was muttering beneath her breath.

Half of us put on the smocks of chamber servants. Others the tabards and boots of the stables. My uniform was an apron of the same vile mustard colour as the guards. Wrekham might have been rich but you apparently couldn’t buy taste.

To Pitius clapping us away like a flock of mischievous drakes. A servant’s passage took Aberan and I under the mansion. It was my favourite moment of the day, when we usually got to be alone for a moment before he fell mute again. Aberan only spoke to me.

‘Wonder what Bunt is going to make us clean today,’ he said, voice deep and soft as always.

‘The usual slop of the same old pans, I bet,’ I replied, taking it slow up the stairs. ‘I don’t know how the baron eats that rubbish. If Bunt just let me—’

‘There’ll be none of that today, Dwellin. Don’t want you messing around and getting the cooks angry again.’

I felt the lump on the back of my skull. ‘But he lets everything burn. He thinks salt is the answer to everything, and I swear his tongue is scorched because every mouthful I sneak tastes of grease.’

‘I said no.’

‘So you’re happy to do this forever?’

Aberan paused to stare through a a grimy window. A gang of masons were mending the old walls of the mansion’s grounds, and through the jagged gap of scaffolding, we could see Canarva’s southern edge. Somewhere beyond the smoke, there was a land were green things grew. Where mountains bore white caps and didn’t spew fire. You could see the edge of the forests on days when the wind blew right.

‘Not forever, Dwellin. We’re meant for much more, I know it. That’s the last promise mother made to us and I’ll make sure she keeps it. We’ve got a good thing going here. At least for now.’

‘No, we don’t. Ma’s a bitch. Wrekham’s a monster. Bunt’s an idiot.’

‘Rather go back to picking scraps from than the gutter?’

He had me there.

‘At least you’ve got a skill, Dwellin,’ Aberan said, walking on while he examined the healing cuts in his fingers. Not all were from washing knives, but fights with others who would call us siblings. Every dysfunctional family had its bullies, and once the attic doors were closed and the lights snuffed, they often took their turn to add to Canarva’s charm. I had a few scabbed knuckles of my own. You have to learn to fight quick when you grow up in the gutter, esteemed reader.

‘Cooking seems to come to you like breathing. There’s a future right there. We wash enough dishes and there’ll come a day you get to show Bunt and his idiots what you can do.’

‘But that’ll take years,’ I sighed.

Aberan raised his chin. ‘If it has to. If you keep your head down like I said, maybe it’ll go quicker.’

‘I’m trying, Aberan. I can’t act as well as you can, and swallow my tongue.’ I sniffed at the waft of burning meat coming from the doorway ahead and groaned. ‘Maybe we should do what Mop Mattox said.’

‘Do what?’

‘Take something from the baron,’ I whispered. It was an idea that had poked me on the nights I couldn’t sleep. One unspoken until now and the kind of idea that felt like a crime even to say aloud. ‘A rich bastard like him wouldn’t miss it. But we don’t give it to Ma. We keep it and—’

Aberan seized my wrist, not so tight as to be painful, but firm enough that the smirk was quickly wiped from my face. ‘Don’t you even joke, little sister,’ he hissed, face stern as the business end of a hammer. The strands of grey hair hanging over his eyes did nothing to hide their glare. They were purple flame.

‘I’ve told you a dozen times: we find our way honestly or not at all. We aren’t thieves. That’s why we didn’t cut purses and why we aren’t going to start now. There’s no quicker way to prison, Dwellin. Is that where you want to go? You want to be worked to death like ma and father?’

‘Don’t have to bring them into it,’ I humphed.

Aberan grabbed me in a fierce hug. ‘Just wait a little longer. I know you can, little one. Something will come along. We’re not meant to be gutter trash all our lives. Until then you have to trust me.’

‘Ugh.’ I stood up straight and dodged away as he tried to ruffle my hair. ‘And I’m not so little. I’ve grown an inch in the last month, I swear.’

Aberan hardly smiled any more. It was what it made a day all the brighter when he did. The smile was brief, out of practice, but pure and warming as sunlight.

‘Oi!’ came a shriek from a nearby door. Our peace and quiet was ripped away by a cook in a pointy hat. He cut all manner of shapes in the air with his knife. ‘Get your arses in here, you little shits!’

With the foul-mouthed cook barking in our ears, our moment was over. Always brief, but always the rope that kept me from sinking into a mire. I didn’t know then, but Aberan kept me sane. Mostly sane, at least. That has always been of question, though I have yet to meet a soul who wasn’t a little mad in at least one way.

The kitchens were a bellowing mess of steam and smoke. Bodies moving about frantically as if whips lashed them. I was sure if somebody gave Master Cook Bunt a whip, it would have cracked over our heads at that very moment, but for now he just stuck to his words and endless cursing. A spoon or two would sometimes be thrown, knocking hats from heads. I had once seen a plate sail across the kitchen and knock the teeth clean out of a man’s mouth. Between the abuse, a gang of a dozen cooks worked madly at pans and fire pits and sizzling hot stones. Fat spattered the floors. Vegetable shavings rained. Flour fell like rain. Not ten minutes in the kitchen, a whole carrot collided with my head.

Aberan and I fed the chaos one moment and battled to clean it up the next. Whichever cook needed us yelled for, ‘Wretch!’ or ‘Whelp!’ as they so enjoyed calling Ma’s children. Two cooks kept me running about all morning, either tottering about with stone dishes in my arms, or lugging blue cabbages from the storerooms. I had escaped to drown myself in the sink troughs when one of Bunt’s cooks beckoned to me from over a thick rack of turtle meat. She was the woman with some Drola blood in her, judging by the scales around her chin and forehead, and the piercing green eyes. I couldn’t remember her name. Bunt hardly ever yelled it.

‘You! I need a piss. You cut this meat for me,’ she bellowed before handing me a cleaver so quickly I almost sliced open my thumb.

I leapt to it, ignoring her hurried instructions in my eagerness to cook. Between every pan and hot stone, I watched every move the cooks made, every sorry dish that was sent out of the kitchen. I was better than half the cooks in this sorry brick cave of steam and cursing. They hadn’t a clue, but I knew what I was doing. I went to work slicing the turtle meat into chunks far more even than the cook’s. I eyed whatever was bubbling in the pot at my elbow. It smelled vile, and I dreaded to think what it tasted of. A half-peeled potato bobbed about in the simmer like a lost eyeball.

A clutch of withered herbs sat just past the pot. I stared around me. In the glow of a fire, I saw Bunt down from his usual perch and berating a junior cook by cracking an egg on the woman’s forehead. The others were momentarily distracted.

I stole my moment and reached for the herbs. They fell under my cleaver until I swiped them into the pot. I liked this knife.

‘What are you doing, Dwellin?’ Aberan muttered to me from behind a tower of pans. ‘I told you: not again.’

‘You said I could stand out. This is my chance.’

‘Not yet, Dwellin!’

A vial of Bashkar scalespice was next. I shook it over the pot and stirred it as quick as I could.

Aberan’s eyes grew wide. ‘Stop it now!’

In went the turtle meat before I went back to the chopping.

‘You’re… cooking, whelp?!’ came a gasp. Bunt stood behind me, aghast and knuckles white around his favourite stone spoon. His spiked crown of alabaster Ashlander hair made him all the fiercer.

I stepped back immediately, letting the cleaver clatter on the tiled floor. ‘No, I—’

Bunt grabbed me by my short hair and pinned me against the hot bricks of a crackling and smoking oven. ‘You dare to handle my food with those dirty hands, you little shit? In my kitchen?’

‘I was asked to cut the meat!’ I yelped.

I looked to Aberan as the heat grew uncomfortable, but it was the Drola cook that came to my rescue.

‘She’s doing what I asked her, boss. I was in the latrine,’ she said, wiping her snout.

‘You piss when I tell you you can piss, Forince!’ The master punctuated each of his words with a whack from his spoon. I flinched in pain. Bunt pressed the wooden spoon against my throat. His purple gaze narrowed to slits. ‘What are you thinking, letting an urchin pretend to be a cook?!’

Forince shrugged. ‘By the looks of it she didn’t do a bad job, boss.’

‘Nonsense! All they’re good for at this age is scrubbing and fetching. You don’t seem to get that, do you, girl? Your mute of a brother does. He works without a single complaint! See?’ Bunt whacked Aberan on the chest to prove his point. My face grew hot. If there was anything that I hated more than this town and its foul inhabitants, it was seeing my brother pay for my mistakes. It skewered me deeper and more often than the memory of my parents.

Bunt was not done. A cruel grin spread across his face. ‘But seeing as you’re so eager to be involved, you two can take the baron his lunch and explain to him why it’s so late. Go. Get! Hurry up and put a fresh smock on.’

I inwardly groaned. Coming face to face with the baron was like staring into the contents of a bucket somebody had left to rot in the cellar. And that was only partly to do with how repulsive he was. Bunt had cursed us with responsibility. Something that quickly led to blame. And blame, for a servant, was never good.

Bunt swaggered through his rank of cooks. I nodded to Forince. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘I worked for the Mop once. I know how it is,’ the woman said as she poked at the chopped meat. ‘Sorry Bunt lumped you anyway. Didn’t mess with anything else, did you? Baron likes his stew just right.’

Insipid and foul. I shook my head emphatically, even though I felt Aberan’s blameful eyes boring into my skull. ‘I didn’t do anything. Just the turtle.’

Forince tipped her pointed hat. ‘Good to know.’

‘Whelps!’ Bunt yelled for us.

Aberan pushed me, muttering under his breath. We ran to change our aprons into servant’s smocks.

We watched, fidgeting while the two teams were piled with all manner of culinary disasters: a pie so burned it might as well have been dragged through the street-ash; a salad that had been left near a fire for far too long; pickled things that had no earthly right to be pickled, like a salamander’s liver and the bulbous head of a flower; and behold, my amended stew. Punishment aside, it looked the most edible thing on either tray. it was almost worth it.

‘Shoo, damn you! And if you spill a drop or let a single grape roll of those trays, I’ll be cooking you in tomorrow’s stew!’ Bunt bellowed.

I, for one, believed him. There were rumours about Bunt, bred from a mysterious and sudden departure from his previous kitchen. Nobody had seen Baron Kanwyn since. The threat drove us towards the swaying door and into a broad servant’s passage.

Aberan knew the way. He had been a servant before I had tried to… help, shall we say. It was my fault he was now in the kitchens. His hands stayed still and practiced. Mine were beginning to shake under the weight of the tray and the concentration of keeping a stew from swaying out of its bowl.

Aberan played mute with me.

‘I’m sorry, Aberan,’ I began.

‘I told you to stop.’

‘I know—’

‘I told you to leave it alone.’

‘I’m not trying to get us in trouble.’

‘Then listen to what I say once in a while, Dwellin.’

I held my eyes front and my lips tight. I could never stand the low growl of his utmost anger.

It was some time before he sighed, at last glancing at me over his hunched shoulder. ‘Ended up giving us a break from the kitchens at least. You better pray the baron’s too hungry to hit us.’

‘Great Watcher doesn’t care for us,’ I said, almost spilling the stew. I steeled my aching arms, dearly wishing not to be the next meat under the cleaver.

Wrekham’s lair – or as I’m sure he called it, his ‘chambers’ – was built into the arch of the mansion’s roofs. It meant taking several sets of stairs to get there, not to mention all the looks from other servants, Ma’s children or otherwise. One even played at trying to trip Aberan, but my brother’s silent glare was as menacing as a dagger. It also meant more windows that gazed upon the ash-fields and northern Glauskine Mountains, glowing with fire and lava. In the distance, two balloons leant against the wind. Their envelopes were gold and green, and the flocks of drakes pulling them onwards were dark clouds against the sky. It was hard to leave the views behind.

Guards lined the way to the baron’s chambers. They lounged against the walls or huffed on the windows to draw in the mist of their breath. One in a captain’s cape tutted at us.

‘You’re late. Pitius has gone down to look for you,’ he moaned at us.

Aberan bowed his head. I followed suit.

‘In,’ the captain said as he nudged open the door with his foot.

I had never been to the baron’s private rooms. Scullery whelps had no need to. If one impression came to mind first, it was that the chambers were blinding. Candles were fine for the rest of the mansion, but here the baron insisted on bathing in expensive blightlamps. The glass cylinders burned with a hot yellow light that held no waver like that of a flame. In their glow, all manner of trinkets shone and sparkled, from vases perched on pedestals to tables arrayed with helmets of soldiers who had no need for them any more. The six circles of the Venerance shone in inlaid silver above every doorway, and each led to bedrooms and offices just as opulent as the main chamber.

Beyond a cluster of couches, a lone figure was poking at crystal decanters of black and yellow rums. By his sway and how long it took him to notice us, he’d sampled several of them already. A white mask shaped like a shield that disguised his face, leaving only slits for his eyes. They held the colour of southern green, like that of the distant forests.

What a prosecutor was doing loitering in Baron Wrekham’s chambers was beyond me. Aberan seemed equally cautious, and kept his eyes on the door. The prosecutor soon forgot we were there, too busy trying to angle a glass and metal straw under his mask. To the sounds of his gurgling, we elbowed the door to find a dark antechamber. It was empty of anything but twin tables bearing ornate cloths.

I placed my trembling tray down for just a moment and shuddered with a sigh of relief.

‘Dwellin,’ whispered Aberan, he was nodding towards the last door separating us from Wrekham’s study. His foot hovered over a small silver plate in the floor. A fine chain attached it to a bell that hovered ominously above us.

I was about to follow when I discerned the voices. Now, they say eavesdropping is a foul habit, but how else were you supposed to listen to what others fear to say beyond closed doors? Show me somebody who hasn’t ever dropped an eave, and I’ll cut their throat for being a liar.

‘Wait. Listen,’ I mouthed.

Baron Wrekham had a visitor. The baron was fond of smoking pipes, something most citizens of Canarva got enough of from the air, and for free, too. It had given his voice a gravelly texture, and a baritone that was harder to hear through an inch or two of door. The visitor gave us no such problem. He sounded like two reeds rubbing together.

‘My master will be arriving here in a few weeks’ time,’ squeaked the visitor in a southern accent.

‘And I’ll tell him the same as I’ve been telling you. It’s not for sale. It’s mine.’

A sigh. ‘I am authorised to increase the amount we last spoke of. My master would be willing to pay fifty-thousand shells.’

I could hear blistered lips sucking on a pipe in thought. ‘Fifty-thousand, you say?’

Aberan and I swapped wide and gawping gazes. I had never seen a hundred shells, never mind fifty-thousand. The number almost felled me. Aberan’s tray rattled until he too put it down.

‘Not a shell more,’ said the visitor.

‘A pity, because I might be willing to talk if it was a little closer to seventy-five.’

‘That’s unheard of!’

‘So is my property, Cleric,’ laughed Wrekham. ‘Go ask the Venerance for more shells. They’re far from short of it.’

‘My master has a personal interest. This is not Venerance business.’

‘I wonder if my friends in Tempest would agree. Perhaps I should ask them.’

‘I… erm. That will not be necessary. My master would like to keep this discreet, Baron Wrekham. Private, if you will.’

‘Didn’t they tell you? Privacy don’t come cheap in the Ashlands. You don’t work your way from the mines to a mansion without learning the value of trustworthy lips, believe me. You’ll be sure to tell your master that when you go crawling back to him.’

‘Baron Wrekham, if I may—

‘No, you may not. Take your leave. I grow bored of you,’ Wrekham growled. ‘And tell your master if he wants to talk, then he better be arriving with an offer that doesn’t waste my time.’

The sound of footsteps from behind the door made us retrieve our trays in a panic. Yet it was no cleric, but an angry butler.

‘There youse are, bloody urchins!’ Master Pitius snapped as he stormed into the antechamber from behind us. Aberan was so panicked he slammed a foot on the silver plate and deafened me with the bell’s ring. I almost hefted my tray towards the ceiling right there and then.

‘Enter!’ came the baron’s order.

‘Youse heard the master, in with you! Bunt told me of your punishment. If you think you can avoid it, you’re sorely mistaken.’

The baron’s inner sanctum was a room of black pitted stone and rich amber wood of the south. Circular windows stared north across the ashen landscape and the hotlakes. Plump furniture worshipped a broad fireplace. A portrait of Wrekham perched above its mantelpiece, painted on carapace. It was almost as ugly as the baron himself.

‘About fucking time!’ brayed Baron Wrekham as we entered. The baron lounged in a chair that barely contained him. He wasn’t all fat under the strained silks of his shirt and waistcoat. Slabs of muscle hid beneath, trained by decades of swinging mattocks and picks. Spiked and jewel-crusted rings banded his fingers like the strings around a ham. Wrekham was quite the contrast to the thin rake of a man quickly shuffling past us, muttering forced pleasantries. His blue cleric’s coat billowed behind him.

‘I have been waiting for an age!’ Wrekham yelled as we placed the trays on a footstool in front of him. Spittle landed in my precious stew. I couldn’t help but notice the small stone chest he clutched tightly in his thick fingers. It was swiftly placed out of sight beside the chair, and I hid my gaze. I wondered if that was what the cleric had been aching to buy. My curiosity ran hotter than the fire.

Pitius was in a constant state of bowing, hands clasped before him like a vulture in the rain. ‘These here whelps have come to explain, Baron.’

Wrekham’s balding head swivelled on his thick neck so he could glare at us. The dye staining his hair a darker grey had stained his scalp The charcoal eyes that descended on me were as black as a Drola’s, not purple like most Ashlanders. His skin was marked with scars from the spatter of brimstone and metal from the foundries. It was as common as lizard shit in the streets of Canarva. Not so much in the barons and masters.

We knew to look away and keep our eyes on the plush carpets, and I was happy to.

‘Well? Spit it out!’

‘It was my fault. I got in the way,’ I uttered before Aberan broke his silence. This was one punishment he didn’t need to take on my behalf.

Wrekham stuffed a pickled carrot into his mouth and chewed so the morsels littered the trays. He nodded as he ate, as if my lie made perfect sense; as if Canarva was plagued with urchins underfoot, as if we were skinks or rats.

Pitius poked at the pie in question with his long fingernail. ‘Ma Mattox’s standards are slipping, Baron, I tell you.’

‘Just like Bunt’s. Look at this bloody pie. I’ve broken pumice rocks less charred than this.’

Pitius nodded vigorously. ‘I shall have him make another?’

Wrekham’s meaty fist broke the lid from the pie and he threw its husk into the fire. ‘No. I am too famished to wait. And I doubt he could do better. He’s lucky he’s cheap.’

‘I could,’ I blurted.

Aberan nudged me sharply.

‘What?’

‘I said I could do better, Baron. I can cook.’

‘You?’ Wrekham guffawed. ‘What could you know of food? I can see your ribs through your smock. I should have Bunt beat you raw for your insolence!’

I bowed closer to the carpet.

Baron gestured at us. ‘Pitius, if you please? I’m eating.’

One of Pitius’ sweaty hands pulled me up by the hair. The other slapped me around the face. I was reeling from the first slap when the second came. I crumpled to the floor, cheeks aflame.

‘Begone, and be grateful I allow you anywhere near my kitchens,’ Baron told us.

Aberan said nothing in reply as we scuttled from the baron’s study. Tears were trying their best to run down my cheek. My brother’s hand rested on my shoulder, and that was all I needed to hold them back.

It was only when we had almost escaped that we heard the baron’s coughing. Not just one hack or two, but a repeated retching that grew more desperate each passing moment. Soon enough, Pitius was yelling for guards. They barged us aside as we burst from the door.

‘What did you do to that stew, Dwellin?’

‘Nothing that would kill him,’ I gasped. ‘Just some flavour. Scalespice and herbs!’

‘Gone gods!’ Aberan said no more and he dashed into the corridor, trying to make it look like he wasn’t running. ‘Whatever’s happened, I don’t want to be anywhere near it!’

I wholeheartedly agreed. ‘Me neither!’

Our feet clattered down servants’ stairwells and along passages as we wound a circuitous route through the mansion. Before I could catch my breath, we were standing at the doors of the kitchen, peering inwards.

‘What if he’s dead? What if I killed him?’ I panted.

Aberan did his best not to scowl, but I caught it. ‘You should have left well enough alone,’ he said, as breathless as I was.

‘I was only doing what you said.’

‘But you weren’t, were you, Dwellin? I said give it time!’ he snapped, something Aberan had only done once or twice before. ‘Once again, you didn’t listen. You just do what you want, acting before thinking. Now look where it’s got us.’

The news spread at lightning pace. The servants had heard the commotion, and it took mere minutes for their talk to reach the kitchens. If there was one thing we servants were universally skilled at, it’s gossip. We heard the shouts for ourselves as Aberan and I hid out of sight.

Something’s happened to the baron.

Poisoned, did they say?

The odorous bastard is alive, thank the Watcher, but raging like a firefountain!

I sagged against the brick. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ I gasped. ‘We aren’t murderers.’

‘We’ll still have to go back to the gutters. No way Ma will take us back after this.’

‘You aren’t going anywhere. They’ll blame me, not you. I’ll run.’

I often wondered if Aberan considered it for the slimmest of moments: how much easier it would be without my bad luck. But Aberan’s heart was too big for that. ‘If you think I’m leaving my fool of a sister to fend for herself, she’s even more of a fool than I thought.’

‘There’s always a chance the baron might not care, right?’ I said, but the slim hope died with every word spoken.

Every neck in the kitchen craned when Master Pitius burst through the doors. He and Bunt shared a brief and tense conversation peppered with louder and louder curses until the cook began marching around the kitchen. While I ducked behind the door, I saw Aberan clench his fists as if he would defend me. My hands were only good for shaking. I don’t mind telling you; I hadn’t yet learned the true face of fear.

‘It’s Forince he’s grabbed,’ Aberan whispered, and I was forced to peek.

‘What did I do?’ the poor cook was yelling.

‘Used scalespice in the stew is what you did! Like an idiot! Baron’s got an intolerance for it, don’t you know that after these years? And he’s blamed me for it, you imbecile! Me!’

‘I didn’t…’ Forince babbled, deeply confused. ‘It was that girl, boss. The urchin. She must have done it!’

‘I don’t see her, do you? If she’s had the sense to flee, then so be it. You’ll take what’s coming to you and after that you make yourself scarce. I don’t want to see you within a mile of this mansion, you hear me?’

I saw why Bunt was raising his voice for all to hear. The baron’s guards were hot on his heels.

Bunt’s spoon hovered in Forince’s face. ‘She’s here, Haltweather. That’s the one.’

The captain we had seen earlier looked rather keen to have something to do for once. ‘Take her to his lordship,’ he ordered. ‘And be quick now. He’s rather impatient to meet the cook who almost killed him.’

I watched aghast as they muscled Forince from the kitchens. Aberan’s hand took mine, forcing me away before I could hear her shouts beyond claims of innocence. All I heard was the captain’s voice enquiring of us.

Where are the others? The street scum you mentioned?’

‘No sign of them.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that. Search the kitchens!’

It was our cue to run, and when your life is in danger, you tend to run the fastest you ever have. The kind of undignified fleeing where your legs feel as if they’ll fly from your body at any moment, or snap under the speed. When every fibre of your muscles and mind are bent around one word: escape.

The corridor flashed past us, and within moments, we were sprinting across the flagstones. The gates were already opening for a carriage. From its window, a cleric was yelling at the guards to hurry up, promising all sorts of ill will from the Great Watcher if they didn’t move their arses. There was no better distraction for us to pelt into the street.

Only cretins would have stopped there. Street after street, we hurtled down weaving a zigzag through Canarva’s ashen buildings, beasts, and wagons until we stood gasping between the hotwells. The steaming troughs of stone were surrounded by servants. With their bare hands, they washed their stacks of clothes in the near-boiling water that bubbled up from the very earth itself. They shooed us out of the way to make room for carts piled high with dripping linens.

‘I know it hasn’t been the best day, but at least I know I’m as fast as you now,’ I smiled, painting a brighter face on our situation.

Aberan trampled my hope without a word. He simply stood up tall, wiped the sweat from his face, and walked away.

‘Aberan—’

‘We have to keep moving,’ he spoke over me. ‘They’ll be looking for us now. We lay low until the baron forgets all about it.’

‘I’m cursed, alright? I’m sorry.’

My words failed to stop him.

‘Aberan! Slow down.’

Call it childish, but I stood still in the middle of the barren street and waited for him to notice. His boots kept meeting the cobbles, and I steeled myself. A mutter and a curse distracted me as an elderly woman tipped her cart, dropping half her linens in the ash. I tried to ignore her frail attempts to pick up the clothes and focus on Aberan, but it was useless. Though I may have been born broken, I was not born heartless, I’ll have you know, esteemed reader.

‘Gah!’ I snarled, scampering to help her. Aberan was still walking away.

‘Watcher bless you, child,’ the woman croaked.

‘It’s no trouble,’ I replied.

It was only when I offered a handful of soiled clothes did I see the woman’s affliction. Scars of the Blight covered her wrist, and in the puckered flesh, black and green veins climbed her arm. Here and there across her neck and face, her skin had turned to what looked like bark, or insect shell.

I couldn’t help but recoil, glad I hadn’t yet touched her. The Venerance taught that the Blight was a gift from the Great Watcher, and it was hard to argue with them. The seeping moulds that spread from the Watcher came in many forms, and each held a different blessing for the intellects, alchemages, and engineers. Dried and crushed and mixed together, blight-powders lifted balloons, or powered the rare southern machines, or cast a humble glow in the form of blightlamps. But one form, one that had been slowly creeping further into the East, ravaged and altered life. There were those that took its green powder willingly for the euphoria it promised, but like a disease it had spread through the northern cities. A disease that was far from kind to its victims.

‘Pay me no heed, child. I’m all healed up.’

I knew it to be a lie; there was no cure, but I said nothing and kept my distance. I reached for the next pile of lost clothing and found Aberan’s hand beating mine to it. He said nothing as he helped, and when the woman’s cart was righted, he took my hand once more.

‘I know you were trying to help. Just… don’t next time. Alright, little sister?’

I nodded, still distracted by the Blighted woman. Most lived a year or two before they were overcome by its poison. She seemed unperturbed.

‘I see more and more of them every month,’ I muttered.

Aberan pulled me along. ‘We’ve got our own problems, Dwellin,’ he said as he led us on. Right as always.

The day was almost spent by the time we worked our way to the centre of the city. Aberan was hoping for the market crowds to keep us hidden, but something else had drawn twice the crowds as normal. We had to squeeze into the side-streets to work our way around the crush.

‘What’s going on?’ I called out over the noise.

‘I have no idea.’

A nearby and particularly helpful drunkard had heard my shout. ‘You ’aven’t heard?’

‘Clearly not,’ I muttered.

‘They say there’s a seer with a new prophecy,’ he said. ‘Say there’s a new chosen to be found.’

Another in the crowd scoffed. ‘A prophecy in Canarva? That’s not happened in decades, and they never found who the last one was about.’

Yet another eavesdropper joined in, a woman with earrings so large they spread across her chest. ‘Maybe Canarva will have its own chosen one yet. About time!’

The drunkard raised his stone cup. ‘Yeah, yeah, that’ll be the day. Nothing comes out of Canarva but ash, stone, and some of the finest rums ever barrelled. You want to see chosen ones, go to Tempest or Jakah.’

Aberan must have burned with more curiosity than I did, for he surged into the crowd and used all his wit and wiry limbs to squeeze ahead of others. I barely kept up. My mind was crowded with questions. Prophecies were few enough in the whole of the East, never mind Canarva. All I knew was that they never failed to foretell a chosen one, and the Venerance were always eager to discover them.

‘What’s going on, Aberan?’

‘There’s a chosen one in Canarva, waiting to be found. A seer’s seen it, and now she’s going to tell everyone who it could be.’

‘Then what?’

‘Don’t you remember what Skindog told us, the night we got stuck beyond the walls?’

‘No. Maybe Mop Mattox or Pitius has knocked the memory out of my head.’

‘People come forwards to be tested, to see if the seer’s words fit them. If they do, they’re given a gold token and taken to Tempest by the Venerance to be trained as a swordsaint. A knight of the Great Watcher. A hero just like the First Chosen, blessed with long life and a Godgear weapon—’

‘I know what a swordsaint is, Aberan. I remember those stories.’ For a whole month I had dreamed of them: towering individuals gleaming in the finest armour, blades as long as spears, shields as wide as tables. The Venerance might have ruled the souls of the Holy Realms, but it was First Chosen Akeron who had won its hearts. He had united the East three hundred years before I came along, and he ruled it still. Benevolent, they called him. Fair and kind, they crowed. I had always disagreed. If there had been fairness and kindness, I wouldn’t have been on the run from a baron.

The crowd was gathered around the only part of Canarva that was kept – pardon the pun – religiously clean. The six-legged marble pedestal was an altar to the Great Watcher, and at its crest stood a woman swamped in the black robes of the Venerance seers. From the space we’d carved at the front of the crowd, I had a clear view of her and the ring of white-masked prosecutors and clerics surrounding the altar.

I had barely opened my mouth when Aberan waved a hand at me.

‘Hush. She’s starting,’ he whispered, already enraptured.

The seer raised her hands to the shape of the Great Watcher in the sky. Anvil clouds obscured half the god’s unmoving face. The seer’s body began to quiver, and her voice grew as shrill as blades clashing against stone.

‘A child of gutters and ashes weaned! One eye taken for gold token’s sheen. Fire and vengeance breed another child. Two hearts splintered of one blood riled. To sun from gloom they carve their way. Burn bright a broken heart led not astray. Two suns will shine upon the east. The battle forged to set free the beast. One is chosen as another shall fall. World ever changed as the darkness calls. One must stand against them all!’

No sooner had she finished did a gang of clerics seize her arms and escort her from the altar.

The crowd was all a mutter as it dispersed. I watched a small copse of people yelling at a fellow with an eyepatch and more decades than he had teeth left. He danced despite their jeers, and by the grin on his face, he firmly believed he was the chosen.

‘One must stand against them all,’ I mumbled to myself, confused. I made hardly any sense of the words, but I knew they were not for me.

Aberan seemed disappointed, pushing his way through onlookers with a sullen hunch. He didn’t say a word until we were clear of the crush of people. I had to catch him as he trudged onwards, head down and eyes on the cobbles.

‘What is it, Aberan?’ I asked.

He smirked wryly as he stared to the sky and its darkening clouds. ‘I thought it would be about me,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Just once, I thought the Watcher might notice me.’

‘I know the feeling.’

Aberan nodded. ‘We should find a place to bed down. Maybe in a week or two we see what Ma… Oh, gone gods. This looks like trouble.’

‘You!’

The shout was like a salamander’s roar.

I followed Aberan’s gaze to see none other than Forince charging down the street towards us. Her scaled face was a mess of dark bruises and deep cuts, no doubt from the baron’s rings. Blood stained the mustard apron the cook still wore.

‘You! You little shit! I helped you and you stabbed me in the back!’

‘It was an accident, Forince. We’re in as much trouble as you!’ I yelled back.

‘That’s what you think! I want my piece of you before the baron has his way. If I leave anything left for him!’

‘We should run, brother.’

‘When I say,’ Aberan muttered. I heard the pop of knuckles as his fists clenched. He took a stand in front of me.

‘Aberan…?’ I said, voice shaking with my heartbeat. The woman was a head taller than Aberan and had the sharp muscles of Drola blood.

‘I’ll clobber you just the same, boy. Get out of my way!’

Aberan stayed as still as a mountain, even though I could see the fire straining to be free of him.

Forince snarled as she swung a fist. Aberan ducked it, snake-like, and drove a blow under her chin. Forince reeled, black eyes turned up, and feet rocking on the cobbles.

‘Now we run!’ Aberan roared.

Much to the complaint of my sore legs, we hurled ourselves into another mad dash. This one was considerably shorter. Not that we didn’t have the strength, nor the need, but for the simple and inescapable reason that a line of guards stood in our way. I stood panting, twitching left and right as the trap was closed. More guards appeared at our rear. Gloved hands clamped onto my shoulders, iron-strong.

The baron’s captain, Haltweather, strolled to greet us, spinning a club in his hand. ‘Doesn’t look like it’s your day for making friends, now does it?’ he said with a grin.

I managed to spit at his feet before the sacks descended over our heads.