Chapter Two

THE FIRST FALL

Blightlamp shine burned into the back of my skull as they ripped the sack from my head. I blinked furiously while rough hands and boots compelled me into a kneel. It was a minor heresy, more proof of Wrekham’s ego than our miscreancy; nobody kneeled in the Holy Realm unless it was before the First Chosen or the high ranks of the Venerance.

When my sight decided to return, I found myself blinking at a delightful brown carpet floor and a grand span of glass windows. The enormous shape of the baron blocked half the glinting view. Mercifully, he had his back turned to us, studying the night.

The first moon was peeking behind the Great Watcher’s carapace, casting its yellow brilliance upon Canarva and the landscape beyond its crater walls. In a distance I rarely glimpsed, the firefountains were aglow in the foothills and mountains, adding their dull scarlet to the light of the moon on the neighbouring lakes. In the sky, beyond the smirch of clouds, the ribbons of the star veils washed back and forth around the head of the watchful god. Blue, green, and gold, they shimmered. They would have mesmerised me had I not been quivering with worry.

Baron Wrekham tutted at the view his fortune had bought him.

‘This very afternoon,’ he spoke, ‘it crossed my mind I might not stand over this wretched city again. Now that I’m still alive, I’ve found myself caring for it even less, however rich Canarva has made me. They said in the mines you’re supposed to have an epiphany when stepping too close to death. A newfound appreciation for being alive, they said, no matter how stinking poor your life was. I guess that wears off when you step too close too often, as I did too many times working my way up.’

My mouth was rock-dry. I worked up some saliva to speak my apology. ‘Baron, sire, I—’

‘Shut your whining mouth, urchin,’ Wrekham hissed. In the reflection of the glass, I saw the glower in his face. The baron’s cheeks looked swollen. ‘I ain’t finished.’

To the wiggle of Wrekham’s sausage-like fingers, Master Pitius appeared with an ornate glass topped with golden rum. Wrekham took a loud sip. ‘This city’s tried to kill me too many times in the past, but the silks and the years have made me all soft and forgetful. Your little attempt to kill me reminded me of what dragged me out of the ash, and that was me, and me alone. You reminded me that I ain’t done. That there’s much more to be had outside this hole of a city.’

The baron turned to flex his thick hands. His scar-pitted face was a furious red and fatter around the cheeks and left eye than earlier. I could still see the stain of Forince’s dark blood on his shining rings.

‘And it’s for that reason I won’t kill you for what you did,’ Wrekham uttered. ‘At least for now.’

The reassurance was so brief I swore I had whiplash.

‘It could still be the ash-fields, mines, or cells for you if you two don’t decide to be smart right here and right now. You doubt me? You’re mine to do what I please with. Ma Mattox won’t be wanting your kind back at her door, that’s for sure. All you have to tell me is who.’

‘Who… what?’ I whispered.

The guards’ grips on mine and Aberan’s shoulders tightened. We squirmed in discomfort.

Wrekham approached us. ‘Who sent you? Who paid you to try to poison me?’

‘Nobody, Baron,’ I replied quickly. ‘It was an accident, I swear it. I was just trying to make the stew better. I didn’t know about the scalespice. My brother here told me to stop, but I didn’t listen.’

Wrekham looked to Pitius and threw up his hands. ‘Well, it’s a fine story, ain’t it?’ he asked.

Pitius nodded like a wind-bullied pennant. ‘Sure is, Baron.’

‘It’s no story,’ I objected in a whisper.

‘Hah! Of course it ain’t, girl! You’re telling me it just so happens somebody tries to poison me on the same day I refuse the offer of the cleric? Mighty fine coincidence indeed. I know I’m being watched. What’s to say Ma’s had her ears listening to my business? Or that wretch Bovin. I’ll bet he’s heard of my good fortune from some gabbing filth, and now that southern bastard wants to play his twisted southern games.’

My head swam so much all I could respond with was a confused gurgle. I knew the baron spoke of his prize box, but that was where my understanding ended.

‘What about you, boy? Hmm?’ Wrekham demanded of my brother. ‘Speak up now! Why’s she protecting you?’

Aberan shook his head.

‘Was it the Venerance? Bovin? Was it that grotesque lump Paribald?’ Wrekham prodded Aberan hard in the chest. ‘Speak!’

‘He doesn’t talk, sire. He’s a mute,’ I blurted.

‘That part is true, sire,’ Pitius sighed. ‘Had him removed from the house servants for that very reason.’

Wrekham grinned, coming to cast his shadow over me instead. ‘I think we can change that, can’t we? Tell me who sent you, boy, and I’ll let your sister walk out that door on her own two legs.’

Aberan’s head snapped around as Wrekham’s grip closed around my neck. My brother’s face flushed red.

‘We’re not lying!’ I gasped. ‘We have no reason to lie! We’re nothing and nobody.’

‘The first true thing you said, girl! Let’s see what else we can squeeze out of you.’

I felt my air dry up. I couldn’t gulp any more into my lungs. I began to paw at the baron’s hand. Aberan’s glower burned hot. I tried to shake my head, but Wrekham was too strong. I had never felt more of an urchin or a child until that moment.

Aberan exploded from the chair. ‘Leave her alone!’ came his hoarse roar.

Wrekham merely extended his spare hand. It looked so effortless, so casual, yet the vicious blow smashed Aberan across the face and sent him spinning against the glass. A crack spread through the pane at his back. Blood was beginning to drip from a dark wound across his cheek and brow.

‘Aberan!’ I croaked, watching him clamp a hand to his eye. Crimson flowed between his fingers.

My brother stayed low, silent and seething. The baron motioned to Pitius to drag him up, and it all became clear in my head.

‘Mattox!’ I screeched.

Wrekham turned back to me. The vice-grip on my throat lessened enough for me to breathe. I stared up at him with all the unblinking certainty I could muster and tried to hide the hatred far behind my eyes.

‘Ma Mattox knows about your little box. She wants it for herself,’ I lied. The baron wanted a name and I’d given him one.

Aberan stared at me from behind his bloody hand.

‘Ma Mattox, you say?’

‘She promised me twenty shells.’ It sounded like a decent amount, but the baron seemed insulted.

‘Twenty shells?’ Wrekham whispered as he released me at last. ‘Twenty shells? Can you believe that’s the pittance of a price she pays for my death, Master Pitius?’

‘No, I cannot, Baron.’

‘That despicable wench!’ Wrekham hurled the glass and its dribble of rum against the wall. I played my cowering part, all the while drinking in every inch of the brute of a man. Every muscle straining against his sleeves. Every curl of his greasy grey hair. Every patter of blood from his precious and gaudy rings. I had never killed anything besides a conversation in my short life, but for the first time, I wondered what it would take to kill a man like Wrekham: a man who deserved it. I had little idea where my next meal was coming from, never mind what I wanted from my life besides better, but at that moment, I knew with absolute certitude that I wanted Wrekham to perish in as horrible a method as possible.

The baron shook his finger in my face. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me, girl?’

I shook my head as rapidly as I could, only adding to the ache in my neck and windpipe.

Wrekham looked down at us like two turds had found their way onto his carpet. ‘Take these little shits to Moonmoth in the meantime, Haltweather,’ he ordered. ‘We’ll see if they tell the same story after a few days in the cells. And it gives us time to see what Ma Mattox has to say for herself.’

The enormous crack in my hasty plan quickly became apparent. It didn’t matter as long as we still walked out of that hideous chamber alive and on our own two feet as the baron promised. I clutched at Aberan’s hand as Pitius shoved him back to the guards. He still had his bloody hand clamped to his face.

The captain had a grip on the door handle when Wrekham’s voice shattered the shuffling silence.

‘And Haltweather?’

‘Aye, sir?’

The pause made me shrink into a wooden version of myself. Aberan squeezed my fingers tightly.

‘Keep the sacks off their heads. Let Canarva see who’s got themselves in trouble. Show them this is what happens with you fuck with this baron. I ain’t dead yet.’

Down the mansion’s broad steps and patterned hallways, we were marched. And in full and clear view of the other servants and siblings, I might add. Low tuts and moans followed us until the guards cursed them into silence. There were no alleyways to flee down now. We had no saviour.

The night bore the cold touch of a westerly wind, born in an ocean I had only heard tales of. Haltweather marched us at the tip of his sword for all to see. He and his halfwits loped behind to laugh between themselves.

I kept my eyes on the skies. Blue and red-skinned balloons, fat and low with cargo, yelled for more height as they threatened to graze chimney tops. A bloated cruiser with two envelopes droned over the crater walls to the east. Her blightlamps shone brighter than a baron’s party.

With the light of the first moon and the wind, the shape of the Great Watcher’s colossal leg was free of haze for a rare moment. Through the curled and pointed rooftops of Canarva, even a hundred miles away, I could see the simmering furnace-light of the lava lakes where the god’s claw met and plunged deep into the earth.

The city clerics and Devoter liked to claim that the Ashlands were where the Great Watcher first touched the soil of our world, eight thousand years before I came along to gawp at it. Then again, so did the peoples of the south and east, where two more of the Watcher’s limbs pierced the lands. I privately liked to think Canarva was correct; there had to be one benefit to this city, and that was an easy one to claim.

Beyond our god, the star veils were already beginning to dim in the light of the second moon’s rising. Her blue wash gifted the torchlit streets and grey brick of Canarva a greenish hue, especially the pale stone of the Venerance temple that insisted on towering over every other structure in the city. I’d overheard that wasn’t an unusual habit of the temples in the Holy Realms. Tempest was apparently a foot rug compared to the Grand Venerate’s gleaming citadel.

Though I wholeheartedly wish I could tell you it did, our march of shame through the streets didn’t go unnoticed. Market-goers pointed and tutted. Wandering clerics of their night shifts blessed our criminal souls with the six circles of the Great Watcher. Crowds of field-workers lounging on tavern patios flicked the remnants of their rums and wines at us. A half-eaten sandwich sailed dangerously close to me before exploding on the cobbles.

One drunkard’s aim spattered Haltweather himself, and I managed to stow my mirth before the captain took it out on me. Our parade came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street while Haltweather demanded apologies. The captain was moments away from trading blows with the man when two prosecutors in their white armour emerged around a corner and stood to watch.

Order was restored without the prosecutors uttering a single word. Fear had that effect on the cowards of this city. Haltweather even sketched a bow as he passed them by.

‘A fine and ashless evenin’ to you, prosecutors,’ he muttered before going back to brushing wine from his cloak and cursing the aimless fool. It was as much justice as I could expect that evening, and I enjoyed every crumb of it.

Aberan faced it all without a word or a break in his wounded stare. He didn’t look at me, nor to any of our hecklers. He kept his gaze fixed dead ahead towards the granite bridge that spanned a rift in the city. Beyond it lay the factories, where the mined powders from the ash-fields were processed into all manner of precious materials. Red and cerulean smog belched from the endless rows of vents upon the factories’ rooftops.

Blight-cursed beggars lay along these streets, begging for shells or morsels. Haltweather and Aberan might have ignored them, but I peered at the afflicted faces beneath their cowls and wraps and saw green eyes glowing back at me. One man giggled quite madly at the sight of us, eyes peeled back and every last tooth on show. I thought the baron’s choice of mustard-yellow was hilarious as well, but I doubted the beggar was truly aware of our passing. Eating or sniffing too much blightpowder could turn a mind to gruel. At least his inventiveness with cursing was something to behold.

‘Fuckery fuck twatbags!’ yelled the man in madness. ‘Piss balloons!’

The Prisons of Moonmoth were a grey tumour that squatted between the factories, perched on a hill so steep it knocked the wind from my tired body. Its four triangular towers faced inwards like the segments of cakes I had seen in bakers’ windows – and admittedly stolen from bakers’ shops once or twice. Much to Aberan’s disapproval, of course.

‘Two more for you, Kellig, you old skink,’ Haltweather called out to the closed gates of the prison.

A sleepy prosecutor of miniature proportions emerged from a wicket gate set into the large doors. His mask was nowhere to be seen and his uniform was stained with what I hoped was soup. ‘Who’s the baron displeased with this time?’ Kellig asked, stretching his back with several audible clicks.

‘Two would-be assassins. These are the urchins who tried to poison Wrekham.’

‘Assassins, is it? Don’t get much of those in Moonmoth. The clerics will be intrigued.’

‘Common murderers, if you ask me. Not very good ones, either.’

‘You’re lucky I got a few spaces,’ Kellig mused while he examined Aberan and I. He poked at my brother. ‘This one’s injured more than the last one the baron had his way with.’

Haltweather yawned. Apparently we were keeping him from his bed. ‘He’ll live,’ he sighed.

Onwards, we were shoved. Our hands were manacled not three paces inside the gates, and while I was busy trying to examine the inner walls and different barred windows that studded them, I had a cup of brackish liquid forced into my bound hands.

‘Drink,’ Kellig demanded. While I hesitated, he patted a cudgel at his blue belt.

‘If you don’t drink it, you get a whack from the Mistress here until you do, understand?’

‘What is it?’ I had the cheek to ask.

Kellig spat on the ground dangerously close to my feet. ‘You drink it, you go to sleep, you don’t cause us any trouble, and you don’t remember any of how you got to your cell. That answer your questions, your Highness?’

The prosecutor forced my hands up, slopping the cup and liquid into my mouth. It was sour and bitter all at once, and I immediately felt my brain swimming in my skull.

‘I should get this recipe off you one day, old man,’ the captain spoke through another yawn.

Kellig laughed. I watched while his face began to droop sideways. ‘Works wonders when the chitlins are screaming all hours of the day.’

Haltweather laughed. The man’s voice was now impossibly deep, as if a mountain chuckled at me. ‘How you’re still pumping out children at your age astounds me, old man.’

‘Ha! Bless me. Great Watcher’s been kind.’

That charming sentiment accompanied me into the dirt as I pitched over. Sleep caught me, and there was nothing I could do to escape its net.

*

Prison was the worst.

And let’s take a pause there, because I can tell you’re thinking, “but Dwellin, that’s the fucking point, you idiot.” If that’s the case, then you’ve missed mine, and you should try a little incarceration some time.

Prison was interminable. It exercised a particular brand of unbearable that kept somebody like me constantly fidgeting and my heart busy pounding. The worst part wasn’t the immovable bars of black steel herding us in against our will; nor the fact they chained us tight and chafing to the wall, two score criminals in one circular space; nor the rumbling of empty stomachs and bored lips; nor even the mice and scrawny lizards scattering across my legs and hands in the dark. It was the godsdamned smell.

We are not so removed from beasts, you know, despite our silks and our machines, and we do not like cages, however well-deserved they were. Prison was a mill made for grinding the sweating, fearful stink out of entrapment. I could smell the terror, both present and past, and along with the rancour of piss and far too few shit-buckets to go around, this weaponised stench was ripe enough to push me to the precipice of panic. Rest was beyond possible. Guilt and fear took turns on me. Hope died there in that room. And that, my friends, was what made the Prisons of Moonmoth the worst.

Told you.

I’d woken from Kellig’s poison what felt like an hour ago. My eyes were growing used to the gloom, helped by a single shaft of yellow moonlight that pierced the flat and oppressive ceiling. The occasional fleck of ash wandered through the open skylight, or worse: buzzing krackles come looking for blood to suck. There was one inner door and one window in the broad cell. Brick and crumbling plaster covered the walls, and a single sewer grate sat in the centre of the mouldy circle, locked and barred.

The dim lights of nearby Canarva flickered against our cell’s barred window. If I stretched, I could peek with one eye through the oval opening. It hurt to strain against my short leash. The iron was fresh and in need of a file, and my wrists were already scraped from trying. Aberan lay just beyond my reach, still slumped against the wall and sleeping through his pain.

Beyond him were ash-smeared workers who raised fists to their foremen, blightpowder-pedlars hushed in whispering conversation, or more disconcertingly, blood-soaked individuals muttering to themselves over hunched knees. Moonmoth didn’t care which sort of criminals it mingled together. You could see it in the gaps left around certain more… worrying inmates, like one huge lump of a man huddled in a shadow. His knuckles poked from the dark, mosaics of old scars and fresh cuts.

There was one that worried me more than the others. Whether the baron and Haltweather had played a hand, Kellig was that mean, or our luck was simply just that torrid, but one of our delightful cellmates was none other than Forince.

Like I said, the Great Watcher had no love for me.

I had noticed her shortly after waking, and since then she had maintained a determined stare from across the fetid floor. Her slitted eyes kept their reptilian shine in the dark, and she had not blinked in an age. It was highly disconcerting, and even though I had whispered my apologies and excuses across the circle, she had not yet said a word. Some of my other cellmates had heard me just fine. One offered me some blightpowder to make me smile and quiet the devils in my mind, to which I politely refused. Another man told me I was a pretty young thing, and that earned him nothing but a curse and a turn of my back.

‘Aberan,’ I whispered to my brother.

Switching myself around, I found I could lie flat and poke him with a toe. I tried several times, but Aberan didn’t come awake and muttered, ‘Gone gods, Ma, let me sleep.’

Another poke and the stench freed him from his dream. I heard him take a breath, gag, and come fully awake. ‘What is that smell?’ Aberan choked.

‘Prison.’

‘Right,’ he whispered, realising we were not alone. His eyes went wide at Forince.

‘I’m—’ I attempted.

‘Sorry, I know,’ Aberan replied, pawing gingerly at the bloody crust of his cheek and brow. ‘This is the baron’s doing, not yours. Not directly at least.’

‘Told you he was a monster,’ I mumbled. Guilt pummelled me just like Aberan punished grain sacks whenever he was gifted a moment. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I can’t open my eye. It burns like a coal.’

A rustling disturbed us. Beyond our barred window, a shadow was creeping along the walkway, making the city lights blink. Though I couldn’t see all of the figure, it didn’t look like a prosecutor. Instead it was wrapped in a long cloak, and I glimpsed the sheen of a green eye staring back at me before it turned away. A shiver shook me.

‘Who in the Ashlands was that?’ I said through chattering teeth.

Aberan shook his head. ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t want anything except to be free of this place as soon as possible. This is one part of Canarva I never thought we’d see.’

‘This is worse than the gutter, isn’t it?

‘Much worse, little sister.’

I lowered my voice as much as I could. ‘Did you hear what Wrekham said? He thinks somebody’s trying to kill him for that box. The one the cleric wanted to buy.’

‘Not now, Dwellin,’ Aberan muttered from the side of his mouth.

‘He didn’t listen to a word I said. He was convinced we were assassins.’

Aberan bared his teeth. ‘The rich never listen to the likes of us. You should have learned that by now,’ he said, taking deep breaths through his grimace. ‘Quick thinking blaming Ma. You did a good job.’

‘I did?’ I asked, sitting up. Those words were golden to me. ‘I did.’

‘I hope so. She’ll be hopping mad when she finds out, but at least she can’t get us in here.’

‘You think the Baron will leave us here to rot? Or send us to the clerics for judging? Do they feed us here? What if they make us work the mines or the fields like—?’

Aberan started to test the bars. ‘You don’t have to worry, Dwellin,’ he cut me off. ‘I got us out of the gutter and I’ll do the same here.’

‘How?’

Aberan gave me a weak and lopsided smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something, little sister.’

As it happened, I already had, but I knew Aberan would curse me for even thinking it.

Forince’s anger at last bubbled over, and she chose that moment to issue her threats. ‘I’m going to skin you both alive for what you did to me! I’ll string you up and roast you until you squeal,’ she yelled to us, smashing the stygian quiet.

Some of the inmates who were already awake cackled or whooped. Those who were asleep cursed the noise or came awake with a terrified start.

‘Got a fight brewing, have we?’ growled an older, fight-scarred man who had been busy scratching the wall with his nails. Once he had shuffled forwards, I saw what he had been scratching in the old plaster. It was impressive, not least because of its surprising artistic ability, but also for how swiftly it educated me on some of the activities that go on behind the doors of bedchambers.

Forince spat on the floor and flicked her forked tongue. ‘This brat had me fired and beaten. And her idiot brother thought it a fine idea to knock me down when I came for the blood that was owed, as is Ashland rule.’

Half the cellmates murmured in disapproving agreement.

‘I told you, it was an accident,’ I yelled back. I’d heard how important it was not to show weakness in prison. I felt tiny amongst these brutes, but I’d be damned if I’d let them know.

Forince spat. ‘You hid and let me take the blame. There’s no accident!’

Aberan said nothing, falling mute once more in the earshot of others. Forince began to tug at her chain over and over, testing the bolts in the granite wall. The jangling beat of her attempts only goaded my heart faster.

‘Were we born just to take a constant beating, brother? Or is it just a run of bad luck?’ I hissed. ‘Far too long a run.’

Aberan stared sidelong at me, unable or unwilling to answer.

Forince took some time to grow bored. A gruff bark from the rather large and terrifying inmate put a stop to her intimidation. Silence fell as a prosecutor tottered past our cell door, barely looking within. I pressed myself against the wall, arms crossed, two strips of smock up my nose and eyes starting to droop, thank the gone gods. I had no care for Forince any more, only to pass this horrid time with sleep. It was the easiest kind of escape for a prisoner, but I cursed how temporary it was.

I don’t know if I slumbered for a minute or an hour, but a dream must have held me hostage, because the sewer grate I was staring at in the floor lifted itself up and began to slither away.

I blinked, sitting up. The grate went several paces before clanking softly to a halt. Only then did the dark sewer hole let forth its shadow. I rubbed my eyes, spellbound as it moved around the circle, bending over the inmates one by one, paying not a care for any murmur or yelp of surprise. One man begged to live before the shadow descended on him. I noticed that it wasn’t a knife that was silencing my fellow criminals, but a puff of dust from a black-gloved hand. With a breath and a choke, their eyes rolled up and their bodies fell. I began to fear this dream was a nightmare.

My body went rigid, abruptly aware this was no dream, and the shadow was no apparition. Aberan was awake too, tugging quietly but firmly on his chain links. His uninjured eye was so wide it looked close to flying across the room. His tensed fist was shaking. I didn’t blame him. It seemed like the spirit of death had come for us personally.

To my surprise, the murderous shadow passed us by, sowing its dust between the remaining cellmates before returning to us.

‘Leave us alone,’ I snapped, like a rat squeaking at a descending boot.

‘That’s a shame,’ spoke the shadow. Death had a man’s voice, and one I vaguely recognised. I saw a rough form beneath the obsidian cowl, one of thick and broad stature. ‘Because it’s you I’ve come for,’ he said.

‘Are you here to kill us like the others?’ I asked.

The stranger laughed. A familiar green light shone behind the black cowl as his fingers shed an iridescent pinch of gold powder. ‘Dawndust. Doesn’t kill you, but it will make you sleep soundly until morning. If I wanted you dead, girl, I’d let either this prison or the baron do it for me. Seems like you don’t have many friends in this city. I thought you might need one.’

I shook my head. ‘We’re not going anywhere until you tell us who you are.’

Aberan growled in agreement.

The shadow swooped between us to manhandle our chains. A sharp light shone between gloved hands before the metal links fell to the floor, their severed, melted ends aglow.

‘All in good time,’ the stranger said. ‘I had to be sparing with the dust. Some men slumber lighter than others, and a good enough slice of gossip can break a soul free of this place.’

Before I could demand he tell us his name, he beckoned to another prisoner I had thought asleep. Or dead. I still didn’t trust the man. To my dismay, it was the muscular lump of an inmate that rose, snapping his chain with so little effort it was insulting. He stood next to the shadow, received a pat on the arm like a pet salamander, and promptly squeezed into the sewer hole without so much as a word.

‘You can stay here and take your chances with broken chains, or you can trust me, and I’ll show you the way out,’ said the stranger. ‘What you do afterwards is up to you. I demand no favours or debts.’

‘You’re a liar. Everybody in this city does,’ I retorted. I didn’t know what to do with all the fear that had welled up inside me, and it came out as venom.

‘I’m not everybody,’ the man chuckled. ‘I’m me.’

For a rare moment, I stood frozen by indecision. Far too little did I stop to think, and yet here I was, taking feeling like I was trapped in marsh mud. My gut stubbornly told me this was a gift, but my mind screamed suspicion.

‘I won’t force you, but I can’t wait forever,’ he said, watching the cell door.

Aberan stepped forwards before I could. Relieved, I followed my brother’s decision, but something held me at the edge of the sewer, and this time it was not the wretched smell.

‘If you really mean to free us, then we have to take her, too,’ I said.

The green light beneath the shadow’s cowl flared. ‘Who?’

‘Forince. The Drola woman over there. Don’t ask me why, but we owe her a debt. Free her, please. Even if I come to regret it later.’

‘I—’

‘Please,’ I insisted, already moving towards her.

After a grumpy sigh, the man stomped over to work his fierce light again, and with Aberan’s help, we carried Forince’s limp into the narrow tunnel. The brute below slung her over his shoulder and hauled her into the dark.

I didn’t dare question what kind of much sloshed around my feet. I mean, I had a pretty good idea it was shit, but anything can be anything in the dark, and I simply pressed on down the tunnel pretending not to think about how low I had fallen.

Whichever grates usually barred the sewer had already been melted and bent aside to let us pass. Hunched as turtles, we swerved around corners and slid down embankments, growing filthier and more desperate for air by the second. Yet if it meant freedom – true freedom – I would have swum out of that shit-pipe if I had to. I didn’t need to stay in Moonmoth a moment longer to know I never wanted to see the inside of a cell again, not for as long as I lived.

We didn’t emerge into the moonlight for some time, and once we had, we stuck to the gutters I knew all too well. For all the tavern guards or prosecutors knew – or smelled – we were beggars or Blighted rummaging around in filth for lost shells and trinkets. More than once, we were actually encouraged to run on by a gang of disgusted factory workers.

All of us took a leaf from Aberan’s book and held our tongues. I buried myself in counting the streets and alleyways to figure where we were being taken. The shadow and the lummox pressed on without care if we got left behind. Only once we had put most of Canarva between us and Moonmoth did the strangers halt, and they did so at the doorstep of what looked like a downed balloon. The gondola had been turned into a shopfront that proclaimed the finest antiques and artefacts in the Ashlands, while its patchwork red and yellow envelope gave roofs and awnings to the rickety building above, some bastard child of wood and black brick.

‘What is this place?’ I asked in a whisper despite the dead nature of the streets. The hour was late even for the drunks and powder-pedlars.

The man told me with a proud tone to his voice. ‘A haven, is what it is.’

Using a door hidden down an alleyway, we were shown into a shimmering candlelight. It wasn’t the first time that night I had been blinded, and yet this time, once I had blinked away the spots, I saw surroundings infinitely less threatening than the baron’s chambers.

The old balloon was a warren of staircases, walkways, and balconies. Hollows filled with blankets and mattresses were populated with children. Most were asleep, just heads or nightcaps on a pillow. Some were awake, their faces pale and curious in the dim candlelight, and I saw that they were all as young as I was.

On the lower floors, workshops sprawled, with benches littered with tools and half-made contraptions and trinkets I had no clue of recognising.

Our hillock of a cellmate, now he stood in the candlelight, was much younger than the gloom of the cell and his shaved head made him look. He couldn’t have been more than a year older than Aberan. The lummox stretched, yawned, and muttered something about the larder. I examined his sprawling tattoos in the moments before he disappeared.

My attention switched straight back to the cloaked and cowled man standing before us. I could now spy a faint smile beneath the shadow of his hood. Aberan and I traded glances, and for the first time, I saw his wound in the light. I had to clench my jaw not to gasp at his mask of blood. It reached down his neck to stain his filthy shirt.

‘Welcome to my humble workshop, the Buried & Lost,’ said our rescuer. ‘I don’t just have a passion for the artefacts of the ancients, I have a passion for keeping souls like you – like us – out of the prisons and the ash-fields.’

‘You were there yesterday outside Wrekham’s mansion, bothering Mop Mattox,’ I said. His name still escaped me.

Finally, the man angled his head to the candlelight, showing us a face carved in half. One side had all the wrinkles and ashen hair of an Ashlander in his middle decades. The right side of his face was consumed by the Blight, but not like anything I had ever seen. The skin from forehead to jaw was a deep lichen-green with the texture of rough bark. The eye that remained on that side was stained black, leaving only a pinprick pupil of green, now dimmer in the light.

‘You may know me as Riveno,’ he said with a warped smile.

I sagged against the nearest wall, exhausted. ‘I don’t know you at all, or what you want from us, but if you’re no friend of the Mop, then we’re willing to listen.’

‘You don’t speak much, do you, lad?’ Riveno said to my brother, eyes roving his bloody face.

Aberan shook his head.

‘What are your names?’

I hesitated. A name is a powerful thing, dear reader. Speak some names aloud and they summon images of glittering heroes. I’ve found mine has far too often been attached to guilt, blame, or to plots of revenge. Or found wanted posters. That does wonders for the esteem, even though they never draw my eyes quite right.

‘I’m Dwellin Dorr,’ I told Riveno. ‘This is my brother, Aberan Dorr.’

‘Well then, Aberan and Dwellin, let me give you the speech. All are welcome here. Come and go as you please, but if you stay, you contribute with a broom or in the scullery. There’s always plenty of workshop work to be done and pay if you want it. I take no cut and I give a fair wage. It might not be easy or short work, but it’s all I can offer. But for now, you, my good sir, need some hot water and some salves straight away. I take it the baron did this?’

Aberan and I both recoiled as Riveno started towards us. I looked again to my brother, whose face didn’t need to move for me to understand. It was always his eyes that spoke loudest to me.

‘What’s the catch?’ I asked.

Riveno sighed. I saw the flinch beneath his cloak as he flexed his hands as if it was a question he was tired of answering. ‘Not everyone in Canarva is Baron Wrekham, or Mop Mattox, or any of the dozens I could name.’

Once more, I held my brother’s gaze. It was Aberan who made the decision once more, with nothing but a simple, tired blink. I sagged into an armchair as Riveno made Aberan sit on an empty bunk. One of the curious faces from the hollows above, a girl younger than me, clambered down the ladders to help. Not a word was shared between her and Riveno. The only sound was the hissing and teeth-grinding of Aberan as they dabbed his wound with water, cloth, and ointments.

‘Wrekham marked him good,’ Riveno sighed, just as my eyelids were drooping. I swore some of the man’s powders had reached my lungs.

I struggled upright to see my brother’s cleaned wounds. A fierce cut scored a path from the inside of my brother’s left cheek to his forehead. He would have looked a fine warrior had the baron’s rings not caught his left eye. It was bloodshot, swollen almost shut, and gut-wrenching.

‘Wrekham needs to die,’ I growled.

‘You going to kill him, child? What are you, twelve?’ asked Riveno.

‘Fourteen.’

‘Sadly, the true criminals of Canarva are not lying in Moonmoth tonight, as they should be, but in their own feathered and perfumed beds,’ Riveno uttered in a low voice as he placed a compress over Aberan’s face. His hand delved into his pocket and brought forth a palm of the shimmering gold powder. Riveno blew a mist over Aberan, and within moments, his good eye was shut and his mouth open in a shuddering snore. He never slept deep enough to snore.

Riveno turned to me while the other silent urchin clambered back to her hollow. ‘Why doesn’t he speak? Hit on the head? Tongue doesn’t work? Broken heart?’

I didn’t tell him which one was true. ‘He only speaks to me. He says nobody except for me hears what he says, only what they want to hear. Since our parents got the blacklung, he doesn’t see the point in wasting his breath,’ I said quietly, not wishing to share my life with whatever ears lingered above.

Riveno sighed, bringing out an intricate silver pipe. There came no taper and candle. A tiny blightlamp glowed inside the contraption, and when he puffed, smoke billowed immediately. ‘I lost far too many friends to that over the years. One kid here has the beginnings of it. They had him in the ash-fields at five,’ Riveno said in a voice made deep by smoke. He emptied his lungs with a deep, long sigh. ‘Such are the problems I try to stand against. But I imagine you have questions before I find you a cot.’

‘There’s a catch, isn’t there? There’s always a catch.’

Riveno smirked. ‘I can tell from this prickly exterior of yours that you’ve spent a life being knocked about and bullied, right? ’

I shrugged. ‘I dabble.’

‘No wonder you’re suspicious when somebody comes along who wants nothing from you. I do this to help these children, not to profit from them. I have other ways of doing that, as you can see from my relics,’ he said, blowing smoke towards his workshops.

‘But why?’

‘Because somebody’s got to, curse it,’ Riveno replied. ‘You’re too young to remember, but this city once tried to tear itself apart, workers against masters, poor against rich. We lost, unsurprisingly. Those who survived put it back together, and I swore I’d rebuild it differently. Nothing changed in the uprising, except this place. This is how I fight back, rescuing one soul at a time. That’s my promise.’ Riveno unhooked a flask from his belt and took a glug. ‘You ever make one of those?’

‘I swore I’d never let Aberan be punished for what I did. That was yesterday, I think.’

‘Looks like the protective kind, your brother.’

‘That he is. Never left my side for more than an hour. He’s the brawn,’ I said. ‘I’m the brains of the pair.’

Riveno raised his eyebrows.

I crossed my arms. ‘Yeah, fine. It’s not working out so well at the moment.’

‘A game of questions. One each. You first.’

One facet of me you should know, reader, is that I’ve always been loathsome for people not spitting out what they want to say. I know now that it started there, in Canarva.

‘What are you? You Blighted?’ I asked.

Riveno winked his green eye. ‘Not in the way that you think. You need not fear me.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Tough. My turn. Did you try to kill the baron on purpose?’

Two could play at the vague game. ‘I wish I had.’

‘Just as I had hoped,’ Riveno said with another gratuitous cloud of smoke. Whatever leaf he was smoking smelled vaguely sweet and sickly.

‘You took us in and you don’t know if we’re murderers or not?’

‘The rumours have been circling all day. I saw you running through the city as if salamanders were nipping at your heels. You didn’t go back to Ma Mattox, and you didn’t look like practised assassins. You looked scared. When I saw you being marched along by the captain, I thought it would be wise to follow and see if you needed my help.’

‘But how did you get into Moonmoth?’

‘That’s two questions.’

‘That’s not fair, I…’ I tutted as I realised he was right. ‘Fine.’

Riveno nodded to the comatose Forince, curled on a sack of feathers and a lizard skin rug. ‘Why’d you save her?’

‘I don’t know,’ I huffed. ‘Seemed the right thing to do. I do the wrong so often I thought I could change that. I didn’t mean to get her in trouble. She was one of the Mop’s just like me.’

‘I hope she won’t cause a ruckus. That’s our one rule here.’

I didn’t like the way that Riveno was looking at me. As if he knew me. ‘You’re not so full of anger and spite, are you, Dwellin? Got a gap in that fierce armour of yours, I think.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘That’s two questions, Riveno.’

The man chuckled. ‘Well played.’

‘Last questions then.’ My words were already nocked and loaded. ‘You got any food in this crashed balloon?’

‘That we have, Dwellin Dorr. Plenty of it.’

I shrugged, far too focused on the idea of vittles. My stomach was gurgling so aggressively it was close to rioting. Riveno fetched an apple and a wedge of ash-covered cheese for me. I hadn’t eaten anything as glorious as cheese in months. I gobbled it up, black rind and all. Let me tell you, my good friends: if I was cursed to choose between cheese and all that I have gained, I confess it would be a decision far too long in the making.

Riveno stood over me. I stared up at him, daring to prove me right about my suspicions of an honest man. For all its factories, that was one thing Canarva did not make. It was a constant irritation of mine that thoughts were an internal habit. There was no magic I knew of in the world for reading minds, or for knowing the hearts of those who stood in front of me, but if it existed, I swore I would be the first to master it.

‘Last questions indeed. My turn,’ he said. ‘What did you do to Baron Wrekham?’

‘Why?’ I shot back. ‘You want to kill him yourself? Finished what I started? I think there’s a line-up. He seems to think the whole of Canarva’s after him.’

Riveno’s smirk had died. The only sounds between us were something whirring within the workshops and the buzzing of his strange pipe.

‘You get no more questions, Dwellin. Answer,’ he said.

‘Scalespice,’ I admitted, and though I had no idea what kind of man looked down on me, I hoped my telling might somehow eventually lead to Wrekham’s death. ‘He can’t stand it, apparently. All I did was try to show the cooks I had a use and to make the stew edible. The baron thought we had done it on purpose. He thought we were trying to kill him for…’ I held my tongue. ‘For some reason.’

Riveno merely nodded, took another drag of his pipe, and pulled his cowl lower. He stepped to the door and shoved it open with his shoulder. The chirping of krackles floated in with the breeze.

‘Sleep. You’re safe here, Dwellin.’

It had been a long time since I felt such a thing I didn’t recognise it. Before I collapsed into slumber, I dragged my armchair closer to Aberan and further from Forince. I stared at the door, wary. It hadn’t been locked. The whole world waited beyond it, and for a long time, I stared at its slats and pondered. My indecision died there and then. My mind came free of the marsh mud it had been stuck in, and I made my mind up.

I would stay. Wrekham and Mattox and their ilk would get what was coming to them. But they could wait until morning.

One bite of the apple was all I managed before my head fell to my chest, and I tumbled into dreams that had no meaning. There are far too many people in this world that thrust sense into our dreams. Far too many decisions are made on nightmares. They are nothing but our minds playing with the time they are given, and they held no sway over my story.

Take it from one knows more than most: only the dreams you have while you’re awake matter.