Chapter Three

AMBITION

They say ambition is the road to ruin. Pride before the fall and all that. My theory is you only hear those stories from those too stupid to keep from falling, and too scared to walk the road. I say you can’t be anything in this world without ambition, and anybody that is to change the world needs it like blood in your veins. Where people give warnings is because of people like me having an ambition they didn’t agree with. I didn’t say ambition had to be pure, did I? Please.

My only ambition until then had been to survive and escape, but my days had changed since then, and Riveno’s Buried & Lost had given me survival I didn’t expect to find in Canarva, and the need to escape seemed less and less. It was – and I hate to say it looking back from more complicated times – blissful. At least as I remember it, before everything changed. And I think I’ll just leave that thick slab of foreshadowing there and whistle innocently.

Buried & Lost was the perfect name for Riveno’s repurposed balloon. My new siblings in this odd family had either been buried by Venerance laws and bureaucracy, or lost in the gutters, pursued by masters, collectors, and clerics. Aberan and I fit right in. The front of the shop belied the churn of bodies in the workshops and bed-hollows.

There was not much need to leave the workshop unless you wanted to. There was plenty of food and fresh water to be had, and there was an abundance of work, from sweeping the metal and sawdust up to helping clean and fix whatever junk Riveno saw fit to buy. I saw three days go by without leaving the shop for more than a glance at the star veils. And once to throw up after sneaking some of Midge’s rum.

Who knew the lump from the prison would be so genial and mischievous? That was apparently how he’d ended up in Moonmoth with us: mischief involving a master’s wife and something to do with climbing down a drainpipe half-dressed right into the arms of some prosecutors. He was Riveno’s right hand man, though man was a bit of a stretch. The boy was barely older than Aberan, but the other children told me Midge had Orka blood in him. Savage myths of the far east and north, tall as two men.

Quiet and suspicious was how I described Riveno. He was always vanishing somewhere. The others said he was visiting his digs: mines that ran too deep and too hot, where treasures and trinkets of the ancients could be found. He certainly seemed to find a lot of them. Canarva had no interest in the past unless it could harvest or smelt it. Riveno apparently saw it as his duty to rescue it. And we children were likely another part of that duty.

And that, my friends, was precisely why I followed him out the door one misty and sulphurous dawn.

The hotlakes must have been belching their gasses something fierce. I had to borrow a rag of wood oil from the workshop just to keep from gagging. You’d think I would have been used to it by now, but Canarva found new lows and heights to sink or rise to every week. Riveno stuck to the back alleys and spent his morning shaking hands with fellow merchants and shopkeepers.

I’ll be honest; Riveno wasn’t the only reason I had forced myself from the workshop. Aberan had remained exhausted after Moonmoth. A dark bandage still covered his injured eye. If I thought he had been the quiet kind before, he showed me how silent he could be. My hope was Riveno’s tinctures dazed him. My fear, which was somehow always more vociferous, was that he harboured a grudge. Or worse, a hatred. I couldn’t face it. And so here I was, sneaking away from my problems under the threadbare guise of investigating Riveno. Call it cowardice, if you want. I called it a solution.

There is a simple pleasure in trailing somebody who doesn’t know they’re being followed, and finding out a truth you didn’t know before. There is a subtle art to keeping the right distance, to melding with the throngs of city folk without getting stuck. I didn’t know it then, but I was training myself, in a way. Secrets were richer than any trinket. Knowledge sharper than any swordsaint’s blade.

You might not believe me yet, but you can can topple a kingdom with the right truth.

The only truth that Riveno was telling me that morning was that he was a do-gooder of almost bewildering proportions. I saw him spread at least a dozen shells amongst not only beggars but the withered Blighted in the darker alleys.

I believed charity to be a vacuous hobby of the bored rich and religious. They usually spent so many heaps of shells on acting charitable with their private galas and balls that there was hardly any left over for the poor they made empty promises to. The Devoter, the Venerance man appointed to oversee all of Canarva, was often braying about the needs of the poor in his monthly sermons. I’d heard him vow the Great Watcher’s a dozen times in my years in the gutter and all I’d ever seen of it was a mouldy loaf.

By mid-morning, Riveno veered to the north of Canarva where the barons and masters built their homes. Riveno toured their gates and swapped words with a guard here and there. One of the more decrepit masters was touring their gardens. The old leech even waved to Riveno, and the cowled shopkeeper spent a moment in hushed conversation. It was hard to see detail from across a courtyard, but something copper left Riveno’s hands and found their way into the master’s. A pouch was offered in return.

Suspicious, see? I tell you, life is easier the fewer people you trust. Every time I dared to toy with trust, the Great Watcher or lady fate herself slapped me with a reminder. Aberan was the only rock of faith in this murky river of humanity, and even he didn’t trust me. Riveno was clearly in business with all manner of scum.

I tailed Riveno to the northern walls, where he wove a path between the flow of field-workers, wagons, and wheelbarrows. Each was piled high with blocks of pumice and granite, or sacks of sulphur and ash. Guards marched alongside the wagons that carted the rare blights the Ashlands were known for. Only the northern mines close to the Great Watcher gave up the best powders. Thick-legged and muzzled kumi lizards bleated at the head of the heavy loads. Each of their three eyes were as red as lava behind their blinkers.

Riveno tested me by sauntering a path past the ash-fields. It wasn’t a place for idly wandering. Plenty had gone for a wander or run an errand only to find themselves mistaken for a lost field worker. Bodies were the currency of the fields and mines. Masters’ and barons’ fortunes were made on the backs of the people that ploughed and dug and coughed up their lungs for a few shells a day. I kept my head down and my shawl over my brow. I moved quickly in any direction I could, at one point overtaking Riveno only to cross his path again. I made a good show of staring at the tall cranes and endless furrows of black, grey, and copper ash. They reached for miles into the black landscape. Here and there where water spilled from copper pipes, bright green scrub bushes grew. They looked more out of place than I felt.

Whatever words Riveno spoke to the foremen were too quiet for me to hear. Wherever he went, it seemed there was some kind of business to be done. From masters to the whip-crackers, Riveno had his fingers in a greedy assortment of pies.

The mere thought of pie drove my never-contented stomach into a gurgling fit. I was glad when Riveno’s errands took us back in Canarva’s crater and through the bustle of a morning spice market. I watched him keener than ever, thinking he might make a stop for scalespice, but he paid more attention to a baker instead, who was busy brushing melted butter over fresh breads. I bared my teeth, hating them both.

It was there I lost Riveno, and lost him good. A passing troop of jugglers decided to get in my way. They capered about in harlequin outfits, flinging balls and bells in the air whilst somersaulting, proclaiming the arrival circus in the south lanes and making such a racket that even the merchants look irked. A prosecutor was waving a club at them as he made his way through the crowds, and I decided to scarper. I barged one juggler aside as I escaped, causing him to fall into the pair currently doing a balancing act. The sound of bells clattering on the cobbles at least brought me a smile.

Riveno was gone. I saw none of the man’s cowl or cloak through the mingling bodies. With a shake of my head, I kept moving away from the prosecutors, not wishing to be recognised. But that was already hopeless, as my darting stare locked with a pair of green Drola eyes. Forince was leaning against a market stall, shredding the remnants from a pear.

The first morning I’d awoken in the Buried & Lost, Forince had already gone. I heard nothing of the row that had apparently ensued. Aberan said Riveno and Midge had taken her out by force. I woke with a bruise on my cheek but nothing had happened my powder-drugged self remembered waking for.

I guess she had been set on trouble after all, and it looked like nothing had changed with time.

Forince didn’t charge like she did before. She didn’t shout. She wound her way through the crowds with slow purpose. The market was too busy for me to run, and so like any good worm, I squirmed through the press of people.

On the cusp of squeezing between two stalls, scaled hands grabbed me by the neck. You don’t survive the streets by giving in to bullies and kidnappers. I whirled on Forince, nails aiming for her scaled face. She’d seen more of the streets than I had, it seemed. Forince caught my arms, forced me down a side street and threw me up against a boarded-up door. There were no guards for this derelict house. The signs pasted across its bricks warned of the Blight and demanded the house be left empty under threat of a lashing.

Forince brought her bruised face close to mine. Too close. She was in dire need of a bath and a mint leaf. Her shabby shirt and trews hadn’t changed since being carried from the Moonmoth sewers.

‘Alright, you got me alone. Better get it started then. Don’t leave me waiting,’ I seethed, hoping I sounded fierce. Powerlessness was a feeling that could gut you without a knife.

‘I should pound you into jam for what you and your brother did to me,’ snarled Forince. Her forked tongue almost tickled my nose. ‘But you got me out of Moonmoth, or so that old man told me. So I’ll ask you this instead. Why’d you do it? Don’t make sense for a snipe like you.’

‘Snipe?’

‘You didn’t seem the sort for kindness. I thought you were a brat. The kind that grows up to be the cut throats and run type.’

I tell you, I was already starting to regret my moment of morality. ‘It was an accident, what I did to you at Wrekham’s,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve got a habit of making a lot of them. And it’s nothing to do with my brother. He paid a price just like you did.’

Forince shoved me against the boards, unhappy with my answer.

I stared back at her even though the urge to blink had become a burning. I knew that was my only way of fighting back, and I hated it.

Forince released me unharmed but she still loomed over me, trapping me in the doorway. ‘You trust that old man you’ve fallen in with?’

‘There’s only two people I trust. My brother and me,’ I told her. ‘But this Riveno is no Mop. He’s no Wrekham. He seems… different.’

Forince scoffed, staring around. ‘This fuckin’ city’s all the same.’

‘Feels safe, then.’

‘Safe is good. Wrekham and the prosecutors aren’t happy Moonmoth was broken. You don’t keep your head down, they might have a hanging for you.’

‘I—’

Before I could finish, Forince smacked me hard in the jaw. I fell against the boards and slid to the doorstep, half-conscious.

‘That’s for the beating I took from Wrekham. S’only fair,’ I heard Forince say before she pulled up a hood and walked away. ‘Consider you and I square.’

Some squaring that was. She hit harder than Aberan, but at least it had only been the one.

The tears that brimmed in my cheek were not for pain – I was getting used to that – but for frustration. I loathed being as small and as weak as I was. It was the same as being trapped in shackles and a cell, or in the carnivorous cycle of Canarva. I was imprisoned in a body that was still catching up to my mind. Jailed by rules of age. Lorded over by the whims of the rich.

It was there, slumped on that doorstep, blinking sparks from my eyes and furiously wiping my eyes, that I knotted the first threads of my ambition. I knew I never wanted to feel such powerlessness again. I was done being throttled and stomped on. I would show them how powerful I could be.

And you, my good reader, I will show you as well.

A voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘Still happy you took her with us?’

Riveno stood across the street. The field-dust across his black cloak blended him perfectly with the wall he leaned against. I rubbed my face against my sleeve. My jaw was still numb. My teeth didn’t seem to fit together right.

‘I’m fine. She took what was owed. That’s the Ashland rule.’

‘Eye for an eye. It would leave Canarva blind.’

‘Please, keep that Venerance lizard-shit to yourself,’ I said. My eyesight was still wobbly, but I forced myself up. ‘Were you just watching?’

Riveno shrugged. ‘I saw some of it,’ he said. ‘You should count yourself lucky it was only Forince that you ran into, and not Haltweather or Mattox. Or the prosecutors. There’s a lot of people angry at your disappearance. The Devoter himself is investigating the prisons this very morning.’

‘And apparently I’m defenceless against all of them.’

Riveno tilted his head, showing me his dark face. ‘Is that what’s got you pouting and red in the cheeks?’

I blew my ash hair from my eyes and scowled. There he went again, acting like he knew me.

‘You’re only fourteen.’

‘That’s the problem.’

‘You’re fiercer than most fourteen year-olds I know.’

‘I’m smarter than them too. Smarter than most in this city, but nobody seems to care about that.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Riveno chuckled. ‘We better get back to the Buried before somebody decides to try to make some shells off catching you. Besides, you must be tired from following me all morning.’

My heart dropped. ‘You saw me?’

‘Since you left the workshop. I’ve been followed far too many times not to notice, which is why we should make ourselves scarce.’

I shrugged away from his guiding hand and grumbled almost as loudly as my stomach.

I fell in to Riveno’s shadow as we took the less-travelled alleys back to the Buried & Lost.

‘So what did you find out?’ Riveno muttered to me as he stared into the mists, always keeping watch.

‘What?’

‘In your investigation. What did you find out about me?’

‘That you’ve got far too many friends for my liking. And some foul friends at that. Guards. Masters.’

Riveno snorted. ‘Anything else?’

‘Whether it was all an act since you knew I followed you.’

‘I’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to pretend to be, Dwellin. All I strive to be is a constant. A fixed point. What you saw was me doing what I can for this city. Mending fissures between rich and poor. Keeping bridges from crumbling. You might not see it, but the peace is uneasy. The Venerance only needs a small excuse to tighten its grip. Freedoms you didn’t think could be taken away will be. Believe me or not, that’s up to you.’

‘Keeping that promise of yours, then.’

‘That I am,’ Riveno growled. ‘You satisfied?’

‘For now.’

‘By the sounds of that stomach of yours, I’m worried you might keel over before we get home.’

I worried he was right. On the streets you get used to hunger, but the Buried & Lost had spoiled me. There wasn’t a lot to go around, but I had gorged myself on my share. And some of Aberan’s. He had barely eaten since the night with Wrekham.

The door to the Buried & Lost arrived all too quickly for me to get another word in. The noise of tinkering and chattering voices enveloped us. Children scuttled about tools and scraps. I scoured the workshops for Aberan and saw him beating a piece of metal over and over with a hammer. I waved, but he didn’t see me. Or chose not to.

‘Who’s watching the counter?’ Riveno bellowed. Several voices chimed together in answer

‘Midge!’

‘You switch with him, Ganner.’

The boy in question came sliding down a railing, flashing us a smile as he did so. I had met him the first night.

‘And don’t you spend too long wagging your tongue with the customers,’ Riveno ordered. ‘The shelves are getting too full.’

‘Aye, Riveno,’ Ganner said, insisting on staring at me. For a boy the same age as Aberan, he was impressively tall. Skinny, like I was, but I saw the wire of muscle under his frayed shirt. His smile remained even though I frowned at him.

Riveno clicked his tongue for me to follow. He led me into the largest workshop. The children hammered the tables as he entered. I cast my eyes over the sprawl of metal and wooden fragments spread across the tables. ‘What have you learned of what we do here, Dwellin? What have the others told you?’

Little, was the answer. I had watched from afar, eavesdropping while the older ones told Aberan what to do. My brother had always been intrigued by metal and cogs and contraptions. I was quite the opposite.

‘That these trinkets need cleaning and polishing,’ I muttered. ‘Repairing in some cases.’

‘They’d be right, though I don’t like the name trinkets, do I?’ Riveno stared about the faces of his little workers.

‘No, Riveno!’

The old man smiled broadly as he picked through a clutch of spoons. ‘What you see here is what Canarva doesn’t want or doesn’t know it needs. Ornaments. Old cutlery. Anything from true junk…’ Riveno plucked a copper-coloured sphere from the mess and threw it in the air. It chimed jarringly as its layers rotated. ‘To artefacts from a world largely forgotten in the Ashlands. Most have been lost or have rusted away, but some survive. This, I call a jingle ball.’

‘What world?’ I asked.

The other children winced or chuckled as if I had just broached a subject either enormously tedious or without end.

‘The ancients who knew this land when it was covered in trees and savannah. We call them Augurs now, but they would call themselves the Forlon.’

‘Eight hundred years ago,’ announced Midge as he lumbered into the workshop. ‘Right, boss?’

‘Eight thousand, Midge. Close.’

‘Every time,’ muttered a girl with bright scarlet hair, a trait of the western islands. Her ears were pierced with rings and claws of black stone. ‘Eight thousand, four-hundred and ten years ago, if you want to be precise,’ she whispered to me.

Riveno crossed his thick arms. ‘Do I bore you, Yver?’

‘No, sir!’ Yver smirked.

I looked past her to Aberan, who was staring at me with his uncovered eye. I nodded for him to follow, but he shook his head and adjusted his grip on his hammer.

With a beckon, Riveno pushed aside a curtain and showed me shelves of repaired and finished items. Some lingered behind cage and key, just like in the shop front itself.

‘The Venerance say that the magic of the Blight and its powders is god-given,’ he told me. ‘A gift from the Great Watcher. But before it came to grace our world with its presence, the ancients had crafted their own powers. Their own magics.’

The word leaned me closer to the shelves to examine. I could tell which pieces were ancient and which weren’t. Between ivory pipes, tarnished silver bowls, and mirrors of volcanic glass, sat objects of dun metal. Grey iron or rusted green copper, they had a complexity and curving shapes that the builders of Canarva didn’t or couldn’t replicate.

‘We master blightpowders and mixtures and call it alchemagic. One of the Augurs’ magics was called orechemy, as far as the intellects can translate. The mastery over metal. You could call it a magic, in a way. They would call it a technology, just like blightlamps. Watch this.’

Riveno took a sliver of the same dun steel from a much cleaner workbench and showed me how solid it was with a flex of hands. He held it near to a candle flame, and within a short moment, the metal began to bend away from the heat. Flipping it over, the metal bent the other way.

‘Hold it. It’s quite cool,’ Riveno offered.

I took the sliver, flinching at first, but he was right: the metal was still cold. ‘Why would anyone want to bend metal with heat?’

‘So far I’ve seen hundreds of applications. Doors, levers, weapons. Problem is, none of them work any more. They need some sort of power that our flames and blightcores can get close to.’

‘Blightcore?’

‘I thought you were smart, Dwellin!’

‘I am, damn it.’

‘Blightcores are blightlamps that provide heat. They keep the balloons and air vessels afloat on hot air. They power furnaces for factories in richer cities. Where do you think all our blightpowder goes? And yet it still doesn’t compare to the power of the ancients. There are some that say the godgears and weapons of the swordsaints are ancient-powered. I would agree.’

I further toured the shelves. A sword lay behind lock and chain. Its blade was pitted with age. Its hilt was complicated with cogs and intricate machinery.

A weapon. There was power in something sharp and blunt. I had seen enough fistfights end with the flash of a knife, whether in blood or in fleeing feet. A weapon was a quicker way to win. Forince would have run a mile if I’d had this sword at my belt.

There was another curtain at the end of the shelves. A sliver of light shined on my foot. An acrid smell of burning came from the room. It smelled of secrets. ‘What happened to them?’ I asked, distracted. ‘The ancients, I mean.’

‘They all died,’ Riveno replied, making me turn.

‘How?’

‘Nobody knows for sure. The Venerance calls the Augurs heretics and say they fought a war against the Great Watcher. If that’s true, they must have lost. Their cities ran from sea to mountain, ice to desert. They had machines that could walk like we do. They even scraped the stars. Now the Forlon’s great empire is buried beneath dust and ruin, and their riches either rot or go to collectors like me or those with enough curiosity and the shells to fund a habit. The Venerance pays a pretty price for the important contraptions. Anything of power or worth catches their eye. As long as I don’t disturb them and keep the most important pieces out of sight, they don’t bother me. I pay a good amount to the prosecutors to avoid a raid.’

‘You can do that?’

‘People will do almost anything for the right number of shells, Dwellin.’

‘How pretty a price do the Venerance pay?’ I asked.

Riveno cast a measured gaze, searching my eyes. ‘Pretty enough.’

‘Hundreds? Thousands?’

‘Why so interested, girl?’

I made sure to keep my words careful. ‘I overheard some of Wrekham’s business when I worked for him. He was selling something a Venerance cleric was interested in.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t lie to me again, now.’

‘I’m not. I never saw it.’ My hand strayed to the curtain. Riveno was beside me in a flash. He firmly moved my hand away and made sure the curtain was closed all the way.

‘That’s not for you to see.’ Riveno growled. His green eye momentarily swelled with light. ‘You’re something of a cook, you said?’

He’d been listening to the talk of the children after the lamps were turned out. Or maybe we had been that loud. ‘Better than half the idiots in Wrekham’s kitchens.’

‘We need some proper meals. I get what I can from those foul friends of mine,’ Riveno said, looking sideways at me, ‘but I don’t have the time.’

‘You cook?’

‘You could say that,’ Riveno chuckled.

‘Right there,’ I said. ‘That’s why I followed you. And this room of yours. You’re hiding something important and I can tell.’

‘I’m entitled to my secrets, just as you are.’ There came that look again. ‘Prove yourself. Show me how you cook.’

‘Why?’

‘Why, because I’m hungry. And your stomach is only getting louder.’

I had seen the larders, but I had no idea there was a scullery to the Buried & Lost. I thought I had explored all its nooks. A strange-looking stove hunched in one corner. Pots and pans sat piled beside a rack of knives and plain clay plates.

‘This is all mine?’ I whispered, trying to hold back my elation.

‘No, it’s all mine, you cheeky waif, but it’s yours to do what you please with,’ Riveno replied.

I shook my head. ‘I meant that I can use all of it?’

‘Of course, you can,’ he said. ‘Trust me now?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But thank you.’

Riveno didn’t leave. He stood near the knives, arms crossed and watching me do a subtle dance about the small space.

The stove was like nothing I had seen before. It had no charcoal or wood to light.

‘What is this thing?’

‘Flick that switch.’

I found the little metal lever Riveno pointed at. With its click, a clunk within the stove started off a hissing, as if a snake hid under the metal. I put my hands over the stone grills and found heat warming my palms. I flashed the old man a confused look.’

Riveno chuckled. ‘Blightcore, like I said. I keep a few back from sale to power my tinkering.’

‘Alchemagic. Don’t think I’ve ever cooked with that before.’

Riveno thumbed his nose and stayed silent. I normally loathed people watching me work, but I barely noticed him as I dragged gnarled Ashland vegetables and wild rice from a larder. I found salamander in a stone cellar. Purple herbs grew in the troughs beyond the workshop door.

The only knife I wanted was the cleaver. I had taken a shine to the last one and this was no different except for being a smaller version. It was so sharp I nearly shave a fingernail or two off.

‘Got any wine?’ I asked, looking over my heap of sliced and diced ingredients to Riveno.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Not after you drank too much of Midge’s rum.’

‘Not for me. For the food.’

The man nodded, disappearing behind the door and into the workshops.

Pain flashed up my finger as the cleaver nicked me. There was little blood, but I grabbed a cloth in any case to wipe the blade. The cloth never left the knife. I stared at its hammered metal. A weapon, my memory whispered to me.

Without a second thought, I wrapped the cleaver in the cloth and stowed it in my baggy trews pocket. Riveno didn’t have to know. There was another cleaver on the wall just like that one. I busied myself pouring half of what I found in the pantry cupboard into my boiling pots until the man returned. I dodged the spatter of hot water and took the offered wine. I slopped it into the pans with everything I slice, weaving back and forth to stir like a lunatic. I could feel Riveno’s eyes scouring my every move. Every spice and sprinkle. It felt somehow like a test, and I relished it.

Between you and I, it was all a giant experiment based, but I flung myself into it and imitated everything I had ever seen in a kitchen. For a moment, Canarva’s cruelty faded into dusk, feeling a thousand miles from the doors of the scullery.

When it was done, I sagged against the hot stove. I turned to find Aberan standing silently in the doorway.

‘Lunch,’ was all I said, gesturing to the clay pots overflowing with my creation. I had no idea what to call it, but it smelled enticing. ‘Better than you’ll find in Baron Wrekham’s mansion, that’s for sure.’

Riveno rubbed his hands and seized a hot pot with his bare hands and without a complaint. ‘Your sister knows what she’s doing, Aberan.’

My brother nodded. I waited until Riveno was out of earshot until I spoke.

‘You haven’t spoken to me in a day,’ I whispered.

‘I’ve been distracted,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Found something I don’t mind doing. Just like you, it seems.’

I nodded. ‘Almost seems too good to be true. Or to last, at least.’

‘Just as long as you don’t get us in trouble.’

The admonishment was subtle, but so can a knife be, and the words cut my insides.

A moment passed as others, Yver and Midge, muscled in to help with the food.

‘Watcher’s balls, this looks better than what you tried to cook, Midge,’ Yver said. ‘That looked like roast shit.’

Midge and the girl left, trading insults. Aberan was staring at me. I stared at the bandages, soaked at the edges with the sweat of work.

‘Not going to poison anyone of us, is it?’ he said, after a moment.

‘Course not.’

The stern look on his face broke into a smile, and I broke too. I cackled with laughter, and for a time, a peace fell over my heart.

Riveno barely had time to say, ‘Great Watcher bless this food,’ before the forks came in like a volley of spears. Those who couldn’t fit around the table perched on stairs with plates on knees. The banter died, replaced with chewing and grunts of appreciation. I knew without even touching my plate I had done a fine job. Sat at the head of the table, Riveno watched over us with a smile. I caught his eye and wondered if I had passed his test.

Aberan nudged me with his elbow mid-chew. His nodding was all I needed to know I had passed his. With a quiet sigh, I dug a spoon into my bowl.

The tinkle of the shop bell raised my head before I could eat. Behind the thick curtains, I heard Ganner bid a muffled good afternoon. Riveno was immediately out of his chair. His eyes flicked to Aberan and I as he tried to discern the voices.

Ganner extricated himself from the curtain. I caught the briefest glimpse of white armour beyond, and seized Aberan’s arm.

‘Visitors, Riveno,’ hissed Ganner.

Riveno brushed his face of crumbs and hoisted his hood. ‘You stay right behind this curtain, understand? Not a word.’

The man had disappeared for barely a moment before I got up to listen. Aberan sucked his teeth at me, even rising to give chase, but I beat him to the curtain. His grip was tight on my wrist, and yet I pulled at him, pushing a finger over my lips. My other hand surreptitiously clenched the knife in my pocket.

Riveno’s voice was louder than usual. ‘A fine and ashless afternoon to you, prosecutors. What is it I can do for you? Am I overdue on the taxes?’

There came an officious cough. ‘We’re not here for that, Riveno.’

‘Venerance business is it?’

‘Not today. Law and order.’

‘Care to elaborate?’

Whomever was speaking spent some time smacking lips and and huffing. ‘Devoter’s taken a special interest in two escaped convicts.’

That label was a little much, I thought. We had never been convicted, for a start.

I pressed myself to the cracks of the wooden wall and tried to make sense of the faint shapes I saw. There seemed to be two prosecutors standing before Riveno’s old counter. One wore a blue collar.

Another voice waded into the conversation. The other prosecutor, and he was not so cordial or patient.

‘Oh please, spit it out,’ the man sighed. ‘This Blighted scum doesn’t deserve any politeness.’

‘Mind your tongue, curse it,’ warned the first prosecutor.

‘He’s always interfering with Venerance matters. Always bothering the barons and clerics. He’s a meddler. A washed-up nuisance who should learn to leave well enough alone.’

‘Lickarse, is it?’ came Riveno’s voice. ‘New recruit.’

‘It’s Litkas, and you know that all too well.’

‘Well, Lickarse. You’d better leave the talking to those who know remember who they’re talking to.’

‘I remember what you did. It was you and your ilk behind the uprising. If it was up to me, you’d be in chains working the ash-fields.’

Riveno took no shit. ‘Remember watching it from your nursery window, do you? While you were suckling on your mother’s tit? How is your mother, by the way?’

‘Worker scum!’

‘Enough!’ cried the first prosecutor. I heard the pound of gauntlets on the counter. ‘We’re not here for this, Litkas! You barely had hair on your balls back then, so shut your bloody trap and let me do the talking.’

The prosecutor did not have a chance. The bell perched atop the door rang once more. The light I could see turned gloomy. Shadow crept under the curtain like prying fingers.

‘Baron Wrekham. An unexpected pleasure.’

Aberan tugged on my arm. I shook my head. The rest of Riveno’s children stared on. They were all on their feet. Midge loomed nearby.

‘Is it, Master Riveno?’ spoke the familiar deep baritone and harsh Ashlander accent. ‘I heard raised voices.’

Riveno’s tone was clipped. ‘What can I do you for, Baron? In the market for an ornament?’

‘Hardly. I ain’t here to shop and barter for your junk, Riveno. I’m looking for something of flesh and blood. Two young gutter whelps who I’ve got a certain… interest in.’

‘I don’t sell bodies, unlike Ma Mattox.’

‘Strange, she’s looking for the same two. Seems they’ve been spreading a vicious rumour about her, and she’s far from happy about it.’

‘Been a while since I’ve seen Ma Mattox happy.’

Wrekham grunted deep in his chest. ‘Now it looks like they’ve escaped Moonmoth, with one of your pets, or so I’m told. Like I said to these useless prosecutors, I reckon you might know a thing or two about all of this.’

Riveno blew a sigh. ‘I wish I did, Baron. You know how I like to keep the peace. If these two whelps are as bad as you say they are, then I wouldn’t want anything to do with them.’

‘Perhaps we should take a look behind that curtain and make sure,’ muttered Litkas. ‘See what else he’s hiding.’

I felt Midge’s hands on my shoulder. He too held a finger over his lips. The silence in the shop stretched out like a body on a torture rack. I stared at the curtain with held breath, dreading footsteps any moment.

‘Whatever grudge you’ve got with these two escapees, Baron Wrekham, I trust Riveno’s word. He keeps a clean shop.’

‘I don’t care—’

I heard a nerve being tested. ‘With all due respect, Baron, this is the Venerance’s problem now, not yours.’

Boots scraped on the wooden floor to the sound of Wrekham’s beastly snarl. ‘Is that so, Captain Drakka?

The prosecutor’s tone was firm. ‘That it is.’

The sound of angry feet retreated to the wild jangling of the bell.

I thought Riveno was alone, but a clearing of a throat proved me wrong.

‘Keep your head down, Riveno. That baron will tire himself out and forget his grudge, but the Venerance is agitated. Tightening up. Did you hear the recent prophecy?’

‘I saw the seer dragged from the altar as if she was a heretic. Is that what you mean?

‘Whatever she said, it’s got them all worked up. Word has it a reverent is on their way from Bashkar. A swordsaint comes with them.’

‘A swordsaint is coming here?’

I glanced to Aberan, whose eye was wide. I had to twist my wrist to remind him how hard he held onto me.

‘Like I said, old friend, keep your head down. These whelps will be forgotten.’

‘I’ll have double the shells for you next time,’ whispered Riveno.

A grunt was the only response from Captain Drakka.

At last, Midge and Aberan released me. It was a good thing; my fingers were starting to go numb.

A storm-faced Riveno burst through the curtain. The red fabric whirled around him as if a gale blew. He cast a look around his children before his eyes found me.

‘All of you clean up and back to work,’ he ordered. When nobody moved, he stamped his foot. ‘Now! You too, Aberan.’

Aberan stayed by my side with a resolute shake of his head.

‘I won’t ask you again,’ Riveno said in a deep voice.

My brother did not move.

‘It’s fine, Aberan,’ I said, gauging Riveno with a stare. ‘I trust him.’

Aberan’s look of surprise was telltale.

‘Somewhat, at least,’ I added.

My brother stalked away, keeping his fists clenched. I wagered he went in search of a hammer.

‘High praise indeed from the girl who trusts no one,’ muttered Riveno, ushering me to the back.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Me? I’m going to train you to fight, Dwellin,’ Riveno said. ‘Because it looks like you might need it after all.’

‘Er…’ I stammered, bewildered. It looked like my ambition was paying off already. That’s the funny thing with ambition: it’s one of the only treasures in the world you can own just by deciding to have it.

I can’t tell you how much I grinned.