Book II. Chapter 145. Rooftrails

Ertan

A massive fist, almost the size of a watermelon, slammed into Ertan’s cheekbone and sent him backpedaling in quick little steps until the sharp bits of hay poking from the stacks around the makeshift ring scratched his back.

The sprawling basement beneath the market square in southern Delpas had once been a wine cellar, its brick walls embracing hundreds of barrels of dry Lintelar wine and cheap cider from the apple orchards of the Foothills. Now, however, its owner had drunk himself into ruin and gambled away his license, and the basement had become the haunt of people of, shall we say, an entirely different sort.

Haystacks and wooden wine crates, long since emptied, enclosed a square roughly six paces by six. Around it, a crowd stood packed shoulder to sweaty shoulder, roaring over the thud of fists striking flesh. Forty people, perhaps fifty, each clutching crumpled banknotes in one fist and passing them every so often to a long-armed bookmaker in a greasy vest who darted among the spectators carrying a notebook, with a stub of a pencil tucked behind his ear.

Erti spat blood onto the packed dirt floor and ran his tongue along his teeth. They were all still there, which was hardly surprising, but the blow had left his head ringing and sent bright sparks flashing before his eyes. His opponent, a massive brute with a bull’s neck and fists like cast-iron weights, gave his right hand a shake and came forward, his bare feet landing heavily on the tamped earth.

The brute was a bosun, and his punches came in wide, heavy swings, as if he were hammering a wall with a sledgehammer. Ertan could see each swing coming long before the fist itself had even begun to gather speed.

But the bosun’s rudimentary fighting style was only part of it.

To Erti, everything around him seemed to move through syrup, slow and thick.

The brute was only just drawing his right fist back behind his shoulder, but Ert already knew what would come next: a left uppercut to the body. He knew because his opponent’s shoulder had shifted a fraction of a second before the fist itself began to move. For Ertan, slipping both punches would have been easier than dodging an apple thrown at him.

But he wasn’t supposed to dodge them.

Ert let his opponent’s right fist glance off his cheekbone, then went flying toward the haystack, propelled more by his own leap than by the force of the blow. The crowd roared, and the bookmaker in the vest scurried among the spectators with redoubled zeal.

“Take a couple more hits,” Dugbag whispered into his ear from behind the haystack, a mug of apple cider in hand. His sly face, more goblin than human or dwarf, shone with sweat and excitement. His small, deep-set eyes darted from the bookmaker to the crowd and back. “The odds aren’t high enough yet, Erti. Let the gentlemen think you’re about to go down.”

“Dugbag,” Ert rasped, wiping the blood from his chin with the back of his hand, “have you seen this hog? I mean, look at him! Bet he eats from dawn to dusk. His fist’s bigger than my head.”

“Looks like an ordinary enough sailor to me. You’re exaggerating, Erti.”

“Oh, yeah? Sorry, didn’t think of that... Maybe you should step in yourself and try driving up the odds?”

Dugbag gave Ertan a critical once-over, head to toe, and snorted.

“Erti, take a good look at yourself before you complain.”

And Dugbag, the “quarter-dwarf,” shoved his friend back into the ring, straight at the big man bearing down on him.

Ert let his opponent step inside his range, took a punch to the ribs, doubled over (again, mostly for show), and started coughing, drawing yet another eruption of almost animal delight from the crowd. The bookmaker was already furiously scribbling something in his notebook. Judging by the din, the bets on the big man were piling up fast.

Emboldened by his apparent success, his opponent moved in to trade punches, hammering away with both fists as he tried to pin Ertan against the haystacks and finish him off right there. Ert dodged the most dangerous blows while taking those that landed on his body and posed no threat of serious injury. He was still waiting for the signal. At last, on the far side of the haystacks, Dugbag raised a hand and splayed his fingers, slowly curling them down one after another as he kept an eye on the bookmaker. Five seconds, four, three, and then Dugbag clenched his fist and stuck his thumb up.

The big man was riding a rush of anger and excitement. He wound up for a wide, looping right, putting all his weight behind it, a deckhand’s crude bravado written all over his face. To Ertan, the swing looked as if the man were moving underwater. It was conspicuously slow, somehow too sluggish and drawn out, his shoulder turning first, his elbow sweeping through a wide, lazy arc.

Ert calmly, almost lazily, stepped half a pace to the left, letting the fist pass his temple. Then, with his hand almost relaxed, he tapped the man on the jaw. It was a light, compact movement, more like a friendly slap than an attempt to hurt him. Because honestly, that was exactly what it was. After all, Ertan didn’t want to break the man’s jaw, much less knock it clean off.

The big man grunted, his eyes rolled back, and he hit the packed earth with a crash that made the bales of hay shudder and the empty barrels clang in the far corner of the cellar. For a moment, the crowd froze. Then it exploded into a roar, and Ert couldn’t tell whether it carried more delight or more fury laced with genuine disappointment.

Dugbag was already squeezing his way toward the bookmaker, waving his little ticket and flashing his most charming dwarven smile.

***

The bookmaker grimaced as he counted out the crumpled bills, then shoved them into Dugbag’s outstretched palm. Without recounting them, Dugbag stuffed the wad inside his shirt. Nearby, Ertan wrapped a scrap of cloth around his knuckles and rubbed his bruised cheekbone. A sharp voice, roughened by homebrew, rang out from the crowd, which was still buzzing and in no hurry to disperse.

“Hold it right there!” the drunk nearly squealed. “Who the demons are you calling a soldier? That’s a boy! A boy from Horse Street in southern Delpas! I recognized that mug! He’s a small-time bandit! And the bastard’s a half-blood! Not human! Look at his fangs!”

Ert reflexively covered his mouth with one hand, but it was already too late. Several people in the crowd who had lost their hard-earned crispers on bets turned toward him, each wearing the look of someone who had just discovered a cockroach in a bowl of soup. A burly man in a leather apron, apparently a market butcher, was already rolling up his sleeves, while two of his friends pulled old wagon shafts from where they leaned against barrels along the wall.

“Dugbag,” Erti said in a cheerful drawl, “now would be the perfect time to use our backup plan.”

“We don’t have a backup plan!” Dugbag squealed as he backed toward the stairs.

“Then now’s the right time to come up with one! Preferably on the run!”

Ertan seized Dugbag by the back of his collar and yanked him along as he dashed for the stairs leading from the cellar up to the street. The butcher and his friends tore after them, with another five people falling in behind. Dozens of boots thundered through the cramped corridor cluttered with barrels.

Ert burst out of the cellar onto the market square. The sun blinded him for a moment. He immediately kicked over a wooden tray of apples, dumping them onto the stairs behind him. The ripe fruit rolled downward, and one of his pursuers let loose a colorful curse as he went clattering down the steps.

“Whoa! Guys, you wouldn’t happen to be related to bowling pins, would you?” Erti roared with laughter without breaking stride.

Ert and Dugbag raced past the rows of vegetable stalls. As he ran, Ertan snatched a sack of turnips from a counter and hurled it over his shoulder. The sack slammed into the butcher in the lead. He grunted and toppled onto a cart piled with cabbages, taking two others down with him.

“Sorry, buddy! I’ll pay for the carp later!” Ert shouted as he vaulted the fishmonger’s counter. The man jumped aside and dropped a bucket of crucian carp. “No promises, though!”

Dugbag ran beside him, puffing like a steam locomotive laboring uphill. He did not share Erti’s amusement in the slightest.

“Erti... damn you... they’re gonna kill us!”

“Don’t lose your nerve, Dag! They won’t kill us! They’ll run out of breath first!” Without slowing, Ert snatched a basket of onions from the nearest stall, spun around as he ran, and hurled it into the crowd of pursuers. The basket burst apart in midair, showering the butcher and his friends with a hail of onions, some of them not exactly fresh. “Nothing stops a chase like somebody else’s tears, Dagi! But we won’t be buying any vegetables here. Those bastards will rob you blind!”

They burst onto the main street. Hearing the familiar clang, Ertan looked ahead and saw their salvation a hundred paces away: a red-and-yellow tram already gathering speed as it pulled away from the stop. Ert gritted his teeth, scooped Dugbag up under one arm like a sack of flour, and sprinted so fast the wind whistled in his ears.

“Erti, put me down, damn it! I’m not a suitcase!”

“Actually, you’re heavier than a suitcase! Time to go on a diet, Dagi!”

In three bounds, Ertan caught up with the tram, grabbed the handrail beside the rear step, heaved Dugbag onto the platform, and leaped up after him. The tram carried them away from the market square, gathering speed. Ert looked back and saw the butcher and his friends still running after them, gradually falling behind, waving their fists and shouting something so filthy that even Erti, who’d lived in Delpas for quite a while, whistled in surprise.

“Such language.” Ertan shook his head as he lounged on the rear platform. “And children walk through that market. No respect for the young.”

“Just shut up already, Erti.” Red-faced and out of breath, Dugbag flopped onto the bench and clutched the wad of bills to his chest, making sure it was all there. “Just shut up and don’t say a word all the way to school.”

“Whatever you say, buddy.” Ert put his hands behind his head and raised his face to the morning wind, whistling some carefree tune as the tram carried them away from trouble.

***

The General Rémonté School was housed in a recently renovated building that looked as good as new, at the corner of Elm and Third Foothill. Somehow, its ivy-clad brick walls made the whole building seem angry at everything around it, as though it were hiding from the world behind a green beard.

Erti and Dugbag went around to the side of the school facing the athletic field, vaulted the fence, and made their way to the groundskeeper’s hut. An overturned trough lay just beyond the corner of a sagging shed. Ert reached beneath the trough and felt around until he found a bundle containing their school uniforms. He quickly stripped out of the clothes he’d stained with blood and grime at the market and changed. Dugbag did the same, but far more slowly, grumbling all the while because his uniform jacket had become too tight across the shoulders over the summer.

The others were already waiting for them by the front steps.

Ponmir, fifteen and as tall and slender as a young ash tree, leaned against the railing, leafing through a botany textbook and looking thoroughly miserable. Not that he had any business flunking the test, but that was beside the point.

His quarter-elven blood had given him delicate, almost girlish features, long lashes, and such fine bearing that the students at the neighboring all-girls school regularly addressed him as “sir” and offered to walk him home. Ponmir, however, invariably complained that he’d rather know his flora and fauna. Maybe then he wouldn’t get smacked with a ruler quite so often.

Lubava stood beside him with her arms folded across her chest. Sixteen and broad-shouldered, with a thick dark braid hanging over one shoulder, she was so busty that no sweater in the world could completely hide her figure; Lubava favored sweaters and wanted nothing to do with corsets. Her quarter-orc blood had given her a sturdy build, a strong jaw, and a temper that made even the upperclassmen recoil.

Quest sat on the bottom step, knees drawn up to his chest and nose buried in an enormous tome titled “Higher Arithmetic.” Fourteen, skinny, and wearing round glasses with thick lenses, he was the only pure-blooded human in their little group and, incidentally, the best student in the entire school. He looked up, saw Ertan covered in filth, and sighed softly. “Been fighting again?”

“Fighting again?”

“Me?” Erti looked as offended as he possibly could. “Never in my life. I’m a peaceful man, Quest. I even have a certificate! And anyway, I was cruelly and shamelessly framed.”

“There’s blood on your collar.”

“Tomatoes.”

“Erti, tomatoes aren’t that color.”

“In Delpas they are. But let’s hurry. We’re already late.”

***

Their current algebra teacher, Krippel, was a lean, sour-tempered man with small wire-rimmed glasses and a frock coat buttoned all the way to his throat. He stopped writing a long equation in chalk on the blackboard and turned toward the door when it flew open with a crash, three minutes into class.

“Egobar,” he said sourly. “I am delighted you have deigned to grace us with your presence. Three minutes late. An unkempt appearance. And, unless my eyes deceive me, a fresh bruise on your face. Might I ask exactly which doorframe you had words with this morning?”

“Two of them, Mr Krippel.” A broad, utterly shameless grin spread across Erti’s face, revealing fangs a little longer and sharper than anyone else’s. “But I hasten to assure you that both doorframes look worse than I do, so I’ll put this on my list of victories.”

A few students snickered, but most bent over their notebooks. The other students might not have been openly afraid of Ertan, but they still tried not to catch his eye any more than they had to. Which, all things considered, made perfect sense. Compared with his thirteen-year-old classmates, Erti looked like a broad-shouldered, wiry eighteen-year-old mistakenly seated at a child’s desk.

Maybe his matabar blood had awakened because the anemia treatments were finally working, or maybe because of something else entirely. Who knew? Anyway! Thanks to whatever Hector had passed down to him, Ertan was growing and gaining strength far faster than any human boy his age, so he already towered more than a head above the rest of his class. And his hands, their knuckles wrapped in bandages he had forgotten to remove after that morning’s bout in the ring, looked about as much at home on a school desk as a blacksmith’s hammer on piano keys.

“Sit down, Egobar.” Krippel adjusted his glasses and went back to the board. “And for the sake of the Eternal Angels, take those bandages off your hands. You’re in school, not... wherever you keep disappearing to after class.”

Taking his time, Erti walked between the rows and winked at some girl with braids. She snorted contemptuously at him, and he plopped down in his seat in the back row. Quest sat at the opposite end of the classroom, right beside the board, and Ert knew perfectly well they hadn’t been seated so far apart by accident. At the start of the year, Krippel had begun to suspect that Egobar was cheating off his “four-eyed” friend and had tried to put a stop to it.

It hadn’t worked.

Krippel turned back to the board and went on explaining something about quadratic equations and discriminants. Ertan rested his cheek on one fist and made an honest effort to follow. About two minutes later, he realized the chalk was tracing patterns across the board that made roughly as much sense to him as Ard’s stupid excuses. And yet, before he had all but abandoned his studies two years earlier, he used to grasp everything in a flash...

Ert shifted his gaze toward Quest.

Quest bent over his notebook, writing formulas in a small, neat hand. A good seven meters separated them, and no ordinary human eye could have made out a single letter at that distance. But Erti was no ordinary human. His father’s blood had given him sharp eyes, too; he could pick out the tiniest details from much farther away. So Ertan did as the Teacher had instructed: he narrowed his eyes slightly and let his third eyelids slide into place. He tilted his head a little and calmly read everything Quest was writing, then began carefully copying the formulas into his own notebook.

The way Quest’s back tensed made it clear that he knew perfectly well he was being watched. He even inched his notebook toward the edge of his desk without turning around, making things easier for Ert.

How on earth had a scrawny little bookworm, a human, no less, and a hulking half-matabar who had moved to Delpas just two years earlier managed to become friends? That was a very interesting story, but quite a long one, and frankly, Ertan was too lazy to think back on it.

Meanwhile, Krippel was at the board, writing out something about the roots of an equation and plugging numbers into the formula. Ert, for his part, copied the final answer from Quest’s notebook without even trying to understand how three lines of mysterious squiggles had produced the number seven. He simply took Quest at his word, because Quest had never once made a mistake solving an equation in his life, and that was more than enough for Ertan.

Krippel turned away from the board and looked over the class, displeasure plain on his face. His eyes, hidden behind the narrow lenses of his glasses, rested on Ertan for a moment, but he said nothing and moved on to the next problem. He left Quest alone, of course. No matter how many times he’d caught Egobar copying, Krippel simply couldn’t bring himself to scold the best student in the school. Quest was neatly writing out his solution without a single correction.

When the bell trilled, Erti snapped his notebook shut and shot out of the classroom ahead of everyone else, leaping over Square’s satchel and nearly knocking Lea off her feet. She snorted again with the same contempt as before.

“Pardon me, forgive me, and may the Light and the Shrimps keep you,” Ert called over his shoulder, laughing, then raced down the stairs.

***

The Hammer boxing club occupied the basement of a former fire lookout tower at the corner of Smithy Street and Copper Street. A low ceiling. Brick walls covered in cracked plaster. And the smell of sweat, leather, and rosin. In one corner hung an old, peeling poster listing the gym rules. Someone had crossed out half of them in pencil and added “don’t whine” at the top. And since the lettering resembled Ertan’s crooked handwriting, suspicion fell squarely on him, but he refused to admit guilt.

The trainer, Mr Kazimir, stood beside the ring, his wiry, scar-covered arms folded over his sunken chest. He watched Ertan with the look an old wolf gives a cub trying to catch its own tail. Mr Kazimir was short and lean, with a shaved head and a broken nose. In thirty years as a coach, he had trained a dozen provincial champions and two medalists at the Imperial championship. So even a single word from him about any boxer was worth more than a page of glowing articles in a sports newspaper.

“Feet, Egobar, feet,” the trainer hissed through his yellowish teeth. “Still trying to make me believe a lamppost gave birth to you. Get moving.”

Ert nodded and began working his way along a rope stretched across the ring and tied to the corner posts at chin height. He stepped forward, ducked beneath it, and immediately slipped to one side. Then he rose again, stepped back, dipped into a slight crouch to let the rope pass over his head, straightened, and glided forward, his chin pressed to his chest and his fists beside his temples.

Ertan rocked his torso like a pendulum and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He tried to keep his movements fluid and avoid jerking, feeling familiar heat build in the muscles of his thighs and calves.

During this simple but exhausting drill, the main thing on Erti’s mind had nothing at all to do with technique. His movements had the frightening ease of a birch bending in a gale, and if he forgot himself for even a moment, his body would accelerate to a speed no ordinary person could track with the naked eye. So Ertan deliberately slowed himself down, as though moving over thin, slippery ice; each time he ducked beneath the rope taxed his will, not his body.

This was only a warm-up, after all.

His training with the Teacher still lay ahead.

“That’s better,” Kazimir grunted. “Now for the mitts.”

The trainer pulled on his leather punch mitts, took his place opposite Ert, and held up the left one. Ert snapped out a short jab from the shoulder, putting the weight of his lead leg behind it. The mitt popped, and Kazimir rocked back slightly.

“Harder.”

Erti struck again, but he still had to make a conscious effort to hold back. He felt the beast inside him. The very beast that woke every time Ertan began to fight. The beast wanted to break free. Wanted, just once in its life, to strike at full force, channeling all its strength and speed, and sometimes its fury, through Erti’s knuckles. But... one ounce too much force, and the bones in the trainer’s hand would snap like dry twigs, and Mr Kazimir, for all his experience and skill, would spend the next six months in the infirmary. So Ert forced the beast down, pinned its muzzle to the floor of his own mind, and measured out each blow against the mitt with the same deliberate precision apothecaries once used to measure out precious drops of rare tinctures.

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“Two-three!” the trainer barked.

Ert threw a two to the head and a three to the body. Every punch looked light and precise. Ert put just enough into it to make the mitt give a sharp pop, but not enough to hurt the trainer’s hand. Sometimes Ertan wondered why he was wasting time here instead of at the shooting range. But the Teacher insisted it was useful.

So...

Mr Kazimir was apparently satisfied, since he nodded and pulled off the mitts.

“Hit the bag. Three rounds.”

Erti walked over to the heavy bag, packed with sand and covered in cracked leather, and went to work. First a left jab, immediately followed by a right cross, then a left uppercut, a quick step to the side, and another jab. The bag swayed and its chains creaked, while the sand inside gave a muffled thump with every blow.

Every time, every damned time, Ertan noticed the same thing: some part of him always wanted to hit harder. He wanted, with an almost physical impatience, to hit fast enough to send sand streaming from the split leather and snap the chains loose so they whipped toward the ceiling. The beast whined and growled; it demanded freedom, but Ert gritted his teeth and drove it back, over and over.

Sometimes, for no reason he could name, he found himself longing for the coppery tang of blood. A strange, unfamiliar feeling...

Next came sparring with Grisha, a long-armed seventeen-year-old. As Erti circled his partner in the ring, he let himself dodge the punches just the tiniest bit faster than he should have. Grisha always punched hard and with great accuracy. Taking one of his punches wouldn’t have bothered Ertan in the least, but he simply didn’t want to lose.

“Egobar, what’re you grinning for?” Grisha grumbled after another miss. “You gonna hit back or not? I need to train for the competition, and you’re in here doing your ballet act again.”

“I’m just enjoying life, Grisha.” Ert ducked under a straight right and tapped Grisha lightly under the ribs. “You don’t mind me enjoying life, do you?”

“I’m going to have a problem if you hit me with one more liver shot, asshole.”

“Whatever you say, Grisha.” Erti ducked in again and tapped Grisha in exactly the same spot, very lightly even by human standards.

Mr Kazimir watched from the corner and merely shook his head.

After sparring, Ert gave Grisha the obligatory hug, then wrapped a towel around his neck and walked into the “lounge,” sipping water from a tin cup. It was a small room beside the locker room, with sagging couches, a cabinet stocked with towels, and a rickety little table. On it, a pitcher of cold lemonade always waited for anyone who had been training. His friends were already settled on the couches.

Ponmir dozed with his long legs stretched out, his arms behind his head, and a textbook on his stomach. Quest had his legs tucked under him, as always, and was working something out in a massive notebook, every so often nudging his glasses back up as they slipped to the tip of his nose. Dugbag, meanwhile, sprawled on the couch at the end with a cup of lemonade in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

Lubava came out of the gym, wiping the sweat from her face with a towel. She trained at the Hammer right alongside the guys. In Mr Kazimir’s opinion, her right hook was the best in the entire “unofficial” division. Lubava plopped down on the couch beside Ponmir, making him bounce and drop his textbook, then poured herself a full cup of lemonade.

“Lubava, damn it, I was asleep!”

“And then you’ll start complaining again about your ass hurting from getting smacked with rulers!”

“Yeah, but now I can start complaining that you nearly sat on my face!”

“Dugbag, what’s in the paper?” Erti asked as he perched on the armrest and swung his feet up onto the table.

“Egobar! Feet off the table!” Mr Kazimir barked from the gym, somehow seeing what was happening through the wall.

Muttering a curse under his breath, Ert took his feet off the table.

Dugbag cleared his throat, spread the newspaper wider, and began reading aloud, following the lines with his finger.

“The Foothill Herald, yesterday’s issue. Here it is, on page three. ‘Tragedy at First Station. According to reports coming in from Yellik and confirmed by the office of the governor of Foothill Province, the town of First Station, located near the border of the Northern National Park of Natural Anomalies, sustained damage several weeks ago during a catastrophe whose causes have yet to be determined. A significant portion of the town’s buildings was destroyed. The Crown has decided to send several trains to Yellik to transport the victims to the capital. Reports indicate that thousands of displaced people have crossed the northern prairies over the past two weeks, heading for the nearest railway stations. The extent of the destruction is still being assessed...’”

“Sleeping Spirits.” Ponmir whistled as he propped himself up on his left elbow. “A whole town?”

“It says ‘a significant portion of the buildings,’” Quest pointed out without looking up from his notebook.

“That’s newspaper-speak, Quest.” Dugbag tapped the page with one finger. “‘A significant portion’ means the whole place was leveled. They’re just afraid to print that outright because they don’t want people to panic.”

“But how is that even possible?” Lubava took a sip of lemonade and settled down with her head on Ponmir’s stomach. He tried to resist, but it was no use at all. “What do they mean, ‘the causes haven’t been determined’?”

“It means they have no idea what happened.” Dugbag shrugged. “Or they know but don’t want to say. Which, for us, amounts to pretty much the same thing.”

Ertan sat silently on the armrest, staring at the wall. First Station. Ard had written to him from there several months ago, before the letters stopped coming. Erti clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles whitened beneath the bandages.

Again…

Once again, Ardan hadn’t said a word. All the while, he had apparently been running straight into every danger he could find. Self-absorbed show-off! Mom would read the news too… And why did Anastasia keep covering for him in her letters?

“Egobar, you alive over there?” Dugbag waved the newspaper under Ert’s nose.

“Alive.” Ert unclenched his fists and pulled his usual smirk back into place. “What else does it say? Anything about gliders? They were planning to open an Army flight school here…”

“That’s it, all of you, out of my lounge!” Mr Kazimir suddenly appeared in the doorway, armed with a bucket and mop. He gave everyone in the room a look so severe that even Lubava sprang to her feet, allowing Ponmir to take a full breath. “I’m not running a café here! If you’re here to train, train. If you’re here to drink lemonade, go drink it outside!”

“Mr Kazimir, they’re already leaving.” Erti held up both hands.

“You get out, too, Egobar. And tell your friends that next time I’ll lock the door and keep them out.”

“Understood, Mr Kazimir. I most certainly will.”

“You’re lying, though.”

“I am, Mr Kazimir. Quite shamelessly, too.”

Mr Kazimir just waved a hand and went off to mop the gym.

They made their way out to the street and settled on the steps beside the club entrance. Dugbag had just begun counting the morning’s winnings, sorting the bills into stacks, when Lenya shot around the corner, nearly knocking over a trash can. A skinny fifteen-year-old from another school, Lenya was wild-eyed with fear, and scratches covered one cheek. He ran as if he’d just managed to escape a pack of dogs guarding a butcher’s shop.

“Erti!” he yelled from the far end of the street. “Erti, I’ve got something! Something big!”

Ertan got to his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“What is it, Lenya?”

Lenya reached the club and planted his palms on his knees, breathing hard. For half a minute, he couldn’t force out a single word. Then, at last, he straightened and began talking in a rush.

“Those guys whose legs you broke, you know, on the other side of the Stone Bridge, when they were hassling that girl. Remember?”

“I remember.” Ert narrowed his eyes slightly. “What about them?”

“Nothing much. Except they turned out to be the Islander’s men.”

Somehow, everyone on the steps fell silent all at once. Even Dugbag stopped counting his money. And if a dwarf stopped counting money, even one who was only a quarter dwarf, then they really did have a problem on their hands.

“The Islander?” Erti echoed. His voice remained as light and carefree as ever, but Dugbag knew his friend better than anyone else and noticed the hairs on the back of Erti’s neck rise ever so slightly. “The one from Stink Corner? Where the tanneries are?”

“Yeah. That’s him.” Lenya swallowed. “Erti,” he said quietly, “he kidnapped Sasha.”

Ertan froze. His expression, relaxed and wry only a second ago, turned to stone. Slowly, he drew his hands from his pockets.

“When?”

“This morning, while you were in the ring. They snatched her right from the tram stop. My neighbor saw it happen.”

Lubava rose from the steps and stood beside Ertan.

“The Islander doesn’t know Erti and Sasha aren’t seeing each other anymore?” she asked, her voice low and guttural.

“Apparently not.” Lenya shook his head. “He almost never leaves Stink Corner, so how would he know? And Erti and Sasha didn’t stop seeing each other until Erti came back from the capital and started scribbling letters to somebody every even—”

“Where are they holding her?” Ert cut in.

“At a warehouse by the depot. Not far past Stink Corner. The Islander has six or seven men there. He’s there too. I tracked them from the water tower.”

Ertan turned to Dugbag.

“Let’s go.” Then he looked at Lubava. “Keep an eye on the others, all right?”

“Whatever you say, Ert.” She nodded.

Dugbag sighed as though he’d just been told he had to climb into a septic tank. Then he tucked the money under his shirt and got to his feet.

“Every time, I promise myself I’ll never go anywhere with you again.” As he spoke, he pulled a pair of brass knuckles and a short club from his waistband. “And every time, I lie.”

“Because you’d be bored without me, Dagi.”

“Because when I’m not with you, I don’t end up looking like an eggplant, Erti.”

***

Stink Corner did not get its name because its residents were prone to exaggeration. The neighborhood lay along the south side of the Gnilusha, and it really did stink: even at the nearest intersection, the reek of tanning solutions, rotting hides, and chemicals was strong enough to make unaccustomed eyes water.

Here, amid the soot-blackened workshops, warehouses holding raw materials, and workers’ barracks, the Islander ran things: a squat, thickset fellow from the Viroeyr Islands who kept the entire district on a short leash with job assignments, cheap swill, and even cheaper threats.

Ert and Dugbag slipped toward the warehouse from the river, vaulted a fence made of rotten boards, and ran along the wall. Rusted pipes and heaps of construction rubble gave them enough cover to remain unseen.

The warehouse itself was a long, low brick building, its high windows boarded up from the inside. Two brutes with clubs lounged beside the heavy iron door.

Ertan flattened himself behind a stack of empty barrels, then peered out and listened closely. His hearing, like his eyesight, was far keener than a human’s, so through the gaps between the boards he could make out voices coming from inside the warehouse.

The Islander spoke loudly, his hoarse voice roughened by a sibilant rasp. He was speaking to someone Ert could not yet see and trying to sound sympathetic, but there was something twisted in his tone. As if the Islander relished someone else’s fear.

Though Dugbag was only one-quarter dwarf, he pressed his ear to the wall and could hear everything just fine too.

“...I just don’t understand, gorgeous. How could a girl like you, with a body like that and such a pretty little face, spread her legs for a half-blood? And a nonhuman, no less? And a thirteen-year-old, no less? You’ve got no respect for yourself, little girl.”

Erti pressed his cheek against the boards and clenched his jaw so tightly his teeth ground together.

“I’m almost fourteen,” he muttered under his breath.

“Ert, you swore to me you hadn’t slept with her,” Dugbag hissed, thumping his friend on the shoulder. “I asked you several times! If her old man finds out, you’re finished! Do you even have any idea...”

“It just happened, Dugbag.” Ert grimaced and looked away. “It’s not like I made any real effort.”

A memory flashed through his mind: the evening a downpour drove him and Sasha under the Stone Bridge by the Creek. They stood with their arms around each other. Soaked through. Their clothes gone almost transparent. Sasha kept laughing as she shook the water from her hair, and then her eyes settled on him in a way they never had before. He looked back at her the same way. And, when she tocuhed him and loosen his shirt, running her fingers closer and closer to his belt something wild that had been stirring in him suddenly broke free with such force that Erti couldn’t hold it back.

So it all happened there, under the bridge, on the wet stones, to the sound of the rain. And afterward they lay side by side on Ert’s jacket for a long time without speaking, and Ertan couldn’t tell whether he was happy or afraid.

“‘It just happened,’” Dugbag parroted. “A beautiful epitaph, Erti. Your dad’ll carve it into your headstone before he buries you.”

“My stepfather,” Ert corrected. “And Kelly won’t bury me. He’s kind.”

“But her dad’s not kind at all, and you know that better than I do.”

Erti shook his head and focused on the warehouse again.

“Take the door,” he said quietly as he unwound the bandages from his knuckles, then wrapped them around his fists again, tighter this time. “I’ll go in through a window.”

“Erti, there are six or seven of them in there!”

“That makes three and a half each,” Ertan said.

“You know I’m no great fistfighter. And I don’t have a revolver with me! And I wasn’t planning to get sent off to hard labor just yet, either!”

“Then it’s six and a half for me and half a man for you. Can you handle that?”

Dugbag swore softly in Dwarfish, got a better grip on the club, and crawled toward the door.

Ert waited ten seconds, then rose without a sound and sprang onto a ledge jutting from the wall. From there, he made his way to one of the upper windows. The boards covering the opening weren’t nailed down very securely, so Erti dug his fingers into a crack and ripped the outermost board free of its nails with a single yank. He slipped through the gap and hung by his hands, surveying the warehouse from above.

The warehouse was more spacious inside than it had appeared from the outside. The long room had a concrete floor, ceiling beams high overhead, and rows of wooden crates stacked one atop another as high as a man. Three kerosene lamps burned in the far corner, and in their wavering light Ert saw Sasha.

She sat on an overturned crate, her hands bound behind her back. Her thick chestnut hair, disheveled and matted in places, fell across her fine-boned face. Ert saw that she’d been crying, though by then she’d calmed down and was just staring into space, her eyes red and swollen. Yet her face and bare arms bore no marks of a beating. Her clothes were still intact, too. And the air didn’t smell of anything... unusual.

So Ert exhaled with relief.

The Islander loomed over his captive, thick arms folded across his chest. Six grimy, unshaven men stood around him. Some carried knives, others clubs, and one held an old, rusty revolver across his knees.

Ert jumped down from the beam onto a stack of crates and from there to the floor. He landed without a sound on the balls of his feet, just as the Teacher had instructed. Then he straightened, slipped his hands into his pockets, and stepped out from behind the stack into the open, whistling the same tune he’d whistled on the tram that morning.

“Good evening, gentlemen. Bandits.” Erti grinned broadly, flashing his white teeth, and bowed slightly. “I hope I’m not intruding on your evening. Everything here is so neatly arranged. Lamps, a lady, ropes. Just like in a romance novel. Wine and music are the only things missing. How do I know, you ask? I saw it in my mother’s books.”

The Islander turned and stared at Ertan as though he’d seen a ghost. His “muscle” froze too, and one of the men, the one with the knife, swallowed nervously.

“So you’re that half-blood,” the Islander said slowly, looking Erti over from head to toe. “You’re huge, but those eyes... You’re only a boy. Eternal Angels, a boy broke my boys’ legs. All right, then, let’s see what you’re made of, you overgrown brat.”

“With pleasure.” Ert pulled his hands from his pockets and cracked his knuckles. “Just a warning: people who meet me usually wind up looking worse than before. And just so your esteemed crew knows, that isn’t a threat but a... emperial observation.”

“Empirical,” Dugbag whispered from his hiding place.

Ertan just rolled his eyes.

The Islander jerked his head, and two of his men, the pair standing closest to Ert, rushed forward. The first swung his club with impressive speed, but to Ertan, the swing lasted an eternity. He saw the bandit’s shoulder tense, saw his elbow rise, saw the wooden club sweep through its broad arc, and it all looked as though someone were slowly sketching the scene right before his eyes, a stick scraping through sand.

Ert simply stepped aside and let the club sweep past. Then he seized the bandit’s wrist, spun him around, and sent him face-first into the stack of crates. The wooden boxes tumbled down, and the bandit vanished beneath a heap of boards and splinters.

The second man proved a little more agile. He drove his knife upward, aiming for Ert’s stomach. Ert took half a step back and caught the man’s wrist in mid-thrust.

“No, buddy. You got a little carried away there,” Ertan declared with a smile, then tightened his fingers around the bandit’s wrist.

The bandit howled, dropped the knife, and grabbed at his arm. Still gripping the bandit’s wrist, Ert turned and used him as a living battering ram, shoving him into the third man, who was charging in with his club leveled. The two men collided, their legs tangled, and both crashed onto the concrete.

“Three down, three to go,” Ert said cheerfully as he brushed wood dust from his shoulder. “Who’s next?”

The fourth and fifth came at him from opposite sides. Ertan sprang up, pushed off a crate with one foot, and vaulted over the fourth man’s head. Ert landed behind the fourth man. The bandit’s momentum carried him on past Ert, and by the time the man turned back, his face a mask of shock, Ert met him with a short, precise blow to the chin that sent him flying a good two meters before he landed sprawled on the floor. For several moments he twitched, almost comically, then went still, though he was still breathing.

“Come on, boys, this is embarrassing,” Ertan drawled, sounding disappointed, as he shook out his hands. “At this rate, I won’t even have time to warm up.”

The fifth man was huge and slow. He tried to wrap his arms around Ertan from behind, but Ert ducked low, slipped between the man’s spread legs, and came out behind him. Then he kicked the bandit in the back of the knee. The bandit crashed down onto one knee. Ert followed with an elbow to the back of his head, and the man pitched face-first onto the floor and went still.

“Five down, one to go.” Ertan clicked his tongue. “How about trying it yourself, Islander? Or can’t you manage without your girlfriends?”

The sixth man, the one with the rusty revolver, brought his weapon up, but Dugbag burst out from behind the stack of boxes. His club smashed down on the bandit’s wrist so hard that the revolver flew into the far corner of the warehouse. The bandit rolled across the floor, clutching his broken arm.

“You said I’d get half a man?!” Dugbag roared, breathing hard. “Oh, Sleeping Spirits, when are you going to stop showing off?!”

Only the Islander remained. He stood with his legs spread wide, his small, piggish eyes full of malice and disbelief at what he had just seen. After a heartbeat, though, he stepped forward. Erti noticed that the Islander moved nothing like his men did. He moved with controlled, springy ease, shifting lightly from the ball of one foot to the other. He had clearly learned how to fight.

They exchanged a few quick strikes. The Islander hit hard, and his form was clean. As Ert dodged, he realized, to his surprise, that the Islander really did know how to fight.

The bandit snapped out a left jab, then slid forward with a right cross and immediately slipped off the line to avoid a counterattack. Erti kept himself carefully in check, giving the beast inside him no opening, and took a couple of body shots. More out of “courtesy” than necessity.

Though that depended on how you looked at it...

“Listen, man. Just give Sasha back, and we’ll pretend we don’t know each other,” Ert suggested after the Islander landed several more punches.

By then, though, Ertan didn’t seem to be the one in pain...

“Filthy monster.” The Islander took a step back, reached behind his back, and pulled a revolver from his waistband. It was in far better condition than the one the sixth bandit had carried. He leveled the barrel at Ertan. His breath came in hard, hoarse rasps as he wiped the sweat from his upper lip.

“You know what, little beast?” he rasped. “I’ll shoot you right here. Then I’ll get nice and close to that beauty of yours and have a little talk with her. She already owes me something, and thanks to you, consider her debt doubled.”

Sasha, tied to the engineering box, cried out in fear, and Ertan couldn’t hold the beast back.

He hadn’t wanted this. He had honestly tried to prevent disaster. But the Islander’s words struck something raw in Ertan, and the beast churning in his chest burst free so fast that Ertan himself didn’t realize what had happened until it was all over.

The Teacher had taught him: once you begin a hunt, always finish it with one blow and one blow only.

Ert extended his claws. Five dark, hooked blades, each sharp as a razor, slid from beneath his fingernails with a soft, bony click. The world around him slowed to near-perfect stillness. He saw the Islander’s finger creep toward the trigger, saw a bead of sweat roll down his temple, saw the tiniest cracks on the barrel’s surface.

Ertan stepped forward. His hand swept through the air so fast it blurred, the steel claws flashing with a soft whistle. The claws sliced through the revolver as if it were wet paper. The weapon broke into several pieces, and they clattered onto the concrete floor.

Stunned, the Islander stared at the broken grip in his palm, while Ert, no longer able to control himself, swung again at the Islander’s throat, aiming to rip it open from ear to ear. His claws were already flashing a centimeter from the Islander’s skin when he heard a voice.

“Erti!” Dugbag bellowed. He stood over the sixth bandit, brass knuckles at the ready, eyes bulging. “Erti, don’t you dare!”

The claws froze. Their tips scratched the skin on the Islander’s neck and raised three thin red lines, but moved no farther.

Ert breathed slowly, each breath heavy and measured. Still growling, the beast reluctantly retreated into its den. The claws retracted beneath his nails, and Ertan’s hand dropped to his side.

Then, without a word, he calmly seized the Islander’s right hand, wrenched it around, and squeezed. He heard a dry crack of bone and a brief cry; the Islander dropped to his knees and clutched his broken arm.

“You can complain to the Shrimps,” Ertan spat and stepped over the Islander.

Erti turned to Sasha and quickly cut through the ropes with a knife he’d picked up from the floor. Once her hands were free, Sasha threw her arms around his neck and leaned in to kiss him, but Ert gently drew away. An image flashed through his mind: black-as-night hair and a fiery, heart-shaped mark. With that image in his mind, even Sasha’s attempted kiss felt somehow wrong. Almost like a false note in a familiar melody.

“Let’s go,” Ert said tersely. He grabbed Sasha’s hand and pulled her toward the exit.

Dugbag picked up his club and dashed after them. A minute later, all three were racing through the dark alleys of Stink Corner, leaving the groaning bandits and the whimpering Islander behind while the tannery stench still clung to them.

***

The alley behind the laundry on Sparrow Street probably looked like every other alley in southern Delpas. Cramped and dark, with a sagging fence and a heap of rags in one corner that smelled of wet wool and cats.

Ertan leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, and waited.

The Teacher appeared a few minutes later. Without a sound, as though woven from the darkness itself. He looked like an ordinary alley cat, only somewhat larger than most, with a scruffy gray-striped coat and ears always pricked. Ordinary alley cats, however, can’t vanish into the dusk. They don’t talk. And of course ordinary alley cats don’t have two tails swaying lazily, one on either side of a lean, wiry body.

“You’re late, cub,” the Teacher said as he settled onto the fence and wrapped both tails around his paws. His voice was even and quiet, with a faint rasp that sounded something like old wood creaking.

“I had to go hunting, Ragrer.” Ert scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

“What about the prey?” The cat narrowed his eyes.

“They’re all alive,” Ertan said quickly to reassure the Teacher. Then he added, reluctantly, “Mostly.”

The Teacher’s yellow eyes closed in a slow blink, and he cocked his head to one side.

“You extended your claws.”

He wasn’t even asking, merely stating a fact. Ragrer could always tell when his student lost control, and afterward he would spend a good long while picking the incident apart in painstaking detail, until Erti sometimes felt ready to howl from sheer boredom.

“A little,” Ert admitted. “But I stopped in time.”

“How much is ‘a little’?”

“Well... I sliced a revolver into several pieces.” Ertan turned away. “And, well... little things... I almost slit someone’s throat.”

“Almost...” Ragrer’s left ear twitched. “Next time, it may not be ‘almost.’ You must control your beast, cub, and not let it control you. I don’t need a student drunk on blood, two-legs. Obey the Laws of the Hunt.”

“I know, Ragrer.”

“Knowing what to do and being able to do it are two very different trails.”

Erti was quiet for a moment. Then, unable to contain himself, he smirked.

“Ragrer, do you still have just three fangs? Or did you manage to get yourself a fourth somewhere?”

The Teacher opened his jaws, displaying three long, yellowish fangs instead of the usual four. A black hole gaped in his gum where the fourth should have been.

“Still three,” Ragrer confirmed. He licked his muzzle thoughtfully.

“And you still haven’t remembered what you did with the fourth?” Ertan winked, glad he’d managed to change the subject.

The Teacher fell silent for a long time. His yellow eyes grew distant, and Erti saw his whiskers begin to quiver faintly as both tails suddenly straightened and went still. Ragrer was trying to remember, and the effort hurt him in a way no one could fake.

For an instant, moisture glimmered in the cat’s eyes. He lowered his head slightly, as though an unseen hand had pressed against the back of his neck.

“No,” the Teacher said at last, his voice a little more muted than usual. “I can’t remember, cub. There was something... someone... but it all blurs together, like a reflection in murky water. Sometimes I think I remember something... something from before you found me in that alley... but the memory slips away from me...”

“Nothing to worry about, Ragrer,” Ert said gently. He crouched and scratched the Teacher behind the ear. “You’ll remember when the time comes.”

Ragrer tossed his head, shaking off the weight of the lost memory. His gaze was clear and steady once more.

“Enough chatter, cub. It’s time we got to work.”

The cat ran lightly up the sheer brick wall of the house, without the slightest visible effort, his claws finding purchase in the mortar joints and on tiny protrusions invisible to the human eye. His striped body flashed against the dark sky and vanished beyond the roof’s cornice.

Erti smiled, shook out his hands to limber up his fingers, and climbed after him. His claws slid out again and bit into the brick. He went up the wall with the ease of a bird in flight.

He swung himself over the cornice and saw Ragrer standing on the roof ridge. Both tails streamed downwind, and his yellow eyes burned in the darkness like two small lanterns.

“Let’s run, cub. The trails are waiting,” the Teacher said. In a single bound, he vaulted onto the neighboring roof and landed without a sound on the tiles.

Ertan leaped after him, and together the Teacher and his student raced across the rooftops of Delpas at night. They leaped from house to house, dove into the darkness between chimneys, slipped along the gutters, and flew up walls like shadows born of silvery moonlight.

The sleeping city, wrapped in night, stretched before them in an endless succession of cornices and overhangs. Only the distant chime of a tram bell carried from somewhere on Elm Street.

“These are our trails, cub,” Ragrer said without breaking stride. “And these are the Laws of the Hunt. Tread softly, keep a sharp watch, and remember: you are truly free only so long as you are strong.”

Ert ran after his Teacher, smiling, because here among the rooftops, amid the wind, the stars, and the moonlight, the beast inside his chest finally grew calm and fell silent, curling into a ball around something very warm and precious, something whose name Ertan did not yet know.

Delpas at night spread beneath their paws, a dark carpet flickering with lights that looked so much like stars. And somewhere out there, far to the north, beyond the steppes and mountains, beyond Bear’s Rift and the First Station, his older brother might also be looking at those very same stars.

Erti licked his fangs, now grown long, and at night the city’s rooftops became his wings.

He still hoped the governor would actually open a military school for glider pilots.

But such thoughts, as Ragrer would say, were for tomorrow.

Metropolis. Ardan. Present day.

The Colonel set the lollipop down in the ashtray.

“Entire town, Corporal,” he said dryly. “This time, the whole damn town?!”