Page 5

It was not only disgust I felt that made me leave the House. I also missed Baylen dearly. I hadn’t seen him in years, even as I scoured the streets during my alms-collecting runs and inhabited old corners we used to work together.

He had either moved out of the southern district of Nuhav, gotten himself in a troublesome situation he couldn’t escape, or had fled the city altogether.

The Faithless knew he would never get far outside Nuhav. There was nowhere for him to go, no one for him to search for.

So I went searching for him.

I stayed two and three districts away from the southern region, away from the House of the Broken. I used my skills in begging to earn a few coins—more often than not accompanied by glares from women and too-long sneers from older men.

Making sure to never visit the same area twice, in case ruffians or defilers decided to show up when their spouses and mistresses were not around, I quickly lost hope of ever finding Baylen. It was like he had vanished off the face of Nuhav.

To make matters worse, there were far more people inhabiting the city than I ever knew. More than thousands, more than I could count. Faces swirled by during the busiest hours of day like mirages. They started to look the same: rough, tanned from hard labor, leathery, and despicable.

I couldn’t look at another human without seeing glimpses of Father Cullard, Jeffrith and the bully boys, or even the meaner parts of Baylen. They began to blend together. I realized—for all I’d seen in my short life—I hated humans.

I ate scraps and whatever I could afford with the meager offerings I collected. The bazaars here were smaller, more spread out, with tradespeople setting up carts and tents in haphazard smatterings across the districts.

I never stepped foot into a shop. I had no business being inside one. I was not presentable enough to be anything other than a would-be thief in the eyes of storeowners and proprietors.

It dawned on me why these districts were gloomier and less populated than the southernmost one: The same district where the House of the Broken sat was also where the Temple of the True resided.

Every Seventh Day, I had gone to the temple with a vowager and the Housemates to pray.

Its location had the effect of creating commerce around it, hence the vast bazaar and loads of coins jangling around the area.

Here, in the southwestern region, I only spotted a garrison, the large heavens-reaching wall that surrounded the entire city, and many dour faces.

I avoided the militaristic Bronzes, who were a frequent presence here, and kept to the shadows and alleys.

It was there I met my first grayskin—a hooded, cloaked figure with waxen skin. His teeth were the first sign, slightly pointed. His eyes were a dark red. The man nearly snuck up on me from the back of an alley, frightening me worse than I’d ever been scared before.

He laughed, saying I had snuck up on him. Then he left me alone. We never exchanged names. I was racked with fear all night. He stayed at least ten feet away from me as we shared the alley.

Against my better judgment, I fell asleep curled behind a trash barrel that evening, unable to keep my eyes open to focus on the grayskin.

I dreamt of a sunflower in a window. It swayed gloriously in a wintry, blue breeze.

Raindrops fell upon the sunflower, and its petals began to pluck and float down beyond my vision, beneath the windowsill.

I stared at the yellow flower from the other side of a window where I could see the hint of my face in the reflection.

I startled at the sight of my face in the reflection, because my eyes were red, just like the grayskin’s. It showed a false version of myself.

After noticing my grotesque reflection, the raindrops turned crimson and bloody, tainting the sunflower until it was painted in red, without petals—a horrid bulb of its former self.

I jolted awake with a gasp. Something was on me.

Scooting back until my skull painfully hit the alley wall, I stared across the way. The grayskin was gone. My eyes veered down, over myself . . . to find the man’s dark cloak blanketed over me.

My brow furrowed in confusion. Did he . . . leave me this? To keep me warm?

The morning was bright and sunny as slants of sunlight wafted into the alley, stealing my shadowy hideout.

More shadows emerged from the street. With the furrow in my brow deepening, I glanced up to see five figures standing over me.

“Well, well, well, look who finally decided to get a clue.”

The voice was familiar. The tall figure was silhouetted by the sun behind him. To his left and right, boys snickered.

“You know this one?” asked one of the others.

The young man standing over me crouched, his face forming in the darkness with a grin as he planted his palms on his knees. “Sure do. Funny seeing you here, Sister Seph.”

My breath hitched. “Baylen.”

My former Brother had grown strong and tall in the years since I’d last seen him as a child. His dashing face, his hair a greasy mop over his forehead—he wore his hair long now. He had sprouted up like a pole, easily a foot and a half taller than when I’d last seen him.

He didn’t tower over me, however.

“You’ve grown, Seph,” he said in a deeper voice than I was used to. He was leading me away from the alley, holding my hand and threading our fingers together like we were long-lost lovers and not former Truehearts from the same sect.

“So have you, Bay,” I pointed out with a small smile, watching his eyes as he took in my form from heel to head.

Though I was still young, only thirteen or fourteen summers by my estimation, I had certainly grown taller, wider at the hips, and stronger in our time apart. More womanly as one crude alms-giver had once noted out loud, from exactly zero prompting from me.

“Where are you taking me?” I scrunched my brow against the sun, scanning the roads, which were starting to get busier for the morning. I laughed at myself. “I’m following you around blindly, as usual. I’ve already followed blindly my entire life. I’m done doing that.”

He gave me a crooked smile. I noticed a small scar on his chin when he faced me, and the slight stubble trying to hide it—the stubble of a boy who was pretending to be a man. “What got you out of the House, Sister?”

Clamping my jaw, I bowed my head. “Something I saw,” I said, leaving it at that.

Baylen didn’t pry. He hummed to himself. “Sorry to hear it. You should have left when I did.”

“Had to make my own decision and see for myself, I suppose.”

A hard bite came to his voice, filled with spite. “You mean you didn’t see it when they lashed you across the back ten times? I’m assuming the lesions still rest on you, scarring your pretty body like they do mine.”

I sighed and nodded, trying to ignore the fact he had called my body “pretty.”

“Some people take longer to learn than others,” I drawled.

“Got that right.”

We walked in silence. He hadn’t answered my question about where he was taking me.

Eventually, we came to a ramshackle den of negligence and decrepitude.

Hovels sat against one another like dingy excuses for houses, with worn wood and broken fixtures.

The road was packed with homeless sewerboys and guttergirls sitting outside their broken hovels and dwellings.

The place stank of shit, rotten food, and spoiled water.

It stretched like this for no less than three street corners, far as I could see. I realized we were not far from the southern dumping grounds.

Wrinkling my nose against the stench, I said, “What is this place, Bay?”

“Somewhere the Bronzes never come to look,” he explained, as if that answered everything. My first question was going to be, Why do you need to hide from the law, Brother?

“It’s home,” he said. “For now. Not much, I know.”

“Home to . . . whom ?”

“The Diplomats,” he said proudly, crossing his arms over his chest.

I had no idea what he was talking about, and was about to say as much—

“Hoy, what took you so long getting back, y’little shit?” came a voice from behind us, emerging from one of the shacks.

My blood froze in my veins from the familiarity of the voice. No . Slowly, I turned. My heart skipped a beat, forcing me back a step.

Baylen took a noticeable step in front of me, whispering close to my ear, “It’s okay, Seph. Things are different now.”

Approaching us was the boy I recognized as Jeffrith the ruffian, now a young man.

My feet rooted to the ground. My veins pulsed with something fierce I couldn’t place—a mixture of pain, anger, and sorrow, perhaps.

This was the boy who had beaten Baylen nearly to death. Had my former Brother simply forgotten that? And now things were “different”?

My teeth ground together.

Jeffrith said, “I was s’pose to head out with Layson and the Third Crew, shithead. Hitting the west route today. You know how far out it is.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Baylen grumbled, bowing his head submissively to the older boy.

Jeffrith cuffed him on the back of the head.

I nearly yelled for him to stop—just like I had years before. But this was a playful slap, if anything. A brotherly slap, one might say.

I was so baffled, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Jeffrith turned his gaze past Bay and tilted his head to regard me. “Say . . . you look familiar, don’t you?”

I found myself shaking my head adamantly, unable to say anything.

Baylen said, “No. Found her on the street, is all. Thought she could be helpful.”

Jeffrith smiled with an ugly sneer. “Yeah, I’d say she could be helpful .”

Bay rolled his eyes. “Don’t start, Jeffrith. I’m tired.”

He scoffed, averting his gaze from me. “You’ve only been out a few hours, you lazy lout!”

“What’s all this fucking noise out here, eh? You trying to get us found out?” yelled a new voice.

This one was gruff, deeper than the boys like Baylen’s, with his quaking, lilting speech that straddled boyhood and manhood. Deeper than Jeffrith’s, too, who although a man, had a whiny, annoying tone to his voice.

The three of us spun around as one.

A burly man with a beard emerged from the largest hovel in the road, storming over with anger in his eyes. I could smell him from ten feet away, as if he’d been rolling around in the filth here and truly calling it home.

I knew he was trouble right away. The fact he was easily twice anyone else’s age here didn’t bode well.

A new Father Cullard, perhaps?

“You’re supposed to be fucking gone, Jeffro. And you, Baylo? What’s this?” His eyes landed on mine as he stopped a few feet away.

I had to resist gagging at his smell, my body going rigid as his crude eyes hovered over me. His breath was putrid.

“This is Sephania,” Baylen said, stepping aside from me. “Former Sister of the House of the Broken. A recent guttergirl.”

“I like her,” the man said. A smile formed behind his beard, filled with holes where teeth should’ve been. “Good work finding a new one, Baylo. Extra ration for you tonight.”

My heart slammed against my ribs in warning. A new one? I wondered what the fuck this gross, fat man was talking about.

“Seph,” Baylen said, stepping closer again and taking my hand. “I’d like to introduce you to the leader of the Diplomats, Dimmon Plank.”

I was wordless for a moment, until Dimmon said, “What is she, mute? Guess that won’t matter if she is.”

“P-Pleased to meet your acquaintance, sir,” I eked out with a small nod of my chin.

I was anything but pleased to make his acquaintance.

In fact, I was already plotting how to get as far away from Dimmon Plank as possible.