Page 2 of Quicksilver

Fuck.

If I wanted to live, there was nothing left for it. I’d have to drop the gauntlet. But that was a preposterous thought. The gauntlet weighed at least four pounds. Fourpoundsof metal. I couldn’t just walk away from that. This gauntlet was more than a piece of stolen armor.It was my brother’s education. Three years’ worth of food. Tickets out of Zilvaren, south, to where the reckoning winds that buffeted the dry-boned hills were twenty degrees cooler than here in the Silver City. We’d have enoughmoney left over to buy a small house if we wanted to. Nothing fancy. Just something weatherproof. Something I could leave to Hayden when, notif,the guardians finally caught up with me.

No, dropping this gauntlet would cost me something far more valuable than my life; it would cost me hope, and I wouldn’t surrender that. I’d rip my arm out of its socket first.

So, I went to work.

“Don’t be ridiculous, girl!” the guardian hollered. “You’ll fall before you even make it halfway!”

If the guardian went back to the barracks without his gauntlet, there would be consequences. I had no idea what those consequences would be, but they wouldn’t be pretty. They could cut off the asshole's hands and bury him up to his neck in the sand to bake in the reckoning’s heat for all I cared. I was going home.

Pain sang from my fingertips, up my arm like a rope of fire, blazing in my shoulder as I pulled myself up, kicking with my feet, leaping up the wall. I aimed for a section of the stone that looked worn but stable. Or as stable as I could hope for. If you gave it enough time, the wind ate everything in this city, and it had been grinding its teeth against Zilvaren for thousands of years. The sandstone was deceptive. The city’s structures and walls looked sound but were far from it. One hard kick had been known to bring down an entire building in the past. It wasn’t as if I was overly heavy, but that was neither here nor there. I was risking life and limb by slamming myself into the brickwork.

My stomach bottomed out as I sailed through the air…and then clenched tight as a fist when I impacted with the wall. Adrenalin soaked my blood as three miracles happened in concert.

First: The wall held.

Second: I grabbed a stellar handhold with my left hand.

Third: My shoulderdidn’tcome out of its socket.

Footing. Footing. Foot—

FUCK!

My heart wedged itself in my throat as the sole of my left boot slipped against the wall, setting my whole body swinging.

Below me, a gentile, feminine gasp parted the silence. Guess Ididhave some spectators after all.

I didn’t look down.

It took a moment to still myself and a handful of strained curses before I felt confident enough to breathe again.

“Girl! You’re going to kill yourself!” the guardian shouted.

“Maybe. But what if I don’t?” I shouted back.

“Then you’ll have wasted your time anyway! There isn’t a fence in this entire city stupid enough to buy a stolen piece of armor.”

“Ah, c’mon now. I thinkImight know a couple!”

I didn’t. No matter how tight things were, no matter how many families starved and died, not one resident of Zilvaren would dare to deal in something as dangerous as the gauntlet I had wedged onto my forearm. But that didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to try and sell it.

“I won’t pursue you any further. You have my word. Drop the gauntlet, and I’ll let you go!”

A bark of laughter ripped out of me. And they said guardians had no sense of humor. This one was a fucking comedian.

Another jump. Another staggering jolt of pain. I calculated the trajectory as best I could, making sure to aim for the least pitted section of rock each time. At last high enough above the streets of the Hub, I allowed myself the luxury of a moment to collect myself. If I moved the armor to the other wrist, would I drop it? More importantly, would I be able to hold onto the wall with my weaker arm while I performed a swap? There were too many variables to calculate and not enough time to do so in.

“How do you think you’re getting down the other side, child?”

Child? Hah! The gall of the bastard. His shouting was quieter now. I was fifty feet up—close enough to see the top of the wall. Far enough from the street for a bristle of cold sweat to break out across the back of my neck when I looked down.

The guardian raised a good point. Descending from the wall would be just as perilous as the ascent, but the Undying Queen’s whipping boy down there had been born into a good home. He grew up in the Hub. His parents didn’t lock their door at night. That man had never evenconsideredtrying to climb the walls that protected him from the ungrateful, infectious rabble on the other side of it. I’d spent half my life running the tops of these walls, slipping from one ward to the next, finding ways into places I had no business being.

I was good at it.

Moreover, it wasfun.