Vayra’s hands had been tingling all afternoon, and she couldn’t blame it entirely on the cold breeze. If all went to plan, this would be their biggest score yet. If all went to plan. She grimaced. Already, they were off-schedule.

She tapped her boot on the cobblestone street and leaned against the wall of knotted wood behind her. If she pressed her back up against the very edge of the alley could she see past the eaves high above. The sky was getting dark, and they were running out of time.

“The longer we wait, the riskier this gets!” a voice shouted from deeper down the shadowy corridor.

Vayra glanced at her brother. The wind muffled his voice, as did the hood of his tattered coat.

She replied, “If we don’t wait, we don’t get paid.”

The wind roared louder. It ripped shriveled autumn fruit from vines and thrashed their husks against the stone below, then buried them with amber leaves. Vayra pulled her hood over her head to shield herself from them. When her brother spoke again, she barely heard his voice. “Why do we need a Helper for this one?” he asked. “I mean…we’ve run jobs like this—”

“Bremi!” she scolded, marching back toward him. “This tip came from Gréno himself. If we run the job without one of his Helpers, we’ll—” She cut herself off. There was no reason to give her little brother nightmares. “We won’t like what happens.”

“But we can handle this!”

“And the Helper will make sure we handle it in a way that won’t get us killed.” She crossed her arms. “I just wanna get out of this alive and fill my stomach with something. Do you?”

Bremi muttered, “I…do.” He pulled his hood up to match her. The coats kept them warm, but it also hid their unusual appearance. Like Vayra, he had bright blue eyes, and orange hair so vibrant they told everyone it was dyed—it wasn’t. “Sorry, sis…”

Any other day, Vayra wouldn’t have been so strict. But he was her little brother, and it was her duty to look after him. “Then we—”

Before she could finish, a humanoid silhouette slid into the alley’s opening. It wore a dark greatcoat, and moved elegantly and silently. She swallowed empty air, then approached.

The silhouette pushed aside one half of its coat. In what little light remained of the day, the silver hammer of a flintlock pistol gleamed. This was the Helper—one of Gréno’s enforcers. Vayra forced her gaze upwards, and kept her eyes pinned to where the Helper’s forehead should have been. She couldn’t see its face, only a pearlescent white mask. When the Helper nodded, she spared a glance back at Bremi and said, “It’s time.” She opened her mouth again to ask if the Helper could climb, but she stopped. Gr éno’s Helpers could always climb.

Without another word, Vayra leapt to a whorl on the wall beside her, and from it, she sprung to a branch above. Higher and higher, she climbed, clinging to the vines and fruit. It wasn’t an orchard. Nearly every building in the city of Tavelle was alive. The city had begun its life as a shipping hub, but it had grown. The settlement turned to a village, which turned to a city. Houses had been grown atop one another until they were stacked so high that sunlight barely reached the ground of the old, stone streets.

Vayra climbed until her face basked in the glow of the setting sun. One at a time, she pulled her legs up onto the gutter of woven leaves, then jumped up onto the sloped roof.

Her rapid breaths condensed into steam, and the wind drew it into thin lines. She watched them float into the distance and dissipate, but her gaze remained. She stared over Tavelle’s thousands of rooftops, towards the distant ocean. But there was no horizon. Miles offshore, the Eternal Stream touched the planet’s surface.

The Stream was an enormous river as wide as a sea, which sloped away from the surface of Decathe and rose far into the heavens. It snaked through the stars, connecting all of the planets of the galaxy with its spirit-energy-infused water. Ships raced along it, and she traced them with her eyes. From here, they were tiny dark specks with billowing, white sails.

She only paid attention to the ships that sailed away from the planet’s surface. But today, in the twilight, she couldn’t trace them through the sky for long. The Stream wove between the clouds, and when it passed the boundary of Decathe’s skies, it faded.

One day, she told herself. One day, I’ll get off of Decathe. One day, I’ll see every world in the galaxy. I’ll do whatever it takes.

But she couldn’t see the galaxy if she starved or got herself killed.

A deep, masculine voice slithered out from the Helper’s mouth. “Will the kid be a liability?”

“He can keep up,” Vayra insisted.

The Helper only scoffed. Vayra crept towards the roof’s edge again, and peered down. Bremi tugged himself up, slower than Vayra and the Helper, but not slowly. He wrapped his legs over the gutter and pulled himself up.

The Helper still stared at Vayra. “Follow,” he said. “You better keep to my pace.”

They took off along the rooftops. Vayra kept her eyes down. One wrong step and she would slip; the tiny shingles were slippery. Each was a light-brown pinecone scale, shimmering and shiny in the fading light.

They leapt over a chimney of woven roots, and Vayra choked on the black soot. Tavelle’s residents hadn’t built their organic city because they loved the natural world. Plant-based houses were easy to transport and nurture, and with proper fertilization, a settlement could be grown in years. But after two centuries, Tavelle hadn’t given up the habit.

Vayra wiped the soot out of her eyes and sprinted after the Helper. The three jumped over a thin alley, then tightroped over a street on a narrow band of wood. Carriages and wagons rushed past beneath, dragged by whinnying horses, and Vayra did her best not to look down. She wasn’t afraid of heights nor was she a stranger to vertigo, but crossing a bustling road always made her stomach lurch.

As the sun slipped behind the Eternal Stream, candles and lanterns flickered to life all across the city. It didn’t help to illuminate the rooftops. Vayra strained her eyes, making sure she didn’t misstep, but they couldn’t slow down.

The three arrived at a long row of four-story tall apartments. They stopped at the apartment third from the street corner, just beside an alley, and knelt on the edge of the roof.

“How’s that, sis?” Bremi hissed. “I’m nearly as fast as you!”

“Only ‘cause you keep growing,” she whispered back. He was nearly fourteen years old, and although she had five years on him, he was nearly as tall as she was. She teased, “Lanky-legs.”

The Helper shook his head. He leaned over the edge of the roof, and Vayra did the same. No light shone from the building beneath—perfect. Taking the gold would be easy. Vayra imagined the coins shimmering in the palm of her hand. Maybe there would be enough to buy her and Bremi’s way offworld.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“We’ve gotta be running out of time before he gets home,” Bremi stated. “It’s now or never.”

Vayra looked to the Helper, and the man nodded. She gripped the edge of the gutter, then swung her legs down to the windowsill below. Maybe there was a safer way, but not one so fun.

A quick exhale was all she allowed herself before driving a boot into the frame—it shattered the fragile wood. The window fell inwards on its hinges, and, after another kick, the casement snapped off. The sheet of glass hit the floor below and shattered. Shards scattered across the floorboards, clinking and rattling.

Vayra winced, then pulled herself into the room. Her gaze flitted around. It was a small apartment, well-kept but not lavish. There were no paintings hanging from its taupe wallpaper, only shelves filled with stacks upon stacks of paper. A barrister, politician, or otherwise, it didn’t matter—the tip said there would be gold.

Two thumps followed. The Helper marched across the room, and Bremi walked behind him. Vayra nodded to her brother, then whispered, “Get looking.”

“Watch yourself,” the Helper warned.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

He grunted, which sounded more like a snort through his mask. Vayra said nothing more; she began searching the apartment’s living room. The drawers of the corner desk yielded nothing, and neither did the cabinets beside the hallway door. She threw herself to the ground to peer under a chair, just in time for the Helper to throw it aside. It crashed against the floor. Her eyes widened. “We shouldn’t be—”

“Another word from you, and your cut drops.”

Vayra stood up to face him. “If we mess this up, Gréno’s gonna have our heads.”

“Only yours and the boy’s.”

Vayra’s eyes widened. “I’ll…I’ll make sure he knows you had a hand in it.” It was a bad strategy. The Helper could say anything, and who would believe her word over his? She and Bremi were Discarded, street urchins without a family or a kinship to protect them.

The Helper placed a hand on his hip, elbow notching aside his coat. “You’re down to twenty percent.”

“Apologies. I just—”

“Fifteen.”

Vayra knew better than to open her mouth again. She set back to searching. Behind the shelves. Beneath a rug, if their prize could even be hidden beneath it. But there wasn’t even a dull shine, let alone a glimmer of gold. She let the rug slip from her fingers.

A crash ripped through the room. Papers fell from a shelf, and Vayra pounced on the pile to stop them from rustling. She looked up at Bremi, who stood frozen mid-step. “You found anything?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” Bremi replied. “Sis, we should—”

“We ain’t done here.” The Helper ran his hand over the varnished mantle of the fireplace, then picked up a leather mask resting atop it. It would only cover the bottom half of a face, and the cylindrical cartridges protruding from each side looked heavy. After a thorough examination, he cast it aside. “He was an officer on a Streamrunner. A purser. Rumour has it that one of the local navy captains has been throwin’ around his weight and pickin’ on the cargo transports, and this here purser was a part of that crew. But they weren’t tellin’ anyone about their latest haul. It’s gotta be somethin’ good.”

“I thought Gréno knew for certain.” Vayra poked her head into the fireplace, then dipped her hands into the ashes. There was nothing below. She lifted a handkerchief off the back of another chair, then threw open the doors of a glass cabinet. There was nothing metallic, except for the rusty tip of a quill, which she didn’t dare touch. She muttered, “And now we’ll take the fall for it. As usual.”

“As deserved, for a Discarded,” the Helper snarled. “Hurry up and find it.”

It wasn’t fair, but it was reality—she’d accepted that long ago. This was their ticket out. She lifted a stack of papers, then laid them down on a chair. She stuck her head into the gap it opened in the shelf, and stared behind the other stacks. Still nothing.

“Look what I found, sis!” Bremi called. Vayra looked up quickly, and the back of her head struck the shelf above.

Bremi held a cube, which barely fit into the palms of his hand. It was white stone, and though it was bland, it was carved perfectly—the corners were sharp, and the edges were clean. On each face, a smaller, black square sat perfectly flush with the stone around it.

“What’s that?” Vayra asked.

“No idea…” Bremi whispered. “But…it’s not gold. I’ll put it—”

“Seems our navy captain—pirate, whatever-he-may-be—raided the wrong folk,” the Helper said. “We don’t want to mess with that. Find the gold and get out of here.”

“Wait…” Vayra breathed, stepping closer to Bremi, and to the small cube. She felt something swirling in her veins and churning in her muscles. The cube tugged her eyes towards it. Her blood rushed to her fingertips and refused to leave, as if drawn by the same force that called her eyes. She felt a pressure on the back of her neck, and three thoughts charged into her mind: Mediator. Duty. Power. She knew they weren’t her own.

Her veins stirred. Something swirled in her blood, pulsing through her limbs and core, and she didn’t recognize it. But she had heard stories of the great God-heirs who could harvest mana from the Stream, cycle it through their bodies, and achieve great, superhuman feats. They could ascend to the heavens and become immortals themselves. For a moment, she entertained the notion. To have…any more strength than she did now?

But, like most people, she didn’t have enough Spirit Potential to use magic. It was just a dream, and nothing could change—

“Sis?” Bremi asked, shattering her trance. “You okay?”

She blinked rapidly, then pulled her hand away from the cube. “Put it in your pocket and keep looking. There’s gotta be a—”

A keyring rattled against the other side of the hallway-facing door, and Vayra’s head whipped around to face the noise. Her muscles seized, and she didn’t dare to move her fingers.

The key rattled again. She and Bremi had never been caught before, not in all of their minor break-ins and heists. They couldn’t be caught now! The thought shattered her paralysis, and she yelped, “Bremi! Forget the gold!”

“No one leaves!” the Helper bellowed. His greatcoat fluttered as he turned, and he flicked his flintlock pistol into his hand. He pointed it at Vayra. She stared down the barrel, but she didn’t raise her hands. The Helper knew she was unarmed. He pointed the pistol at Bremi, and the boy halted as well.

“Wait!” Vayra hissed. “Do you want—”

The door swung open, and a humanoid figure stepped through. The Helper pointed his pistol towards it. An acute bang echoed through the room, followed by a puff of fire and smoke, and the body collapsed. Vayra averted her gaze, mind rushing with barely-formed plans and interfering thoughts. If they kept looking, they might find something to make the journey worthwhile, but someone had to have heard the gunshot. The reward wouldn’t mean anything if they were all caught.

Vayra stepped towards the window. The Helper blocked her path. “You ain’t leavin’ ‘til we get that gold,” he stated.

But he had used his shot. Vayra glanced at Bremi. She could deal with Gréno; she could beg the wannabe crime lord for more time and another chance to settle their debt. But she couldn’t reason with the authorities. She and Bremi had to leave before they were caught. Bremi dipped his head—he understood too.

Vayra dashed around the Helper’s right side, and Bremi on the left. The Helper reached towards her, but he only snagged her coat. She let it slide off her arms, then ducked under the Helper’s wild punch. “Bremi, go!”

Her brother clambered onto the windowsill and wrapped his arms around a downspout. It was encased in rough bark and would be painful to slide down, but it’d get them to the street quickly.

As her brother slid down, Vayra jumped away from another of the Helper’s punches. She stumbled and scrambled back towards the window.

The Helper turned his pistol over in his hand. He swung it like a club, and Vayra barely rolled away in time to dodge it. She leapt up onto the windowsill to avoid another swipe, then jumped out the window.

She fell a foot before clutching the downspout with her bare hands. Her palms burned, and she was certain the bark left a few splinters. As she neared the bottom, she hugged the spout tight, and she came to a complete halt. The spout deposited them in another alleyway, which intersected with a larger, main street.

“You alright?” Bremi asked.

“I’m fine.” She brushed her hands against her pants, hoping it would soothe the raw pain. It only made them burn hotter. Then, she glanced up towards the Helper. She couldn’t see him. She imagined him biting open a paper cartridge and pouring gunpowder into the pistol. “He’s reloading. We gotta go.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Not really. But it’s too late now!” Vayra leaned out of the alley and into the street. Pedestrians bolted past, and coachmen whipped their horses faster and harder. They didn’t seem to know which direction to run, but they seemed to run in fear—they must have heard the shot. One of the pedestrians collided with Vayra and knocked her to the ground.

Scrambling back to her feet, she pulled Bremi closer to the nearest wall. They didn’t have much time before the Helper had another shot ready. “It’ll be just like that time we stole that gold monocle. We’ll just have to make a run for it. Ready?”

“I’m ready,” Bremi whispered.

Vayra met her brother’s gaze. “Then let’s go.”

She sprinted out of the alley.