Brat woke up lying on stone. That was normal. The child-coffin-sized chamber where the twins slept was stone. They’d had a blanket for a few years, but over time it had moldered away.

It wasn’t usually this cold down in the Closes, though. The sigh of aboveground wind and the mutter of voices weren’t right either.

This wasn’t the Closes.

Eyes flying open in a wild panic, Brat searched the unfamiliar space. Bars over the window and bars for a door. Stinking puddles on the floor, the ones bordering the room eddying with the muddy tide.

This was the gaol on River Street.

Around the cell were scar-crossed men, women with torn clothing and missing teeth. A few prisoners closer to Brat’s age huddled in corners or trembled with fear, many of them already in the grasp of the gaol’s older, larger predators.

Brat gulped. Caged in the gaol, like the worst of day terrors. Soon one twin would shake the other awake.

Hopefully soon. Hopefully before the adults descended or the priests came looking for blood.

No saving second awakening came. The nightmare was real.

A pebble plinked off the back of Brat’s head.

The top of Pretty’s face peeked in the window bars.

Casting a look around to make sure no one was closing in, Brat scrambled to the window and pulled up on the bars to look out. The gaol was off the Salt River proper, tucked back on the crumbling edge of the Mean Tributary. Brat had heard the cells filled up with muddy water during flood season and only the prisoners who won a spot on the windows survived. Everybody else drowned.

Water could be awfully bad medicine.

The window Pretty peeked in overlooked a rocky ledge that had been eroding for years, the water eating away at the dirt until there was nothing but patchy limestone and the ancient underground brick of Old Siu Carinal holding it up. A hole from the Closes came out down there. In drought times, the twins liked to poke their heads over the ledge to watch the hangings. Brat’s impression of kicking legs and bugging-out eyes always made Pretty laugh.

Pretty wasn’t laughing today. She pressed her face against the bars, bottom lip trembling. “Those men took you, and they ain’t even sheriffs. They looked like they mighta been gonna stick you in a carriage.”

This was how Brat knew they were twins—they were always thinking the same way.

“Nah, I scairt the piss out of ’em, me,” Brat said. “They wasn’t so tough once I caught a holt of ’em.”

“I prayed to the Cormorant, but he didn’t help none.”

Brat scoffed. “What, you think a god’s gonna show his face every time a close-rat gets in trouble? He was busy, you know. But he helped me plenty—just with invisible medicine.”

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“Oh.” Invisible explained it. Who was going to waste big medicine on a close-rat when small would do?

After a second, Pretty’s eyes filled again. “What’s gonna happen to you?”

Lots could. Hanging. Getting ate. Bad stuff. Sacrificing.

“I got the gaoler right where I want him, me.” Brat eyed the lightening sky. “You oughta get somewhere safe, though. Sun’s gonna burn you soon.”

Pretty shivered. The sun was bad medicine, especially for her. Brat’s skin could tolerate it, but hers never had. She’d be blistered and sick if she didn’t get going.

“You get that bread?” Brat asked.

Pretty swallowed. She shook her head.

Brat cursed the air foul.

“Aw, don’t cry, Pretty. I ain’t mad, me, just hot at whoever took it.”

She scrubbed away the tears, leaving behind dirt-trails, and sniffled.

“You get on back down into the Closes and wait for me,” Brat said. “I’m fixing to be outta here and on my way. And this time I’ll bring us something even better than nasty brown bread.”

“Promise on your everlasting soul?”

“What, am I gonna miss this year’s Carnival of the Dead? We gotta see whether they run out ol’ Tonia for it, don’t we? And there was s’posed to be one a’ them fancy ladies died a couple months ago, too. I ain’t missing that.”

“Swear it, Brat.”

“Didn’t I just?” Not a budge from Pretty. “Fine, I promise on my everlasting soul I’m coming home right quick here, may the Cormorant strike me dead in the streets if I’m a-lying.”

The barred door of the gaol shrieked. Both twins flinched, but Brat recovered faster and layered on the bravado.

“All right, you best get gone so you don’t have to see me lay into this guy. It’s fixing to be nasty, and I might have to kill a few folk with their own guts. Like that dock thief, remember? The one they hung up with his insides?”

“Get away from that window, boy!” a deep voice yelled.

Pretty shrank back. The crate she was standing on tipped, but she grabbed the bars and caught herself before she fell.

Brat kissed her dirty little fingers where they wrapped around the bars. “Get.”

The heavy tread of feet crossed the gaol cell. Pretty jumped down and disappeared over the rocky ledge. A huge hand snagged Brat by the arm.

That stone floor felt a lot harder when you got tossed onto it. Brat winced.

“A little more care with the merchandise, if you please, Master Gaoler.” Muddy Boots was standing by with a smirk Brat would’ve liked to knock off his face. He had one hand on his blade. All the adults in the cell had backed away from him like they were scairt.

“Guess I can’t talk you out of taking that one?” Sword Man was blocking the open doorway.

“Not this time.” Neither of those silt brains had drawn their blades. Why wasn’t anybody fighting them?

“Well, my money’s on this big strapping lad here.” Sword Man nodded at a heavyset towhead with a split lip and black eye. “How old are you, boy?”

“Sir?”

“How many flood seasons do you have under your belt? Isn’t that’s how you delta folks measure time?”

“I—fifteen or sixteen, sir.”

Muddy Boots rolled his eyes. “Too timid.”

“But he has blood magic,” Sword Man argued. Blood magic was rich folk talk for medicine. “What’re you in for, boy?”

“Hit a guy for calling me out. I never figured it’d kill him, me.”

Sword Man raised a smug brow at Muddy Boots.

A sigh. “Fine. The fat one’s in. Got anyone else in mind?”

“Take me!”

“I’ll go! I ain’t a-scairt of nothing, me!”

The other young prisoners all figured wherever these men were taking them had to be better than the cage full of predators the riverfront had puked up. Brat wasn’t so sure. Getting bad hurt on a stone floor and getting bad hurt on a feather bed weren’t a whole lot different; you just stayed warmer on one than the other.

But there would be another chance to escape outside. A swift kick to a groin or a fistful of mud in an eye and Brat would disappear belowground just like Pretty had.

In all, the armed men only picked three kids to take with them—Brat, Scaredy-Cat, and a skinny boy with crazy eyes who claimed to have blood magic, too. The rest of the pitiful pleas went unanswered.

Brat edged toward Sword Man, the pursuer who’d almost been licked by a simple run through the streets.

There was that ugly smirk on Muddy Boots’s face again.

“Don’t even think about it, kid.” He pulled out a set of jangling chains.

Brat made sure Muddy Boots had an undertow of a time getting those shackles on.