[https://i.imgur.com/PVQZiJI.png]
Skop kept a tight hand on my elbow all the way to Hook Street. His grip was hard and he wasn’t shy about using it. My fingers were tingling, but any time I tried to jerk away, he pinched even tighter and yanked me back like a rich man’s pet wyvern on a leash. He kept up a steady mutter of threats and directions in my ear that all blended together into a single, wordless promise of violence the longer it went on. I kept my face turned as far away as I could without tripping over my own feet – his breath smelled of rot and oysters.
Everyone that saw us averted their eyes and kept moving. Somebody getting frog-marched by one of Ticosi’s enforcers was no business anyone with half a brain wanted a part of here in the Lows. I saw Tomarken chatting up old Lucera at her produce stall and tried to catch his eye. He was one of the street boys I knew best, if not exactly a friend, but I might as well have been made of glass for all he noticed me. Oddly enough, he suddenly found urgent business down another street before Skop and I got too close.
We turned onto Hook Street, and it felt deeply wrong to be on my home turf, the place I knew better than any other, and have this fat bastard stinking up my ear hole. The road had the old-style stone cobbles worn down over who knows how long that felt so much nicer on my rag-wrapped feet than the newer brick pavers the idiot Sun King was making them use now, and the street itself had a lovely little meander to it. Lots of nooks and crannies for an smart grocer to set up a snacking table, or an enterprising card sharp to fleece the merchant folk, or a poor sap like me to hide from danger… if only I could get away from this breathing shit pit and his pinching fingers.
“I’ll give you all the shards in my stash if you let me go,” I said to him when he paused his whispered threats for half a second. “You can tell him I jumped in the river and drowned before we ever got here.”
Skop snorted and shook me by the arm. “You’ll give me the shards anyway, and then we’re going to the pits. They’ll like a pretty little boy like you. People pay good money to watch pottery break.”
“But Ticosi’ll just take my card shards,” I said, thinking fast. “If you say I drowned, you could keep them.”
“You think he wouldn’t find out?” the fat man sneered. “Twenty people seen us walking safe and sound so far, and the river’s all the way over on Sinner’s Row. Why would we even be over that way?”
“I could run once I hand you the shards.” It wasn’t a bad plan, if only the moron would listen. “You chase me over to Sinner’s, I jump in, and now you’ve got enough shards to take one of your cards up to Uncommon.” I couldn’t swim worth a damn, but he didn’t need to know that. Not like he could keep up with me all the way to the river anyway. He’d have a heart seizure if he even thought about running that far.
“He’d find out,” Skop repeated, saying it slow like he was speaking to a simpleton. “It’d take ten times whatever you’ve got in your little stash to get me thinking about crossing the Big Man. Twenty times. Not all of us are stupid like you, kid. Attacking Harker like that? You got a death wish.”
I did have a death wish, just not for myself. At the moment, I was considering adding Skop to the list. “My spot’s over here,” I said, pointing to the alleyway between Teran’s dye shop and the back wall of the butcher’s place.
“Hold on,” Skop grunted. He held out his free left hand, drew a source card from the air, and threw it overhead, where it formed into a pearlescent ball of Order. Then he switched his grip on me to free his right hand, plucked another card out of nothing, and focused on it ever so briefly. The white ball circling his head dimmed and grew dull, and a Guard Soul misted into being next to us.
[https://i.imgur.com/teedhod.png]
The Soul summons was nondescript, a human man in a simple-woven tunic and trousers, with a head wrap obscuring most of his face, cheap, rusted armor protecting his torso, and a short, serviceable sword hanging from his belt. It was impossible to know the rarity of a Soul someone else summoned, so far as I knew, but this one was the very image of a Common Order card. He was standing at ease when he appeared, and he shrugged inside his armor, loosening his sword in its sheath and waiting dully for Skop to tell him what to do.
“No funny business, squirt,” Skop said, shaking a finger and giving me a gimlet eye. “I’m just as happy to watch you bleed out as I am to hand you over to Brin in the arena.” He plucked a second source card from the aether, and a moment later a second white source circled his head opposite the first.
Damn. I should have known he’d take measures against me before we ducked into the alley. All I could do was walk in front of him, trying to look unthreatening as his guard Soul followed us. It hadn’t drawn its sword, and I hadn’t heard him give the summons any command to protect against me, but a single word from the fat fellow would do the trick, and that’d be that. I didn’t like my chances against a sword. Even a Common card could kill a nobody like me.
My little alley was cozy and warm, as usual. The chimney of the dye shop jutted out into the alley, radiating heat and making a little recessed nook behind that was perfect for sleeping, especially since the roof covered the spot. I’d had to fight no fewer than five other kids for it in the last two months, but my Nether source and its ability to strengthen my blows made me king of the hill compared to other defenseless, card-starved orphans.
“It’s there,” I said, pointing to the wall at the back of the alley. “The dark brick with the red spot in the corner. It’s a false front with a hollow behind it.” I darted a look at the guard, who was still standing mindlessly at its ease, waiting for a command from its Summoner. It’s a good three steps away, and that idiot Skop hasn’t told it to keep an eye on me. He’s not being careful. Can I do this? I have to. They want to break me like pottery.
“Get it, then,” Skop said, gesturing.
I backed into my sleeping nook and raised my hands helplessly. I was two steps from my shard stash, and if Skop went for it himself, I’d be four steps from the guard, who was on the far side of him. It might work. “I don’t want you thinking I’m going for a weapon. Please. I don’t want any trouble.”
The heavy man sighed and rolled his eyes, lumbering forward and prying at the fake brick I’d showed him. My heart leapt, and with my right hand I reached behind myself into the other hollowed-out brick I’d made – the one in my sleeping spot, right where I already stood. With my left I pulled one of my Nether source from nowhere, moving my hand as little as possible. Skop was peering into my treasure hole and sticking in his grubby fingers. With a little flick I tossed the card up, and the spiky purple ball of Nether coalesced overhead. I drew on it hard, and my right hand found the little sack I’d filled with lead slag and cobblestone rubble. It made a handy blackjack for a poor boy, and even when I was sleeping it was always within reach.
Rage filled me along with the Nether, and I lashed out just as Skop pulled my pouch of shards free. The heavy end of the little sack connected with the base of his skull, and he pitched forward into the wall, his face scraping against the brick. The shredded bits of a single card puffed up into the air, and he went down like a sack of rocks, his eyes rolled back in his head. I immediately dove to the left, looking for the guard, but as I’d hoped, the moment Skop lost consciousness, his summoned Soul vanished into the same nowhere as the other card I’d beaten out of him. They’d reappear in his Mind Home in a moment now that the fight was over.
The heat of victory flushed me, and I hit the unconscious thug across the jaw with my blackjack, snapping his head hard to one side. “Give me my shards!” I crowed, snatching the bag out of his loose fingers. He couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t care. I’d been scrabbling and scraping for six years for those forty-one shards, and then he’d put his foul, rotten breath on them.
The last of the Nether dribbled out of me, leaving me feeling drained and shaky. What did I just do? Skop was still breathing, but a bad hit to the head could ruin him, and even if it didn’t, Ticosi was going to catch me and use his terrifying Chaos cards to do unspeakable things to me until I died. I’d just made sure I could never show my face in the Lows again.
“Might as well make it count,” I muttered, reaching behind Skop’s right ear. His skin was greasy and slick. I only got wet when it rained, and I was still cleaner than this slug. Ignoring the grime, I pulled a finger along the bare skin, waiting for the feel of a card against my fingertip. Fate and Fortune only let you take one card from someone you’d dueled – nobody knew why – and I wasn’t going to miss this chance.
He jumped under my hand, his eyes rolling wildly. “Help!” he bleated, sounding drunk and confused. “Harker!”
I jerked back and looked around, heart hammering wildly at the thought that the other mountainous enforcer might be creeping up on me. She wasn’t – Skop was barely conscious and talking nonsense. He’d pissed his pants, too.
Cries for help weren’t the most remarkable thing on Hook Street, but if anyone had seen me come in here with Skop, and at least a few had, they might decide to curry favor with the Big Man and intervene. Time to get gone. What am I going to do with some garbage Common Order card anyway?
Sell it, obviously, but it wasn’t worth the risk to try to wrestle it out of him if he was stirring. I pocketed my shards, tossed my blackjack aside, and then strolled out of the alley, doing my best to look casual and unhurried while still covering as much ground as quickly as I could. I had to get back to Capono’s place, retrieve my hidden Rare card, and get gone. Plus, once Skop got back on his feet, I’d have to do it all without any of Ticosi’s people spotting me.
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* * *
I crouched in the shadows and watched the tailor’s shop. I was right on the edge of the posh Hills district, where the city watch passed down each street twice an hour and the gas lamps left only the occasional pool of darkness. It had taken me all day to fetch my card – my heart seizing every five minutes as I imagined Harker kicking the loose cobble aside when she moved the old dead man, or some other random lurker coming across it by accident – but now it was safely stowed in my underclothes, and I’d tracked down Tomarken and beaten the location of his fence out of him. Three times using the Nether in one day left my joints feeling loose and my head on askew. I felt like I could go in any direction, do anything under the sun no matter the consequence, and it was scaring me.
The Watch wouldn’t come back by this spot for another ten minutes, and I was sitting in the garden in front of some posh merchant’s home, screened from its windows by a flowering bush and from the street by a waist-high wrought iron fence. Everything reeked of money, and I regretted not venturing here to pick pockets more often. Sure, it was a good way to end up in the Palace cells if you got caught, but not five minutes past I’d seen some fool strutting past in velvet puff trousers, a purse the size of both my fists together jangling obscenely at his side. It was ten o’clock. The man was practically begging to be robbed.
Across the way, a red curtain fell across the window of the tailor’s shop, and an ornate CLOSED sign got propped up in the corner by a well-manicured hand. According to Tomarken, the red curtain meant it was time for the real business of this particular shop to start. I was fairly sure he’d told me the truth. I hadn’t knocked out any teeth or broken any of his bones. In the Lows, that was as good as asking politely and serving a fellow tea. I waited for the watchman to pass again, gave it another five minutes, and stole across the street. I slunk around the shop to the back door, where I knocked twice up high on the door, three times down low, waited three long breaths, and one final knock right in the center of the door.
An eye slot on the door slid open, and a pair of dark eyes filled the gap. They flicked up and down over me and the eyebrows drew down. “Get running, gutter trash. You’ll scare off the customers.”
I wanted to poke him in the eye, but instead I fished out my troll card and held it up in front of him.
[https://i.imgur.com/wllfyG4.png]
The gold border caught the dim light shining back from the street, glinting beautifully. The man behind the door paused and then gave a little huh sound, and the door unlocked. The portal swung open, and the man filled the doorway, his muscular bulk filling the doorway, a dim silver light silhouetting him from behind.
“Are you the tailor?” I asked.
“I’m the one that’ll break you if you touch anything without permission,” the man grunted. “Don’t forget it.”
With the pleasantries out of the way, the man retreated and beckoned me in. I came into a room small enough that I could almost touch both walls by spreading my arms. A curious lantern that shed a light like pale moonbeams hung over a narrow, severe looking man with thinning brown hair wearing an embroidered jacket of the deepest red. He was twitching black velvet cloth back from glass cases that ringed the room on three sides. There were two tall, narrow cases, one standing in each back corner, that he did not uncover. In the lunar glow I could see the outlines of dozens of cards displayed within the bared cases. My fingers itched. So much power and wealth all in one spot.
“You have ten minutes,” the thin man said, drywashing his hands and looking down his nose at me. “Then you leave.”
I frowned. “You make people buy and sell in ten minutes? I can’t even look at all these cards in that time!”
“I’m making you leave in ten minutes, and I’m only giving you that much because you’re carrying a Rare,” he said. “Your time has already started.”
I suddenly felt the minutes slipping away. “I want to trade my card.”
The man held out a thin-fingered hand and said nothing. I wasn’t about to just hand it over; I held it by the edges and held it face-out toward him. He quirked an eyebrow at me but didn’t complain. He merely pulled a pair of reading spectacles out of his pocket and leaned in, peering at my treasure.
“Hmm,” he said. “A decent summons. Trolls of this size and cost don’t often have the attack bonus I’m seeing. What’s your source?”
“Nether,” I said.
“Really?” he said, eyebrows high. “Highly unusual. What else?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a sigh.
He shook his head and shared a glance with his bouncer, who was lounging in the corner. “Don’t waste my time, young man.”
“I’m not,” I growled. “I’ve tried Order and each of the four Elementals. I can’t take any of them.”
He rubbed his chin. “So your soul card is Nether, then?”
I wasn’t about to get into that story in the time he’d given me. “Yes.” For all I knew, it was. I had no memory of my soul card, no matter how much I wracked my brain.
His eyes flicked ever so briefly to the tall, cloth-covered case in the right corner and then back to me. “As far as Nether goes, I haven’t got anything useful for you.”
My heart sank. “Are you sure?”
He spread his hands. “Cards from the Demon Realm don’t grow on trees ‘round here, boy. I have to keep my little shop quiet unless I want to start paying the Sun King’s ruinous trading fees, so my reach remains short. I do have some very nice neutral Relics that might be of interest, though. What are you looking for?”
It felt like the walls were closing in on me. “I need to be able to protect myself.”
He sniffed. “Of course you do.” He reached into the rear of one of the cases and pulled out a card, holding it out toward me. As if to mock me, he did as I had done, holding onto the card and forcing me to peer at it from an awkward angle. A solid silver border glinted in the lantern’s starlight glow.
[https://i.imgur.com/hCXz0KH.png]
I wanted to snatch it from his hand and run out the door. A one-attack Relic was next to useless – and it was ridiculous for such an underpowered item to have Overkill, which allowed any excess damage to pass through a Soul to the Summoner – but for someone using Nether to power their blows, the damage would stack. If I’d had this in my hand when I attacked Harker this morning – was that really just this morning? – I’d have dished out just that extra bit of hurt and she wouldn’t have gotten back up. It was perfect for me.
Time crunch or not, I knew enough not to let on. “Can I look at some of the others?”
The tailor’s bloodless lips puckered unpleasantly. “No.”
I gestured around. “Look at all of these. There’s got to be something else–”
“Not for you,” he said primly. “I want you gone, boy. You stink, and if anyone important sees you mucking about my place, they’ll start asking questions. If you want the card, we can trade. If not…” He beckoned to the muscled man in the corner, who came and stood behind me, breathing down my neck.
“Fine,” I said. “The Relic plus what else?”
The tailor feigned ignorance. “Else?”
“I’m handing you a Rare,” I said, blood rising in my veins, “and you’re trying to scoot me out the door with an Uncommon. I may not be a merchant, but I know a bad deal when I see one.”
He smiled thinly. “You are welcome to take your custom to any of the registered shops about town if you prefer.”
He knew I couldn’t. A kid like me, showing up with a Rare? I’d end up in chains and the card returned to the Sun King’s repository.
“Another Relic added in, then,” I said. “A source multiplier. Those aren’t hard to come by.”
“For someone else, maybe,” he said. “But you either stole that card or killed for it, and I don’t like you. Two minutes.”
Desperation rose in me. He had me over a barrel, and he knew it. “Money, at least. The hammer and two crowns and I’ll be on my way.”
He scoffed. “Have you spent too long staring at the King’s sunrise celebrations? Your brain is addled. Five silver clips.”
“Five clips and ten Common shards,” I said. It was a rotten deal, but I wouldn’t get a better one.
He just held out his hand, and with no small amount of trepidation, I laid the Rare troll card in his palm. In return, he handed over the Hateful Hammer. Before he could take it back, I pressed the card against my head behind the ear.
I’d never gotten my hands on a neutral Relic before, and I had no idea what it felt like for a card to be stored in my Mind Home. There was a flash of cold behind my ear, and I felt the card dissolve out of my hand. I had a sensation almost like swallowing a bite too big for my throat, except it was in the side of my neck. And then…I could feel it inside me, fluttering about my mind like a moth around a flame. It was like having a friend floating inside me. I loved it immediately. I knew intuitively that I could hold out my right hand and draw the card back into existence whenever I wished. It was mine now.
“Beiron, be a dear and get this little urchin his coins and shards,” the tailor said, pointing to a shelf high on the back wall. The bouncer brushed past me, reached up to a high shelf for a metal box, and as he turned, he bumped into the side of the tall, velvet-covered case. The black cloth fell aside, revealing a narrow display with many levels, with space for only one card on each shelf. My eyes latched onto one immediately, and my entire body clenched. It was a royal purple above and below, and its border was made of purest faceted ruby. I’m looking at an Epic card. I never in my life dreamed I’d see such a thing.
[https://i.imgur.com/haaIWU2.png]
My mouth went dry, and my insides yearned. It was a Nether card, I knew it instantly. It spoke to me. I had to have it.
The tailor tsked and quickly covered the tall glass case, throwing an annoyed glance at his employee. The bouncer, totally unaware of what had just transpired, shoved five silver coins and a small bag into my hand. “Time’s up, friend. You can walk out or I can throw you.”
Seconds later I was back on the street and slipping into the shadows. The smart thing to do was to get myself to the docks and use those five silver clips to buy passage to Charbond or the Pax Crossroads. The number of hours I’d keep breathing here in the capital could be counted on both hands, maybe on one. Ticosi would never let my defiance go unanswered.
I settled back into my garden hiding spot and watched the tailor’s shop. I’m going to leave. It’s the only option.
But there’s one thing I have to do first.