Pausing to pray for guidance was a mistake.

I figured that after breaking a branch across the guy's head, then stabbing him a good six inches in the gut, he wasn't going anywhere.

I figured wrong.

When I hesitated, he punched behind himself with one fist and caught the girl in the cheek. The blow flung her away and she yelped and the guy--the guard--lunged at me from his knees.

There wasn't any room to dodge, but I tried. I wriggled to the side but his hand closed on my tunic so I spun back to him and stabbed again, into his shoulder and chest, once-twice-thrice, little woodpecker stabs that made him roar in pain ... but didn't make him release my tunic.

He reeled me closer then a forearm like an iron bar caught me in the hip and sent my stick flying and me sprawling. Onto my stomach. On the floor. My mind whirling, my panic ... well, huh. I felt no panic.

I felt an icy calm that seemed to slow time.

When I crawled away from him, I felt his hand smack my bare ankle, scratching for purchase. So I rolled to the side to break his grip and he gasped and swore and somehow rose into a half-crouch, his eyes burning with rage and he threw the chair at me.

I hugged the ground and the chair shattered a foot from my left ear, legs and slats bursting across the room.

The guard swore and I scrambled sideways, trying to stay away from his killing embrace. Nothing in room except the one table and the now-broken chair, the mattress and the clotheslines. And in my cool tranquility I considered wrapping a clothesline around his neck but that required too much time, too much planning, too much skill...

Wait.

I had skill.

I heard the dim echo of a hard-won skill inside my chest. My mind didn't remember but maybe my body did, the way I knew how to talk and run and bleed.

I just needed a chance. A few seconds without him a hair's breath from killing me.

On my feet again, I danced to the side and he followed. No room to maneuver! He tagged me hard enough on the head that the world flickered and the room spun and I swayed there, standing in place like easy prey--until the girl whacked him in the calf with a piece of broken chair.

The impact sounded like a butcher tenderizing meat.

The guard howled and looked down and saw her there, tiny beneath him, hitting him again, and something must've caught fire in his mind because he forgot all about me.

He stomped at her. If he connected he would've broken her but she rolled desperately away, her hair fanning and her skirt bunching. He followed her, not fast but with a terrible inevitable strength, and then he stomped again.

He missed again, too, but that time she rolled into the wall. She hit hard, her breath coming in quick gasps. She whimpered and tried to push herself into the stone, to escape from her own death, but there was nowhere to run.

The guard looked down at her. His head bowed low, spittle dripping from his open mouth. He made terrible noises and she shrunk away, then he lifted a huge boot over her chest. To break her ribs and drive the fragments into her heart and lungs.

My dizzy spell faded enough that I leaped from the table.

I didn't weigh much compared to the guard. I was nothing but gristle and bone, yet every ounce of my weight was focused on a single point: on the spear tip of my bent elbow as it drove into the back of his neck.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The blow fell hard, the blow fell true, and the guard dropped like a sack of donkey dung. He sprawled halfway across the girl and I landed hard on my knees then flopped forward and nearly brained myself on the floor. Which had not been the plan.

I lay there, still dizzy, still unsteady. Trying to marshal my very last ounce of strength but not abe to move, not yet.

The girl shoved frantically at the guard's unmoving bulk. The boy--the dull-eyed boy, who didn't look so dull anymore, his gaze burning with anger, was already dragging the guard off her, tugging at one of his outflung arms.

I ignored the pain in my knees and half-crawled, half-rolled across the floor for the broke piece of kindling. The cold part of my mind told me the guard was no longer a threat but I planted the stake into his back with all my might before I collapsed to the floor.

My breath came in panting gasps. Whatever I'd once known, this body wasn't trained for it. This body wasn't strong. And part of me was genuinely a kid: I just wanted to cry.

The boy did cry, quietly. Checking on the girl as tears rolled down his cheeks. I respected him for that. A show of honest emotion. That felt to me like a show of real strength, the right kind of strength.

The two of them spoke quietly. Not whispering, but I was too shaken up to listen. Too busy trying to calm my breath, to steady my hands now that the icy battle-calm had thawed into sticky fear.

After a while, I pushed to my feet, moving like an old person. Still woozy from that clip to the head. I shuffled to the guard's body. He was so motionless. Just a big slab of stillness. And he stank pretty badly, that was new.

I braced myself, then managed to squat beside him without fainting. What a hero. I rummaged for his belt pouch. Embossed leather, with some kind of woven wire to stop a cutpurse's razor. Nice and heavy, fat with coin.

Except my fingers were too shaky to untie the knot or the clasp or ... I couldn't tell what, exactly, because my eyes weren't quite focusing. So I rummaged for his knife and used that to saw the cord away. Which took a short forever. But eventually, I enjoyed the heft of the pouch in my hand as I recovered my strength.

Then I stood and staggered toward the door.

"Wait," the girl said.

I didn't. I opened the door and--

"Hide the belt pouch!" she told me.

Oh! Right. That wasn't exactly subtle, a kid who looked like me walking around holding a bulging pouch in one hand. So I closed the door and turned back to her and didn't know what to say.

"You have two choices," she told me, and her voice was shockingly steady. "Take his coin, take whatever you want, but at least put it in the pouch we stole and--and grab clothes from the line here so you don't look so much like ... " She gestured at me. "Like that."

I leaned against the wall to catch my balance. "Yeah. Thanks."

"'Thanks?' You're thanking me?"

"I owe you ..." the boy told me, then choked up. "We owe you everything."

"So don't ask him to let us pay him back, Erni," the girl told him. "Don't put him on the spot like that, okay?"

"O-okay," Erni said.

"Right." The girl turned to me. "And number two, your second choice? Come home with us. We'll get some food into you, and some rest. Maybe even a pair of shoes. And then we ... we'll see."

I tried to smile but it felt more like baring my teeth. "The City Guard is going to riot when they find this guy dead, yeah? Best if we go our own ways."

"In that case, Hadima bless you." The girl eyed me. "Or ... or maybe Kayve."

Of the thirteen gods, Hadima was easily the most popular. Her domain included farms and families, health and home. At least half of the population honored Her, the peasant's gentle goddess, most highly--so of course She was the one the girl mentioned. But Kayve? He was the god of bloodlust, of mindless joy in battle, and hearing the girl say His name surprised me. What had she seen in me?

"You too," I told her after a moment, and looked for the empty coinpurse.

Then the room darkened, like a stormcloud passing overhead on an otherwise clear day. My knees weakened. The wall scraped my back as I slid to the floor. My vision blurred and my mind only caught glimpses of time passing.

The boy searched the body.

The girl drew in blood on the wall.

In the dim alley, I leaned against the boy, my arm draped around his shoulders.

In another street, my other arm was around the girl's shoulders too.

My feet dragged and my head hung low, watching the cobbled street. The pattern of stones blurred in my vision, the lines between them wavered and then turned black and--and then turned into a different pattern.

Long lines between polished wooden planks. Nice wood. A good, dark wood.

I was lying on my back, looking up at the planks. I didn't understand how until the girl's face appeared above me. The planks were some kind of ceiling, and the girl was looking down at me, smiling warmly.

"I'm Josie," she said. "Well, Josefinia but everyone calls me Josie. What's your name?"

I opened my mouth to tell her, and I realized that I didn't know. So I just looked at her clear dark eyes and didn't know what to say.