CHAPTER 1

“We’re gonna turn your skin to belts, Malco!”

They keep shouting it, over and over, as they pass my hiding place. Staves whack the sides of trees and the rocks lining the path, a demonstration of what they want to do to me.

But I’m snug in my bush. Bago and his pack can waste all the time they wish going up and down the path and yell until they're blue in the face – I’m not budging. Bushes can be quite comfortable once you get past the prickling. What’s more, I know they’re getting more nervous with every minute they’re forced to spend outside the safety of Reach, so it’s only a matter of time before they give up the search.

I sigh. What had it been this time? Someone threw something, or maybe I was seen walking on the wrong path. It doesn’t really matter. Not my smart mouth, not his distasteful stink; between me and Bago there’s only one real point of contention, and that’s…

“…Katha the wild bitch!” Bago yells.

I frown. Here’s the source of our disagreements. Among all those in Reach who whisper and mutter about Katha, Bago's family counts the loudest voices. And for some reason that I’ll never understand, Medrein, my father and the village chief, tolerates their crap, which only emboldens them, and inevitably, after sometimes weeks of uneasy peace, he’ll say something…

“…I’ll find her after we’re done with you…”

Something that stings particularly hard, or rubs me too far the wrong way, and then I will say something…

“…give her a Malco-belt as payment…”

And when I’m getting beat up later, after a series of events such as the present one, I won’t be able to shake out a particular feeling…

“…and bend her over a barrel!”

The feeling that Bago knows me entirely too well.

“Hey,” I call out. I stand and awkwardly step away from the bush, get my foot caught in a root, and manage to keep upright by a miracle. “Looking for me?”

They’re farther along the path. A few more seconds, a couple more taunts endured, and I’d be on my merry way back to Reach. I shouldn’t have done this. Really shouldn’t have done this. Even though we’re broadly the same age, I’m the shortest and skinniest of them all. Bago is a monster at sixteen, twice as wide and more than a head taller than me.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Malco,” Bago says. He’s smiling, walking leisurely down the path to meet me.

I don’t answer. I made it all the way to one of the better views of the valley, right at the edge of the dangerous part of the forest, before they caught up. I was planning on hiding out here while they got tired chasing their own tails. It’s a nice spot. The trees shake slightly in the cool breeze and guard us from the summer heat. It’s a beautiful day for a beating, at least.

Bago steps forward with his staff resting easy on his shoulder as the rest of his pack surrounds us. His buddies holler from the sidelines like a pack of howling lapdogs cheering for a particularly ugly goat.

“You’ll notice I’m unarmed,” I say, tentatively.

His smile broadens.

“That’s all right,” Bago says. “I’ll try not to let it bother me.”

“Speaking of bothering,” I say. “I was just planning on hiding out, but the second you went past the smell got too much. You really need a dip in the river, buddy.”

It’s a low blow. Mago, Bago's father, breeds horses he sells to the Godtouched, and his son spends his days knee deep in manure. But the sting lands. Bago’s neck and cheeks grow bright red and I see two of his friends exchange a look.

“Since you were so obliging as to step up for your beating—”

A beating which is more and more starting to look like broad daylight murder.

“—you can have this. My treat.”

Bago throws his staff to my feet.

“A little big for me,” I comment as I pick it up. The understatement gets a snicker from the audience. Bago’s staff is nearly twice as tall as I am.

“Tough luck, for sure,” he says as he takes a staff from a kid in his entourage.

I find myself out of verbal jabs. He has his staff and I have mine, and there’s little else to be said. Our audience clamors when Bago steps in, staff raised.

The first hit rebounds off my clumsy parry and makes my teeth clatter. He reaches with an open hand, but I dodge away. Bago swings low, I jump, then thrust forward and glance off him, though if I cause any pain, he ignores it. We dance around each other. It’s not the first time we do this. I know his strength, I know that I’m not his match, and that any of the boys watching could put me down on my butt. It doesn’t make it any easier to stomach the fact that I'm too slow to catch Bago's next swing. It rebounds off my shoulder, dragging an undignified yelp out of me.

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“Your foundling whore isn’t going to save you this time,” Bago spits.

“You sure?” I ask, a little winded and feeling my arm grow warm and numb. “She could be watching you right now. Look where you are.”

I’m joking, but I manage to make it sound ominous. Bago doesn’t take his eyes off me, but the rest of his pack quiet down a little. Good. Few people in Reach like these hills. Here is where you stop finding deer and rabbits and start running into beasts with levels. Shoulder-height boars, silver wolves, venomous snakes as thick as my arm. Right now, I’m glad for the hint of danger. If the tagalongs grow nervous, they’re likely to lose their interest. And Bago is above everything a man of his crowd.

He moves in. Swing, swing, thrust. A series of rattles as I defend, but the thrust catches me on the side and takes the air from my lungs. All I can manage next is a quick jump back to evade what Bago thinks is a victory strike. His staff hits stone hard enough to chip it.

I raise a hand, doubled down, wheezing. The boys laugh, but I’m more serious than I’d like to be. Every time Bago lands a hit I know I’ll be feeling it the next day, while mine seem like motherly caresses. The issue is the same as it always was. My scrawny body can’t keep up with their oxen physiques.

“Hurt already?” Bago asks, resting against his staff. “Think Malco’s had enough, guys?”

They yell out again, a resounding ‘no!’. I let them have their fun while I catch my breath, check the tenderness of my ribs, and try my best to look better than I feel.

“Had enough, Mally?” Bago purrs.

“Yeah,” I rasp. “Enough of you.” I uncoil like a snake, bringing my staff around in the air. It’s too big and heavy for me, yes, but that means that, under the right circumstances, a good swing will pack a punch. And Bago just let his guard down.

The staff slaps surely against the side of my opponent’s knee. He yelps as he falls, and I know he’s going to remember this one in cold nights to come.

I follow it up with a series of strikes. Back, side, arm. Thought they all land squarely, Bago seems to feel them less and less until finally he’s standing again. I strike once more, and suddenly his hand closes around my staff like a vice and yanks it out of my grasp. It falls somewhere in the weeds. When the swing comes, I am defenseless. It sweeps the legs from under me, and I fall down face first.

I’m blinded by pain. I feel, more than I see, that Bago is lifting his staff in the air for his favorite overhead finisher.

And then the world grows quiet. The boys stop laughing. My head hasn’t cracked open like an egg, so this seems like definite improvement, until I look up and see what changed.

I groan.

Katha is standing between me and Bago, facing him. It should be no contest. She’s wiry and tall, but he’s a giant among men. She’s unarmed, and with her simple dress Katha looks the furthest thing from threatening. And yet Bago doesn’t advance. He doesn’t knock her out of the way. He can barely look at her. Instead, he lowers his staff and glowers at me over her shoulder.

Once, I was like him. Before Katha became my best friend, I was the worst of her bullies, half-terrified of her and the mystery of her origins. It disgusted me that my parents had adopted her, their insistence that I treat her like a sister. I grew out of it. But even after all these years, vague, threatening difference, is still enough to stop a bull like Bago in his tracks.

I stand up slowly. The situation has moved from exhilarating to tense, and therefore dangerous again. And the only person who appears not to sense this is Katha.

“Out for a late-afternoon walk?” she asks like she just ran into them in the village.

Nobody answers. Their eyes travel from the treetops to the ground in front of them, and never dare to settle on Katha for too long.

“It is a very nice day,” she continues, unperturbed. “But I do wonder, what are so many of Reach’s young men doing so far from the village on this day of all days. Aren’t you afraid you’ll miss the celebrations?”

A mutter courses through the group, suggesting that indeed it was getting late, and wouldn’t it be better if they started out now?

Bago is the last one to cave in, eyes still focused on mine. He points his staff at me.

“Lucky again,” he says. “But not forever.”

And then he limps around me and Katha and continues down the path. Just like that, the spell is broken. The tension dissolves and the rest of the group follows behind their leader.

I look at Katha and she at me. She bites her lip, smiles, and I know what's coming. I almost ask her not to do it, but what the hells. They deserve it. She lets out a cry. It’s something between a bird’s shrill and a ghost’s keen, which I’ve never been able to reproduce. However she does it, it seems to poke something deep and ancient in the back of my neck. It’s the cry of a something alien and predatorial, something that could be anywhere around us, hidden just behind a bush or in the boughs of a tree. The effect on our neighbours is immediate. Among cries of alarm they dart down the path, pushing each other out of the way. Bago is the last one in line, not running, but definitely hobbling faster than he was.

And I know it isn’t over. Not with Bago, not by a longshot. But it is over for now, it is over today, and I can’t help but feel myself relax. Only for a moment, though.

“You saved me,” I say. “Again.”

Katha turns to me. Her eyes, full of mirth, make her stand out in any crowd, and her hair is so blond as to appear white. It stands out among Reach's blacks and browns like a silver coin in a basket of coal.

“Well, you looked like you needed a hand,” she says, a hint of mockery in her tone.

“Yeah, yeah. Teaches me to play the gallant knight.” I stand, refusing her hand, even though my knees still feel wobbly. She rolls her eyes at me.

“You know I don’t want you to defend me, Malco,” Katha says.

“Well, I don’t want them to speak about you the way they do.”

"I don’t care about what they say. I don’t want you getting hurt because of me.”

“Guess I should stop, then.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

We don’t make eye contact for a while. I walk around, stretching my limbs, massaging the pain away, and remember to collect Bago’s staff where it fell among the bushes. It’s a rare day when I get away from one of our confrontations with any sort of prize.

There’s a flower I don’t recognize sprouting next to the staff on the ground. I don’t think it has any medicinal applications, or Dala, my mother, would have told me about it. It’s past its prime and a little wilted, but beautiful all the same. I pick it, then walk back to Katha, supporting myself on the staff a little more than I actually feel the need to, playing the sympathy card, and extend the flower.

“Thank you for saving me,” I say. “Friends?”

She rolls her eyes again before accepting the flower and placing it behind one ear. “Friends.”

It’s always like this with Katha. Since we became close, there is no row that lasts long. Wounds are patched over in moments. Arguments end when we can no longer conceal the size of our smiles. That makes exactly one friend I’ve managed to hold onto throughout the years. To be fair, she’s also the friend that made it impossible to maintain a friendship with anyone else. We only have each other, and that suits us both fine.

“I really didn’t set out to save you," Katha adds. "Dala was looking for you. The Godtouched are about to arrive.”

Oh, crap.