“Sshhh,” she murmurs as she pulls me down next to her. “Breathe silently and don’t move. At all.”

Despite my confused look, I settle into an easy crouch and place my hand over my mouth to indicate that I understood her. She rolls her eyes. Not for the first time, I wonder how I ended up in this situation - dressed in a commoner’s clothes, hiding in a dark alley with a girl my own age who’s probably never even seen a proper bed or worn clothes that hadn’t already been worn to shreds. Not to mention that I don’t even know why we’re hiding.

I hide an eyeroll of my own and tell myself to wait patiently. She said she’d show me why those on the streets don’t trust the government. I don’t know what that has to do with hiding behind empty crates and half-filled sandbags, but I have a feeling she’ll bolt if I make any noise right now. I frown and look around, trying to catch the eyes of my best friend, but all I can see of him is the hemline of his pants peeking out from the side of a tarp. She nudges me.

“No matter what you see, never look directly at anyone,” she breathes, her mouth mere millimeters from my ear. “If your presence here gets us caught, I swear to you, you will never see another glimpse of any of us. Do you hear me?” I gulp and nod really carefully. “Good. Then watch, and try to learn something.”

Did she say caught? Are they doing something illegal? I’m so focused on my thoughts that I startle a little at the sudden sound of footsteps, then frown abruptly. Those sound like… There’s no way.

Contrary to my thoughts, it really is a guard platoon. I mean, I knew they patrolled this area, but why would the alley-dwellers have to hide from the military? I watch in silent confusion as they come to a complete halt in the small clearing between the buildings.

The leader lifts his arm and gestures at the piles of rubbish lying around. “Search carefully, men. Those street rats won’t hide from us much longer.” He spits in our general direction and I flinch as I suppress the urge to puke. His look of disgust as he scans his surroundings only exacerbates my struggle.

His expression morphs into a self-satisfied smirk as his subordinates scatter around the clearing. I notice something, though. Most of the soldiers don’t actually move very far. They’re also giving only half-hearted efforts at searching. My anger with their captain fades a little bit as I start paying more attention to the guards themselves. Tilting my head, I watch the lowest-ranked patrolman find a small girl covered in a tarp and immediately cover her up again. As he steps away, I see one of the older men give him an approving nod. Then I hear a startled cry.

It takes everything I have to turn my head slowly instead of whipping it around. When my eyes finally find the source of the sound, I’m suddenly engaged in a new struggle - trying to hold myself in place instead of rushing across the gap in the buildings. The captain is holding a boy of about nine years in the air by his wrist. “Hahaha! What a dirty little rat I’ve caught. I wonder, what should we do with this one, boys?”

I shudder in disgust along with most of the guards. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my best friend being restrained by one of our guide’s companions. I grit my teeth and pull a small piece of metal out of my pocket. I see a couple of the shadow-dwellers glance my way in concern, but none of them do more than tense as I carefully hold it up to a sliver of light and hit my best friend with a beam of light directly in the eyes. He stops struggling long enough to squint my direction - and then slumps as I signal for him to sit back and watch.

I turn back to the sadistic guard captain and notice that my guide has vanished from my periphery. Where is she? I don’t have to wonder long, though: she’s standing on a rooftop behind the captain, out of his sight line and with the sun opposite her so her shadow doesn’t show. I blink, thinking I must be seeing things. What is she doing? Direct confrontation isn’t her style. She locks eyes with me and I suddenly realize that she’s doing it to make a point, to try to show me something. I force myself to settle in place and focus on learning whatever she’s trying to demonstrate.

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“Hey, you!” She hollers. The captain turns. “Yeah, you, with the fancy flag thing.” That’s not a flag, that’s a plume… ah, whatever. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He growls. “You damned street monkeys! Get down off those buildings now!” Plural? Oh… For the first time, I notice the other shadow-dwellers perched on the surrounding rooftops, clearly following her lead.

“And why should we do that? Like we actually want to end up in whatever torturous mining shaft you metal-heads intend to shove us into,” she remarks. Her words are impressively casual for someone who’s as tense as a drawn bow. “Why don’t you set our cousin down gently, hmm? He’s not harmed anyone.”

The captain snorts. “Ha! You dirty-blooded mongrels don’t deserve to live on our streets. The mines are the only places filthy enough to keep up with your barbaric races! One of these days, someone in the high courts will finally decide they’ve had enough of you, and you’ll all find yourselves wearing collars. Why not start now, a few at a time?” His grin is pure evil as he taunts them. “Looks like your little cousin here will be your senior when that law passes. Ha!”

I’m physically trembling now, the reminder of the look in her eyes as she told me to watch and learn the only thing holding me in place. I risk a glance to the side and suppress the barest hint of a smile at the sight of my friend passed out with a shadow crouched over him. I guess his sense of justice was stronger than his willingness to listen. Hopefully he’ll be more receptive when he wakes up.

I return my eyes to the confrontation before me to find that the situation has changed drastically in the brief second that my attention was elsewhere. The leader is now on the ground, facing off with the captain, and her followers are nowhere to be seen. The other soldiers are all either unconscious or pretending to be, and there’s a faint sense of magic in the air. I blink as I look at my ‘guide’ again. For all that’s pure and innocent in this world… I’ve never seen anyone with that much control!

Her eyes meet mine for a brief second before she smirks at the captain. “Perhaps someday it’ll be you in chains. I’ll be taking our cousin, now, and then you and your patrol squad can go back to pretending that you’re protecting the town, ‘kay?”

He just growls, but she appears behind him and knocks him out with a hard chop to the back of the neck. She catches her ‘cousin’ as he falls, then glances around. As I start to move, she gives a sharp shake of her head and vanishes into the shadows again just as the first of the soldiers start waking up. The street rings with an unnatural silence as the guards gather themselves and their captain. Before they leave, though, I see their lieutenant turn toward the nearest set of shadows and salute. The other patrolmen barely glance at him, so I guess they agree that their captain is… overzealous.

When they’re all gone, she finally turns to look at me. “Well, rich boy? Have you figured it out yet?”

I blink. In all the commotion, I’ve almost forgotten that I had asked her a question in the first place. I stare at her for a moment before blowing out a heavy breath. “I can’t even remember what I asked anymore…” I trail off for a moment. “I’ve learned so much in the last half hour that I can’t even think about it at this point. I need some time.”

She nods amusedly and I wake up my friend. I know he’s confused, but he reads my face and (for once in his life) holds his questions for later. I can feel her watching us as we stumble away, but I can’t think about that now. How… How did this happen? What did I ask her again? What did I just witness?

And most importantly, how did we end up here in the first place?