patrol Ree had ever seen would dress in gray. City patrols believed in bright colors as a way of showing how important they were. The army believed in efficiency. Gray clothes and actually doing their jobs.
Ree held his breath. Soldiers were bad news. He ducked back into the dark before he reminded himself that only his changed sight allowed him to see them. And to hear them, as they drew nearer.
“. . . can’t believe no one’s torn this dump down, even for firewood.”
One of the soldiers laughed. Ree could not see which one. There were five, all burly and looking well- fed.
“Ever’thing round here’s Army property now, anyhow. Ain’t no one was gonna go through all that crap last winter just to steal a bit of firewood off of Army land.”
An icy fist clenched around Ree’s gut. He bit his lip, to avoid calling out. The army was efficient. Efficient . . . at killing hobgoblins and undesirables. At rounding up street rats for the work gangs. “More like they didn’t want to meet the rats,” said another man. “Every brat that’s been picked up in this sector knows the rat hole.”
They moved in close enough to be hidden by the walls of the building. Only the sound of their breathing, the sound of their movements told Ree they were still there and coming closer. And closer.
Ree stayed where he was, frozen. His hands reached back, to find support against a wall that was mostly crumbling rubble. He felt the dryness of plaster against his palms. Surely they would not enter his refuge. This place wasn’t safe. For humans.
For him, and for the rest of the city’s discards, it was home.
“Gah! Filthy vermin!” Squeaks and skittering joined the soldier’s curse as rats fled the noise. A boot scraped in the rubble.
They had come in. Ree’s chest hurt. His mind became a blank space filled with fear. Part of him—the part of him at the back of the mind, the part of him that was not fully human, not fully himself, wanted to run, to hide. But his working mind, his memories, knew better. To run meant to call attention to himself. It meant death.
The soldiers came closer. A spot of light danced erratically on the skewed beams near Ree’s head. One of the soldiers had unshielded a night lantern. Though Ree knew he could not be seen from the ground, he had to fight the urge to run, to escape. To hide in a hole and be safe.
Heart pounding, he waited until the lantern was lowered and its light aimed away from his hiding place. Slowly, he crept out of his hiding place. Balancing his feet on crossed beams, he shifted quickly, feeling the slight shift of the wood beneath him, and leaping before the minimal movement turned to a rolling fall. He skipped and tiptoed and leaped till he reached a hole, barely big enough to let a slim rat-boy through.
Stretching his arms up to the hole, he balanced on one foot. As he lifted himself by the strength of his arms, the log rolled beneath him, and a shower of rubble trickled beneath.
“Up there!” The light of the lantern hit Ree.
Ree pulled himself up, pushing his head through the hole. He had to escape, to get away from the light, away from discovery.
“Outside, quick! It can’t get far!”
Ree squirmed through the gap, pulling himself on his aching arms, feeling the jagged edges of the hole scrape his fur-covered body.
“Quick,” a soldier shouted beneath.
Ree skidded down the sloping roof, twisting around to get his feet under him. A second from a precipitous fall, he managed to jump onto the next building. For a heart-stopping moment, he hung in the air, then his fingers latched onto the wooden eaves of the building across the lane.
His claws extended, instinctively, and dug into the wood. His feet scrabbled for a hold.
He heard shouts behind him. Strength he didn’t know he possessed infused him. He pulled himself onto the steepsloped roof. Scrabbling up it, he panted. His heart hammered in his chest. His throat ached with dryness.
At the top, he held on, his claws fully extended, biting into the age-softened wood. He eased himself down the shingled roof. His chest hurt. He swallowed. Once. Twice, trying to summon moisture onto his panic-parched tongue.
He’d survived. He was alive. But he was alone and unprotected. Where would he go now? The abandoned warehouse had been the closest thing he had ever had to a home. Well, the closest thing since his mother’s home.. . . .
Ree banished memories of a beautiful woman dressed in silks—of perfumed rooms—of her laughing. Her laughter had never been for him. Nor had there been any true joy in it. It had been a sham deployed in the service of the men who paid her. And more often than not Ree was locked out of her rooms while she entertained clients. Until . . .
Ree blinked to clear his burning eyes. His mother’s home had never been home. His mother had never been a true mother. And besides, that was all done and over with. That was the other Ree, the human—the boy. The clawless, furless creature who was as nothing to this Ree. . . .
He swallowed hard, wishing moisture away from his cheeks. He was no weak human. Not anymore. He would not cry. He would think. The warehouse could not be the only available shelter in this town. He had to lose the soldiers, and then he could think about what to do next. At least climbing down to the ground was easy.
Streets here were swept at least once each day by one of the work gangs. With his night vision, Ree could scamper through them as if it were full daylight. He hardly thought about where he was going. And perhaps that was for the best. If he had nothing in mind and just turned on whim, the soldiers would find it harder to follow him. It would be harder to anticipate random movements.
Their voices grew fainter till even his enhanced hearing could hardly pick them at all. Ree breathed deeply. It was working.
As he came to a narrow lane between overarching buildings, he slowed down and looked around. His mad turnings had brought him to one of the tenement districts, where the shabby buildings leaned so close to each other they almost touched above the lane. Black alleys barely wide enough for a hand cart separated the buildings. The sun never reached the mud beneath.
He lifted his feet off the dismal muck and sighed. He needed to pick his way more carefully now. He had already trodden in more than enough to leave a scent trail even a human could follow.
Lifting his foot, he shook off the worst of the filth. These lanes had never been paved. They went from ice in winter to mud in summer, and since the magic died they had more than just mud and ice in them. He had been born somewhere like this. He’d played in these streets—or walked forlornly along them—when his mother locked him out of her rooms.
Ree crept slowly through the darkness, listening, listening. His enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of people in their houses—whispers, conversations, a sleeper turning in bed, a child crying forlornly.
Smells seeped over the ever-present stink of waste. A hint of stew that made his stomach growl, reminding him that he had not eaten since last night. Old beer, rancid as it mingled with older straw in the closed alehouses. Unwashed humans, ripe with sweat from days of work in the summer heat. Acrid smoke from cooking fires. The smells were signs of life in the darkness.
But the streets themselves were almost deserted. This area had once bustled day and night. But since the curfew, no one wanted to risk a crossbow. A shadowed figure in darkness could be mistaken for a hobgoblin, and who was going to say the soldier who fired the crossbow hadn’t thought he was killing a monster? Certainly not the dead person.
The quiet felt wrong to Ree. Ominous. Even though he could never go out among humans again, Ree wanted to know people were still out there on the streets—feasting, fighting, flirting. People on the streets meant things were normal again, and normal meant that people would fear hobgoblins less. And not hunt a young street rat, constantly making his life a living hell.
He walked down the street, listening, listening for the sounds that told him at least people were still living in their houses, still safe. He felt a nostalgia for that life he’d never had, for that life that would never be his—for a family and a quiet snug home, where he could turn in his bed, pull the covers over his head, and be safe.
His ears, reaching for the sounds of normalcy picked up marching. Marching feet. His fur rose in hackles on his neck. Marching footsteps came from farther up the lane. He stopped. Then darted into the nearest alley.
“What the—” someone said, near him.
Panicked, Ree spun to the unexpected voice. A hulking shape loomed out of the blackness as the marching feet grew closer.
