With his warning spoken, Demroth fell into shadow and was silent. Heed ye this warning, children of Retgar. Do not fall into greed. Remember your vows. Be fruitful of children. Keep flames lit at the altar. Do not give into despair. Let not the final words of the Faceless Betrayer come to pass. May the stars forever shine their light upon us, and grant us peace.
-Retgar’s Saga, Chapter 5
Verses 32-36
24
Whispers of the Fire
“Grab her!” bellowed a man’s voice over the cacophony of sounds filling the street as Ka’veshi citizens from various guilds gathered together to mark the first day of spring.
Bells jingled, horns blared and fire-sand sticks sparkled with crackling pops. Children laughed and dashed through the crowd, women danced with tambourines and men loudly boasted while raising their drinks. Despite his red-faced attempts, one man’s yell hardly made a dent in the throng. Naomi used this to her advantage and dove deeper into the crowd.
She’d been so careful, but all it took was one misstep to have the Hunters on your trail. And now, with a guild war looking all but certain, there weren’t just men aiming to sell you to the Roses. No, they’d sell you to whoever bid highest, and there were far worse places a guildless orphan could end up than the Roses.
Naomi ducked into the shadows beside a cart selling meat-filled sweet buns. She panted, trying to catch her breath as sweat rolled down her neck. For the first day of spring, it felt more like the high end of summer. The scents from the food cart made her stomach growl even as her muscles cramped from running three blocks as fast as her bare feet would take her. Crouched down with hands gripping her knees, she spied a half-eaten, discarded bun laying in the dirt beneath the cart. Without hesitation, she snatched it from the ground and pushed away from the cart to continue swimming through the crowd.
The meat inside the bun was gone, but what remained of the bread was soft and not nearly as dirty as one would think. She hated wasteful, and most likely entitled, people. The bun helped ease her hunger but did nothing to slow her heartbeat. The men, she knew, would not give up the chase so easily.
This would be her third escape in the past week. Finding food and items to hawk had become more dangerous as guild tensions intensified in the city. Every guild had begun drawing their ranks in close and seeking new blood to fill out their numbers. The ‘Battle for the Flats’ had been long forgotten to the ‘Victory at the Crown’ and the ‘Blood Market’ that followed. She could clearly remember that day; the heat roiling off the pavement, the Purple Hand and the Harvesters standing side by side, the Spears marching in with the morning light glinting off their metal armor. Despite their numbers, the Purple Hand and Harvesters had lost the market square that day. After losing the Crown, the Spears had drawn a hard line in the paradunes and took their repayment in blood and territory.
Or, at least that’s what she had heard on the wind. Naomi hadn’t stuck around to watch the actual fighting. She’d taken what food her satchel could carry and slunk off into the shadows without shame. A few Crows had stayed so they could barter the tales of the Blood Market and the thirty or so poor fools who had died in a fight over a couple city blocks and stalls full of half-rotten fodder.
She’d bunkered down on her rooftop after that, for as long as her satchel’s meager contents could last. It bought her two days and three nights of relative peace and quiet, but flaccid carrots and beetle eaten cabbage could only be stretched so far. When her feet touched the ground again, the old man had warned her of the Hunters, how they’d snatched unmarked boys from a washerwoman’s house two alleys over and sold them to the Spears. Those boys were probably washing the barrack floors now, soon to be trained up and marching in shiny armor for sultana and country instead of enjoying what semblance of merriment tonight’s truce had brought to Ka’Veshi.
The sultana herself had declared an armistice during the night’s festivities, vowing that any bloodshed would be met with swift punishment. Hollow words coming from the same royal palace in command of the Spears, and it hadn’t deterred the Hunters. Naomi’s sore feet and winded lungs could attest to that much.
She cast a nervous glance out over the crowd before ducking low again. Perfume made her gag as she pushed past a few Roses on a different hunt of their own. When they weren’t escorting or servicing those who could afford it, the Roses were as skillful a cutpurse as any. They could whisper sweet songs into a man’s ear while emptying his pockets, leaving him none the wiser and feeling foolish once he noticed the money was gone. Not many men would call the Spears on the Roses for theft while their wives looked on. No, better to say they’d lost it while drunk or gambling and take the lesser beating and cold shoulder that followed, and chalk it up to a lesson learned.
Not that they ever learned. Men.
Naomi snorted a laugh as the three Roses latched onto a young man in lavish attire and a few cups on his way to drunkenness. They giggled and he smiled, cheeks as red as his eyes. Naomi just shook her head and pressed on in her search for a shadow to hide in. That man would be lucky to not find himself left
