Twelve-year-old Carmen has a secret: she can talk to her cat Grim. But the powerful Brotherhood has banned pets, and the penalty is death.
Ward is the most wanted boy in the world. The only thing standing between him and the hangman's noose is maste...
It was as she made her way home from school the following day that Carmen spotted the boy.
She was almost home when she saw him. He was moving along the shadowy side of the street, stopping occasionally to consult something in his hand, heading east along Croakumshire Road, the houses of Parliament rising to the right and the Residential Quarter approaching on the left. There were few people out in this part of the city on a Saturnday afternoon, and Carmen stayed a block back so the boy wouldn't see her.
A block short of the city's edge he stopped and looked up at a street sign, then down at the thing in his hand again. This was the poorest part of the Residential Quarter. The buildings were newer than those to the west, but they had been built cheaply, and because the State was responsible for repairs they were already run down. The lamplighters either forgot these streets or went home early. Carmen knew this neighbourhood. After all, she lived here.
The area had one advantage. On a fine day Carmen could look out her bedroom window to where the fields dropped to the river Yar as it passed beneath the Wall of Nod and meandered away into the strange north. She could see Croakumshire Road leading dusty and straight to the east, rising into the foothills and vanishing, and the purple mountains that rose beyond. She had spent many afternoons gazing out of her first-floor window and dreaming of wild, faraway places.
It had been a week since she had brought Grim home from the Old City. He had been haughty for a few days, but was slowly returning to his old self. Carmen had implored him to stay out of sight, fearing another argument with her mere, but although her parents had surely spotted the fel, neither of them had said a word about him. They simply acted as if he wasn't there. She knew better than to draw attention to it, and strove to ignore Grim too. The only one unhappy with this arrangement was Grim himself. He portrayed indifference, but Carmen knew he loved attention.
The boy turned down her street, but passed her house without even glancing up at it. She had a moment to wonder if it had all been a coincidence, before he veered into the overgrown vacant lot next door.
She found him crouched there, peering up through a gap in the bushes at the first floor window of her own bedroom. She was able to creep right up to him. Some spy, she thought. She had a clever comment prepared:
(most people knock on the door you know)
but before she could speak he had whipped around with surprising speed and grabbed her wrist.
"Let go!"
He did, suddenly. "You crept up on me," he said, his face scarlet.
"I crept up on you?"
He glanced towards the street.
"Spose you're going to run off then?" she said.
"No."
"Who are you?"
"Ward."
"Is that all?"
"I don't have any other name."
"You're a liar."
"Am not." The boy's face was still red, but with anger now. Carmen didn't think he had any right to be angry.
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