They gut Troud's parents like sick dogs and throw her out on the street. There are a lot of orphans in the Fades, and you even see them in the gutters of other places. Skinny waifs staring haunted eyes at merchants and soldiers make Ismayah City more beautiful. The city is a song, breathy and lofty.
The only song she knows is her own, and right now it's discordant, all harsh chords and sudden silences.
She lands on jagged cobblestones, cutting her palms open. She's not fifteen years. Her song is of high hats and pounding low notes. A sax can't contain itself and erupts in long bars, and she cries for that, that her song isn't sad enough. Her tears sprinkle the dark stones, mixing with her blood's thin rivers. The worst thing is for the passerby of Isyamah to ignore her. So they do.
They do even though these are the Fades, and everyone in the Fades should look out for each other, because they don't have anything else. The Fades, the dead centre of Ismayah, bled its wealth out slow to the outer circles until there was nothing left. Then the outside built walls around the Fades, to dam the city's flow.
Homes in the Fades are built spiked out of dark stone, at angles that hurt your eyes. In the light of the Bright Circle, they cast violent shadows that split whoever they fall onto into dark and light halves.
Sometimes they are hollow caves, carved into walls separating the Fades from Ismayah. These homes are afterthought, carved into structures that exist first to do other things. Her family's hollow held overflow tubes behind it, which stretched past east of the Fades to pour glistening sewage out of the city. Troud used to scrape mold off the stone with her fingers, pressing them together to feel the grit hiding under the fuzzed spores. No matter how much she scraped, there was always mold, and her parents cried like their eyes held overflow ducts too.
She uses her bleeding palms to push herself up so her back is straight. The Wolves are coming out. The Wolves are the city's guard. On their chests they bear the death's head of Lupin, the Edged God, long fangs white crescents.
The crescents look like the Pale Sliver. The Pale Sliver is all there is in the night sky. Her light is faint, ethereal, so if you're not home at night it's hard to find your way back. She will not be home tonight. The guards are locking the door.
One is smoking a silverlight. She sees it and for a nano moment her sorrow and fear is cut through by anger. The Wolves think the Pale Sliver is the Edged God in his most beautiful aspect. They're wrong. The Sliver is a lady. Everyone in the Fades is pale, but only the girls can be silver white. These guards are men and tanned dark by easy living.
He drops his silverlight and it flutters to the ground as his friend twists the lock violent. It gleams in the black cracks in the stone. Then he moves in front of his friend, his mouth a set line trying to become a sneer. He thinks he's cool and trying to act that way. He's seen the black and white sky songs, but he doesn't understand. Troud doesn't know about the sky songs, but she knows there's something to understand.
He takes two long strides and pulls his leg back. Terror bleeds into her from the spaces behind her teeth. They chatter as she throws herself to the side. He keeps his leg raised. He was faking her. She snarls and picks herself up and scampers away. Her toes slip between cracks and push off for speed. She dodges the hooded merchants, some freezing in politeness, some swearing. The Wolves call out taunts. She misses a step as her head turns to catch the sound. She hits an upturned stone and leaves the ground and screams as arrowpoint stones call to her.
But she hits flesh instead, four arms thin as hers, but longer, cradling her to the ground with graceful folding bodies. She goes oomf as a curved elbow presses into her stomach, softening her trajectory. Then she's on the ground, pressed over skin and bones, with her right side covered by another.
The person covering her hops to his feet. She feels the wind of his movement more than his weight's absence.
But the person she's on is pushing her up, hovering her to the ground beside. Then he's getting himself up himself, flowing like a waterfall in reverse. The one to her right is moving around her. She turns automatic to track him. When she stops she realizes that they're even spaced in front of her, one to her left and one to her right, three steps away from her. They're a triangle together.
Between them an invisible wall separates them from the people of Spirit Square. They pass behind it, knees raising to step light over cobbled graves. Spirit Square was built over mounds of bodies and was never leveled out right. Here and there it rises in edges and dips in creases. You have to watch your step, forget yourself and focus on your path. It's hard for Troud to focus. She's not fifteen years.
None of them are watching, sneaking glances, not even trying not to.
"So you're an orphan now," the boy who pushed her off says. Skeleton slender like his friend. His hair is brush cut close so she can see his scalp in the burning light of the Bright Circle. The other is watching her through dirty waves.
She lets her tears talk for her.
"It's sad," he says. "Your whole world is gone. Now you're lost and alone in the Fades, and everyone wants you dead."
He crooks his neck. "You died with your parents, though. You're an orphan in the Fades, which makes you not real. You don't have an identity anymore. You're ethereal." Someone walks behind him, cut only by a sliver.
"In the Fades we call ourselves Etherics," he says, nodding at his friend. The friend grins, teeth glinting in the Circle's light. "We make the best of bad scenes."
She blinks. The heat is burning her tears away. Her skin sings fire as they go.
"So deal," he says, "and live better. Let's get out of the bright."
