The thrill of a good steal never failed M'yu. Especially when the evening sun peeked out behind the mountain and the icy wind combed his curly black hair as he ran. The young thief stuffed the stolen linkcard in one of his many hidden coat pockets. The crowd, mostly other street rats and honest folk scraping to get by, parted as he ran. They weren't so kind to his Cap mark. A man in a gold-buttoned doublet huffed and puffed behind M'yu, impeded by the closing crowd at every turn. He shouted at M'yu, then pushed over a kid who stepped in his way.
"Done showing off?" Karsya whispered from a dark alley. Her fiery hair framed pale cheeks red from the ever-present cold. M'yu grinned and ducked in.
Her hands went to her hips. "You could have lost him three streets ago."
M'yu shrugged, sly grin still tugging his lips. "We need to get their attention. What's that make, twenty-seven card thefts in the last month?" He tugged his black beanie over his cold ears. "And the Knights still haven't poked their nose down here."
"Uh-huh. So you didn't just want to run him?"
M'yu spread his hands innocently, then spun around her. Sprinting to the dead end of the alley, he kicked up and vaulted to the top of the snow-dusted wall. He turned, hand held down for her. She sauntered over and took it with a sigh. Even through his gloves, her fingers were warm.
Small though he was, his wiry arms pulled her up easily. Together, they leaned against the roof, her shoulder brushing his. Below, the Cap man he'd stolen from still bumbled across the market square. Two little boys—not any of M'yu's thieves, but friends of the boy who got pushed down—ran low with a bit of rope. It tangled around the Cap's ankles, and the man tumbled to the ice.
Karsya snickered.
M'yu's lips turn down. "They shouldn't have done that."
"What, you'll run them and steal them blind, but you don't have the stomach for a prank?" She flips her hair over one shoulder. "You need teeth, M'yu."
M'yu points as the man picks himself up, blood running out both sides of his mouth. Even from here, M'yu can see quivering rage in the man's shoulders and the burning glare he surveys the Gloamers with. They disperse from the street, no longer quite so eager to get in the rich man's way. "We steal his card, he'll go cry to the Magnate. But we hurt him? He'll want his pound of flesh." The Gloamers had had enough flesh stripped from their skin, and M'yu had seen enough of blood.
Karsya fingered her necklace. It was just a rock she picked up from the street and polished till it shined, not a real gem like the Caps wear, but she treated it as her own personal sign of rebellion. We can have anything they do, she'd told M'yu when she gave him a matching one. We just have to take it.
She bumped his shoulder. "Lighten up. Maybe he'll cry a little harder this time then, and your Knights will finally show up. You still got the lockdown on their stage-house?"
M'yu gave her a sidelong glance. "You act like I haven't been staking it out for weeks." His eyes drifted up to the mountain that left the Gloam community in its shadow. At the top, the Caps lived in their gleaming city, looking down on all the Gloamers below.
"I hear they eat cake," Karsya said, following his gaze, "for all three meals."
M'yu's fist clenched, but his words were light. "It would explain why they're so sour-faced." His eyes cut to her. "They're sick at their stomach all the time."
Instead of the smirk he'd hoped for, her gaze dropped. "Should be," she said, knocking a sheet of ice from the roof, "way they run us." The ice shattered on the pavement below. She stayed fixed on it, a broody storm brewing in her eyes.
"Hey." The storm only intensified. "Hey." He tilted her chin up, first to his eyes, then up to the city on the mountaintop. "It's all about to turn. It's all about to turn, and they'll never see us coming."
She stared at him for a long moment. Her voice dropped. "I'm not one of your lackeys, you know, that you can sell on hopes and dreams."
"Like it isn't your dream too." M'yu reached out and thumbed her necklace. "Up with the innocent, right?"
She rolled her eyes. "And down with the powerful."
Moving to a crouch, he offered her a hand up again. She got to her feet instead, almost as sure as his on the icy shingles, and ran low across the roofs.
A string of expletives drew M'yu's gaze back to the street. The Cap, hair wild and dress shirt stained red, kicked a wagon wheel. Without his linkcard, he had no money, no transportation. He was as helpless as most the Gloamers, helpless as M'yu had been when he left home.
Inside the wagon, a mother and children huddled in fear while the father tried to talk sense to the man. The Cap's hand flew out and struck one of the children. The mother screamed and held her baby closer.
One of the Magnate's brutes walked by, baton tapping against his leg. Rather than intervene, he nodded politely at the Cap and kept going.
M'yu's fist clenched. He leaned toward the roof edge, body tight, ready to jump—
"You coming?" Karsya called over her shoulder.
Lip curled, M'yu turned away. Catching up to her, he pulled a bit of bread he'd bought the morning out of his jacket. They slipped down into another empty alley together, and he handed it to her. "Take this back to our hole."
She scoffed. "And leave you to go to Nightsale by yourself?"
Much better that he go alone than she come with. The security at the local black market ogled Karsya with looks that could rival the slavering Caps'. But M'yu just stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. "You trust Dahnko to look after the others?" He raised knowing brows. "We've been out too long as is."
"You don't have any teeth." She bared hers at him, as if ferocity was the only way to win a fight.
"News to me." He tapped on his not-quite-so-pearly whites, then patted his jacket, where he kept his tools: a knife, lockpicks, witchcandy, and a programmable linkcard he'd stolen off a Cap engineer. "Besides. I've got other things up my sleeve."
"You're gonna get yourself killed someday." Scowling, she tucked the parcel of bread beneath her own jacket, out of the sight of hungry thieves and starving beggars. "Don't forget the truffle beer."
"And the dress." M'yu smirked.
"Like rot you're buying my dress—" The sun slipped behind the mountain, painting her flustered face in shadows.
"I'll get something you'll like." M'yu clapped her on the shoulder. "I promise."
"You don't even know my size!"
M'yu had spent the last two years providing everything for everyone—food and cough syrup and coats and boots and clothes. He knew all their sizes, not the least of which Karsya's. He gave her a mock salute and darted off into the dark streets of the Gloam.
The earlier bustle of the streets was quickly dissolving. Women swept gaggles of children under their arms, hurrying into shantyhouses. Men's eyes darted at alleyways as they walked. Pickpockets hunched their shoulders and slipped into places unknown. M'yu breathed in their fear and grit his teeth. It won't be like this forever, he promised.
The Nightsale was north, but his eyes caught east on the road to his adopted mother's house. Karsya would sneer at him for it, but Karsya also wasn't here. He took the detour.
Shacks loomed lower and lower the further down the roads he went. Broken windows were boarded up against the long winter. Missing shingles left holes in roofs. Walls shifted and sank in the snow, leaving gaps big enough for burglars to slip in through.
The only things that prospered here were places Caps deigned to visit.
On the corner, Mrs. Sliya's bakery puffed constant, cheery streams of smoke from its bright brick chimney. Her neighbors' houses all stood cold. M'yu didn't know what kind of magic she'd spun to earn the patronage of the few Caps that lived down here or visited. What he did know was that she looked more like one of them than one of the Gloamers, what with her painted face and nose in the air. She lived a comfortable life baking delicacies, and her neighbors went without bread.
M'yu flicked his thumb past his front teeth at the bakery, thumbing it off just like any other self-respecting Gloamer.
His mother's house was just around the corner, and he stopped at the street's edge, peering down. She stood in the doorway, shooing in the last of the little ruffians she'd taken in lately. He stayed in the shadows, waited for the door to close. Glancing around, he made sure none of her neighbors were out, then darted down the street.
A single candle lit her window, so he kept his head down and pulled his beanie lower. With quiet fingers, he brushed the snow from the porch and gently laid a second parcel of bread there. M'yu crouched in the shadows, head leaned against the rail. From inside leaked laughter and the clean smoke of the wood he'd brought them last week.
A little nose pressed against the window. "Momma!" a child called. It'd been two long years since M'yu had lived here; he didn't recognize the voice. "Sum' un's at the door."
M'yu startled. Fast as a sparrow, he darted to his feet and down the street. The door creaked behind him, but he just ran.
Jumping a fence, he cut through the Magnate's mushroom fields. Not the witchcandy fields where workers caught the Rot from something as small as a hole in their glove, but the staple foods and expensive truffles. The snow and soil squished beneath his boots. Around him sprawled a fortune that men like his uncle had worked their whole life and still died in squalor.
Chains jangled as he slipped out the back of the fields and dropped to the pavement. Before him rose a trash heap, and M'yu swallowed hard. Dung and detritus piled high over frost-bitten and Rotted corpses. The smell was overwhelming, but his feet rooted themselves to the ground. His eyes flicked over the pile, lying to him that he could still see his uncle in there if he searched hard enough. He even remembered what quarter him and Karsya had carried his body to, but in the three years since, the pile had changed so much, he didn't know anymore.
Eyes burning, he hurried away.
The Nightsale entrance was just around the corner. M'yu ran the back of his hand across his eyes, knocked the loose cobblestone out of place, and slid down the ladder. He nodded at the hired muscle at the bottom. "Evening, Brytus."
The guard just grunted and let him through.
Candles lit the illegal marketplace, busier now in the dark than the Daymarkets ever were in the light. Water dripped from the ceiling of what had once been a sewer.
One merchant hollered prices for witchcandy pinched from the Magnate. His crumbling mushrooms only filled half of their cartons and were quickly snatched up as people with holes in their skin waved their linkcards in the merchant's face. M'yu probed his own sore with his tongue, and it panged.
He wouldn't end up like them. He was careful. He was controlled.
His hand twitched, and he resisted the urge to pat his pocket to check that his bit of candy was still there. He hadn't been a pickpocket this long without knowing that's how you got pilfered.
Instead, he pushed through the waves of people and looked through their wares: knives, art, bruised apples, silk scarves. Not all of it was contraband. Most of it was stolen. What wasn't served as way to launder things that were—like the nicked linkcard in his pocket.
M'yu haggled for the things they needed with the folks he knew he could tease into a grudging smile and a deal. He paid the asking price with the folks he knew would rather stab him than let him talk them down a cent. Every time, he was sure to pull out the card he'd nabbed today and not the engineer's card he'd stolen some time ago. If he lost that, then this whole operation went to rot, and he was back where all these people were.
Hopeless. Scrounging. Bickering. They deserved better.
He leaned on a hodge-podge booth. "Any news from the Magnate?"
The old woman running it thwacked him and put a finger to his lips. "You go around spewing everyone's secrets, boy?" She, like Karsya once had, slaved in the Magnate's house. She looked harmless and frail and had been serving long enough that she'd talked the Magnate's missus into letting her do the buying for the house. Little did they know that she was as spry as a cat and bought for one price before selling here for another.
"My bad." M'yu rubbed his shoulder, eyes roving her stall. Bits of jewelry, candlestick holders, a tube of lipstick. "Where's the dress I asked about?"
"You think I'm crazy enough to steal from the..." Her eyes roved the neighboring stalls and her voice dropped. "The you-know-who?" Her grey hair frizzed around her head as she shook it.
M'yu's head tilted, and a smile he couldn't kill bloomed on his lips. "Mags, don't give me that. You do it every week."
She thwapped him again. "Here." She dragged a box out from under the counter and cracked open the lid. "I got this legal-like. Well, legal for the likes of us, anyway." She cackled, patting M'yu on the shoulder with a heavier hand than necessary.
M'yu peeked inside. The top of a red silk gown with pearl beads and golden brocade shimmered in the candlelight. It was everything Karsya had grown up seeing in the Magnate's house, dressing his niece and daughters, girls with no difference to her other than who they were born to. She wore rags while they wore riches.
"It's great, Mags."
"Like I don't know that." She held out her hand for payment. Not having a linkcard herself, she always traded in goods, and M'yu handed her three of the truffle beers. She cackled, cracking one open and hiding the other two beneath her stall. Wiping her mouth, she held out her hand again.
Sighing, M'yu double-checked there were no holes in his gloves, then fished in his pockets. Where she couldn't see, he broke off part of the witchcandy, then drew it out. She frowned at the damaged cap. "That's it?"
"That's all I got."
With a mutter, she used a dirty kerchief to pluck it from his hand. Leaning across the table, she pulled his ear near. "Capital sent word to His Largeness today. Magnate'll have visitors soon. Knights coming to crack down all the thieving lately." She leaned back, chin jutting out. "Can't say I thought I'd see the day when hoity-toities from the government came a'poking their nose around for the likes of us. Someone musta made some of those pigs real mad."
"Musta," M'yu agreed, mind racing. He blinked at her. "They say when? I need to get my folks off the street while they're here," he lied.
"Tomorrow. They're staying on His Largeness's street. Stay way from there, you should be good." She whistled. "But boy, can you imagine the goodies in those pockets?"
"Take care, Mags," M'yu said, picking the box up. He left Nightsale, steps a little lighter and a little faster than normal.
Because he could imagine exactly what was in those Knight's pockets. Linkcards that could do far more than pay your way and prove your identity. Ones that could do more even than the powerful engineer's card in his pocket.
Tomorrow, M'yu planned to steal a tool from the upper-crust of the government and use it to bring everything crashing down around their heads.
When M'yu made it back to his hideout, he whistled up to his gang. Fifteen feet up, a couple boys poked their heads past the blanket blocking the entrance. M'yu nodded at the goods, and they helped him carry up the beer and food. M'yu scaled the rickety building one handed, dress box tucked under his arm.
Past the blanket door, warm air caressed his face. Kids as young as five sat on patchwork pallets or huddled around the fire, listening to Karsya tell stories. Dahnko, a dark-browed boy not much younger than M'yu, played capture-stones on the floor with a couple other teenagers. They were green recruits picked up just in the last couple months.
M'yu's lips turned down. We need more time. He'd been trying to trick the Capital Knights down here for months, but staring at his ragtag group, it suddenly hit him how unprepared they were.
He swallowed the growing panic and took a deep breath, controlling his breathing same way he did whenever he used the witchcandy. Control, he demanded of himself.
Lania bounded into him, blonde hair bouncing. The twelve-year-old girl threw her arms around him, then stepped back. "How did it go? What did you bring us? What did you learn?"
He ruffled her hair and put on the confident smile they all needed from him. His arm wrapped around her, and he pulled her to the side to address the others. Their eyes stared up at him.
"The Caps will be here tomorrow," he said. "And you know the plan."
Author's Note:
Funny story, this is actually the last chapter I wrote for this story—not the first. This chapter is the first chapter of what will eventually be a new draft that I hope to publish someday. It's still in a rough state, though, so I appreciate any and all feedback!
I also want to let you know, because of that, some of the later chapters might read just a little odd—duplicate character introductions, repeated bits of world-building. Nothing major, and absolutely nothing in the plot has changed. Feel free to mention it if something seems off, though, because the whole draft is subject to change for publication! <3
Thanks for reading!