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James Clay laid on the thin wool blanket, staring up at the ceiling as winter sunlight filtered in through the cracked window. Sleep had eluded him once again. Stig's words from the previous week haunted his days and nights.
"For your outstanding bill."
After the bar owner's unannounced visit to his hovel of a home, James had decided enough was enough and forcibly confined himself to his bed on the floor. A week of withdrawal was not nearly enough. His fingers twitched for a glass of whirl, but his vow to never taste alcohol again remained firm.
For someone who had been raised on false promises, keeping his own came naturally. He saw for himself what could happen to those who did not. Yet with all the will James Clay had he failed the one person who mattered. Vows, he had learned too late, weakened after every sip of alcohol.
A bundle of fabric on the other side of the room shifted. His little sister, who was a mere sixteen years of age, woke with a start. He watched as Rosemary's arms flung out wildly to smack the vestiges of her nightmare away. It seemed Stig haunted her too.
James sat up, licked the sourness of sleep from his teeth, and surveyed his younger sister's sniffling form at the opposite side of the dingy one-bedroom apartment they could no longer afford. The small pile of rags he had concocted into a makeshift bed for her had long since lost its comfort.
"I'm sorry," had become James' customary morning greeting since the attack.
Rosemary rolled onto her side to face him. Her white cheeks were spotty with dirt and tear stains. "I don't like being threatened, Jimmy. I don't like you being threatened. You're all I have."
"I know."
"That was all the money I had saved," came Rosemary's watery retort. "Everyone around here already knows what happened to us. They heard me screaming when Stig broke down the door. They heard me, but they didn't come 'en help. Mr. Alvyn wants us to leave by weeks end. Where are we gonna go? Can't he see we're victims?"
James folded his legs under his body on the cold and dirty floorboards. He wanted to say, "Everyone who lives in the Hovels is some kind of victim," but instead rested his hands on his knees and cleared the weariness from his voice.
"We'll get through this. We always find a way."
The whites of Rosemary's eyes were bloodshot. "They fired me, Jimmy. They fired me for having skinny fingers, but then they went 'en hired two foreigners. Split the salary they were giving me between them, I bet. It's not fair. I was good at washing. The steam never bothered me. Why's Mr. Alvyn kicking us out so fast?"
James' hands shook. He had a constant headache that made him sluggish and irritable, but Stig's shakedown gave him the resolve he needed to stay sober. "I'm going to see about a job today. Should fetch enough money to get us out of the UDF. We'll go someplace warm. How about the Kingdom of Marzhan or Vorroco?"
He didn't know if the job he spoke of would be as fortuitous as he described, but he promised his sister all the same. If he promised it, he would keep it. He had to.
Rosemary sniffled. Her voice, which was normally a soft melody, was thick with mucus. "Who you going to steal from this time?"
"Rosemary," James grumbled. "You know I've only ever stolen from people who can afford to lose a bit."
"And if you fail with this job, those goonies you call friends are going to come for us. I know how this works, Jimmy, 'en I want out."
"I'm getting us out!" James' hands shook and he was glad Rosemary's eyes were too bloodshot and puffy from crying to notice. More calmly, he added, "Just give me some time."
Rosemary went quiet, and then in a voice harmonious and full of sorrow, said, "Time collects debts, too." She pulled a blanket of decaying fabric over her tearstained face. The same wine-colored hair as James' own poked out from the sheet in thin lockets and lay limp on the dirty floor.
James smoothed down his scruff of a beard with calloused fingers, slipped on black trousers, and laced up the secondhand leather boots the docks made him use for part-time work. They still smelled like putrid fish, but he hardly noticed. The Hovels smelled worse. Over his soiled sweater, he donned a pewter-dyed winter coat full of holes before giving his sister a terse, "I'm off to Hops Street to see about that job. Be back tonight."
Rosemary didn't reply. She hadn't said much to him over the past week, but that was mostly because James had been a trembling sack of flesh and bone on the floor and she a wailing one.
Much of the capital had been destroyed during the Reaping several decades before James was born when the strict, militarized government known as Guild Nation collapsed. Trailing his hand along the wall, he often found himself wondering what the capital had looked like before the war. The severely damaged areas had quickly been rebuilt as tall and narrow, red-bricked housing for lower-income citizens. Called the Hovels, it was a place overrun with crooks, addicts, Guild Sympathizers, and the disenfranchised like James and Rosemary, who had no one to care for them and nowhere else to go.
There was another group steadily on the rise, at least in numbers, within the Hovels. A group the former Guild Nation criminalized and murdered for merely existing.
On the stoop sat three young neighbor boys. Two were like James and Rosemary—untouched by magic, but the third had twin calcified horns the color of aged bone. They stuck out from the sides of his forehead in matching curlicues. Carlyle Henning was touched by magic, a trait passed down from his touched father. Some magical marks were easier to hide than others but for the Hennings, even a hat was useless.
"Morning lads," said James as he weaved around the boys. He ruffled Carlyle's hair in the place between his growing horns as he passed.
The boys greeted back with a chorus of "Eh's!" and a parting, "A'ight there, Jimmy?" from Carlyle.
James ducked under a line of clothes strung between two buildings, bypassing babies with chubby cheeks who wailed at their mothers from beaten up prams. A gaggle of women huddled together in the dirty street, griping about which new jobs had been outsourced to foreign workers. Rosemary was well on her way to joining them.
Hovels excluded, James liked living in Rydén. Other parts of the bustling city were nice. There was history in the capital and families with surnames that could trace their lineage back generations. Having emerged as an epicenter for internationalism after the war, scores of trade businesses and organizations made the capital of the United Democratic Federation—or UDF as the nation was often shortened to—a highly desired place to live.
While the city grew around those pockets, James knew that the Service Quarters remained the true heart of the nation. As the oldest area in the capital, it comprised of the most important organizations.
The Service Quarters housed the Headquarters of the Constabulary Force, a government task force simply referred to as the "CF," and the infamous Hive, which was a newspaper owned and operated by the queen of gossip, Elvira Waxworth. Then there was Guild Square—an old set of brick city manors once owned by high-ranking Guild officials.
"Outta the way!"
James paused mid-stride as an all too familiar scene unfolded across the street. Three young women of Rosemary's age, who were wearing far too revealing clothing to be considered fashionable winter attire, darted from an alley. Behind them, a set of constables in tailored black uniforms and sparklingly clean boots set chase.
He held his breath and tucked his chin into the collar of his jacket, remaining as still and inconspicuous as possible. There was hardly a reason to worry. The women were gone in an instant, disappearing into another side-alley they obviously knew well and making the constables rush to keep them in their sights.
A lock of oily hair fell into James' mouth. He spat it out and continued walking.
Days ago, a man like James would have been able to walk the streets of the Service Quarters without fear of being accosted by a constable. These days, however, he and everyone like him had to lay low from the CF, for the Prime Minister had announced his retirement after fifteen years of service. The United Democratic Federation was entering a new phase.
Vagabonds and thieves were placed under surveillance for every kind of election but for one of this prominence, they were rounded up and arrested for the smallest infraction. All eyes would be on the capital from now until the election. The government wanted to keep the streets clean and the city safe until the scrutiny eased. A waste of resources.
As James walked, he contemplated his impending meeting. Only fools planned a heist in the midst of an election.
This was a job he desperately needed, though. Ricky Dickson promised it to be a good one and Ricky Dickson was not one to embellish. The man was a crook, but he was honest about the crooked jobs he offered.
Once on Hops Street, he passed bar after bar with his head firmly cast down. His hands trembled, imploring him to stop for a drink. He shoved them into his pockets and mustered on. Covertly checking to see if a constable tailed him, he turned a corner into a dirty side-alley that reeked of garbage and smoke.
Ricky was already there, leaning against the brick wall of Stig's bar and smoking a handmade roll of tobacco. Two streams of smoke exited his nostrils. A crinkled newspaper was folded in the bend of his arm.
"Jaimsie," Ricky greeted lowly. Balding and unhappy about it, the career thief once spent five years in prison for nearly killing a woman during a botched robbery. "Thought you might have ducked out of this one."
James grabbed the roll and took a drag. The smoke burned the back of his throat and swirled around the inside of his lungs. A splash of cheap whirl normally followed. His body nearly convulsed when it didn't receive the drink.
"You smell like piss, Ricky."
"You don't smell of roses neither. Speaking of roses, how's your sister? Heard she paid your debts."
James itched to punch Ricky in his pockmarked face. He handed the roll back and spun the conversation to the heist. "What's the job?"
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Preview for next chapter:
James learns who the target of Ricky's heist is, and he is none too happy about it. Only fools planned a heist in the midst of an election, but only idiots planned to rob the most famous family in the nation.
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