The Facefaker's Game

by Chandler J. Birch

  He was so absorbed that he didn’t turn when the door banged open again. He would have continued in blissful ignorance if not for Barrister.

  “Make certain your boy’s careful with that door, Saintly,” the man said sternly. “I’ve only the one.”

  The back of Ashes’s neck tingled. He swallowed his last bite too quickly, slipped the food inside his coat, and slid off the stool, keeping his eyes down—

  “So sorry about that, Mr. Barrister, sir,” came the reply. It was a smooth voice, full of smiling. “He’ll not do it again, sir, I’m certain of it.” A pause for breath, and then, in tones of delight: “Surely that won’t be you sneaking away from me, aha, Ashes?”

  The bottom dropped out of Ashes’s stomach. There wasn’t any point in pretending, and he couldn’t run while Saintly’s boys were standing at the door. He bottled his fear and curled his lips into something faintly resembling a smile before he turned.

  Saintly Francis was one of Burroughside’s great mysteries. The district was littered with the diseased and dying, and folk who had lost limbs or eyes or noses to the Gleaming Law. Many younger children were strategically mutilated, the better to beg from sympathetic Denizens. Saintly, though, was as beautiful a boy as could be found in Teranis, with dark, curly hair and wide eyes that oozed innocence. Somewhere near fifteen, he was a couple years older than Ashes, and the crewleader of the Broken Boys, one of Burroughside’s most fearsome gangs. Right now, he was smiling, and that made Ashes’s guts twist.

  “What a fancy thing, aha, seeing you here,” Saintly said, approaching. The room seemed to reorient as he walked, making certain that its center was always right where he stood. Ashes could feel people glancing in their direction, eyes drawn by Saintly’s irrepressible gravity. “How’ve you been?”

  Ashes looked at the door, at the three boys Saintly had brought. They’d want food; if he left now, he could get away while they were eating. “Bit busy, Saints. Probably ought to run.”

  “Nonsense!” Saintly slapped him on the shoulder, and his hand stayed there. “Been so long, Ashes. Surely we ought to catch up. It’s been months. Too long, Ashes.” Their eyes met. The look in Saintly’s face was catlike, predatory.

  Ashes smiled, and it came out braver than he felt. “I’m afraid it’s like to stay too long.” He stepped out from under Saintly’s hand. “I’ve got business—”

  “So’ve I, mate.” Saintly slid in front of him. His eyes were dark now, his voice low enough that not even Barrister would hear it. “We’re due for a conversation about monsters, you and me. Why don’t we take a walk? Chat about things?”

  Where nobody else’ll see hung unspoken on the end of his sentence. Ashes felt his hands start quivering and couldn’t force them to stop.

  “I don’t think he wants to do that, Francis,” someone said. Saintly and Ashes both jerked, as if woken from sleep. Iames the Fool had Saintly by the shoulder; Slippery Rafe stood beside him. Both were staring fixedly at Saintly. Rafe’s fists were loosely curled.

  For a fragile moment, Ashes feared Saintly would make a fight of it. It was four against three, in Saintly’s favor, but Iames and Rafe were both sixteen and wiry. They belonged to the Motleys—Iames, in fact, was its crewleader—and Motleys were not known for fighting fair. They could use anything as weaponry, and both were in grasping distance of Saintly’s arms . . .

  Ashes imagined he saw the same thoughts go through Saintly’s head, quick as winking, and just like that his eyes were clear again. “Aha, hello, Iames,” he said. “Rafe. Such a pleasure to be acquainting with you again. You can take your hands off, lads, aha.” He turned and grinned at them. “Just wanted for a bit of catching up, you know.” He looked at Ashes, his stare glassy and calm. “We’ll have to talk some other time.”

  He swept out of the shop without another word. Barrister followed the boy with his eyes, then scoffed as the door closed. “Without even buying anything. By the Faces . . .”

  “Bastard,” Iames muttered. “You all right, Ashes? He didn’t gut you or nothing while our eyes was away?”

  “Neh,” Ashes said, watching the Broken Boys as they made their way back toward Burroughside. He edged toward the door. Now was the time to leave, while Saintly was still worried about the Motleys at his back. He could circle around Barrister’s, take the long way home—

  Iames put a hand on Ashes’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “You shouldn’t be going out there,” he said sincerely. “Give it a while. Rafe and I’ll leave in a bit. We can walk with you, keep the whorestain away.”

  Slippery Rafe nodded. “We’ve got an open space with the Motleys, if you need somewhere to doss.”

  Ashes smiled weakly and shook his head. “Thanks. I got a place already. Best be getting to it.” He was not the sort of person to belong to a crew, not these days.

  “You can’t dodge Saintly forever,” Iames whispered. “Mark me.”

  “Don’t need to dodge him forever,” Ashes muttered. “Just till solstice.”

  Iames frowned as he processed the implication, then frowned deeper when he understood. “Don’t count on the Tithe. I’ve seen kids like you hope for it, and it never turns well. You’re too young for the Lass. If she’s your best hope, you’re better off in the sewers.”

  Ashes gave a low laugh to hide his shuddering. “Me best hope ain’t Bonnie the Lass, Iames. It’s me.”

  He hurried outside, walking the opposite direction from Saintly and his Broken Boys. He could take a circuitous route back home, and even Saintly wouldn’t be mad enough to follow him after dark. Even so, he didn’t breathe easy until he felt sure that none of the Broken Boys had followed him.

  The shift from Lyonshire-Low to Burroughside was not a subtle one. The cobbled streets ended as if they’d been chopped off with an axe, and then sewn awkwardly together with streets composed mostly of mud and excrement and broken rocks. One moment his shoes were on worked stone, and the next they sank into a thin but perpetual veneer of stinking muck. He could smell the shift in the air, too, as all the pleasant scents of a thriving district were subsumed by the odors of a dying one: vomit blended with cheap beer, stale waste, and rot nearly as old as the street itself.

  Burroughside. Home, or what passed for it.

  He picked his way more carefully through these streets, on guard against Broken Boys and other crews. Seeing Saintly had rattled him more than he would care to admit. Hardly a year ago, they had been friends. Before Saintly put a red smile across Mari’s throat and took the Broken Boys for himself.

  Mari had never seen it coming, but Ashes should have. He’d been Saintly’s shadow for months before Saintly put the knife to their crewleader. Saintly had been nervous and cagey in the days leading up to it, enough that Ashes should have sensed something off. Ashes had told no one, and Mari paid for his stupidity.

  A familiar, muttering voice pulled him away from the dark thoughts. Around the corner he found Ben Roamer, hugging himself and whispering urgently to a blank wall. Ben was one of a paltry few Burroughsiders who could honestly claim to be older than fifty—though it was almost always guesswork, as birthdays, to the gutter-rats, were profoundly useless. His beard was equal parts dirt and hair and perpetually flecked with spittle. He was also mad as a boiled owl.

  Ashes made to walk around the man, but Ben must have heard him. The old fellow spun on his heel, and his eyes locked on Ashes.

  “Eshes,” he muttered. “Know ennethin bout kitchin’ kits?”

  “Ho, Ben,” Ashes said. The tension in his body began to dissipate. In truth, Roamer did not make him half as nervous as some Burroughsiders; mad as he was, the old man had been harmless as long as Ashes had known him. “What’s on?”

  “Wanna kitch a kit,” he said urgently. “Gots to kitch a kit. Know ennethin bout kitchin’ kits?”

  “Can’t say as I’ve caught many. Probably the trick is just being faster than them, right?”

  Ben shook his head and spat on the ground. “Kent do that. Kent do th
at. Kits is too—too—” He stabbed angrily at his temple. “Kent kitch ’em that way. Too sneaky.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Ben.” Ashes grinned uneasily, preparing to step around the old man. Ben seemed a little more off-balance than usual today.

  “Piddlin’ thinks from all of you,” Ben murmured furiously, and threw up his hands. “She ent help much et all, neither. How your sort goen’ to survive, ye kent kitch kits?”

  “She? She who?”

  Ben jerked his head toward the lump of mud on the ground, and it stirred. Ashes’s eyes widened. It was a girl, young and small and frail, with lank hair hanging in her face. She was trembling—a cold breeze had brushed through, and the girl’s shift looked thinner than skin.

  “Face of Kindness, Ben!” Ashes said, dropping to his knees next to the girl. “Yammering about catching cats! How long has she been here?” He put one hand near her face, wary in case she tried to attack. The girl didn’t move, didn’t stir—didn’t recognize his presence at all.

  “Gots to kitch a kit,” Ben said under his breath, turning away from them both. “Gots to kitch a kit.”

  Ashes pushed the hair out of the girl’s face and whispered a curse. Her eyes were blank as slate, and dark.

  A rasa. Had to be.

  “Can you talk?” he asked in a low voice. “You’ve got— D’you have a name? I’m Ashes. Can you talk?”

  There was a spark behind her eyes at the words, though it seemed distant and dim. Her cheeks were terribly pale, but her hair wasn’t near as matted as he would have expected. She hadn’t been here long, then—this might be her first night in Teranis, even. He pulled a bit of bread out of his coat, held it in front of her mouth. Her head tilted forward mechanically, and she took it from his hand with her teeth.

  She could move, at least, and there was a bit of life inside her. Ashes looked at the sky. Violet and crimson coated the western clouds, but the sun itself wasn’t visible any longer. The Ravagers would be out soon. Did this girl even know what they were?

  The girl trembled again, an all-over shake that couldn’t have been just from cold. “Let’s call you Jennie,” Ashes whispered. “Jennie Trembly. How’s that?” Naming her was practically a reflex. Rasa needed names; it gave their minds something to hold on to.

  “Y’know how you kitch a kit?”

  “Go home, Ben,” Ashes said. “Dark’s coming. Y’hear me? Dark’s coming. There’ll be Ravagers soon. Find somewhere safe.”

  “Gots to be clever,” Ben said, stabbing a finger at his temple again. “Gots to think like ’em. Give ’em a clever trap.”

  Ashes took the girl by the shoulders, guiding her gently to her feet. “Whatever you say.” He wrapped his coat around the girl, taking care not to move too quickly. She would spook easily. “Go home, Ben.”

  “Clever traps,” Ben said again, but he turned west, presumably toward whatever stretch of covered space he called home. “Make ’em hard to get to, is all. Hard to get to the trap, they’ll climb up jessa get inside it. Straightaway. Straightaway.”

  The girl followed Ashes’s lead, moving clumsily on bare feet. She walked as if she had forgotten how to do it. And, Ashes thought, it was very possible she had.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said. “You’ll be all right. We’ll get you somewhere safe.”

  Evening was settling on Teranis like scattered rain by the time he made it to Batty Annie’s house. It came in droplets first, dripping into the pools of shadow until they were swollen near to bursting. Finally, the dams burst, and the shadows connected and spread until they filled every corner. Not twenty minutes after sunset, the streets were soaked in black, looking as if they had always been dark, and only pretended to be lit during the day.

  Ashes’s throat tightened as he pounded on Batty Annie’s door. He shivered, half because of the chill he felt without his coat and half because of how quickly it had gotten dark. He’d expected the evening gray to last just a little longer, and he’d expected the girl to move just a little faster. Both expectations had turned out to be wrong, and now all he could do was hope he’d be quick enough.

  He slammed his fist against the door again and shouted, “Open the bloody door!”

  Half a moment later the door was open, and Batty Annie was glaring imperiously down at him.

  “What the hell do you want, facefaker?”

  It was said that a witch lived at the end of every street in Teranis; if that was so, then Batty Annie was the witch of Bells Street. She was older than anyone Ashes had ever met or seen or even heard of, and sometimes he could swear she creaked when she walked. He didn’t know if she could summon bolts of flame and shadow, but she lived in Burroughside without paying a slim penny to Mr. Ragged, and that counted for a lot.

  Ashes presented the girl for Annie’s inspection. “Her, ma’am,” he said quickly, throwing glances over his shoulder. “She needs a place to stay. I found her—”

  Annie’s bony fingers snatched Ashes’s chin, forcing him to look her full in the face. It was like meeting the eyes of a tiger. “She carrying your seed, boy? She gonna be heavy with your get come Festivale?”

  “What? No!” Ashes felt the blood drain out of his face. “No. Nothing like that.”

  She stared at him fiercely, then released her grip. “You’re telling the truth. Rare for one of yours.”

  “I don’t lie to folks that’s smarter than me.”

  “Oh, I’ll just bet you don’t.”

  “Please, Annie—I found her out near Barrister’s. She can’t speak a word, she dun’t know her name, barely moves when you give her food—she’s rasa. I’m sure of it.”

  “You would be.” Annie’s gaze had shifted now to the girl, and she bent to give a more detailed inspection. “Eh. Empty as a cornhusk, her. How long’s she been in the city?”

  “Not long, I think.”

  “Any name?”

  “She dun’t remember. Or if she does she dun’t remember how to speak it. She’s Jennie Trembly for the moment.”

  Annie’s hard stare seemed to grow even harder. “And what would you have me do with her?”

  Ashes paled. “I—I thought you might take her in. You’ve done that before, sometimes. Haven’t you? I’d heard that Hennah Verston took up with you after—”

  “I’m no charity-house, boy, nor’m I a church,” she said. “If this girl’s to stay, and if she’s to stay alive, then I’ll need somebody to pay her way. There’s nothing that comes free.”

  Ashes looked at her helplessly. “How much?”

  “Six crescents for the night,” she said flatly. “And you’ll be sleeping in separate rooms and you will be out by morning.”

  Ashes shook his head. “Just for her, Annie, and I want her safe a good long while.”

  “You some kind of stupid, boy?” Annie eyed him. “Ravagers won’t care naught for that tongue of yours.”

  “Hence I got no time to barter,” Ashes snapped. “Just for her.”

  “Sun’s down—”

  “Just. Her.”

  “A lumin and three, then,” she said.

  Everything left in the Ivorish man’s wallet, not counting the notes Ashes had hidden. Nearly everything he’d earned today. He’d need to go out and beg or thieve tomorrow if he was to make enough for his tax, and he would need to do it away from Lyonshire.

  He looked at the girl, pallid and frail and helpless. She was as bad a rasa as he’d ever seen: no memory of her name, of where she came from. And no one to take care of her. He knew that feeling far better than most—three years ago, he hadn’t been so different.

  He took the coat off her shoulders and pulled out the Denizen’s wallet.

  “It’s all in there,” he said.

  Annie smiled a cold smile as she took his money. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, boy.” She tugged the rasa girl gently past her door. “I’ll be sure to keep her safe.”

  “One other thing,” Ashes said, speaking before he could think better of the idea
. The old woman glared at him, as if shocked that he would dare speak further. “Don’t let Mr. Ragged know she’s here. He’d sell her off to the Silken, or someone. Just—just don’t let that happen.”

  She regarded him with a chilly blankness that made his insides squirm. “If I do?”

  “Nothing I can do to punish you, Annie, even if I wanted to try,” Ashes said honestly. “But I’m the one as brought her here, and I’m the one paying her dues to you. Once she’s walking and she knows her words and her name, you find some place for her. Far away from Mr. Ragged. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Annie huffed. “Compelling,” she said, with not one ounce of sincerity. “But you’ve done a good thing tonight, boy, so I’ll let you in on my secret.” She leaned toward him and whispered, “I wouldn’t sell that child to Mr. Ragged for all the money in the world, sure as the drift of the moon. I don’t sell that Ivorish-addled jackass anything. Nor’m I going to tell him the girl’s here. That’s because I do what I do.” She lowered her face so her frightening eyes were on the same level as his. “And no one else tells me what I do.”

  Ashes swallowed and nodded. “Yes’m,” he said, shrugging into his coat.

  “Along with you,” she said, turning smartly and retreating into the house. “Faces help you, if they can.”

  Ashes nodded fervently and turned to go, but the rasa girl caught his arm. Her eyes, brighter than before, were fixed on him. She reached inside the pocket of her shift and pulled out the tattered remains of a handkerchief, blue as an evening sky. Wordlessly, she took his hand and looped the cloth around his wrist. She tied it solemnly, brow furrowed in deep concentration.

  He peered at her, looking for some explanation. “Thanks,” he said.

  She said nothing, but her eyes had turned bright and lively.

  Annie pulled the girl past the threshold. “Along with you, then,” the old woman said, closing the door.

  The moon was coming up. Time to be gone, he thought.

  He ran.