A geyser of hot, boiling water rushes out to greet you the moment you do.
That is what I felt when the liquid rolled down my throat. It burned like a trail of lava. It awoke all my slumbering senses.
I sputtered and choked, but the hands holding the cup to my face did not relent until I had swallowed every last drop.
“You’re lucky I found you,” a voice like rustling hay said. “Lucky the sight of your wretched body in the street pulled the strings of this woman’s old and shrunken heart.”
The hands let me go. I fell back, gasping for air. Heavy blankets covered my legs. I kicked them off. My body was producing heat to rival the greatest furnace.
Bit by bit, the sensation of burning lessened. Bit by bit, my rapid heartbeat slowed. I stared at the low, smoky ceiling of the hut and tried to piece together everything that had happened.
Duke and his friends beat me to an inch of my life. I have no doubt they thought they left me for dead. Somebody—this woman, presumably—found and cared for me.
Why? That was the prevailing question on my mind. Why did she help me? Why didn’t she let me die?
I sat up, slowly, tense and ready for all the hurt I expected to feel. But I rose smoothly. Either the elixir worked its magic, or time had done its part.
“You’ve been with me eleven weeks,” the woman offered, as if reading my mind. I turned toward her voice. “Eleven weeks old Magda has cared for you.”
She was a shriveled old thing. For half a second, I was reminded of the gypsy woman who sold me to Three-Grin.
But Magda looked even older.
She stood no more than two inches above my height. Her back was crooked. Deep lines crowded her face. Her clothes were the clothes of a nun, though such dirty garments I had never seen in my life.
Her hands were hidden by long, gaping sleeves. They were stained an assortment of colors: here brown, there red, other places violet. She turned away and started moving around the room with the methodical efficiency of one very much at home, tending to the various instruments along the sides.
There were stoppered flasks and bubbling liquids. There were jars of drying leaves. There were clay pots and various tools: scales and measuring sticks, chisels and augers, short bits of rope with equidistant knots tied in them. There were mortar and pestle sets of all sizes. There were piles of pretty rocks and fine powders. I saw a large, elaborate device with many small gears that fascinated me. I later learned it was for showing time.
Magda hummed a halting melody as she tended to her things. She pulled a single hair from her cap and dropped it in a pot of roiling water. She sanded her nails over the dried skin of a salamander.
“Do you know the common tongue?” she asked without looking my way.
I nodded even though I knew she could not see me. “Yes.”
“Yes!” she echoed. “Then do speak up, boy. Tell me your name.”
I debated lying, but instinct told me she would see through it. “Dagan.”
“And where are you from, Dagan?” she asked. “Surely, not from here.”
“No,” I admitted.
She dipped a spoon into a tall clay jar and swirled it around. “So, Dagan-not-from-here, where are you from, hmm?” She turned toward me, and for a fleeting moment, her eyes reminded me of Karl’s. “What business brings you to the Great City of Hallengard?” She managed to fill the title with all sorts of derisive scorn.
“I… I was told to come here,” I said.
“Oh? Is that so? By whom?” It was easy to tell she did not believe me.
“A man,” I answered.
“And did this man come to you in your dreams, maybe?” she laughed. “Did he speak to you while you slept?” She turned away and began tending her things again. “You know what I think, Dagan-not-from here? I think you’re a runaway. That puts me in an awkward position. If somebody recognizes you on the street, I could get into a lot of trouble for sheltering you.”
“I’m not a runaway,” I protested.
“So you say, so you say,” she nodded. “The question is: What can I do with you?” She went around the room as she spoke. “Or perhaps, the better question is: What can you do for me?”
I stalled.
“I spent eleven weeks nursing you to health. An effort like that should be rewarded, don’t you think? So, Dagan-not-from-here, tell me: Have you any parents?”
“No.”
“Do you know your letters?”
“No.”
She tapped one foot. “Can you act? Sing? Steal?” Her eyes bore into me. “Kill?”
Could I kill? I remembered how easily the white-haired cart master went down. One arrow between the eyes was all it took. And I already had a list of targets enough to fit two hands: Three-Grin, my three masked torturers. Duke, his friends. The gypsy woman.
“I can learn,” I replied.
The woman clapped her hands together and hooted. “You can learn? Whoo-wee, boy! I’m starting to think that rescuing you was not such a mistake.”
“Will you teach me?” I asked.
Magda frowned, taken aback by my question. “Me? No, no. I am old. Frail. These hands were made for healing—” she lifted them in front of her face and let the sleeves drop.
I gasped. Each hand had two fingers missing.
“—not killing,” she concluded. “Although, at times, the difference between a potion and a poison is the skill of the administerer.” She cackled. “And stealing?” She waggled her remaining fingers at me. “I learned at a young age that my hands were not deft enough for that. Four times I was caught. It took four fingers for me to learn that lesson.”
Disappointment flared to life within me. Magda had brought me back from the abyss, but to what purpose?
She clicked her tongue. “Oh, don’t look so glum, boy. Just because I can’t teach you doesn’t mean I don’t know others who could.”
My eyes shot up. I sat straighter.
Magda waved my enthusiasm away. “But, not yet. You’ve still got some healing to do before I let you back onto the city streets. How old are you?”
I cast my eyes downward. This was the second time I’d been asked the question I could not answer. “I don’t know,” I muttered.
“Head up, boy!” Magda snapped. “There’s no shame in not knowing your own age, seeing as how nobody’s ever told you. I don’t take you to be dumb. So, that’s the only other option, isn’t it?”
She stepped up to me and peered into my eyes. I saw that hers were not black like Karl’s, but instead a deep brown.
That comforted me.
“So, how about this?” Magda offered. “I tell you your age, and I reckon I’d be off by a year at most, if that. In return, you tell me how you wound up in Glorious Hallengard.” She cackled again. “How does that sound? Fair?”
“Fair,” I answered.
Magda nodded. “Thought so.” She reached into a deep pocket and pulled out a flat, sanded piece of wood. It was about the length of a finger. She pressed it to my lips. “Open wide, now.”
I did. She counted my teeth. Next, she told me to stand on the table and strip. I did. She flipped me over and tapped on each of my vertebrae, bringing her ear close to listen for the sound they made.
She counted my ribs, measured the girth of my neck, the length of my limbs, the distance from my bellybutton to my throat, and the circumference of my chest at the nipples.
When she was done, she told me to put my clothes back on. When I finished, she sat me down and looked deep in my eyes.
“By my reckoning,” she told me, “you are just about to turn eight.”
Eight. The number floated through the air and seemed to touch down onto me almost like a seal. It wrapped around my chest and infused me with strength I had lacked—or forgotten I had. It was a little piece of my identity that had been stolen from me.
Now, finally, I had back.
Magna motioned to me. “Your turn.”
I nodded, and told her my tale.
“Hold on.” Earl held up his hands. “You’re sayin’ a woman named Magda rescued you from the streets? What happened to the Arena?”
“Yeah,” Patch agreed. “I thought you said before Three-Grin was raising you for it.”
Dagan nodded impatiently. “He was.”
“So what happened to all that training?” Earl asked. “To all your pain tolerance and such?”
“The year with Alicia softened me,” Dagan answered. “My body had grown to withstand harsh conditions, but the moment the stimulus was taken away, the ability withered. When I reached Hallengard, I was just a regular boy.”
“That ain’t very good training if it be lost so easily,” Earl muttered.
“Three-Grin did not mean for the training to last. He meant it to be thorough. He meant it so that his slave children would not die of shock the first time one of their limbs was severed in the Arena. He did it to give us an advantage of seconds. No more. In the Arena, the last to die wins. Two combatants enter. Neither leaves.”
“You escaped the cart,” Patch said. “The man who gave you the mark saved you! Doesn’t that mean you weren’t bound for the Arena anymore?”
Dagan shook his head. “The world is not so simple, Patch,” he answered. “Fate had been watching me from the moment I was born. And fate decreed that my path would lead to the Arena.”
***
A week later, Magda introduced me to Thraugh.
Thraugh was a boy two years younger than I was. But whereas I spent my childhood in a dungeon, Thraugh spent his on the streets. He was a veteran of the twisting alleys and rooftops of Hallengard.
Thraugh taught me a lot. He taught me to beg. He taught me to look after myself. He taught me to steal.
My first venture into the world of thievery was not an auspicious one. It earned me a whipping and a stained right thumb. That was the mark of a would-be thief in Hallengard. An unwritten code existed between the merchants and the urchins that every child would try his hand at thievery at one point or another
The merchants tolerated the first attempt, so long as you did not try again. The paint on my thumb was meant to be permanent, to signal to others that I had gotten my one free pass. The next time I was caught, I would lose a finger.
Magda laughed when she saw. She dressed the wounds on my back and dipped my thumb into a harsh solution that made it blister and burn. The skin peeled away a day later, but when it healed, there was no trace of the stain.
My second attempt was better. I feigned illness in the middle of a busy street. When the guard came to pick me up and carry me out of sight, I deftly cut the coin purse hanging from his waist.
I shared the money with Magda and Thraugh.
It did not take me long to surpass Thraugh in skill. I was motivated. I was fast. I had a mind ready to absorb anything thrown at it.
Magda stopped just short of offering me a home. Nevertheless, she had become someone I could rely on in times of need. While she did not give me food, she did show me all the places I could scavenge for scraps. She knew physiks, and thus could heal.
I relied on her for that. The first time I came to her with a fever and chills after biting into a fresh loaf of bread passed out by the Church, she scolded me for being a fool and refused to treat me. She told me there were no free hand-outs in life. The ministers had spiked the bread with cyanide as a method of population control.
I spent all night shivering in a cold sweat. Sharp pains shot through my stomach. It was the longest night of my life. Not a single minute went by where I did not think I would die.
In the morning, Magda came outside and gave me a white, chalky drink that I gulped down in earnest. I spewed everything up moments after, including the poison that was killing me from within.
From that moment on, I ate only what I could buy with the little money I scraped together.
Most of my days were spent on street corners begging for iron pennies. I learned the places where people felt most generous, and the places where they were most stingy.
Most of my nights were spent cutting the purses of drunkards. I learned that though it was easier to steal from a drunk, nine times out of ten the amount of coin in their purse was hardly more than what I could earn in a day of begging.
As the months slowly passed, I grew more and more confident. I ventured past the familiar streets around Magda’s hut, and discovered that all the places of Hallengard were mostly the same—at least, from the perspective of someone like me.
The first time I ventured into a gambling district, however, I thought I had found a new home.
No sooner had I sat down with my tin kettle placed in front of me (with some fake coins glued to the bottom to encourage donations), than a man burst out of a pub with two women on his arms. He was laughing and drinking from a mug held in one hand.
One of the women noticed me. She whispered a word to the man. He staggered over, reached into a purse, and dumped a handful of coins into my kettle.
He ruffled my hair as I stared, amazed, at my newfound fortune. “There ya go, you little hapless bastard,” he laughed, slurring his words. “Enjoy some o’ my winnings. ” He turned away, put his arms around the women, and waltzed down the street.
I could not believe my eyes. I fingered the coins, doing a quick count. There were fifteen iron pennies, six copper marks, and one tiny, silver dime.
The dime was worth more than the rest put together. It was worth more than all the coins I’d ever collected put together.
Clutching my windfall, I got up and ran. I was going to go to Magda, to give her most of the coins as payment for everything she’d done. I could give her more than half, and still have enough to eat for a year.
I ducked through the sparse crowd, dodging legs and bodies, when suddenly a blow hit me right across the back.
I fell. The metal kettle flew out of my arms. The coins scattered.
Nobody paid me any mind—except for two large, heavyset street toughs.
“Look what we’ve got here,” one of them said. “A little boy with a fortune. How’d you get all those coins, kid?”
“Say, these look like Delphic coins,” the second said. “Now, how would a dirty little runt like you come across Delphic coins?”
“You’re too young to gamble,” the first mused. “So you must have stolen them, eh? Ahh, answer me!”
He picked me up and held me in the air, feet dangling. He smelled like smoke and rust and stone. “How did. You. Get those. Coins?”
“Someone gave them to me,” I said, trying to squirm out of his grip. “Let go!”
“Someone gave them to you.” He scoffed. “You spin a tall tale, kid. Why would anyone give so much money to a brat like you?”
“I think he stole it,” his friend said over his shoulder. “We’ll have to teach him what happens to thieves.”
I remembered my blistering thumb. “No!” I screamed. “No, I didn’t steal it!”
The man holding me tossed me down. I fell with a grunt. I could see my coins lying scattered around me. A space had cleared up on the street. The passersby were giving us a wide berth.
The two men towered over me like mountains. “The Delphic doesn’t look kindly on stragglers, kid.” A boot caught me in the side. “Get up! Collect your coins. We’re going to hand them back to the casino.”
I scrambled to pluck up as many as I could. My eyes searched wildly for the dime. I knew that if I could find it quickly, I had a chance of pocketing it without notice.
Luck was not on my side. The second of the toughs leaned down and picked a coin up. He flipped it in the air as he straightened.
I caught the slivery glimmer of my dime in the sun.
It represented half a year of food. It represented a warm place to sleep on cold nights. It represented a respite, however short, from life on the street.
The tough caught me looking. He scowled. “Did I tell you to stop? Get going!” He aimed another kick at my head, whic
h I only narrowly avoided.
I collected the remaining coins under two pairs of watchful eyes. I clutched the little kettle to my chest protectively when I was done.
In the span of time it took me to retrieve the coins, I contemplated running a dozen times. And a dozen times, I reminded myself that I couldn’t. I didn’t know these streets. Even if I did, two grown men could easily outpace an eight-year-old boy.
I had no chance.
“Good,” one of them said. He held out his hand. “Now, give me that kettle. Those coins belong to the Delphic, and that’s where they’ll go.”
I held the kettle closer to my body. My eyes darted behind the men. If I went that way, however, I could find the path back.
Could I outrun them? I wasn’t sure. But if I didn’t try, regret would gnaw at me for weeks.
“No,” I said, and sprang forward, ducking between the two men.
I passed under their legs, and for a brief, ephemeral moment, tasted freedom…
Then I was yanked off my feet and held up by the scruff of my neck.
The kettle was wrenched from my hands. I heard the clatter of coins inside as the street tough jerked it away. I heard warm nights and a full belly disappearing. I heard the promise of a slightly better life be whisked away.
“Smart-assed bastard tried to run,” the one holding me said. “Can you believe that? I knew he was a thief.”
The second cracked his knuckles. “We’ve got to teach the runt a lesson. He’s gotta learn that we deal with thieves differently in the gambling district.”
“Here.” The man holding me tossed me to his friend as easily as if I was a coin purse. I collided with the second man’s chest. He threw me over his back and turned away into an abandoned alley.
As he walked, I saw my kettle lying full and forgotten on the ground behind us.
Chapter Twelve
He dumped me to the ground. My head bounced off the stone. My vision went wobbly for a few moments.
When I could see again, I saw the toughs staring down at me. They reminded me of two hungry cats circling a cornered hen.
A Thirst for Vengeance (The Ashes Saga, Volume 1) Page 6