"Run, Jorge!"
"Get'im Eula! Spit on 'im good!"
"Ivar's on Jorge's side! Eula, look out!" The cat-monkey boy climbed over the half-door of the cooper's storage shed and the girl turned around as he was about to jump on her. She spat on him and he fell down, rolling around in the dust holding his stomach.
"Auugh, worms, I got worms," he squealed, pretending he was dying while she ignored him and chased after the other boy, who jumped up on a barrel with a bucket in his hands.
"Spit on me and I douse you! Come on!" He waved the bucket at her and she stopped; spat disgustedly on the ground instead.
"You started it!" she yelled, then grabbed a rotten 'maranth root off a midden heap and pegged it at him. As he ducked, the bucket tilted, showing that it was empty. "Yaahhh!" she yelled, and jumped at him. He rolled off and stood up next to where Megan watched.
"Hey!" He was a lot bigger than Megan and looked at her as if she were a rotten tuber. "Hey, lookit this!"
The other kids came around until the cooper yelled at them to get lost, they were blocking her door.
I think he's the leader. Jorge. He might be way older than me. Maybe even eight.
"Maybe's a baby the Sour Noters' lost," someone said.
"I am not," Megan snapped, answering to Jorge, even though he hadn't said it. "I'm no baby, I'm Megan."
"Ohhhhh! It talks back. A Megan. He sniffed, as if she smelled bad. "Well, I'm Jorge and I'm head of the Cooper's Lane Killers."
"Jorge, you just lukewarm runs who wants ta be real hot shit." It was a girl who had a burn scar on her right cheek. He pulled away from where he'd been leaning over Megan to glare at the other girl instead.
"Marin!"
"You yell't me, Jorge, and my mama won' give you even a burnt sticky-bun fer a whole year."
He pouted at her. I don't pout. Much.
"I live on Cooper's Lane, too," Megan said. "In the Flats."
He ignored her. "Marin, I's just…" He looked down at his feet.
"Come on, we're not the Killers an' you know it. We just one squat over from the Sour Noters, is all. Leave the freshie alone."
He looked around, then said, "Stay outta my way freshie, ya got no zight with me. Marin, didjer mam have fresh sticky buns left?"
As Megan stood there, wondering what she should do, they all decided to go visit the bakeshop and started pulling out stuff to trade to the baker, Mann's mother. I'm hungry too, but they don't like me, just like the kids at school and they don't want me to…
"Hey, freshie! You comin'?" It was the girl with the light hair—Eula.
"Mann's mam'll give you sumin' anyway, 'cause you're new." The others had gone down the street already, leaving Megan and Eula behind. Jorge had a leatherwood stick and pretended to lead a parade. Then Eula yelled, "Follow My Leader!" and climbed the wall to swing from a gargoyle's horns. Megan followed Eula and a lot of the kids came back to play follow-my-leader rather than parade behind Jorge.
***
Eula told Megan that the vacant lot where everyone played was called the Ground. Crooked Alley and Vischy Street converged there, and Sour Note Street ended at the hole in the board fence, where the two "squats" touched. A squat was the ground a kidpack defended, calling themselves the "mesne" or owners of the squat. At the Ground, the Sour Noters and Cooper's Laners stayed at their own ends.
Megan didn't like it when the other Cooper's Lane kids called her freshie, but she hung around anyway, determined not to be left out. Jorge was loudest of the kids, "all wind and no balls," like Aage the Older, Aage's second papa, said.
Aage had a great scar on his forehead, right where his hair parted over his left eye, from a fight with the Sour Noters. Someone had hit him there with a thrown bit of brick. Aage's blood-papa was a blacksmith, and his second papa was a farrier.
Some of the kids were children of quad marriages, and some like Eula and her brother Egon had just two parents like Megan. Onya and her little brother Yuri only had a mama, and Megan thought that was why Yuri was a scaredy-mouse who whined. Marin's only family was her mother and a big brother too old to run with the kids, choosing to help his mother in the bakery instead. The fire that put the scar on Marin's face had killed everyone else in their family when it burned down their block.
Then there was pretty Tantine, who had two mamas and thought she was so pretty. She's always there if there're fights. I don't like her. There were fourteen kids all together, if you counted Megan.
"Joooorge. D’ja like me?" That was Tantine, with a wilting daisy in her curly brown hair.
Jorge, busy tying bits of broken rubber together and winding them tight to make a ball, just said, "Nah, get lost."
"You're mean."
"Nah, you bug me."
She sat down—next to him—pouting.
"Hey! Ev’body! Lookit!" Serkai called from the street. He wants to be a guardsman someday. He hurried into the crowd of children, holding a bundle carefully in both hands. "I got two real knives!"
"Where’d ja get em?—How'd ja get em?—Serkai, you didn' steal 'em, did you?—Shit, I was going ta get the first knife—How'd ja get 'em?—How?"
Everyone was pushing to see. Megan, who sat on top of a broken bit of wall, could just see over Aage and Lixa's shoulders as Serkai unwrapped his prize, two plain steel knives, double-edged, leaf-shaped, with ridged horn handles, lying on the burlap he'd hidden them in.
"Hey, let the Sour Note kids try something now! I'll cut 'em." He picked up one, then the other, and weighed them in his hands, grinning. Up until now, all the kids had been practicing fighting and playing cniffta, the knife-juggling game, with knives made out of wood or rubber balls.
"I din't steal them," he said. "Well, not really." He started cleaning them, though they didn't need it. "I's up at the Market and there's a bad challenge at the cniffta circle. Somebody called somebody else a Kuritz h'Rokatzk!"
Arvi whistled. "'s bad."
"What does that mean?" Tantine whispered.
"I don' know, but it has sumin' ta do with corpse handlers."
"Eaaeu!"
"Yeah." Serkai stood up to tell his story. Not as good as Papa but okay. "Then the one woman killed't' other one." Everybody around him sucked a gasp through their teeth, going quiet.
"Really?' Megan didn't see who whispered.
"Really." Serkai nodded, firmly. "I saw. She's jumpin' an' then made a gurgly sound an' fell down with a knife in 'er neck right there." He pointed to illustrate. "An' bled like the 'Nest Fountain—pump, pump, pump. Then it stopped and 'er feet kicked. An' I's a knife fetcher.
When she died ev'ybody forgot "bout the knives an' I scatted 'fore somebody could count 'em all."
"'s good, Serkai," Jorge said, looking at one knife. "You're still seven? Hey, 'f they caught you stealing ja know whatil happen?"
"No."
"Shit, din't anybody say?" Jorge looked around at the other kids, who shook their heads. "My older sister tol' me." He puffed himself up. " 'f you get caught stealing an' you're under 'prentice age, your ma or pa gets a hand broke so they can't use it."
"Broke?"
"With a big hammer at the Market block. They hit three times."
Megan remembered something that had happened a while ago, when she and her parents had gone up to Teik Sandar's bathhouse.
They'd been passing a crowd around the Block near the bookseller's and Lixand's face had gone grim. He'd hustled them past, saying that the girl was only eleven and had stolen something to eat and that he wasn't going condone a tyrant's brutality. Ness had hushed him, looking around to see if anyone had overheard. Behind them, muffled by distance, there had been a wet hammering and someone screaming. They'd broken her hand.
"Yeah," Jorge said. "An' when you're older than seven they do it to you."
"Well, I'm not gonna get caught!" Serkai took his new knife back from Jorge. "Now I kin practice cniffta, two knives!" He rolled the knives away in the burlap, then picked up the stick he usually carried. It stood
taller than he was and he'd scraped it smooth with a piece of brick. "I could tie one on each end an' make my own two-fang!"
"An' get caught fer sure! Only Dragonguard kin carry two-fangs inna street, turkey-head!"
"Blppppht!" Serkai put his tongue between his lips and blew air through them. "Turkey-head jerself! I got knives 'fore you did, maybe I should be leader."
Jorge leaped on him and they wrestled and the rest of them all yelled, jumping up and down until Serkai, with his face in the dirt and his nose all bloody yelled, "Rhunay! Rhunay! I give!" and Jorge let him up.
It's not fair, Jorge is older and bigger'n Serkai. He's all right though. We don't hurt each other. Well, at least the kids who belong don't hurt each other. I don't belong yet. I'm still the freshie. That's why Serkai didn't cut Jorge. Megan lent Serkai her kerchief, wetted in one of the puddles in the broken flagstones, to clean his face, and he let her see his knives. She cut herself three times trying to flip them like a real cniffta player, but she managed it, finding they were easier to throw than wooden ones.
It hasn't snowed yet but there isn't much day to play in. She was with the rest of the kids, scrounging bits of glass to sell to the glass-blower in the Market. If you collected a whole basket she'd pay a copper Bite. Megan had done that last week, then bet Yuri his Bite against hers on a spider-fight that she won. She'd been so proud to be able to give the whole Fang to her mama who, at first, had been worried where Megan had gotten it. She was happy I wasn't stealing. I don't really steal.
Eula had showed Megan a neat trick while they'd been in the Market, hungry, with no copper or anything to trade. She'd said "watch this" and walked over to the apple-sellers, looking back over her shoulder to call back to Megan.
"Eula, watch out!" One of the sellers had just stepped down from his wagon with a box of apples on his shoulder and Eula, not paying attention, bumped into him. He yelled, swayed, and she jumped out of the way as the box fell and broke, scattering apples all over the flagstones.
"I's sorry, Teik," Eula said, almost in tears. "Please, lemme help. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She'd helped him pick up the apples rolling around and put them in a basket he'd grabbed out of his wagon. Megan made a motion to help, but Eula frowned and shook her head. She apologized so hard the apple-seller just waved his hands and gave her a couple of the more bruised ones. She said thank you and came back to sit on the other side of the square with the rest of the kids listening to Chandro, who had different stories from Megan's papa. In the crowd of kids, she gave Megan two apples.
"But Eula, you said you were hungry too." Megan tried to be fair and give her one back, but Eula shook her head, grinning.
"I have some," she said, showing three more apples hidden inside her shirt where her vest hid the bulges. "I picked 'em up while I was helping."
Megan didn't think Mama would like her doing that, but they still tasted good. Eula said that Nomo the Ragman would pay for all sorts of things and not ask how they were gotten, paying the best for good metal, like buckles or buttons.
After the first snow, Megan started looking forward to Dagde Vroi, the Days of Fools, in two more iron-cycles, when the whole city would celebrate. The Sysbaet and the Brown Brothers and the Ladyshrine priests would feed poor people in the River and Lake Quarters a big meal and everybody would get at least a piece of sausage. We've been eating a lot of 'maranth lately. Maybe the sausage'll be spiced with garlic.
Everyone would be making their best costume to wear in the streets or planning parties, and the Woyvode might have hot spiced punch given out at the Dragon'sNest Gate as he had in the Lady's Years. Papa says he doesn't have to in the Dark Lord's Years.
There was enough snow for the kidpack to make snow-demons with wings and roll snowballs that had bits of leaves and grass stuck to the outside. Megan threw one at Jorge, not meaning to hit him smack in the face, but he didn't duck.
"You… you…" He came and stood over Megan. "You don' really belong!"
"I do so! I live on Cooper's, just like everybody else!"
He sneered, "I'm leader of Cooper's Lane kids an' I say you don' belong!" and pushed her so hard she sat down.
Megan got up, sticking her chin out at him—all wind and no balls. "Push me again and I'll bite you!"
He laughed in her face. "See? 'f you were one of us, you wouln't say that! You keep hangin' around with us an' you play with us, butjer not really our friend."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"I'm just as good as you!"
"Are not!"
"Am so!"
"Are not!"
"Am so! I can do anything you can! I can do it better!"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"I could steal sumin' from the Wizard's House," he said.
"I could too!" As she said it, he grinned.
"I Dare You," he said. Everybody went as quiet as when Serkai had told them about the woman getting killed.
"Jorge,'s not fair," Marin said in the quiet. "You never stole anything from the Wizard."
"I snuck into 'er lean-to though." He swung an arm at Megan, who ducked. "She said she'd do anything better! Well, 'f she wants ta be one of us, let 'er prove it!"
"Jorge, she shouldn' have ta," Aage said.
"I said I would," Megan said. I'll show them. I'll show him. "Piss on you," she yelled, and kicked him in the shin, connecting solidly because he wasn't expecting it. "I'm goin' now and when it gets dark I'll do it!"
He hopped, holding his leg, and by the time he thought about hitting Megan back she was already on the way to the Wizard's with everyone else following along.
"Meg, you shouldn' have ta do this by yourself. Well come an' help," Marin said.
"And get caught."
"But…" Marin stumbled over explanations. "She's the Wizard."
Now Megan was frightened by her rash promise, but she couldn't back down or Jorge would laugh and she'd never be part of the pack. The Wizard's house was built on the north side of Victory Square, the only place that didn't need a high wall because no one would dare offend her. She even had windows on the outside and didn't need to keep dogs. Around the garden there was a border of tied-up rose bushes as high as Megan's waist.
The Wizard lived in the River Quarter because she chose to, and her pipes never froze like other people's. It was rumored that she had so much manrauq that she'd lived longer than most Zak, perhaps even longer than a naZak.
The rumors all said she was a witch strong enough to use the colors with no name, beyond violet. She could turn somebody into a toad. When she went out with her wing-cat on her shoulder, she went where she would and no one would dare lift a hand against her.
The Honey-Giver's Shrine, where Megan stopped, sweating even in the cold, was already too close to the Wizard's house, just across Chigger Street. There were kraumak on the gate-posts as big as Megan's head, which you didn't see anywhere else but in the First Quarter or the Nest. There was even a night-siren in her garden; black, flat leaves just unfolding in the breeze, the scream of the wind through its branches still eerie and thin this early in the evening.
If I don't go, Jorge'll laugh. He's like Bosziviy.
"Megan, she might turn you into a bird an' put you inna cage," Eula whispered, looking across at the lighted windows.
"If she does," Serkai said stoutly, patting his knives. "We'll come an' rescue you."
"Thanks, Serk." Megan shivered, feeling the snow on the wind. They sat in the Honey-Giver's Shrine, since it was warmer than out in the square. This shrine was dedicated to the Mama-bear who was only roused to anger if her cubs were hurt. Koru, Goddess, help me. Mama-bear let me be your cub, at least for now. The drum from the Nest sounded the third hour of the day, and though it was getting dark no one went home.
Jorge was still right here, wanting her to say she was too scared, a baby.
"You'll be all right," Nikolai said, nodding reassuringly. "You're smallest, n you kin get in real tight places." She nodded again, and made the Go
ddess's sign on Megan's forehead and chin. "She'll never see you."
"You watch," Megan said. "You'll see," she said to Jorge, who looked a little sick because he hadn't thought she d actually do it. She looked at him, wondering if he were worth being friends with.
Megan said, "Everybody stay here," and walked down to Yalshoi, the other street touching the Wizard's garden. She could hear the night-siren in the front garden wailing up and down with the breeze. If the wind picked up much more the siren would start flaring, sending blue sparks to the ground. It was starting to snow. Megan pulled her threadbare coat tight and looked for a safe way in.
There was a small pine tree poking its branches through the back garden fence. It was darker here because the house on the other side of the street presented a wall covered with dead red-vines to the pavement. The pine trees down the street creaked and whispered and Megan started nervously, thinking they were watching her. She looked at the little pine wondering if it would grow fingers and grab her if she climbed it.
She clenched her hands into fists in her pockets. She'd said she'd do it. In the left pocket she had her rubber ball, almost as big as her fist. She took it out and threw it over the border into the Wizard's yard, holding her breath.
It bounced twice, raising a puff of snow, then rolled to a stop by a statue of a hermaphrodite with glass wings like a fly's. It was carved sitting cross-legged, with closed eyes. Maybe it's not a statue. But her ball was right by its knee. If she got caught, she could say she came into the garden to get it back. With her heart hammering, she jumped and climbed over the low fence, using the pine tree.
The garden looked the same on the inside as the outside, with dead grass still poking up through the snow. Soon it’ll be deeper than I am tall. She ran to get her ball and away, but the statue didn't move. It had snow on its head and face, thick on its closed eyelids. It was snowing so hard that her footprints were already disappearing. She ran across to the wall of the house between two windows and looked back. The statue's eyes were big and yellow, and Megan wondered why she hadn't noticed before.
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