The chicken Dastan had captured earlier had largely given up its fight. Now it suddenly clucked and twitched.
“Keep quiet,” Dastan said, tucking the bird behind his back. “I want to surprise Javed.”
Dastan whistled, and the wiry boy looked up immediately, his curious brown eyes searching the rooftops. When he spotted Dastan, he waved. He said something to the little boy he had been helping and then hurried over to Dastan. As always, Javed’s left arm was tucked inside his clothes. It had been badly damaged in a fire that had killed his family a number of years earlier and was of little use to him now.
“I see you’ve taken to the rooftops, little brother,” Javed called with a grin as he came closer. “Does that mean you’ve managed to enrage another of our esteemed local shopkeepers with your pillaging?”
“Something like that.” Dastan held the chicken behind him. He shifted and squirmed in an attempt to hide it as it twitched and flapped around. “Get up here and you’ll find out.”
Despite having only one arm, Javed didn’t need any assistance in reaching Dastan up on the rooftop. Backing up a few steps, he ran straight at the building upon which Dastan was perched, and kept running—right up the wall and onto the roof! It was an impressive and handy trick but also a difficult one. Dastan had never quite been able to master it.
“Well?” Javed said. “What did you find?”
“This!” With a flourish, Dastan pulled some onions out of his clothes.
“Ah, not bad.” Javed’s expression lost none of its cheer as he took one of the onions and examined it then took a bite right through the skin. “And they’re neither rotten nor dried out. That’s a fine thing. The pickings are slim in the dump this morning.”
“And as usual, I see you’ve given away what little you found to someone else,” Dastan said, glancing down toward the young boy, who was gnawing on a mutton bone.
Javed shrugged. “He’s new on the streets, having lost his mother just a week ago to a brain fever,” he said quietly. “He needed it more than I.”
To Dastan, caring too much about anyone or anything was a weakness when one lived on the streets. Javed thought differently. For this reason, it had been difficult for Dastan to trust Javed when he’d first turned up among the homeless urchins. Dastan thought he must have wanted something for his benevolence. Until then Dastan hadn’t needed friends, and even now he didn’t really want to let anyone else in. Many times he’d thought, if only Javed felt the same way, surely we would eat better.
Still, he knew better than to chide Javed for his softheartedness. It never did any good.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Dastan said with an air of great carelessness. “I also found this.”
He pulled the chicken from behind his back, shaking it a bit to make it squawk. Javed’s eyes widened when he saw it.
“Can it be?” he exclaimed. “A whole chicken! Why, King Sharaman himself couldn’t ask for more!”
“Indeed.” Dastan grinned. “I might even split it with you for a suitable price—say, that worthless old coin hanging around your neck?”
Javed’s hand flew to the coin he wore on a thread. “My lucky coin? I wouldn’t trade it for all the chickens in the empire!”
Dastan laughed. He knew very well that the battered old coin was priceless to Javed. It was the only thing he had left of his family.
“All right, then.” Dastan turned the chicken right-side up and thrust it toward his friend. “I suppose we can share—if you are the one to dispatch this creature so that we might eat it.”
“Not a chance, little brother!” Javed exclaimed. “You are much more ruthless than I, even at your tender age.”
Dastan waved the hen in his friend’s face. “Go on,” he urged with a grin. “You can do it. Otherwise, I might as well let it go.”
“Okay, I’ll pluck and prepare it,” Javed said, bursting into motion. “But you’ll need to catch me first!”
There was a taller building adjacent to the one where they were sitting. Without hesitating, Javed raced over, leaped across, and ran up the wall onto the higher rooftop.
Dastan couldn’t resist a challenge. “You’d better find a sharp stone, because here we come!” he shouted back.
Tightening his hold on the chicken’s scaly legs, Dastan raced toward the wall that Javed had just conquered. This time he was sure he could do it. He leaped directly at the wall without slowing. His bare feet slapped against the rough stucco. One step up, two . . .
For a second, Dastan thought he was doing it. But then he felt his momentum slow. One foot slipped and then the other. Dastan cried out as he tumbled to the ground, falling onto the chicken.
The alarmed bird let out a squawk and flapped its wings violently. Dastan’s grip had been loosened by the fall, and before he knew it he’d lost his hold on the hen’s legs.
“Hey!” he said as the bird made a break for it, flapping across a narrow alley to another nearby rooftop. “Get back here, you!”
Dastan stood and brushed himself off, glad that at least nobody had witnessed his fall. Glancing across the alley, he saw that the chicken had stopped to peck at something. It would be an easy matter to collect her, then catch up to Javed, who was surely several rooftops away by now. He stepped closer, preparing to make the easy leap across the alley.
“Help!” a terrified voice cried out from somewhere below. “By the names of Zurvan and Ahura, someone please help me!”
Dastan stepped out to the edge of the roof and peered down. A narrow alley lay directly below. It was a dead end, with houses on both sides and a high stone wall at the corner. A man with a patchy gray beard and tattered clothes was pressed up against the wall, looking terrified. Standing in front of him was a couple of nasty-looking youths.
“Don’t go far, my tasty friend,” Dastan called to the chicken. Then he began to stealthily make his way down into the alley.
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