Master of One

by Jaida Jones

  Their stark black uniforms, detailed with silver, turned them into shadows. They were all business, as though their mistress, the Queen, could see them everywhere, every heartbeat of every day, so they always had to be on their best behavior.

  That thought gave Rags shivers, and he stepped down hard on it. Had to quit daydreaming. If he planned to see this bewildering trip through, figure out how to escape it, he had to pay attention.

  A few more halls. The architecture was late Radiance period; this could only be home to a member of the Silver Court, a theory confirmed by the masterpieces—not forgeries—hung in lily-shaped frames between the windows. Then a brightly lit chamber, a chair at the far end flanked by two massive, wire-furred hounds. A lean young man sat dead center, his long black hair seeded with jeweled beads. At his back, another man, stockier, dressed entirely in red. Like a sorcerer.

  Like a fucking sorcerer.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  The Queensguard didn’t let Rags go, didn’t give him the chance to bolt. One put his hand on the back of Rags’s head and said, “Bow.”

  No choice. Down on his knees in front of some Ever-Noble, staring at his own filth-caked hands, fingers splayed on marble tile veined with silver.

  “You need a bath,” the young man in the chair said.

  And a knife, and a way to turn back time, to be a good boy and ignore the rumors about jewels buried beneath an abandoned bank.

  “’Snot all I need,” Rags said. “. . . Your Importantness.” That last bit earned him a boot to the side of the face—a boot with its toe cased in iron.

  “Rise,” the sorcerer commanded.

  The Queensguard assisted Rags, shoving him forward. They let go of his wrists because they didn’t need security, not now that the sorcerer had stepped forward, his eyes just visible between swaths of bloodred fabric.

  The sorcerer continued, “We’ll kill you if you don’t agree to our proposal.”

  “I agree to your proposal,” Rags said.

  The sorcerer shook his head. The cloth around his mouth and nose didn’t stir with his breath, sending a shiver through Rags’s body. The rumors that sorcerers didn’t have to breathe couldn’t be true.

  Was he the last thing the Queen’s most recent enemies, the Ever-Loyals, had seen before their eyes had glazed over for good? Someone should’ve noticed that Rags didn’t belong in their noble, deceased company.

  “Let’s eat first,” the sorcerer said. “Shall we?”

  3

  Rags

  No names were offered, but they were generous with their food. Rags’s manners had the wiry hounds looking away in shame, but no one corrected him or was stupid enough to bring out a knife and fork to help him eat. He ate with his hands. At least they had brought him a basin of clean water and scented soap to wash them in first.

  He had caught sight of himself in the surface of the water before he disturbed it. Hollows in his cheeks, under his dark eyes. The split in his lip was worse than he’d thought, definitely going to scar. He took in his sharply angled features, the mouth that felt permanently twisted. The posture and attitude of a magpie, with the bird’s shifty, quick grace. Black hair curling over the curves of his ears. The lobe of the right had been torn, the hoop that once hung there ripped out in his latest tussle with the Queensguard.

  All that work, skillfully avoiding every trap, only to have Queensguard waiting for him at the end of the maze. It still smarted. The Gutter King was laughing in his vault somewhere.

  And counting his un-stolen jewels.

  The memory offered revelation. “Oh. You want me to steal something for you. Right?” Rags caught the Ever-Noble’s flicker of surprise and kept smug triumph from crossing his own face. “Figures. Even though I got pinned by your guys, you still think I’m the pawn for your special job?”

  The Ever-Noble tipped his head back with a faint smile.

  Rags’s eyes naturally picked out the shiny first: A shimmer of chain against the man’s dark skin, connecting the gold ring in his ear and the one in his nose. A whisper of metallic thread crosshatching his midnight-blue tunic. The gilt finish of his smoking slippers, the pure silver signet ring adorning his left hand. All these things told Rags that the Ever-Noble was a mover and shaker. Coming up in the world, doing well for himself, and showing off too much, like all new money.

  The sorcerer’s eyes showed nothing, reminded Rags of polished stone. Reflecting, not revealing.

  Rags’s throat was still dry. He contemplated drinking the water in the basin he’d used to wash his filthy face and filthier hands.

  “You did well in the test,” the sorcerer said, and waited for this to sink in. When Rags swore, comprehension dawning, he continued: “Yes, I designed the obstacle course below the bank. You evaded every trap, save for the final one. Had you done that . . .”

  “You would have been in trouble, Morien,” the Ever-Noble said, a flash of fire in his eyes. “No need to withhold names any longer. He’s the one for the job. Let’s treat him well.”

  Morien. Morien the Last. Rags recognized the name from rumors only. His mind spun. Last what? Last in his class, or last thing you see before he tears out your still-beating heart and eats it with eggs at breakfast?

  Morien shrugged beautifully, heavily. “As your will commands, my lord Faolan Ever-Learning. This thief is the one for the job.”

  Rags swore again, curses so colorful that when his voice broke and he fell silent, Lord Faolan Ever-Learning of the Silver Court applauded him for his inventiveness.

  Faolan wasn’t just your average lily-soft Ever-Noble. Most thieves worth their spot in the Clave knew better than to steal from House Ever-Learning, because young Lord Faolan worked directly under the Queen.

  Poor folk kept track of that kind of thing. Needed to know who was too dangerous to be worth stealing from.

  Rags’s old friend Dane from Cheapside would’ve eaten this story up. But Cheapside was a long way from the royal Hill, Dane was long dead, and Rags was in the deep shit now.

  Lost-Lands help him, he wanted to know how deep.

  4

  Rags

  They had him clean up first, while also, Rags figured, letting him stew in curiosity for hours, so he’d drive himself wild with the need to know what came next.

  He only allowed himself to properly boil once he’d bathed and changed and prodded at the split in his lip in front of a spotless mirror, in a waiting room that would’ve held half of all the street rats with allegiance to the Clave. With space to spare. Family portraits hung in gilded frames; the window fixtures were wrought from precious metal, the chairs upholstered in the finest velvet.

  Of course, the Queensguard was watching, so Rags couldn’t make off with the lot stuffed down his pants.

  He dressed in clothes that had been left for him: trousers without holes and a belt with pouches. The belt was magnificently useful. Everything else was too much, especially the cowl-necked tunic, fluttering hem so crooked it had to be on purpose. All in black, with a pair of soft leather boots he’d hawk if he made it out of this in one piece.

  No harm in wearing them for this job, learning what life without foot blisters was like.

  Rags whistled at the picture he made. Tugged the draped fabric up and around to hide his nose and mouth. Looked like a child playing in an older sibling’s clothes.

  Save for the boots, which were a perfect fit, every item of clothing was at least a size too big. Rags wasn’t troubled. Most of the clothes he owned had been purchased for someone else to wear.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so clean. His skin was pink, tingling from the rough scrubbing. His hair clung wet to his forehead and the back of his neck. His hands were dry and peeling around the nails, but otherwise unharmed.

  One of the Queensguard caught him flexing his fingers and examining his knuckles, and cleared her throat. Rags tried to stop looking so suspicious after that. It was dawn when Morien and Faolan returned. Rags watched through the w
indow as the sun began to climb, turning Cheapside’s seemingly endless line of tin shanties briefly gold. From the Hill sprawled Westside, where folks were nearly as rich, but their houses weren’t as well guarded; and Northside, which was merchant and shop territory, the newly rich, who were about as trustworthy as Cheapsiders and Clave thieves. Sinkholes, a hazard from all the collapsed mining tunnels, pocked the fallen Eastside district.

  Didn’t stop desperate orphans from trying to take shelter in the rubble. Every month, their corpses were discovered in the shifting dust and cracked stone.

  Loss of an entire neighborhood led to more overcrowding in Cheapside—the city’s poorest district, and Rags’s home. The view from on high transformed his old sneaking grounds into something beautiful, angular, like lines on a map, instead of the familiar, stink-soaked back alleys Rags was so fond of disappearing into.

  Then the door opened, the lord and his sorcerer entered, and the Queensguard left. Only the dogs stood between Rags and Faolan.

  They cowered aside, made way for Morien the Last.

  “My favorite part of the test you designed was the bit with the barbed arrows that came at me from every direction,” Rags told Morien. “That was fun.”

  Had the Gutter King’s vault ever lain in wait for him, or had it been a ruse from the start? Was there a Gutter King anymore? Rags didn’t know what to believe and, as always, decided not to believe in anything, except his quick fingers.

  “There’s worse where you’re going.” Morien stood by the window. The sunlight revealed black threads veining the red cloth he wore, like branches against a burning sky. No—like the creep of deadly poison through blood.

  “That was my favorite part, too.” Faolan patted the head of the dog nearest him affectionately. “What do you know of the Lost-Lands, little thief?”

  What did one trash-raised, trash-named thief know about the Lost-Lands? The same stories every guttersnitch knew: extravagant lies, elaborate inventions. Once upon a lost-time, Oberon Black-Boned ruled a glittering court, as beautiful as it was treacherous. His fae Folk were handsome, strong, and brilliant, but inhuman and terribly cruel. Their beauty was the lure, their nails and teeth sharp.

  Through subterfuge or sheer luck, armed with sorcery and shadowy pacts, humanity had managed to destroy them all. Even after their annihilation, the mere thought of them or their Lost-Lands still traced its fangs along the back of Rags’s neck, raised the hairs there. As though echoes of fearsome fae remained, ready to enact ghostly vengeance despite being buried long ago.

  Instead of letting on how the thought chilled him raw, Rags snorted. “That if I don’t finish my vegetables every night, I’ll be taken away, replaced in my bed by a changeling, and fed to Oberon’s children finger by finger.”

  Faolan waved a hand. His dogs watched it move, accustomed to treats. “Regardless of what you believe in, we’ve discovered an intriguing ruin. You’ll be brought there—you’ll have to be blindfolded much of the way—then charged with leading my explorers through its pitfalls successfully.”

  “And if I’m not successful?”

  “You aren’t our first choice,” Morien said.

  “Or our fifth,” Faolan added.

  “Seven have already tried and failed.”

  Faolan sighed deeply. “Poor number six.”

  So the whispers of the Gutter King’s vault had lured more than Rags and his clever hands. Made sense. A big score bred big competition. He should’ve suspected something sideways right from the start.

  Wherever Blind Kit was, Rags couldn’t decide whether to curse her or hope she was still breathing.

  He settled on both.

  “What’s the pay?” he demanded.

  “You keep your life if you succeed,” Morien replied.

  There was no reason to assume that was a joke. Rags regretted opening his mouth.

  “But”—Faolan offered a weary smile—“if it makes you feel better about your prospects, Morien’s tests have grown more difficult with each vaultbreaker. You made it through his hardest one yet!”

  “Lord Faolan believes in the importance of hope,” Morien said.

  “And you?” Rags asked.

  “Like any drug, it has its uses,” Morien replied. “And like any drug, too much is fatal.”

  Faolan waved his hand again. “No more theatrics, Mor. It’s getting old. Just do the awful thing so we can prepare for the eighth expedition.”

  Morien turned away from the window, the sun at his back. His eyes had changed color. They were death-shroud white. He held up one hand and said, “Be still.”

  Rags didn’t feel it when he fell to his knees, but he heard the echoes of Morien’s footsteps, each strong enough to shatter his bones, as the sorcerer crossed the room. Darkness drew around them like a pair of raven’s wings folded against rain. Morien touched Rags’s jaw, tilting his face upward. The sorcerer’s fingertips traced the large vein in Rags’s throat until it stilled. The world pitched gray, became shadow. Rags opened his mouth and no sound came out.

  “You will obey,” a voice commanded. It sounded like three Moriens speaking at once. A hand on Rags’s chest. Something sharp, cold, slid into it, through the skin, past muscle, between bones, lodging itself in his heart.

  Mirrorcraft. The word passed in nervous whispers from eave to gutter through the lower city. Only Queen Catriona Ever-Bright’s sorcerers practiced the mysterious art.

  Then Morien’s voice was in Rags’s ear: “If you try to run, the shard of mirrorglass I’ve placed within you will shatter and shred your heart’s muscle into a thousand pieces.”

  As he said it, the shard within Rags vibrated, threatening to slice his heart apart then and there. Something inside him, not a part of him. The wrongness of it was like biting down onto a nail in bread, a mean trick some bakers used when cooling loaves on the sill. Ruining their own goods to punish hungry orphans with sticky fingers.

  “You understand.” Morien’s voice was quiet, but it flooded Rags’s head like a chorus. “I’ve devised a trap you can’t escape. We own you. You’ll do as I wish, until I decide otherwise. And when you’re no longer of value, I will kill you.”

  In reply, Rags vomited, then blacked clean out.

  5

  Rags

  They gave him a horse to ride. Given Rags’s lack of experience with horses, he had told them it would be faster if they tied him to the shitting end of one and let him walk.

  But all Morien had had to do was touch the beast’s snorting nose, and it bowed its head, pressed its brow to Morien’s brow. After that, it gave Rags no trouble.

  However, its glossy muscles jostled Rags with every step, and by the end of their first day riding, his ass was bruised, his thighs sore, his fingers cramped from clutching the reins for dear life.

  He rubbed his hands together over the campfire, not too close to the flames, cracking his knuckles and easing every ache. He thought about the shard of sorcerer’s mirror-magic in his heart and crept closer to the warmth. Nothing could heat his chilled flesh.

  Lord Faolan Ever-Learning wasn’t accompanying them on their journey, but he’d sent six of the Queen’s best Queensguard, led by Morien, and one of his dogs, who had refused to be wooed with half of Rags’s sausage at dinner. The hound had eaten it, of course, but didn’t get friendlier for it, and he still slept at Morien’s side.

  Fucking waste of a sausage.

  The first night under the open sky, far from the city Rags knew from crooked cranny to cunning corridor, found him sleepless, staring at the stars.

  He was worrying a hole in one too-long sleeve, biting where it covered his knuckle. If he tried to run, the shard in his chest would shred his heart to scraps. Not a pleasant way to die. The best he could imagine for his future was a full pardon and being turned back to the streets where he belonged—with the shard still in his heart to ensure he never spoke of this mission to anyone.

  It wasn’t much hope, but that was for the best, since hope and Rags didn�
�t get along.

  He touched his chest, imagined he could feel the shard through his rib cage, and withdrew his hand. Above, a canopy of stars shimmered, marking shapes he knew from bastardized street versions: the Swan-Slayer, the Sheep-Fucker, the Shitting Lad.

  “Those aren’t the names I learned,” Dane had said once, wide-eyed at Rags’s filthy mouth, his filthier fingernails, and the impression he immediately gave of being a bad influence. Rags, age twelve at the time, had informed Dane he was simpler than a headless chicken if he didn’t think that mess of stars looked exactly like a man bending over and pulling his trousers down.

  “And that’s where his—”

  “I see it now,” Dane had said, eager to end the conversation. Sorry he’d started it. Laughing despite himself.

  Like always.

  Rags blinked, thought he saw one star shake free from the swan’s beak and arc downward, brightly burning. Another blink revealed it was a trick of tired eyes. Rags closed them, threw his elbow over his forehead to block out the world, and forced himself to rest.

  6

  Rags

  Another day of tireless riding through homely farmland, now under ceaseless drizzle. The Queensguard remained eerily silent. Old bruises got banged around, joined by new ones. Farmhouses dotted the fields, smoke rising from chimneys. They passed field laborers—whose lot in life was a fate that made Rags shudder as much as the shard in his heart—farm animals, piles of dung, rotting vegetables for fertilizer.

  It was horrible. If he lived through this, he’d never leave the city again. A steamy cluster of stone buildings and too many crowded bodies, with the Queen on her Hill watching them scuttle about like ants: that was his turf.

  He missed it fiercely.

  Would he ever return to his Cheapside? Now, in the daylight, Rags tried again to envision a way this ended well. Morien the Last was a name that stuck to the darkest parts of the city, whispered in alleyways, swirling on the dockside breeze. It was rumored he’d fought in the Fair Wars, or his master had, yet he looked no older than a man in his early twenties. No one had seen his full face in years, but the straightness of his back and the lack of wrinkles around his fathomless eyes gave everyone pause.