Chapter One. Gin #2
He takes my hand again and leads me through the void.
My eyes adjust enough to detect the walls on either side of us.
It’s a tight space, barely enough for me to fit.
Rollo bends forward against the low ceiling.
“I used to hide here when I was a little boy,” he whispers.
“Old holdover from the war. I hear this is how Lacon won the war, by using all these secret passageways.”
“Who was the girl in the hood?” I ask him. “The one who was supposed to be me?”
“A Guild thief. Don’t worry, she wore a harness—she wasn’t harmed.”
I nod. I saw that clearly. The girl had looked clearly irritated, and not at all hurt.
“And believe me, she was well compensated for the trouble,” he adds.
“So the guards did let me go?”
“Of course. I arranged a last-minute swap. Everyone thinks you’re dead, so you’re safe now.”
I stop walking. I can’t see him, but I feel him breathing. “You did all that for me?” Though I’d been formulating an escape plan of my own—an admittedly risky one that involved getting ahold of a blade somehow—I appreciate him coming through for me.
I blink back tears, thinking about the weeks we spent before being discovered.
We were strangers—a girl from the Sleeve and a young nobleman from the estates.
I was wary at first, unsure of why he brought me to the palace.
What did he want from me? But all we did was play games—cards, tiles, puzzles—and he’d bring me books and we’d talk all night about anything and everything.
He’s the same age as me, and even though we grew up worlds apart, we share a love for all the same things.
In the palace, like in all of Lacon, there were mechanical marvels, things he called automatons, statues that could come alive, animated not by magic but by the movement of machines, pulleys, and gears, and we would study them to see how they worked.
There were great leather-bound books that described their making and we’d spent hours poring over the diagrams and details.
Our conversation was filled with science and curiosity, and I savored it.
I was happy. It seemed too good to be true and it was.
Plus, I could eat as much as I wanted, and for the first time in my life, my bony hips filled out and the hollowness in my eyes vanished after endless hours of luxurious, uninterrupted sleep.
All that comfort made me heady and foolish, and I became far too comfortable in a place where I did not belong and should never have been.
Na?ve enough to believe I might get away with it forever.
Even allowed myself to imagine a future here with him …
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Gin…”
“Yes?” I press closer toward him.
“I wish … I wish I could have kept you safe forever,” he whispers.
My heart soars and hurts at the same time. “Rollo,” I breathe.
But he moves away. “We’ve got to hurry. You don’t have much time, and I need to get back to the party or it’ll be suspicious.”
I swallow a lump of disappointment even as I quicken my pace, following him through the dark passageways that stretch on and on.
Occasionally, sounds from within the palace drift through the walls, music and heated conversation as well as loud stomping as guards move from one post to another.
At one point, the floor pitches down, and I nearly lose my footing.
I reach out to grab the wall. My hand brushes against cold metal, a tiny hinge, as I stumble.
Rollo catches me. “Careful,” he whispers.
“What’s this?” I tug at the metal, and it swings open like a tiny door, revealing a small beam of light. Shocked, I shut it immediately.
“Some kind of spy hole. I loved these when I was a kid,” he explains.
I open it again and see that we’re next to the grand ballroom—or nearly below it.
The hole must have been hidden near the floor, in the intricate carved moldings that framed the mirrored walls.
Elegant guests in their best gowns and lushly embroidered brocade coats mingle in small groups while the palace musician strums an enormous golden harp.
Servants offer trays overflowing with fresh fruit and salted meats.
My stomach growls.
Rollo reaches over to shut the cover. “Sorry, but we’ve got to hurry.”
Eventually we reach a dead end. Rollo takes out a long match and lights it on the bottom of his boot.
He holds it up near the wall and searches around until he finds another keyhole.
“Hold this,” he says, and hands me the match.
Once he unlocks the door, he takes the match back and stomps it out beneath his foot.
My heart pumps harder. “Wait.” I grab his arm.
“What if there are guards out there?” Aside from the fact that I haven’t gone toe to toe with anyone in quite a while, I’m completely unarmed.
With a blade, I could still hold my own.
But without it? I knew I should’ve kept up with my training regimen.
I was too complacent, and foolish to believe this might be forever.
“This passage lets out at the far edge, near the kitchen waste. You won’t be noticed there.” He slides the door open like the other one before. “But you still need to hurry. If my mother has discovered the ruse, they’ll be looking for you.”
It takes a beat for his words to sink in. “You mean, you’re not going with me?” I imagined he would, somehow, that it was why he’d rescued me. That he would be coming with me.
He shakes his head, his face grim and drawn.
“If I do, they’ll know you’ve escaped. It’s not possible, Gineth.
She’ll have an entire army searching for us.
But if I stay, you’ll be safe. This is the only way.
” He calls me by my Ophir name, Gineth, which means “happiness” or “light.” We Ophir are not allowed to use our full names or we face the consequences.
Laconians want no reminders of our heritage, or for us to take pride in our culture, and so we are all forced to answer to shortened monikers that mean nothing in our language.
“But where will I go?” I don’t care that the weeks of unparalleled luxury are over; I could easily go back to sleeping on the streets, back to the fleas and roaches, while rats steal my last chunk of stale bread. But it’s right then that I realize: I can’t leave him.
“You can’t stay here. You’re dead. Or my mother believes you to be. Head to the Lashing. You’ll be safe there.”
“The Lashing?” I ask, confused. The Lashing is a remote colony of Ophir; outside the laws of Lacon, it’s supposed to be a ragtag flotilla of barges, rafts, and boats lashed together, the last fragment of our fallen people.
The Lashing is well hidden and moves frequently in the endless ocean.
Its freedom comes at a price, however, as Lacon is intent on destroying it, conducting raids every time they discover its new location.
Somehow, the Lashing survives every devastation.
But believing that I would be safe there is like believing that our people were once so powerful we commanded spirits and the gods themselves.
“It’s the only place you’ll be free,” Rollo says.
“Find Bahram at the market, he sells kitchen pots and smokes a cigar. He has one blue eye and one black one. Tell him I sent you. Give him this, and he’ll take care of it,” he says urgently, as he hands me a small pouch heavy with coin.
“Head north on the river until you get to the open sea, then follow Estrella Norte all the way until you find it.”
I try to remember everything he’s telling me, but I’m so confused.
Things are happening too fast to make sense, and then Rollo pulls me against him and holds me tight.
For the briefest moment I forget the danger around me, focusing only on his arms around mine.
Maybe he’s changed his mind, and will hide me somewhere again, or decided he can’t be without me after all.
But he wrenches away suddenly. “You’re not safe here. Please. Find Bahram. Go to the Lashing.”
“What about you?” I ask. It sounds pathetic, and I regret saying it as soon as the words leave my mouth.
“Rollo … I…” I love … I love the way your eyes crinkle when you laugh.
I love that you always save me the largest slice of cake, the ripest fruit from the tray.
I love that you try your hardest to beat me at cards, but you’re never a sore loser.
I love that we are friends. I love that you care about me, and I care about you, too.
Rollo, I think I might even love … But I swallow the words.
Rollo puts a warm hand on my chin and raises my face to meet his. “I feel the same,” he says, even though I didn’t say anything about my feelings.
“Will I ever see you again?” I ask.
“I hope so,” he whispers. “But all that matters is that you’re safe.” Then he gently pushes me back a few paces. The door in the wall shuts behind me and I’m all alone once more, just as I have been since my mother died.
A steady shower of rain pours down from the gray skies.
Stunned and alone, I face away from the House Eternal to the winding road that leads straight back to the Sleeve.
Back to the gutter he’d plucked me from, to nights spent stealing for scraps and huddling in a corner while rats skittered across my ankles, waking me at odd hours to find that the fire had gone cold and even the embers had ceased glowing and the wind had begun to whistle through the cracks in the walls, making it all but impossible to sleep.
I shudder at the thought, my stomach twisting in knots.
Who’d have thought that I’d ever miss the floor of the brothel kitchen.
Back to the shadows and the margins. But what choice do I have?
Loitering around the palace means certain death.
I run to the edge of the grounds. The path out is lined with trees.
At least for a while, I can follow the road undetected.
The rain slows to a drizzle. I come to a fork—right, to neighboring estates; left to go back to the slums. Reluctantly, I head left.
The trail quickly turns from the kingsroad, paved with cobblestone and flanked by deep ditches to carry away water, to dirt paths where wagon wheels carved deep furrows in the earth so that the mud is ankle-deep.
I sidestep the carcass of an unrecognizable animal lying in the path, chewed by flies.
Then I see it. Either my memories are too rosy, or else my time in House Eternal made me soft.
Ahead of me, the boundary of the Sleeve begins and I can’t believe how rank it smells.
I’m greeted with a few decrepit hovels, unfit for livestock, let alone people.
A bony, wrinkled woman stands outside one, staring blankly into space.
I’m clean, and therefore a target, so I pass the old woman as quickly as possible.
Before going any farther, I swipe my hand through some mud and wipe it all over myself.
I can’t look like I have any coin on me.
Or even like my clothes are worth stealing.
As I reach down for more dirt, I gasp, startled.
There’s a man lying face down a few feet away.
Whether he’s still alive or not, I’m not sure, and I’m not waiting around to find out.
The rain stops, at least for now. Thunder booms somewhere to the west. Something clangs down the road.
My heart speeds up—a guard? But then I see what is making the noise: an old man wearing a long, ragged shirt, hunched painfully, grasping a tin mug that holds a few farthings.
He bangs it again. As if anyone here has anything to spare for him.
Meanwhile, back at House Eternal, golden trays are piled high with sweet dates and plums, luscious tarts, and icing-laden honey and cinnamon cakes that will go untouched and uneaten and end up thrown to the pigs.
One foot in front of the other, I say goodbye to the plush grounds and glittering ballrooms of the estate and head back to the most dangerous place in the world—and the only home I’ve ever known.