The Serpent Called Mercy

Chapter One A Slumdog’s Long-Awaited Revenge in Three Acts

CHAPTER ONE

A SLUMDOG’S LONG-AWAITED REVENGE IN THREE ACTS

L YTHLET T AIREL WAS ordinarily fond of lightning-bees, but on this rainy winter’s night, she wished they would silence their incessant buzzing.

She stood beneath a streetlight, shivering in the cold. A hive hovered overhead, the colony whirring as its thumb-sized citizens illuminated the street. Two were squabbling, their droning dissonance heightening her agitation.

The loan shark would come at dawn to collect on Desil’s debt, and they would not escape unscathed if Lythlet didn’t scrounge up enough coin by then. If past experience was anything to go by, they’d end the day with bruised ribs and threats painted over their walls.

A sly thought nudged her toward a downhill road: thievery would stitch together her purse strings.

But Lythlet hesitated. It had been many years since she had last turned to thievery, and it weighed heavily on both her conscience and her pride that she had to resort to it again.

She pulled her last copper out of her pocket, deferring the decision to fate.

“Tell me where my story leads tonight, Sunsmith and Moonmachinist.” Clapping her hands together thrice, she stared at the heavens.

Rain splattered over her cold cheeks, but she remained unblinking.

“Heads, I listen to my good conscience, return home, and wait for the loan shark’s punishment.

Ship, I go thieving in the night and make what I can from the squalor of Setgad. ”

With a flick of her thumb, she sent the coin soaring overhead and caught it in her palm.

The Fated Ship stared back at her.

“Thy will be done,” she murmured, pocketing the coin and taking a deep breath. She pulled her hood up and began the hunt.

She could not risk making a single mistake, and the fires of her wit were being stoked to full flame tonight.

Dewa Road, Mandol Lane, Westiri Alley, she regarded each with a prompt judgment, a calculation of all the variables present, and their potential outcomes.

Too brightly lit—she would be seen far too easily.

Too sparsely crowded—she needed a blur of people to disappear into.

Too many potholes and rubbish heaps lining this road—it was risky having such terrain if she had to run away.

She turned away from one man, his impressive build too risky for her to challenge.

A lithe woman smoking a pipe under a streethive was less so, but her coat was so thin she would immediately notice a stray hand entering her pockets.

That slope-shouldered man was the best so far, seeing how distracted he was by the woman at his side.

But Lythlet had seen him two streets earlier, emptying his entire purse at a hawker’s stall on a serving of fried mashed Jhosper berries mixed with makrut lime leaves, which he now split with his lady friend.

She’d be wasting her time on a man with nothing left in his pocket, and even if he had the coin to spare, she couldn’t quite muster the energy to ruin what was possibly a rare romantic night for him.

Then the perfect victim emerged on the bustling road of Fithan Avenue, the heavens serving her a careless lackwit on a silver platter as her eyes fell upon the pocket of a thick winter coat scuttling across the street.

Dangling out of it was a long black string, no doubt a coin purse attached to the other end.

It took a shocking naivety to not mind one’s pockets in Southeast Setgad.

She slinked through the crowd, strides lengthening as her heartbeat crescendoed.

But her steps slowed a stride away from her prey, bravado vanishing.

No. No, not him.

The winter coat hung off a frail, old Oraanu man tottering along the litter-strewn street, pushing a one-wheeled cart filled with stacks of bamboo charcoal. He was likely returning from a long day hawking his wares at the Midnas Street market.

He looked old enough to be someone’s grandfather, judging from the wispy strands of white hair he kept in a limp ponytail.

Lythlet had never known her grandparents on either side—they had passed long before she was born, may the white wind guide their souls—but she could imagine the grief that robbing an old man would cause.

So she remained still, bitterly watching him leave. But as he journeyed on, she couldn’t ignore the loose string hanging out of his pocket like bait hooked for hungry fish. Even if she had some mercy to spare tonight, other thieves would not.

“S-sir?” she called, rubbing her freezing hands nervously behind her back.

The man hobbled to a stop, his cart creaking until its one wheel stilled. Wrinkled face wary, frown lines heavy, he regarded her silently. Strangers did not talk to each other in Southeast, not unless they wanted trouble.

She nodded toward his hip with a jerk of her head. “P-pockets,” she said, annoyed that her childhood stutter was rearing its head now of all times. “Mind your—mind them.”

He patted them, finding the purse string, and tucked it in hastily.

He gave a nod of gratitude in her direction before picking up his handcart once more, dragging it over cracked pavements and poorly laid cobblestones until he joined the tail-end of a queue leading to a rattan-and-bamboo trishaw selling muna-muna —parcels of lemongrass-seasoned fish wrapped in banana leaves, an imported recipe from the southern islands of the Ora Empire.

Though the city-state of Setgad existed independently from the Empire, it was a patchwork tapestry that borrowed from both the Oraanu, the pale-skinned, dark-eyed moon-worshippers whose first home remained in the Ora Empire to the west, and the Ederi, the manifold-colored descendants of exiles from the far east.

Ederi as she was, Lythlet had loved Oraanu food since she was young, and the fragrance of muna-muna sent her stomach growling; the briny tang of mackerel, lemongrass, mint, coriander, makrut lime—all together they reminded her she hadn’t eaten since the morning.

Taking no comfort in her good deed, Lythlet made ready to leave the street behind and hunt for another target. She would only be rewarded for her mercy with the loan shark Tucoras’s wrath tomorrow. She glanced back at the old man in the distance and froze in her step.

A pale hand was escaping the man’s pocket, a coin purse with a long black string clutched between slender fingers vanishing entirely into another pocket—a thief pulling a sleight of hand, leaving without looking back.

Lythlet blinked. It had happened so quickly, she almost mistrusted her eyes. The old man himself hadn’t an inkling he’d just been robbed, still waiting tiredly for his turn at the trishaw. No one else on the street had noticed, everyone minding their own business.

All none the wiser, except her.

Seizing the moment, Lythlet sprang into action, eeling through the crowd. She passed the unsuspecting old man and gained on the cutpurse, trailing him carefully.

He turned the corner onto Junda Road and strolled past the late-night eateries without a second glance, passing the local pig- farmer making his rounds through the neighborhood kitchens for slop to feed his herd.

Curious. If the thief hadn’t come here to eat—and she highly doubted he had come to play with the stray dogs as she did—then there was only one place left worth visiting by this route at this time of night: the ginhouse at the far end of the road.

That meant she had about ten minutes to empty his pockets before he sat down and did it himself on a night of drinking.

He was an experienced pickpocket, she could tell as much, so she didn’t want to risk robbing him too brazenly without tilting the odds in her favor first. But she had to move fast. She scanned her surroundings and smiled for the first time that day at a familiar sight resting under the awning of a closed eatery.

“Good to see you again, old boy,” she said, bending down to pet a mangy mutt missing an eye.

The stray wagged its tail and pressed its whitening muzzle into her palm tiredly.

She was glad to know it had survived the winter; they’d met a year ago, and she’d come to feed it when she had something to spare.

She had even taught it a handful of simple commands over the months.

“Have you time to assist me? I’ll reward you with food. ”

At the last word, the mutt stood up, waiting expectantly. It followed her as she crossed the street to one of the neighboring eateries, nearing the pig-farmer and his nasty-smelling pail of slop, the stench of day-old food waste making her stomach roil.

“Filthy strays,” the farmer muttered at the sight of them, turning down the other end of the street. Choosing to ignore how the pluralization indicated his opinion of her, Lythlet leaped forth and silently snatched a half-eaten turkey wing from his pail.

The mutt wagged its tail.

“Not yet,” she apologized, holding one finger up. It obeyed her gesture, waiting patiently.

She dashed down the street, making short work of the distance between her and the thief, the dog scampering only a few paces behind her. She quietened her footsteps as she approached him, letting her presence fade into the unceasing noise of Setgad at night.

The thief sauntered along, relishing his success too much to take note of a scrawny young woman and a hungry mutt trailing him.

His coin-laden pocket was within reach, but she ignored the distended patch of cloth. Her eyes homed in on the pocket on the other side instead, flat and unremarkable.

Drawing closer, Lythlet hooked the wing bone into that empty pocket and stepped aside into the shadows, flashing an open palm at the mutt behind her.

The mongrel sprang into action, bouncing forward and tugging at one end of the wing, eager to fetch its reward.

The pickpocket stumbled and shouted in alarm, turning to barely make sense of a stray dog trying to rip a turkey wing from his coat. He wrestled with the mutt, retracting his hands with a frightened yelp whenever the dog growled.