“It’s a miracle.”
Áed agreed. The fire was gaining strength. It illuminated the brick-cobbled street and the crooked, ramshackle buildings with their sunken stoops and shattered windows, and Áed averted his eyes and stepped back as the fire spread. Flames began to curl around Ninian’s body, obscuring it behind a screen of luminous orange. There rose a faint, gut-turning whiff of burning flesh.
Before long, Áed put a hand on Ronan’s back and steered him back inside the tenement. There was nothing after this point that either of them should remember. Neither of them should watch. The fire would burn, burn away until the pyre was nothing but charred rubble and Ninian’s bones, and Áed didn’t want to see the black, sooty femurs and ribs and skull. Not of Ninian, so recently living, so recently speaking, joking, swearing and fighting, running, laughing, and caring. Áed’s empty stomach heaved, and he swallowed hard.
He had a decision to make. It had been in the back of his mind, he thought, since that morning, but the time had come to face it.
Quashing quickly-rising guilt, Áed began to move around the flat to gather up their meager possessions.
“What are you doing?” Ronan’s voice was small and exhausted.
Áed opened the cabinets methodically and spread the sparse contents on the table as Ronan watched. “Packing.”
“Are we leaving?” The boy didn’t sound like he was arguing, but he probably just lacked the energy to do so.
“Yes.”
“To go where?”
“Out,” Áed said. His voice felt heavy. “Out of here, that’s where. The White City.”
The smaller boy’s silence fell as heavily as a stone.
“Go on upstairs, Ronan. Go collect your things.” It pained him to do it, but the opportunity had come, and he would act. Ninian’s death had taken so much that Áed didn’t think the chasm in his chest would ever heal, but there was something else Ninian’s death had eliminated: “If we leave now, ceann beag, nobody will bother us.”
Ronan’s nickname, meant as a comfort, had little effect. “You mean his gang?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.” The gang would come looking eventually. The gang was the reason they had not left before. “Go on.”
It felt almost like robbery, like stealing the child’s illusion of safety, but it had to be done. Áed could not save the Maze, but he could save Ronan. Slowly, aimlessly, Ronan moved upstairs, and Áed assembled his belongings into a burlap sack. They were few. A couple of cans, a shirt, gloves that were made more of patches than original fabric. A knife so dull that Áed hadn’t been able to sell it. A single coin. More importantly, he packed a comb that had been Ninian’s and the letter from Áed’s mother.
He paused before he placed the worn paper into the bag, staring at the rows of symbols he did not understand. Ninian’s lips had once demystified the words, but now…
Ronan returned, sadly bearing his own sack, and Áed released the letter to join the rest of his worldly goods before looking up. “Are you ready?” The boy hesitated, then gave an uncertain nod. “That’s my brave one,” Áed murmured, and Ronan took his hand. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Áed?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
The question was so blunt that Áed blinked. He ruffled Ronan’s hair the way he would have done before everything collapsed. “It’s going to be alright.” Alright. All right. It had never been, and never would be, all right. He shook his head to clear the haze, but he knew that his mind would stay murky nonetheless.
They’d left through the back of the tenement to avoid the still-burning pyre, and now they moved through the alleys like ghosts, untethered from the world. Grief made them weary and mindless, though Áed sensed emotion churning in himself beneath the surface. Anger and fear, both hot and bright, mounted deep inside him, but they, for the time, stayed buried beneath layers of ashy confusion.
It was properly nighttime as they neared the tightly-packed tangle of streets and glassless windows that gaped like empty eyes. This was the Inner Maze, and fear crept under grief’s curtain. Ronan squeezed Áed’s hand. “Áed,” he whispered hoarsely. “You told me never to come here.”
“I know,” Áed replied. “But we have to, okay, ceann beag? Don’t let go of me.”
The boy held Áed’s hand even tighter, and Áed said nothing of the ache it brought. If he thought it safer, he would have waited until morning, but he didn’t know when Ninian’s gang would come to check on their fighter. He’d be damned if they found Ninian dead and held the nearest parties responsible, he’d be damned if Ronan was there when that happened, and he’d be damned if they missed their only chance to get out. They approached every crossroad carefully, ears open for sounds of danger, and though the grimy route was empty, Áed held his breath. This was Morcant’s territory, and the very ground felt poisoned beneath his feet.
“Can you move any faster, Ronan?” Áed murmured gently. “I know you’re tired, but this is not a good place to be.”
Their feet carried them deeper into the rotting metropolis, where the buildings looked wicked in the dark and their tracks were thick with filth. Fallen shingles and human refuse spackled the gutters, and Ronan shivered at the smell of decay that hung heavy in the air. “Why did we have to come this way?”
“There is no other way.”
“I feel…” Ronan’s voice wavered. “I feel like there’s somebody watching us.”
A shiver ran over Áed’s skin, and he looked around. Any of the shadows could enshroud a body, and the buildings may as well be nests of hornets for the danger they could mask. “Where?”
“I don’t know.”
There were no torches in this unholy sector of the city, and no moon behind the clouds. There was no way to discern who lurked unseen. With a hand on Ronan’s back and another glance over his shoulder, Áed urged the child onward.
“Stop.”
Áed’s gut clenched, and he froze.
“Turn around.”
They obeyed haltingly, and from a doorway whose lintel was crooked with age appeared a figure, mirage-like. Another followed, and then one more. Together, their bulk turned the alley into a dead end.
“Do you know where you are?”
It was difficult to see, but Áed thought he recognized the silhouette in the center, the one who had not yet spoken. A spark of anger burned through the damp cloak of grief and fear. “Yes.”
The left silhouette clicked his teeth, and they glinted in the darkness. “Then you know that’s a problem.”
The central figure held up a hand, and his underling hushed as if his breath was stolen.
At the display of authority, any doubt steamed away.
In a growl, the word escaped Áed’s clenched teeth, and the world tipped as something, something hot and powerful, surged within him. “Morcant.”
✽ ✽ ✽
A scratching sound clawed its way from the darkness, and a miniature, tremulous flame burst into existence. The man who held the match was practically a giant, all well-fed muscle and sinew and bone, and the weak light shone dully against muddy-colored eyes. He lifted the match, illuminating the alley, and one of his eyebrows slid up. “Well. You know whose land you’re on.”