Chapter One
Tianlan of the Catseye
IT WAS CLEARLY HIS FAULT I’d punched him in the face.
It was still the man’s fault when I did it again, and when I did it a third time, and when I did it the next twenty-one times. I lost count after that—his fault too, because I’m the kind of woman who keeps score.
It was his fault I’d kicked in his ribs, heard that satisfying crack the instant my steel-toed boot hit vulnerable flesh. It was his fault I’d broken his fingers when he wouldn’t drop the knife. His fault I’m painting the sides of the broken street with his filth.
Strangers passed us, looked away. People minded their own business in Aranth; ignorance was a strength here, inattention a survival trait. The passersby were smarter than my current victim. Their eyes took stock of the heavy robe I wore, the blacker-than-black piping lining the edges of my cowl. If not that, the enormous blade strapped to my back would have at least suggested to the average intelligence what my job required.
It was one thing to intervene while a man was being beaten, but it was another thing entirely to intervene in Catseye business.
Especially with a Catseye who’d just been stood up by her date.
I flexed my fingers, hauled the man up by his collar. His face was an abstract mess of blood. It reminded me of those Lichtbachter paintings squirreled away in rich old Vanlersmit’s attic, where he thought no one would find them: people with faces dribbling down canvases like liquid, drawn ugly, surrounded by objects painted square when they ought to be round, by cats with beaks and fish with legs in putrid patches of color. Never understood how those hideous things sold quickly and for large amounts of cash, even after the Breaking—not that I was complaining. I wished I could package his face up and sell it like I had those old Lichtbachters, because then my day wouldn’t have gone to waste.
Or rather, night. No such thing as day anymore. Not in Aranth.
“Had enough?”
A low groan was my answer.
“Was it worth it?” I waved the book in front of his face. It was a first-edition volume of classic mythology dating back to the Golden Age, mint condition. Or it was mint condition when I bought it, before this carrion feeder tried to knife me during the brief lull between storms.
He opened his eyes. I could see at first glance that he was one of those rare Acidsmiths, although an inept one; the patterns of Water around him were nearly nonexistent, and the fire-gates in his eyes were faint—the thin rings of color around his irises were redder than what his apparent alcoholism allowed for, but not enough to show he could use his skill. Most people were born with the capacity to see patterns and manifest gates, albeit at varying strengths, but fire-gate users were never strong enough in Aranth to do much of anything; that, plus his lack of sobriety, meant he could barely spit dirty water in my direction. He was certainly inept enough that he’d chosen a knife as his weapon of choice instead of channeling poison.
Neither would have worked on me.
His gaze fell on mine and widened in horror. My eyes glowed like shining glass despite the heavy gloom, one as golden as an idol and the other a pale silver. “B-bright Lady,” he stuttered.
I grinned. “Not a lady,” I said, and let the aether-gates within my eyes flare.
He recoiled, whimpering at the back of his throat. I knew what he was seeing, what he was thinking. I could siphon off his life, reduced him to nothing more than a skeleton and sagging flesh. I could introduce festers and sores on his body, accelerate them so that his last few days would be spent in untold agony. Assaulting a Catseye, even unsuccessfully, was punishable by death, the sanction to be carried out at our discretion.
Instead, I healed him. I felt the bones under his skin knit quickly, the muscles firming. There was a click as his rib cage re-formed and the joints in his fingers reattached. The painful gashes on his face and arms thinned out and closed at my touch. Aether patterns seeped into his insides, finding the familiar contours of spleen, heart, and the last stages of liver decay. Corrosion at that stage required at least a good month to treat, but I scoured and cleaned the wreckage as best I could. Then I washed away his insobriety, but not the hangover he’d be suffering tomorrow, because where’s the fun in that?
“Take some milk thistle for the next three weeks when you can find it, and for the Good Mother’s sake, find other means than ale to drown your sorrows.” I let him go.
He scampered away on his hands and knees without another look back, until the night swallowed him up.
I had little faith that he would take my advice, but I could hope my tough love had ensured that he would at least think twice next time. Because there was no doubt there would be a next time, and the Good Mother help him if another Catseye—or Starmaker Gracea, if he was that unlucky—became his target. People tend to hold fast to their baser natures. These days, they were the only things they had left.
I examined my book and sighed. There was a long gash across the leather cover, slicing through the first few pages. I’d paid thirty crowns for this and three other books—penny romances I wouldn’t have been caught dead with, had Ame not enjoyed them.
“She never even showed up, you idiot,” I grumbled aloud, still raw from the rejection, and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, careful not to remove the colored-feather pin Mistress Daliah had given me. The fight hadn’t even dislodged it.
I resumed my trek toward the tower. Somewhere in the city, bells began to toll, signaling the final Hour of Waking. I cursed the lateness; the goddess’s daughter would be fast asleep by now, if she and her mother weren’t still waiting up. Not a good impression for what was my first night on the job.
Above me, houses huddled together, little sign of life within save for occasional sparks of light; glowing Air-and-Fire-patterned rushlights for those who could afford the luxury, and tiny stubs of candlelight for the less fortunate. The majority of the population were either Stormbringers, Windshifters, or Icewrights—redundant talents when you live in a storm-swept city surrounded by ever-expanding ice. Water was abundant, but food was scarce, limited to what we could catch in the seas and what little vegetation could thrive in the absence of sun.
I quickened my pace, aiming to reach the Spire before the next storm broke in—I scanned the sky—twenty minutes, as swift as the furies and as predictable as clockwork.
When I passed through the gates that separated the Spire from the rest of the city, I was met at the entrance by a couple of Icewrights, encased in the heavy Water-patterned armor they were expected to maintain until their shifts were over. I had argued against such idiocy; they would be weak and depleted by the end of their rounds, ripe for attack. Starmaker Gracea, however, had remained adamant—it would do good for morale, she insisted, and it would be an excellent exercise in endurance.
But Starmaker Gracea wasn’t in the tower tonight. “Stand down,” I ordered the guards, to their obvious relief.
The bright blue rings in their eyes faded as their water-gates closed, and their sleet-enchanted armor disappeared to reveal simple chain mail. “Thank you, Bright Lady,” one voiced his gratitude, taking in a deep breath of cold wind.
Not a lady, I kept myself from saying, and grunted instead. “Stay alert.” I reached out to grasp them both by the arms. Patterns of aether swirled, and I focused my gate on their minor aches, cleansing them of both exhaustion and cold. “The Banishing takes place tomorrow, and nothing must be allowed to disturb the goddesses’ rest.”