Our conversation brings us to the outskirts of the Commerce Ward and the wide southern trade road that leads down the Olhavian Peaks to Nuhav. A few times we hide at the mouths of alleys as carriages pass—better safe than sorry—before continuing.
That’s where all the foot traffic is: on wheels. It makes sense.Why would wealthy people walk when they can ride, get somewhere twice as fast, and be private?We’re sitting targets out here on our feet. All it would take is one wrong look from aguardsman who recognizes us to sound the alarm that fugitives are afoot in the Commerce Ward.
“Would really love the carriage right about now,” I mutter, sighing as we reach the edge of the city. “Blend into the crowd.”
“You say that now,” Vallan mutters. “Won’t be the same when we’re in Nuhav and we’re theonlypeople in a carriage.”
He has a point. In Olhav, two black horses leading a nicely crafted wooden cart with a closed hull is as common as the wind. In Nuhav, coaches are scrutinized, sneered at, and often vandalized. It’s another symbol of the wealth and power gap that exists between the sister cities.
We reach the base of the Olhavian Peaks unimpeded. Rather than travel the main road to the gate leading into Nuhav, we decide to hop the high wall into the human city. Since I have a vampire and dhampir with me, it’s easy for them to launch me up to the edge so I can easily climb over.
Once we hit the ground on the other side, which is decidedly muddier and ranker than the cobbled streets of the Commerce Ward, we head southeast. Our travel zigzags us through tent cities, streets filled with mud and shit, and rundown neighborhoods.
Here, mid-evening, the throng of people on the streets is heavy and thick. Everyone wears a scowl. From the largest bearded blacksmith clanking away under an open-aired awning, to the littlest girl wearing a potato sack trying to sell flowers and pendants to passersby.Or perhaps trying to pilfer coin from distracted citizens who take her cuteness for innocence. It’s what I did when I lived under Father Cullard and the House of the Broken. Truehearts flog me, that might even be the same street corner I worked.
Lost in my thoughts, my nostrils flare at the girl, inadvertently. Her scowl only deepens, and she bares her teeth like a feral animal. She scampers away to accost another group.
“What did the little lass ever do to you, honey badger?” Garro asks with a chuckle, watching the scene play out.
I sigh regretfully and shake my head, not bothering to answer. There’s nothing like a trip through the shit-flooded streets of Nuhav to bring my ugly past to the front of my mind.
“Maybe she was reacting to your pale face, cub,” Vallan says, coming to my rescue. He pulls his hood even lower, so only his beard is visible. “Keep your hood tight.”
The seriousness of our situation dawns on me. We need to meld into the crowd. I can’t get lost in my dark memories when I’m living one right now. I’m no longer a rabble-rousing whelp stealing coin for my supper. I’m with two vampiric mates in the center of a city thatloathesvampires, and one of them isverybroad-shouldered and tall, sticking out like a stubbed toe.
Coming here puts them in danger. Or, rather, it puts everyone around us in danger. The last thing I want to do is incite a bloodbath just because I want to see my mother.
Thankfully, I know these streets like my own body. So do they, and between the three of us we make quick work of shrouding ourselves in our cloaks and the dark corners of alleyways, traversing the roughshod roads, and arriving in the southern district of Nuhav unmolested.
Up ahead, a house is on fire. Thick black smoke billows through the windows, and the heat can be felt from two blocks away. A crowd of a dozen onlookers watches with arms crossed, stoically staring at the burning building until it becomes an ashen skeleton of blackened beams.
We have to go past the house to get to the cock bar, which means getting through the crowd. No alleys for us to duck into this time.
I clench my jaw and steel myself, nodding my mates forward. As we pass, slithering between the hardy group of commoners,I divert attention from my mates by asking someone, “What happened here?”
The middle-aged man scoffs. “Slaver’s house. Can you believe it, right under our noses, next to the Temple of the True?” He spits at his feet. “Even worse, the bastard was a Bronze.”
He’s not looking at me, which is perfect. It gives me the chance to glance left to see Vallan’s and Garroway’s hooded frames vanish behind the crowd. “ABronze?” I say, sounding disgusted. “Give the lawmen too much power, this is what happens.”
“True be true, lass,” the man replies. “Good thing we got new lawmen in town, eh? Silverknights’ll set these brass bastards right.”
I wince.So you’re giving away your bronze shackles for silver ones? Doesn’t sound like much of a transformation, sir.“True be true, sir. Good eve.”
“May the Truehearts hold you.”
I slip by the stranger, hurrying to the back of the crowd where my mates are hiding under their hoods. By this point, the acrid scent of burning wood and metal tickles my nose and I sneeze when I arrive.
“May the Truehearts hold you,” Garroway says sarcastically, blessing me, bowing low, and making a ludicrous salute that means nothing.
I wipe my snotty nose with my forearm, spit in the mud, and smirk at my mates as we walk away from the scene. “You heard that?” My voice lowers, and I bump his shoulder. “Damned bloodsucker ears.”
Vallan, who sees no humor in anything, looks over everyone’s head as we pass them. “This city seems more militant than I remember.”
“Times have changed, my big brute.” I skip sideways between two commoners before hopping over a puddle to get to my mates. “The slavers are out. Anyone who associates with them is a pariah. I think we helped start a miniature revolution when we showed people can stand up to the slumlords and traffickers. Now the people are taking matters into their own hands, so they don’t have to keep watching their daughters, wives, and sons suffer.”
Garroway smiles wickedly at me. We share the memory of cutting off the flesh-traders at the source, with the deaths of the slumlord Perevis and the slumlady Bolela of the Stitchers helping the cause.
Now it seems like the lawmen themselves, the Bronzes, have gotten involved on the wrong side of the stick.Things could get ugly here fast if the Silverknights are the retribution the citizens are hoping for. They can’t just move all their faith from one useless sect to another.