Gooseflesh pricked Sandis’s arms. Her ensuing whisper was almost a hiss. “You can’t go through his things again, Rist. Last time he was lenient.”
Kazen would never have his vessels beaten enough to cause them permanent harm, but he had other methods of tormenting them. Last time Rist had been caught snooping around, he was locked in solitary for nearly a week . . . and Rist couldn’t even read. The isolation had nearly broken him. Sometimes food or water would be denied or changed, or Kazen would sic Galt on one of the other vessels and make the offender watch. Sandis hated that one. Often, however, Kazen got creative. Not knowing what to expect was the worse punishment to Sandis. That was why she tried so hard to never break any rules. Why she tried so hard to be, as Heath put it, the “favorite.”
All she had ever wanted was to be good.
Rist pressed his lips together for a moment before saying, “Regardless, I think he’s doing experiments at night, when he has someone to practice on. Maybe potential vessels he can easily discard. Hosts he can get for cheap.”
“But they’re so hard to find,” Sandis countered.
Rist shrugged. “Here, maybe. Not across the border.”
Heath covered his ears. Sandis put her hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be you. Any of us. We’ll be fine.”
She didn’t like the uneasy look on Rist’s face, so she turned away from it. But that only brought her attention to the other cots. Alys, Dar, and Kaili were elsewhere. Maybe one was being briefed on an upcoming job, or doing a chore for Zelna, or being punished for something Sandis didn’t yet know about. She tried not to think about where they were; the worry could be maddening.
Her gaze lingered on Alys’s bed. She was still so new to this, and the weakest of Kazen’s vessels. If these slavers didn’t deliver, would Kazen decide she was expendable?
No. She’s safe, Sandis told herself. You’ve taught her everything she needs to know. She keeps her eyes down, stays quiet, follows all the rules, just like you. She’ll be safe. Sandis would make sure of it.
Yet uneasiness bloomed in her gut like a rancid flower. Telling herself it was merely hunger, Sandis left Heath’s bedside for the food tray.
She forced down every bite.
Chapter 2
The best way to travel in Dresberg, Rone had discovered, was above it.
The air wasn’t any cleaner—smoke rose, after all—but there was a lot less traffic, fewer people, and a much smaller chance of him stepping in a puddle of unknown refuse. A person never got used to that.
One might say that jumping from building to building—occasionally using ropes, boards, and other creative measures—wasn’t safe. And yet Rone was certain his chances of not getting mugged, stabbed, or spat on were better five stories up than down on the cobblestone pathways.
And if he fell, well, he had his special trinket for that.
The overly orange sun had dropped behind the city’s massive wall a few minutes ago—a wall one could compare to the hefty mountains separating Kolingrad from all other civilization. A wall that reminded him this place was a cage where people had shat in the corner so long they couldn’t remember what clean air smelled like. Up here, Rone could see over the wall. If he kept his eyes up, he could almost pretend it wasn’t there. That it was simply him, wide roads, and general nothingness for miles.
He’d also fall to his potential death, so he kept his eyes down, sprinted, and jumped.
Dresberg was a cesspool of people and factories and work, work, work. Disease flourished in its densest parts, and yet the people kept trying to cram more things into them. Taller buildings. Narrower rooms. Children to stuff into every nook and cranny. But at least the lack of space made Rone’s job easier. His legs were long enough to hop alleyways, and sometimes the buildings leaned up against each other so tightly that jumping them was like a twilight stroll.
That was the best way to start a burglary. Strolling.
This wasn’t a burglary per se. The item had been paid for. The money just went to Rone and not to the item’s owner. Regardless, tonight’s quarry was an ancient Noscon headpiece, so really, the true owner had died a thousand or something years ago. It was a thousand, right? Rone had never been a great student. Then again, his absent father hadn’t tried very hard to teach him foreign history.
Rone paused on top of . . . the library, he thought, to catch his breath and gain his bearings. The wealthiest city denizens lived closest to the wall, as far from the smoke ring—and the poor people who dwelled there—as they could get. Again, why anyone with a steady and enormous income would choose to live in Dresberg was beyond him, save for the worthless politicians holed up in the Innerchord, making pointless laws and eating baby animals. Rich people always ate tiny meat.
Rone was rich at that moment, but tiny meat was expensive, and so was his rent.
City lights flickered on drowsily beneath him as he took the long way around the police hub and, begrudgingly, dropped down to a two-story building with a sturdy drainpipe and then slid the rest of the way to the ground. His gray clothes helped him blend in. The nice cut of his collar would hopefully do the same if he was caught snooping around one of the finer flats in the area.
He rechecked the address he’d written down. District Two, a neighborhood on the northeast side of the capital. He turned down one street, hopped the gate on another. Oh, not a flat. A house. No shared walls or anything. It was even white. Leave it to the fanciest people to paint their houses white in a city where the constant spew of factory smoke turned rainfall into sludge. Some lucky orphan had a good job cleaning up for these folks.
No, Rone wasn’t going to feel bad about this at all.
There weren’t many people in the streets here—the residents were the sort who didn’t have to work long shifts or late hours. It was past bedtime by now, and so Rone, on feet that had been lashed by his old master until they could walk without sound, approached his target.
The use of tiny quartz chunks in the slender yard was annoying—Rone had to walk on the concrete border or risk his steps crunching. At least Ernst Renad—this was his house, supposedly—had enough sense not to keep a garden. Plants didn’t grow in Dresberg. Not outdoors, anyway. Everything the people ate was shipped in from the farms in the north, away from the smog.
He reached the southwest corner of the house and utilized the brick chimney and white cornices to haul himself up to the third story. Dear Ernst had been kind enough to offer him a small balcony. He settled onto its railing, checking his pocket for the small golden trinket that had saved his life too many times to count. Unlikely he would need the amarinth for this—the robbing of ancient artifacts from one of Dresberg’s richest denizens was actually one of his safer jobs—but he preferred to be cautious.
His employer had given a detailed explanation of where Ernst Renad kept the headpiece in question, as well as what it looked like, but Rone had never worked with the man before and didn’t know whether he could fully trust him. Some factory owner or the like, based on what Rone had gathered from their short in-person meeting. Rone was a freelancer, so his clients varied.
Rone slipped down to the balcony floor. Only problem with robbing the wealthy was if you were caught, they could push money down the throats of jailers and politicians alike to ensure your sentence far outweighed your crime. There were laws, lawyers, and judges, but when it came down to the final ink on the paper, Dresberg operated on money. The whole country did. Rone’s trinket couldn’t save him from corruption.