She crept to the edge of the roof and peered down, spotting Lark’s silver-blond head below, hand outstretched as he pretended to sell charms to anyone who passed, even though the charms were just stones painted with fake spells and he was really standing there to make sure no one came home while she was still inside.
Kosika whistled, and he looked up, head cocked in question. She made an X with her arms, the sign for a spell she couldn’t cross, and he jerked his head toward the corner, and she liked that they had a language that didn’t need words.
She went to the other side of the roof and lowered herself down the gutter, dropping to a crouch on the paving stones below. She straightened and looked around, but Lark wasn’t there. Kosika frowned, and started down the alley.
A pair of hands shot out and grabbed her, hauling her into the gap between houses. She thrashed, was about to bite one of the hands when it shoved her away.
“Kings, Kosika,” said Lark, shaking his fingers. “Are you a girl or a beast?”
“Whichever one I need to be,” she shot back. But he was smiling. Lark had a wonderful smile, the kind that took over his whole face and made you want to smile, too. He was eleven, gangly in that way boys got when they were growing, and even though his hair was as pale as the Sijlt before it thawed, his eyes were warm and dark, the color of wet earth.
He reached out and patted the soot off her clothes. “Find anything good?”
Kosika took out the amplifiers. He turned them over in his hands, and she knew he could read the spells, knew they were a good find by the way he studied them, nodding to himself.
She didn’t tell Lark about the sugar, and she felt a little bad about it, but she told herself he didn’t like sweet things, not as much as she did, and it was her reward for doing the hard work, the kind that got you caught. And if she’d learned anything from her mother, it was that you had to look out for yourself.
Her mother, who had always treated her like a burden, a small thief squatting in her house, eating her food and sleeping in her bed and stealing her heat. And for a long time, Kosika would have given anything to be noticed, to feel wanted, by someone else. But then children started waking up with fire in their hands, or wind beneath their feet, or water tipping toward them like they were downhill, and Kosika’s mother started noticing her, studying her, a hunger in her eyes. These days, she did her best to stay out of the way.
Lark pocketed the amulets—she knew whatever he got for them, he’d give her half, he always did. They were a team. He ruffled her in-between hair, and she pretended not to like the way it felt, the weight of his hand on her head. She didn’t have a big brother, but he made her feel like she did. And then he gave her a gentle push, and they broke apart, Lark toward wherever it was he went, and Kosika toward home.
She slowed as the house came into sight.
It was small and thin, like a book on a shelf, squeezed between two others on a road barely large enough for a cart, let alone a carriage. But there was a carriage parked in front, and a short man standing by the front door. The stranger wasn’t knocking, just standing there, smoking a taper, thin white smoke pluming around his head. His skin was covered in tattoos, the kind the grown-ups used to bind magic to them. He had even more than her mother. The marks ran over his hands and up his arms, disappearing under his shirt and reappearing at his throat. She wondered if that meant he was strong, or weak.
As if the man could feel her thinking, his head swiveled toward her, and Kosika darted back into the shadow of the nearest alley. She went around to the back of the house, climbed the crates beneath the window. She slid the frame up, even though it was stiff and she’d always had a fear that it would swing back down and cut her head right off as she was climbing through. But it didn’t, and she shimmied over the sill, and dropped to the floor, holding her breath.
She heard voices in the kitchen.
One was her mother’s, but she didn’t recognize the other. There was a sound, too. The clink clink clink of metal. Kosika crept down the hall, and peered around the doorway, and saw her mother and another man sitting at the table. Kosika’s mother looked like she always did—tired and thin, like a piece of dried fruit, all the softness sucked away.
But the man, she’d never seen before. He was stringy, like gristle, his hair tied back off his face. A black tattoo that looked like knots of rope traced the bones on his left hand, which hovered over a stack of coins.
He lifted a few and let them fall, one by one, back onto the stack. That was the sound she’d heard.
Clink clink clink.
Clink clink clink.
Clink clink clink.
“Kosika.”
She jumped, startled by her mother’s voice, and by the kindness in it.
“Come here,” said her mother, holding out her hand. Black brands ringed each of her fingers and circled her wrist, and Kosika resisted the urge to back away, because she didn’t want to make her mother mad. She took a cautious step forward, and her mother smiled, and Kosika should have known then, to stop out of reach, but she took another slow step toward the table.
“Don’t be rude,” snapped her mother, and there, at least, was the tone she knew. “Her magic hasn’t come in yet,” her mother added, addressing the man, “but it will. She’s a strong girl.”
Kosika smiled at that. Her mother didn’t often say nice things.
The man smiled, too. And then he jerked forward. Not with his whole body, just his tattooed hand. One second it was there on the coins and the next it was around her wrist, pulling her close. Kosika stumbled, but he didn’t let go. He twisted her palm up, exposing the underside of her forearm, and the blue veins at her wrist.
“Hmm,” he said. “Awfully pale.”
His voice was wrong, like rocks were stuck inside his throat, and his hand felt like a shackle, heavy and cold around her wrist. She tried to twist free, but his fingers only tightened.
“She does have some fight,” he said, and panic rose in Kosika, because her mother was just sitting there, watching. Only she wasn’t watching her. Her eyes were on the coins, and Kosika didn’t want to be there anymore. Because she knew who this man was.
Or at least, what he was.
Lark had warned her about men and women like him. Collectors who traded not in objects, but in people, anyone with a bit of magic in their veins.
Kosika wished she had magic, so she could light the man on fire, scare him away, make him let go. She didn’t have any power, but she did at least remember what Lark told her, about where to hit a man to make him hurt, so she wrenched backward with all her weight, forcing the stranger to his feet, and then she kicked him, hard, as hard as she could, right between his legs. The man made a sound like a bellows, all the air whooshing out, and the hand around her wrist let go as he crashed into the table, toppling the stack of coins as she shot toward the door.
Her mother tried to grab her as she passed, but her limbs were too slow, her body worn out from all those years of stealing magic, and Kosika was out the door before she remembered the other man, and the carriage. He came at her in a wreath of smoke, but she ducked beneath the circle of his arms, and took off down the narrow road.
Kosika didn’t know what they’d do if they caught her.
It didn’t matter.
She wouldn’t let them.
They were big but she was fast, and even if they knew the streets, she knew the alleys and the steps and all nine walls and the narrow gaps in the world—the ones that even Lark couldn’t fit through anymore. Her legs started to hurt and her lungs were burning, but Kosika kept running, cutting between market stalls and shops until the buildings staggered and the path climbed into steps and gave way onto the Silver Wood.