The reputation for winning every fight that he’d built before he’d left the district had protected him when he was just returning for the occasional brief visit. The news that he’d come back to stay was another matter entirely. Now he was a threat to the established pecking order. He didn’t know how many challenges he’d have to face to climb back to the top, but he was more than ready.
The two boys lunged for him at the same time. Sebastian pivoted, letting the shorter one stumble past him. Stepping into the taller one’s charge, he turned his body to the side, slammed the flat of his palm into the arm that held the knife, and then jerked his elbow up to smash it into the boy’s face. Stepping between the boy’s feet, Sebastian held the assailant’s knife arm and twisted the boy sharply to block the shorter one’s renewed attack. Three punches and one well-aimed kick later, and both boys were on the ground, bleeding and cursing him.
“Anyone else?” Sebastian turned slowly, staring down the motley collection of boys who had the hard, weary eyes of old men, girls with weapons in their hands and defiance on their faces, and the occasional young child tagging along with an older sibling because their parents were either working, using apodrasi, or dead.
A few met his gaze and held it. Most found something else to look at. Sebastian set a course toward the northern end of the district where two of Teague’s bosses lived, and started walking. The crowd parted to let him through.
He’d gone three blocks and won two more fights when a runner found him.
“Sebastian Vaughn?” the girl asked, taking a dagger out of the small arsenal of weapons she wore around her waist and aiming it at him. “Felman wants to see you.”
For one sickening moment, the truth of what he was about to do sent a dizzying wave of fear and loathing through him, but he swallowed it down and kept his expression blank as he followed the girl through the warren of streets and alleys that led to Felman’s headquarters.
He was doing what he had to do to gain Teague’s trust and protect Ari.
If that meant he had to walk a few steps in his father’s shadow, he’d endure it.
Felman, a thick-necked, thick-bellied man who was at least ten years older than Sebastian, ran his corner of east Kosim Thalas from the sagging remains of a building that decades ago had been a respectable mercantile. Guards stood at the doorway, swords drawn, as they scanned the streets. Sebastian clenched his jaw and rode out the wild urge to strike as the guards roughly ran their hands over him, searching for weapons. They found his cudgel immediately, and set it aside for him to pick up as he left.
It didn’t matter. He was the true weapon, and they wouldn’t see him coming until it was too late.
It was time to play the role that would get him close to the princess. He gathered up his memories of the last month—the way Ari smiled at him, the way he could stand close to her without his instincts screaming at him to fight or flee, the peace he’d known when he’d sat beside her for hours staring at the sea—and locked them away where they wouldn’t be touched by the filth of the life he was stepping into. In their place, he focused on one single thought: get close enough to destroy Teague.
He was ready.
When one of the guards found his bag of coin and tried to remove it from Sebastian’s boot, he leaned down and said softly, “If you take a single coin from me, there won’t be enough of you left to bury.”
The man started to laugh, caught sight of Sebastian’s expression, and fell silent as he backed away to let Sebastian and the runner through.
“You’re going to make enemies, talking to people like that,” the girl said as they entered a long hallway lined with doors that led to rooms full of whatever stolen goods Felman’s network of thieves had scooped up within the last week.
“I’m not here to make friends.”
She shrugged and knocked at the last door on the right. When it swung open, she motioned him inside, but didn’t follow.
He let the door shut behind him while he swept his gaze over the room, taking stock. A box of an office, one desk in the center, three chairs against the west wall, one chair behind the desk. Two men standing slightly behind Sebastian on either side of the door. One woman standing on the far side of the desk swinging a mace back and forth like a pendulum. Felman in the desk chair, studying Sebastian with a smug little smile on his face.
Four to one. All of them armed.
They weren’t the best odds, but he hadn’t survived east Kosim Thalas—hadn’t survived his father—without knowing how to take a beating and still reach his goal.
“The prodigal returns,” Felman said. “Couldn’t hold on to your fancy palace job, eh?”
Sebastian pivoted, drove his fist into the man to his right, and then hung on him for balance as he snapped a kick into the face of the man on his left. The man on the left went down hard and rolled on the floor, holding his face, but the man in front of Sebastian came up swinging.
His first blow landed on Sebastian’s jaw. The second grazed his stomach. Behind them, Felman was shouting for his guards to beat the boy to a bloody pulp, and Sebastian heard the woman with the mace run toward them.
The mace struck his back, and the pain lit a blinding inferno of rage inside Sebastian.
He was six, huddled on the kitchen floor beneath the pounding of his father’s fists, screaming for help that wasn’t coming. He was nine, trying desperately not to cry as his father hit him with a stick while his mother turned her back. He was sixteen, jaw clenched, eyes dry, as the whip flayed strips of flesh from his back and the rage boiled inside him, the only antidote he had to the unending pain.
The woman struck again, and something inside him broke.
With a primal roar, he spun toward her, grabbed the mace midair, and twisted it from her grasp. As the man behind him attacked, Sebastian whirled, smashing the mace into the man’s throat and then spinning back toward the woman as the man fell.
She launched herself at him, a dagger glinting in her hand. He lowered his shoulder and met her halfway, sending both of them to the floor. The blade scraped his arm, but he barely felt it. Using the mace to block her next blow, he gripped the pressure point in her neck. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and he was on his feet and moving toward Felman before she’d finished losing consciousness.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Felman’s face was red as he came around the desk for Sebastian. “You’ve declared war. You’re going to rue the day—”
Sebastian swung the mace and knocked Felman onto the desk. The man kicked, catching Sebastian in the thigh, but the fire burning inside him swallowed the pain and fed him rage instead. He kept coming. Taking the blows. Boxing Felman in. Absorbing the beating like he’d absorbed so many before.
Felman made one final lunge, and Sebastian ducked the blow, shoved the handle of the mace beneath Felman’s chin, and slammed him, back first, onto the desk.
Leaning over the man, Sebastian said, “Where is the list?”
Felman’s face turned red and he gasped for air, but Sebastian didn’t let up. “I know you have it. With Daan dead, every street boss will have a list so debts don’t go unpaid. Where is it?”