Ailith set down the two sacks and rummaged in one, pulling out a torch and setting it on the ground. She reached into her pockets and pulled out her flint and steel, which she began working to produce a flame in the tallow-soaked sticks at the end of the torch.

  Terro kept a close watch on their surroundings. There was very little chance anyone would attack them since the Senior Guardian had a reputation as someone who would and often did break the bones of anyone who dared cross her.

  Once Ailith had the torch lit, she pulled bread from one sack and apples from the other. She used her belt knife to cut everything into slices, and these she piled into the bottom of her tunic. “I’ll be back.” She glanced up at Terro, who looked over her shoulder and nodded. When she was on the top step, Ailith hesitated, “What should I do if Ghost is down here?”

  “Tell her I’m up here and need to talk to her. Oh, and let her know I brought a sweet she’ll only get if she comes to talk to me.”

  “Will she understand me words?”

  “Aye. She’s learned a lot these last couple of moons.”

  Ailith climbed down until she was able to step off the stairs and move onto the ledge. For whatever reason, the architects had built ledges on both sides of the channel, and as she walked, she began seeing eyes reflected in the light from her torch. Some were on her side, and others waited across the chasm separating them. All were eerily silent. They knew she brought food, and they also knew that if they waited, she’d toss each one a piece of bread and a slice of apple.

  She had to return to the surface once to replenish her stock, and when she surfaced the second time, she shook her head. “No Ghost. This is th’ biggest bunch in here. Th’ other fracks don’t get this crowded.”

  They’d finished all thirty fracks by the time midday rolled around. Terro couldn’t believe Ailith had been doing this on her own for the past fortnight. “When have ya slept?”

  “I get back around two bells, eat somethin’ and then sleep until it’s time fer weapons practice.” Ailith caught a glimpse of a curly head peering over the side of a rooftop. The head disappeared in the time it took her to blink, and without breaking stride, she quietly said, “Try yer whistle. Ghost’s right above us, watchin’.”

  Terro took a large bread loaf from the sack, set it on an upturned water barrel halfway down an alley, stepped back, and whistled. To both their relief, Ghost launched herself off the roof and landed like a cat in the middle of the alley. She ran to grab the bread, but Terro was faster. “Now, ya know better than that. And what are ya doin’ out in th’ middle of th’ day durin’ th’ Festival, eh?

  Ghost eyed th’ bread.

  Terro tossed her a piece, which the skelli grabbed and stuffed in her mouth. “Ya must be hungry if you’re out in th’ open. I keep whistlin’ for ya, but ya don’t come.”

  Ghost scratched her chin but never took her eyes off of the food Terro had in her hands. “You sing. I’m gone.” For whatever reason, Ghost couldn’t remember the word whistle, and she’d taken to saying “sing” instead.

  “Gone where?”

  “Puttin’ skelli’s ‘n nints….” She stomped on the ground. Several turns earlier, Ghost had taken on the gruesome task of pulling the dead bodies of the homeless skellis and nints off the midden where they’d been left to rot, dragging them into the forest, and giving them what she considered a proper burial. Granted, most of the time, the bodies were dug up by predators that roamed the woods at night, but she continued doing it all the same.

  Sábria had gotten the practice changed to where the guards who found the bodies were to at least take them out to the burn pits, but they’d gotten lazy since the pits were a good distance outside of the city. They’d begun throwing the bodies into the midden again and had begun the practice of burying them beneath other types of “trash” to hide what they’d done.

  Terro held out a piece of bread, making Ghost come close enough to snatch it off her hand. “Been a lot of ‘em lately?”

  Ghost gulped the bread down without chewing. “Aye.”

  “Fowk.” Terro glanced at Ailith, who’d dropped the two bags and was standing guard with her back to them. This alley was only open on one end, and she’d taken up a position at the opening, watching for trouble. Terro gave Ghost some more bread and then knelt so she wasn’t towering over her. “Do ya remember th’ Arch Priestess?”

  “Aye.”

  “She said ya could come to th’ Temple, eat all ya want, and sleep there while these nobles are in town. Will ya come with me, then?”

  Ghost stepped back and narrowed her eyes. She shook her head so vehemently that the brown mop flew back and forth across her face.

  Terro had run out of bread, so she dug in the bag and brought out an apple. Pulling her belt knife, she cut off a slice and held it out. “I’m not gonna grab ya and make ya come. I just worry about ya, is all.”

  Ailith backed toward them and then, without taking her eyes off the streets, spoke gutter cant over her shoulder to Ghost. “Yer no caien th’ bloodin’ none an’s no worth yer own hide. Ya can kip in wit’ th’ four-leggers. I done it a’fore, and kin kip wit’ ya if’n ya like.”

  Trying to learn gutter cant was nearly impossible if you hadn’t grown up with it because it was spoken with a slurring of words one into the next that no one but gutter scum understood. Even though Ailith had been a skelli in Dreyutha, she’d picked up on the Cibían cant fairly easily. Terro had no idea what Ailith had just said, but when she noticed a thoughtful look in Ghost’s eyes as she plucked the apple slice from her hand, she wanted to know what had made her little skelli interested all of a sudden. “What did ya say to her?”

  “That she won’t be stoppin’ the deaths of the skelli’s and nints, and buryin’ ‘em while th’ poxy nobles are here could get her killed. She won’t be wantin’ to kip inside a room, so I told her I used to kip in with th’ horses, and if she wants, she can kip there, too. And I said I’d kip with her there if she wanted me to.”

  Thinking back over the gutter cant that had slid off Ailith’s tongue so easily, Terro tried to match the translation with the cant and shook her head. She grinned at Ghost, “And ya understood her? Ya ken what she said?”

  A glint of amusement crept into Ghost’s eyes as she nodded. “Aye.”

  “Well, if ya come with us, there’s sweeties for ya.”

  Ghost’s eyes darted to each of Terro’s pockets, trying to see where she had the sweeties hidden.

  “Aye, I’ve got some with me, but there’s more at th’ Temple, and more important, ye’ll be safe there with th’ Blades. They all watch out for ya, now.”

  She slipped her fingers into a small pocket on the front of her tunic and pulled out a hard candy. “Ya get this when we’re crossin’ through th’ gate into th’ courtyard, aye?” The bright eyes smiling up at her through the tangled hair filled Terro’s heart like nothing else could, and she knew Ghost was seeing the same thing in hers. When Ghost decisively nodded once, Terro stood. “She’s comin’ with us, shiv, and yer done deliverin’ food for th’ day.”

  Ailith glanced back and pointed to the sacks. “Could ya upend them bags? I need ‘em fer th’ mornin’ run.”

  Terro thought about that. “Well, no. Ghost’ll pounce on th’ food and stuff her mouth so full she’ll be throwin’ up everything right quick.”

  “Oh, right. Well then, if ya take over th’ watchin’, I’ll hump th’ sacks up to th’ roof and dump ‘em there. They’ll find it up there easy as down here.”

  Terro stood and held out her arm. She’d been working on building trust with Ghost by casually draping her arm across the girl’s shoulders. At first, Ghost had run, but with patience, Terro had been able to touch her if she stood completely still as she fed her some food. This would be the first time she’d done it while walking, and she wasn’t sure what to expect.

  A surge of emotion ran through her when Ghost not only stepped under her arm but actually leaned into her leg a tiny bit while they waited for Ailith to toss her sacks onto the roof and climb up after them. Terro wasn’t one for overt shows of emotion, and the fact that she had to swallow back tears took her completely by surprise. She silently thanked the Goddess that Ailith wasn’t close enough to see her surprising lack of control.

  Terro had mastered her emotions by the time Ailith landed lightly in the center of the alley and came up beside them. The Blade took a tentative step forward, hoping Ghost would follow.

  When Ghost stiffened, Ailith glanced over at them. “I’m not tellin’ ya what to do or nothin’, but yer stiff, and that scares a skelli. Stiff means either somethin’s wrong, and they need to run, or yer gettin’ ready to grab ‘em, and they still need to run. Either way, she’ll take off. Walk normal, an’ ya should be fine.”

  What Ailith said made sense. Terro’s normal demeanor was that of a strong person people knew not to mess with, and that was what Ghost had grown up seeing. She had to act like herself if she wanted to instill enough confidence in the girl for her to follow her to the Temple. Straightening her shoulders, she walked at the pace she’d normally use when moving through the Codpiece.

  After seeing the change, Ghost immediately relaxed and had to practically run to keep up. The skelli looked up at Ailith, who was walking on her other side. Ailith, too, walked with a natural confidence, even if she always kept her head on a swivel. Ghost wrapped her little fingers around Terro’s belt to help her keep up and walked with her shoulders straight and her head high like the other two were doing.

  When Terro felt Ghost’s fingers on her belt, she thought her heart would melt right there in the street. She gently squeezed the little shoulders, hoping to convey the message that Ghost was safe and she wouldn’t ever let anything happen to her. Terro glanced at Ailith out of the corner of her eye. It was because of the shiv that Ghost was coming back to the Temple, and she felt a stirring in her chest for the young warrior who’d won over some of the most taciturn Blades in the Temple.

  They made it through the gates, and at Ailith’s urging, they immediately found the stable master, Kemi Leernan. Terro told her that Sábria had given Ghost permission to stay on Temple grounds and asked if the skelli could sleep in one of her stalls.

  Kemi, who was a woman much like Terro—short-tempered and irritable with anyone who annoyed her, which, unfortunately, was most people most of the time—looked Ghost over with a critical eye. “Will she work fer her stay?”

  Terro opened her mouth to bite Kemi’s head off, but Ailith said, “Aye. She will.” She turned to Ghost and pointed to a pitchfork. She used an abbreviated form of gutter cant, hoping Kemi and Terro would understand most of what she was saying. “Ya need t’ pay th’ bacon to kip aye inta stayin’. Ya seen th’ shite on th’ heaps?” When Ghost nodded, she said, “Ya seen th’ shite wagons?” Ghost nodded again. “Th’ Temple’s got its own heap. Ya ken? I’ll take ya t’ glimpse th’ heap, and then ya move the shite. Aye?”

  Ghost straightened with something like pride in her eyes and nodded a third time. “Aye.”

  Terro blinked and realized she’d almost made another mistake by not giving Ghost a way to pay for what she was getting. Not only that, she hoped it would give the skelli a sense of belonging—that by contributing to the wellbeing of the Temple, she’d feel she belonged there as well. Why hadn’t she thought to ask Ailith, who’d lived on the streets, to help her with Ghost? Because Ailith was in training herself and didn’t need any more distractions than the ones she usually made for herself, that’s why.

  There were several empty stalls, and Ailith wasn’t sure which one Kemi intended for Ghost to use. She turned to the stable master with raised brows. “Which one’s fer her to kip in?”

  Kemi glanced around and then opened a smaller stall next to the office. “It’s aye Greenmeere, but nights, as ye know since ya work Deadnights, are still cold.”

  Ailith watched the stable master, knowing that in spite of her seemingly uncaring exterior, she’d chosen that stall because the lass would be warmer up against the wall of the office since it wouldn’t allow any stray wisps of wind to come floating by.

  Terro walked to the stall and looked inside. Taking her cue from Ailith’s earlier interaction with Ghost, she stepped back and looked around until she spotted a pitchfork in the corner. “Ghost. There’s th’ fork.” She pointed to it and then walked to the stall where she knew Kemi kept extra straw. “And here’s th’ straw. Take that and get th’ straw and pile it up in yer room here. Then we’ll go get ya some food, aye?”

  Ghost narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. She stared at the little pocket on Terro’s tunic, lowering her chin until she looked like any other stubborn child.

  Terro grinned and slipped her fingers into the pocket. “I promised ya this, didn’t I?” She pulled out the hard candy and held it out.

  There was nothing Ghost liked more than sweeties, and she snatched it out of Terro’s hand so fast there was no way Terro could have pulled it away even if she wanted to. When Ailith stifled a yawn, Terro motioned her away. “Get on with ya, then.”

  Ailith had intended to grab some food from the dining hall, but suddenly, all she wanted was to find her bed, climb in, and go to sleep. She doubted she’d awaken on time, so she stopped by Emlyn’s room and asked her to wake her when it was time to head to weapons practice. That done, it didn’t take more than a few stray thoughts flitting through her head before her breathing had settled into the easy cadence of sleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Terro stood at attention in front of Sábria’s desk, waiting for her Arch Priestess to get her temper under control. She recognized the rippling muscles in Sábria’s jaw and the clenched fists on the desk as her way of keeping herself from killing the messenger. The sound of Commander Shirin’s sigh behind her was the only sound in the room, and Terro felt a drop of sweat sliding down between her shoulder blades.

  “Let me get this straight. Lady Farryn has been sending a shiv, my shiv, into the Codpiece every day for the last fortnight, by herself, with sacks of bread and apples. Sacks that would make it impossible to defend herself quickly if she needed to pull her weapons on short notice. Not only that, she sent her down all thirty fracks, twenty of which are in the Codpiece. Into fracks where she’s probably outnumbered fifty to one by starving nints and skellis armed with knives and Goddess only knows what else, to deliver food to those starving, desperate, wild children who will do anything, kill anyone, to get their hands on a single piece of fruit, meat, or bread. Does that just about cover it, Terrowyn?”

  “As far as that part goes, Aye.”

  Sábria sat forward and lowered her forehead onto fists that she’d brought together while resting her weight on her elbows. Her thumbs were pressed into either side of the bridge of her nose, and she pressed very hard to keep her growing temper in check. When she felt calm enough to speak quietly, she raised her head and almost smiled. Almost. “There’s more?”

  The slow way Sábria raised her icy gaze and cocked her head was more than a little scary, and for the fifth time during this report, Terro stiffened and pulled her shoulders back to an impossible extent. “Well, this might not be th’ time to tell ya, Milady, but we found Ghost, and Kemi gave me permission to put her up in one of th’ stalls at th’ stables.”

  “Put her…?” Sábria’s mouth dropped for just a second before she glanced at Shirin, who was purposefully keeping out of the conversation. Her second knew as well as Terro that this wasn’t a good time to be in the Arch Priestess’s line of sight.

  Sábria glanced down at her desk and then back up at Terro. “If it were anyone else, Terro, I’d wonder why you’re treating a nine-turn child like a stray dog you’re keeping in a kennel, but I know you care for the girl. So…care to give me an explanation?”

  “Well, she refused to come to th’ Temple with me until Ailith talked to her in gutter cant and told her she didn’t need to sleep inside a room because I guess being inside four walls scares ‘em, but she could sleep out with the horses if she’d rather. Ailith told her that she’d slept out there and she’d be safe, so that’s when Ghost decided to come with us.”

  Sábria sat back and crossed her arms. “Well, that makes sense.” She studied Terro for a moment. “Have you been to sleep yet?”

  “No, Milady. I thought ya should know about Ailith before I slept.”

  “You’re dismissed, then. Get some rest, Terro. Make sure you get your sleep. I don’t want you forgoing sleep to take care of or watch over Ghost. Either she’ll stay or she won’t. Have you spoken to the kitchen staff?”

  “Aye, Milady. They know they can’t just let her run wild with th’ food. They’ll be watchin’ and takin’ care to feed her accordin’ to Master Haria’s instructions, and they won’t let her eat herself sick.” When Sábria nodded distractedly, Terro turned for the door. She met Shirin’s gaze and lifted her brows.

  Shirin didn’t dare return the gesture because she was facing Sábria while Terro was not. She settled for a single nod before opening the door and letting the senior guardian out.

  The quiet way Sábria spoke said they weren’t through with this yet. “I’ll need ten fully armed Blades in a quarter-candlemark. See to it.”

  The Arch Priestess was well known for not wanting to always be surrounded by the rotating contingent of Blades whenever she left the Temple. At times, she and Shirin went out on their own, but even then, word went out to the on-duty Blades, who kept a close watch on them wherever they went. For Sábria to give Shirin notice that she’d need her guards was worrying. Shirin must have hesitated a moment too long because the way those blue eyes lifted from studying the papers on her desk to glare at her sent a frisson of fear down Shirin’s spine.

  Shirin had seen that look many times over the turns and knew this was not the time to try to talk her friend down. In fact, this wasn’t her friend at all. This was the Arch Priestess of the Daughters of Elyon who needed no one to give her advice or alter her plans. She came to attention and pounded her fist to her chest. “Yes, My Lady.”