He was on the verge of thinking he’d been wrong and that he was going to be left to starve when a door screeched open. Footsteps clicked his way, louder and clearer the closer they got.

  A short figure holding a lantern stopped in front of the bars, keyring jingling as he fumbled with it. He looked about forty, gut the only thing still growing, bald head glistening in the moonlight with a neat beard.

  The man found the key he was looking for and looked at Niaz greedily, like a digger who’d struck gold. There was a certain brass to him, like he knew the world owed him something. His face grew an ugly smirk. “Niaz Akhtar! The Devil of the Clay! It’s been too long.” He unlatched the door, shoved it inward and stepped into the cell.

  Niaz rubbed the scruff of his beard. “Must’ve been. Can’t say I recognize you.”

  The smile grew wider and uglier. “No? How about now?” The man’s beady, brown eyes fluttered into the back of his skull until just the whites were showing and Niaz put one thing to another. Here was the fucker responsible for his growling stomach and sore ankles.

  Niaz threw a grin of his own at the man and cocked his head to side, holding his latched hands up to the man. “Way too long old friend! What’s it been two days?”

  His pupils returned and he placed the lantern on the ground before clasping Niaz on the shoulder, like they really were old friends reunited after long years. “Three! That first day I was almost worried you weren’t coming back to us.” The man squatted and undid the shackles binding Niaz’s wrists before moving on to his ankles.

  Niaz tried to shake the soreness out. Failed. “Not worried enough to feed me.”

  “No, not quite. Up,” the man said. He grabbed the lantern and backed out of the cell.

  Niaz didn’t bother disputing. He hauled himself to his feet and followed the man down the corridor. He stole a glimpse of the cell across from his as they passed, but it was too dark to make out much. Maybe there was a body there, but it was a small one if so. He almost let himself believe he’d seen two small horns jutting through the shadows. Damn, he was hungry. No Zurun this far north.

  The man led him through the screeching door and up a torchlit stairway. When they reached level ground, they were back in Ilysílos, or Aerilon’s Edge, whatever the fuck it was called now.

  Niaz followed him through a surprisingly healthy part of the city. Cracked homes were squeezed together, paint peeling and showing the black char underneath. Roofs with shotty wooden shingles pitched over the original, damaged slabs. The new masonry was a far cry from the old architecture, but that was to be expected. He’d seen what the masons here were made of.

  He remembered his first time seeing the city. White towers grabbing at the clouds, people pinched together so tight it was hard to make out your next step, birds singing and women singing with them. Not much left but broken buildings, rubble, and weeds strangling the old stone. Unless you wanted to count the ash. No shortage of ash. A raptor, vulture, or some other scavenger hissed and screeched through the night.

  The man glanced back at Niaz over his shoulder. “Follow me.”

  Niaz’s instinct was to bolt in the opposite direction, but trying to run away from someone Cursed was a fool’s game. The bald man gave a hoarse laugh as they walked through the streets. “Keep listening and you might even get fed. Although I’d wager it’d take more than some hunger to kill the Devil of the Clay, eh? I must admit, I was hoping you’d tell me some of the stories of how you earned that name. I have a girl back home, Jillian, that could do with being spun one or two. The Mother, Father and Son know she could use some fear. Still at that age where she thinks the world’s a decent place.”

  Niaz doubted he’d ever been that age. “I reckon you’ve already heard them.” He ran his eyes over the streets for something that might pass for a weapon. Nothing doing. There weren’t even other people braving the night, not here on the Southern Twin where the stuff of nightmares ran rampant. After all, here was the Devil of the Clay himself strolling down the cobble. Niaz wished he could escape The Devil himself, but he’d given up on outrunning his shadows.

  The man chuckled. “I suppose I have. It wouldn’t be good manners to make you tell stories when you’re hungry anyways, and I always tell the girl it’s about treating others the way you want to be treated.”

  Niaz’s rolled his eyes and snorted quietly. “And who may I thank for the courtesy.”

  The man stopped and turned, smile unsheathed and glinting. “I am His Majesty’s eyes, His ears, His swords. My order, mister Akhtar, is the backbone of His Majesty’s justice.” He lifted his chin. “I am Oryn Ackland, Highest of His Majesty’s Ausars.”

  Niaz frowned. Aerilon Kilton had been decent enough, but his son was nothing of the sort. Niaz reckoned His Majesty’s justice was about killing and burning until everyone in the Sharp Places called him King. He pushed his tongue into his cheek. “Ausars huh?” He shrugged. “Never heard of ‘em. Got no business with ‘em.”

  Ackland smirked before turning and pressing back through the streets. “You have business with His Majesty, which means you have business with His Ausars.”

  Niaz winced and his heart dropped into the pit in his stomach, swirled around in the hunger pangs. He’d expected something along those lines.

  Ackland clasped his hands together behind his back. “Don’t worry, friend. His Majesty has washed his hands of any scores between you and his late father.”

  He had some hope then. “That’s good. Scores always end up in dust. One way or another.”

  “A friend of mine says something similar. Clay and dust.”

  Niaz scrunched his face. Someone from the Far South this far north? “He from the Far South?”

  “She is.”

  A woman too. Been a long time since he’d seen a Southern woman. Probably for the best. There were enough people in the North who wanted him dead. “You ever been Far South? To the clay dunes?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “That’s all there is in those parts. Clay and dust. And when the last Zurun and Wandering Tribe is gone from this world, that’s all that’ll be left. The clay ain’t goin nowhere and sooner or later all men go back to it. No Gods to believe in down south. All we know is there was clay before us, and it’ll be here long after. Come to think, there’s one more thing in the Far South.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  Niaz rubbed the scruff of his beard, tracing one of the long scars under it with a finger. He spun off a smirk of his own. “Dirt.”

  Ackland halted in his tracks, scowl plastered across his mug, and his eyes peeled back into his skull in the lantern’s flickering light. The air tightened around Niaz’s throat, and he buckled to his knees. His nails dug into his neck as he clawed for air, sticky blood spilling over his fingers. He crashed into the ash, wheezing and gasping, vision smearing.

  Ackland’s face bent into a sneer as he loomed over Niaz. His pupils dropped back into place and the pressure lifted. “You’re no fucking devil. You’re nothing, the son of some southern whore. I suggest you take me seriously, Akhtar. You came to my city and killed my men. I’m the only reason your head isn’t planted on a spike outside the walls. As it is, you just may prove useful, so you’re still breathing. Stand now and show the proper respect. You will not outlive your usefulness, nor my patience. Am I understood?”

  “Ye—"

  “I said stand!”

  Niaz lumbered to his feet, coughing in dry, ragged gasps. “Yes,” he managed.

  Thick veins bulged out of Ackland’s bald skull as his face regained its normal leer. “Your wrists. You’ve squandered any privileges you might’ve started the evening with.”

  Niaz raised his wrists out and winced as they were roped together. The knot was nowhere near tight enough, though. The whole of the Twin Continents knew what his hands were capable of. All he needed was an opportunity, scarce as those tended to be. He didn’t give a rat’s arse what Dacian Kilton needed from him. Ackland was more than welcome to find out why they called him the Devil of the Clay. He’d tried to start living honestly, was just a couple of cards hands away from taking up a good man’s work, but his luck had conspired against him, and now it was back to the same black shade of business he was used to. That was the Sharp Places for you. The time for good men had died long before he’d been born.

  Ackland yanked Niaz forward, not seeming to care too much about him tripping and stumbling through the ash. Niaz wanted to be angry about his treatment, but between starvation and thirst it was too ambitious a task.

  They stopped in front of what must’ve been an impressive building once, but the towers had withered to a fraction of their old height, and the glass was shattered. The entire wing along the western wall had crumbled into rubble and ash. Two enormous doors guarded the entrance, thick wood charred and splintering.

  Oryn groaned one of the doors open and yanked Niaz through. It slammed shut behind him and his stomach lurched. Here was, without a doubt, among the most shit of situations he’d ever been in.

  The inside was in better shape. The space was well lit throughout. Statues of great Fanir men and women from history lined the sides. Eònan Vonungr with a sword brandished, Maeve Maoilir feeding the poor, and dozens others he didn’t recognize. The white walls were penciled with thin cracks but were intact. Had to be one of the last standing buildings from when the city was called Ilysílos.

  The problems came from who was inside the room. For starters, there were two bows trained at him from the second-floor balcony, but that was nothing really. He’d had arrows trained on him what felt like his whole life. The real concern was the other seven people scattered throughout the tables in the hall.

  All seven had eyes that lacked irises, and their skin was all still intact as far as he could tell. No one even near becoming Lost. One woman looked her thirties, as bald as Ackland with smooth black skin, draped all over in the brightest red silk he’d ever seen, gold bangles coiled up the length of her arms. She wasn’t even the most striking person in the room.

  He’d been all over the Sharp Places and he’d never seen eyes like the pale ones glinting at him. The woman looked the youngest of them all, but her hair was white as winter. She lounged across a tabletop, head resting in her hand. She smiled as Niaz stared at her, showing daggers for teeth.

  A Lýkein. He’d never actually seen one. He thought the last of them were tucked away in the Arden, but he was raised on the tales. She didn’t seem like she could change into a giant wolf, but he learned a long time ago the old tales were true more often than not.

  Then there was the woman sitting alone in the corner, who had to be who Ackland had spoken about earlier. Unmistakably southern, with familiar tan skin and thick black hair. Her dark eyes ran him over with that old disgust.

  He’d forgotten how beautiful the women of his home were. Strong too, harder than the women of the North. Hard to forget how much they hated him though, just like everyone in the Far South. Kinkiller they called him. He winced just thinking of the name. He preferred the Devil of the Clay, as far as names went.

  The other four littered about the room paled in comparison, but they were still Cursed. Eight Cursed, one a Lýkein, and two men with nocked bows trained on him. Utter shit. Ackland stepped from behind him to stand amongst the others and their pupils dropped back into sight. The Lýkein smiled at him slyly, like there was a joke on only she knew about. No good. The only thing worse than eight Cursed on edge was eight Cursed feeling right at home.

  Ackland spread his arms out wide. “Niaz Akhtar, I give you His Majesty’s Ausars.”

  The dark-skinned woman tapped a cheek with long, spindly fingers. “Does he know why he’s here?”

  “I reckon I’m needed for some killing,” Niaz said. No reason to let them talk about him like he wasn’t there.

  Ackland scowled. “Reckon, do you? As if there’s anything else you could be good for.”

  “Only problem is I think I might’ve had enough of killing. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth and where’s it got me? A dark room full of Cursed people with my hands roped and two arrows trained on me.”

  The Lýkein kept smiling, but every other set of eyes burned with scorn. Niaz flashed a crooked grin of his own. When you’re unarmed it’s your tongue becomes your best weapon.

  “Mister Akhtar, I’m not sure you quite understand. If you don’t do as we ask, we will kill you.”

  Niaz rubbed the scruff of his chin. “I don’t think you will.”

  Ackland curled his twitching lips into a snarl. “And why might that be?”

  “Well, I’m still breathing for firsts. Last I heard, the price for my head was around seventy gold scales and that was years ago. Amount like that and I figure I’d be dead already unless I’m needed badly. The only way you pass that up is if you need me for a nasty piece of work, you’re not willing to do yourself. So, either you can’t find anyone willing to do the work, or you can’t find anyone else capable.”

  Ackland trained narrowed eyes on him, and then his brow loosened a bit. “Did you ever consider that you just played your hand?”

  “How do you mean?” Niaz asked, hair standing on the back of his neck.

  Ackland pushed out his bottom lip and shrugged. “You’re right of course. You could be very useful, but you’ve made it clear you aren’t willing to help us. Why keep you alive? Your head for almost seven scales a piece? Not bad at all, and that was ‘years ago.’ You’re worth a good deal more now.”

  Fucking shit. Maybe he’d misread things, and they’d get on just fine without him. Nothing to do other than take the circumstances as they come. He glanced around the room for something, anything. Opportunities always come around eventually, just a matter of staying alive long enough for one to find you. “Could I have some time to think it over?”

  Oryn ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’m not sure there’s much to think about.”

  The Lýkein flourished a wide smile, showing off the daggers in her mouth. “Let’s give him a day, Oryn. There’s no rush, and we have our own considerations.”

  Niaz knew he liked the wolf. Beasts are better company than men, and this one was prettier too.

  Oryn twisted his mouth and knit his brow. “One day. Take him to his cell, Aisha.”

  Aisha tossed a scowl at Niaz. Aisha. Must’ve been the prettiest name he’d ever heard, but he was grinning because he had at least one more day above the clay. If he didn’t have a surging headache, fierce hunger pains, and an intense even-if-slightly-quenched thirst, he might have been giddy.

  “And have him sent food and drink before he goes off and dies on his own.”

  Giddy.

  Aisha emerged from her corner and rebound his wrists. Before he knew it, he was being yanked out of the doorway and back through the city. He didn’t think much about why the Lýkein had bought him another day. He didn’t even think much about who they wanted him to kill or why they needed him to do it. He was just happy to be on his way back to his cell, with the stone floors and the tight shackles, and his probably imagined neighbor across the hall.

  So happy he thought he may as well start a conversation. It wasn’t often he saw other Southerners. “Niaz Akhtar. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  She stopped, turned, and spat on him.

  Niaz sighed as he wiped the slime from his mouth. Truth be told, he’d been expecting worse.

  She approached him slowly, lips ripped into a snarl. Damn she had nice teeth. She got so close her breath was warm on his cheeks. She smashed her knuckles up his chin.

  He staggered back, teeth biting into his tongue, blood leaving iron in his mouth. He steadied himself and rubbed his jaw. He might’ve protested if he hadn’t deserved it.

  She didn’t say a word and tightened his rope until he was ready to yelp, not that he’d give her the satisfaction. Then she went back to dragging him along, but not as hard as before. Must’ve been an accident that she wasn’t yanking him as hard, but he smiled all the same. Sore jaw and all. That’s what life’s about—finding joy out of the little things.

  Wasn’t long before he was done being pulled and he was staring down a stairway. She’d even been considerate enough not to let him stumble to death down the stairs. Niaz cleared his throat as they reached the bottom. “I’m not proud of my past. Only trying to be better is all.”

  “Hmph.” She pulled him down the stairs and to a thick steel door.

  Niaz shifted to the side of the hall opposite his cell as he followed behind her. He made careful note of each cell as they walked down the corridor. Empty. Empty. Empty. She stopped ahead of him to find the key to his cell, but pretended he didn’t see and bumped into her.

  She called him an unkind name in Southern and shoved him into the bars. But he’d bought enough time. He saw all he needed to see. He hadn’t imagined a thing. The cell across from his wasn’t empty. Far from it. Sulking in the shadowed corner of the cell, with two horns protruding through a mop of dark hair was a young Zurun girl. It was too dark to make out any other features, but there was no mistaking those horns. They were even a bit longer than most would’ve been around that age.

  He was yanked into his cell before he could see any more of the girl. He was still dumbstruck as the shackles clamped around his ankles. No Zurun had been this far north since Eònan Vonungr shored on The Twins. Guess he didn’t know as much as he thought.

  Aisha slammed and locked his cell door. “Food and water will be brought in the morning.”

  Niaz didn’t pay her any mind as she walked off. He’d even lost interest in the Zurun girl. There in his cell, lying on the cold stone, was a small shiv. Had Ackland dropped it off to him when he’d unshackled him? Did someone else leave it there while he was gone? Didn’t matter really. All that mattered was that he had a weapon.

  Niaz smiled in his dark corner. The odds had just shifted in his favor. Life was simple really. Stay alive long enough for an opportunity to present itself.