PROLOGUE
She sees everyone, and everyone disappoints.
Chewing off the last scrap of a chicken bone with the corner of her teeth, feeling not unlike a dumpster cat, the seven-or-eight-year-old girl sees everything all day and night, but no one sees her. She calls herself Kid because everyone else does, and she keeps her twenty braids of dirty hair wrapped and pinned to her scalp because no one else does. Her hair’s so dirty, she forgets what color it is. Slum-colored, she tells herself, but no one sees.
Kid has her eye on a band of boys tonight. One of them’s called Link—a scrawny one with a mop of black hair hiding his eyes—and he wears a ragged blue cloak like the rest of them. Eight in all. They round a corner, so Kid tosses the chicken leg—empty of meat anyway—and follows. Curiosity is the sole thing that carries her, as she has no idea who they are. They’ve said very little in the last hour, which is annoying. She’s heard of kids banding together to right the wrongs of the city. Maybe this is one of them, she hopes, her heart lifting at the very idea.
But of all the boys, Link makes her the most curious. He told them he has no brothers and lives alone, but she followed him from a house where two other boys in fact lived, so she already knows he’s a liar. That makes him all the more interesting. He even has a mom and dad.
I once had me a mom and dad.
Following Link and his wordless party of blue, she tracks them down three streets before a foot accidentally kicks into a trashcan … her own foot. They turn—all eight of them—and she just stands there.
They still don’t see her. They don’t see her because her Legacy of invisibility won’t let them.
“Cat,” one of the younger guys mutters, deciding. “Just a cat, keep going.”
“I don’t see no cat,” another complains, squinting.
“It’s gone now. Move on.”
After a length of annoying debate, they finally move on with Link pushed ahead of them. Kid keeps up, this time caring not to attack anymore trashcans. She hates drawing attention, even if she cannot be seen.
It isn’t too much longer before they arrive at the apparent destination: a sanctuary at the edge of the tenth ward slum. She didn’t take the boys to be the praying kind. Are they here to donate? Help the poor? Maybe she could join their band, help the world smile more. There are so many terrible things out there, as living on the streets has taught her. Kid lets herself smile, having drawn close to them as they approach the door of the sanctuary.
The nearest one politely knocks. A priest with heavy eyelids answers. He observes the visitors a while before speaking. “Welcome to The Brae, boys. Have you a life to save tonight?”
“Yours,” the boy in front says, and a knife finds the priest’s throat and draws red across the length of it.
Kid’s smile is gone.
The blue cloaks drop to the ground like curtains. Beneath, the boys are dressed in chains and black tatters, and the screams from within the sanctuary are all she hears as they press inside, blades drawn, knives thrusting. The leader of the boys, a lean and youthful boy with black gunk caked around his eyes, throws the butt of his sword against another priest’s face as they push into the sanctuary. Kid follows them into the main hall where rows of benches hold startled innocents. A boy whom she presumes to be the leader’s younger brother—practically his twin, similar of face and build—shoves one of the older ladies, threatening her with a thin curved blade Kid doesn’t know the name of, and demands something from her, her jewels, her life, the sanctuary’s money keep. It’s so difficult to make out words with all the screaming.
Then an unlucky priest who speaks up gets his jaw knocked sideways, blood painting the wall behind him. “Where’s your Three Goddess now?” the attacker cries out, laughing maniacally. “Go ahead!—Pray! Pray! Ask them to save a life now! Save plenty of ‘em!”
She spots Link passing through the hall less boldly, the scared faces of innocents seeming to bring pause to his actions. Kid slouches against a wall, feeling the hope that lived only a moment ago in her heart turn black as the blood that now dances on stone and fist and sharp, sharp metal. Oh, what boys’ hands can do …
“Link,” calls out the leader with black gunk about his eyes. “Food, glass, and money from the chambers. It’s ours.” And like a good boy, the one called Link grips his sword, puts on a menacing sort of face and takes off.
Such a good boy a liar makes, she thinks with a scowl.
The moment he’s gone, the other gang-boys start to laugh. “What a tool,” one says between guffaws.
She’s been watching them for a while and can tell there’s something different about the one called Link. He isn’t like the others, he doesn’t belong. But he seems to want them to think he belongs. Is there a game being played here among these boys? Does she not see it?
In the corner of the room, Kid observes a mother with her baby squeezed in arm. It touches her, the baby, mommy’s embrace … Kid’s a young enough age where she can almost remember her final wake, but it’s been long enough that she questions whether she’s recalling it at all, or just lying to herself. All babies in the world sleep until the age of two. Then they wake up for the last time in their lives, forever after staying awake, dreams never to find them again. Until they’re dead, maybe.
“Did you see it?—the hilt of his sword?? Tell me you saw it,” a boy snickers to another. “It was all pink.”
“Yeah,” replies the other, sneezing with laughter. “A pink handle, I saw it. Who paints a sword pink??”
Another priest gets his jaw knocked sideways, for what, Kid doesn’t care anymore. The saddest thing is, none of the priests use their Legacies to defend themselves. So many abilities in this room, and no one even bothers to shield a face. Is that their pride, or their silly Three Goddess beliefs that stop them? What’s it matter, the girl wonders sourly. Death and hurts can’t be stopped by the palms of hands. Everyone’s gonna die just the same, no matter their Legacy. They die as pathetically. Die alone. Whether screaming, pleading, laughing or silent, everyone dies the same. She watches the priest beg, the sorry man he is. No hand can stop death.
The scrawny Link returns, heaving with the weight of a sack over his shoulder. The sack is spotted in streaks of pink where Link’s hand clutches it. Strange.
“I have it, Dran, all of it.”
And the lean, sinewy one with the blackened eyes and greasy black hair, Dran by name, sings to the scared priests: “It’s been fun, but gotta run. Thanks for donating, so very.”
In the way of the exit, a little girl stands clutching a doll, begging Link to help her. Apparently on their way in, one of them struck down her brother, who still writhes in silent agony on the ground. “Please,” she whimpers.
The one called Dran is studying Link, the rest of the gang too, all of them waiting to see how their new recruit handles this obstacle. Even Kid finds herself on edge, invested, her interest revived. Her heart begs him to be strong, to not give in, to throw away his desire to win these fools over, to stand against them.
Instead, Link rips the doll from the child and twists off the head—which takes more effort than he was expecting, clearly. He grunts in the effort before the head pops off with a sad little squeak. The girl cries out, but Link silences her by putting the pink hilt of his weapon into her cheek. This action moves a priest between them in some sad attempt at protecting the child, but Link is quicker and strikes him too, a blunt hit to the back. For a moment, horror flashes across Link’s face at the red he’s just drawn from the man’s backside. The priest attempts to rise for one pitiful second, then drops to the floor, unable, wailing in agony.
The moment that follows stretches on and on. The little girl and her brother, both on the ground clutching at nothing, pain seizing the boy in so many places he doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands. The struck priest, he can’t even turn over to witness what else is going on, his eyes in a panic. The rest of the sanctuary holds tensely, watching, begging good riddance to their intruders who with such ease slipped in and took all the money and food they had, every paper and cent.
Kid, the invisible bystander, the watcher, she just waits and waits with tired eyes, seeing all.
The little Link puffs up, playing proud of the horrors he’s committed, though his face tells another story, eyes trembling, lip quivering with uncertainty. He faces the room and cries out, “If anyone else wants to talk back, talk now so I can show you what your insides look like!”
No voice answers him, only silent, cold eyes.
Link drops the mutilated doll into the girl’s tiny lap before stepping over her to make leave. The others follow, each as though hopping a mere crack in the pavement, paying no mind to the blood on the floor or the quiet, swallowed tears of the sanctuary. Dran trails behind, taking a last glimpse over his shoulder to admire the pretty victory, a greasy sort of smile tickling his lips.
Kid doesn’t watch where they go, nor does she follow. Instead she observes the wounded of the sanctuary gather themselves, rising slowly off the floor, in pieces, emerging from dark corners of the hall and the stair and from beneath benches where they hid, not one of them saying a word for so long. The silence and shuffling of feet speaks enough.
If there’s anything Kid hates worse than the constant disappointment, it’s a liar. She whispers his name bitterly. The wounded boy on the ground stirs at the sound of Kid’s whispering, searching for the voice, so Kid thinks the name instead: Link.
Liar-boy Link … liar, liar Link …