Seven emerged from an unassuming red-painted door set deep in a stone edifice. Its windows were so dark with dirt nothing escaped them, but the orange glow of lantern-light could be seen behind his small frame. When the door clicked shut, it was dark again, save for the eerie haze a red smile cast in perpetual night. He set off alone among the twisted, serpentine underground with his own thoughts and an off-key tune to keep his company. It did not take long for the streets to grow thin; rickety porticos shouldered against narrow alleys just beyond the oppression of hulking stone walls. The yellow-white of lanterns peered through the gloam; perpetually damp flagstones glinted like slick black marbles.
Leathered shoes scraped a lopsided trail against the ground. It could be as hard to find the surface as it was the world beneath it, but the streets below had favored the cynical halfblood enough to spit him out before the day’s last light slipped over the foothills beyond Alvadas’ walls. Today would not be as easy. After a few sharp turns, he passed the red door again. When he took to a narrow alley, the door met him on the other end; he turned abruptly and found himself facing an impassable wall.
Of course. He had left early, and had paid for it. His burned leg was stiff, it wanted for a comfortable chair and his dry mouth for tea. Even the half-chilled amber swill at home would have sufficed. A tongue reached out to wet parched and tight lips, and he encouraged sore feet to push on.
As Seven searched, he thought. The daydreamer often lost himself in his thoughts; he had the ability to mute the world, drive out the smell of sweet rotting fruit and the sting of excrement, the rattle of hooves on stone or the creak of carts they towed, the blur of unfamiliar faces that came few and far between beneath a living city. He should have noticed the stout figure that approached him too quickly, with too much purpose. When a pair of calloused hands took the him by the shoulders and hauled him bodily into the crushing darkness of a sliver-thin alleyway, he loosed a startled cry. A dirt-marred palm stilled his lips, and the world drummed back into Seven’s senses with the sickening smell of sulfur and a brusque voice.
“There you are, konti, I thought I’d lost you.”
Konti? Seven opened his mouth to speak, only to be reminded of the stinking hand that quieted him. He jerked his head and posed the muffled question all the same.
“Come, we’re late.” Seven’s jaw was released, aching and throbbing while the memory of a man’s reckless grip lingered on his skin.
“Late? Who is konti, and who the fuck are you?” There was an iron-on-iron rattle, and cold clamped down on Seven’s wrists, one after the other, guided by an arm stronger than both of his. Seven’s nostrils flared. Dizzying fear and rage surged fire-hot through his veins. His head spun, and he thrashed, feet scrabbling against slippery wet rock. Tears blurred his vision, and a wail caught in the back of his throat, emerging in a pathetic moan.
“Calm yourself, konti.” The name was repeated, and again, as much to win over the owner of the words as the squirming halfblood subjected to them. Silver caught the dim light of the blood-moon in the corner of Seven’s frenzied stare. He turned, and a dagger point grazed his nose. It was dirty, caked with mud, or dried blood, it was hard to tell in the dim light. “You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself. The last one, she never wanted to hurt herself, but she gave me no choice.”
The next chimes were a blur of dizzying panic and clumsy feet. Iron wore against his thin wrists and a hand concomitantly gripped his coat and pushed at his back, turning to a rough shove if Seven stopped to hesitate—which was often, with his leg.
Several narrow alleys fed into one pool, where a noisy throng had gathered among makeshift wooden booths that stood out against age-old stone walls. It was clear they had not been there long, nor would they linger. Seven craned his chin upward as he passed beneath an archway into the mouth of chaos, only to have that ever-present hand give him a rough push before he could decipher the wooden sign that swung in dead night air. The stalls smelled of muck, and the perfumed stock in velvet and ermine smelled worse. Lanterns swung on chains overhead, limned in colored glass.
“What is this place?”
“Shut up.”
“Fuck you.” That warranted a smack, a teeth-chattering backhand from the loutish wretch.
“Hold your tongue.”
Seven seethed behind a reddened cheek, eyes darting away from his captor long enough to catch a flash of wild orange-red in an otherwise grey crowd. He looked away and back again, and a familiar storm-grey stare drifted alongside the ginger hair and freckled smile, flickering with impatience, but did not fall on him. His heart leapt into his throat. He jerked at his iron binds. He screamed their names. Two feet scraped desperately at the hard ground beneath them, and a heavy hand brought silence to the halfblood once again with a swift backhand. Seven reeled, blinked bleariness from his eyes, and found the resolve to raise his head again. This time, he made no fuss, but there was no need. They were gone as soon as he’d glimpsed them, lost to a sea of foreign faces that left him wondering whether they had even been there at all. Seven’s desperately swiveling head was turned for him. They ducked into a stall.
It was quieter, here, on the other side of scant slats of timber, but the stench still clung to his nostrils.
“Here she is. I believe we agreed on eight hundred gold-rims.”
She?
A merchant’s shrewd black eyes peered out from behind wire-rimmed glasses at the glowering halfblood.
“That’s no konti. You said you’d have a konti, that’s what I am paying you for. Not some … ” There was a pause, then laughter. “For the sake of the gods, that isn’t even a woman.”
Seven’s tongue was fat and dry. He croaked. What was on that sign? He turned to look.
“Four-hundred, then.”
Carved and burned in wood were shackles, like the binds that held his wrists at the small of his back. Oh, gods. His mouth watered. Bile crept up his throat. Victor, Palla, they were … Victor.
“You’ve beaten him. His lip’s bloody, and he limps. One-fifty, or take your … whatever you have, kelvic, Widow, man-konti—take it elsewhere.”
“Bugger yourself.”
Respite was short-lived before they were in the sweltering mob again. His captor was cursing beneath his breath, and the stunned and sheltered Lhavitian had only now pieced together the motives of the man, of the market. Seven spat. His wits were plagued by fear and frustration, and he began to shout anything that came to mind. “I’m not a slave, you shit. I live here. I own a tavern! Let me go, and I’ll pay you twice what you asked in there. I have money. I need to find … ”
Smack.
