• Serpent Among Crows • Kaz Brekker

2

Kaz and Jordie had no plan when they came to Ketterdam, low on funds and any idea what the city held in store for them; but one thing they learnt quite quickly was that the streets were not a kind place for children.

The dark city was a rusted, well used machine; it thrummed off of crime and violence and trickery to keep it running. A canvas of blacks, greys and browns, it was rare to find a splash of colour or anything good among the Barrel. From the harbour to the University district it was writhe with gambling parlours, taverns, bars, brothels - all ran in the background by feared gangs that controlled the fates of the unfortunate, all for coin.

The first glimpse of colour that hadn't seemed fake, synthetic or just for show had came to them in the form of a young Shu girl with the brightest golden eyes they had ever seen.

She spoke little, if at all, and often muttered to herself in a language they didn't understand. Only weeks later when Jordie bought them hot chocolate did she gain the courage to say thank you in Kerch.

She had been running from something, but weren't they all? The stadtwatch, the brothels, the sly hand of a thief, the eye of a con-artist, the clutches of poverty and starvation?

She had no where to go and neither did they. No home, no family left, no options, and no semblance of safety on the unforgiving streets - it had seemed wrong to let her go off on her own - she was the same age as Kaz, and as the older brother, Jordie couldn't leave her to the devices of fate with good conscience.

The girl with golden eyes had stayed with them, become a friend who taught them how to pick-pocket, and in return she was given a tiny morsel of safety.

A young girl on her own would have been snatched up by slavers, traders or worse at any second. But Jordie and Kaz acted as a shield that she could hide behind.

A shield that one day would be shattered.

Maybe it was fate that the three couldn't slip through the cracks - after all, what light could shine that far down in the Barrel? What saints bothered to cast their eyes that low except for Ghezen, who saw their worth only in use? In profit?

Sadly for the Shu girl with the golden eyes, Ghezen was the only saint to catch hers through the merky depths; not for her sake, but for those who snatched her up off of the streets while she was alone - so much profit that could be made from the girl, and so little she understood at the time.

If only the plague had killed her that night, too.

It seemed cruel of fate to land the girl into the very satin lined, incense smelling walls that she had been running from as a child in the first place; her mother had died to get her out of the brothel life, and not a year later it had all been for nothing.

For Barrel rats like Kaz Rietveld and Zhen Kir-Saran that was just how fate worked.

Never in their favour, always against them, a game rigged to make them lose.

Maybe, after years of being wronged by fate, or the saints, or whatever higher power you'd like to call it - it seemed fitting that they would grow strong enough to rewrite the rules.

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇

Zhen had no trouble recalling the sickness that had ravaged their tiny bodies, shredded their voice boxes and wilted them like flowers in the depths of winter; Kaz, Jordie and Zhen, only children, had been doomed from the very start.

They had no chance at survival in the Barrel.

Zhen remembered lying between the two boys beneath a set of steps between two buildings. Huddled shoulder to shoulder for some semblance of warmth in the unforgiving streets, leaning on eachother for strength that they could only pray for.