Kingdom of Scourge and Shadow (The Sightstone Series #1)

Chapter One: Zoya

"On first impression, Allerstad is a cesspit filled with the worst sorts of people. Both the sanctimonious and the amoral call it home, and money is the only thing that matters to both. Yet, spend enough time on its streets, and you may find you've come to understand it."

-Domnall Ahearn, Kenish explorer and merchant, Ports of the Northern Lands

***

Allerstad, Rjikelund,

21st of Bone Moon

On the rooftops of Allerstad, silhouetted against the ink-black sky, Zoya Rostov could almost pretend she was flying.

Up here, several stories above the grimy, dark streets of Rijkelund's largest city, Zoya was free. She didn't have to worry about rival gangs, or polizei, or procuresses seeking young girls for their pleasure houses. Up here, there were no handsy men, no drunks or addicts, and no knives waiting just around the corner. Up here, it was almost peaceful.

The wind blowing in off the sea carried with it the smell of brine and fish, providing a slight relief from the coal smoke that blanketed the city, coughed up by the factories of the Basin and the chimneys dotted along the rooftops.

Zoya reached the edge of the roof and, without hesitating, bent her knees and soared over the narrow gap between this house and the next. Up here, in the Arrow, the thin, merchant district that separated the narrow, winding streets of the Old Stad from the wide boulevards of the New Stad, she was in charge and alone. No one else took these pathways. Only the Viper roamed here.

Since arriving in Allerstad, Zoya had learned to love the Old Stad. Here, where the poor and the working class were crammed into alleyways and tenements caught between the harbor and the Arrow, the roofs were close enough for her to use as her own, personal thoroughfare. While the High Streets, townhouses and shopping districts of the New Stad were navigable by rooftop, the streets were wide enough to see the roofs of the buildings across the way, and well-lit enough to silhouette anyone who lurked there, limiting her options somewhat.

In the Old Stad and the Arrow, the rooftops became Zoya's personal playground. No one ever looked up, she'd long since learned. The streets were so narrow that you couldn't see the roofs of the brightly-painted buildings, and the vast network of canals provided a thousand hideaways and escape routes for enterprising law-breakers of the sort Zoya belonged to.

She loved it.

Despite the smoky air, the reek of fish, the coal dust that coated every surface in sight, Zoya loved it. She hadn't, at first. When she'd first arrived, she'd found the city strange, gaudy, and filthy. After the pure, crisp air of the Saroviyan countryside, the smoke-choked air and the oppressive odors had made it hard to breathe.

But she'd adapted. She always adapted.

Tonight, she was running late. A job in the Jewel, the wealthiest neighborhood in the New Stad, made up of mansions surrounded by immaculately-landscaped groups, had detained her longer than she'd expected. At least, she thought ruefully, as she leapt another gap between roofs, she'd left with what she'd come for. The thick roll of papers was securely tucked into her waistband, where no one would think to find it, and where no one would dare to grab it, even if they realized it was there.

A cold, damp gust of wind buffeted her, smelling of the sea, all brine and damp, with a hint of tar likely borne up from the harbor. Zoya paused to pull the scarf she wore covering the bottom half of her face down, and breathed in the cold, clammy air. Two weeks into Bone Moon, and an unseasonable cold snap had taken hold of the city. Samhain wasn't even upon them yet, and already it seemed that the season of storms that preceded winter's arrival was on its way.