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PROLOGUE ▪▫▪▫▪
KIRA BROUGHT CHAOS TO KETTERDAM. That much she was sure of. For a city that reveled in it, in the chaos of gullible tourists and the fools patting their wallets as they walked through the streets, it was a rare occurrence that more chaos could ensue. But she had managed.
The firepox had snuck its way into the streets of Ketterdam the same way Kira had. Through the Queen's Lady ship. Kira, unlike the sailormen and people of the Barrel, had not gotten sick at the touch of the disease, the only sickness she carried as she planted her feet on the docks the day she'd arrived was the absence of home. She had been lost that day. And the following day. And the one after that.
Then bodies started pilling up on the streets or being carted off to Reaper's Barge for burning and Kira wasn't as lost anymore. Perhaps the feeling of Death watching over her shoulder made the little girl less aware of what morals were. She saw an opportunity and she grabbed it, gripping it like a lifeline for if she didn't Death would certainly catch up to her in the Barrel.
Kira felt her stomach lurch at the sight before her, but still, she let her dainty little fingers slip beneath the pockets and wallets of the corpses lining the streets of the Barrel.
For each kruge she found, for each earring she stole, for each body she passed, for each pair of eyes that looked back at her through blank gazes of death, Kira prayed.
She prayed for all the Saints above her to forgive her sinful ways, to forgive her consciousness that was slipping through her fingers like cold, gelid, water; to forgive the fact that Kira wasn't, and never would be again, the little blonde girl that giggled in the marbled halls and ran away from maids.
She could feel all the different metals in all the different bodies. She took them all, stashing them away in a little abandoned house she had found on the edge of the city.
That was the place Kira was now on her way to, her pockets full of little treasures, bloodied treasures, but treasures nonetheless. She was walking by the harbor, the smell of death carried by the wind hitting her face, but she did not grimace anymore. Death was poison, but Kira had enough of it to be vulnerable by now.
She looked down at her hands, at her index finger where her ring lay, the crest on top of it was turned around in her palm, so she could only see the golden band wrapped around her skin.
She knew that in a few years, it probably wouldn't fit anymore, the ring had been made for an eight-year-old princess, not a nine-year-old thief. Her eyes prickled with tears and she took a deep breath, but not before a sob managed to escape her lips.
Looking around the docks to see if anyone was around, to see if anyone had seen the golden-haired girl in the docks crying. A little girl crying was a sight men loved, she looked innocent and sweet and most of all up for grabbing and shoving into a brothel.
The first time someone had tried to do that, Kira had made the chain around their neck tighten, and saw for the first time in her life how purple a man could get as the breath was taken away from him. She did not cry for the man. Neither did she cry for her soul, she was fighting for survival and she wouldn't apologize for that.
No one apologized for making her that way.
As her eyes roamed the docks around her, her gaze got caught by a strange sight. A boy laid on the rotting wooden beams of a dock. He looked drenched and cold but as she squinted her eyes she could see his chest moving. He was alive.
Kira smiled at the sliver of morals she still had, making her way to the boy that didn't look much older than she was. She stepped closer to his body and saw as he looked up at her, his eyes widening slightly before they rolled to the back of his head and closed.
She tilted her head to the side as she knelt next to him, and brushed his dark hair out of his pale face. He was still breathing, which was good, but he looked dead, which was not so good.
If someone had found him they'd probably thought he was sick and dead, and thrown him in the water so they couldn't catch the disease. Kira didn't get sick, so she hauled up her strength, wrapping her arms around his frame and latching her hands in his chest as she started to drag him out of the docks.
Huffing and puffing at her lack of physical strength, something she would have to surely look into, she managed to drag the boy into the confines of an abandoned merchant's office, that had been abandoned by men and occupied by plague (well, at least when it got there, Kira was sure it was fine by now).
She laid him down on the wooden floor—taking off his wet jacket so he wouldn't freeze as much—and stood up, stretching her back that had been hunched over as she dragged him along. She looked down at him and sighed. Shoving her hands into her pockets she took out all of her findings and wrapped them all in his jacket lying next to him.
Then she proceeded to poke him in the face to see if he woke up. The most reaction she got out of him was his eyes squinting as they tried to see her through his exhausted state. She smiled brightly at him, the way her brother used to do when she was sad.
His eyes closed again and his face relaxed as he fell unconscious again.
Kira smiled at him and then left the building, sure he would be fine. No one would fight their way through the bodies of the Reaper's Barge if their purpose wasn't surviving the Barrel.
That day, Kira made a promise to herself. One that had sparked in her mind after the honesty she had felt when saving the boy. She discovered she liked honesty, she liked the way it made all her sins seem like nothing.
So she swore: no lie would pass her lips from that moment on. It was the only thing she could think of to appease the Saints and hold her consciousness in her hands without it slipping away into nothingness. She would find a way to skirt around lies, to tell the truth in deception but she would never lie again.
Just like the boy she found on the docks had fought for his life, she would fight for her consciousness, appease its weight. The boy in the docks made her a girl that could save someone without thinking instead of waiting for their last breath just to rob them blind.
She couldn't promise herself she could save the lives in the Barrel but as long as she did not lie it was enough for her to overlook her other crimes; crimes she would surely have to commit if she needed to survive the Barrel.
