Demis had been alone for as long as he could remember.
He could still hear his mother's voice sometimes, faint and far away in his mind.
But he had long since forgotten both his father's and his mother's faces.
The earliest memory he could clearly recall was from when he was probably three years old.
There had been a great deal of crying and a great deal of burning. But most of what he remembered was his time with the men of the mountain.
They were towering men who only knew to listen to whoever stood above them. When he was older, and had learned enough to piece things together, he understood that he had been taken from a caravan bound somewhere he had already forgotten.
What mattered was that the men had taken it for themselves.
He had been one of the spoils.
Most of the people who had fought died. Apparently his parents did as well.
The rest were sold to slavers. Demis was not, for reasons he never understood. He lived among the bandits as an errand boy. Sometimes he was bait. Merchant caravans that saw a child in the middle of the road would stop for a moment, and then the bandits would come down on them.
He had heard the bandit leader praise him on more than one occasion. Apparently, he was 'too smart' for his own good.
That life ended when the bandits were cornered by a merchant caravan that turned out not to be merchants at all. They identified themselves as men of the Commercie.
Demis was picked up and sent to Bren.
For the longest time after that, he was content. He did not know if he could call it happiness.
For a few months, Demis was cared for at the Home for Foundlings. The place was crowded with children. Some were loud. Some were mean. Some cried at night until they wore themselves out.
The matron was a good woman.
She often tried to make money on the side, just to give the children some extra clothes, better food, or a blanket that did not smell like mildew and old rain.
The matron had always wanted children of her own. Because of that, she thought it only proper that the children under her care be given more than what the castle or its other donors cared to spare.
But a tragic day befell her when the Lady of the Castle stormed in and stripped her of her title.
Different institutions vied for the children. Demis just got the short end of the stick. He was sent to another Foundling house. The owner cared nothing for the children. As far as Demis was concerned, the man was practically a slaver.
He sold Demis off to a gang leader in the outer ring named Cerulle.
Demis was on his way back from the smithing district when someone knocked him over.
"Watch 'ere you're going boy!"
Demis was about to complain when he looked up to a toothy grin.
It was Hardis, one of the men in Cerulle's gang.
"Yer off buying things again arn't ye?"
Demis didn't answer. He just sniffed.
"I sawr you buy that beggar woman some food again," Hardis spat. "Ye have 'nough coin for doin' charity work now are ye?"
Demis knew for a fact that Hardis didn't see him buy anything. He knew that Hardis saw him give the matron some food.
Demis sniffed again. "I... I didn't buy it. It was given to me, I just gave it to her."
"Oh boy, wai' till Cerulle hears this. Yer in fer a beatin'."
Demis stood up, but Hardis punched him back down. His head hit the roadside. His clothes were stained with mud.
He stood up again. This time, he wasn't struck down.
Hardis kept smiling that strange, sadistic smile. Demis just walked beside him.
They went through the outer ring by roads Demis already knew too well. Past the tannery lane, where the drains always ran dark. Past the cookstalls, where the grease smell never really left the stones. Past the alley behind the wine sheds, where older boys sometimes came back with split lips and empty hands.
Cerulle kept his headquarters in an old storehouse near the merchant quarter. It had once held sacks of grain. Now it held men.
Two of them stood outside the warped door with cudgels in hand. One of them glanced at Demis's muddy clothes and laughed through his nose.
"Boy's done somethin' again?"
Hardis grinned. "He's been charitable."
That got a short laugh out of both of them.
Demis said nothing.
Hardis shoved him between the shoulder blades and pushed him inside.
The place smelled of wet timber, sour ale, and the rot that came from too many men sleeping in one room too often. There were old crates stacked against the walls and a long table in the middle of the main chamber where three men were dicing over coppers. They looked up when Hardis brought Demis in, then looked back down. No one asked questions. That was worse, somehow.
Cerulle was at the far end of the room.
He sat in a chair that had once belonged to someone wealthier than him. The carved arms were chipped, and one leg had been braced with iron straps. Even seated, Cerulle had a way of making a room bend around him. He was not huge, but he had blood in him. It showed in the way he held himself, and in the way others gave him space.
Demis never knew from which house the blood came, only that it was there.
Cerulle was cleaning his nails with a knife when they approached.
Hardis stopped a few paces away and gave Demis one last shove forward.
"Caught the boy givin' food to the beggar woman again," Hardis said. "Saw him with me own eyes."
"The previous matron from the Home that the Castle closed?" Cerulle asked, facing Hardis as he sipped a pint of mead.
"The same, boss."
Cerulle did not look up at once. He finished with one nail, wiped the edge of the knife on his breeches, then lifted his eyes.
Cerulle leaned back in the chair and looked him over. Mud on his clothes. One side of his face already swelling from Hardis's punch. Hands dirty from the road.
"Look at me, boy."
Demis did.
Cerulle tapped the knife against the arm of his chair.
SLAM!
The knife hit the empty space between Demis's fingers. Demis didn't flinch.
Cerulle, annoyed with his expression, hit him right in the stomach.
Demis vomited.
"I know you think you are smart, boy. But you aren't the only smart one here, lad," Cerulle spat. "And in the Empire, the strong rule over the weak. I am stronger than you, so you should do as I say."
Demis wiped the drool from the side of his mouth with his sleeve. His mouth twitched a little, and he sniffed again. He didn't dare look into Cerulle's eyes.
"Now, boy, you may not think I'm looking. But I have eyes and ears everywhere. And I know for a fact that you've been talking to a merchant and that you have been receiving coin."
Cerulle sipped his mead again.
"Now, as far as I am concerned..."
Cerulle kicked Demis again, this time in the head.
Blood lined the inside of Demis's mouth.
"You owe me for keeping you under my roof. I feed you, and clothe you. Least you could do is respect me and pay your due. So pay up."
Cerulle stood over him. The lantern light caught the edge of his knife.
"I won't ask again, boy. Where is the coin?"
Demis tasted iron. His head spun from the kick, but his mind raced. If he said he had nothing, Cerulle would start cutting off fingers. If he gave up the loose stone by the docks, he would lose more of the vatts Gerren had paid him.
Demis let his shoulders sag. He made his voice shake, leaning into the fear.
"The alley... behind the tanner's vats," Demis rasped, spitting a glob of blood onto the floorboards. "Under the third rotted board. By the rain barrel."
Cerulle stared at him. He didn't smile. He didn't sheathe the knife. He just tilted his head toward Hardis.
"Check it."
Demis wiped the blood from his mouth with his sleeve again as Hardis walked out the back door.
The room went dead quiet. The three men at the table had stopped dicing. They just watched. Cerulle sat back down in his heavy chair and picked up his mead. He sipped it slowly, his eyes never leaving Demis's bruised face.
Demis stayed curled on the floor, clutching his stomach. He focused on breathing. In and out. Slowly.
Ten minutes passed.
The back door rattled open. Hardis stepped in, wiping rain from his shoulder. He walked over to Cerulle's table and dropped a handful of coins onto the wood.
They clattered loudly. Mostly six vatts, with a few terrs mixed in.
Cerulle looked at the pile. Then he picked up one of the bronze coins and rolled it between his fingers.
"Twelve vatts and some copper," Cerulle said softly. He looked down at Demis. "This isn't all, is it Demis?"
Demis's heart hammered against his ribs. He forced himself to look at Cerulle's boots.
"I bought the food for the matron," Demis lied, his voice hoarse. "That's what was left."
Cerulle stared at him. The silence stretched.
Cerulle was smart. He knew the math didn't add up. He knew Demis had a real stash somewhere else. But Cerulle also knew that Demis brought in more coin running messages in a day than Hardis did breaking jaws in a month.
He raised his heavy boot and drove it straight down into Demis's ribs.
Demis cried out. All the air rushed from his lungs as a sickening crack echoed in his chest. He curled into a tighter ball, trembling violently.
"I'll take this as today's tax," Cerulle said, his voice entirely flat. He leaned over, grabbing Demis by the hair and pulling his face up. "I know you're holding back, boy. You're smart. But I'm the one who lets you breathe."
He dropped Demis's head back against the floorboards.
"You're a good earner. So you live today. But if you hide the silver from me again, I won't just kick you. I'll take your eyes."
Cerulle turned and walked back to his chair. He waved a hand at the door. "Throw him out."
Hardis grabbed Demis by the collar of his tunic, dragged his limp body across the rough floorboards, and threw him out into the cold, muddy street.
The heavy door slammed shut.
Demis sniffed again. For other people living in the tenements, this would have been fatal. They would probably be sick with the fever the next day. But Demis had a strange resilience that he himself could not explain. He had an energy or something within him.
He had asked around about this. But it wasn't like anything he had heard of. Magic was fire, it was water, air, and earth. It wasn't something like... whatever he was feeling. And whatever it was inside him, he only had enough for himself.
He pushed the strange feeling toward his skull and his chest, easing the pain and somehow lessening the damage. He couldn't see it perfectly, just somehow felt it. With what happened today, he doubted he could go back to Cerulle to sleep amongst the other boys.
So he got up and walked toward the inner dockside. After a few minutes of walking, he stopped.
"Ma'," Demis said.
The woman looked up from where she sat against the wall, her blanket drawn tight around her shoulders.
"Oh, you poor thing."
It was the former matron. She was much thinner now than she had been four years ago. Her cheeks had sunk in. Her hands looked smaller than he remembered.
"What happened?"
"I fell again," Demis lied.
"You should stop climbing walls, you know? You could end up becoming wheat bran." The woman let out a soft chuckle at her own retort.
Demis sniffed and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.
"Well, it's the only place I can hide the money, Ma'."
The matron shook her head slowly. "You should have never found that place."
Demis shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His side still hurt when he stood too straight.
"Well, you were right, it was a good spot for seeing the hills. It was abandoned then."
"Not anymore."
"Ma'," Demis interrupted.
The woman lifted her eyes to him.
"Yes, Demis?"
He looked down at her bowl first, then at the stone beneath her, then back at her face.
"Do you hate the Lady of the Castle?" Demis asked innocently.
The matron blinked once. Her hands tightened a little around the blanket.
"Omniscience, no. I... I deserved it. I should've known. I just thought that Catalyna was a kindred spirit."
Demis stared back but didn't reply. A drop of rain slid from the edge of the awning and hit the stone beside them.
The matron was too good a soul. He wanted to say many things. He wanted to say that she did not deserve this life. That she had been dealt with too harshly. But he held his tongue.
The matron, seeming to read his face, spoke again.
"It's not too bad. Some of the other children give me food and some coin too."
She smiled still, though it sat tiredly on her.
Demis looked at her hands again. Her fingers were red from the cold.
"Ma', can I sleep together with you tonight?" Demis asked.
The matron's face softened at once.
"Of course, my dear. We can sleep under the sky."
Demis shook his head.
"We don't need to, Ma'. We have coin. We can go to an inn."
The matron let out a small breath and looked away down the lane.
"Ahh, no inn will have me."
Demis took a step closer.
"There can be, Ma'."
"Oh?"
He nodded.
"Yes, the inn where Master Gerren stays. We can stay for the night. I have coin."
The matron looked back at him.
"But that's yours."
Demis shrugged, though the motion pulled at his ribs.
"It's alright, Ma'. At least you can sleep better tonight. You can have a proper bed."
The matron studied him for a moment. Then she pushed herself up with one hand on the wall and the other holding her blanket closed.
"Ahh, alright. If you insist, then."
Demis held out his arm. She took it, lightly at first, then with more weight once she stood fully. Together they started down the lane.