The carriage door slammed shut, plunging Lysander into a darkness thick with the smell of old leather, damp wood, and the sharp, metallic tang of his own blood. He lay crumpled on the hard floor, each jolt of the wheels over the cobblestones sending fresh waves of agony ripping up his spine. His back felt like raw, exposed meat, every nerve ending screaming. He tried to breathe shallowly, to exist in the tiny spaces between the pain, but it was relentless, a tide threatening to drown him.
Time lost meaning. He drifted in a haze of torment, only dimly aware of the carriage slowing, turning, descending. The smooth stones of the Heights gave way to rougher, uneven surfaces. The sounds filtering through the wooden walls changed too. The clatter of expensive carriages faded, replaced by a cacophony – shouting, the clang of metal, raucous laughter, the constant, unsettling hum of too many people crammed into too little space. The air grew thicker, warmer, carrying unfamiliar scents: woodsmoke, rotting vegetables, stale beer, human waste, and the pervasive damp of the river.
The carriage stopped abruptly. The door was wrenched open. Harsh daylight, filtered through Veridia's ever-present haze, stabbed at Lysander's eyes. Before he could react, rough hands grabbed his arms and hauled him out. He cried out as his lacerated back scraped against the carriage frame, the sound tearing from his throat like broken glass.
He landed face-down in mud. Cold, wet filth seeped through the thin linen of his nightshirt, instantly mingling with the drying blood on his back. The stench was overwhelming – decay and despair. He pushed himself up weakly onto his elbows, coughing, his vision swimming.
He was in an alley. Narrow, choked with refuse. Crumbling brick walls leaned precariously overhead, blotting out most of the sky. Rats scurried away from the sudden intrusion. A few paces away, the alley opened onto a wider, teeming street, a river of ragged humanity flowing past. No one stopped. No one looked. A discarded person in the mud was just part of the scenery here.
Disposal authorized. The Crescent Dump. The Magistrate's clerk's words echoed cruelly in his pounding head. He was the trash. This was the dump.
A wave of nausea, worse than the laudanum hangover, washed over him, followed by a sudden, violent shivering that had nothing to do with the cold mud. His skin felt clammy, yet burning hot. The throbbing in his back intensified, a deep, sickening pulse that seemed to radiate heat. He recognized the signs, dimly, through the fog of pain and shock. Infection. Sepsis. Silas hadn't just discarded him; he'd condemned him to a slow, agonizing death in the gutter.
Despair, deeper and colder than anything he'd felt on the flogging floor, threatened to pull him under. He tried to crawl, to find some semblance of shelter, but his arms trembled violently, collapsing under him. He slumped back into the mud, his cheek pressed against the cold filth. The world tilted and spun. The sounds of the street – the shouts, the bartering, the crying child – blurred into a meaningless roar, then receded, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in his ears. Darkness nibbled at the edges of his vision.
Flash: His mother's face, pale and strained, smiling down at him as she tucked him in. "Music is feeling, Lysander. Never let them cage the feeling."
Flash: Silas's cold eyes, watching him perform. "Control it. Or it will be your undoing."
Flash: Kael's impassive face as the Enforcers marched him away. "The air down there carries disease."
He moaned, a low, animal sound of utter desolation. The gilded cage was gone. All that remained was pain, filth, and the crushing certainty of oblivion. He closed his eyes, welcoming the encroaching darkness. Let it end. Let the fever burn him out.
Then, cutting through the roaring in his ears and the distant street clamor, came a sound. Not a shout. Not a cry. Music.
It was rough, raw, scraping against the air. A fiddle? But unlike anything played in the Orpheum. This wasn't melody crafted for approval; it was feeling ripped from the gut and flung into the world. Dissonant, aching, furious. It twisted and turned, refusing to resolve, mirroring the chaos of the street, the desperation in the air. It spoke of cracked pavements and empty bellies, of defiance scraped raw. It was the sound he'd heard last night from the overlook. The sound that had resonated with the chaos inside him.
It was close. Very close.
He forced his eyes open, blinking against the blur. The sound seemed to come from the wider street beyond the alley mouth. He dragged himself forward, inch by agonizing inch, the mud sucking at his clothes, his back screaming protest. He had to see. Had to hear. It felt like the only anchor left in the dissolving world.
He reached the edge of the alley and peered out.
The street was a riot of color and decay. Ramshackle stalls leaned against crumbling buildings, selling dubious wares. People jostled, dressed in patched, faded clothing. Children darted underfoot. The air vibrated with shouts, arguments, the clatter of carts.
And there, leaning against the soot-stained wall of a building opposite the alley, was the source of the music. A figure, small and hunched, wrapped in layers of ragged shawls despite the day's warmth. The face was obscured, but the hands were visible – gnarled, dirty, moving with surprising strength and speed over the neck of a battered fiddle. The bow scraped and danced, pulling that raw, heartbreaking sound from the cheap wood and gut strings.
Lysander stared, transfixed, even as another wave of shivering wracked him, making his teeth chatter. The music wasn't beautiful in the Conservatory sense. It was ugly. Honest. Alive. It clawed at his fevered brain, refusing to let him sink completely into the dark.
He didn't see the shadow fall over him until it was too late.
"Lost, pretty bird?"
The voice was low, gravelly, and far too close. Lysander flinched violently, crying out as the movement tore at his back. He twisted his head, looking up.
A man stood over him, blocking the weak light. He was tall and gaunt, draped in a long, stained coat that might have once been black. His face was deeply lined, framed by long, greasy strands of gray hair escaping a battered felt hat pulled low. But it was the eyes that held Lysander – pale, almost colorless, like chips of dirty ice. They held no pity, only a sharp, unsettling curiosity. He smelled of stale sweat, cheap spirits, and something else… ozone? Metal shavings?
"Fell out of your golden nest, didn't you?" the man rasped, crouching down with surprising agility. His gaze swept over Lysander's bloodied back, the fine linen nightshirt now ruined, the mud caking his bare legs and feet. A grimy finger, surprisingly long and sensitive-looking, poked near one of the lacerations. Lysander gasped, jerking away.
"Infection's set in," the man stated matter-of-factly. "Festering nicely. You'll be dead by sundown if the rats don't get you first." He tilted his head, those pale eyes boring into Lysander's fever-glazed ones. "Or the fever cooks your brain. Saw it happen. Not pretty."
Lysander tried to speak, to plead, to curse, but only a dry croak emerged. Terror warred with the consuming heat inside him.
The man's thin lips stretched into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Orlov," he said, tapping his own chest with that grimy finger. "They call me Orlov the Storm." He glanced towards the street, where the fiddle player scraped out another anguished phrase. "That caterwauling won't save you, boy. Only thing that might is getting off this street. And that takes coin. Or favors." His pale eyes flicked back to Lysander, speculative. "What do you have, broken bird? Besides a death sentence on your back?"
Lysander had nothing. Nothing but pain and the fading echo of perfect, dead notes. He closed his eyes again, the fiddle's cry the only thing tethering him to the world of the living as Orlov the Storm watched him, a vulture considering carrion. The raw scrape of the strings was a question, a challenge, the first note of a desperate, discordant song he didn't know if he could survive.