The world under the cobblestones didn't have room for mistakes. One slip, one moment of hesitation, and you ended up floating face-down in the Sorrowflow or sold to a mine-factor with no eyes. Kestrel knew this in her bones, the way she knew the feel of a good lock's tumblers and the exact weight of a full purse. So when the giant walked into The Leak, she felt the mistake before she even made it.
She'd been watching Gerrin's booth from the shadows, a practiced routine. New faces meant new opportunities. This one was different. He moved like a landslide held in check—immense power restrained by a will you could feel across the room. His cloak was travel-stained, but the leather underneath was good quality, and the long, ominous shape across his back wasn't a fishing pole. He had the look of a man on a mission, which usually meant he was either dangerously focused or dangerously paranoid. Either way, his purse would be heavy with purpose, not just coin.
She'd followed him after he left Gerrin. The river-rat had given him the bone chit. South wharf, third pier. The River Mule. He was leaving, and soon. A man in a hurry with a fresh wad of silver was a gift from whatever cruel gods watched over Oakhaven's alleys.
The market square was her stage. The chaos was a symphony she conducted with subtle nudges and feints. The gang of lumbering apprentices was a perfect, noisy wave to ride. She slipped in beside him, a ghost in the crowd, her body a whisper against the solid wall of him. The touch of the leather pouch through his tunic was firm, promising. Her blade—a sliver of sharpened steel with a wrapped handle—slipped from her sleeve. Not a slash, a surgeon's cut. One quick, upward motion against the cords. The satisfying snick of parting fibers. The sudden lift of weight from her blade as the pouch fell free into her waiting palm.
And then she felt it. Not a shout, not a grab. A stillness.
He hadn't yelled "Thief!" He'd just… stopped. The air around him seemed to congeal. It was the most terrifying reaction she'd ever provoked. Most marks flailed, shouted, clutched at the empty spot. This one became a predator who'd just felt a flea bite.
She melted into the crowd, her heart a frantic bird in her ribs. Don't run, flow. She hit the alley mouth, allowed herself one glance back. He was coming. Not running, but walking with a dreadful, inevitable pace, his grey eyes locked on her like twin bolts of storm. Panic, pure and acidic, flooded her mouth. She ran.
The chase was a blur of damp bricks and pounding blood. He was fast, so fast for his size, closing the distance with terrifying strides. The dead-end courtyard was a testament to her failing luck. The tannery stench was like a physical wall. She whirled, needle-dagger out, the bravado in her voice a thin shield over the terror. "Back off, big man!"
He didn't even draw the sword. He just looked at her, and in that look, she saw her own death measured and found acceptable. His offer was a formality. Hand it over or be broken.
She fought. Of course she fought. Survival was the only instinct left. He moved like lightning, his hand a vise on her forearm. The pain was bright and shocking, her fingers going numb. The dagger fell. The pouch was torn from her grasp. This was it. This was where they found her body in the morning.
But he didn't kill her. He checked the pouch, his face unreadable. And then he did the second unimaginable thing: he asked her name. Not "you little rat" or "filthy thief." He asked for her name.
Kestrel. It fell from her lips, a piece of herself she hadn't given anyone in years.
And then came the coin. A silver Shield. A king's ransom. For the bruise. For silence. And a job. A guide east. Into the mouth of the beast itself, the Drakespine Marches. The coin was a lifeline and a chain. He saw her not as vermin to be crushed, but as a tool to be used. It was almost worse. But the silver was real. It was food. Medicine. Maybe a real blanket.
When he demanded to see her world, a part of her wanted to spit in his face. But a larger, colder part saw an opportunity. Let him see the squalor. Let him understand the price of his fine principles. Maybe his guilt would loosen his purse strings further.
Leading him to the temple felt like leading a wolf to a den of pups. As they entered the gloom and she saw the children's faces—Talen's fierce, scarred defiance, little Mirri clutching her headless doll—a new kind of fear gripped her. She had brought danger to their only sanctuary.
His reaction wasn't what she expected. No disgust. No pious horror. He knelt. He showed his empty hands. He listened to her flat, ugly story as if it were a military briefing. And then he offered the impossible.
A home.
Not a promise. A plan. A letter. A carter. Hearthstone. It was a fairy tale, the kind she'd stopped believing in before she'd lost her first tooth. But the specifics—the uncle who was a sergeant, the directions to Finn's Haul, the hard silver in her hand—they were not a fairy tale. They were logistics. And the price? Her skill. Her knowledge. Her life as a guide into the very hell that had spawned the monsters who'd wanted these children.
The calculation was instant and agonizing. Trust was a currency more debased than the Empire' tin pennies. But the children's eyes… Mirri's hope was a physical force, a tiny, fragile flame in the damp. Talen's suspicion was a wall, but behind it, she saw the desperate longing of a boy who'd been a man for too long.
She made the deal. Not for the silver, not even for herself. She made it for the chance to see Mirri's face without hunger in it. For Talen to lower his hatchet for good.
As she hurried the children to pack, her mind, against her will, flashed back to the day she'd stolen them. It wasn't a heroic memory; it was a scream of instinct.
---
It had been last autumn, the time of choking dust and fading light. She'd been working the caravan route from Oakhaven to the eastern hamlets, picking the pockets of merchants and guards dulled by travel. She'd seen the child levy before—a grim fact of frontier life. The factors came after bad harvests, offering "indentured apprenticeships" that were just prettied-up slavery. You didn't look. You couldn't afford to.
This one was different. The factor, a man with a face like boiled leather and fingers crusted with ring-seal wax, wasn't just taking teenagers. He had them chained by the ankle in a coffle, a line of misery that included children as young as Mirri. Their faces were blank with shock, their feet bare and bloody on the gravel road. They were being marched not towards the southern farmlands, but east, towards the grim, smoke-stained foothills of the Drakespines. Everyone knew what lay there: Ralke's mines. A place you sent people you never wanted to see again.
She'd been hidden in a ditch, watching them pass, planning to lift the factor's strongbox from the rear cart after dark. She wasn't a savior. She was a scavenger.
Then, the line had stumbled to a halt near a stream. The factor's brutish lieutenant, a hulk of a man named Bor, had yanked a boy—Talen—from the line for moving too slowly. He'd raised a whip not of leather, but of knotted rope. The sound it made cutting the air was a sickening whistle. Talen hadn't cried out. He'd just stared, his young face a mask of hatred so pure it burned across the distance.
And in that moment, Kestrel hadn't seen a mark, or a victim. She'd seen herself, twelve years old, facing down the landlord's man who'd come to collect her family after the plague took them. The same hatred. The same certainty of doom.
Her body moved before her mind could protest. Saviors died. Sentiment got you killed. But the factor's supply cart, piled high with sacks of meal and barrels of cheap ale, was a beautiful, vulnerable target. Her fire-striker, a precious tool for survival, felt hot in her hand. It wasn't a plan; it was an eruption.
She crept, a shadow in the twilight, to the back of the cart. She sliced a sack, spilling dry grain. A quick spark, a curl of tinder-dry cloth from her own pack, and she touched it to the meal. It didn't explode into flame; it smoldered, then caught with a sudden, hungry whoosh that raced up the spilled grain and into the cart's canvas cover.
The shout went up. "FIRE!"
Chaos. The guards rushed to the cart, beating at the flames with blankets, creating a thick, blinding smoke. The factor screamed orders that no one heard. The chained children milled, confused and terrified.
Kestrel didn't run. She darted to the edge of the line, her needle-dagger flashing. Not at people—at chains. The cold iron links were tough, but the locks were cheap. Two quick, brutal jabs with the pick-end of her tool, a twist, and Talen's ankle manacle sprang open. She met his eyes, saw the shock, and hissed one word: "Run. That way. Into the reeds. Now."
She moved down the line, a phantom in the smoke, popping locks. Some children froze. Others, like a sharp-eyed girl with red hair, instantly grabbed the smaller ones and bolted for the stream and the thick reeds beyond. Talen, instead of running, started helping her, yanking at the manacles of the ones too stunned to move.
When eight were free, the factor's men finally spotted them. A crossbow bolt thudded into the dirt at her feet. There was no time for more.
"Go!" she snarled at Talen, shoving him towards the reeds. She took one last look at the remaining children, their eyes pleading from the smoke, and a piece of her soul fractured and stayed behind with them. Then she ran, following the fleeing children into the choking cover of the riverside thickets.
They ran until their lungs burned, collapsing in a filthy, forgotten drainage culvert. Eight children. Eight lives she now owned. No food. No shelter. No plan. Just the certain knowledge that men with crossbows and dogs would be coming for their property.
That had been months ago. The temple ruin had been their fourth hiding place. The factor's men had swept the area, but she knew Oakhaven's underbelly better than they did. She kept them moving, kept them silent. She taught Talen to stand watch, taught the others to hide any sign of their passing. She stole to feed them. Every loaf of bread, every wedge of cheese, was a tiny victory and an ocean of risk. The silver Shield in her hand now represented more food than she'd managed to steal in a month.
---
The memory faded, leaving the acrid present of the temple. The giant—Arrion—was finishing his letter. He moved with a focused certainty that was foreign to her world of constant improvisation. He believed his uncle would take them in. He believed she could guide him through the Marches. He believed in a chain of trust that stretched from this ruin to a village called Hearthstone.
It was madness. But it was a madness with full bellies and solid walls at the end of it. As she watched Talen carefully parcel out their meager belongings, as she saw Mirri try to smile with chapped lips, Kestrel made her choice. She would be his guide. She would navigate the river of shadows for him. Not for the silver. Not for him.
She would do it for the chance to lead these children, just once, not into deeper darkness, but into the light he promised. And if he betrayed them, if this was all an elaborate trick, she would make sure her needle-dagger found its way into his throat before the mine-factors ever got their chains back on Talen's ankles. That was the only trust she had left to give.