I leaned down and slapped a hand over the prince’s mouth. Everyone knew not to mention the times the Goddess had used my body like a marionette. I didn’t have perfectly clear memories of either instance, but I knew that it had happened. The first time had been in front of the king when I was ten, and I’d stabbed an assassin from the Guild. My eyes had turned gold, and I’d spoken in Her voice. Not that I remembered what She’d said.
It had made my breath smell weird for months afterward, though. At least I’d gotten a good cloak out of it.
I sighed, trying not to sound as pissed as I felt. “Dash, only speak to answer this one thing: why were you here?”
He dropped his eyes. “I followed you to this neighborhood last week,” he admitted sulkily. “Then I saw Verity go inside thisbuilding today. Or I thought it was this one.” His puppy dog eyes met mine. “I wanted to know what you were doing inside.”
“You weren’t supposed to know about this place,” Augusta explained, leading him away from me before I shook him again. “It’s a crew-only secret.” She wasn’t lying. We’d all made a vow on our lives to keep it secret.
“I want to be in the crew.” His jaw jutted out mulishly. “I’m going to be.” Then he muttered, “Going to marry Ratter and make her my queen.”
“Dashy, you’ve got to stop this. You’re seven,” Dev said kindly, straightening his clothing. “She’s much older than you.”
“I turned eight this month. And I like older women,” he insisted, puffing up his concave chest.
Everyone burst into laughter at that, except me. I didn’t want to encourage the crown prince’s crush. I had a feeling his “affections” would be transferred, possibly to Verity, as soon as I left. He’d already started mooning about when she was on duty, his attention split between us. But I didn’t want to hurt his feelings; I’d known him from the time he was born, and he’d always been such a sensitive soul. And he was a child.
A cold child. I suddenly noticed he was shivering. Where had his coat gone? I had to get him out of the winter wind and back to the castle before his dads—the king, his executioner, my boss, and the king’s top two generals—realized he was gone and called up the army to find him.
Dev grabbed his hand. “I’ll take you back home. If your parents know you followed Ratter down here, she might get in trouble.”
“I would never allow that,” Dash proclaimed, trudging after Dev with one last calf-eyed glance at me.
As soon as they were out of earshot, I beckoned the others closer. “Verity did come here today. I see her sign on thewindow.” They glanced at the four faint thumbprints in a clover pattern in the dusty, broken pane. “Is something up?”
Robert shrugged. “I think she was trying to give the princeling the slip. He really is persistent.”
“She might stab him if he doesn’t stop,” I replied. “Somebody needs to let him know girls don’t like being spied on, or followed around.” I lifted an eyebrow at him, and he blushed down to the roots of his deep brown hair. I’d caught Robert peeking through the window of the Black-Eyed Susan the week before. For a brothel, it wasn’t a bad place. And he was seventeen now. But he was more or less my little brother, my adopted family, and it was my job to tease him about it.
Family.My heart gave a painful thud. I was going to leave them. I had to tell them.
“I need an all-hands tonight at midnight. At the south tower,” I said, ignoring the questions that flew from all of them. I held up two fingers for quiet. “I have news. And I can only get through it once. So be there. Tell the others.”
Even with us quiet, the street was noisy. Gulls squabbled by a stack of nets, water slapped against the dock at the river, wagons and carts rumbled past on the wide street two blocks over, and every time the wind blew, it moved the strings of glass and metal that we’d hung across the rooftops of the streets. We’d hung lines all over the ceiling of Turino, and left signals for each other in them: signs that only me and my crew could read. Not even Vilkurn, though he had asked about them.
There were some secrets only the closest kind of family could know. Only others who had been where we had, and fought the same sorts of battles. I looked into the assessing, too-wise eyes of the young men and women who made up my heart, and forced a smile.
Their expressions changed, too, filling with something close to panic. I guess I didn’t smile all that much.
“I’m not dying,” I teased. No one even cracked a grin. “It’ll be all right.”
“Well, if the hand of the Goddess says so,” Robert intoned in that new, deeper voice he’d developed when he became an Alpha in the summer. He took any talk of Her seriously. “Ratter, while you’re here, I’ve got news. Word on the street is that this building’s been sold. The new owner’s planning to tear it down and build a new cannery immediately.”
“What?” My heart raced. “Who said that?”
“My friend’s da. Just today, he was sayin’ he needed to make sure the old place was ready to be torn down the day after Solstice.”
Ah, hells.“Why would they tear down a perfectly good building?”
He rolled his eyes. “You know as well as I do that it’s a hazard. You won’t even let other street rats on the roof. It leaks in the rain, and smells like the back end of a donkey. Be ready.”
“It’s a shitty place to live, but it’s been safe for years. And it’s all they’ve got.” I waved him away with a huff. He was right, and I was pissed at myself for not taking care of this sooner. I’d have to rush to come up with a new place. I let out a huge breath, feeling overwhelmed. I’d think about possibilities once I’d found Verity.
As soon as Robert was gone, I wandered into the darkened alleyway behind the warehouse, listening to make sure no one had followed me, before ducking under a piece of tarp. The noises of the street were muffled inside, and I pushed through a series of curtains, walls of fabric that hung from the ceiling to the floor, creating a strange labyrinth. I heard shuffling all around me, but didn’t see anyone.
“Sounds like rats in here,” I said softly. A small giggle, quickly muffled, was all the answer that came. There were rats,though, real ones. And cockroaches, and leaks, and terrible smells. Robert was right; it wasn’t really fit for habitation.
But it had been close to free, and in a part of the city my crew could watch, and we’d made it work for the ones who needed it. What would they do without it? When I was gone, and couldn’t keep them safe? I sighed, trying not to worry.
