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CHAPTER ONE
TODAY IS THE most important day of my life. Right now, I should be catching an extra hour or two of sleep, cuddled up between Quoll and Pika, ensuring I’m as ready for the coming bloodbath as I can be.
Instead, I’m climbing to a part of the Dregs I rarely spend time in at the request of my ex-girlfriend. No telling why Mara wanted to meet so close to the wall, but it’s probably a last-ditch effort to turn me from my path. I’m a fool for agreeing to this. I should go back to the relative comfort of my own bed.
I pause to catch my breath and look over the edge of the rooftop. I’m high enough to leave me breathless. I thought I’d outgrown my fear of falling to my death years ago, but I’ve had little enough reason to spend time this far from the streets below. I’m not done climbing yet, either; my destination is one of the highest rooftops.
Maybe Mara’s going to push me off. I chuckle softly and reach for the handholds carved into the building in front of me. They’re worn and smooth from hundreds of hands and feet over the years. I haul myself up and up and up, catching glimpses of the people who live here. Two old-timers sit and drink at a worn table. The next building up, a family is curled together on a mat on the floor. The next, a couple is … I jerk my gaze away and keep climbing. That’s none of my business.
It takes another hour to reach the top, each level bringing me closer and closer to the wall itself, the great looming monster that none of us can ever escape. The air feels different, but that might just be my imagination. I stand at the very top of this part of the Dregs and still the wall towers overhead, ascending into the night sky. It’s somewhere close to a hundred and fifty feet tall in this section, one of the great fingers reaching up to blot out the Sun, an ever-present reminder that those of us in the Dregs are perpetually trapped between the wall and the rest of the city perched on a high hill. We are literally in the shadow of both, to the point where the Sun only touches us a short time each day during most of the year. In the winter, it doesn’t touch us at all.
I make myself move across the rooftop toward it. I could reach out and touch the stone if I wanted to. I don’t want to. Its very presence sets my teeth on edge, like a voice just slightly out of tune.
To distract myself, I turn and look out over the bits of Caelria I can see. To either side, the wall curves around the city, the Dregs existing in its shadow. As if those on the hill, the guilds and Minor Court and all their privileged people, shoved the unwanted down the hill to crash against the wall like a wave against a rock. The only place the Dregs doesn’t touch the wall is where it extends over the little bit of the Coeruleus Sea that creates the bay Caelria perches on. Here in the city, we’re denied even the horizon.
“You made it.”
I turn to find Mara on the rooftop behind me. I hadn’t heard her arrive, but I’m used to that. No one hears Mara unless she wants them to. “You asked me to come.”
“Yeah, well, I ask you for a lot of things, and you only agree sometimes.” She’s a skinny thing, all bones and gristle, with too-pale skin, muddy blond hair, and a face as sharp as her temper. Mara crosses the roof in quick, furtive movements, and pulls me into a tight hug. “I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about going to the Culling.”
I let myself cling to the hug a moment too long. We might have ended our relationship, but it wasn’t my choice. Truly, it wasn’t hers, either. Tomorrow bears down on us both. “You know I haven’t.”
“I can only hope.” She sighs and gives me one last squeeze. “In that case, I also hope you’ll indulge a friend who’s worried about you.”
Suspicion takes root. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to shove me in a locked room for the next twelve hours—just long enough to ensure I miss the Culling. There won’t be another chance to become one of the Cinque—to actually make choices that will affect the city, to find answers about what happened to my mother all those years ago—for another twenty-two years. By that time, I’ll be as old and broken as Mouse. I can’t afford to miss this one. “Mara…” I swallow down the defensive words threatening to rise. “I don’t want to fight with you. Please.”
“I don’t want to fight, either.” She takes my hand and leads me to the far side of the roof. I swear the temperature drops with each step that brings us closer to the wall. “This won’t take long.”
“Good. You know the wall creeps me out.” I don’t understand how the people below us live like this. Our apartment is barely enough to hold me, Mouse, Pika, Quoll, and the littles, but at least we have some distance. There are times when I can almost convince myself I don’t feel the presence of the wall, lurking just out of sight.
Mara rolls her eyes. “I don’t know why you hate it so much. If it wasn’t for the wall, the wilds would overrun Caelria. Who do you think the monsters would eat first? Not the rich bitches up on the hill.”
Another argument, worn smooth with time. Mara isn’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean she’s entirely right, either. There are plenty of other predators within Caelria, and quite a few of them hunt in the Dregs. We might be safe from the wilds, but we’re not safe. I take a deep breath and fight against my habitual response.
Instead, I say, “I don’t have long.” I have to gather Mouse to make our way to the Wands District and enter the arena by the twelfth strike. The arena is mostly used for prisoners who are sentenced to death, but once every twenty-two years, on the first solstice of the year of the Wheel of Fortune, it hosts the Culling instead.
Mara gives her own sigh. “If you’re determined to do this, then let me help in the only way I can.” She holds up a hand before I have a chance to protest. “I don’t want to argue, Kestrel. You can’t tell me you don’t believe in the gods when you’re about to fight to become the champion of one. We’ve seen what the Cinque can do. Where do you think that magic comes from?”
“I never said I don’t believe in the gods.” I can’t quite keep the sharpness out of my tone. I never can. “Clearly they exist—and just as clearly, they don’t give a fuck about us outside of the Tarot Trials.”
I was three during the last Trials; even if I could remember that far back, I didn’t witness anything personally. There’s probably a blessing in that, seeing as how my mother was one of the champions slaughtering her way to victory. For all the good it did her—she barely lasted a month before she was executed for treason. What crime did she commit? Apparently that isn’t for the city at large to know. Not even Mouse is sure, and he has a way of digging through rumors and myths to the very truth of things.
“The Cinque—”
“Don’t give a shit about us, either. At least not this bunch.” The Cinque, the five winners of the Trials, are supposed to be the voices of the gods in the Concilium, the ruling body of Caelria. I’ve yet to see the four living members from the last Trials—Judgment, the Chariot, the Star, and Death—do anything remotely helpful for the people who need them most. Either the gods can’t be bothered with caring, or they’re too distant to force their champions to action. It all adds up to the same results—they aren’t worth worrying about on a day-to-day basis. “That will change when I win.”
“Lie to yourself if you need to, but don’t lie to me.” Mara is completely unbothered. “The specter of your mother and her death drive you.”
How could it not? She accomplished everything she and Mouse dreamed of, and then was murdered before she could actually use her hard-won power to help the rest of us in the Dregs. From the moment she died, Mouse has been at my shoulder, pointing me toward the Trials. Toward change. Toward answers. “I want to know why she died. Why Death betrayed her.” The others, too, but he is the one who played executioner.
“I know.” The words are little more than a sigh. “But Death has been part of the Cinque for twenty-two years, and he was fearsome even before he had the chance to mature into his powers. He’ll kill you before he gives you the answers you seek.”
“He was my mother’s ally and he cut her fucking head off,” I snap. “He owes me answers.”
“Except you aren’t planning on telling anyone your mother was the last champion of the Moon, because you know what will happen if you do.” Mara gives me a long look as if debating whether she wants to dive into this argument again. “Your mother was accused of treason. They say her powers turned her into a feral animal. Even if you win, that’s what you have to look forward to.”
“That’s a lie.” My mother didn’t go mad, no matter what the rumors that still circulate around the city say. The Concilium made it up to excuse executing her. Mouse told me so.
