The Hanging City (57)

“I would. And I’m not special, Perg. I’m not the only decent human being in the world. A lot of us are sane, caring people.” The cruel ones merely scream the loudest.

He frowns. “So what, some trollis soldier got weird on an excursion and raped one of you, and the rest felt bad, so they kept the infant?”

I blanch. I had never considered a malignant conception. I had hoped . . .

It doesn’t really matter what I hope. What I feel, or was starting to feel. And yet I ache to meet with Tayler, to ask him about the Cosmodian . . . and Baten, his origin, how he was treated by the others. I have a deep, sick desire to know. I’d thought the humans in Cagmar my last chance at a family, but if there are others . . .

And perhaps, Tayler might justify the strange tilting of my heart.

I think of Azmar, the hooded way he looked at me, his hands on my leg. Were he human . . . the expression and behavior was not so different from that of Andru, my former fiancé. But Azmar isn’t human, and I have not lived in Cagmar long enough to understand the countenances, emotions, and behaviors of trollis. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

“I don’t know Baten’s story,” I admit to Perg.

He leans back into his pillows. Standing, I help adjust them. “Who knows, Lark. Probably just a distraction anyway.” He sighs. “I’m going to sleep.”

I lean over him and take the bowl, then rinse it in the small sink on the other side of the room. When I’m done, I murmur, “I don’t mind teaching you.”

He snorts. “Monster slaughter?”

I click my tongue. “Reading.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. With luck, I won’t need it.”

With that dismissal, I slip out into the stony corridor. The monster horn doesn’t sound again. Perg must have been right about the sighting. I hug the right wall so two Nethens can pass by me, and as they do, I hear a sharp word pass from the lips of the closest.

“Witch.”

I stop. Turn around, cold from the stonework seeping into my joints. The trollis looks back at me, briefly, eyes hard as iron.

Witch.

My heart pounds against my ribs. Did I hear wrong? That name has been flung at me so many times over the years I’m sure I didn’t. Ritha had said the trollis don’t believe in witchcraft. So why . . . ?

Hugging myself against the chill, I walk briskly back to the market. I step aside for several more trollis, who pass me silently. I’m too stuck in my own head. I should find something to do. Unach always has something that needs doing.

I’ve just barely stepped into the market when I hear my name, almost as hushed and sharp as the Nethens’s voice had been. Turning, I spy Ritha, over where the massive walls of the cavern meet their joists in the shadows. I hurry to her.

Then I see the bruise. It’s large and purple and covers a quarter of her face, starting from the jaw and crawling toward her eye.

“Ritha!” I reach forward, but she pulls away. “What happened?”

Ritha shakes her head. “I was hoping to talk to you, but not here. Do you have private quarters now?”

I nod. “But tell me what happened.”

She presses her mouth into a hard line, then sighs through her nose. “I had a run-in with Grodd.”

His name shoots ice through my center. Azmar said, It isn’t illegal to harm a human.

Because even a Pleb is greater than we are.

Ritha gives me a long, piercing look. “I learned a long time ago not to interfere with troll politics. Something you should remember, too. But I do want to speak with you.”

“Now?” I try.

She shakes her head. “After sundown.”

I tell her how to get to my tiny chamber.

She turns, but hesitates. “Be careful, Lark. Grodd may have fallen in the tournament, and in his caste, but he still has allies. I’ve heard rumors.”

I swallow. “That I’m a witch?”

She frowns, but nods. My sense of safety shatters.

“You’re a human,” she warns. “Remember your place here, beneath the feet of even the lowliest troll. Do not forget it.”

She glances around, heaves her sack onto her other shoulder, and hurries away, leaving me shivering in the shadows, alone.



After dinner I sew a patch over a pair of beige slacks that I tore while climbing the city. I’m in Unach’s apartment, using her thread and my needle. And I’m distracted. Did Grodd strike Ritha out of anger, or did she provoke him? Ritha is so demure . . . I couldn’t imagine her so much as crossing a trollis’s path. And what does she want to talk to me about that she feared speaking of it in the marketplace?

The fire diminishes, and the sunlight has already gone from the window. I poke myself with the needle.

“You’re distracted.” Azmar’s voice resonates cool and calm. He approaches me—from where I sit on the floor, he seems enormous—and lowers himself into the oversized cushion beside the dying embers. Unach busies herself in the kitchen, violently shucking the scales off a fish.

I pull the thread through my stitch and sigh. “Something one of the other humans said to me today.”

Azmar leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Ritha?”

“How did you know?”

He offers a one-sided shrug. “I do remember their names. You interact with her the most.”