The stout man with the porridge beard spit the bones of his oxfoot onto the table. “’Course, you know who’ll drink most of their stock.” He elbowed his neighbor. “The Tallywag!”
Laughter spread.
“The Trifle can’t be too happy,” another concurred.
“That’s certainly true,” Kanthe admitted dourly.
“Not with his bonny brother one step closer toward the throne.” Porridge Beard elbowed his other neighbor. “Especially if that Carcassa wench truly has pudding warming in her pot.”
More laughter followed.
With a half-hearted wave, Kanthe left them to their merriment and headed out of the inn. He grimaced at the sun, silently cursing the Father Above. To the west, thunder rumbled, as if scolding his blasphemy.
He growled under his breath.
It seemed no one was happy with the Tallywag.
Least of all me.
With a self-pitying groan, he shaded his eyes and stared up from the city’s Nethers toward the shining Crown of Highmount. He still had a long trek back to his dormitories at Kepenhill.
He lowered his face and tugged his hood higher, hiding his countenance from the Father Above. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the sun that should have concerned him. As he climbed the crooked streets, his head pounded with each step. The bright morning reflection in the windows stabbed at his bleary eyes.
He staggered onward, leaning on a wall every now and then, trying to hold his stomach in place. He nearly lost his footing as he crossed the mouth of a narrow alley. A hand caught him, steadying him.
“Good thanks to you,” Kanthe mumbled.
Only the same grip suddenly yanked him off the street and into the dark alleyway. More hands grabbed him, revealing a trio of brigands in shadowy cloaks. Panic iced through him at the threat. He cursed himself for letting his guard down—always a mistake in the Nethers, even in the brightness of the morning.
The point of a dagger in his side punctuated his lack of caution.
“Scream and die,” a voice warned in his ear as he was forced deeper into the alley.
Kanthe remembered the heft of his purse, the generosity of a silvery ha’eyrie tossed through the air to the barkeep. He should’ve known better than to be so careless with his coins. Generosity was seldom rewarded in the Nethers.
Once deep in the shadows, the thief hissed in his ear, “Looks like we caught ourselves a prince out of his cupboard.”
Kanthe stiffened. He had been reaching for his coin purse, ready to relinquish it. He now recognized that its weight of brass pinches and silver eyries would not buy him his freedom this morning. Even the Sodden Prince was worth more than a fistful of eyries.
As his head spun, Kanthe barked a half-laugh. He staggered as he tried to crane back at the thief with the dagger. “You … You think … just because I’m so handsomely dark that I’m a prince?” He guffawed his contempt.
The thief’s companion leaned closer, coming nose to nose with Kanthe. His breath reeked of stale beer and rotted teeth. “You sure it’s him, Fent?”
Taking this opportunity, Kanthe employed his only weapon. He unclenched the tenuous hold on his gut and heaved forth a thick stream of bile. The acidy spew struck the brigand square in the face.
The man fell back with a bellow, pawing at his burning eyes.
Kanthe used the momentary shock to slam his bootheel atop the instep of his captor. As the thief cried out, Kanthe spun out of the man’s grip. The dagger sliced through the fabric of his cloak, but the knife found no flesh. He kicked out with his other leg, catching the third man in the chest and slamming him into the far wall.
Kanthe did not wait and leaped away, driving for the street. He silently thanked the Cloudreach scout who taught him how to hunt, how to wield a bow, and more importantly, how to deal with the danger when a hunter became the prey. Sometimes flight is one’s greatest weapon, Bre’bran had instilled in him.
He took that lesson to heart and burst back into the brightness of the street. He jammed into the clutch of pedestrians, knocking a wrapped bundle from a woman’s arms.
“Sorry,” he gasped without stopping.
He reached the first cross street and took it. As he fled, he made a silent promise to himself.
To be more cautious in the future—and far less generous.
* * *
KANTHE PANTED HEAVILY and covered his ears against the next bell’s ringing. It felt like the bronze clappers were clanging against the insides of his skull.
While he outwaited the noise, he cowered in the shadows of the tunnel that passed through the Stormwall. Searching behind him for any sign of pursuit, he leaned his shoulder against its massive bricks.
The furlong-thick fortification had once marked the outermost boundary of Azantiia, protecting the city for thousands of years from the fierce storms that would sweep off the sea and into the Bay of Promise. It had also shielded Azantiia from more than foul weather. Its colossal mass had been burrowed through long ago with armories and barracks, its outer face peppered with arrowslits. Untold numbers of armies had shattered against its ramparts—not that any had dared try to for centuries.
Though if rumors of war proved true, its battlements might soon be tested again. Skirmishes were growing along the southern borders. Attacks on the kingdom’s trading ships occurred with greater frequency.
As the ringing ended, Kanthe continued down the tunnel and out the opposite end, leaving the Nethers behind him—and hopefully a certain trio of thieves. Still, he kept a wary watch all around him.
Over the passing centuries, Azantiia could no longer be constrained by the Stormwall. It had spread in all directions, even out into the bay itself, building atop packed siltfields, requiring the dockworks to be extended farther and farther out.
Unfortunately, the storms still came.
Thunder rumbled behind him as a reminder.
The Nethers outside the walls were subject to sudden floods, with large swaths often drowned or blown away. But such areas were quickly rebuilt. It was said the Nethers were as variable as the weather. Maps of the place were drawn more with hope than on any measure of wayglass or sexton—and certainly never with the permanency of ink.
Beyond the Stormwall, Kanthe continued into the city proper, known as the Midlins. Under the protection of that massive fortification, homes here grew taller, some towering half the height of the wall’s battlements. Many of the buildings’ foundations had been built upon older foundations, one regency burying another, stacking up like the pages of a book, a history writ in stone.
The Midlins was also where most of the city’s wealth settled, flowing from all directions: from the bountiful farms of the surrounding Brau?lands, from the mines of Guld’guhl to the east, from the western ranches of Aglerolarpok. Everything flowed through the Nethers and into the Midlins, ending at last at the heights of Highmount, the castle-city at the center of Azantiia.
As Kanthe continued, the fly-plagued butcheries closer to Stormwall became quaint hostelries, dressmakers, cobblers—and the farther he climbed, silversmiths and jewelers appeared, along with banks and financiers. Homes became adorned with flowering window boxes. Small perfumed gardens dotted the way, often walled and behind spiked gates. At these heights, the air was salted from a near continuous blow off the bay, washing away the reek and filth of the Nethers.