Page 4 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
At the edge of the crowd where the stalls thin out, a small boy in patched brown trousers huddles under a thin cloak. He keeps his face down to where a tin cup sits empty on the damp ground. At his side, a girl with hollow eyes begs.
An ache flares in my chest like a wound, one only half healed. I flick a thin bronze coin their way, and the girl almost leaps to catch it.
My eyes flit to the boy still hunched over in the dirt. He lifts his chin to meet my stare, and a shudder trails down my spine.
Both his eye sockets are empty, the hollows carved with twisting scars—the mark of a thief.
The scars are so pink, they can only be recent—and probably came from the gardai.
The boy tilts his head, then snaps it toward the slums at the edge of the market.
Fear grabs me then.
Most days, the market is a riot for the senses, with shepherds from Eireann’s inland valleys milling around with grain farmers from the north and miners from the western cliffs with their minerals and ores; herbalists and artisans come from the south and its wild sea coves.
But now—now the bodies move through the lanes not in a swell but in a swarm.
A horde.
Amob.
Pottery tumbles from stall shelves, shattering on the ground. I hear boots slap on mud and voices rising, not haggling or cursing but shouting as the mob surges past the Black Quay, all the bodies moving as one as they scream and run into the thick of the market around us.
We all scatter, but the panicked horde moves impossibly fast toward and around all of us in the market. Something hot and as solid as an ox slams into my back, and I fly forward. A sharp knee to my gut knocks me flat; the hilt of the short blade at my waist digs into my ribs.
I gasp at the pain, tasting thick mud. A heel collides with my mouth, and my blood spatters across the dirt. Another heel lands at the base of my spine. A third blow to my head punctuates the pain, and ringing explodes in my ears.
Through it all, a single word rises above the shrieks of the crowd as I fight my way upright—
Gardai.
The High King’s brutal royal guards. Not two or three or four of them, the normal patrols we see. Instead a thick sea of crimson-and-black uniforms clashes with the crowd beneath the shadow of the Black Quay. There aredozensof them, descending on us all.
I hear the clash of steel on steel and the dull thump of metal on wood—or on human bone. Terror lights in my gut, courses in my veins.
Another body slams into me, and I go flying. Trampling feet crush me down into the dirt once more. Pain beats in my every muscle, but something sparks inside me then. Something fierce—and desperate.
I refuse to be another name lost to the haze coating every inch of this city.
I have to survive this.
My muscles shake, but I shove myself up heavily. I fight against the weight of the crowd, ears ringing with the din of screams, just as a guard in menacing red and black brings his sword swinging down straight for my head.
Instinct seizes every nerve. One hand finds the hilt of the dagger at my side, and I drop, sliding to slice the back of the guard’s knee with my blade before he brings his down on me.
He crumples to one knee with a roar. The guard’s violent glare jerks to me. “You’re dead,” he vows with a savage grimace, struggling to rise.
I hurl the knife from my belt before he can make another move, and it embeds deep in his left lung.
The guard wheezes, hands clutching at his front. He rips my knife out, but it falls into the mud, too close to him for me to risk grabbing it, even when his gasps turn to whistles and his skinbegins to gray. Even as he coughs up blood, the crowd is surging again.
Shit.
Suddenly a long knife slashes across the front of the guard’s throat, crimson spraying over the mud. A cloaked arm snaps back as the guard falls, hands grasping at the gash, then going still.
Green eyes, as fierce as fire, lock on mine from beneath a heavy hood. Dark hair falls across a man’s shadowed face, no more than a few years older than me. Stubble covers his jaw, and I catch a haunting, branching scar—like a fork of lightning. There’s a spray of blood across his cheeks, but it’s flaking and dry, as if it’s been there for hours.
“Go for the throat next time. Kills them quicker.” He glares from beneath the cover of the heavy hood and black cloak—
