3. Ratter

RATTER

“ M aster Spy? Me?” I gaped at my boss, who was almost grinning. Well, one of his lips was slightly curled, but that was a lot for Vilkurn. I felt like he’d whacked my head with a wooden beam. “You’re… I’m going to be…”

“If you can get hold of that temper, and learn to fend off boors like that Alpha yesterday without causing a diplomatic incident—or Goddess forbid, a war—then yes. I’ve been training you for almost a decade, girl. Don’t act surprised.” His eyes narrowed again. “And don’t let me down. You’ll leave the day after the Solstice with the Verdanian trade council.”

I swallowed hard, my head swimming. “I won’t fuck up again,” I promised.

He rubbed his temples with his fingertips, like he had a headache. “Just don’t kill any of them. We need the salt from their flats, and your Aunt Cilla and Queen Vali both want some of the fabric dyes Valerie’s friend makes.”

I swore, making a bunch of promises I planned to keep, some I didn’t, and some that weren’t possible, as the mirror flashed again in a pattern, the code clear this time, before it stopped. Shit. It was a call for immediate help, only to be used in a dire emergency.

When Vilkurn nodded, turning away, I was gone in a flash, racing along the top of the battlement to the only possible pathway down the side of the tower. I would know; I’d created it, and made certain every other way a person could climb up was impassable. My fingers and toes, wrapped in my favorite ridged, thin leather boots, found each crevice in the stone, along with the few small nails I’d hammered in when I was younger and couldn’t reach quite far enough. I’d leave the nails in when I left Turino, since one of my crew would have to take over my shift guarding the queen’s brood once I was gone. Verity, probably, and she was short for an eleven-year-old.

My heart felt heavy and light at the same time as I raced to answer the call for help halfway across the city. My city. Goddess, I’d miss it. But Vilkurn wasn’t punishing me. He was giving me the chance to grab the brass ring, to live a dream I’d never even admitted to myself.

“Master Spy of Rimholt,” I whispered as I ran toward the docks. “The crew will never believe it.”

A few minutes later, I stopped celebrating, and cursed in disbelief instead. I’d assumed the mirrored signal had originated from the roof of the nearby apothecary, the usual place in this neighborhood my crew used for communications. And I’d been dead certain it had come from one of them, the nine street rats who’d grown up with me as their leader. Who owned these streets, and knew everyone and everything that went on in them.

But now I was close enough to see who was signaling me, and from where, and my mouth went dry. I approached the building I knew very well, but had kept secret from all but the ten of us for almost seven years. The person who had signaled me, in broad daylight, was definitely not one of mine, though I was well acquainted with him.

“Dashiell?”

Perched on the roof of an abandoned warehouse I knew for a fact could cave in at any moment—since I’d weakened the timbers myself in certain areas—was the crown prince of Rimholt, holding a mirror and flashing it in the code I’d taught him years before.

Well, not that many years. The kid was barely eight.

But not likely to live to see nine. As I watched, he slipped slightly on the roof tiles, and I heard the unmistakable crack of a board beginning to break.

“Shit,” I cursed, running as fast as I could and shimmying up the side of the warehouse. I knew where the only safe places to step were, or at least the ones that had been safe a year before. No one used this rooftop anymore. It might draw attention to the treasure hidden below, inside.

The vulnerable women and girls I’d been keeping safe.

I leaped from shingle to shingle, never more grateful for the gripping surfaces of my handcrafted boots, when the board that had been breaking finally snapped.

The prince didn’t even have time to take a breath and scream, but his eyes—dark like the queen’s—met mine as he fell. I leaped toward him, my body skidding across the splintering tiles as I lunged to grasp his hand.

And caught it. He dangled from my grip, and I grabbed hold of his wrist with my other hand to secure the hold. My heart was pounding so fast, my vision grew hazy for a moment. I closed my eyes, breathing slowly, trying not to black out.

Then the prince whimpered in pain. I opened my eyes immediately, pulling him toward me as smoothly as I could. “I’m going to… lay you flat on a safe patch,” I huffed. “Then I’m going to crawl to the roofline where you climbed up, yeah?” He didn’t nod as he slid over the sharp-edged tile, and didn’t flinch at the pain he must have felt as I dragged him to relative safety. “You’ll crawl or step only in the places I do, and lightly. Then we’ll climb down. Got it?”

“Got it,” he agreed breathlessly.

I watched as he got to his hands and knees, then did exactly what I’d said. When we were safely on the ground, I checked his arms and legs for cuts. He was scraped to bits, and would bruise up pretty nicely, but he was whole. In fact, he even smiled slightly, peeking up through his shaggy, dark curls.

“Thank you, Ratter. I knew you’d come.”

Satisfied he was all right, I took each of his sturdy shoulders in one hand, and began shaking him. “What were you thinking? You almost died! You should be dead; I boobytrapped this place myself.” I shook harder, the fear I’d been suppressing rushing to the fore.

“You committin’ regicide today, Ratter?” the oldest member of my crew called out, as he jogged up Fish Street.

I didn’t stop shaking Dash as I called back, “It’s not regicide if he’s not the king, Rubs.”

He let out an exasperated, “It’s Robert.” I winced. I still forgot to call him Robert when I was agitated, though he’d changed his name officially years ago.

“It’s prince-icide,” a new voice yelled from another direction. Two more of my crew, Devil and Guts—although they insisted on using the far less fear-inspiring names of Devorah and Augusta—were sprinting to a stop in front of me.

I dropped Dash to the muddy cobbles where he lay like an overturned turtle, and snarled at them. “You were supposed to take my shift in the castle. Who’s watching the rest of the brood?” If Dash was here, that meant Queen Vali’s younger children could be exposed. Unprotected.

“Trevor’s there,” Augusta sneered, wrinkling her freckled nose. “It’s nap time, anyway.”

“Well, there’s one who didn’t get that reminder,” I said, staring in disgust as Dash smiled up at me with wide eyes.

“You saved me, Ratter,” he murmured. “I knew you would. Blessed be the hand of the Goddess.” He flipped over, scrambled to his feet, and bowed down to me, like I was the royalty, not him. The others began coughing, to hide their laughter. I felt my cheeks go red.

“It’s still so awkward to witness this,” Dev whispered. “He’s so intense.”

“She saved me. It’s a sign,” Dash announced, rising to one knee. “Everyone pretends like I’m going to marry some stupid princess. But I heard my dads talking, and now I know Ratter is Her voice in the land, and Her avatar beats out a princess any da?—”

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 this building 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 the window.” 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.

As I approached the center of the warehouse, there were a series of real walls, but all with open doors. Stepping through one, I noted the signs of living. A doll, a felt checkers set, and a cot. A pile of blankets, nicer quality than anything I’d seen except inside the castle. Considering I liberated them from the castle for this place, it made sense.

I stayed out of the rooms that held more significant piles of bedding, and stopped when I reached the last doorway. In the center of the room sat a cage, an iron one, just large enough to keep one adult, maybe two. This was the same cage where my adoptive mother and one of her mates had been entrapped, years before. Now, it was decorated with chains of paper dolls and holly for Solstice. It was almost pretty, but the reminder of what it really was glinted in the iron bars that still showed through the decorations.

“They always want us in cages,” I said softly.

“That’s why we learn ta pick locks,” a small voice replied at my side. I took the little girl’s hand in mine, and smiled down at her.

“You remembered the code words,” I murmured. “Good job, Gert.” Her gap-toothed grin made my heart twist. “Where’s your mom?”

“In the kitchen,” she said, a dirty stuffed bunny hanging from her other hand. She held it over her nose as she went on. “Can’t you smell it? It’s cabbage day. I hate cabbage day. Bunny does, too.”

I slipped a small, paper-wrapped taffy out of one of my cloak pockets. “If you eat this after, it makes the burps not so bad.”

“What about Bunny?” Her lower lip trembled.

“You little rascal. Nicely done.” I handed her another sweet. “If you’d managed a genuine tear or two, you might have gotten the whole bag.”

“Then what would I have to steal outta your pocket later?” She grinned and skipped away.

“What’re you doing here, Ratter? You said you’d come tomorrow.” Verity stepped out from behind a sheet, a small group of young boys and girls following her, their footfalls soft in stocking feet. Her long brown hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and she wore a set of gray trousers and a matching shirt, with a hand-knitted sweater that had more lumps and missed stitches than pattern. One of the kids here had made it, I figured.

“Spot inspection,” I answered with a wink. “I’m impressed with how quiet this lot was. Also, how invisible. I didn’t catch a glimpse of a single one until I said the code words.”

A few more children wandered closer. They stared up at me with a combination of trust, hope, and humor, though some of the newer ones still hung back. And they all carried a kernel of cynicism in their expression, even the youngest.

These children had been hurt, often by the very ones who were meant to protect them. The ones the Goddess had put on this continent to watch over the vulnerable, but who frequently and inexplicably turned to prey on those they should love.

Alphas.

Every one of these children was on the run from an Alpha… as were their mothers. Like me and my birth mother had been. I’ddone everything I could to keep what happened to us from happening again, to make safe places and safer streets, in memory of her sacrifice.

I sighed heavily now. How was I going to protect them all the way from Verdan? Starlak?

How long until it’s you? my inner voice murmured. Where will you hide? Like a rat, in a place that smells of mildew and old fish, like this one?

A surge of rage filled me. I wasn’t going to spend my life hiding, even if it meant I had to kill a thousand more Alphas to make it safe. Ten thousand. What I truly wanted was to learn how to change the world, not just destroy it. But in a pinch, mass murder would do.

“Ratter, what’s wrong?” Verity paid closer attention than almost anyone to the moods of those around her. I needed to distract her, or she’d have the news from me, and the whole crew would know within ten minutes.

And I wasn’t ready for that. I needed to put something in place first.

Time for a distraction. “I may or may not have had to rescue a prince from plunging to his death atop this very building.” The children around me gasped.

“Dash?” Verity’s face went pale, and her deep green eyes glimmered with panic. “Is he…”

I rolled my eyes. “I caught him.”

“He was on the roof? ” Her voice went squeaky. “What was he doing up there?”

“Lurking,” I told her. “You were followed, Princess Verity. I’ll be assigning extra nighttime shifts for that.” She knew I was serious when I used her official title. Verity had talked the king into making her a princess when she was only five years old, with enormous eyes and a lisp that was a more powerful weapon than a dozen daggers. A shame she’d outgrown it.

“Yes, Ratter,” she groaned, slumping to sit on a pillow. She pulled a knife out from under her sweater and began twirling it between the fingers of her hand faster than the eye could track. She only did that when she felt really wretched.

I sat next to her. “Want to tell me what’s up with that?” She fidgeted, which was highly unusual, but didn’t answer. “Let’s try that again. Tell me, Verity, what’s going on.”

“Well, there’s a boy I like,” she began. I nodded at the other children to back away. Suddenly, I wasn’t concerned about Dash anymore.

“Who’s this boy? Is he here? Have I met him?”

“You were busy murdering Duke Dumbfucker,” she grumbled. “He danced with me last night before that handsy bastard.”

“Before the one I took care of?”

“Yeah. Anyway, he’s leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh. One of the Mirrenese shitheads?”

“He’s a Mirrenese prince,” she admitted. “But not an asshole one.”

“An Alpha?” I asked, trying to remember who she’d danced with, before I’d turned the ballroom into a bloody killing field. “I saw you with a… Fuck’s sake, you’ve got a crush on the younger brother of the crown prince of all Mirren? He’s sixteen .”

“I’m twelve!” she yelled back. “Or close enough!”

“We don’t know that! We don’t know how old you really are.” We were both standing now, staring into each other’s face. “I can’t keep you safe if you start throwing yourself after Mirrenese princes.”

“You don’t need to keep me safe. I can do that on my own.” She held up the knife. “You forget I’ve stabbed Alphas, just like you have.”

“No,” I muttered. “Not just like that. You’re young, and vulnerable, and I’m not leaving you. Damn it all, I’ll tell the boss to eat shit. I’m staying.”

Her face went pale. “You’re leaving?”

Fuck.