113 Mirtul, the Year of the Weeping Moon (1339 DR)
Darmshall, Vaasa
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Where there was one little tiefling on the streets of Darmshall, the other would be close by—everyone knew that. Bisera waved her twin back out of sight. If anyone so much as spotted Alyona, she wouldn’t be much of a lookout. Alyona bit her lip, but tucked herself deeper into the bunch of lilac bushes that had yet to bloom beside the side entrance of the temple.
Eight-year-old Bisera turned her attention to the three corpses laid out behind the temple of Selûne. Adventurers, dead in a tavern brawl, no one to claim them. The watch had taken the best things off them—blades, jewels, anything magical. A big human man, a half-orc woman, and an elf, who was one or the other or something in between. Didn’t matter, they were all dead.
Bisera slipped her little hands quickly through their pockets—adventurers always had pockets enough that the watch missed a few coins, a few trinkets. Silver on the woman, and a little whistle shaped like a sparrow. Just copper on the man, but a lot of it, and a dagger tucked deep into his boot. The elf had only a bunch of junk—pouches of powders and cobwebs and dried leaves and inks. She shoved her hand deep into the pocket inside the elf’s robe, all the way up to her armpit—that wasn’t right. Her hand closed on something heavy and thick and flat.
A book. Scorch-marked and dog-eared and chased with flaking gold leaf. She opened it, and a faint breeze of soot and wintergreen stirred the spring air. Bisera shivered.
“Oy, demonspawn!” Bisera dropped the book, kicked it under the corpse’s cot with one heavy hoof. She turned to see a trio of human boys storming toward her from the market street—Vainen, Marko, and Torger. She balled her hands into fists.
“Where’s your shadow?” Marko demanded. None of them would be called boys for long, but Marko was by far the biggest, the one she ought to be most afraid of.
“She didn’t want to help,” Bisera lied. “Too much of a risk.”
“Here’s your risk,” Torger said. “What you get? Hand it over.”
Bisera grit her teeth and thought about head-butting him, right in the stones. “I need it. I’m hungry.”
Vainen grabbed hold of her by one sharp horn and gave her a little shake. “You hand it over. This is our street and so these are our pickings, demonspawn. Thief.”
“You know what we do to thieves?” Torger chimed in. Marko cracked his knuckles in a way that was only half as menacing as Bisera was sure he meant it to be. Vainen let go of her and she fell to her knees on the dirty ice.
“Fine.” She reversed her pockets, dumping out two silvers and four coppers. She held them out to Vainen as though they were a weapon she could pierce him with. He snatched them, testing the weight in his hand.
“All of it.”
Bisera bit her lip, as if she were going to cry. She reached into her shirt and took out the whistle that looked like a sparrow. She held it a moment—pretty little thing. She hadn’t even gotten to play it. Torger snatched it out of her hand and blew sharply on it. “Dross,” he said. He dropped it on the cobblestones and crushed it into an unrecognizable lump. Despite herself. a flutter of sadness like a little bird taking off went through the tiefling child.
“Your cooperation is appreciated,” Vainen said. “Stlarn off before we change our minds.”
Still on the cobbles, Bisera wiped her face. While the boys circled up, arguing over who got the silvers and who got the coppers, she hooked the book with one arm and shoved it under her shirt, bundling her cloak around her. She stomped off toward Alyona’s hiding place.
One of the priestesses, a silverstar with her dark hair cropped close under a pale fur cap, stood in the doorway, considering Alyona as she spoke rapidly and animatedly. “That’s just what they say, the priests of Tempus,” Alyona finished, her voice rising with anxiety. “Is it so? Or does Selûne say different?”
The priestess looked up at Bisera and raised a thick eyebrow. “All things that seek the light in the darkness. Even the shadowed. Whatever the light of the moon touches, she protects. Now—”
“Some boys are messing with those dead people,” Bisera said. “I told them not to, but they didn’t stop.”
The priestess’s expression darkened, too shadowed for even Selûne, Bisera thought. She nudged Alyona aside, storming toward the rear of the temple.
“Come on,” Bisera hissed, pulling on her sister’s sleeve. They hurried up the street, away from the boys and the priestess and anyone who would bother them.
“I’m sorry,” Alyona said. “She came out and asked what I was doing, but then I heard Torger and I didn’t know how to keep her away and warn you too … Oh, tell me you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” Bisera tucked her arm around her sister. “You did your job. She would have been more trouble than those idiots.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Not badly.” They ducked under the wall of the baths, beside where the fire to warm the water was kept. Bisera snuggled up against the toasty wall while Alyona kneeled opposite her.
“Did they take it all?” she asked.
Bisera smiled and reached into her shirt for the book and for the little pouch she’d sewn under her arm. “One silver and fifteen copper. And a book. Best yet. Those three are such dummies—I just happened to find one silver fewer than there were boys?” She snorted. “They’re probably still trying to figure out if you can clip a silver into thirds.”
“You have to be careful,” Alyona said gently. “They’re more dangerous than you think.”
“So long as they keep being as stupid as I think, I don’t mind.”
“Do you want to go buy some food?”
“It’ll be cheaper later,” Bisera said. They’d learned already that if they looked like they could afford too much, people got suspicious and tried to call the watch. But some little beggar children with a few coppers buying bony dried fish and potatoes full of eyes didn’t gain much notice—and sometimes you could pocket some sweets while they weren’t noticing.
Bisera pulled the book onto her lap. Her fingertips tingled as she turned the gilt-edged pages. She could read, albeit slowly, but this was like nothing she’d ever seen. Magic. Spells. Which of them would give those bully boys something to fear? she wondered. How long would it take her to figure it out?
Alyona curled up next to her, considering the spells. “Who do you think they were?”
“Who?”
“The dead ones. Do you think they were friends?”
Bisera turned another page. Friends, enemies, acquaintances—it didn’t matter, they were dead, and alive they would have been so much less useful to the tiefling twins. Crueler even, perhaps. But Alyona studied the page with such sadness, the loneliness of life in Darmshall etched on every sigh. Bisera put her arm around her sister. “Whoever they were, they’re our heroes now,” she said, pulling the book closer. “We’ll never forget them.”
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