Excerpt
The Debtor's Game
Chapter OneI cannot be late this morning, lest someone discovers I’m smuggling a feast fit for a king. And I am no king.
My mistress rarely rises before noon, but the other faerie servants have already scattered about the palace of Versara, polishing it to perfection for the coming coronation. If I’m found for a thief and not among them, my hand will be my recompense. I’d like to keep all my limbs.
I tighten my grip on the pack slung over my shoulder, passing the subterranean pantries of dried meats and canned goods, closets of cleaning supplies, washing rooms, the icehouses, storage filled with spare furniture and linens and silver. The underground tunnels allow us to move beneath the sprawling labyrinthian palace without disturbing the High Fae above. It is the Nest, the common room for faeries, that is always the most difficult to navigate.
Already, I feel my genius fluttering awake, humming in the back of my skull. While my eyes and ears take in light and shouts and laughter spilling outward from the end of the tunnel, my genius detects the magic of others and helps me perform my own.
Stepping into the Nest, I am hit hard by the hundreds of faerie geniuses, sweet and cool as fresh soil between the toes, that crowd the ever-present plane of magic. Hordes of inked faeries cluster around long tables lined with stinking pots of cabbage stew. Only in the Nest can Base servants come in from the farms, Scarps from washrooms and kitchens, and Crests from High Fae chambers to sit and share a meal. It’s the one place in Versara I have found my shoulders dropping, stomach aching with laughter—and the rotten leftovers we’re allowed to eat. I keep my head down and cross the room, avoiding—
“Avery!”
Shit.A gentle tattooed hand grasps my shoulder. Reluctantly, I look at the tall, leanly muscled Scarp faerie. Black ring tattoos mark him fingertip to neck, whereas mine start at my wrists and reach my shoulders. Whispers in the Nest claim that a single gold coin tipped from a High Fae could clear away an entire debt ring, no matter how thick with interest it is. I wouldn’t know; our salaries only come in coppers, and the interest for our debts builds every month. Yet even several gold coins couldn’t make up the difference between Jeremee’s and my balances. While I have twenty rings, he bears over thirty. He could be indebted for a century more than me. Focusing on his angular face, I take in the dark auburn hair, straight nose, and warm moss-green eyes, his lips tugging into a half smile, and ignore a pull in my chest.
“Hey, Jeremee,” I say, forcing a casual tone.
“What’s in the pack?”
“King Gregor’s corpse, what else?”
He coughs, flushing to the points of his ears. “You shouldn’t joke like that.”
“You shouldn’t ask like that, Jae.”
He surveys the room, worrying his lower lip. “Well? Lead the way.”
I groan, then motion for him to follow. “Fine, let’s go.”
We reach the far end of the room, then head down a passageway, the scent of boiled food fading to damp stone and earth. Soon the only sound is that of our footsteps, mine clipped and his an awkward clop.
“I’m buying you new shoes at the next Full Moon Festival, I don’t care,” I mutter.”
“Save your money.”
“Yours are two sizes too small! You’ll deform yourself.”
He shrugs, smiling. “It’s okay. Glenn thinks I’m as beautiful as a fox.”
“Is that so?”
“And what do you think?”
We touch gazes for a moment before looking ahead once more. It’s a game we play, as if jests about being under each other can chase away the reality of being beneath the High Fae. A game of teasing words and tracking stares through the thick of the festival throng, of leaving with the same sex but never the opposite. Last month, he split from the crowd with Glenn, and I kept company with a cup of cider. Two moons before that, I found fun in a blushing brunette, though maybe the real fun was tempting her away from him.
“That you have a loud gait for an accomplice.” My pace slows, the stones beneath my feet drifting farther apart in the dirt like lily pads across a pond.
“This is bold,” Jeremee says. “Stealing in broad daylight.”
“You sound like my mother.” The grip of a familiar grief tightens my throat.
“Why, because I want you alive?”
“You want me to do less.”
“Hey,” he says, halting. This far down into the tunnels, away from storage and bunkrooms, the darkness hides the burn in my eyes. “I want you to do less on your own.”
“I can’t be late.” I move around him.
Running those long, tattooed fingers through his hair, he says nothing. I stride down the tunnel, and behind me he sighs, as if resigning himself to my shadow.
We reach a split in the passageway, the right side veering to a different wing of Versara. The tunnel entrance to my left is framed by twisted tree roots, leading into darker, danker depths.
“You’re not coming,” I say.
“F***ing planes,” Jae mutters, leaning against the wall. “Why not?”
“Not risking you or Benji.”
He looks away, crossing his arms over his chest. That always shuts him up. No matter how much Jeremee and I care for each other, we care for his little brother more. His birth and infant tattooing were the first I’d ever witnessed. The Healer delivered him, staying only long enough to ensure that the teller marked both Benji and their mother for services rendered. At the time, I didn’t think it could get worse than the enchanted quill tapping newborn flesh with indentured ink. But everyone must pay to be born, one ring to each House, and mothers must pay even when a Healer leaves before the afterbirth can properly expel. Days later, Jeremee held his wailing brother as my mother and I lowered his mother into the ground.
Jeremee still bears her delivery and funerary debt. Though Benji started work as soon as he could carry a bucket, his six rings still had years to thicken with interest.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, the sentence catching in my throat.
“Five minutes and then I’m coming after you,” he grumbles. “Scream if you need me.”
“You could always wait in the kitchens.”
“No.” My best friend glares at me. I smile back.
“Listen for the scream,” I say.
He groans. “Don’t jest about—”
I duck under the roots and into the tunnel, leaving him behind.
The passage is uneven and small, buttressed by crumbling brick for the vendors who truck goods into the hill upon which the palace perches.
A candle smacks me in the forehead. Swearing, I bat it away, drops of wax and wick bobbing through the air. Someone, some time ago, stole a handful of enchanted candles and sent them across the dark like petals down a stream.
As a little girl, I would squeal when my mother pointed out the lights floating several feet above my head, daring me to catch them. Maybe she was trying to distract me during the frequent moves between the palace and the Peri, the surrounding faerie village, where we’d stay with my father until they fought again. Maybe she was trying to distract herself.
Dipping under the next candle, I spot a bony figure leaning against the wall, the light casting an orange hue on the dozens of tattoos scrawled from his toes to his scalp. The faerie has four limbs of debt, rendering him unemployable to most. An Unluckie. Even the whites of the faerie’s eyes are spiderwebbed black with the magical ink.
A giant, old bloodstain marks our meeting spot on the brick wall, roots curling through the cracks. The Unluckie straightens to his full height.
“Found the spot,” he says, gesturing to the blood. “Who do you think died here?”
“No one,” I answer, swinging off the pack. His black-rimmed blue eyes follow the food.
“You actually brought it,” he marvels.
“Bread, meats, and grapes, enough to feed a family of five.”
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
The crack of wonder in his voice pierces my chest. When I began stealing and distributing food two years ago, I could only find those in need through whispered word of mouth. That’s how I met my first Unluckie and realized when the High Fae said Unluckies were dangerous, they meant hungry. While each House decides what their servants can eat, Amyrian law bans any handouts to the Unluckies. It felt wrong that there was so much wasted food in the Illusion kitchens and wasted life outside them.
“Be sure everyone eats a bit of everything. Only grapes, and you won’t fill up. Bread, and you’ll burn out fast, and just meat and your head will ache from dehydration.” I open the pack so he can peer inside.
