“Liar!”
I bit my lip, forcing myself to keep watching. All the nearby crowds had turned to watch this little scene play out, but no one stepped forward, either to help or condemn. Everyone knew this was how you dealt with thieves, whether or not they were guilty.
But then, the sharp-eyed fruit vendor blinked and turned his gaze back toward the perfume cart. He frowned. “Sir?” he said, interrupting the man as he raised a fist to strike the now weeping boy. “Sir, is that your pouch on the ground there?”
The man paused. Turning, he stared at the dusty ground in front of the perfume vendor, where something glinted gold in the light of the twins. A small leather pouch, spilling a pair of coins into the dust, lay innocently on the ground before the wooden stall. The man gave a shout and immediately whirled around to snatch the purse from the road.
“Thank the goddess,” the man huffed, attaching the pouch to his belt again. “I must’ve dropped it earlier.” He did not, I noticed, try to apologize to the boy, who had already fled, white-faced and sobbing, into the crowd. He didn’t even look his way as he dusted off his hands and turned back to the merchant as if nothing had happened. “So, are you going to give me a better price for this, or are you going to continue to rob me blind?”
As the watching crowd began to disperse, I caught the glimmer of a familiar hood in the throng and turned, already knowing what I would find. The thief girl stood at the edge ofthe crowd, watching the blustering man begin his haggling anew. Her eyes were shadowed, and I knew what was going through her head and heart. Anger. Anger toward the man and the callous accusation of a fellow urchin, even when the boy had done nothing wrong. Regret that she had let sympathy get the better of her, causing her to toss the hard-won coin purse in the dust in front of the cart. Fear of what Vahn would say when he found out. Because he always found out, eventually.
Interesting.The voice in my head was cold, giving nothing away.Had you not returned, that boy would have lost a hand. He would have died on the streets, begging for the scraps and coins of strangers. Instead, he grew into a predator who would murder a young mother in an alley one night, leaving behind three orphans. Do you know why you chose to return, to help?
“I...” I swallowed the poisonous lump in my throat. “I didn’t want anyone taking the blame that should have been mine,” I said shakily. “He hadn’t done anything wrong. It didn’t seem right that he should be punished for my actions.”
I see.
The cat creature said nothing more. The scene around us faded, growing blurry as if caught in a dust storm, and then blew away on the wind. Stripped clean like sand on a wall. When the gale died down and the haze around us cleared, I was once more in a different place.
Vahn’s office.
I would have recognized it anywhere. How many hours—years—had I spent in this room? Learning everything I couldfrom the Guildmaster of Kovass. Every skill, every tenet and teaching and rule of the guild, I’d learned it all here. Sitting in that small chair in the corner, working on a lock or just listening to Vahn as he spoke to clients and guildmembers from behind his polished desk.
His desk.
It was a monstrous old thing, scarred and dinged from age and abuse. Besides the shelves of ledgers on the far wall and the single chair in the corner, it was the only piece of furniture in the office, and it dominated the room. But Vahn was not the only one who had sat behind it. When I had been younger and much smaller, I would often hide beneath the desk, sheltered in a cave of polished wood and confident that no one in the guild would ever find me there.
Tonight, Vahn’s office was already occupied.
A chill slid down my back. There were many reasons that the cat creature would bring me here, many memories to choose from. Nearly half my early life had been spent in this office, after all. But I recognized this night, and the two men sitting at Vahn’s desk. Vahn had been talking to them about membership in the guild; they were apparently newcomers to the city and wanted to ply their trade in Kovass, but needed permission from the Guildmaster. That was the story they had given Vahn, anyway.
Vahn had stepped out of the office for a moment to deal with a trivial matter, leaving the two men alone. Bassig was just down the hall, and there was nothing of value to steal inside the room, so it had been safe to do so. Or so he had thought.
Silence filled the office for a moment, and then one of the men leaned forward. “So... tonight?”
His voice was a hushed, raspy whisper, causing the second man to shake his head. “No,” the other growled. “Too many witnesses. We do it tomorrow, when the guild is empty. You get his attention, lead him outside. He won’t be able to take us all.”
A thump in the hallway signaled Vahn’s return, and the men leaned back as the Guildmaster entered the office. After a few more minutes of Vahn talking about rules and territories within the guild, the three men stood up and left the office, closing the door behind them.
A moment passed. Then the chair behind the desk moved back on its own, scraping against the floor, and a tiny girl emerged from beneath the desk. I clenched my fists at how small she looked; barely five years old, her brown hair hanging in her eyes as she gazed around with one fist in her mouth. I remembered, even after all these years, the fear I’d felt when those men had spoken, thinking they were alone. I hadn’t understood exactly what they were talking about, but I’d known something was wrong. And so, when I left this room, I would go immediately to Vahn and tell him what I had heard from beneath the desk.
After this night, I’d never seen those two men again.
You saved the life of theGuildmasterofKovassthat night. The cat creature’s voice shivered in my head.Had you known what you do now, would you have made the same decision?
“I wasfive,” I whispered. “I didn’t even know what was happening, much less what would happen twelve years in the future.”
That is not what I asked.
I clenched my fists, knowing what the creature was implying. If I hadn’t saved Vahn, would any of this have happened? Would the Deathless King still be buried deep in the undercity, sleeping and unknown? Could all the destruction, death, and terror that had happened since the night Kovass fell have been prevented by the different choice of a five-year-old in this very room?
Would you still have saved him, if you had known?
“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes. “Of course I would have. And that might be the wrong choice but... I can’t see myself doing anything else.”
The voice in my head didn’t answer. Once more, the scene around us faded, blowing away, until I stood on a familiar wooden deck, the suns blazing down on me, hearing the screams and howls of a horrific abomination as it crawled over the strider. I saw my friends darting around the abomination’s jointed legs, striking where they could, and felt the same fear as I had on that day, watching them race off to what would surely be their deaths.
I watched myself turn from the door into the strider, from the safety of retreating inside, and sprint back across the deck. Toward the monster who could kill me as easily as a bug.
