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I fall back against Jost in surprise and his arm circles protectively around me.
“Please!” I beg. “What do you mean ‘left behind’?”
“What the Guild of Twelve Nations did was reprehensible,” she seethes, raising her cane and pointing it at us. “But your kind, what you do, that’s worse. Rebellion and violence—an endless cycle. The Kairos Agenda is unwelcome here. I want no part of it. I’ve lost enough already. Get out!”
Jost pulls me to the door, but I can’t tear my eyes from the accusation blazing on her face. It is as though she knows who I am, what I can do, but how is that possible? Bringing my hand up to push Jost’s arm off mine, ready to turn and flee, I see what she saw. The same mark that caught the girl’s attention last week. A mark so I’ll remember who I am. A mark that told her who I was. I raise the hourglass techprint to her as Jost drags me to the exit.
“This?” I ask. “Is this it?”
“You’ve been marked, girl,” she snarls. “And I’ll have no part of it.” We’re out the door now, and as she clutches the entrance’s frame, her shouts echo against the buildings around us. “Give me that paper back.”
Jost shoves it into his pocket, and we dart away. I don’t feel guilty for taking it. She got fair payment. She only wants to keep it from me, but she doesn’t know who I am.
No more than I do apparently.
The shop owner limps onto the sidewalk hurling obscenities at us as we go, and calling, “Thief!” But no one this close to the grey market cares. Not at this hour. Until someone does—a figure appearing from the fog cast about us.
“Hold up there,” he says. “What’s old Greta screeching about?”
FOUR
STEPPING CLOSER TO THE STRANGER, I REALIZE it’s the same Sunrunner I saw examining the solar lamp before Valery appeared. He’s young, not much older than I am. Even though I know he can’t be Guild—not here in the Icebox—his presence, the dominant way he stands, blocking our path, makes me anxious. There’s something familiar in his stance—maybe his self-assuredness reminds me of Erik—but it feels like more than that. His hair is cropped close to his head, and even though I can’t see them in the dark, I know his eyes are brown.
I’m not sure how I know that.
Greta continues her hysterical ravings behind us, and Jost attempts to step around the Sunrunner, but he holds up his hand.
“What’s this about, Greta?” the Sunrunner calls out to her.
Jost could probably take him, but he doesn’t move. I could use my own considerable skills to get away, but I’m rooted to the spot by the familiarity I feel. The Sunrunners patrol the nicer blocks of the Icebox during the designated commerce hours, but even they’re indoors once darkness arrives.
“They’re thieves and hooligans,” she rants.
“Is this true?” he asks us.
Jost squares his shoulders and takes a step closer to him. “No, we paid her more than what an old book is worth.”
Greta hobbles closer to us, and when she hears this, she shakes her cane again. “No amount is enough when dealing with your type.”
“Hey now.” The stranger stops her. “I’ve never seen these two before, so I know they can’t be too much trouble.”
The only reason he thinks this is because he hasn’t seen us before. I know differently.
Greta screws up her face and gives a large huff. “I didn’t ask for your help, Sunrunner. You’re as bad as they are, so maybe you don’t mind keeping company with thieves.”
“Some of my best friends are thieves,” he says, his lip tugging up. The movement, though slight, flashes through my mind. One side curves more than the other, but his lips never give way to a smile. I’ve never seen him before but something about him is so familiar. “You should get inside. It’s after hours, and there are scarier things than an old crippled woman creeping about.”
I dislike how he speaks to Greta. But there’s no time to call him out on it. Lockdown is imminent, which means the makeshift lighting system will power down for the evening, extinguishing the solar street lamps completely and casting the whole crumbling metro into blackness. The rumors of snatchers and cannibals replay in my mind. We have to get out of here.
“We need to go,” I say to Jost.
“Good riddance,” Greta calls from her shop’s door frame. “Remember, thief, you reap what you sow!”
“Thank you for your assistance,” I tell the Sunrunner. Despite the necessity of moving on, I’m reluctant to see him go. I wish I could unravel his mystery, or, at least, the tangle of knots he’s made of my nerves. “We have a friend to find so we can take shelter.”
“Better to let your friend find you at this hour,” he advises, but I shake my head.
“Not how it works.”
