Part I: The Lightfoot Twins

In the Garden for No One

The garden at “The Farm” was built for nothing and no one, and so it welcomed everything and everyone. It sprawled from the back of the house in a labyrinth of raised stone beds and careless wildflowers, unchecked by ambition or design, more suggestion than blueprint. Grasses and moss crept over the boundaries and smothered the old brickwork. A forest of apple and plum and slender, flaking birch overlooked the beds, boughs heavy with young leaf and, in spring, drifts of pastel blossom that clung to hair and lashes and the corners of sleeves.

Kerrowyn crouched low behind a boxwood border, her face slick with the sweat of concentration, eyes narrowed against the glare that sliced through the branches overhead. Her hands were cupped in front of her chest, palms up, fingers tensed and ready, her whole body pulled taut as a wound spring. To her left, Kerric perched on his toes, knees wide, his mouth twisted into a crooked frown.

The white-linen tablecloth sagged in the heat, a ripple of uneven pleats where the caretaker’s hands had smoothed it flat that morning. On the table sat a modest tea service, plates stacked two high, a bowl of sugar cubes with silver tongs, and two matching spoons. The caretaker herself had stepped inside to fetch the scones, her footsteps muffled on the kitchen’s flagstone floor.

“Ready?” Kerric mouthed.

Kerrowyn nodded, and on the breath between seconds, they moved.

Kerric went first, flitting from their hiding spot to the far side of the table. He ducked under the hanging cloth, the tips of his fingers barely disturbing the hem, and set his gaze toward the kitchen door, scanning for any sign of movement.

All the while, Kerrowyn’s heartbeat measured time in the emptiness: three, two, one. The trick of it wasn’t moving fast. It was moving with nothing extra—no gesture, no angle, no wasted energy. She slithered from her cover, careful to keep her shadow pressed close beneath her, and palmed both spoons from the table. Her hands, still child-soft but nimble, curled around the polished stems, and she let her gaze rest a moment on their reflection. They mirrored the flash of Kerric’s eyes as he grinned from the other side of the table.

She tucked the spoons into the pocket sewn into her apron’s hem, the thread there slightly uneven—her own work, and still obvious if you knew what to look for. No one ever did.

The sugar tongs were next, but they required more finesse. She waited until the shadows of the housekeeper’s returning steps darkened the edge of the kitchen threshold. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she sent the tongs tumbling into her palm, snagging them mid-fall and curling them against her body.

The caretaker’s voice drifted out through the open kitchen door: “If you two are up to mischief, remember what happened last time!” The warning was routine, rote, a sing-song threat with no teeth left in it. The spoons and tongs had already vanished.

Kerric flashed his fingers at Kerrowyn, counting. One, two, three— and the two bolted with a practiced synchronicity as their caretaker shouted after them with words that were meant to be threatening, but actually filled with pride. After a few minutes of running, the twins checked to make sure they hadn’t been followed before stopping to admire their haul; the spoons, the tongs, and the slip of a candied fruit she’d filched from the plate on the table’s far edge. Kerric arched a brow, and Kerrowyn arched back, but she was already laughing, the sound pressing out through her nose in a quick, wheezing rush.

He let himself collapse onto the grass beside her, shoulders shaking. “Amateur,” he whispered.

Kerrowyn stuck out her tongue. “You’re jealous because you always get caught.”

He made a show of pretending to sulk, but the mirth in his voice betrayed him. “Only when you let me.”

The caretaker’s voice rang out across the clearing, “Lightfoot twins! You’re not getting a crumb if you don’t show yourselves by the count of five.”

Kerrowyn and Kerric shared a glance, and for a heartbeat, the whole world narrowed to the space between their eyes: a flicker of grey-blue and violet, ringed with the gold dust of sunlight on baby hairs, and all the silent oaths that passed between them unspoken. “One day they’ll never see us coming,” Kerric said, and Kerrowyn knew he was right.

They emerged together, giggling, all traces of guilt worn smooth by years of practice. The spoons and tongs would reappear, sparkling and freshly polished, at breakfast tomorrow, and the caretaker would pretend not to notice the extra clink in the cutlery drawer. But in their pockets and in their hearts, the twins knew each prize was a trophy. They kept them catalogued in memory—every theft, every game, every day spent in that secret world they shaped with their own deft hands.

In the shade of the apple trees, they stuffed their faces with scones, cheeks ballooned and crumb-dusted, and dreamed aloud of what they would steal next. The sun moved slow and content across the garden, the hour stretching thin and golden, and even as the future turned behind the sky’s bright face, for now, all was perfect, and nothing was ever lost.

Fledgling

The tree in the backyard had stood longer than the Clan house itself, older than the city’s name or the first coin minted with the Emperor’s face. It rose from the tangle of grass and bramble like the spine of some ancient animal, its bark scabbed and flaking, limbs as thick as stone columns. Nobody remembered who had planted it; nobody dared cut it down, either. The Lightfoot children had adopted it as their fortress, court, and gallows before they’d even learned their letters.

On this day, the air was bright and thin, the sun straining to break free of the cloud cover, and Kerrowyn—never one for caution—had decided to climb all the way to the crown.

She started barefoot, as was her habit, her toes finding purchase in the cold, rough crannies of the trunk. The scars from last season’s fall still ringed her ankles, faint white against her skin. She ignored them. Every ascent was a dare to herself, a wager that she could go higher, faster, or with less looking back than the time before.

Below, Kerric hovered at the tree’s base, arms folded across his chest in a gesture so like their mother’s that it almost made Kerrowyn laugh. He squinted up, lips pressed into a line, his worry shining through the frown. “You’ll crack your skull open one day, Wren,” he called, keeping his voice pitched low so the adults in the kitchen wouldn’t overhear.

Kerrowyn grinned down at him, her teeth small and sharp. “I’ll land on my feet,” she retorted, and then, with a showy lurch, she swung herself onto the first of the big horizontal boughs.

She climbed by memory, by instinct: left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot. Her fingers closed on a scar in the bark—an old nail, half-rusted, which she and Kerric had driven there in a contest of strength last summer. The memory made her grin widen. She ascended, shedding the world with every meter: the noise of the house, the stink of cabbage from the kitchen, the drone of their uncle’s voice from the parlor. Here, there was only the wind and the creak of wood.

At the third fork, Kerrowyn paused, her heart a hummingbird in her chest. The limb she needed to reach was just above her head, slick with last night’s frost. She balanced on her haunches, stretched upward, and caught the branch with her fingertips. For one awful moment, she dangled, her feet scraping for grip, and then she was up, straddling the limb, legs trembling with effort and relief.

The yard below had shrunk. Kerric’s face, tilted skyward, was a blur of color and concern.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he hissed, but the anger was a mask; beneath it was something Kerrowyn knew well—a matching hunger, a secret wish to be up there beside her.

“Race you to the nest!” she shouted, and scampered sideways, hands and feet moving with a monkey’s ease.

The nest was wedged in the crook where two branches joined, a lopsided bowl of mud and woven twigs. It belonged, that year, to a pair of jays with shrieks louder than any cat’s. Kerrowyn peered inside, careful not to touch, and saw two pinkish, nearly featherless fledglings, their beaks stretching open in perpetual hunger.

She perched above them, balancing on the balls of her feet, and looked out over the rooftops and alleys. The city was a patchwork, all red tile and tar and the glint of glass, with the Brightfell River a silver snake threading through it. For a moment, Kerrowyn felt taller than the spires of the old Watchtower, untouchable, wild as the sky.

Kerric’s head popped up beside her, panting. He’d followed the same route, but slower, testing each handhold before trusting his weight. “You’re going to get us both killed,” he gasped, but he was already grinning, eyes alight.

Kerrowyn nudged him with her elbow, careful not to unseat him. “We won’t die,” she said. “We’ll just fly away.”

Kerric rolled his eyes, but when he looked down at the nest, the hardness in his face softened. “They look disgusting,” he said, but he couldn’t take his gaze off the fledglings.

Kerrowyn’s voice dropped, as if she were telling a secret to the leaves. “I think they’re perfect.”

They sat in silence, the wind teasing at their hair, the city far away, and the world below irrelevant. For all their fights, their bickering and boasts and thrown punches, up here the twins were a matched pair—two creatures built for climbing and daring and seeing what no one else could.

“Do you think we’ll ever leave?” Kerric said, so quietly she almost missed it.

Kerrowyn didn’t answer right away. She stared out over the edge of the limb, at the distant black line of the Iron Peaks, at the clouds catching in the city’s highest towers. “Of course we will,” she said. “We’ll go farther than anyone. All the way to the end.”

Kerric looked at her, his expression inscrutable. “Together?”

“Always,” Kerrowyn replied. She meant it with her whole heart.

Below, the world turned and turned, but in the high branches, time stopped. They leaned against each other for warmth, for courage, for the comfort of knowing there was still a place where only the two of them belonged.

Velvet, Steel, and Radishes

The Capitol City gleamed under the midmorning sun as if it had nothing to hide, which was a laughable notion to anyone raised in the Nightvalley District. Here, secrets ran deeper than the leyline beneath Elani Street, and even the shadows found ways to keep secrets from each other. Today, the secrets were measured in pocketfuls, in the deft slicing of purse strings, in the nimble hands of Kerrowyn and her twin brother Kerric.

They were eight years old, or close enough—age counted for little among the Lightfoot Clan unless you could leverage it for sympathy or braggadocio. Both were small for gnomes, which meant invisible for anyone taller than a halfling, and they wore their matching mop-heads of blonde hair like a shared joke, one only they understood. The market square at the edge of Nightvalley belonged to them, or so they believed. Their mother had drilled the route into their bones, from the bread baker to the sausage vendor to the jeweler’s kiosk at the dead center of the square.

Kerric was always the bolder twin, if only by necessity; he lacked the sleight-of-hand that came so naturally to Kerrowyn, so he compensated with noise, with spectacle. On this particular morning, he zigzagged through the crowd in a deliberate tangle, brushing “accidentally” against a vendor’s stall and sending a pile of radishes tumbling to the cobblestones. The vendor, a squat woman with forearms like cured ham, cursed and stooped to gather her produce. That was the opening: a three-count window where no eyes watched the prize.

Kerrowyn advanced, a shadow among the shadows, and perched herself beside the jeweler’s display case. She did not bother to look at the jewelry itself; her eyes tracked only the man’s hands and, more importantly, the satchel hanging from a nail behind his seat. A velvet drawstring purse, ostentatious even by Capitol standards, bulged with unsold trinkets and coins. She slid a hand beneath the cloth with surgical precision, untied the drawstring, and began to ease it free—

“Oi!” The jeweler jerked upright, squinting. For a moment, Kerrowyn was sure she’d been caught, but his gaze snapped past her, to where Kerric now stood, face red, hurling barbs at the radish vendor. The distraction held; Kerrowyn pocketed the drawstring purse and slipped back into the crowd. She felt the familiar thrill, part shame and part electricity, as she looped around a noodle cart to rendezvous at their usual spot.

Except Kerric wasn’t there. He had oversold his distraction, and the radish vendor was now shaking him by the shoulder, her voice escalating into a warble that carried across the square. Worse, a member of the Imperial Guard was striding toward the altercation with the deliberate pace of someone paid by the hour. The guard’s armor was ill-fitting, which meant he was either new or demoted. His mustache drooped like a tired caterpillar.

Kerrowyn hissed through her teeth and edged closer, just close enough to see that Kerric’s eyes had gone wide. The vendor was accusing him of theft—her radishes, of all things. Kerric protested, but the guard wasn’t interested in mediation. He clapped an iron hand on Kerric’s shoulder and jerked him away from the vendor.

“Please, you’re making a mistake,” Kerric said, the desperate politeness of prey. The guard said nothing, merely started hauling the boy toward the nearest guard post.

Kerrowyn felt her stomach invert. She checked the sky for the time: the Bell Tower would ring the hour soon, and if Kerric was not home in time, there would be no hiding this from Mother. She had one chance, and it was the sort of chance their mother would later curse her for taking. She doubled back through the market, running interference, colliding with a well-dressed matron and sending her fruit basket sprawling across the cobbles.

The market erupted in shouts, and Kerrowyn slipped into the tumult, stalling just long enough to wedge herself into the guard’s path as he passed. She dropped low, stuck out her leg, and tripped him with the practiced efficiency of a street brawler. Kerric tumbled free; the guard wheeled, caught his balance, and rounded on the smaller of the two twins.

“Which one—?” he said, then thought better of it. “You two are done.”

Kerrowyn’s mouth was dry. “Sorry, mister,” she said, and made a show of trying to run. She didn’t get far. The guard’s hand landed on her nape, cold and implacable as a vice. The next moment was a blur: Kerric’s voice crying out, the guard’s orders, the market crowd closing in, eager to witness someone else’s misfortune for a change.

Kerric did not run. He could have, easily; the guard had eyes only for Kerrowyn. But Kerric hovered at the edge of the crowd, face a mask of rage and shame, watching his twin as she was frog-marched toward the Watch station.

Kerrowyn never broke stride, and she did not look back.

A Thorn in the C

The jailhouse reeked of sweat, metal, and the cheap whitewash used to cover the sins of previous tenants. Kerrowyn’s cell was not so much a cage as an architectural afterthought: three sides of heavy iron bars, and the fourth a crumbling wall of composite stone that had already begun to weep moisture despite the season. Her hands and feet were unbound; the Imperial Guard knew what happened when you tied up gnome children. The guard deposited her in the cell and locked the door with a snap.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, not unkindly. “You’ll be held until the matron’s available for judgment. Do you have a parent or guardian to inform? ”

Kerrowyn tried not to imagine her mother’s reaction. “I don’t have parents,” she responded, keeping her head low.

He shook his head and walked off, boots clanking a rhythm that echoed down the row of cells. There were other prisoners: a weeping orc woman, a saturnine elf hunched against the wall, and a halfling who looked like he’d been drunk for a week straight. None paid her any attention, which suited her fine.

The initial panic of capture had given way to a dull anger, not at the guard, or at Kerric, but at herself for thinking she was clever enough to outmaneuver the entire Capitol on her own. She flexed her hands, feeling the stolen drawstring purse pressed into her waistband. Stupid, she thought. They’d be back for her before morning, and she’d lose everything—her prize, her dignity.

The cell door would not open, of that she was sure. The lock was too high for her, and she could see the iron was recently greased, no doubt to keep it silent and sticky for small hands. She walked the perimeter of the cell, searching for cracks, loose stones, anything that could serve as leverage. Nothing.

She sat on the floor and emptied the contents of her pockets, partly as ritual and partly because it calmed her. The purse yielded three silver pieces, three brass tokens, a folded piece of paper and a brooch in the shape of a stylized bird, which would have delighted her under other circumstances. She considered the brooch’s pin: too short to be useful, and not strong enough to jimmy a lock. She examined her clothing, wondering if there was enough thread to fashion a noose for dramatic effect, but the thought felt childish even by her standards. She sighed and leaned back against the wall, eyes on the black space between the bars and the ceiling.

She must have drifted off, because the next thing Kerrowyn remembered was the clatter of keys and the sharp rattle of the lock. Gray light slanted through the cell window, the kind of light that failed to warm even the hungriest of bones. The corridor’s air was colder than the stone. A guard woke her with a tap to the bars.

“On your feet. Matron’s ready.”

Kerrowyn’s legs were pins and needles. She stood anyway, ignoring his sideways glance at her bare ankles and the unlaundered state of her dress. There was a parade to it: the guard’s hand on her shoulder, the thunk-thunk of the cell block doors as they passed, the way the other prisoners suddenly found deep fascination in their shoes rather than the condemned girl. On the wall hung a portrait of the Emperor, eyes following them down the hall.

The Matron’s office did not resemble an office so much as a confessional in a church that had long ago stopped believing in redemption. The Matron herself was a severe woman, human, with gray hair cut to a precise line at the jaw, and eyebrows as thin and dark as somber thoughts. She stood behind a battered desk, hands pressed flat to the surface as if to prevent it from taking flight. On the wall hung a wooden plaque bearing the Capitol’s sigil—tower, scales, sword—and beneath it, a branding iron resting in a brazier of coals. The iron was not yet red-hot, but it glowed with the promise of pain.

The Matron’s gaze held Kerrowyn’s for a full five seconds before flicking to the guard, who stood at attention, hands fidgeting behind his back. “Sit,” said the Matron, and Kerrowyn obeyed, perching on the hard wooden chair as if it might bite. The Matron did not sit herself; instead, she paced with the measured steps of someone who had found the precise spot where mercy ended and duty began, and refused ever to step beyond it.

“Name,” she said, not looking at Kerrowyn but at the scuffed floorboards, as though the answer might be hidden in the grain.

Kerrowyn considered lying, but here the lie was always the truth waiting for you to choke on it. “Kerry,” she tried.

The Matron made a note on the form in front of her, pen scratching with an audible sting. “Surname.”

Kerrowyn pressed her lips together, eyes fixed on a seam in the desk’s battered surface.

“Lightfoot,” decided the Matron, not bothering to conceal her distaste. She mouthed the syllables as if they were a foreign curse, or else the name of a minor pest. “The Nightvalley Lightfoots, I presume.” Her eyes flicked up, pinning Kerrowyn with a look both clinical and bored. “You’re early. Your people usually don’t start until after the solstice.”

Kerrowyn said nothing, though the knuckles of her small hands whitened against the seat. The Matron continued to leaf through the unexceptional paperwork, signing here, initialing there, as if the outcome had already been sealed in wax.

“Read the charges,” she instructed the guard, her voice trained to weaponize indifference.

“Petty theft. Disruption of commerce. Public endangerment,” recited the guard, neither raising nor lowering his tone. He looked at Kerrowyn with a kind of weary pity, “according to the report, she, or her partner, only attempted to steal a few turnips. Perhaps a warning would suffice.”

The Matron’s nose wrinkled, as if the very word “turnip” were a personal affront. Her eyes lingered on the report, then on Kerrowyn, and for a moment the girl felt as though she were being measured for a box. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Lieutenant,” the Matron said with a brittle patience. “The Lightfoots have their reputation, but it’s not for vegetable larceny. If this child wanted a meal, the night kitchens would be missing a pie, not a root crop.” She snapped the folder shut, the clap echoing in the small room.

Kerrowyn’s face betrayed nothing; she had been schooled in the art of stillness, of fashioning silence into armor. But inside, something twisted—a metallic taste in her mouth, the knowledge that someone was sizing her up by the deeds of ghosts.

The Matron circled Kerrowyn’s chair, her steps soft but deliberate. “So, Harrins,” the Matron said, “search her.”

Kerrowyn’s heart seized, but her face did not betray it. Instead, she adopted the mask of bored insouciance she’d seen the older girls wear, the one that dared the adults to find anything that actually mattered. The guard—Harrins, now—cleared his throat and patted at her sleeves, her pockets, down her sides. He moved with the caution of a man picking up a snake.

The velvet purse fell from her waistband and landed on the floor with a plush, traitorous thud.

They all looked at it: the blue velvet, the golden drawstring, the subtle bulge of something heavier than coins. For a second it was the only thing in motion. Then Harrins scooped it up and placed it on the Matron’s desk, as though it might detonate if left untended. The Matron did not move at first. The only sign of life was the tightening in the muscles of her jaw; she considered the purse, the girl, and then the purse again, as if she could divine its entire provenance by squinting hard enough.

“So, child,” the Matron said, voice designed to flatten anything that rose before it. “Do you know what I find most interesting about this purse?”

Kerrowyn weighed her responses in microseconds, as if there was a correct answer that would spare her, or even amuse her captor. She found none.

“No, ma’am.”

“It’s not the color,” the Matron went on, “though imperial blue is reserved for merchants of note.” She nudged the purse open with a pen, never touching it directly. The Matron’s fingers, Kerrowyn noticed, were long, unadorned and precise as a surveyor’s calipers. “It’s not the weight, though I’ll wager you thought it a fortune.” She upended the purse onto a ceramic plate. Silver tumbled out, each coin chiding the silence, then the brooch and a trio of brass tokens stamped with the crest of the Merchant Guild, and beneath those, a folded square of pale vellum that looked out of place among the currency. The Matron used the pen to unfold it. Her nostrils flared.

“Do you read, girl?” She did not look up.

Kerrowyn hesitated. To say yes was to admit to more than the Matron had asked, but to say no was another kind of forfeiture. She thought of her mother, of the endless afternoons tracing letters in spilled flour, of the threats that one day she’d be stunted if she couldn’t read the difference between a one and a ten.

“Enough to get by,” she said at last, which was more than most grown folk in Nightvalley could boast.

“Good.” The Matron’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Let’s see you do it, then. Out loud.” She flicked the slip of vellum across the desk, and it skidded to a stop before Kerrowyn’s bent head.

The note was written in a hurried hand, but the language—Capital dialect, with just enough misspellings to throw off a lazy reader—was clear:

Deliver the coin and the bird to The Scales at dawn. No mistakes. Custodian.

Kerrowyn felt the room’s pressure shift. The Matron’s eyes caught the edge of the note, and her gaze, when it landed on Kerrowyn, was sharper and hotter than the iron brand in its brazier. Behind her, even the guard seemed to shrink, as if proximity to the words might summon something worse than demotion.

“The Scales,” the Matron hissed, “that bar is a front for the worst kind of enterprise,” she said, and the last word was a clenched fist. “A den for the Brimstone Sons. You know what that means, don’t you?”

Kerrowyn’s mind raced. She’d heard of the Brimstone Sons, of course—everyone from the river wards to the Guild Halls spoke the name with a shiver, or else in the hush reserved for monsters under beds. She knew they ran black-market protection, had sway with certain Imperial Guard captains, and that a Lightfoot caught working for them might as well sign away her next ten years to the iron mines beneath the Peaks. But she also knew, with the certainty of children too young for nuance, that the Lightfoot Clan didn’t work for the Sons. Not directly, anyway. Not unless Mother was more desperate than Kerrowyn could imagine.

“I’m not—” Kerrowyn began, but the Matron cut her off.

“Oh no, you’re not," the Matron snapped, her voice gone flint. "You’re not what? Not clever enough to make the delivery? Or not already in the Sons’ pocket, like so many of your ilk?" She let the question settle, her eyes never leaving Kerrowyn’s squirming form. "It’s always the same with Nightvalley gutterfolk. You think you can play two sides and come away richer, but what you’re really doing is sowing a graveyard big enough for every last one of you."

Kerrowyn’s mouth opened, then shut. The urge to protest swelled, but no words came. She could see the future unfolding, the story the Matron was already writing: a gnome girl, doomed by blood and district, with guilt as inevitable as the seasons. It was not the first time Kerrowyn felt herself shrinking into a role that predated her, but this time it stung in new places. Her mother would have told her to keep her chin up, to bite the inside of her cheek and wait for the accusation to crest and break, but even the memory of her mother’s voice sounded faint and small in the Matron’s presence.

The Matron leaned in, her shadow falling sharply across the desk. “You want to tell me how a child picks up a delivery for the Sons? Or should we ask your mother, see if she’s waiting at The Scales herself?”

Kerrowyn shook her head—the wrong move, but she couldn’t help it. “It wasn’t a job. I just saw the purse. It looked…” She searched for a word that wouldn’t make her sound like every other petty thief, but the Matron’s face made it clear there were no right words. “I took it because I could. It’s not for them.”

The Matron’s mouth curled. “A confession, then.” She looked Kerrowyn up and down as if she was an ancient puzzle she had already solved. “And what would you do with three silver and a handful of brass tokens, child? Splurge on a hot meal and a new pair of shoes? Or would you bring it all back to your mother and let her decide who gets paid off first?”

Kerrowyn’s cheeks went hot. She thought of her mother’s ledger, the neat columns of debts and favors, and how every coin she brought home was weighed against the price of tomorrow’s bread or the rent on their leaking roof. She wanted to say that she hated the coins, hated the work, hated the way it pulled her apart from the inside—but the Matron’s eyes would not allow it.

“Doesn’t matter,” the Matron said, sweeping away the moment with a flick of her pen. “You were caught lifting from an Imperial merchant, carrying contraband, and lying in the face of the an Imperial Officer. By decree, I could send you to the Mines for a year. Five, if I wanted to make an example.” She let the numbers hang, heavy and cold as the iron brand.

Kerrowyn’s chest went tight, her pulse fluttering. She’d heard stories—the mines in the Peaks, children yanked from their beds and gone before breakfast, coming home thin and blank-eyed years later if they came home at all. But the Matron wasn’t done. She picked up the branding iron, and for the first time Kerrowyn noticed the tip: not a letter but a sigil, the old city mark for “criminal.” A canted C with a thorn underneath, meant to scar permanent and visible, even through fur or hair.

But then, unexpectedly, the Matron laid the iron back in its coals and turned to the guard. “Lieutenant Harrins. How long have you served the district?”

Harrins stiffened, as if being addressed in this way was somehow more dangerous than the criminal across from the desk, “Sixteen years, Matron.”

She gave him a look, cool and appraising. “And in that time, how many Nightvalley pickpockets have you seen hauled in for a first offense?”

He hesitated. The correct answer was not the truthful one, and Harrins had learned, at cost, that the Matron preferred the latter only when it suited her. “A fair few,” he said, gaze steady. “But most just get a warning, or their parents come and fetch them.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face, then vanished. “And how many were caught with encoded messages for the Brimstone Sons?” She did not wait for him to reach, but pressed on, “This is not a child’s prank. This is how it begins.” Her voice sharpened. “We brand her, and perhaps the next Lightfoot thinks twice before taking on a job for the Syndicate.” Her tone was resolute, her decision clearly final. The guard did not argue, but something in the set of his mouth suggested he did not agree, either.

She gripped the arms of her chair, knuckles white, refusing to give the Matron the satisfaction of watching her flinch. Harrins’s hands were steady, but his eyes, when they met hers, were complicated—a flickering sadness, shame, and a strange apology that she could neither read nor trust.

Kerrowyn had been told about The Branding in whispers and threats, her mother’s voice always the loudest. It was simple: a letter for your crime, an indelible mark on the body, visible to all who cared to look. Matron gestured for the guard to carry out the punishment.

“Remove her left sleeve,” the Matron said, voice slicing away the last of the morning’s softness. “Mark her where it cannot be missed.”

Harrins hesitated, just long enough for Kerrowyn to see it. Then, with a care that undid her, he reached for the seam at her shoulder and tugged the thin cotton away, exposing the pale skin beneath. The branding iron hissed as it was lifted from the coals, the tip now an angry orange. A hush fell over the room, thick as syrup. Kerrowyn’s mind went blank except for the singular, foolish hope that it might not hurt as much as the stories claimed.

Harrins moved quickly, as if he also willed for the punishment to be over as soon as possible. He pressed the iron to the skin of Kerrowyn’s upper left back, just below the line of her dress, and for a moment, the world became only fire. Sensation returned to Kerrowyn in sudden, punishing increments: the hard stool under her thighs, splinters biting through threadbare linen, the stink of ammonia and boiled cabbage, the metallic snap of the branding iron returning to its stand. The first thing she did, even before the pain had fully mapped itself onto her shoulder, was check the perimeter of her body with a trembling hand, to ensure she was still all one piece.

The brand itself was a raw, weeping thing; she felt the edges of it as a slicked-over ridge, an unlovely letter that would make her known to every guard, every shopkeep, every sneering child in the Capitol for the rest of her life. She wondered, with a detachment so complete it verged on hallucinatory, whose handwriting it was. Would the apprentice who’d hammered out the iron recognize his own hand if he saw it on her someday?

The Matron nodded to the guard. He took Kerrowyn by the upper arm—rough, but with a practiced gentleness, as if to keep the pain localized and avoid new injuries—and marched her from the office. The world swam, every surface overlit and rushy from the effort not to cry; her body felt foreign, a skin-sized sack with a hot lump of misery stuck to the back of it.

Master Key

Kerrowyn barely noticed the corridor until the guard stopped at the Watch post’s front desk, a battered plywood slab littered with forms, rubber stamps, and an inkpot with its own scabby crust. She waited, shoulder burning, as he thumbed through paperwork, humming a tune she didn’t recognize and avoiding eye contact with his young charge. The man was not unsympathetic—he offered her a chipped mug of water, and when she stared through him, he shrugged and set it beside her on the edge of the desk.

While he finished the paperwork, Kerrowyn kept her hands folded, ostensibly to keep blood from running down her arms but mostly to avoid drawing attention to their trembling. The pain radiated out from the brand like an infection, making it difficult to focus. But as the guard flipped through arrest reports, his stubby fingers left a small, bent paperclip sitting at the edge of the desk, glinting dully in the wet light.

It was nothing—a mere scrap. To Kerrowyn, it might as well have been a master key. She let her gaze linger on the mug of water, then reached for it with her good arm, careful to keep her wrist loose and unimpressive. In the same movement, she palmed the paperclip, curling it into her fist and letting her fingers resume their shiver. She drank, the water warm and metallic, and ran her tongue over her teeth to keep from smiling.

The guard finished the forms and motioned for Kerrowyn to follow him back toward her cell. He led her back along the corridor, his boots now soft-soled against the flagstones, as if loud noise might break whatever spell kept the place running. When they reached the cell, he did not open the door at once, but lingered with the key in hand, glancing down at the thin girl beside him.

“You’ll sleep here again tonight,” he said, voice pitched low to avoid carrying beyond the bars. “Maybe longer. Sometimes these things take a day or two.” He fingered the chain of keys, lost in his own litany of protocols and schedules, then added, “Don’t do anything stupid. The Matron isn’t gentle with repeaters.”

He slid the key into the lock. The metal teeth caught—once, twice—before turning, and the cell door swung open with a hush. Kerrowyn stepped inside, her movements small and deliberate, clutching the paperclip tightly in her hand.

She waited until midnight, when the guard rotated shifts and the snoring of the orc woman covered any noise. The lock was not complicated, but it was sticky and high, and she had to wedge herself between the bars to reach it. Her hands trembled as she worked the paperclip into the keyhole, twisting gently, listening for the click that would signal her freedom.

The first two attempts failed, the paperclip bending and nearly snapping. The third try yielded a dull clack, and the latch slid open as if by providence.

She did not hesitate. She squeezed through the bars, keeping her feet silent as she could, and padded down the corridor toward the exit. She passed the sleeping guard, careful not to breathe, and reached the outer gate. This lock was the real obstacle—a newer mechanism, heavy-duty, with a sliding bolt that looked recently installed. She held her breath and applied the paperclip, praying to any deity that would listen.

A click. The bolt slid. She was free.

Kerrowyn stepped into the street, the cold night air burning her lungs. She did not run; she walked with purpose, small and invisible, navigating the side alleys until she reached the Lightfoot Clan’s home at the edge of the Nightvalley.

Because I Could

Home was a den, a hive, a perpetual state of controlled chaos. The main room was lit by a single sunstone set in a lantern, its violet hue casting elongated shadows against the floorboards. Kerrowyn’s mother, Klaudia Lightfoot, sat at the kitchen table, knife in one hand, apple in the other. She had not changed clothes in a week, but she looked as imperious as ever, her hair braided into a crown atop her head. Across from her, Kerric cowered on a stool, every inch of his posture broadcasting guilt.

Kerrowyn hesitated in the doorway, unsure whether she should announce herself or attempt to sneak to her room. In the end, her mother decided for her.

“There you are,” Klaudia said, voice cool as the lake wind. “Your brother is in tears, the whole clan is whispering of your failure, and you, my darling, have a new tattoo. Show me.” Kerrowyn had hoped she would be able to keep the brand secret, at least for a while.

However, her mother's keen eyes noticed an unseen clue—perhaps in her gait, the expression in her eyes, or the small rip in her sleeve—that revealed what had occurred.

Without a word, Kerrowyn pivoted and tugged down the collar of her dress, revealing the raw wound on her shoulder blade: a crude “C” burned into her skin, the lines still angry and swollen.

Klaudia made a sound that might have been a laugh, if it wasn’t so bitter. “Congratulations. Your first branding, and you didn’t even make it to ten.” She rose and crossed the room, peering at the wound with clinical detachment. “Could be worse. They could have taken your ear.”

Kerrowyn’s voice was thin. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

“No, you’re not.” Klaudia dabbed a rag in a bowl of cold water and pressed it to the wound, none too gently. “If you were sorry, you’d have run home, not straight into the arms of the Guard.”

Kerrowyn gritted her teeth, refusing to cry out. “Kerric would have been caught. He’s slower than I am.”

Klaudia glanced at Kerric, who looked away. “That may be true, but it doesn’t justify the risk. You think you’re clever, but clever gets you dead in this city.”

Kerrowyn could not answer. She felt the heat of her own humiliation, the twin ache of failure and pain. In the silence, she felt rather than saw Kerric’s eyes on her, not with gratitude but with a sort of simmering resentment that seemed out of place for a brother, especially a twin.

Klaudia finished binding the wound, tied off the bandage with a flourish, and fixed both children with a gaze as sharp as any blade in her arsenal. “You are Lightfoots. You’re better than this. If you want to survive in this city, you learn from your mistakes, and you never get caught. Understood?”

Kerrowyn nodded, eyes lowered. Kerric nodded, too, but his face told a different story.

“Go,” Klaudia said. “Sleep, if you can. Tomorrow, I’ll think of a proper punishment for your failure.”

The twins retreated to their shared room, closing the door with a soft click. For a while, neither spoke; they simply lay in their beds, the silence thick as fog. At length, Kerric broke it.

“Why did you do it?” he whispered.

Kerrowyn rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “Because I could.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She thought about this. “Because I had to,” she said finally. “We look after each other. You know that.”

Kerric did not reply. He turned away, curling into a tight ball, and Kerrowyn knew she had lost something more valuable than any brooch or silver coin. She closed her eyes, listening to the muted sounds of the city beyond the window: the distant shouts, the clatter of boots, the music of survival.

Tomorrow, she thought, she would start again.

But tonight, she nursed her wound and wondered how many secrets she could carry before she became invisible even to herself.

Counting Thirty-Two Stones

The punishment her mother decided on was a week in the cellar. To teach her what it means to be imprisoned so that she wouldn’t repeat her mistake, her mother had said. The room had always been cold, even when the air outside broiled under high summer. The chill stuck to the rough-hewn stone walls, grew roots in the mortar, and threaded itself into Kerrowyn’s bones. She hunched in the far corner, her back pressed flat to the uneven stones, knees drawn up to her chin, arms clasped tight around her shins. The brand on her left shoulder still steamed, the burned flesh exuding a thin sheen of sweat and something clear that wasn’t quite blood. Every pulse of her heart sent a fresh wave of heat and nausea spiraling up her spine. She focused all her will on keeping her breathing even. If she lost control, if she wept, the pain would be unbearable.

There was nothing in the room but her, the shadows, and the single lantern that hung crooked from a ceiling hook. Its flame burned low, guttering each time the wind battered at the half-shuttered window, so the walls moved and shifted in a jittery parade of black and orange shapes. The only company she had for days was the rats, and Kerric for the quick moments when he would drop her off a scrap of bread and water. He sometimes slipped her a treat; some dried fruits, a stale tart, and little notes too, folded into the origami birds they had been practicing. It wasn’t enough to stave off the hunger or the boredom.

She’d counted the number of stones in the floor. Forty-one, if you included the ones chipped so small they were more filler than brick. She thought if she could name a fact for each stone, she could outlast the pain.

Her mother’s footsteps shattered the count at thirty-two.

Klaudia entered like a thunderclap, every stride a hammer blow on the warped wood of the threshold. She swept in with her cloak already half-off, her face so tight with rage it seemed etched in iron. The door slammed behind her, and the lantern trembled on its chain.

Klaudia’s eyes went straight to Kerrowyn, cold and sharp as wire. She didn’t bother to speak at first—just stood there, breath hissing out in white clouds, the silence vibrating with everything unspoken.

Kerrowyn buried her face in the crook of her arms. It didn’t matter; she could feel her mother’s glare like a physical weight, heavier than the brand, heavier than the shame.

“You were lucky,” Klaudia said at last, and it was so sudden and low that Kerrowyn almost missed the words. “If it was the Guard from my youth, they’d have taken your whole arm.”

Kerrowyn didn’t reply. A bright, childish part of her wanted to scream, to spit back that it had been Kerric’s fault, that he was the one who’d messed up. But she kept her mouth closed. This was the way the game was played: you never gave up your accomplice. That, at least, was the law that never wavered.

Her mother stalked across the room. Every step made the shadows crawl up the walls, sent the lantern into a new swing. “You think it’s a joke?” Klaudia hissed. “You think this is a game, girl? The world is not a child’s playhouse.” She stopped in front of Kerrowyn, looming so large the little gnome felt she might simply disappear into the angle of her mother’s shadow. “Next time, you won’t have a home to come back to.”

Kerrowyn forced herself to look up. The movement sent a lance of pain through her shoulder, but she used it, let it burn away the fear. She met Klaudia’s eyes and, for a moment, saw not the Clan Matriarch, but the woman who had once cradled her in the blue light before dawn, had pressed cool lips to Kerrowyn’s fevered brow, had mended her ripped stockings with hands that never trembled.

But that woman was gone, her face replaced by this iron mask. Or maybe the mask had always been there, and it was only now that Kerrowyn could see through to the shape beneath.

“You have to learn,” Klaudia said. “You have to learn what it costs.”

Kerrowyn nodded. “I know.”

“Do you?” Her mother’s voice was brittle, splintering. “I doubt it.”

Kerrowyn said nothing. Her arms tightened around her legs.

After a long moment, Klaudia crouched down, her knees popping, and reached out. Kerrowyn’s first instinct was to flinch away, but she mastered it, held still while her mother’s fingers pressed into her cheek. Klaudia’s hand was rough, calloused, the nails clipped blunt and stained with ink. The touch wasn’t gentle. It was an inspection, a confirmation. The coolness of her skin made the heat of Kerrowyn’s burn stand out all the sharper.

“I wish you were smarter,” Klaudia whispered, not quite looking at her daughter. “I wish you understood how much is at stake.”

Kerrowyn opened her mouth, closed it again. She wanted to say she was smart—smarter than Kerric, at least. She wanted to say she understood everything, the rules and the exceptions, the brittle pact that kept their family together. But the words stuck in her throat, and in that silence, her mother’s face shifted, just for a second, into something Kerrowyn recognized from a thousand nights before: weary, vulnerable, nearly loving.

It was gone in an instant. Klaudia stood, wiped her hands on her cloak, and turned for the door. “You’re to stay here until morning. You will remember.”

The door slammed shut, and the lantern wobbled, flickered, steadied.

Kerrowyn waited until she could no longer hear the echo of her mother’s boots. Then, and only then, she let the tears come—silent, viscous, running tracks over her cheeks to drip on the bruised skin of her arms. She would not scream. She would not sob. But in the dark, she let herself grieve for the old garden, the apple blossoms, and the mother who was sometimes—once—kind.

Inheritance By Inches

When the iron bells of the Capitol’s ninth hour sang their cold clangor over the rooftops, the Lightfoot twins took up their positions in the shadowed yard behind their clan’s main house. Autumn fog drifted in from the Brightfell, rolling down the stony back lanes to erase the finer lines of the city. The Lightfoot property—secured behind three locked gates, two sets of spike-topped walls, and a brace of well-fed mastiffs—existed in a perpetual dusk, the sun excised by the high stone of neighboring guild halls and the tangle of old elms above. It was the perfect kind of place, Kerrowyn thought, for criminals to teach their children the art of silence.

Tonight, the training yard was slicked with rain, its gravel path glazed obsidian in the meager glow of the watch lamps. A row of wooden targets, each carved with a painted bullseye, leaned against the far wall—some already flecked with the scars of bladework past. The rest of the yard was mostly mud and bramble. A net of gossamer hung in the branches, glinting faintly where it caught a bead of lamp light, a snare set to warn if any Watchman scaled the wall. Their mother had set it herself.

“First to ten,” said Kerric, voice tight as a bowstring. He held his knife by the tip, the hilt pressed against his palm as if it might try to escape him. “Winner gets—”

“Second pick from the dessert tray.” Kerrowyn finished, because this was always the wager. She made a show of loosening her shoulders, but in truth, her muscles ached from last night’s lockpicking drills. She wondered if this would ever get easy, or if it would always feel like her bones were too big for her body.

Above them, seated in a battered chair with a wool blanket wrapped to her chin, Klaudia Lightfoot watched in silhouette. Her hair, a wild white crest, was unmistakable even at a distance. She tapped the haft of her cane in time with the bells and said, “Kerric, you throw first. Let’s not keep the other little thieves waiting.”

Kerric drew his arm back, a flicker in the gloom, and let the blade fly. It caught the target just shy of center, the wood shuddering in protest. He made a little triumphant noise, shoulders raised, and turned to see if his mother had noticed.

Kerrowyn, when she threw, did not aim so much as she released—the blade left her hand in a blur, spinning clean and true, and landed an inch inside the ring that Kerric’s had cut. The handle quivered, humming with the force of it.

Klaudia’s cane beat a slow applause. “Beautiful, kitten. Keep your hand soft, but your will sharp. That’s how you win anything worth stealing.”

Kerric offered a ragged smile, but his next throw was off by a finger’s width, the blade glancing sideways and sticking at a drunken angle. The twins took turns, the rhythm of their throws echoing the city’s clock, the gap between their scores widening with each round. Kerrowyn won, as she always did, but feigned surprise when her tenth blade landed dead center and the head of the target snapped clean off.

“Beginner’s luck?” she said, stepping back from the line.

Kerric spat into the mud. “You started learning before me.”

“We started on the same day.”

“You practice when no one’s watching,” he accused, though his voice lacked the bite for true anger. “I see the cuts on your hands in the morning.”

Kerrowyn glanced at her palms, scarred and cross-hatched from months of drills. “Maybe I just bleed easier than you.”

“Enough,” said their mother, her voice slicing the yard into silence. “Kerrowyn, you will teach your brother how to throw with his heart instead of his hands. Kerric, you will not lose again. If either of you is caught watching the Watch lamps after midnight, you will both be on guard duty for a month.” She stood, casting a long shadow over the twins. “You are Lightfoots, not street rats. In two years’ time, one of you will be my right hand. I will not have the guild thinking I raised a pair of idiots.”

She looked at Kerrowyn then, her eyes catching the lamplight in that predatory way of hers. “You’re wasted on this kind of practice,” Klaudia said, as if offering an apology and a threat in equal measure. “I’ll arrange something more challenging for tomorrow.”

The children nodded, though only Kerrowyn met her mother’s gaze. Kerric stared at the ruins of the target, chest heaving, jaw set tight as a locked door.

After their mother retired, the twins gathered the knives in silence. The mud sucked at their feet as they walked, shoes ruined and cold water seeping through the seams. When Kerrowyn plucked her final blade from the splintered wood, Kerric hovered beside her, shadow merging with hers.

“You like this?” he asked, voice as thin as the fog between them. “All of it—the drills, the rules, the… competition.”

Kerrowyn considered. She liked the clarity of a good throw, the perfect way a knife rotated through air, the click of steel into wood. She liked the feeling of doing something right, even if her rightness made Kerric’s shortcomings all the more obvious. But she hated the way their mother looked at her, as if she were a puzzle to be solved or a trap to be set, not a person at all.

“It’s what we do,” she said at last, not sure if it was a comfort or a curse.

Kerric did not reply, but when they entered the house, he let her walk ahead of him. In the kitchen, dessert trays waited on the high shelf. She reached for the second pick, then stopped. There would be a lesson in this, too, she realized—a test of loyalty, or mercy, or something more twisted. She took her brother’s favorite sweet and pressed it into his palm.

He blinked, then closed his hand over it, hiding the gift from the world.

Later, as she lay in her bed beneath the rafters, Kerrowyn listened to the sounds of the house: the distant scrape of her mother’s boots on the upper floor, the soft click of locks being checked, the even breathing of her brother in the room across the hall. She thought of the way her mother’s eyes had narrowed with pride and warning, the way Kerric’s fingers had curled tight around his prize.

She thought of the way a path was drawn, one throw at a time, each victory another step toward a future that belonged to someone else. And she wondered how much of her would survive it.