The smell of food wafted upward from the tents, and the girl’s stomach rumbled just before an old man in tattered clothes stumbled into the street near her, as if appearing out of thin air. His hair was a mass of tangled, filthy curls, his beard long enough to touch his chest. He carried a cloth sack bulging with his personal belongings over his shoulder, and it was large enough to make him stagger from side to side as he went. She tensed as he weaved into traffic; surely he would be run down, but as he dropped the sack in the street and planted his feet, glaring at the carts and packbeasts, they all cursed and drove around him, parting like water around rock.
The old man mumbled to himself, but it was too quiet for her to hear the words. He rummaged in his sack for a moment and held up a bolt of cloth, the remains of a tunic. The end of all days was scrawled across it in blood-red letters. He pulled it over his head and held up his wrinkled, filthy hands, as if to testify.
“Beware the coming of the evil ones!” the beggar shouted, his voice as ragged as his clothing. “It begins with the fall of the mountain and the opening of the gate, and it will end with terror and death! The sky will turn black, the streets fill with blood!”
A group of boys were gathered across the street. One of them elbowed another and pointed at the old man. They laughed and went out to meet him, forming a loose circle. “Get out of the road, old man,” one of them said. “You’ll end up with that beard caught in someone’s wheel.”
The beggar’s head bobbed back and forth, his gaze darting between their faces. “You are doomed. The Dark One is powerful, I tell you. He will raise a demon army! The dead will walk among us!”
The boys laughed again, rolling their eyes at each other. “You smell like a dead man,” one said. “Maybe you’re confused.” Another picked up his sack, and the beggar’s hands began to flutter like birds, reaching out for it as the boy tossed the sack to the side, narrowly missing a woman and her child, who scurried past, eyes averted. The beggar tried to get his belongings, but the boys closed in, forcing him back and cursing at him. As the old man reached out again, brushing their arms, one of them shoved him. He stumbled and nearly fell.
The girl could not stand it anymore; their cruelty was like watching a monstrous wave approaching from the shore. She set her small shoulders and stepped out from the shadows. “Leave him ’lone,” she said.
The boys turned to stare at her. “Well, look at that,” the lead boy said, sauntering over to her. He was larger than the rest, at least a foot taller than she was, and his eyes were piggish and cruel. “He’s got a guardian angel, after all. Or maybe you’re the walking dead he’s going on about?”
The girl’s heart beat faster as the rest of the boys left the old beggar and approached her. “What do you want with a fool like that?” Pig-Eyes said. “He your boyfriend or something?”
The girl glanced through the boys at the old man, who had gathered his sack and was wandering away from them, muttering again. The wave she had felt building had broken momentarily like water on rock, and for a moment she allowed herself some relief. But then Pig-Eyes was shoving her shoulder with a pudgy finger.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.”
The others snickered, grinning at each other. The fun was about to really begin, those grins said. Time for Pig-Eyes to do his thing.
“I don’t like you,” the girl said. “You’re all ugly, inside here.” She touched her thin chest.
Pig-Eyes narrowed his gaze, the grin fading away. “Well, you’re ugly on the outside,” he said. The tone of his voice had gained an edge. “I seen you before, haven’t I? Leah, you are? Where’s your crazy mother? Servicing the men at the tavern again, is she?”
The other boys whooped and guffawed, slapping each others’ shoulders, but Pig-Eyes didn’t look away from her face. “Listen, I don’t like you either,” he said softly. He poked her again. “Understand? Nobody does. You’re a sewer rat. We should toss you in the fountain, wash off the stink from those filthy tunnels you crawl around in, but then we’d sell no tickets to the show.”
The others laughed again. Sewer rat. She hated when they called her that. “Don’t touch me,” she said, and when she looked into his gaze with her own, he took a small, involuntary step back. Her eyes held a glittering darkness, a depth that made others turn away in discomfort. She did not know why, only that others found something unsettling in her, and at the strange things that sometimes happened when she was around. She was like a divining rod for bad luck, it seemed. But that would not hold this one at bay for long, especially not in front of his friends. He would try to hurt her, things would get out of control, she would get out of control, and she did not know what would happen then . . .
A crow cawed above them, circling the group and settling with a flap of black wings about twenty feet away. It cocked its head, beady eyes studying them, and hopped to where a dead rat lay in the sun. A wagon went by, the wheel dangerously close, and the crow hopped away and then back again, peering at the flattened mess of guts and fur before pecking at a long, wet strand, tearing and pulling it up off the hot dirt like a worm before tilting its head back and gulping the meat down.
Leah’s stomach churned as the crow cocked its head again, its black eye staring right through her, I see you, little one, and she began to feel as if that eye might open up enough to swallow her whole, just like the raw, red flesh the bird was eating.
Her body trembling, she clenched her hands into tight fists, ready to fight, but the boys were distracted for a moment by the crow, and she took the opportunity to dart underneath Pig-Eyes’ arm and up the darkening alley, running hard. A moment later someone gave a shout, and she could hear them coming after her, their running feet like thunder as the blood began to thud in her ears. Somewhere below them she heard the old man’s hoarse voice screaming out his prophecies of the End of Days, and in her mind’s eye she saw the crow staring at her as if she were next on the dinner menu.
Something terrible is coming.
For a moment she did not know if the voice was from the crazy beggar down the street or from her own head. A chill ran down her spine, and she shivered as she ducked into another, narrower alley between the backs of a bakery and a dress shop, swerving to avoid a drunkard fumbling at a woman’s breast in the dark amid a muttered curse and more shouts from the boys. Something terrible. She did not know why she thought that, but it was there, all the same, flapping over her like the wings of that crow. She had heard the voice inside her head before, and it was not at all like her own. She had often wondered if everyone had these voices that spoke up every now and again, or whether she was alone in that, too.
The alley opened into a larger street with more foot traffic, and two soldiers watched her from the other side with their hands on their swords. With luck, they would spot the boys running and stop them, but she could not count on it. She swerved right, into the cool, shadowed doorway of a smoke shop, the smell wafting over her like rich, mossy earth. She knew the city well, knew that this shop ran deep and had another door in back that led to safety; the boys might know too, but they did not know what lay beneath it. By the time they figured out what she’d done, she would be gone.
As she darted through, ignoring the startled shout of the proprietor, she tried to get herself to relax. Nothing had really happened, nothing that would cause her trouble as long as her mother didn’t find out.