He’d decided on the Spill. It was his go-to move for pairs. Balthazar would follow closely behind the two Greeks as they made their way across the crowded forum, waiting for his accomplices to strike. If everything went as designed, the boys would emerge from nowhere, hurrying along with a jug of wine. They would clumsily run into the two Greeks, spilling its contents all over their robes. And as the men examined themselves — as they cursed and yelled and threatened to beat the boys for their clumsiness — Balthazar would make the lift: passing behind the target, slipping a small knife imperceptibly toward the Greek’s coin purse, cutting the small leather strap that held it to his belt, and snatching it away without breaking his stride in the slightest. The target would never know what hit him, other than a jug of wine. When it worked, it was a thing of beauty.
When it didn’t? You ran.
Balthazar went as fast as his spindly legs would carry him — which was, it seemed, only a fraction faster than the Greeks chasing him. It had been a bad lift from the start. The Spill had been clumsily delivered, spilling onto their feet instead of their robes. Worse, the Greek’s companion had clearly been a victim of pickpockets before. Once the initial shock of the spill had worn off, the younger Greek immediately checked his own coin purse and began looking around. Balthazar had made the lift despite the botched spill. Unfortunately, he’d gotten only a few feet away before he heard the dreaded, “Hey! You!”
So here he was, pushing his twelve-year-old legs well beyond their intended use, with two much bigger Greeks chasing him — their feet stained red with wine, yelling, “Stop that boy! He’s a thief!”
If they caught him, it would mean the loss of both hands, at a minimum. More likely, he’d be put to death, either by stoning or by beheading. Pickpocketing had become an epidemic all along the Colonnaded Street and in the forum, and the Romans were cracking down. There was no place for rampant crime in a Roman city. Just as there seemed to be no place for its native Syrians.
He ran east along one of the canals that carried fresh water into the center of the city — part of the network of channels, tunnels, and pipes that made up the aqueducts built by the Romans. This particular canal was dry at the moment, littered with dirt and sticks and garbage. And that was exactly why Balthazar was following it.
The neighborhood — if I can make it to the neighborhood, I’ll be safe… I’ll be able to disappear.
There were dozens of small villages packed together on the outskirts of Antioch, so dense that they formed a sort of second wall around the already walled city. There were incredibly rich sections, marginally rich sections, middle-class sections, and poor sections. And then there were the Syrian slums. The slums toward which Balthazar now ran with death nipping at his heels.
“Syrian filth!” he heard one of the Greeks yell behind him. “I’ll tear your arms out of their sockets myself!”
Balthazar knew every inch of the four square blocks that made up the section called Platanôn — a maze of tiny, tightly packed houses and narrow, unpaved streets where most of the city’s native Syrians lived. He knew every face on those streets, every name of every resident of every house. And he knew that he could rely on any one of them to keep him safely hidden from the Greeks. But first he had to get there — and that was going to take a minor miracle.
Actually, three minor miracles.
As Balthazar ran along the dry canal, the wide cobblestone streets and gleaming colonnades of the city dissolved away, becoming the narrower streets and houses of a poor suburb. Ahead, the houses abruptly stopped at the edge of a hundred-foot ravine, but the canal kept going, continuing across a narrow, unfinished bridge.
The old bridge had collapsed during a recent earthquake, one of the unpleasant realities of living in Syria. Roman engineers had shut off the water while they built a new one. One team had started on the near side of the ravine, another team on the far side. The plan was to have the two halves of the bridge meet in the middle, and they were almost there, only twenty feet to go. A wooden crane sat on the edge of both sides, each of their outstretched arms supporting the ropes used to hoist stone blocks to the top — the ropes Balthazar hoped would carry him to freedom in a few seconds.
The first of Balthazar’s three minor miracles occurred: the bridge wasn’t under construction today, though this barely qualified as a “miracle,” given the notoriously relaxed pace of Roman construction. The second miracle occurred immediately after: the rope hanging from the crane on the near side was within his reach. Now all he needed was a third miracle: to grab on to the hanging rope and swing safely across.
When he neared the edge of the ravine, Balthazar diverted off the road, down into the canal, and out onto the unfinished bridge, the men nearly close enough to touch the back of his clothes.
You can make it.
He ran with every bit of speed he could squeeze out of those spindly legs as he closed in on the edge of the bridge and the hanging rope. You can make it, Balthazar. And with a last leap, he grabbed on to the rope and swung off the end. You can make it. Just don’t look down and you’ll —
There was no way he was going to make it. As soon as Balthazar swung out over the ravine, he knew he was in trouble. The distance between the two sides was twice what it’d looked like from the bridge, and the drop twice as far. Worse yet, the top of the crane he was swinging from wasn’t centered between the two bridge sections — it was much closer to the side he’d started on. As he approached the bottom of his arc, Balthazar suddenly found himself with two unsavory options: He could either hold on to the rope and return to the side he’d swung from — the side where two big men were waiting for him — or he could let go and jump. Either way, there would be no more miracles today.
He let go.
Once again, it was a decision met with instant regret. He wasn’t going to make it across. Not on his feet, anyway. There was a chance — a sliver of a chance — that he could reach the edge of the other bridge with his fingertips. Balthazar pumped his exhausted legs as he flew, as if running on air would propel him farther.
I’m descending.
He reached his arms out in front of him as the uneven, unfinished stones of the other bridge rushed at him. But it was his chest that hit first, smacking against the bottom of the other canal and knocking the air from his lungs.
The impact startled a rat that had been picking through litter on the other side of the canal. It looked up, a half-chewed maggot in its mouth, and saw a human boy clinging to the edge of the waterway, struggling to pull himself up. It was a brief struggle, for the boy began sliding back toward the drop almost immediately. The rat watched as the boy’s fingers grabbed at the bottom of the stone channel, trying to hold on. After a brief but valiant effort, the boy disappeared over the side. The rat, who assumed the human had fallen to his death, went back to its rummaging.
Balthazar had absolutely no idea how he’d caught himself. He hung by little more than the grit beneath his fingernails, pumping his feet. Trying to push against a surface that wasn’t there. Don’t look down. It’s very important that you resist the urge to —