Mrs. Evans spoke with regret, but only a fool would miss the note of steel that had entered her voice. Behind that steel stood not just six enforcers but enough contacts and knowledge to bring down the Creche and half the city behind it. Christian turned to Maura, but the beseeching look on her face said everything. Suddenly Christian hated the lot of them: Mrs. Evans, Thorne, even Maura herself.
Tend to your own business.
He would have liked to ignore Maura’s words, but he could not, for she was right. Unless he was prepared right now, at this instant, to take her away, to remove her utterly from this life—
But even then, you wouldn’t have the right to take the syringe out of her hand.
After another long moment’s hesitation, Christian turned and walked away. Many times he had dreamed of simply wringing Mrs. Evans’s neck, but that was just as much a fantasy as topside itself, and it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. Customers paid, tricks turned . . . the players changed, but the game never ended. Only the suffering was real. As Christian ducked through the grating of his shortcut, he suddenly saw Maura as he had first seen her: the tiny girl who had taken his hand when they were both in the pens, waiting to go on the block. For those few days, they had stayed together, keeping each other from panic, as sale drew closer and the darkness closed in. Even after Wigan bought them both, Maura had done her best to create an invisible circle around the two of them, making birthdays, singing songs, tending his wounds after fights. They had protected each other.
But I can’t protect her now, Christian thought bitterly. Not even from herself.
Chapter 4
NIYA
The second iteration of the Blue Horizon was a strange animal: utterly committed, yet innately contradictory. William Tear had condemned the use of arms, but the Blue Horizon carried steel and used it well. They longed for a peaceful world, but did not flinch from violence in pursuit of that goal. William Tear had despised organized religion, and so the Blue Horizon naturally railed against God’s Church, yet its members worshipped William Tear like a god, speaking of him as though he were alive. No Christian sect ever had such a powerful Holy Ghost.
—The Early History of the Tearling, as told by Merwinian
She was in the lowest part of the Hollow when they caught her. The first man stepped out of the mouth of an alley just as his two companions came up behind. Both grabbed a bicep, whipping her arms behind her, and as she tried to wrench free, the first man slipped a hood over her head. They brought her arms together, manacling her hands at the waist.
With the appearance of the manacles, Niya dismissed her initial assumption that they were simple villains, bent on assault. Women who spent any amount of time in the Gut had to know how to defend themselves; Niya had even heard that one brothel held weekly hand-to-hand combat classes for its pros, classes taught by an army lieutenant who liked his free tumble now and then. Rape occurred all the time in the Gut, but the men leading Niya remained coolly professional. As they led her up the steps out of the Hollow, one of them even tucked a hand beneath her elbow, an almost courtly gesture, designed to keep her from stumbling.
Do they know who I am? she wondered. The Fetch had forbidden her to attend any more meetings once he had placed her in the Keep, but it was always possible that someone had recognized her from the early days, for in a kingdom where redheads grew scarcer all the time, Niya sported a head of bright, coppery hair.
Has someone betrayed us?
At first her three captors remained on their guard. Niya was no easy piece of business, and if they knew who she was, they would know that too. But three on one was three on one, and the captive was hooded, and somewhere between Clewes Alley and the Great Boulevard, Niya sensed all three of them beginning to relax. That was their mistake. Niya’s parents had both died in a pub fire when she was eight, and she had grown up a pickpocket on the streets of New London, earning and eating only what she stole. She did not need eyes to see her way. She knew the Gut the way she knew her own heart.