Chapter 2 Caine

Hopelessness swamped Vix, chasing everything else away. She wondered whether she ought to have just told Knickknack the truth. It probably would not have mattered either way.

She did not know what had happened the other night to cause that barn on the outskirts of the city to suddenly burst into flames. Vix had been stalking through the grassy waste, alone, when she spotted the dazzling light. The inferno had risen halfway to the moon, followed by a column of smoke as tall as the turrets of Hallowskeep.

She had never seen any fire burn like that before. It had torn the barn apart all at once, bursting it like rotten fruit, with tongues of flame dancing over everything like maniacal jack-in-the-boxes.

Vix shivered again. She did not want to know what had caused it.

She had waited for hours afterward, watching. People from all over had come galloping up, shouting loud enough to wake the heavens, hurling buckets of water upon the flame until it finally hissed into nothingness.

None of them had noticed Vix. She stayed where she was, patiently, until everyone had gone, finally leaving the cinder-black skeleton of the barn deserted.

Then she had snuck inside to see whether anything of value had survived. She felt like a scavenger, rooting around the muck to find something to latch its fangs into.

But she did not have the luxury of letting shame get in her way. It had been too long since she had last eaten for that.

A bitter smile touched her face. She could not believe her luck when she had found that stash of silver, hidden beneath some burned beams. It seemed the farmer who owned the nearby homestead had chosen to hide his best dinnerware within the barn.

Even more fortunate, he had chosen a spot that had been sheltered from the worst of the flames. He must have assumed his treasure lost.

The gods seemed to have been smiling on her, then. Now, Vix was sure they were just laughing at her. She still could feel the silver jostling in her bag, taunting her.

There was something else, too – something that she wished as hard as she could to forget. But no sooner had she even allowed her mind to touch on it, the memory came flooding back. Inside the barn had been a body.

It was impossible to tell who he had been. The flames had seared away nearly every trace of humanity. Lying there, alone, too disfigured for anyone to know who he had been or how he had died. What a horrible way to die.

He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, most likely. Just unlucky. Yet that had not mattered. A bit of bad luck was all it took for his life to be reduced to nothing, for his family to never see him come home again.

Vix scrunched down lower, hugging herself tighter. She was alone. If she was to suddenly disappear, killed in some horrible accident, no one would be waiting for her. No one would be wondering what had become of her.

Vix pictured herself slumped over, lying in exactly the same way that unrecognizable body had been. What then? Nothing would change. The pigeons would continue their play, the pipe would continue its endless drip. The people that were walking past the deserted alley would simply keep going, uncaring.

Vix gasped convulsively and squeezed the skin on her arms so tightly that her fingernails cut her. She tried to banish the image, but it was stuck, plastered to the inside of her brain.

After eighteen years of surviving in the slums, after all that effort, that was all she would leave behind. A hunk of cold meat, beneath the fleeting notice of even a cluster of birds. Her only mourners, the bloated rats and worms of the city, chewing and nibbling, worrying her corpse onward with all the tender and lingering ceremony they could muster.

A primal fear seized Vix in its grasp. It went beyond mere terror. Her very being trembled like a stretched string caught in a hurricane.

Leaping to her feet, Vix forced herself to move, nearly running as she blindly careened out of the alley. She wanted to put as much distance as she could between herself and that horrible, quiet place.

She broke free of its close confines, entering into the watery sunshine again. Vix stood in place, wheezing, running her hand over her heart in rapid little strokes. 'There, all better now,' she soothed herself, trying to believe it.

At length, she was calm again. She was alive. She would continue to keep living. Because the alternative was too terrible to face.

Vix collected her thoughts, pushing the dark mood that had seized her behind closed doors in her mind. Back where it belonged. She turned her attention to the problem at hand.

Vix needed money. She had silver jangling in her bag, but with no one to sell it to, it might as well have been rocks. For a moment, she wondered whether she would be wiser to simply throw it all away, into some trash heap for a luckier soul to find, or else plunge it into the Black River.

If she was found with it, if people connected the loot with the burnt barn and the dead man inside, she might be blamed for everything.

But she could not bring herself to do it. 'Hold onto it,' she cautioned herself. It might be that Knickknack would change his mind. Or perhaps she could find someone else who would be willing to take a risk.

Vix shook her head firmly. Either way, that was a matter for another day. The silver was useless to her at the moment. What she needed right now was money and food.

A flash of light blinded her momentarily. She came back to her surroundings and saw a well-dressed youth walking toward her. He was absently checking a gold pocket watch, which was glinting in the light of the sun.

The moment Vix saw him, she could not stop staring.

He was dressed in a fine chocolate-brown tailcoat, with a gray vest and well-pressed, white cravat peeking out from beneath. She wondered what a man so well dressed was doing in the pits of the slums. He looked like he belonged in some upper crust party somewhere, with a fluted glass of champagne in his hand.

But she could not focus on his clothes, strange as they were, for very long. The young man was several inches taller than Vix, with a long, rather equine face. He was handsome, his face proud and unlined. But it was his eyes which drew her in.

They were absolutely striking, a murky green that reminded her of sunlight touching soft grass. They shone out brightly from beneath the severe shelf of his brow, which threw his startling eyes into attractive degrees of shadow.

He did not lope or strut like she would have expected of a young man so blessed in looks and fortune. He was somewhat flatfooted, walking with his head kept down and his shoulders hunched, looking like a man intent on his business and not keen to be recognized while about it.

The young man cocked his head as he approached, looking puzzled. Vix, realizing how much she had been staring, dropped her eyes, embarrassed. Then he breezed past her and went on his way.

It had happened so quickly. Unable to help herself, Vix looked around to stare after him. He seemed familiar, somehow. For a moment, she just stood there, frozen.

Suddenly, she came to a decision. Vix went after him.