They were small. They were fast. Soldiers were big. Slow. And loud. The clinks and clanks of their chain shirts chimed a tune with the voices of the people they were wading through, barely able to walk straight from how many there were around them.

  As the boys watched the soldiers moving through the bustling crowd of people, they were signaling to each other with nods and hand signs that would be mistaken for reaching for sticks or playing with their little toys. One was a little older than the rest, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, crouched in between stacked crates at the edge of a narrow alleyway. He locked eyes with a girl half his age on the other side of the street, sitting with her friends and siblings, most of them around her age.

  The girl let herself stumble into the crowd, tossing her doll at the feet of the soldiers. Three boys from different places among the sides of the street swam into the crowd, fading away. The girl cried out. The first soldier stopped when she ducked in front of him to grab the doll. The other soldiers with him staggered to a halt. The three swam between their legs as unnoticed as tadpoles in a pond of snakes.

  “Watch where you be, girl!” The soldier kicked at her as she scurried away with her doll.

  The oldest didn’t wait to see her look up. He sank back into the shadows of that alleyway and thumped into Nina’s hip hard enough that he fell onto his back. He gave her a scowl until she lowered her hood. The scowl faded into a gaping, wide eyed look of worry.

  She crouched to his level with a hand out and waited, eyeing him. He hesitated, then narrowed his gaze and took her hand. She lifted him to his feet and pulled him back behind one of the crates as the soldiers passed without notice.

  “Blight on me,” the boy said in a breath. He turned to her, slapping dust from his hands with a cocky smile, “That was a close one. Well, that be my time to go.”

  Nina winked at him as she brushed her hand over the strings that had once held her dangling coin purse. The boy winked back and leaned with an upward nod. Behind her, the alley had filled with dirty-faced boys and girls varying in ages from twelve to six or seven, all with a club or rod in their hands and mean looks on their faces.

  Nina raised a brow and her hands, pressing her back against the wall the crates were stacked against. The boy’s smile widened and he sprinted for them…then stopped long before he reached them.

  Nina waited, keeping her arms up as she turned herself toward him. In one hand was her coin purse. In the other, was the boy’s patchwork one whose stitches were loose.

  The gang of children raised their weapons. The oldest gave her an awed look over his shoulder. Nina flicked her brows at him and leapt. The tips of her fingers and toes caught thin cracks between crooked and misplaced bricks in the wall. Leap after leap, she reached the top of the building and rolled away.

  “Get her!” She heard the boy shout below.

  She spun the two pouches together and stuffed them in a pocket in her cloak. She sprinted across the rooftop, taking leaps over chimney stacks. She ducked and weaved around laundry dangling on lines. The wall at the edge of the building came quickly. The next one towered two levels higher. It had windows every few meters going along each level, with brick framing that protruded from the wall. More than enough room for her to grip.

  She looked down. The kids were flooding into the alley below her. One pointed, three of them rushed to climb up the gutter pipe toward her. The oldest boy shot her a glare. She met his eyes with a shrug and jumped.

  All heads moved with her as she flew across the narrow alley. She caught one of the window frame tops with a thud that made her grit her teeth. She stifled the groan from escaping with the air from her gut. She began springing herself out and up with her legs. Window to window. Ledge to ledge. She reached the slanted tile roof. It took a moment to gain traction with her bare feet—and to catch her breath after hitting that window frame so hard—and she continued to climb.

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  “What is this bitch? A spider or something?”

  “Does it matter? She has our coin! Get her!”

  Nina crested the roof of this building. She let herself slide down the other side and sprang herself across the next alleyway, once again over their heads. This time, it wasn’t a roof she launched herself to, but an open window.

  She landed in the hallway of the Lioness and Thyme Brothel with a roll back onto her feet. She slipped her shoes on and tossed her cloak from her shoulders to over her arms. Her pace slowed rounding the stairs.

  Now in a nice blue one piece, gold embroidered dress that hung a little lower at the bust than she preferred, compliments of the Baroness, she went down the stairs of the brothel as if she had finished with a patron. She gave a man a salacious smile that made the half-dressed woman leading him up the stairs eye her in confusion. She went out the back door and turned into the alley onto a main throughway. She blended into the crowd, attaching herself to a group of well-to-do merchant wives with parasols.

  The gang were looking for her from either side of the brothel. Like she expected, one recognized her, even with her noble dress, perfect aristocratic make up, and braided hair. She turned into the next alley, her cloak back over her dress, hood over her head. She sank back into the arch of a sewer grate and waited, short knives drawn.

  The boy who recognized her led the oldest and one other into her alleyway. She could hear the running footsteps, light as raindrops, from the other side of the sewer grate. They were trying to corner her.

  She let the boy who recognized her pass, along with the oldest one, their leader. It was the last one she reached for. With a wrap of her arm to clamp down his thin arms, she pressed the point of her one knife to the side of his cheek. He crouched into her hold. The other knife, she had angled into his back. The two others could see when they heard his far too shrill of a scream.

  They jumped at the sight of her holding their comrade. Their hands went up. “I dunno what you want, lady,” the oldest said, stepping towards her, “but please don’t kill him. He’s just a little kid. He ain’t done nothing to nobody. I just take care of him, like...like a little brother. We’re just innocent little—”

  She shook her head with a laugh and rubbed her cheek against the opposite one she had pressed her knife point into. “How old are you?”

  “He’s five,” the one coming toward her said, his arms still high. Unfortunate for him, it was at the same time that the little one in her arms said, “Eight.”

  “Thought so,” Nina moved her eyes to the approaching one. “What’s your name?”

  “His name’s Tim.” “Connie.”

  “Piss on you, Connie, can’t keep your mouth shut for two seconds?”

  “Sssh,” Nina kept her eyes on the oldest, who was biting his lip with a fiery glare. The rest of the gang were flooding the alley behind him, all slowing their paces to a stop as they came closer. To the one in her arms, “Who’s your Fence-Pa?”

  “Don’t tell her!”

  “Lyon de Salaud,” the one in her arms answered, squirming against the blade pressed to his back. She pulled it back a little. Didn’t want to do more than scare the boy.

  “Aw, come on!” Echoed through all of them as they stomped and kicked at the rubbish scattered in the alley.

  “Perfect,” Nina kissed his plump cheek and straightened. The moment Connie was released, he sprinted to the gang, who were now regaining their own postures. She tossed the purse she had lifted to the oldest. “I’ll give you what you thought you lifted from me after you take me to your Salaud.”

  “He doesn’t like visitors.”

  Nina crouched, this time letting him see that she was lowering herself in the same way a fighter preparing to spring an attack would by fluttering her cloak outward. The pretty dress, with the slit she put down the side, fell to reveal her hardened hide trousers adorned with a circlet of throwing knives sheathed around a long dagger. She gave him a mischievous grin and cocked brow as she sheathed her knives in their slots. “What’s your name? Salaud the Second?”

  “Gar,” the oldest answered with a shiver. The rest of them were shifting. “Who are you?”

  “Take me to your Lyon de Salaud and you and I can become better acquainted.”

  Gar gave her a savvy smile and raised his brow. “How well?”

  She stood, rolling her eyes. “Not that well, kid. Go on, lead the way.”