The Serpent Called Mercy

by Roanne Lau

Genres: Fantasy; Dark Fantasy; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Epic Fantasy; General Fiction

Synopsis

“A show-stopping debut that dazzles even as it pulls at your heartstrings. Featuring breathtaking battles, intricate lore, and a remarkable friendship as its beating heart...a thrilling spectacle from beginning to end. I loved this book.” —Chelsea Abdullah, author of The Stardust Thief

"Roanne Lau immerses you into a remarkably vivid world with a gritty underworld that raises the stakes—and your blood pressure. Full of monsters and mayhem, but most importantly, a cast of characters that you can’t help but love. An astounding debut." —Saara El-Arifi, internationally bestselling author of Faebound

The Witcher meets Squid Game in this Malaysian Chinese-inspired epic fantasy novel where a debt-ridden slumdog joins an illegal monster-fighting arena for some fast coin, but quickly learns the most dangerous beasts are outside the ring

Lythlet and her only friend Desil are shackled to a life of debt and poverty that she fears they will never escape. Desperate for money, they sign up as conquessors: arena combatants who fight sun-cursed beasts in the seedy underworld of the city.

Match-master Dothilos is initially enamored of Desil’s brawling reputation, but after seeing Lythlet lead the pair to triumph with her quick cunning, he takes her under his wing, scorning Desil. Ambition takes root in Lythlet’s heart as a life of fame and wealth unfolds in her imagination.

But Lythlet isn’t the only one out for coin and glory, and she soon finds herself playing an entirely different game—a game of politics and deception. As the cost of her ambition grows, she will have to decide if sacrificing her honor, and only friendship, is worth the chance to shape her own fortune.

A whirlwind of blood-pounding battles as characters grapple with their choices in the face of wealth and financial security, The Serpent Called Mercy's heart is the underlying, steadfast friendship between its protagonists.

Release date: March 25, 2025

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 368

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

A SLUMDOG’S LONG-AWAITED REVENGE IN THREE ACTS

LYTHLET TAIREL WAS ordinarily fond of lightning-bees, but on this rainy winter’s night, she wished they would silence their incessant buzzing.

She stood beneath a streetlight, shivering in the cold. A hive hovered overhead, the colony whirring as its thumb-sized citizens illuminated the street. Two were squabbling, their droning dissonance heightening her agitation.

The loan shark would come at dawn to collect on Desil’s debt, and they would not escape unscathed if Lythlet didn’t scrounge up enough coin by then. If past experience was anything to go by, they’d end the day with bruised ribs and threats painted over their walls.

A sly thought nudged her toward a downhill road: thievery would stitch together her purse strings.

But Lythlet hesitated. It had been many years since she had last turned to thievery, and it weighed heavily on both her conscience and her pride that she had to resort to it again.

She pulled her last copper out of her pocket, deferring the decision to fate.

“Tell me where my story leads tonight, Sunsmith and Moonmachinist.” Clapping her hands together thrice, she stared at the heavens. Rain splattered over her cold cheeks, but she remained unblinking. “Heads, I listen to my good conscience, return home, and wait for the loan shark’s punishment. Ship, I go thieving in the night and make what I can from the squalor of Setgad.”

With a flick of her thumb, she sent the coin soaring overhead and caught it in her palm.

The Fated Ship stared back at her.

“Thy will be done,” she murmured, pocketing the coin and taking a deep breath. She pulled her hood up and began the hunt.

She could not risk making a single mistake, and the fires of her wit were being stoked to full flame tonight. Dewa Road, Mandol Lane, Westiri Alley, she regarded each with a prompt judgment, a calculation of all the variables present, and their potential outcomes. Too brightly lit—she would be seen far too easily. Too sparsely crowded—she needed a blur of people to disappear into. Too many potholes and rubbish heaps lining this road—it was risky having such terrain if she had to run away.

She turned away from one man, his impressive build too risky for her to challenge. A lithe woman smoking a pipe under a streethive was less so, but her coat was so thin she would immediately notice a stray hand entering her pockets. That slope-shouldered man was the best so far, seeing how distracted he was by the woman at his side. But Lythlet had seen him two streets earlier, emptying his entire purse at a hawker’s stall on a serving of fried mashed Jhosper berries mixed with makrut lime leaves, which he now split with his lady friend. She’d be wasting her time on a man with nothing left in his pocket, and even if he had the coin to spare, she couldn’t quite muster the energy to ruin what was possibly a rare romantic night for him.

Then the perfect victim emerged on the bustling road of Fithan Avenue, the heavens serving her a careless lackwit on a silver platter as her eyes fell upon the pocket of a thick winter coat scuttling across the street. Dangling out of it was a long black string, no doubt a coin purse attached to the other end. It took a shocking naivety to not mind one’s pockets in Southeast Setgad.

She slinked through

the crowd, strides lengthening as her heartbeat crescendoed.

But her steps slowed a stride away from her prey, bravado vanishing.

No. No, not him.

The winter coat hung off a frail, old Oraanu man tottering along the litter-strewn street, pushing a one-wheeled cart filled with stacks of bamboo charcoal. He was likely returning from a long day hawking his wares at the Midnas Street market.

He looked old enough to be someone’s grandfather, judging from the wispy strands of white hair he kept in a limp ponytail. Lythlet had never known her grandparents on either side—they had passed long before she was born, may the white wind guide their souls—but she could imagine the grief that robbing an old man would cause.

So she remained still, bitterly watching him leave. But as he journeyed on, she couldn’t ignore the loose string hanging out of his pocket like bait hooked for hungry fish. Even if she had some mercy to spare tonight, other thieves would not.

“S-sir?” she called, rubbing her freezing hands nervously behind her back.

The man hobbled to a stop, his cart creaking until its one wheel stilled. Wrinkled face wary, frown lines heavy, he regarded her silently. Strangers did not talk to each other in Southeast, not unless they wanted trouble.

She nodded toward his hip with a jerk of her head. “P-pockets,” she said, annoyed that her childhood stutter was rearing its head now of all times. “Mind your—mind them.”

He patted them, finding the purse string, and tucked it in hastily. He gave a nod of gratitude in her direction before picking up his handcart once more, dragging it over cracked pavements and poorly laid cobblestones until he joined the tail-end of a queue leading to a rattan-and-bamboo trishaw selling muna-muna—parcels of lemongrass-seasoned fish wrapped in banana leaves, an imported recipe from the southern islands of the Ora Empire. Though the city-state of Setgad existed independently from the Empire, it was a patchwork tapestry that borrowed from both the Oraanu, the pale-skinned, dark-eyed moon-worshippers whose first home remained in the Ora Empire to the west, and the Ederi, the manifold-colored descendants of exiles from the far east.

Ederi as she was, Lythlet had loved Oraanu food since she was young, and the fragrance of muna-muna sent her stomach growling; the briny tang of mackerel, lemongrass, mint, coriander, makrut lime—all together they reminded her she hadn’t eaten since the morning. 

Taking no comfort in her good deed, Lythlet made ready to leave the street behind and hunt for another target. She would only be rewarded for her mercy with the loan shark Tucoras’s wrath tomorrow. She glanced back at the old man in the distance and froze in her step.

A pale hand was escaping the man’s pocket, a coin purse with a long black string clutched between slender fingers vanishing entirely into another pocket—a thief pulling a sleight of hand, leaving without looking back.

Lythlet blinked. It had happened so quickly, she almost mistrusted her eyes. The old man himself hadn’t an inkling he’d just been robbed, still waiting tiredly for his turn at the trishaw. No one else on the street had noticed, everyone minding their own business.

All none the wiser, except her.

Seizing the moment, Lythlet sprang into action, eeling through the crowd. She passed the unsuspecting old man and gained on the cutpurse, trailing him carefully.

He turned the corner onto Junda Road and strolled past the late-night eateries without a second glance, passing the local pig-farmer making his rounds through the neighborhood kitchens for slop to feed his herd.

Curious. If the thief hadn’t come here to eat—and she highly doubted he had come to play with the stray dogs as she did—then there was only one place left worth visiting by this route at this time of night: the ginhouse at the far end of the road. That meant she had about ten minutes to empty his pockets before he sat down and did it himself on a night of drinking.

He was an experienced pickpocket, she could tell as much, so she didn’t want to risk robbing him too brazenly without tilting the odds in her favor first. But she had to move fast. She scanned her surroundings and smiled for the first time that day at a familiar sight resting under the awning of a closed eatery.

“Good to see you again, old boy,” she said, bending down to pet a mangy mutt missing an eye. The stray wagged its tail and pressed its whitening muzzle into her palm tiredly. She was glad to know it had survived the winter; they’d met a year ago, and she’d come to feed it when she had something to spare. She had even taught it a handful of simple commands over the months. “Have you time to assist me? I’ll reward you with food.”

At the last word, the mutt stood up, waiting expectantly. It followed her as she crossed

the street to one of the neighboring eateries, nearing the pig-farmer and his nasty-smelling pail of slop, the stench of day-old food waste making her stomach roil.

“Filthy strays,” the farmer muttered at the sight of them, turning down the other end of the street. Choosing to ignore how the pluralization indicated his opinion of her, Lythlet leaped forth and silently snatched a half-eaten turkey wing from his pail.

The mutt wagged its tail.

“Not yet,” she apologized, holding one finger up. It obeyed her gesture, waiting patiently.

She dashed down the street, making short work of the distance between her and the thief, the dog scampering only a few paces behind her. She quietened her footsteps as she approached him, letting her presence fade into the unceasing noise of Setgad at night.

The thief sauntered along, relishing his success too much to take note of a scrawny young woman and a hungry mutt trailing him.

His coin-laden pocket was within reach, but she ignored the distended patch of cloth. Her eyes homed in on the pocket on the other side instead, flat and unremarkable.

Drawing closer, Lythlet hooked the wing bone into that empty pocket and stepped aside into the shadows, flashing an open palm at the mutt behind her.

The mongrel sprang into action, bouncing forward and tugging at one end of the wing, eager to fetch its reward.

The pickpocket stumbled and shouted in alarm, turning to barely make sense of a stray dog trying to rip a turkey wing from his coat. He wrestled with the mutt, retracting his hands with a frightened yelp whenever the dog growled.

Lythlet slipped in then, hand dipping into the unguarded pocket. Retrieving the pilfered coin purse, she darted away, completely unnoticed, sprinting to the end of the road and turning the corner.

Streets away, certain she had been neither noticed nor followed, she checked the old man’s coin purse, eyeing the coins wistfully. Then she looked up and saw the mutt trotting toward her with a wagging tail and a muzzle full of bone and half-chewed turkey.

“Good boy,” she cheered softly with her second smile of the day. 

• • •

BIDDING FAREWELL TO the stray, Lythlet returned to Fithan Avenue, but the old man was nowhere to be found. The queue had completely vanished, the muna-muna trishaw closed up for the night.

Loath as she was to admit it, she felt relieved the purse would stay with her. She needed all the coin she could get, and those four extra coins in the old man’s purse were practically a fortune at the moment.

But I still need more, Lythlet thought glumly. Tucoras expects three white valirs tomorrow, and I haven’t even a quarter of that.

It irked her how a sum of three coins—just three!—was causing her so much grief. As a bookkeeper, she had handled accounts worth a thousand times that, accounts belonging to those unlikely to even notice the absence of three white valirs. If she could only pay a brief visit to one of the mansions in Central Setgad, she’d have all the coin she’d need without anyone noticing. Just grazing the pocket change of someone like Governor Matheranos would likely end all her problems.

But even stepping foot into the governor’s precinct would be the death of her; the bulk of the city’s watchmen were posted there, protecting the rich from slumdogs like her. No—if she were to turn to thievery tonight, it would have to be amongst her people, the underclass toiling away in Southeast Setgad. The watchmen did not care to catch petty thieves so long as they stole only from petty lives.

Petty lives like yours truly, lives easily cast aside by those whose fingers tighten the purse strings. She paused. Those like Master Winaro.

Now that was a man who deserved a reckoning and a half. It was his temper that had put her in this desperate position, after all.

Seven months in all, she had worked under Hive-Master Valanti Winaro at his hive maintenance workshop. Both government and civilian markets commissioned him to tend to the lightning-bees, to clean the rot out of their hives and prolong the lives of the colonies. After years of working for crooks and fraudsters, Lythlet had been overjoyed to work as the money-minder for someone who ran a clean business, no numbers in his books needing alteration.

To all beyond his

little workshop on Destaro Street, he was renowned for being reliable, working hard from dawn till midnight. Yet she alone within the walls of his workshop knew his temper and bore the brunt of it. It would rear its head at the end of a long day, when there remained shelves and shelves of hives to tend to after he’d taken on too many in too little time.

It had begun with him cursing her, but curses she could survive. She knew how to swallow her pride for coin, and she and Desil were desperate for it. But as a crisp autumn had paled to a gray-skied winter, bruises began to pockmark her bony brown body.

It happened once, and he apologized. It happened twice, and he apologized. Thrice and a third apology, and she could no longer convince herself these were aberrations.

Yesterday evening had been the last time, and it had begun with—of all things—a visit from Governor Matheranos.

Lythlet had been sterilizing a tray of scalpels Master Winaro used to scrape away the white rot that accumulated on the bioluminescent hives when the bell by the door tinkled.

She’d raised her head, half-covered by a thick protective shroud so she wouldn’t breathe in the poisonous rot residue, to bob politely at the customer—and was stunned to see none other than Governor Matheranos entering, a swath of cloaked guards escorting him. They stood in formation behind him, the ship-within-a-diamond emblem representing the United Setgad Party stitched onto their cloaks, nightsticks and short swords hanging on their belts.

The hive maintenance workshop was frequently commissioned by the governor, but she had never expected the twice-elected leader of Setgad, second in power only to the twelve judges of the Einveldi Court, to actually deign to visit their premises himself.

Master Winaro’s eyes widened, and he yanked down his own protective shroud as he bowed.

“Bow,” he snapped at Lythlet, even as she made her torso parallel to the floor.

He slapped her back, pushing her even lower, as if he wanted her to prostrate herself on the ground the way she would before the divine or to her parents. A needless gesture, transforming an act of respect into one of subjugation—but with that one unsubtle gesture, Master Winaro had signaled two things to the governor: that according to the hierarchy of Setgad, Lythlet was the lowest person in that room, and could thus safely be ignored, and more importantly, that Master Winaro was respectful enough of the governor’s ranking above him that he was willing to debase his subordinate as such.

“Please, hive-master, none of that,” Governor Matheranos said with a laugh, waving them up. His famed mane of wild white hair shook as he gave 

a brief, pitying smile in Lythlet’s direction. Lythlet demurely lowered her gaze; the governor would consider her ill-bred if she met his eyes directly for too long.

“To what do we owe the honor of your presence, Governor?” Master Winaro said, an oily smile greasing his face.

“I’ve come to make a special request. I’m entertaining a gaggle of ministers from the Party later this week, and I intend on taking them on a brief tour through some Southeastern streets.”

“Here in the slums?” Earnest concern laced the hive-master’s words.

“Oh, not to worry, Valanti. We’ll have enough watchmen to protect us from cutpurses and whatnot. My friends are simply curious about the way life is led down here, and I deemed it my duty to educate them. Which brings me to my request: these streets must be lit as brightly as possible to make their tour more hospitable. Unfortunately, their hives haven’t been serviced in a year, and rot is dimming the lights. Here’s the list prepared by my advisors on the streets to be serviced by the end of this week.”

Lythlet peeked up from the scalpels to the parchment in Master Winaro’s hand. Her gut sank at the length of the list—yet even more long sleepless nights were waiting for her.

“Will there be any issues, Valanti?” the governor said.

“None at all,” said Master Winaro, bowing graciously.

“Excellent,” returned the governor jovially. “Your work in keeping the hives of the southern sectors clean has not gone unappreciated.”

“I would, of course, be very happy to take on the business of servicing the northern hives,” Master Winaro said hopefully.

Governor Matheranos laughed. “All in good time, Valanti. The hive-master we commission up north does good work, but if he ever retires, we’ll come to you.”

Forcing a polite smile out of his tightened jaw, Master Winaro bowed once more. “It is an honor beyond words that you would come to me personally with this request,” he said, manners cloaking his chagrin. “I know your governorship has been harangued by much trouble lately.”

Governor Matheranos barked a harsh laugh. “You mean that rabble-rouser Corio Brandolas? Pah, he’s nothing but a bloviating popinjay trying to oust me so he can be governor instead. Honestly, he wouldn’t even be given the time of day by anyone if it weren’t for the family he married into.” He leaned in. “Just between the two of us, the Einveldi Court has decided today to ban the sale of his book. Almost a unanimous decision—eleven to one! News will be released soon.”

“Oh, certainly a 

most wise decision,” said Master Winaro, nodding obsequiously.

Lythlet cast a brief side-eye at him—Master Winaro’s dog-eared copy of The Setgad Dilemma, an incendiary polemic advocating for the removal of Governor Matheranos written by Corio Brandolas, the leader of the Coalition of Hope party, was sitting just beneath the counter, no more than a foot away from Governor Matheranos.

Master Winaro and Lythlet bowed once more as Governor Matheranos took his leave, the bell tinkling overhead.

A groan left the hive-master the moment the door swung shut, and he shook the list the governor had given him. “Ten streets to be serviced in two days,” he muttered. “Madness. Does he think a hive takes only five minutes to clean?”

Lythlet grimaced. That was at least a hundred hives. She’d be sleeping in the administration quarters again, this commission making returning home a wistful daydream.

Master Winaro looked sharply at her. “This is your fault,” he snapped.

“Yes, Master Winaro,” she said, knowing better than to argue.

“If you weren’t so slow, we’d be able to clean dozens of hives a day. But now we’ve this backlog to deal with, and more to come.” He waved a hand over the apiary shelves housing scores of hives awaiting his maintenance.

“Yes, Master Winaro.” Just keep working.

“Honestly, how hard is it to obey my instructions? Even a child could work quicker than you. It says much about your father and mother that they never taught you an ounce of diligence.”

At the invocation of her parents, something inside Lythlet snapped. “It says much about you that you would insult my parents when they have nothing to do with this,” she spat, flinging a scalpel into the tray with a ringing clatter.

Master Winaro stared, stunned at her outburst.

“You hired me as your bookkeeper, not your assistant,” Lythlet continued, enraged. “It is not my duty to tend to the hives, and never has been. The only reason I’m doing this is because you’ve scared off every single hive-tender you’ve ever hired with your foul temper, and I’m the only one desperate enough to stay on.”

He turned crimson, his gaze lighting up with rage. “You dare speak to me this way?”

She flinched, already knowing what was coming next.

He balled up the list of streets and lobbed it at her face. Then came the dog-eared copy

of The Setgad Dilemma, the hardcover slapping her cheek. Corio Brandolas’s book fell just in time for her to catch sight of Master Winaro’s hand wrapping around the neck of a bottle of rot-softening solution.

She ducked just in time to miss the bottle cracking her skull. It grazed the top of her head and shattered against the wall instead, and her heart thumped at the near-death sensation. A rain of glass shards descended upon her, one flicking across her forehead. Pain spiked, and blood dripped over her eyes.

She sprang to her feet, furious, too outraged to retreat into feeble silence for once, but he fetched an unsterilized scalpel from his tool-roll. Its sharp edge glittered as he held it before her.

“Get out,” he spat, backing her toward the door. “If you ever come back here, I’ll shank your disrespectful throat myself.”

And with that threat came the splinter in her foundation that sent her spiraling down to this moment, out in the streets as a common thief hoping to scrape together enough coins for a debt-collector.

As her memories unspooled, her boots took on the cobblestones with compounding fury, storming through the streets.

Lythlet was still a distance away from the hive-master’s workshop when she halted by a road, spotting a piece to add to her burgeoning revenge plot. The street was dimly lit, the hives emitting a soft, milky light that indicated neglected colonies. She dusted her fingers, then latched onto the nearest hive-post. She climbed the length of it, hands and feet moving gracefully, her childhood pastime of scaling bamboo poles reducing a difficult task into pure muscle memory.

At the top, she fiddled with the latch, making short work of the lock with a pick she’d owned from childhood. Then she reached inside the glass case and pulled out the hive.

A gentle, nutty smell filled her nose. As pleasant as it was, hinting of hazels, she had worked long enough at the hive-master’s workshop to know intimately the smell of hive rot. Although not instantaneously perilous to breathe in, prolonged exposure was decidedly unwise.

“Come along, little bumbles,” she sang softly to the bees, landing on the ground with a soft thud.

The lightning-bees buzzed peacefully around the hive she held captive, trailing 

her as she resumed her route. Some came to rest on her fingers, illuminating her knuckles, and she stroked their fuzzy, luminous bodies, marveling at how small they were. So small, yet together their light breathed life into the city even in the darkest night.

She came to a small plot of undeveloped land, weeds overgrown, rubbish scattered in heaps. Children of the slums rarely went to bed early—if they had one at all—and there were a handful playing there, occupying their last hours of the dying night, and she sought to hire one.

One caught her eye.

The boy was young, ten at most, and his short hair stood up in messy tufts, reminiscent of leafy vegetables. He sat by himself, blowing hard against a leaf, trying to make music from it and halfway succeeding.

“Boy, come here,” she said stiffly.

The boy jerked in fright, the leaf fluttering to the ground.

She realized belatedly the error of greeting a child the way she would a dog. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said.

The boy wheeled around on his heels to retreat.

She frantically dug into her pockets and plucked out a coin. “Listen, lad. I have a business proposal. I’ll give you this spira if you hold this hive and ask a man some questions about it. That’s all.”

The boy paused, then looked over his shoulder, a mischievous glint in his eye. “I want a black valir.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she scoffed. “A spira is all a boy your age needs. I’ll give you two spiras and you’ll be grateful. If not, I’m sure one of these other tykes would be happy to accept in your stead.”

After a moment’s thought, the boy relented. “Fine. What must I do?”

She guided the boy to the workshop streets away, sending him in with the stolen hive and instructions to ask as many questions as he could about his family’s hive-lantern. Do these bees look sick to you, Master? How long would it take to have the rot cleaned out? How much would it cost? Goodness, that’s an awful lot of money. Couldn’t you make it a bit cheaper, sir?

Meanwhile, Lythlet went around the back to the side entrance. Slipping her lockpick into the door and making quick work of it, she found the cramped administrative quarters empty as expected.

Somehow, in a single day without her, the quarters had become overwhelmingly messy, reams of ledgers and contracts spread over the tables, glinting tools tossed haphazardly around. She fetched the coin

jar Master Winaro kept for change from a drawer.

Cascading clinks rang throughout the small room as she cleared it out with a vengeance, pouring it into her coin pouch.

She tightened the purse strings, but froze, ears pricking up. Steps were clicking close, light and faint but very much there on the other side of the door. Her chest seized with terror, and she bolted into the nearby closet, squeezing into the coat-stuffed nook and shutting the door after her.

Who is it? From murmurs in the distance, she knew the boy was still dutifully unleashing a barrage of questions at Master Winaro, so it couldn’t be them.

The door opened, and footsteps drew closer.

Lythlet pinched her lips tight and gripped the nearest coat. She’d be skinned alive if whoever it was came to collect their coat. Fear sank its claws into her bones, but her mind refused to quieten, curious as to who it might be.

She hunted for any patterns to draw conclusions from. The footsteps—they had been light, almost dainty. Then Lythlet noticed the fabric of the coat she clung to—Master Winaro wore a rough woolen coat, but this was a fine-threaded paletot. It belonged to a lady, small and tailored so.

His wife must have come to help him with the books in my stead.

Outside the closet, drawers were pulled open and slammed shut.

“Nothing ever kept in order around here,” Madame Winaro muttered. “He wasn’t hitting the girl hard enough if she never had the sense to clean up once in a while.”

Lythlet stilled, those words choking her in one single timespun breath.

A minute later, Madame Winaro retrieved what she had come for, and the door shut once more, her footsteps vanishing into the distance.

Lythlet lingered, clutching the paletot tightly, fingertips white from pressure. She pressed her bandaged forehead against it, the soft fabric caressing her skin, her spirit sapped of all strength. It grieved her to think of how meaningless her pain was to these people.

Let me grant you as much mercy as you’ve ever shown me, she swore, rage resurfacing.

She rammed her hands south into the pockets of Madame Winaro’s coat, ripping

out the contents by the fistful and shoving them into her own pockets. She tore out of the closet, out of the hive-master’s workshop, to the end of the street, where stood a small shrine dedicated to Ezrinara, the warden of wisdom and justice.

The effigy of Ezrinara stood forebodingly tall, a stern woman wielding the Fire of Retribution between her palms. Behind her, at the back of the shrine, was the altar to the Sunsmith and the Moonmachinist, cordoned off by a golden chain. It was considered inappropriate to make prayers directly to the creators of mortalkind, the immortal voyagers of the universe known and unknown, without guidance from a monk learned in the Poetic scriptures, their intricately tattooed backs proclaiming their liturgical mastery. Unguided prayers could be made to the twelve tutelary wardens instead, each governing specific domains.

There, alone but for Ezrinara’s vigilance, Lythlet pored through everything she’d stolen. Coins, plenty of them—at last, there would be enough to pay the loan shark tomorrow.

But buried under a fistful of coins was a thin silver chain. She had plucked it from Madame Winaro’s coat without noticing what it was. Two ornate silver rings clung to the chain, as did a thin star-shaped pendant with a sapphire center. It was a wedding pendant, clear as daylight.

This is too much, spoke a quiet voice within her. Coins were one thing, but this would have precious sentimental value. The vindictive rage was gone now, and she was alone with the remains of her soul, a feeble, wilted thing.

She turned and stared warily at the manifestation of Ezrinara. The gaze of her cold stone eyes bade Lythlet be still. Unbidden, the opening prayer recited before the divine controlling their fate ran through her mind: umera venturi, asigo venturi. We live according to your whims, we die according to your whims.

She ought to return it. The coins alone would be enough to keep the loan shark happy for the month. Of course, the wedding pendant would pay off an even greater portion of Desil’s debt—but returning it would be the right thing to do.

So spoke Ezrinara, She of Good Counsel, but Lythlet turned her heart away. Madame Winaro may have never raised a hand against her, but neither had she ever lowered her husband’s.

Staring up at the effigy, Lythlet made her case: You cannot condemn me for doing what I must to survive. You cannot render my life a tragedy, then damn me for fighting to overcome it. I owe the Winaros nothing. Not a single iota of mercy, not a single iota of guilt. May they reap thricefold every bit of pain they have ever sown in me, she cursed the workshop, grip tightening over the chain.

Wouldn’t it be poetic justice if she ended her night on three victims, anyway? First the pickpocket, now the two Winaros. A proper Ederi story concluded with three, Lythlet had learned that much from all the storybooks

 she’d stolen in her youth.

Moments later, the boy caught up with her, hive still in hand.

“Did what you asked, ma’am,” he announced cheerfully. “My fee, if you’d please.”

“Very well, little loan shark. Two spiras, as promised. Run along now. It’s late.”

“What shall I do with the hive?”

“Keep it, if you like.”

“What for? A dying hive’s not worth much,” he said, scrutinizing it. “Buying a hive’s never the expensive part, maintaining it is. I doubt I’ll get more than five pennies for it. Look at all this rot here! I’ll probably get sick if I hold on to this any longer. These bees are worthless. The sooner they die, the luckier they are.”

She bristled at him. “How did you wind up such a miser at your age?”

“I was born this way,” said the boy with pride.

“Careful with that now, or come ten years’ time, you’ll wind up like me.”

“You can’t be only ten years older than me,” said the boy, staring in astonishment at her.

She shooed him away with a snarl, but not before snatching the hive.

“Don’t listen to that nasty turnip,” she whispered to the lightning-bees as she stalked away. One flew up and landed on her knuckle, limning her skin red with its soft moonlight glow, then buzzing happily as she stroked it. “None of you are worthless. You’re all good, hardworking little bumbles. If it weren’t for you lot, this city would be wreathed in darkness.”

But the boy had been right about one thing: white rot was gathering at the base of the hive, the nutty smell faint. The bees would die soon if the hive wasn’t tended to.

All it would take was Governor Matheranos signing a directive to have the lamps of that street serviced, but he was a man sitting in the safety of his well-lit chancery, blissfully unaware of the quiet suffering beyond his walls, signing edict after edict that seemed to benefit only people of his ilk and never hers. Rare was such a man who cared for small lives.

She returned to the street she’d stolen the colony from, lowering it back into the glass cage of the hive-post.

“I hope you all live a long time,” she whispered as the bees swirled around in lumbering circles. She clung to the hive-post longer than she intended, watching the bees, feeling a strange sort of sorrow, a strange sort of camaraderie. It was in the days of her deep-buried bittersweet

hildhood when she had come to the conclusion that slumdogs like her had more in common with the lives of insects than the rich.

As thrilling as the night had been, taking revenge on the Winaros and getting enough money to pay off Tucoras at dawn, a deep melancholia filled Lythlet then. My little adventure as a protagonist has come to an end now, she thought as the bees flitted over her fingers, and it’s time to return to the margins where I belong. ...