Adversaries Together Read Free Page A

others looking
to harm them.”
    Declan smirked, “So I need ta shadow ‘em an’
dispose of these others.”
    Tobin shook his head, “You don’t need to stop
anyone that might cross their path but if the two do have their
mission terminated, you need to acquire proof of their demise.”
    Declan listened, but his mind began to wander
as he tried to figure out what the Spires wanted with embroiling
themselves with the Cathedral. It was quickly becoming clear that
this wasn’t above board with the Spires and the idea of being mired
in the politics of the Cathedral was not appealing. However, the
purse’s weight in his hand felt right and he couldn’t help but
fantasize about how good twice the amount would feel, “So, go on
then. Tell us some more…”

    Rikonen, Lammas Day

    The morning blue was cold, the air thin
carrying sharp echoes from distant alleys. In the background, the
white noise of the bay mixed with the hum of the scattered fires
sending up black columns from throughout the city. Fery opened her
eyes and immediately shot up; there was a moment of shock and
disorientation. Every morning started this way. She couldn’t
remember the last time she had to fight to wake herself, the last
time she fought to stay in a warm slumber from a deep safe sleep.
She couldn’t remember when the sound of birds in the morning had
stopped. These days Rikonen never fell asleep nor ever woke up. It
was bleeding into Fery, getting to the point where she was merely
abiding not surviving.
    She looked around the room and realized where
she was. The night before had been moonless, she had made her way
through the alleys of the third ward trying to stay ahead of the
cannibal gangs that had flushed her out of her last hiding spot.
The third ward had been the distillery district, small but
distinctive with its tall and narrow stone buildings whose cream
color bricks stood out from the rest of the city’s white plaster.
For hundreds of years the district had taken a portion of the grain
and seed harvest from the plains outside the city creating one of
the most popular and strong spirit the world had seen. But it’d
been one of the first wards shutdown because of The Blockade, then
the first to be abandoned. Fery had hoped she could steal away for
at least the night here and, if things went well, perhaps
longer.
    The morning became brighter as she remembered
where she was. It was a storehouse, cold, hard, and vacant. Fery
threw off the tarp she’d been using as a blanket and looked around
to absorb more details of the place now there was light. Most of
the level was open with pillars roughly every twenty feet and huge
arched open-air windows lined the three walls. She had climbed up
four floors, the wind whipped through leaving Fery unable to stop
trembling. She stood and began folding up the canvas. Kneeling as
she stuffed it away, her stomach lurched and she felt a rumble go
through her entire torso. She needed to eat, but her food was
nearly gone—small pouch of goosefoot, a heel of heavy bread, and
the brick of cheese she had stolen.
    “ No,” she whispered to
herself as she looked at the cheese, “I didn’t steal it. She was
dead, I was alive.”
    Still, she hadn’t taken a bite of the cheese
since she had pried it from the dead woman’s hands. Every time she
raised the cheese to her mouth, she saw the corpse’s face, the
woman’s last living look. Resignation. How had she died? Fery
didn’t know. Most likely exposure. A hunk of cheese, a treasure.
The woman had not marks on her, no blood. Perhaps she had frozen to
death or her heart just gave out. She’d seen it before on the
streets, people who had just given up. Some had taken their own
life—many hung themselves, more than she would have thought had the
will to impale themselves with makeshift stakes. A good number had
stabbed themselves in the neck and bled out; it had gotten so
common before the flesh-eaters that folk called it Parmentier’s
Way. It made