Forbidden Read Free

strides before he faltered. What was he doing? If the guard were after the man, for whatever reason, he should stop and assist them. He should give them the bundle, let them sort it all out. He pulled up hard and spun back.
    They had the old man, sagging in their hold. Something flashed in the rain. The serrated blade of a knife. Not the ceremonial variety Rom was accustomed to seeing in pictures, but a weapon strictly forbidden.
    “Run!” the man screamed.
    As one guardsman held the flailing old man, the one with the knife ripped the blade across his wrinkled throat. The old man’s neck opened with a dark, yawning gush. His last cry devolved into a gurgle as his knees gave way.
    And then the gaze of the restraining guardsman locked on Rom. The old man was no longer their quarry.
    He was.

Chapter Two
    G ripping the parcel, Rom sprinted between the two buildings to the street and took the corner at full speed. The third guardsman was there to cut him off, and neither had time to pull up. They crashed into each other with force that knocked Rom’s breath from his lungs and set the world ringing in his ears.
    The guardsman went down beneath him with a grunt. The parcel slipped free of Rom’s grip and skittered on the pavement.
    Rom threw himself past the guardsman’s clawing fingers, lunged for the parcel, and rolled to his feet with the thing in his hands. But in the process he lost his bag.
    Shouts from the alley—too close.
    He should stop, turn back, and give them the package. Clear this up. But the image of that knife and the dark gush of blood catapulted Rom across the street. He barely missed a second collision, this time with an oncoming bicycle.
    He veered onto a side street, barely avoiding a young woman carrying a grocery bag. Her arms flew up. He heard her bag crash to the pavement behind him. He sprinted to the first intersection and tore down a street to his right: Entura Street, five blocks from home.
    He had just watched a man’s life spurt out of his throat. The look in the man’s eyes hadn’t been madness, but extreme fear. And now that same fear consumed Rom in a way he had never experienced.
    Your father was killed.
    His mother had never said anything of the sort. Surely she would have known.
    At the end of the block he veered left onto a slender cobbled street. It had no streetlamp. He sprinted its empty length, lungs burning.
    At the end of the lane was an abandoned print shop, its windows long boarded over, its decorative crenels broken or crumbled away. He knew this place, had poked around it before, even shown it to Avra once, wondering if it would make a second workshop before he gave up the idea as too expensive.
    Rom slowed, panting, and looked around. No one present that he could see. He jogged a few paces, searched along the first floor of the building. There—the boards of a ground-floor window, still missing where he had once broken them away to climb inside.
    He shoved his way through, grunting as a splintered board ripped the shoulder of his jacket down to the skin. He hesitated just a moment inside as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The uncanny still of the stale air filled his nostrils.
    He staggered past the front room to the larger one in back and fell against the wall just inside the open doorway. He listened for long moments, straining to hear shouts or the prying of window boards. Only his own labored breathing and the skittering of rodents along the far wall broke the silence.
    Rom exhaled an uneven breath and slid down onto his rear, ignoring the plaster that dusted his shoulders. Hands trembling, he rubbed the rain from his eyes. But it wasn’t all rain. His fingers came away red. Blood was on the dirty muslin of the parcel, too.
    He set the parcel down. But the sight of it, the blood-smeared price of a life—more than one, according to the old man—seemed obscene.
    What have I done?
    He had run in panic and would surely pay a terrible price. But why had the old man