Short story things to help put a few more specifics into Zhi's backstory. I wanted to show how she got the kink in her tail, but there might be more after. There'll be a little bit of child abuse towards the end in another post or two. Fair warning.
Mam never came home alone at night. Zhi wasn’t allowed to be home at night. She’d stay out, seeing how high she could climb and what she could steal from the nocturnal residents of the city. Sometimes she’d roam in packs with the children what passed for her friends, laughing and jeering at whatever unfortunates they came across. Sometimes the older kids would filch booze, and they’d sit around in abandoned buildings and lots passing the bottles around and talk about how great they were.
Night belonged to Keepers. Zhavi understood, in an abstract sense, that she belonged to the Keeper clan. But what she knew, in a concrete sense, was that night belonged to her. Specifically. It was her freedom. It turned the city into her playground.
That night, Zhi was alone. She’d a flexible wire and a tougher one she’d nicked from a smithy. They weren’t picks. Picks were things you didn’t often get to steal, because the older thieves had ‘em and it was rough to steal from one of them. Rough as in they caught you, and they didn’t bother calling for the jacks. They’d just sheathe their knife in you and call it even. That was the hierarchy in the city. Zhi was at the bottom.
The door rattled. Zhi paused in her attempts, cursing its shit construction. It didn’t sit right on its hinges, and it was loose nohow. She listened for footsteps, heard none, and put the wires back to the lock. She couldn’t open good locks with her tools, but she could and had opened bad locks. But right now, even despite the fact that she was in the poorest residential area, this lock, in particular, was giving her a load more trouble then she’d had in a full moon. What was worse, the wire was getting all slippery in her fingers. She kept having to stick them in her mouth to wipe her hands against her pants.
She was almost there when the door jerked under her fingers. She froze, tools still inserted into the locking mechanism, as something bumped behind the door. Eyes wide, she tried to pull the wires out from the lock, but her fingers had gone all slippery again. They were jerked from her grip. The door opened. Zhi stared up, and up until her eyes crested the broad chin of a roegadyn. A roegadyn with axe in hand. He looked down. Their eyes met. For a strange, long moment Zhi felt a curious sense of detachment as she struggled to place the face; she’d seen it somewhere before. He moved, hefting the axe, and Zhi’s eyes moved to the weapon automatically, drawn to the movement. The axe was more familiar. Particularly because it was a jack weapon.
The moment ended. Zhi cursed, a stream of unintelligible words flowing from her, as she backpedaled, turning to run. His hand shot out and caught the back of her shirt. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she was drawn back, and then lifted. She spun in mid air, struggling and kicking, and came face to face with the man. He was big. The axe had gone from his other hand, and he caught her flailing hands with it, stilling her struggles.
“Kid,†he growled, “think I tole ye and yer friends t’stay out o’trouble.â€
Oh yeah. That jack. She did remember him. Him and his partner patrolled their part of the city, and he usually pulled night shifts. Except for tonight. Apparently. And when, exactly, had this jack come to live in this neighborhood? How had she not known about it? The questions shot around her head, all bouncy desperation. She tried to think around them, and as she opened her mouth to inhale for a retort, she caught a whiff of something.
Zhavi Gutterborn was the daughter of a whore. She knew what sex smelled like. A slow grin curved her lips, and he shook her in retaliation for her apparent irreverence. It rattled her, but she wasn’t down for long. Oh no.
“Ruttin’ on duty, mister?†She thought herself right clever for the retort, as was shown with the return of her grin.
He stared at her, eyes going all flat and hard. It was a sign of victory, she thought, and readied another salvo. Her voice was smugness personified. “Don’tcha know where th’ real whores are, mister? Lasses in this part o’ town ain’t nothin’ but. . .†She trailed off, eyes going wide again.
He’d removed the hand keeping her still. He’d picked up his axe. Its edge was pointed towards her, and she stared at it. Even in the dark of night, there was light enough to glimmer off the metal of the blade. Of the edge. It looked right sharp. Real sharp.
“D’ye know what the punishment used t’be fer ratty little thieves, lass?â€
The grin vanished. “U-uhhh. . .â€
“See, the way t’keep ratty little thieves from stealin’ is t’take away what they use t’steal with. Guess what that is?â€
Definite bad feeling. “Umm. . .me picks?â€
“Hmm.†He had a grin on his face. It was a nasty, ugly grin. “I think I might take me a hand. No one has t’know but us two, right?â€
Zhi went cold. He’d do it. She knew he would. She’d seen the damage the axes of the jacks could do to a man, woman. . .child. Zhi weren’t no stranger to bloodshed. No one could be, not on the streets. Dead bodies happened, and you learned to walk around them, not look at them. Same with anything else. Shouting, screaming. . .cries for help. She was on her own.
She spat. Spitting contests was something she was good at, and her aim was true. It got into his eyes. Now, the jacks? They weren’t some bumbling idiots. He didn’t drop her. He didn’t drop his axe to start rubbing at his eyes. He didn’t jerk away. But it did distract him, and that was all the moment she needed to slip out of her shirt and hit the ground.
Zhi always wore layers. They’d never saved her from getting cut up before, but she’d remember for next time — mam screaming at her for losing a shirt aside. She looked up as the world seemed to stop, muscles tensing to run, and saw that he was already letting go of her shirt, already starting to wipe at his eyes. He was quick for a roegadyn. Naw, more’n that, he was quick for anyone. He was just too damn fast.
He bellowed.
“Shit!†Zhi ran.
In a just world, she would have outpaced him. She should have been more nimble than he was. But the world wasn’t just, and wasn’t fair — he was a guard in his prime, a jack who made his living chasing down petty criminals and meting out justice whichever way he saw fit. Suffice to say, even with axe held to the side (she hoped he tripped and rutting cut himself up on it) and more mass than any one person should even have, he kept on her tail.
She took sharp turns. He stayed on her. She jumped down onto lower streets. He crashed down behind her, unphased. She swung off bridge to bridge. He was always behind her. Gaining. It wasn’t right. It was downright unnatural — or something. She had to think fast to rid herself of him, go somewhere he wouldn’t be able to follow. Do something he wouldn’t expect.
She pivoted onto yet another bridge, breath coming in great gasps and arms pumping, and made another jump. But rather than landing on the path below, as she had done the last few times, she landed on the wall. Skin tore as her fingers and toes scrabbled for purchase, and she watched as he sailed past her to land on the road below. He looked up, murder in his eyes, and he put his axe away. He set his hands to the rock. He started to climb.
It really wasn’t rutting fair. Really. Zhi cursed Nald’thal for all the weight that had gone into the roe’s side of the scales, and set herself to climbing. The pain hadn’t fully set in, burned away by her fear and exhilaration, but she could feel the start of cramping exhaustion in her fingers. She had to dust him somehow. She crested another tier, stumbled forward a few steps, and had an idea. She moved to the rough outcropping of rock behind the buildings on this newest tier and started to climb again — just as the roe crested the road. Zhi redoubled her efforts, and was a body’s length ahead of him when he set his hands to the wall.
When it came to climbing, Zhi was good. There, she had an edge on him. She pulled away, and when she looked back down he was a far enough distance away. She looked, waiting until he had one hand up, reaching for the next handhold. He was directly below her. It was perfect. She let go of the wall, landing one foot on his head, the other slipping off his shoulder and skidding down his front. She wasn’t a heavy kid, but she was heavy enough. She’d caught him by surprise, and he lost his grip on the wall. They fell.
Bad landings happened from time to time, even for her. But hers wasn’t near as bad as his. He landed flat on his back, and she half on and half off of him, rolling away with the force of it. They hadn’t been all that high up, but it was enough to knock every last breath of air from his lungs. There was a whistling, wheezing sound as he instinctively tried to refill them. The sound of it made her smile, even as she tried to shake the dizziness caused by her own rough landing. But him? He wouldn’t be able to follow for a little while. Long enough.
Zhi went to him, patting him down. She found gil, and took a handful. Might as well, right? She’d have to avoid his part of town for awhile, anyways, because the next time he saw her? He was very probably gonna kill her. So she took what she could and trotted away to waste more time until dawn. Until she could go home.
Mam always woke up in the morning alone. Alone except for Zhi. When Zhi came home, she’d always walk to the one bed in their little room, to the shoddy table where money was always left. Zhi would count that money. Counting, the one thing her mam had taught her, because that was Zhi’s job: to keep track of how much money they had. Counting, her mam had told her many times, was useful. You could get through just about anything so long as you knew how to keep numbers in your head. Zhi would take the money, count it, and then go to the small stash they kept under the floorboards.
Zhi was lucky. Her mam hadn’t given herself over to drugs, over to addictions. She was smart enough to hoard what little money they had, and when she was in a good mood she’d pull Zhi onto her lap and poke through the gil together, whispering stories of places they would go when she’d earned enough.
But she was never in a good mood for very long.
Mam never quite earned enough.
Zhi never understood why money would disappear, why it had to go towards something she didn’t understand, to a man she’d never met. Her mam was smart, but when it really counted, she wasn’t smart enough.
Zhi jingled her own earned coin in her hand as she crept inside, locking the door behind and setting the wedge; that door’s lock was the first she’d ever practiced on, and she knew just how easy to pick it was. The wedge helped.
It was a short trip to the table. Their little room was small, as were most like them who made a living on the edge of poverty, flirting with being out on the streets. But Zhi didn’t need more than a room. She had her, and her mom, and they kept each other warm. They had food. It was enough.
Zhi was breathing in the smells of her mam’s night out as she took the seven steps from door to table (it took her mam four; five when she was tired). It was a game to figure out how many men had been in the room during the night. It was as automatic to her as counting the money, counting steps, counting anything was.
She froze with her hand outstretched towards the table, turning to look towards the bed. She smelled a man. A familiar man, one she’d smelled on her mam before. One that, she knew instinctively, hit her mam. One who her mam would visit in the daytime. One that never gave her mam any money, but took it — there was always less in their stash when mam went out to visit him.
Mam wasn’t sleeping alone.
The room was suddenly too small, too precious. Zhi’d never seen this man before, the one who took their money. Though, truth, she rarely saw any of the men her mam dallied with. Rage rose up in her. This wasn’t his place. He didn’t belong there. None of them belonged there in the day, in her spot next to her mam. She left the gil on the table, and turned towards the bed. He was too big. There wasn’t room on it for her. He was in her spot, and that filled her with a wrath so deep and so vicious that she didn’t know what to do with it. So she just stared, gulping shallow breaths, hands fisted. She wasn’t going to leave. She wasn’t going to let him take her place. She ripped one of their ratty blankets away, intent on setting herself a vigil against the wall.
The man turned. His eyes flickered open. Zhi froze. He was a hyur, tall, muscles wiry on the arm flopped above his head. She opened her mouth to tell him to leave, that he wasn’t allowed to stay, when he chuckled. It was a deep sound, masculine. It didn’t belong in the room. Her eyes flickered away, towards her mam. She didn’t stir. Her ears were soft in sleep, eyes closed, breathing steady. There was a dark spot on her upper cheekbone, one that hadn’t been there when Zhi’d left earlier.
Her courage broke. She took a step back, hands fisting into the bottom of her shirt — still clutching the blanket. The man was staring at her, sleepy: there was a slow, relaxed smile on his face as he took the sight of her in. She stared at him, eyes moving from his hand to her mam’s face. She turned to look at the door, her shirt twisting in her grip. Heat prickled behind her eyes as she looked back at him. He looked from her to the corner behind her, furthest from the bed. She took another step back, shoulders hunching up and her breath coming faster.
Nald’thal had taken everything from her side of the scales. She was craven. He smiled at her as she took the eight steps to the corner. “Good lass,†he murmured. She heard the rustling sound of him turning over as she pulled the blanket around her and sat with her back in the corner. It wasn’t fair. That was her spot. Her throat was closing up. He shouldn’t be there. Why was he there? Had her mam told him he could stay? Why hadn’t she told Zhi? Her breath hitched. She pressed her lips together, trying to swallow, trying to stay silent. She curled double, face to knees.
Just for today, she told herself. Mam will explain it when she wakes up. He’ll be gone. He won’t come back. Just for today. She hated him. She hated him worse than when her mam hit her in the mouth for backtalking. Worse than when her mam told her no, told her to shut up, told her to get out. She hated him worse than the jacks, worse than rival kids who threw rocks at her. Worse than the old nag in the market who always caught her up by the ear when she tried to run past, and twisted it until Zhi was sure it was gonna come off. She hated him more than anyone she’d ever hated before. She was sure that she would hate him forever, that he would always be the person she hated most in the world.
She would, she decided, forgive her mam. Once he was gone, she would tell her mam it was okay. She was grown up at nine, and she understood. Her mam would tell her that it was just this one time. There would be a reason. They would laugh and count the gil. Her mam would buy her something sweet. She would never see him again. She would tell her mam to stop going to see him, and then they would save up more gil, and they could leave their little room, the one that leaked and was cold in winter.
Everything would be okay.
Nothing was going to change.
But when she woke up, he was still there.
Mam never came home alone at night. Zhi wasn’t allowed to be home at night. She’d stay out, seeing how high she could climb and what she could steal from the nocturnal residents of the city. Sometimes she’d roam in packs with the children what passed for her friends, laughing and jeering at whatever unfortunates they came across. Sometimes the older kids would filch booze, and they’d sit around in abandoned buildings and lots passing the bottles around and talk about how great they were.
Night belonged to Keepers. Zhavi understood, in an abstract sense, that she belonged to the Keeper clan. But what she knew, in a concrete sense, was that night belonged to her. Specifically. It was her freedom. It turned the city into her playground.
That night, Zhi was alone. She’d a flexible wire and a tougher one she’d nicked from a smithy. They weren’t picks. Picks were things you didn’t often get to steal, because the older thieves had ‘em and it was rough to steal from one of them. Rough as in they caught you, and they didn’t bother calling for the jacks. They’d just sheathe their knife in you and call it even. That was the hierarchy in the city. Zhi was at the bottom.
The door rattled. Zhi paused in her attempts, cursing its shit construction. It didn’t sit right on its hinges, and it was loose nohow. She listened for footsteps, heard none, and put the wires back to the lock. She couldn’t open good locks with her tools, but she could and had opened bad locks. But right now, even despite the fact that she was in the poorest residential area, this lock, in particular, was giving her a load more trouble then she’d had in a full moon. What was worse, the wire was getting all slippery in her fingers. She kept having to stick them in her mouth to wipe her hands against her pants.
She was almost there when the door jerked under her fingers. She froze, tools still inserted into the locking mechanism, as something bumped behind the door. Eyes wide, she tried to pull the wires out from the lock, but her fingers had gone all slippery again. They were jerked from her grip. The door opened. Zhi stared up, and up until her eyes crested the broad chin of a roegadyn. A roegadyn with axe in hand. He looked down. Their eyes met. For a strange, long moment Zhi felt a curious sense of detachment as she struggled to place the face; she’d seen it somewhere before. He moved, hefting the axe, and Zhi’s eyes moved to the weapon automatically, drawn to the movement. The axe was more familiar. Particularly because it was a jack weapon.
The moment ended. Zhi cursed, a stream of unintelligible words flowing from her, as she backpedaled, turning to run. His hand shot out and caught the back of her shirt. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head as she was drawn back, and then lifted. She spun in mid air, struggling and kicking, and came face to face with the man. He was big. The axe had gone from his other hand, and he caught her flailing hands with it, stilling her struggles.
“Kid,†he growled, “think I tole ye and yer friends t’stay out o’trouble.â€
Oh yeah. That jack. She did remember him. Him and his partner patrolled their part of the city, and he usually pulled night shifts. Except for tonight. Apparently. And when, exactly, had this jack come to live in this neighborhood? How had she not known about it? The questions shot around her head, all bouncy desperation. She tried to think around them, and as she opened her mouth to inhale for a retort, she caught a whiff of something.
Zhavi Gutterborn was the daughter of a whore. She knew what sex smelled like. A slow grin curved her lips, and he shook her in retaliation for her apparent irreverence. It rattled her, but she wasn’t down for long. Oh no.
“Ruttin’ on duty, mister?†She thought herself right clever for the retort, as was shown with the return of her grin.
He stared at her, eyes going all flat and hard. It was a sign of victory, she thought, and readied another salvo. Her voice was smugness personified. “Don’tcha know where th’ real whores are, mister? Lasses in this part o’ town ain’t nothin’ but. . .†She trailed off, eyes going wide again.
He’d removed the hand keeping her still. He’d picked up his axe. Its edge was pointed towards her, and she stared at it. Even in the dark of night, there was light enough to glimmer off the metal of the blade. Of the edge. It looked right sharp. Real sharp.
“D’ye know what the punishment used t’be fer ratty little thieves, lass?â€
The grin vanished. “U-uhhh. . .â€
“See, the way t’keep ratty little thieves from stealin’ is t’take away what they use t’steal with. Guess what that is?â€
Definite bad feeling. “Umm. . .me picks?â€
“Hmm.†He had a grin on his face. It was a nasty, ugly grin. “I think I might take me a hand. No one has t’know but us two, right?â€
Zhi went cold. He’d do it. She knew he would. She’d seen the damage the axes of the jacks could do to a man, woman. . .child. Zhi weren’t no stranger to bloodshed. No one could be, not on the streets. Dead bodies happened, and you learned to walk around them, not look at them. Same with anything else. Shouting, screaming. . .cries for help. She was on her own.
She spat. Spitting contests was something she was good at, and her aim was true. It got into his eyes. Now, the jacks? They weren’t some bumbling idiots. He didn’t drop her. He didn’t drop his axe to start rubbing at his eyes. He didn’t jerk away. But it did distract him, and that was all the moment she needed to slip out of her shirt and hit the ground.
Zhi always wore layers. They’d never saved her from getting cut up before, but she’d remember for next time — mam screaming at her for losing a shirt aside. She looked up as the world seemed to stop, muscles tensing to run, and saw that he was already letting go of her shirt, already starting to wipe at his eyes. He was quick for a roegadyn. Naw, more’n that, he was quick for anyone. He was just too damn fast.
He bellowed.
“Shit!†Zhi ran.
In a just world, she would have outpaced him. She should have been more nimble than he was. But the world wasn’t just, and wasn’t fair — he was a guard in his prime, a jack who made his living chasing down petty criminals and meting out justice whichever way he saw fit. Suffice to say, even with axe held to the side (she hoped he tripped and rutting cut himself up on it) and more mass than any one person should even have, he kept on her tail.
She took sharp turns. He stayed on her. She jumped down onto lower streets. He crashed down behind her, unphased. She swung off bridge to bridge. He was always behind her. Gaining. It wasn’t right. It was downright unnatural — or something. She had to think fast to rid herself of him, go somewhere he wouldn’t be able to follow. Do something he wouldn’t expect.
She pivoted onto yet another bridge, breath coming in great gasps and arms pumping, and made another jump. But rather than landing on the path below, as she had done the last few times, she landed on the wall. Skin tore as her fingers and toes scrabbled for purchase, and she watched as he sailed past her to land on the road below. He looked up, murder in his eyes, and he put his axe away. He set his hands to the rock. He started to climb.
It really wasn’t rutting fair. Really. Zhi cursed Nald’thal for all the weight that had gone into the roe’s side of the scales, and set herself to climbing. The pain hadn’t fully set in, burned away by her fear and exhilaration, but she could feel the start of cramping exhaustion in her fingers. She had to dust him somehow. She crested another tier, stumbled forward a few steps, and had an idea. She moved to the rough outcropping of rock behind the buildings on this newest tier and started to climb again — just as the roe crested the road. Zhi redoubled her efforts, and was a body’s length ahead of him when he set his hands to the wall.
When it came to climbing, Zhi was good. There, she had an edge on him. She pulled away, and when she looked back down he was a far enough distance away. She looked, waiting until he had one hand up, reaching for the next handhold. He was directly below her. It was perfect. She let go of the wall, landing one foot on his head, the other slipping off his shoulder and skidding down his front. She wasn’t a heavy kid, but she was heavy enough. She’d caught him by surprise, and he lost his grip on the wall. They fell.
Bad landings happened from time to time, even for her. But hers wasn’t near as bad as his. He landed flat on his back, and she half on and half off of him, rolling away with the force of it. They hadn’t been all that high up, but it was enough to knock every last breath of air from his lungs. There was a whistling, wheezing sound as he instinctively tried to refill them. The sound of it made her smile, even as she tried to shake the dizziness caused by her own rough landing. But him? He wouldn’t be able to follow for a little while. Long enough.
Zhi went to him, patting him down. She found gil, and took a handful. Might as well, right? She’d have to avoid his part of town for awhile, anyways, because the next time he saw her? He was very probably gonna kill her. So she took what she could and trotted away to waste more time until dawn. Until she could go home.
*
Mam always woke up in the morning alone. Alone except for Zhi. When Zhi came home, she’d always walk to the one bed in their little room, to the shoddy table where money was always left. Zhi would count that money. Counting, the one thing her mam had taught her, because that was Zhi’s job: to keep track of how much money they had. Counting, her mam had told her many times, was useful. You could get through just about anything so long as you knew how to keep numbers in your head. Zhi would take the money, count it, and then go to the small stash they kept under the floorboards.
Zhi was lucky. Her mam hadn’t given herself over to drugs, over to addictions. She was smart enough to hoard what little money they had, and when she was in a good mood she’d pull Zhi onto her lap and poke through the gil together, whispering stories of places they would go when she’d earned enough.
But she was never in a good mood for very long.
Mam never quite earned enough.
Zhi never understood why money would disappear, why it had to go towards something she didn’t understand, to a man she’d never met. Her mam was smart, but when it really counted, she wasn’t smart enough.
Zhi jingled her own earned coin in her hand as she crept inside, locking the door behind and setting the wedge; that door’s lock was the first she’d ever practiced on, and she knew just how easy to pick it was. The wedge helped.
It was a short trip to the table. Their little room was small, as were most like them who made a living on the edge of poverty, flirting with being out on the streets. But Zhi didn’t need more than a room. She had her, and her mom, and they kept each other warm. They had food. It was enough.
Zhi was breathing in the smells of her mam’s night out as she took the seven steps from door to table (it took her mam four; five when she was tired). It was a game to figure out how many men had been in the room during the night. It was as automatic to her as counting the money, counting steps, counting anything was.
She froze with her hand outstretched towards the table, turning to look towards the bed. She smelled a man. A familiar man, one she’d smelled on her mam before. One that, she knew instinctively, hit her mam. One who her mam would visit in the daytime. One that never gave her mam any money, but took it — there was always less in their stash when mam went out to visit him.
Mam wasn’t sleeping alone.
The room was suddenly too small, too precious. Zhi’d never seen this man before, the one who took their money. Though, truth, she rarely saw any of the men her mam dallied with. Rage rose up in her. This wasn’t his place. He didn’t belong there. None of them belonged there in the day, in her spot next to her mam. She left the gil on the table, and turned towards the bed. He was too big. There wasn’t room on it for her. He was in her spot, and that filled her with a wrath so deep and so vicious that she didn’t know what to do with it. So she just stared, gulping shallow breaths, hands fisted. She wasn’t going to leave. She wasn’t going to let him take her place. She ripped one of their ratty blankets away, intent on setting herself a vigil against the wall.
The man turned. His eyes flickered open. Zhi froze. He was a hyur, tall, muscles wiry on the arm flopped above his head. She opened her mouth to tell him to leave, that he wasn’t allowed to stay, when he chuckled. It was a deep sound, masculine. It didn’t belong in the room. Her eyes flickered away, towards her mam. She didn’t stir. Her ears were soft in sleep, eyes closed, breathing steady. There was a dark spot on her upper cheekbone, one that hadn’t been there when Zhi’d left earlier.
Her courage broke. She took a step back, hands fisting into the bottom of her shirt — still clutching the blanket. The man was staring at her, sleepy: there was a slow, relaxed smile on his face as he took the sight of her in. She stared at him, eyes moving from his hand to her mam’s face. She turned to look at the door, her shirt twisting in her grip. Heat prickled behind her eyes as she looked back at him. He looked from her to the corner behind her, furthest from the bed. She took another step back, shoulders hunching up and her breath coming faster.
Nald’thal had taken everything from her side of the scales. She was craven. He smiled at her as she took the eight steps to the corner. “Good lass,†he murmured. She heard the rustling sound of him turning over as she pulled the blanket around her and sat with her back in the corner. It wasn’t fair. That was her spot. Her throat was closing up. He shouldn’t be there. Why was he there? Had her mam told him he could stay? Why hadn’t she told Zhi? Her breath hitched. She pressed her lips together, trying to swallow, trying to stay silent. She curled double, face to knees.
Just for today, she told herself. Mam will explain it when she wakes up. He’ll be gone. He won’t come back. Just for today. She hated him. She hated him worse than when her mam hit her in the mouth for backtalking. Worse than when her mam told her no, told her to shut up, told her to get out. She hated him worse than the jacks, worse than rival kids who threw rocks at her. Worse than the old nag in the market who always caught her up by the ear when she tried to run past, and twisted it until Zhi was sure it was gonna come off. She hated him more than anyone she’d ever hated before. She was sure that she would hate him forever, that he would always be the person she hated most in the world.
She would, she decided, forgive her mam. Once he was gone, she would tell her mam it was okay. She was grown up at nine, and she understood. Her mam would tell her that it was just this one time. There would be a reason. They would laugh and count the gil. Her mam would buy her something sweet. She would never see him again. She would tell her mam to stop going to see him, and then they would save up more gil, and they could leave their little room, the one that leaked and was cold in winter.
Everything would be okay.
Nothing was going to change.
But when she woke up, he was still there.
