Boots hit the mud. One slipped. The runner fell face-first, teeth hitting together. The other two kept going. Elbows out. Eyes forward. They reached the gate first. By sundown the one who fell would blame the ground. The ones inside would eat.

  Sheets twisted under my fists.

  Fingers forced open.

  The West Docks bled through, I reached out for my gun.

  “Claire—wait—!”

  “Where—? No—no—this isn’t—”

  “Rain… I heard rain—”

  “Claire?”

  “He—he was right there—the coat—”

  “Don’t—don’t crowd me—”

  “He said my name.”

  “Get back—!”

  The yard roared back to life behind her.

  The stone of the altar rail was cold beneath Harl’s skin, though her fever made the sensation distant. She opened her eyes to dust drifting through beams of light, settling on the linen bandages wound tight across her torso. Sweat made the cloth cling to her. The scent of burnt beeswax and damp earth filled the chamber.

  A voice drifted in from the high, narrow window.

  "The bells finished ringing a while ago," he said. "I wondered if you were dead or if you had decided the silence was better. How is the pain? Does it burn, or has it settled?"

  Harl shifted, her breath catching against the restriction of the cloth. Her mind was a blurred mess, the West Docks, the taste of blood, and the small, weak hands she now possessed. She watched the gray light at the window, trying to anchor the room as it tilted.

  "There is water in the basin," he noted. "If you can reach it."

  The shadow of the speaker shifted against the stone outside. A long silence followed, filled only by the distant sound of a wooden coin hitting a palm.

  "People come to these halls to offer up their suffering as a gift," he said. "They imagine the gods look down with pity. It is a comforting thought, but it is a lie. The gods do not pity the breaking of a human heart. They envy it."

  The coin snapped against his hand again.

  "Consider the nature of an immortal. They are fixed, finished, and stagnant. They watch us because we possess the one thing their divinity forbids: the capacity to change. We are fragile enough to be destroyed, and in that destruction, we experience a depth of existence they can only observe from a distance. To be a god is to be a witness to a fire you can never feel. They would trade their immortality for the sharpness of your current agony, because your agony is proof of a life that can end. They are waiting for a conclusion that will never come for them."

  Harl wiped a bead of sweat from her eye, her grip on the stone ledge firm. She didn't let her hands shake. She forced her lungs to expand, pulling the stale church air deep into her chest until the room settled. With a steady pull, she hauled herself up to the narrow gap of the window.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The courtyard was mostly empty, but a man stood there, leaning back against the masonry. He wasn't looking at the window; his eyes were fixed on the horizon, the wooden coin dancing over his knuckles.

  "Who are you?" Harl’s voice was flat, the question landing like a stone in a well.

  The coin stopped mid-air, caught against his palm. He let out a short, dry sound that carried no heat.

  "Me?" He finally looked toward the window, his gaze drifting. "I’m a man who forgets to go home. A minor footnote in a very long book."

  He tucked the coin into a pocket.

  "I'm a nobody. If I were you, I’d worry less about the man in the dirt and more about the water in that basin. The gods might envy your pain, but they aren't going to quench your thirst."

  The man pushed off from the wall and crossed the stones toward the outer gate. He disappeared through the archway.

  Harl dropped from the window ledge. Her feet hit the stone with a solid thud. She walked toward the heavy oak door. She reached for the iron handle. The door swung inward.

  A nun stood in the hallway with a stack of folded linens stopped.

  "Little lady. You should be resting," the nun said. Her voice was soft. She looked at the bandages. "The fever broke a short while ago. Back to bed, little one."

  Harl looked up. She allowed her shoulders to slump. A hitch moved in her chest. She made her eyes shimmer with the threat of tears.

  "I was thirsty," Harl said. Her voice was a small, fragile rasp. She let her bottom lip tremble. "The room felt so big and quiet. I got scared."

  She reached out and gripped a fold of the nun’s habit with her small fingers. She clung to the fabric.

  The nun’s expression softened. She set the linens on a nearby bench. She touched Harl’s forehead with a cool palm.

  She smoothed Harl’s hair. "You need your strength. Come."

  Guided her back toward the cot. Harl moved with an exhausted shuffle. She let her head lean against the nun’s side. She was a frightened child. She was small and vulnerable and overwhelmed. The performance was seamless.

  The nun tucked the thin blanket around her.

  "Stay here," the nun said. "I'll bring you a cup of water. It'll help with the dreams."

  The door clicked shut. Harl lay still. She stared at the rough wooden beams of the ceiling. The fear vanished. She listened to the fading rhythm of the nun’s footsteps.

  Now with cold empty eyes.

  I flexed my fingers. One. Two. Three. Four.

  It seems like nobody has arrived yet. I stared at the wood grain above me.

  The nun returned. The floorboards announced her arrival long before she reached the door.

  "Here, Harl. Drink this."

  She held a tin cup to my lips. I let her tip it. I swallowed the lukewarm, metallic-tasting liquid with the dutiful expression of a girl who believed in angels.

  The man with the coin. Iren. The "Saint" talk.

  I was being watched. Iren, he'd seen the way I cleared the soup off my sleeve. He’d seen the barrel.

  I leaned back into the pillow, letting my eyes go heavy.

  "Sleep now," the nun whispered. She moved toward the lamp.

  The light died. The shadows reclaimed the corners.

  I didn't sleep. As I waited a subtle gain of light appeared, guess it's time.

  Being a hitman taught me one thing: never stay in a place where people know your name. But being an eight-year-old girl meant I couldn't just walk out the front gate. I’d be picked up by the first scavenger or patrol that saw a stray "little lady."

  I needed intel. I needed to know what Iren was planning to do with a "Saint" in his cellar. And I needed to see if my "useless" power could do more than just make a cup of water taste like a glacier.

  I reached out my hand into the dark. Focused on the moisture in the air, the dampness of the stone, the sweat on my own palms.

  The cold tingle started again.

  I wasn't a saint. I was a fixer. And I was going to fix this body until it was a blade again.

  The movement pulling at the bandages with a dry, sticky friction.

  I stood in the center of the dark room, waiting for the floor to stop swaying. A shadow cut the light under the door. Going past the nun.

  I stayed low, shadow to shadow, until I reached the door to the infirmary.

  The door stood an inch open.

  "The Empire moves on Tuesday," the soldier said. He was a silhouette against the window. "A girl who clears a well clears a path for ten thousand men. We take her then."

  Iren’s voice carried through the wood.

  "The girl is a variable we cannot afford to lose."

  I looked at my hands. Small. Pale. I gripped the doorframe to keep the room from spinning.

  The fever was a weight in my skull. I pushed off the wall and moved toward the back stairs.

  I pulled back.

  Tuesday. Got four days.

  I need to find a way out of this safe house before the Empire comes to collect their weapon.