Chapter One- How to Survive the Underworld

A Chapter by excusemeitsrosie

I had this system for getting exactly what I wanted out of people. You had to, in a place like this, where you couldn’t trust a single word or whisper that reached your ears. In a place like this, you had to learn how to hide, how to manipulate, and how to spot the signs of betrayal before it was too late. Here, you were always being watched, you were always watching, and the shadows had teeth.

It was my home.

These twisting grimy streets and cobbled roads, the dark and malicious creatures that lurked in the corners of abandoned buildings. The underground of the city. These streets were my streets, the rooftops were my world, the twisting stairs and window ledges where my methods of travel, and all the beautiful and wicked creatures that found their place here were the ones I danced until dawn with.

In a place like this, you either took nothing for granted or you took everything for granted. You could let the thrumming pulse of the city rule you, or you could rule it. Resourcefulness, manipulation and nerves of steel. That’s what you needed to survive, and that was show I got by.

I learnt, a long time ago, that impressions and appearances were everything here. With the right words and mannerisms, you could waltz in and out of anywhere whenever you wanted. The right smile, the right hairstyle and casual elegance, the right swinging hips, and glances, and you could pass for anyone, even with the most innocent forms of distraction. Or the not so innocent ones. The steps I had learnt folded together to make me, a walking mannequin, ready, with a snap of her fingers, to become a poor beggar, a woman of high birth, or a wild street child.

Of course, living here taught you other things too. How to wield a knife like it was an extension of your hand, how to move quieter than a shadow, how to move with a grace that told people to get out of your way. How to prowl the night like a predator, how to know when someone was reaching for your pocket, how to knock out a man with one blow. How to steal apples and later on jewellery, right out of the hands of the unsuspecting. How to slash a pocket with a stumble, how to tell who was a threat, and who was just pretending to be.

I had once stolen a pie for a starving man, a man who I had seen getting beaten up by the palace guards for speaking out against a morning execution. He had watched me from across the square, and when I brought the pie to him, he had laughed and said “You could make a living doing that kind of thing”. I supposed that I could, even though, back then I had never even thought about it, using the skills that came so naturally to me. Since then, I had been using the power of manipulation, and what I like to call ‘people reading’ to build my twisted excuse for a life.

Ever since I was a child, being raised by a peasant man who had taken in a screaming baby for his own, and raised her with the skills she would need to survive, I had been more perceptive towards people and their emotions than most people. I could tell when people were lying, when they were disgusted or angry or upset, even if they couldn’t. In a city like this, when there were so many desperate people searching for the reason there lives were spent in pain and hunger, these talents were invaluable. I had learnt how to manipulate even the best, the drug lords, ‘business’ men and gangsters that ruled the underworld of the city.

It was above the den of one of these unofficial rulers that I lived, or at least, where I had created a home for myself. A few boxes mainly with weapons in, a roll mat and blankets, a metal stove I fed with wood or paper-whatever I could get her hands on. A trunk of clothes and accessories, all ready for me to become whatever I needed. The trunks and boxes were all locked, with separate keys that I wore tied to the inside of my clothing, (don’t put them around your neck, that’s the first place they’ll look, dumbass). However, it was near impossible to get up to the roof unless you knew how, (it involved a grappling hook and several stomach lurching jumps) so it was pretty much secure, as well as being on the roof of a drug-lord’s den. A rather rich one, and more importantly, rather feared. I had won a favour from him after saving his large arse from disaster- I had worked out, after spending a few evenings in his casino on the ground-floor, that one of his men was cheating him out of large sums of money, feeding information to a rival drug lord, which he was also betraying, as he was actually one of the kings men. Realising that, to him, this was valuable information, (to me it was just passing entertainment), and that I was in need of a place to live at the time, I informed him that I had information, and we struck up a deal. I now had a secure place to live on his roof, underneath a metal-and material canopy, and he wasn’t executed. Magic.

Of course you must never trust a drug lord, and I had taken the precaution of learning the names of his spies, and politely told him there was a lot of rooftops I could make my home on. Luckily for him, he realised that you don’t want me as an enemy, and has taken the precaution of protecting the entrance to the roof for me. Like I said, manipulation. Learn how to take someone down, then flaunt it in their face long enough for them to realise that there castle is not as strong as they may think, and then decide if you want anything from the situation. If not, leave the drug-lord, murderer, or whoever, as a slightly more paranoid person than they were before.

However, don’t become noticed. Don’t leave a trail. Be a whisper of a name if anything, never something bold and burning. Don’t start a rebellion or actively preach against the royals. Don’t cause too much noticeable havoc (just a healthy amount). Don’t become a target, because they are always more of them than there are of you. Learn how to become a shadow, and you’ll do just fine.

Doing favours and working low paid jobs for the last four years of my life had built me a reasonable amount of money, enough to rent a room somewhere. It would be more sensible and probably safer, but I could never bear to leave this rooftop. After the night I lost everything, I was constantly running and moving and paranoid, a fifteen year old with a whole world suddenly springing up around her. She had been given no time to mourn the only father she had ever known. This rooftop had been the first home I had ever built for myself, the place, that after months of sleeping in random inns and living precariously, I allowed myself to break down in. I allowed myself to curl up and cry to the heavens that the world was a horrid, wicked place. It has yet to prove me otherwise.

During the day, Darktown, as it was called, could pass for just a poor, grimy section of the city, poor and starving. During the night, however, you could see the city for what it really was. While Lightown fell into pleasant slumber, Darktown woke up. The casinos threw open their doors. Wild, adrenaline-inducing pounding music fills the air and raucous laughter rumbles out of the taverns. Crooks filled the shadows, going about their murderous business. It was the time when, I too, began the game. Dressd in a black cloak, padded to show hulking shoulders, I slipped through the twisting alleys and dark streets. My eyes searched the darkness, ready for the slightest shift in, my surroundings: the scream of a knife being drawn, the whisper and pads of someone following. My body language changes as I leave the alleys onto a busier street, becoming rounded. I tip my shoulders back and hold my head high. I’m an associate of Fellows. I whisper through my brain. The casino master on Black Street. If you mess with me, you mess with him. I’m a 25 year old man, going about my business, but I’ll fight you if you touch me. None of this is true, of course. But this is my system: the art of delusion. The art of being unexpected. The art of pretending and impersonating and manipulation. The art of lying.

Tonight is no different than usual: the music is loud, the people are loud, and the combined noise hides the dark deals that happen. I shoulder my way into a bar no different than any other; except for my friendly relations with the barman.

“Alright Tiger?” I growl at him. It’s a nickname Tiger knows well, and he turns around with a gleeful grin. Tiger is a name I gave him after I accidentally rescued him from a gang beating him up. Fortunately for him, it happened to be the gang I was on a mission to beat up. I won. Since then, Tiger, with his bright ginger hair, freckles and habit for gambling, has been an ally. As in, drinks from him are on the house for me. He’s a year younger than me, but anyone who has lived in a Darktown for more than a day knows that being a decent Barman- someone who can balance orders and remember preferences- is a serious advantage. Tiger, who loses all the money he earns on card games he claims he only just loses, is perfect for this. His memory, due to the endless poker games, is incredible. His easy persona isn’t wasted either.

“Kaelin! My favourite a*****e. No wait, sorry, its Kai tonight.” His grin tell me he is not sorry. “My bad.”

“You pretentious dick.” I say. “Way to ruin my disguise.” With a sigh, I throw back my hood and shape out my hair. Tugging the padding out of the shoulders, I throw it at him.

“Whoopsy-daisy.” He says, ducking. “There you go- your right back to the beautiful and charming Kaelin. How about I give you an extra shot in your dandelion ale? Will that make you forgive me?” He uses mock-puppy eyes.

“Suck it backwards fatface.” I say, and he grins knowing he’s forgiven. A second later, a dandelion ale appears on the bar in front of me.

“There you go! Now run along, go ruin someone’s evening.” He says.

“How did you guess my intentions?” I say. “Stay out of trouble you b**b.”

“Yes ma’am!” He yells after me as I walk away.

The meeting disappoints me. People seem to believe that to make it in Darktown you need to have a poker face, and use it to hide all emotion. They’re right. However, it means that I don’t get laughter when I drop a hilarious remark. It’s a shame, because the three men that meet me are a goldmine of hilarity. To start with, they were clearly told they were meeting someone impressive and dangerous, and were all on edge until they realised that they were meeting a teenage girl. Cue damaged pride. This reaction is something I’m used to, and it just makes beating their a*s far more fun when the time comes. I could pretend to be someone I’m not to make them feel better. If I speak slearly and crisply and real of facts and figures, making them intimidated, then they would feel less ashamed for being a scared of me. It is just more fun to not bother with disguises, and go for my wry-smile, self-satisfied smile and sarcastic comments. Works a treat on the brawny ones.

They offer me something I have been offered a hundred times before: if you become or secret spy and run around doing work for our boss/casino/drug-lord/other, we will pay you some money you don’t need and show you off like a prize puppy. Belive it or not, I turned it down.

Despite my general aim to keep a low profile, words of what I can do does leak out. I tend to lose the ‘cool, calculating, don’t-go-into-a-situation-if-you-don’t-know-you-can-win’ thing on bad days. On bad days I lose myself becoming someone else, and flaunt about emptying out casinos and fighting in the street until blood runs down my arms like rivers. It’s the Darktown effect: you pretend to be better than it, in order to survive, but deep down, you love the savage fighting and mud-streaked gore same as anyone else. Or at least that describes me.

The evening was uneventful, on the whole, but it ended up with some worth when I got back to my rooftop. Shoving my hands in my pocket, I pulled out a note. It stated, in a quick, neat script, that I should come to a warehouse on the edge of the city at midday tomorrow. That’s it. Not signed, no date, just ‘tomorrow’. As if the writer knew exactly when I would read it. I had received notes like this in the past, handed to me in alleys, tucked under coasters, or once, encased in a glass orb floating in my drink. But never had I found one in my pocket.

One of the big rules of Darktown, (aside from not drinking anything you didn’t order and not wearing clean or white clothes-it attracts attention. And of course: if they hit you, you hit them back) was that you guard your pockets. Pick-pocketing was the child-trade. It was what everyone did, if they could. I had never had my pockets picked, and had caught most wondering hands far before they were near me. Never, never had something got into my pocket when I hadn’t wanted it too. I wonder if the writer(s) of the note expected that to be the reason I contemplated going.

The sunrise, hazy in the smoke of the city, rises to the east, bathing the marble palace in light, just as it does every morning. I am sat on the edge of the roof, legs swinging, while my breakfast cooks. The note made me uneasy. Frowning at the houses closest to the castle, all of them large and orderly, I watched as the lamp posts- something only to be found in Lightown, as it was called with distaste around here- flick off one by one. The only place in the kingdom to be able to afford electric lights, Lightown showed them off obnoxiously, placing far too many lights around than is necessary. It was perhaps the strange matter in which the note had found its way into my pocket rather than the way it was written that compelled me to go to what must be a trap or a test or a set-up, but I think it was more the pull in my gut, the strange feeling in the back of my head telling me that this note was the start of something bigger, something that would give me a purpose. As I stared down at the city from my birds view, this city made and built by forced labour and held together by lies and blackmail, I knew that I would go. And also, that I was clearly the lands’ biggest fool.

The warehouse was deserted. It was half eleven, and there was no one here. The building consisted of one large room, scattered with crates and sacks and general rubbish. The roof was high and held up by rafters, one of which I was sat on. To bring light in, large shutters had been built into the roof, ones that could be operated from the floor. I had taken a subtler entrance though, choosing to climb through a lose plank in the roof, and climb onto the rafters. After surveying the room, checking there was no danger, and doing an inventory of my possessions- two short-swords, six throwing knives, the note, several silver pieces and a pear- stolen from a trailer- I had sat down to wait. That had been two hours ago. Better safe than sorry, I guess, although now I was wondering if it was better to be sorry than to be THIS bored. I had explored everything the roof had to offer, sat outside for a bit to survey the entrances and exits, and had eaten my pear. I was half tempted to take a nap, but that could mean falling to a painful and embarrassing death, which didn’t sound great.

I was just considering swinging from rafter to rafter when they came in. There were four of them, a woman and three men. They came through the main doors, and one of the men, the biggest and burliest, shut the doors behind them and stood inside. A guard. The woman and the two men, both of which were young, not much older than me, and looked rather alike, surveyed the room. I shrank back into the corner to avoid being seen. The man I was assuming to be the youngest, as he was the shortest exchanged words with the others. The three of them then lent against a stack of crates, and began to talk quietly. Relaxing a notch, I surveyed them. They were all wearing different clothes, so there was no uniform or armour, which ruled out this being an obvious attack from the kings men, though, even from this height, I noticed several barely-concealed weapons, which I took to believe, from the careful way they had surveyed the room and the guard at the door, that they had more weapons concealed. The two men both had brown hair and pale complexions, and looked quite similar despite the small height difference.

The woman, now I could properly see her face, was probably middle-aged, with streaks of grey in her copper coloured hair. She had a stern face and intelligent eyes, and even for their body language was relaxed, her eyes were constantly scanning the room. There was something about her piercing gaze that unnerved me, and I was glad for my long black cloak and the shadows that hid me. I knew, eventually, that I would have to make myself shown, or wait up here until they left. I didn’t want to engage myself in anything whilst I had no idea who they were, however, because that was just plain stupid. And I also couldn’t win a fight against all of them. The guard was tall and burly, with arms like tree trunks, and a large array of weapons hanging at his side. The two men, who I had assumed to be brothers, both moved with a casual, self-confident gait- they were both comfortable in their own skin. The woman, well she just looked fierce, and the same array of weapons as the three men. I had my knives with me, and I was an excellent fighter, but I couldn’t take four other good fighters at once. Probably.

Deciding I needed to move if I was going to make a decision, I shifted slightly, and then paused, but no one noticed. Standing, I began to move across the beams. Luckily for me, whoever had built this place had been paranoid of the roof falling in, and had put the beams close together. I gently hopped from beam to beam, making my way across the room until I was perched against the wall on the beam directly above the woman and the men. Holding my breath- I listened to their murmurs.

“It could go wrong so easily, and we have no idea if she could do it, even if she agrees.” Says the taller of the two men, running a hand through his dark hair.

“More importantly, if she shows up.” Says the younger dryly.

“She is our best hope, and if she is as good as what Derek says, then it could work.” Replies the woman. Her voice is crisp and efficient.

“Look, we don’t have any chance of taking down the royals without proper inside information. Yes, we have spies, but not half decent ones. We need someone in the loop. Someone in the inner circle, or at least someone who can pretend to be.” Says the older brother, taking a breath.

“We need her.” Says the younger in agreement.

I sit back in shock. They were rebels. Proper, serious, powerful rebels. The resistance. They had fought viciously, starting a civil war nineteen years ago, after the Fae were defeated, striking when the kings army was in tatters. They had been smothered then, and pronounced dead, finished. I had always thought them foolish. This was the way things were. You rule it or you let it rule you. You make do with what you get. And they want me to impersonate someone? And to infiltrate the castle? To feed them information? They were deluded, and I planned to tell them so. I undid my belt, the one that I wore double wrapped so I could use it in situations like this, and strapped it around the beam before fastening it.

They were still talking.

“I guess so, I mean we could ask his daughter, but as a last resort only. She doesn’t have the same talents or background. And she’s as plain as a brick.” Says the woman.

“All we have narrowed down here is that she is the only one that can do this for us. And guess what? She’s not here.” Says the older brother.

“Did you really expect her to come? We know her, and her heritage. We will have to go to her instead of asking her to come to us.” Says the younger brother.

“That,” I say, dropping to the floor in a crouch, holding one end of the belt to avoid breaking my legs, making all four of them in the room whirl around to stare, “will not be necessary.” With a smirk I stand, lean against the nearest stack of crates, cross my arms and legs and wait.

“What- where- where were you?” Says the oldest brother. The guard has come over now, glaring at me and holding his sword raised.

I smile. “I’d tell you but then I would have to slit your throat.” I say, idly taking out a throwing knife from my pocket and twirling it through my fingers.

They all tense at the knife except the youngest brother who looks at the knife, then me, then at his brother, and begins to laugh. My smile stretches further.

“It is clear where she has been, Michael, look at the beams. Now, -Tomin SHUT UP- Miss Knox, I would like to formally introduce myself to you, my name is Hera. I did have an opportunity for you, but as you have been listening to our conversations, you probably know all about that and it would be useless me telling you anything. I also assume you have an answer for us. Am I right?” Says Hera briskly, looking me straight in the eyes with her fearsome gaze. I resist the urge to shift uncomfortably, like a naughty child being told off by a teacher.

“First of all,” I say, “its Kaelin, rather than Miss Knox, and secondly, you are completely right I the fact I have decided your plan is completely delusional.” I pause. “Why would I ever want to break into the castle? You may be surprised to know, I do not actually have a death wish.” I say. Uncrossing my arms and standing straight. The two- boys, really, know that I see them properly. I would hazard a guess at the younger one being the same age as me, and the older one to be maybe twenty two. Men, but not for long. What did she say their names were? Michael and Tomin.

“I figured that would be fairly obvious?” Says Hera the lady, clearly confused. “I assumed you, of all people in this city, would want revenge on the king.”

Now it’s my turn to look confused. “Look lady, I know things aren’t great around here, and everyone has a hard life, but why would that give me any incentive to be your spy- which would undoubtedly get me killed- or worse?”

Her frown deepens, as does the two brothers. “I was not talking about your life in the city. I was actually talking about your heritage.” When I still look mystified, she adds. “Your Fae heritage.”