Prologue

Zach Carlyle

I walk out into the streets, thankful to be moving around and basking in the wonderful Outland sunlight. The people crowd around me, and I’m pushed along with them. As I walk, I enjoy the sunset, a rare sight for me. I really need to start working better hours. I run into a man in an expensive suit and leave with his wallet. I see a bulging wallet in the back pocket of the man to my front left and snatch that, too. I slip them into my secret pockets, simultaneously putting on my brass knuckles when I notice Peril ahead. I slip into a side alley, hands still in my pockets and wait a few seconds until he enters on the other side.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Peril says, putting his hands into his pockets, presumably reaching for weapons. I mentally check which of my weapons are on me, I didn't think I'd run into any peril today. My shuriken, hand-made, wrought in titanium and edged in diamond, are there. My dagger hangs at my side, but my whip and my kubotans are back at base. I can see a dagger hanging from his belt, and he probably has tiger claws of some sort in his pocket. I’ve heard that he carries arm-blades, but either he doesn’t have them, or they’re very well concealed. He usually uses a sword- lucky me that he doesn’t have it. We slowly advance towards each other.

“Well,” I say, walking over to some piles of trash. “Here’s a garbage can, and here’s another one, and- ooh, here’s a mouse! Should I catch it?” Peril’s visually alarmed at the mention of a mouse. I laugh. “Just kidding. No mouse. It was just a rat.”

“Like you!” he pulls his hands out of his pockets, aiming tiger claws at my face, just as I predicted.

“No,” I respond, delicately balancing the claws on one brass knuckles punching him with the other. His nose squirts blood. “The rat was Castor Billings. Remember him?” Peril’s face goes white as he backs up a couple of paces.

“I-I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on! Good ol’ Castor, your soldier, your friend, your rat? Are you telling me that you don’t remember poor old Castor? He would’ve been very disappointed to hear that.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Oh, don’t worry he barely felt a thing before he was gone.”

“Liar,” Peril says, seething.

“Yes. Yes, I am,” With him distracted on Castor, I slip my dagger out and whack him upside the head with it. He falls, unconscious, as I slide my dagger back into its sheath and step over his body on my out of the alley.

The sunlight is fading as I step out. I need to get back to Scales. On the side of the road, there’s a beggar girl of about thirteen, only a few years younger than me, sitting on a blanket on the side of the road, doing street magic for coins. She's in Night Dragon territory, my gang's territory, but I don't think that she's with any other gang, or really doing much harm. I watch, and in the hustle and bustle of the crowd, I get pushed to the front. She smiles at me, and I feel something on my head. No way. She did not just make that coin in her hands appear on my head. My mind races through the street magic that I know, trying to figure out how she did it. I take it off, and put it in her hand, doing some street magic of my own and doubling the coin. She smiles and I make my way back to Scales, the tavern that the Night Dragons, my gang, runs. The official name of the tavern, posted on the outside in mismatched neon lights is The Scales: Food, Drink, and Games. Unlike most other places in this sick town, we don’t offer girls. I walk up to the main table and go to grab my wallet out to play a couple of rounds before I realize that I don’t have it. I quickly walk into the bathroom and close myself in a stall before searching my secret pockets for the other wallets that I stole today. After, all I can’t reveal the locations of the pockets in front of the pickpockets in the tavern, but all of my pockets are empty. My heart races as I try to figure out where I lost Them. They were there after I fought Peril, so it must’ve between there and here.

“No way,” I whisper, as I figure it out. That beggar girl. She must’ve done it. But how?

I run out of Scales, not worrying about the looks people give me, and run back to where I last saw her. Gone. I feel a tap on my shoulder and whirl around. The girl.

“Hello again,” she smiles, faking innocence.

“Give it,” I demand. “Now.” My happiness has faded. How did she rob me?

“What?” she asks, pretending not to know anything.

“You know what.”

“Do I?”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

I stare at her, lost. After a second, she laughs and hands me the wallet that I own and the ones that I stole.

“Try to hold onto it next time,” she says, smiling. An idea pops into my head.

“What do you say about a job?”

“A… job?” she’s instantly wary. “What kind?”

“A place in my gang. Not what you’re thinking.”

“What would said job involve?”

“Well, pick-pocketing, working at destroying other gangs, you know, the usual.”

“That’s not the usual offer for females,” she says. “But sure. As long as I can leave at any time.”

“Deal. I’ll show you the way. Oh, and if you want to stay alive, don’t ever take my wallet again.”