Chapter 1: The Knife at His Throat
The knife at Roen's throat was a familiar feeling.
Almost comforting, really, in the way it promised certainty. Either he'd talk his way out, or
he'd bleed out in this rotting alley behind Madame Velska's brothel. No middle ground. No
complicated choices. Just survival or death, laid out simple as a coin flip.
"Thirty crowns," the man growled.
He smelled of cheap ale and cheaper women, and his breath came in wet, rattling gasps. A
hired thug, not a professional. Roen had seen enough of both to know the difference.
Professionals didn't waste time with threats. They just cut. This one wanted to feel important.
Wanted to feel like more than what he was.
The knife trembled against Roen's skin, pressing just hard enough to dimple flesh. A thin line
of warmth trickled down his neck. He'd need a new shirt. Again.
"Boss wants his coin," the thug continued. "Says you're late."
Late. That was one word for it. Three weeks past due was another. Roen had every intention
of paying Gravel-Tooth back—eventually. But intention and coin were different currencies,
and he'd been short on the latter for most of his seventeen years.
"Thirty crowns?" Roen managed a grin despite the blade. His heart hammered against his
ribs like a caged bird, but seventeen years in the Ashen Moors had taught him one thing:
show fear, and you're meat. Show confidence, and maybe—just maybe—they hesitate.
"That's an insult. I'm worth at least forty."
The thug blinked. His grip loosened by a fraction. Confusion flickered across his pockmarked
face like a candle in wind.
"The fuck you talking about?"
"My debt." Roen kept his voice steady, conversational, as if they were discussing the
weather rather than his potential murder. "Gathered interest. Thirty was what I owed
Gravel-Tooth three weeks ago. A man of his standing deserves proper compensation for the
delay. I'm saying forty is fair. Forty-five, even, for the trouble of sending you to collect."
The thug's confusion deepened, creasing his brow. This wasn't how debtors were supposed
to act. They were supposed to beg, cry, offer to sell family members or perform degrading
acts. Not haggle upward.
"You... you want to pay more?"
"I want to pay what's right." Roen kept his hands visible, palms open. Non-threatening. A
man offering a deal, not a man looking for an escape. "Problem is, I don't have it on me. But
I know where to get it. You let me go, I walk to the Ghost Market, I come back with fifty
crowns by sundown. You tell Gravel-Tooth you negotiated a better deal. Everyone wins."
The Ghost Market. A lie, of course. Roen had no connections there, no way to scrape
together fifty crowns in a handful of hours. But thugs like this didn't know that. They heard
"Ghost Market" and thought of forbidden things, illegal things, money moving in shadows.
"Why would I trust you?"
"Because I'm still in Ashford." Roen met the man's bloodshot eyes, unflinching. "I've had
three weeks to run. Haven't. Because I owe Gravel-Tooth, and I pay my debts." He let that sit
for a moment, then added, "And because if you slit my throat now, you get nothing but a
corpse that used to be handsome. Fifty crowns or a dead body. Your choice."
The knife stayed pressed against his throat for three more heartbeats. Roen counted them,
feeling each one stretch like taffy. One. Two. Three.
Then the thug stepped back, cackling.
"You're a crazy little shit, you know that?" He wiped his knife on his trousers, leaving a dark
smear. "Gravel-Tooth was right. You've got iron in your spine, even if you're thread-blind as a
stone." He sheathed the blade. "Sundown. You're not here with the coin, I find you, I take it
out of your hide. Fifty cuts for fifty crowns. We got a deal?"
"Deal."
The thug clomped off, his heavy boots splashing through puddles of filth. Roen watched him
go, still pressed against the brick wall, still grinning. The moment the man turned the corner,
Roen's legs gave out.
He slid down the wet brick until he was sitting in the muck, breathing hard. His hands shook.
His whole body shook. But he was alive. That was something.
"Fifty crowns," he whispered to the empty alley. "By sundown. Easy."
He had seventeen crowns to his name, hidden in a loose floorboard in his rented closet of a
room. A knife with a cracked handle. One boot with a hole in the sole that let in water every
time it rained. And apparently, according to every woman in Madame Velska's establishment,
a face that was "too pretty to waste on a street rat."
Small fucking comfort.
Fifty crowns. The number sat in his chest like a stone. In Ashford, that kind of money could
buy a fresh start. Or a grave, if he didn't find it by sunset.
Roen pushed himself to his feet, wiping grime from his trousers. His neck stung where the
blade had nicked him. He touched the wound, felt the wet warmth of blood.
First things first. He needed to stop the bleeding. Then he needed a miracle.
Or, he thought grimly, he needed to find someone desperate enough to pay fifty crowns for a
thread-blind street rat with nothing to offer but quick hands and a quicker mouth.
Ashford's streets were already bustling by the time Roen emerged from the alley. The
morning market sprawled across the main square, stalls and carts and shouting vendors
creating a maze of commerce. The smell of fresh bread mixed with the stench of the tannery
district. Somewhere, a child was crying. Somewhere else, a man was laughing.
This was home. This was survival. This was the only world Roen had ever known.
He moved through the crowd with practiced ease, keeping his head down and his eyes
moving. Looking for opportunity. Looking for danger. Looking for anything that might
translate into coin.
Fifty crowns by sundown. The words echoed in his skull like a death knell.
He'd talked his way out of worse. Probably.
The morning sun climbed higher, indifferent to his problems. Somewhere in the distance,
bells began to ring, marking the hour. Roen had until the last bell of evening to produce a
miracle.