The Beggar Who Devoured Heaven

Chapter 2: Three Days Earlier

Three days before the Arena, Ren Kai owned eleven copper coins and one rule.

The rule was simple. Never spend money on yourself.

He had earned the coins by digging through the rubbish heaps behind the rich restaurants of Azure City. He had found bones, broken tools, and once a whole boot. Every coin had a job. Four were for rice. Three were for rent. Four were for noodles.

The noodles were not for him. They were for Ren Lan.

Ren Lan was ten years old and weighed less than a sack of flour. She had a sharp tongue and a cough that never stopped. Every night she lay on her straw mat and made jokes about how loud her own chest was.

"I sound like a broken flute," she said that morning.

"A flute is a nice thing," said Ren Kai. "You sound like a goat."

"A goat that wants noodles." She smiled with her eyes closed. "Bring me a hot bowl tonight, Big Brother. The kind that burns my tongue."

"I will."

That was the promise. He dug through rubbish all day to keep it, and went to buy the noodles at dusk.

Everywhere else in the Gutters, the air smelled of wet stone and old rubbish. But Noodle Street smelled like hope. Steam rose from big iron pots. Cooks shouted their prices. Rich people sat on low stools and slurped as if nothing in the world could go wrong.

Ren Kai paid his four coins and took the bowl in both hands. He wrapped it in his shirt to keep it warm and took the short way home, through the Alley of Barrels.

That was where he heard the cough.

It was not Ren Lan's cough. It was lower and wetter. Behind a pile of broken barrels, an old man lay against the wall. His face was like dried fruit, all folds and wrinkles. His robe was ragged and dirty, but under the dirt Ren Kai could see the cut of expensive cloth.

"Boy," said the old man. "That smells good."

Ren Kai kept walking. In the Gutters, you learned not to stop for dying people. There were too many of them.

"I will pay," said the old man.

"With what?" Ren Kai said. "You have nothing."

The old man opened his shaking fist. In his palm lay a coin. It was copper, old and bent, with half of a strange symbol worn away.

"This."

Ren Kai laughed, short and sour. "That is not worth one noodle."

"No," the old man agreed. "It is worth more than this whole city. But I will take one bowl for it. Do not be greedy."

Ren Kai looked down at the bowl. Steam curled up from it like a hand waving goodbye. Four coins. Ren Lan's dinner.

He thought of her smiling with her eyes closed.

"No," he said. "It is for my sister."

The old man nodded, as if that were a good answer. "Then go."

Ren Kai went. He took one step. Two. Three.

Behind him, the cough came again. It was small and tired, like a candle running out of wax.

Stupid, he thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He turned around.

He walked back and knelt in the dirt and put the bowl in the old man's shaking hands. "Eat. Slowly."

The old man stared at the bowl. Then he stared at Ren Kai for a long time.

"Your sister will go hungry tonight," he said.

"She is always hungry."

"So are you."

"Everyone in the Gutters is hungry," Ren Kai said. "Eat."

A strange look crossed the old man's face. It was not quite a smile. It looked more like a man who had waited a very long time for a door to open.

He took Ren Kai's hand and pushed the coin into it. "Keep it. A deal is a deal."

"I do not want your coin."

"You do not get to choose." The old man's fingers were cold. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Listen carefully, boy. This is the only thing I will ever ask of you. That coin is hungry. When the time comes, let it eat. But whatever you do, do not get full."

Ren Kai frowned. "What does that mean?"

The old man began to laugh, weakly. "A beggar, afraid of being full. Funny. So funny."

He lifted the bowl to his face. He breathed in the steam, and his eyes closed.

"Hot," he whispered. "What a pity."

His hands went still. The bowl tipped, and a little broth ran down his sleeve.

Ren Kai waited. The old man did not move again.

The noodles were still steaming.

Ren Kai sat in the alley for a long time. The wind pushed a scrap of paper along the stones. Somewhere far away, a bell rang. He was not sad, exactly. He had seen death often. But he had never seen someone die with a smile, as if he had won something.

He set the bowl gently at the old man's side, so he would not go hungry on the road. Then he walked home with no noodles and one ugly coin.

Ren Lan was awake when he came in. She took one look at his hands.

"No noodles?"

"I lost them."

"Lost them to what?"

"A dying old man."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she gave a long, tired sigh. "Big Brother, you are the worst thief in Azure City. You even steal from yourself."

"I am not a thief."

"I know." Her voice was soft. She patted the mat beside her. "Come. Sit. I will tell you a joke so bad you will forget you are hungry."

She told it. It was truly bad. He laughed anyway.

Later, when she slept, he lay on the cold floor and took the coin out of his pocket.

It was warm.

Coins should not be warm. This one felt like a small, sleeping animal. He turned it over. The half-worn symbol looked a little like a mouth.

Do not get full, the old man had said.

Ren Kai put the coin back and tried to sleep.

In the morning, on his way to the water well, he saw a new notice nailed to the wall of the Sect Hall.

AZURE CITY TRIALS. SERVANTS' ROUND. TWO DAYS FROM NOW.

HONOR PURSE: ONE HUNDRED SILVER.

He read it twice. Then he read the last line again, in smaller print: No servant has ever won.

He thought of Ren Lan's cough. He thought of the blue jars in the medicine shop. He thought of how a hundred silver would make a hundred nights of quiet.

He knew the sects would never take him. Last year, a sect elder had tested his core and laughed. "Useless," the elder said. The guards had beaten him for standing too near the gate.

But the Servants' Round did not need a core. It only needed a boy who could take a hit and keep standing.

Ren Kai had never been a brave person. But he was a very stubborn one.

Two days later, he would stand in the Arena of Ashes.

But first, that night, someone knocked on his door.

Three slow knocks. The kind that did not ask permission.

"City guard," said a cold voice outside. "Open up. A man died in the Alley of Barrels yesterday. We hear he gave something to a boy."

In his pocket, the coin grew warm.

Then it grew hot.