The Forsaken Scavenger’s Rise to Godhood

Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The First Blood Debt

Zephyr found Rowan by following the medicine.

The Quiet Buyer's contact had sold Cassian's men a crate of fever tonic two days ago, delivered to a warehouse at Dock Nine. Nobody needed that much tonic for guards. They needed it for a sick child.

"It's a trap," Mira said. They were crouched on a rooftop across the canal, watching the building. "Two guards at the front. Four on the roof. Those are trained fighters, not city watch."

"I know."

"Then wait until we have a plan."

"Rowan has a day left." Zephyr checked the six brown bottles in his jacket. "I have a plan. It's just not a good one."

Mira stared at him. "How bad?"

"The loading tunnel. Every dock warehouse has one for hauling cargo from the canal. They never guard it because nobody thinks scavengers fit through it."

"Can you fit through it?"

"I've fit through worse."

She pulled a small cloth bundle from her satchel and pressed it into his hand. Lockpicks. "Scream if you need me. I'll pretend I didn't hear."

He almost smiled.

---

The tunnel was a brick pipe half full of canal water. Zephyr went in on his hands and knees, dragging the bad leg. The splint scraped stone with every move. He held the lantern in his teeth.

At the far end, an iron grate blocked the way. The lock was old and rusted. Zephyr had it open in under a minute.

He climbed into a dark storage cellar and listened.

Voices. Chains. Someone coughing.

He crept to the door and looked through the keyhole. A long stone corridor, lit by a single lamp. Cells lined both sides, iron bars rusted to brown. Prisoners sat in them. Six, maybe seven. Ragged men and women with the hollow look of the very hungry.

"Rowan?" he whispered.

Nothing. He opened the door and slipped along the wall.

Nobody called out as he passed. They all stared at him with flat, frightened eyes, and none of them made a sound. They knew better than to draw a guard.

He found Rowan in the last cell, curled on a pile of straw.

His brother was twelve years old and weighed less than a bag of flour. His lips were cracked, and his skin burned to the touch. When Zephyr dropped to his knees, Rowan's eyes fluttered open.

"Zeph?" A thin whisper. "I told them you'd come."

"Of course I came." Zephyr's voice cracked. He fumbled the lock with Mira's picks. "Hold on. I've got your medicine."

The lock clicked. He pulled Rowan into his arms and poured the first bottle between his lips. Rowan swallowed, coughed, and swallowed again.

"Are those scavengers?" Rowan whispered, looking down the corridor. "They said they weren't thieves."

Zephyr looked back at the other cells. Up close, he saw what he'd missed. These weren't criminals. They wore worker's clothes and merchant's boots. A woman in a seamstress's apron. A boy no older than sixteen. They had been taken off the street.

An old man in the nearest cell caught Zephyr's eye. He was gray-bearded and bone thin, and he was staring at Zephyr's open collar, where the black mark showed above the cloth.

"Boy," the old man hissed. "That mark. Where did you get it?"

"Not now."

"Cover it. Please." His hands trembled on the bars. "If they see it, if anyone in this building sees it, you can never expose it. Do you understand? You can never let anyone see."

"What did you witness?" Zephyr asked. "Why are you in here?"

The old man shook his head. His eyes were wet. "We saw the Ninth Door. That's all. That's why we're here."

Before Zephyr could ask what the Ninth Door was, a bell began to clang.

---

The alarm ripped through the building.

Boots thundered overhead. Doors slammed. Someone shouted, "Intruder in the lower level!"

Zephyr cursed. He'd tripped something, a wire or a plate. Whatever it was, Cassian's people knew he was here.

He lifted Rowan onto his back and tied him there with a belt. "Hold on tight."

"Zeph, the others." Rowan's voice was small. "Don't leave them."

"I'm not."

That was a lie, and Zephyr knew it. Seven prisoners, one guarded door, one wounded brother. He couldn't free everyone.

But he tried.

He sprinted down the corridor, picking locks as he went. Two cells popped open. A woman and the sixteen-year-old boy stumbled out. He reached for the third lock.

A door at the end of the corridor slammed open.

Garrick Thorne stepped through it. Six guards flanked him. The enforcer was a lean man with a flat scar across his lip and eyes like wet gravel.

"Kaelith." Garrick smiled. "You made this easy."

Zephyr dropped the picks. His mind was already counting. Six guards, one narrow corridor, a mark on his chest he couldn't use without bleeding.

"Get behind me," he told the woman and boy.

"Stay where you are," Garrick said calmly. "Hand over the boy and the relic. I let the others live."

"You were never going to let anyone live."

"True." Garrick shrugged. "But I would have made it quick."

Zephyr looked past him. On the wall by the corridor's end was a heavy iron lever, the kind that controlled a portcullis. The door at the far end had a gate. A gate meant a counterweight, and counterweights meant ropes.

He raised his left hand and pulled at the cold weight in his chest.

The Ward flickered into being, thin as glass. Pain split his skull. Garrick's first guard swung, and the blade rang off the shield.

Zephyr didn't hold it. He threw it.

The disc flew across the corridor and struck the rope holding the portcullis. It snapped. The gate crashed down between him and Garrick's men with a boom that shook dust from the ceiling.

"Run!" Zephyr shouted. "The tunnel!"

The woman and boy bolted for the cellar. Zephyr turned to follow with Rowan on his back, and then the old man grabbed the bars.

"Boy! Take me!"

Zephyr stopped.

Behind the portcullis, Garrick's men were already hacking at the rope. Thirty seconds, maybe less. Four prisoners remained. The old man. Two women. A man with one arm.

He could take one more, maybe two, before the gate fell. Taking all of them meant Garrick caught them in the tunnel, and Rowan would die.

"I can't," Zephyr said. His voice broke. "I'm sorry."

The old man's face crumpled. He didn't beg. He just nodded, slowly, like he'd expected it.

Zephyr grabbed the nearest lock anyway and burst it open. The old man stumbled out. One more lock, the man with one arm. The woman and boy were already in the cellar. Four people total, counting Rowan.

The last two women reached through the bars toward him. Their eyes followed him all the way down the corridor.

He didn't look back.

---

They crawled through the tunnel as boots hit the cellar above them. Water splashed up around their knees. The old man wheezed. The boy sobbed quietly. Zephyr kept moving, one hand over Rowan's chest to feel him breathing.

They burst out of the canal into a freezing predawn alley. Mira was waiting with a cart and a heavy tarp.

"Get in," she hissed. "Now."

They piled into the cart. Mira whipped the horse into a run. Zephyr lay on his back, staring at the brightening sky, and felt the grief settle in his stomach like a stone.

Two women in those cells. He had seen their faces and left them behind. He would see those faces again tonight, and tomorrow night, and for as long as he lived.

Rowan stirred against his chest. "You came back for me."

"Always," Zephyr said.

Beside him, the boy they had rescued was shaking. His skin had turned the color of ash. Black veins were crawling up his neck from beneath his collar.

"Zeph." Mira had turned to look. Her voice went thin. "What is that?"

Zephyr stared. The infection was spreading while he watched.

A hand closed on his arm. The old man had crawled across the cart. His grip was desperate, his voice barely a breath.

"The relic isn't the reason they fear you," he whispered. "They fear what your existence proves."