No Cage for a Crow

Six - Shards of Glass

MY HAND slid across the grimy surface, fingertips trailing over an inch of thick slime and soot. Beneath was either brick or stone, but there was no way I could have told which.

Behind me, I heard a girl's little grunt, and I turned in time to see Snail wriggle out of the man's grip and take off the way she had come, done with this game. I had moments to become invisible.

Luck seemed to be with me. My fingers slid out of the muck and into open air as the entrance to a side passage opened in the wall. Not a passage, exactly. The top of the wall had crumbled away, opening onto some adjacent space, the lip of the gap at about the height of my waist. As quietly as I could, with trembling arms, I heaved myself up to sit in the mouldering masonry and swung my legs over.

I had forgotten about the others.

A child's petrified scream froze my guts, the most awful thing I had ever heard. Then a crash, and a scuffle, and a meaty thud, and then only heavy boots, walking away.

I twisted to see a broken little body, still and lifeless on the alley's floor... I blinked, and it was gone. But there was a retreating back, and a limp form slung over the massive shoulder.

The sight slid away from me as I overbalanced, scrabbling uselessly at the slick rock, and tumbled sideways into the shadows beyond the alley.

It took longer to fall than it should have, the floor of the dark place being a good four feet lower than the floor of the alley, my brain having slowed to a crawl. The landing was soft, at least, something spongy and giving, filling my nose with the smell of good earth and crushed green things.

Without checking myself for damage, I scrambled up again and felt for the lip of the hole, but my hands found only brick. It was too high for me to reach.

Snail's name bubbled up in my throat, and I swallowed it before it could emerge. If I called out, they would have both of us, and then who would remain to say where we had gone?

The boots came back at a trot, and I crouched down low and held my breath. An amber beam of light, solid as an iron bar, blazed through the hole above me. I did not know why I had not thought they might have lanterns. It came closer, pouring down, and a head appeared beside it. I shrank away, but the light only deepened all the shadows around its revealing circle, and I faded into the dirt. The head turned this way and that and then withdrew, but not before the light had struck a flowerbed, and a worn path, and brick walls all around. I was in the garden of a home.

Then the light was gone, and I was left blind, blinking away the spots it had left in my vision. Safe for the moment. I sank down into the dirt, thinking as quickly as I could.

All right, girl. Analyse.

Snail was taken.

I was not taken.

But the men had come after me. Specifically me. 'That one! There she goes!' After me, but they had taken her. What did Snail and I have in common apart from our sex? We were not of the same age or class or size. Surely, I had not been a Wrong Boy long enough for that to be a factor. Only our sex, then. They were after girls? I shuddered.

But why me first, and Snail only once I was out of their reach? If they just wanted a girl, they should not have singled me out. Or could they have taken her only because she was the one to come after me? Not girls, then, but me, and then whomever had interfered? Or had they taken her to get to me...

That house flashed into my memory, and the people inside it. Was there any possibility—any at all—that my family would send hired men to find and retrieve me?