Excerpt from The War for the Ghost Cities, as recorded in The Book of Khinet…

  4.4 And Eketra, desirous to rule alone, plotted against Josean to bring about his downfall. She stole runes from Teikru, runes designed to drive any god or man mad with lust.

  4.5 And she fashioned a daughter for herself and called her name Seleketra. Upon every inch of flesh, Eketra marked her daughter with these runes and sent her to Josean.

  4.6 Not realizing the girl was part of Eketra’s schemes, Josean obsessed over Seleketra day and night until he was sick with lust for her. Finally, he forsook even glorious battle to have the demigoddess.

  4.7 Eketra, believing herself victorious, sought to take the throne of the ghost cities for herself.

  4.8 This she did, not knowing that Teikru had purposely left the runes where they should be easily stolen and bring about Eketra’s downfall instead.

  The Cormorant was smaller than Brat expected, the same size as a man. On the scroungy side, too, like an old fighting rooster abandoned in the low streets, too fast to catch, too tough to kill, and too stringy to chew if you did.

  When she thought back on their meeting later, that made sense. The strong gods were big gods—that was why they were only interested in uphill folk, the sort who lived big important lives. The god of the streets was scrawny because he watched out for scrawny little close-rats who lived and died without anybody important taking notice.

  He had a big nose, though, which was probably where he got his name.

  At least the Cormorant had been tough enough to kill that mean-looking uphill couple and their leering bruisers. If he hadn’t dropped out of the sky to save Brat, it would’ve meant some real bad stuff, for sure.

  With the corpses still steaming in the cold winter air, the Cormorant knelt down in the slushy mud of the spur off River Street and looked Brat in the eyes. Right away she felt the power coming off him in heaps. He had a whole lot more medicine than anybody she’d ever seen, either aboveground or down in the Closes. Enough that she could look past the starved, gristly face and see the close-rat who had become a god.

  “I cain’t be everywhere, me,” the Cormorant told her in a voice like a stray dog’s growl. “You gotta be smart and stay clear of trouble.”

  So Brat had been smart. She’d hacked off her hair short and become a boy, which folk looking for the bad stuff took after less often than girls. She’d taken care of Pretty and looked out for her, because two together was safer than one.

  One night, Brat heard a pear seller on Market Street say that two alike were called twins.

  As soon as she heard that, Brat knew that twins was good medicine as surely as a thumbnail moon or nine crows on a gallow pole. She and Pretty didn’t look alike, but they must be twins, because they were always thinking the same way. Like how Pretty thought Brat was the smartest and the fastest and the bravest close-rat under Siu Carinal, just like Brat thought.

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  With the certainty of a child who has no evidence whatsoever, Brat knew that she was a twin. All the other close-rats—the worshipful Pretty excluded—figured this was just another of Brat’s whopper lies.

  Unbeknownst to anybody, this time Brat was telling the truth. She was a twin, but it wasn’t Pretty she had shared the womb with. Brat’s real twin had disappeared inside her developing body long before she was born, leaving behind a single piece of itself to prove it had once existed.

  For sixteen years, the lost twin’s heart sat tucked up against Brat’s, laboring away while Brat’s heart slept. The stolen heart raced when Brat swiped food for her and Pretty, thundered when Brat gave somebody what-for, soared when she got her brothers Four and Twenty-six, and crashed through training and lectures and extra sword lessons, first as Nine, then as Lathe.

  Then one rainy spring midnight, a wooden thornknife snapped Lathe’s breastbone and pierced her lost twin’s heart. The King of Night himself tried to call Lathe back from the grave, but he couldn’t do it because she had never left. It was the last piece of the lost twin that had died, not Lathe.

  For the first time in sixteen years, as the riptide carried what her brothers thought was a dead girl away from land, Lathe’s heart had to get smart, too. So it pumped when it could and rested when it got too tired.

  Together, they drifted out to sea.

  ***

  Pretty had never had the same kind of smarts or bravery Brat had, but she did have faith. She’d never seen the Cormorant, but she believed the stories Brat told about the god of the streets. She had always believed everything Brat said, even when she knew she shouldn’t. Right up until her twin disappeared from the gaol, never to be heard from again.

  Then Athalia had found her and offered her a way out of the Closes, and Pretty believed it was the only escape.

  Pretty let Athalia’s flesh artisan file her slightly longer eyeteeth into fangs. Then she had held still while he needled dark ink into her pale skin, until her whole body was covered head to foot in intricate runic markings. Even harder than that, she had kept her eyes wide open while he needled glowing green ghostlight into her dark irises. Pretty had done it all because she believed what Athalia said about rising above any placement any close-rat had ever lived to see.

  With artistry and clothing and comportment, Pretty had become Seleketra, the beauty that felled a thousand kingdoms. All of Siu Carinal fell into a hysteria of worship for the demigoddess. Men died for her, killed for her, sacrificed themselves as burnt offerings for her. Because they believed.

  Then one day a man styling himself a warlord sent a contract to Athalia for the favor of Seleketra’s companionship that outweighed all the gold and prestige of the demigoddess’s previous dalliances.

  Athalia would never have to entertain a caller again, never have to grace another Carnival of the Dead on a lord’s arm, never have to spend another day in a bed not her own. Pretty could never repay Athalia for saving her from the Closes, but in agreeing to the warlord’s contract, Seleketra had finally given Athalia everything a good daughter would, everything Pretty had hoped to provide.

  Pretty never saw the Cormorant, but he saw Pretty. He stood watching from the window as the former close-rat left Athalia’s townhouse and was handed into the carriage that would take her away.

  “Can you rest now, Starry? No more bed-hopping now that she’s doin’ it for you?” He regretted it as soon as he asked. He didn’t talk much anymore, him, and when he did, the whispered rasp made everything sound harsh. Even questions that cut both ways.

  Athalia didn’t look at him. She hadn’t in twenty years or more.

  “Watch over her for me, Shad,” she pleaded.

  There were still a few folks alive who knew the Cormorant’s name—close-rats who had gotten out, like him and Starry—but most were too drunk or addled nowadays to identify either of them. Even without impediments, those folks probably wouldn’t have recognized the grown, changed versions of the brats they’d once known, Starry with her uphill refinement, and Shad with his throat cut like fish bait and fire inside from walking the ghost cities.

  “She’s all I got, all I’ll ever have,” Athalia whispered to what she thought was an empty room. “Keep her safe for me.”

  The Cormorant nodded. Athalia didn’t see him nod, and she didn’t hear him leave, but he knew she knew he would do what she asked. Because close-rats were loyal, even when they grew up and one became the Daylily of Siu Carinal, and the other became the god of the streets, pining away after the girl he’d lost to harsh, bloody reality.

  Soul Guardian.