REBEL BASE BOOKS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Copyright

      Rebel Base Books are published by

      Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

      Copyright © 2018 by James Wolanyk

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

      All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, and educational or institutional use.

      To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

      Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      119 West 40th Street

      New York, NY 10018

      Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

      Kensington Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

      REBEL BASE Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

      The RB logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

      First Electronic Edition: July 2018

      eISBN-13: 978-1-63573-021-0

      eISBN-10: 1-63573-021-X

      First Print Edition: July 2018

      ISBN-13: 978-1-63573-024-1

      ISBN-10: 1-63573-024-4

      Printed in the United States of America

      Dedication

      To the immutable goodness at the core of every person.

      Acknowledgments

      Many of us are not perfect, and I firmly place myself in this category of flawed humans. That being said, the difference between growth and stagnation is simply paying attention. Signs and helping hands and paths are often present, but we lose ourselves in the chaos that we mistake for living. Those who have dedicated their lives to preserving and sharing knowledge—not only on an academic level, but in regards to existence itself—deserve the highest praise. They are not bound by language or any one religion, but by a sense of unconditional love to the world and its flawed humans. Without these figures, we would not stop to listen, to see, to experience life as it flows around us. We would succumb to fear and violence. We would forever conflate suffering with being. Therefore, these words are owed to those who have created the conditions for their existence.

      Chapter 1

      When Anna donned the wool shawl of a goat herder, she’d thought nothing of murder. There had been only wind skittering over the lip of the rock overhang, the dry shuffling of boots and cloth wraps, the creaking of trigger mechanisms being locked in place. Four hours of collective meditation had settled her mind and made violence foreign to the core of her being. Of their being, she supposed. They’d stared at one another, through each other, so inwardly naked and still that anything beyond compassion was unthinkable.

      But violence was a language imposed from birth to death.

      “Where’s the fifth pebble?” Anna asked the Hazani girl as they knelt in shadow.

      Ramyi sighed. “Five paces behind me, on the third ledge.”

      “Second.”

      * * * *

      By the time the girl had memorized their shelter, the skies were endless mica and tufts of violet. Anna led the herders-who-were-not-herders and their goats down hills threaded by narrow switchbacks. They were a ragged procession of silhouettes and bleats and tin bells, bronze skin and threadbare coverings, a stream mingling with the wagons and traders flooding the valley’s night markets. It was jarring to see how many travelers had resorted to using century-old footpaths to reach a city’s outlying districts. But with the region’s kator networks torn up or taxed to the point of bankruptcy, a return to the old ways was inevitable.

      Some of the foundlings jogged after her and called out, rattling handfuls of beads. Years ago the children of Leejadal had been charming, practiced sellers, but eagerness had soured to hurried barks at her back. “Five stalks, five stalks only. Just for you, morza.” Old men with milk-white eyes and mouthfuls of khat swiveled their heads as she passed.

      They were strangers, outsiders in the most dangerous sense of the word, but not unwelcome: The market’s usual well of flesh peddlers and spicemen had dried up over the past two cycles, and only the foreign caravans—those from Malijad or Qar Annah—brought any hope of profit.

      A sea of lanterns lay below her, giving shape to curtains of shifting sand, the hard edges of mud storehouses and ramshackle fencing, brick walls marred with soot stains. A black expanse of stars framed the curvature of the hills and the towers of Leejadal, which now stood high and unlit against the moon.

      “Was it always like this?” Ramyi asked in flatspeak, surely knowing the answer already. She was young, but she knew better.

      Anna glared at her, but the girl missed it. She missed many things.

      Once they’d crossed a dry gully and its tariff checkpoint, Yatrin’s broad silhouette angled back toward Ramyi. His eyes were weary yet alert, sapphire in the light of hanging lanterns. Sapphire in a damning, eastern way. He must’ve felt it too, as he glanced away immediately; that sort of instinct couldn’t always be trained into operatives. “It’s no better.” He clicked at Ramyi through his teeth. “Watch the goats. They like to wander.”

      “Yes, of course,” Ramyi said. “The goats.” She moved on the outside of their column, using her walking stick to herd the goats back into a tight cluster. The indolence in her walk said it all: She was too blunt to respect a plan’s subtlety. “What will we even do with them?”

      “Sell them,” Anna hissed, and that was it.

      But Anna had the walk of a goat herder, the strong yet labored gait of those who’d had their legs broken and mended