Date: The Late Afternoon of the 3rd Day of the Month of Blossoms, Year 1107 of the Imperial Calendar.
Location: The Black Market, Lower District.
Survival is a math problem.
Veer sat on the upturned crate, staring into the hollow space under the floorboards where he kept his food stash. The math was simple, and the result was zero.
Zero crusts of bread. Zero dried meat. Zero apples.
He pressed a hand to his own stomach. It growled—a low, angry rumble that echoed in the silent shack. He hadn't eaten in two days. He had given the last scrap of bread to the girl shivering in the corner.
He looked at Aanya.
She was curled on the pallet, the wool blanket rising and falling rapidly with her feverish breaths. She hadn't moved in four hours. She hadn't spoken. She hadn't drunk the willow bark tea, which was now cold and muddy on the floor.
If he stayed, they both starved. If he left, she was defenseless.
Veer stood up. The movement made the room spin. He grabbed the doorframe to steady himself, blinking away the black spots dancing in his vision. Hunger made him clumsy. Clumsy thieves got their hands chopped off.
"Aanya," Veer said. His voice was rough.
She didn't move, but he saw her shoulders tense. She was listening.
"I have to go out," he said. "The air is free, but breathing costs money. And we're broke."
He walked over to the door. He picked up a heavy, square beam of oak that served as the lock.
"Look at me," Veer commanded.
Slowly, painfully, Aanya turned her head. Her good eye peered out from the blanket, wide and terrified.
Veer demonstrated. He slotted the beam into the iron brackets.
"This is the only thing keeping the wolves out," Veer said, tapping the wood. "I am going to leave. You are going to slide this bar into place the second I am gone."
He crouched down, forcing eye contact.
"You do not open this door for anyone. Not for a voice you recognize. Not for a cry for help. Not for the Emperor himself."
He paused, his eyes hard.
"Not even for God. Do you understand?"
Aanya stared at him. Then, a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
"Good."
Veer slipped his dagger into his boot. He grabbed his cloak—still damp, but better than nothing. He pulled the hood up.
He opened the door, slipped out into the rain, and waited.
He heard the shuffle of straw. Then the dragging sound of the wood. Then, the heavy thud of the beam falling into the brackets.
She was locked in. He was locked out.
Veer turned and walked into the gray sludge of the alley. He felt lighter without the girl, but the worry sat in his chest, heavier than any gold.
The Lower District Market was not a place of commerce; it was a place of desperation.
Stalls made of rotting wood lined the muddy street. Vendors sold old shoes, dull knives, and food that would make a stray dog hesitate.
Veer moved through the crowd. Usually, he was a ghost. He flowed around people like smoke. But today, he felt solid. Heavy. His focus was fractured.
Is the door strong enough?
Did Silas wake up?
Is she burning up?
He shook his head, forcing himself to focus. Get the job done.
He needed two things. Food and medicine.
He spotted an apothecary cart. It was run by an old woman with milky eyes who sold herbs and questionable salves.
Veer drifted closer. He saw a roll of clean linen bandages sitting near the edge of the cart. Next to it was a jar of antiseptic honey.
He waited for a drunk to stumble into the cart, creating a distraction.
Now.
Veer's hand shot out. It was a movement he had practiced a thousand times. But today, his fingers were stiff from the cold rain. His timing was off by a fraction of a second.
His fingers brushed the linen. He grabbed it.
"Hey!"
The old woman wasn't as blind as she looked. She spun around, swinging a cane.
Whack.
The cane caught Veer's forearm. Pain shot up to his elbow, but he didn't drop the bandages. He shoved them into his tunic and dissolved into the crowd, ducking behind a large man carrying a pig carcass.
"Thief! Shadow-rat!" the woman screamed.
Veer kept moving, his heart hammering against his ribs. That was sloppy. Amateur.
He was sweating, despite the cold.
He still needed food.
He saw a fruit stall. A crate of apples sat near the front. They weren't the perfect Red Suns from the noble district; these were small, bruised, and spotted. But they were food.
Veer circled the stall. The vendor was arguing with a customer about the price of turnips.
Veer saw his window.
He reached for an apple.
As his fingers closed around the fruit, a wave of dizziness hit him. His vision blurred. He stumbled, his shoulder bumping the crate.
The crate wobbled.
The vendor turned. "Oi! You!"
Veer snatched the apple and ran.
"Stop him!"
A guard—a massive brute in dirty leather armor—was standing ten feet away. He lunged for Veer.
Veer didn't have the energy to fight. He dropped to the ground, sliding through the mud between the guard's legs. He scrambled up and sprinted into the labyrinth of narrow alleys.
"Come back here, you little gutter-snipe!"
Veer didn't look back. He ran until his lungs burned. He ran until the shouts faded into the background noise of the slums.
He collapsed in a doorway, gasping for air, clutching the stolen apple and the roll of bandages to his chest.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
He had almost been caught. For an apple.
Veer leaned his head back against the wet brick. He closed his eyes.
A thief travels light. A thief has no attachments. A thief cares only for his own belly. That was the code. That was how he had survived for seven years.
Now, he had a girl with a melted face locked in his shack.
He looked at the apple. It was bruised. It was pathetic. But it was life.
"You're going to get me killed, Princess," Veer whispered to the empty alley.
He pushed himself up. The adrenaline was fading, leaving him more exhausted than before. But he couldn't rest.
He had a mouth to feed.
Veer tucked the apple deeper into his tunic and stepped back into the rain, carrying the weight of two lives on his starving shoulders.