Free Herb-Witch (Lord Alchemist Duology) by Elizabeth McCoy

with
anonymous light hair, paler skin and eyes. Not Kessa the half-breed
and dog-eyed. Not Kessa the immune, with her Guild Master's notice.
    She
skipped into an alley only once to avoid guards; where she was going,
guards didn't bother with more than token patrols.
    Kelp
Street meandered along the border between the docks district and the
rat-maze of unnamed slum streets that'd grown up outside the
long-neglected city walls. Taverns dotted it, like chipped glass
beads on a necklace. Most had names like "Drunken Mermaid"
or "Riverman's Brew."
    Out
back of one called "Shark Reef," she found a stick and
poked at its brickwork. Nothing snapped, so she took a deep breath,
and put her hands and feet into the niches the different-colored
bricks concealed. Happily, no sharp bits of glass or metal greeted
her, and she made it to the attic shutters. She hit them with the
heel of her hand. Thump, pause, thump-thump, pause, thump.
    Then
she hung in the cold, listening to a drunken bard playing in the
tavern below, and hoped old haunts hadn't changed too much.
    She
was about to get her knife and try opening the shutters from the
outside, when a voice finally came, high and reedy. "Who's
there?"
    "Kellisan,"
she growled. "Looking for Tag."
    "Ain't
here."
    "So
find him. Tell him I'll be at his sister's," Kessa said, and
climbed back down. No need to wait for the sounds of someone running
on the errand. Either someone'd draw short straw and go tell Tag –
in which case she'd give him coin to pay the messenger – or
they'd not, and she'd be back to see if she could thump them around.
That was the way things worked.
    Jontho
and Laita didn't live on Kelp Street, or even as close to it as
they'd gotten to Kessa's shop, but getting there took only a brisk
walk in the darkness. And though the building went three stories, two
in honest brick and one in wood . . . Kessa stepped
over a rotten stair-tread. She trailed her fingertips across the wall
beside her and wondered how many drafty cracks it'd reveal, come deep
winter. Perhaps Jontho could fetch wood or brick to put under her
cot's legs, enough to make up a pallet underneath? Put Laita on the
cot, herself on the pallet, beds built atop each other like stores
and apartments . . .
    She
tapped on the third door along, in a pattern that meant "safety,"
and waited.
    She
was in luck; Jontho opened the door, a rushlight haloing him from
behind. "Kess-kess?" he asked, though she'd not rapped out
"danger."
    Kessa
said, "'Sall right, Jonno. No one's followed me."
    "Let
her in, Jontho," came a voice behind him, and he remembered to
stand aside so Kessa'd not have to duck under his arm with roof-rat
manners.
    Inside,
the rushlight seemed brilliant after the thin moonlight. Laita sat up
on the cot in the corner, the ragged mattress next to it showing
Jontho's bed. Despite the light making her eyes more visible, Kessa
took a long look at her crèche-sister, fretting.
    Laita
was beautiful as always, though her bones showed more than Kessa
liked, in the flickering shadows. A heart-shaped face with pale eyes
that caught the color around her in silver and blue, framed in
curling white-blonde hair. The curve of a bosom enough to be a
handful and a little more, in the opinion of the boys Kessa'd spied
on as a boyish brat herself. Laita was everything Kessa wasn't. It
made her angry that her sister couldn't find a patron who'd keep her
the way she should be kept: silks, satins, potions for the least
cough or headache, and enough food to pad her ribs so they didn't
show beneath her breasts.
    But
Laita'd not found anyone, and instead of being a pampered
concubine . . . She was a freelance courtesan, living
in a drafty rooftop apartment with her brother, relying on her
crèche-sister for cures. It pained Kessa. She knew her life would be
hardscrabble; she was a half-breed, likely some tavern-wench's
accident for lack of good dry tea. It wasn't right that Laita, who
looked like a noble's daughter, had