Free Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman Page A

stuck my head into the darkness, where a stair curled down into shadow. Hand in hand, we descended the slick steps and passed through a dank culvert, into the streets behind the streets, the grim warrens of the very poor.
    The alley was narrow, unpaved, and dark. Chamber pots might be emptied onto streets all over town—that was part of city life in the Southlands—but the city didn’t hire anyone to wash the streets in this neighborhood. Everything clumped together in an open sewer down the middle. I hesitated, worried about bringing Abdo here, but he seemed not frightened in the least. He walked ahead of me, prudently skirting puddles and piles of rags. The piles bestirred themselves and stretched gnarled hands toward him, palms up, wordlessly begging.
    Abdo dug a hand into his shirt, where he kept his purse on a cord around his neck.
Does Goreddi coin spend here?
he asked.
That’s all I’ve got
.
    “I’m sure it will,” I said, hastening after him. Needy hands plucked at my skirts. It surely wasn’t safe to flash coins, even Goreddi copper, in a place like this. I let Abdo pass out a handful, and then shepherded him along. “Do you see the mind-fire down here?”
    Abdo started forward again, craning his neck and squinting. At last he cried,
I do!
He pointed at a rickety timber structure.
Through that building
.
    “He’s inside the building?” I asked, incredulous. I’d had no idea this light, invisible to me, could shine so brightly.
    Abdo shrugged.
Moving behind it, more like
.
    We circled the building to the east, then Abdo said,
No, thisway. He’s moving west
. I followed him down a cluttered alley that reeked of old onions; it began westwardly but soon veered south.
    This is wrong
, he said.
I can see his light through walls, but not what road he’s on. It’s like a maze, and we’re in the wrong part
.
    Several dead ends later, we emerged into a broader dirt lane and saw, far ahead, a figure in a long leather apron and broad-brimmed hat, walking away from us. Abdo grabbed at my hand excitedly and pointed.
That’s him!
We hurried, our feet splashing in the drainage ditch, skidding on filth. This was the very edge of the city, where the country began creeping in; we dodged a pig in the road and navigated a flock of complaining chickens. A mule, piled high with bundled twigs, obscured my view, but I cleared it in time to see our man duck down a stairwell and into the basement of a crumbling church.
    Of course. No one would waste hospital beds on plague victims.
    I reached the peeling door just as the latchstring was being pulled back through the hole. I grabbed at it, getting only a knot burn for my trouble.
    His shimmer is directly behind the door
, said Abdo, tracing an outline on the splintery wood.
    I knocked, but there was no answer. I put my eye to the latch hole and peered into a dim crypt. Straw pallets littered the floor between the blocky priests’ tombs and the thick support columns. Upon each pallet lay a wrecked being, neck and eyes swollen, fingers curled into gangrenous fists. Nuns—Sisters of St. Loola, by their yellow habits—picked their way gingerly among the dying, administering water or poppy tears.
    Only now did the groans reach me, and the cadaverous stench.
    Finch yanked open the door, and I nearly fell inside. A terrible beaked face glared at me with big glassy eyes; it was a sackcloth plague mask, the eyeholes set with lenses, the bulging leather beak stuffed with medicinal herbs to filter bad vapors. His leather apron was spattered and his gloves stained; his eyes, behind the glass lenses, were startlingly blue—and kind. He spoke in muffled Ninysh.
    “D-do you speak Goreddi?” I asked.
    “Must I ask you to leave in two languages?” he said, switching without apparent effort, his voice still muffled by the leather and by the real beak hidden under the mask’s. “Is the stench, the neighborhood, your good sense not warning enough?”
    “I need to speak with you,” I