Free The Shattered City by Tansy Rayner Roberts Page B

front (when they weren’t tucked away behind the leathers).
    It was an odd sort of feeling. Freedom. Respect. All new tastes in my mouth. Then, the year I turned sixteen, everything changed.
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    Macready was getting too old for this shit. The thought of waiting around for a horde of babes in arms to come into their own as sentinels made him want to jump off a fecking bridge.
    Though to be fair, most conversations with Delphine made him feel that way. It was a long time since a demme had got under Macready’s skin like this. There was nothing easy about Delphine. She grated against him — and every time he thought he was making progress, she slid away.
    It reminded him of learning to fish in his gramp’s favourite trout stream back home. Just when you thought you had landed a beauty, it would slip and slide right out from under your fingers.
    Being a sentinel was not something you chose, not something you could just walk away from. It was a sacred trust, and it burrowed into your heart like a mouse chewing its way into the walls of a house. Macready was stuck. He hadn’t been able to walk away when Garnet started sending his people to their doom, when the Haymarket was awash with blood. He hadn’t walked away when Garnet cut his fecking ring finger from his hand, in punishment for one drunken insult. How could he leave now, when the Court might actually have a hope of bettering itself?
    So here he was, trying to save Delphine and turn her into a sentinel. Rhian had sided with him at least, agreeing that a visit to the Seer sounded like a good way to sort Delphine’s future out once and for all. She had even agreed to step outside with them for the second time in the same market-nine, and that had been a master stroke, so it had. Delphine could not argue with it when she knew it cost Rhian so much more to make the trip.
    Macready and Delphine had one thing in common, at least, and that was concern for Rhian. The lass grew nervous as they made their way through the crowded Basilica. She flinched when people brushed against her, and her friends walked on either side of her, trying to keep it from happening.
    â€˜Almost there,’ Macready said, hoping to soothe. They circled a row of hot meat and cold pottage stalls until they finally reached the colourful, gaudy tent of Madama Fortuna.
    A sign hung on the outside, declaring that the fortune-teller was not seeing customers today. A few offerings of centimes, tied posies and honey cakes had been left outside the tent. Ha, Heliora had a few satisfied customers, then. Good for her.
    â€˜Heliora,’ Macready said against the tied door flaps of the tent. ‘Are you there, my lovely? I’ve visitors for you.’
    There was silence, and then a huff from inside. A slender hand slid through the slit to untie the flaps and let them fall open. ‘I’m not working today, Mac,’ said the Seer of the Court. She looked as much the urchin demme as she ever had, with her head lightly shaven and her bare feet sticking out from under a thin cotton tunic.
    â€˜Special occasion,’ he suggested, and gave her a hopeful grin.
    Hel gave him that suspicious glare, the one he liked to think was reserved, all special like, for him alone. Finally, she stepped back to let him and the lasses through. The tent flap fell closed as they came inside the space, which was stuffy with incense smoke. ‘Stray lambs?’ Hel said sarcastically.
    â€˜New blood,’ Macready informed her.
    That did interest her, and Hel turned her strange, luminous eyes on Delphine and then Rhian, staring at them both until they glanced away, uncomfortable with her scrutiny. ‘Not that one,’ she said finally, dismissing Rhian. ‘But you …’ Her eyes widened as she took in everything about Delphine. ‘Saints and devils. This is the one who —’
    â€˜That’s not public knowledge, so,’ Macready said sharply. ‘Only the