-The Sky Isn’t Free-

The slums had a smell that clung to every available surface. Ash and wet stone and something older underneath soaked into the walls so long it had become part of the architecture. It wasn’t so notable in the city, but after coming from the outskirts a breath of fresh air was welcome.

He stood at the mouth of an alley off Gratten Row, scanning the crowd for the fifth time that morning. The lower city hummed with its usual misery. Vendors shouting over each other; children cutting through gaps in the crowd with small, practiced hands; a  man asleep against a doorframe with his mouth open. The gray light filtered through the smoke layer above, giving everything that same washed-out look it always had. But now it seemed especially dreary. 

No knight. No woman with the bearing of someone who'd rather punch her way through a problem than talk around it.

“She's not here,” Zendy said from somewhere behind him.

Ryker didn't turn around though his brows flickered down.. “Don’t say that.”

“I searched the whole street. I went to the end.” Zendy materialized at his side, hands in his coat pockets, green eyes moving over the crowd with that calm, unhurried attention he brought to everything. “She's not on Gratten. She's probably not on Ferrin either, because I checked there this morning before you woke up.”

“You checked Ferrin before I woke up.”

“I was up early.”

Ryker finally turned to look at him. Zendy's expression was perfectly neutral. His long lashes and the tips of his hair had a dusting of ash on them, somehow making him look more dignified. “Why didn't you wake me?” 

He shrugged and fiddled with his dagger. “You needed sleep. You had that look.”

“What look?”

Clicking his tongue, Zendy slid the dagger back onto his thigh. “Anyway, she wasn’t here.” 

Ryker turned back to the crowd. He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth and said nothing for a moment. The ash came down in slow, lazy drifts, settling on shoulders and awnings in a pathetic attempt at snow in the summer heat.

He had one image of her in his head, sharp and clear. The way she'd looked at him like he was a problem she hadn't decided what to do with yet. He'd been turning that image over in his mind since yesterday, examining it from different angles, trying to figure out where someone like that would go in a city like this.

“She has to sleep somewhere,” he said, feeling like he was fighting against time in a race to catch her before she left.

“Brilliant. Everyone sleeps somewhere.”

“She's a knight,” he continued, mulling it over in his head. “She's not sleeping in an alley. What if we ask the inns if they’ve been keeping a knight?” 

Zendy pushed forward first. “Well, the sooner the better before she leaves.” 

The rest of the morning passed in a grueling march around all the famous inns. Fancy buildings with a little less ash on their windows, loud rooms filled with people in a bar, or quiet little nooks known for privacy. 

Nobody had seen her. Or if they had, they weren't saying so to a thin boy cosplaying with black hair and he was shot down every time. 

By the time the pipes overhead groaned their usual afternoon warning, Ryker was standing at the base of the old mill building on the east side, staring at a wall with nothing on it. His feet hurt. His stomach cramped and he was starting to feel it in that hollow, slightly distant way that meant his body was running on stubbornness and not much else.

Zendy found him there half an hour later and wordlessly handed him a bread roll. He took it. 

“Nothing?” Ryker asked, munching on the bread roll, secretly grateful to have something.

“Nothing.” Zendy sat on a broken crate and chewed his bread slowly. “She could have left the lower city.”

“Maybe.” Ryker leaned against the wall, feeling a pit of bitterness in his stomach. After all these years he was so close and still managed to throw the chance away. 

He could feel Zendy’s burning gaze on him, but he didn’t bother to turn his head. Then he said, “You really want this.”

It wasn't a question exactly. Ryker looked at the wall. “Yeah," he said, fingers curling around the bread a little tighter. “I do.”

“Can I ask why?” 

That was the question, wasn’t it? All he could remember was feeling hurt because the boys were bullying him again until it had suddenly stopped and he was looking up at a mountain of silver. 

“It just . . . feels right,” was all he said in the end, tucking his uncertain feeling back into a corner in his head. 

Zendy didn’t push, like Ryker knew he wouldn’t. There were some things better left unsaid, even from each other. 

Once the feeling in his stomach eased up from lunch they moved onto the next sector, combing through the tunneling veins. 

It was in the fourth alley, the one that ran behind the collapsed granary on the south end of the quarter, that Ryker heard the yelp. Glancing at Zendy, they quietly moved forward and peered around it carefully. 

There were four children in the alley. They were small, seven or eight years old at the oldest, pressed back against the far wall with the particular stillness of kids who had learned that moving made things worse. In front of them stood two men, and Ryker felt his blood begin to boil. 

Until his gaze landed on the person between both groups. 

Ryker recognized her immediately. She was standing with her weight balanced and her arms loose at her sides, and she was looking at the two men with lidded eyes, like she did these kinds of things on a daily basis.

“Walk away,” she said, and her voice carried itself in the same strong way it had yesterday.

One of the men spat on the floor before turning a heel. “C’mon, it’s not worth it,” he muttered to the other man who sneered and followed behind. 

It was only when the men were long gone that Vikki turned to the children. “You're fine, now,” she said to them with a soft smile. “Go home.”

They scattered, taking their one chance at freedom because it might never happen again, leaving behind the memory of terrified glances. 

Then she turned and looked directly at the corner where Ryker was standing. Swallowing harshly, he stepped out, listening to the soft whoosh of his friend move behind him. “What are you doing back here?”

“We’ve been looking for you, actually,” Ryker started, feeling a wobbly smile stretch over his lips. 

Something shifted in her expression, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Surprise? Anger? Disappointment? Had she never wanted to see him after their last talk yesterday? But she didn’t say anything as she turned around just like last time, and Ryker nearly choked on the panic crawling up his throat. 

“Wait!” 

“I’m busy, kid,” she answered, striding down the alley with long steps. 

Ryker missed his chance last time, but he sure wasn’t going to let it slip from his fingers again. Not when he had so much left to learn. From a brief encounter with her years ago his life had been changed since, but it wasn’t enough. There was still so much more he had to learn.

“I want you to teach me,” he blurted. “I want to be a knight.”

Vikki stopped and the silence in the alley felt cold. Somewhere overhead a pipe was draining, and the sound of water trickling through the walls was the only thing filling the space, but neither were as loud as the heartbeat in his ears. 

Red eyes turned to stare hard at him. He held her gaze, though his palms grew warm so he had to wipe them on his trousers.

“No.”

“I get it you're busy,” he said quickly, arms flailing up. He figured she might say no, but the pain in his heart still pulsed. “But I can’t sit around doing nothing anymore. People need help and there’s no one to help them. Remember? You saved me once. I-I remember and ever since I’ve been trying to do the same thing because nobody has a hero anymore.” His lip quivered and he had to take a moment to breathe through it. 

It wasn’t easy to fight. It was so much easier to run away from the problems and pretend they don’t exist, but that always hurt him worse in the end. He needed someone strong to help him fight through them. Vikki was the perfect answer, how could he not grab this chance with both hands and pull? 

Vikki shifted her weight. She looked past him at Zendy, then back at Ryker. Her jaw was set in a way that suggested she was not accustomed to people standing in front of her and not moving. The alley was quiet. The ash drifted. Ryker's heart was going faster than he'd like, but his hands were steady and he kept them that way. “You have no idea what you're asking for,” she said.

“I know it's hard,” he said. “I'm not afraid of that.”

“That's something people say when they haven't met the right kind of challenges yet.”

“Maybe.” He didn't flinch from it. “But I'm still here.”

She looked at him for another long moment. Ryker got the sense she was calculating something, running numbers he couldn't see. Then, from further down the street, came the sound of boots on stone. Multiple sets. Measured. The specific, even cadence of city guards on a patrol route.

Vikki's eyes moved to the alley entrance immediately. The calculation in her expression shifted into something quicker. She took one step, then stopped, and for a brief second she looked genuinely trapped in a way that didn't match the rest of her at all.

The footsteps were getting closer.

She turned back to him. Her hand came up fast and she put one finger very firmly against her lips. The gesture was sharp, unambiguous, and carried the specific energy of someone who was used to being obeyed.

Ryker went quiet. Zendy went quiet. They both pressed back against the alley wall, Ryker's shoulder against the cold stone, and listened to the guards pass on the street outside. The sound of their boots was slow and rhythmic and seemed to last a very long time. Then it faded. Then it was gone.

Vikki lowered her hand. She stood very still for a moment with her eyes on the alley mouth, listening. Then she exhaled through her nose, once, controlled.

She turned back to Ryker.

He met her eyes. He didn't say anything. He'd already said everything he had to say, and adding more words now would only make it worse. He'd learned that much about people. Sometimes you made your case and then you let the silence do the rest of the work.

Her jaw tightened. Then something in her face settled into a resigned set, the specific look of someone making a decision they've already started regretting.

"Fine," she said. The word came out flat, clipped. Like she was closing a door on a larger argument. "Fine. You want training, you'll get training. But you do what I say, when I say it, and you don't ask me questions I don't want to answer. Understood?"

Ryker's chest did something it hadn't done in a long time. He kept his face even. "Understood."

"And your friend." She looked at Zendy without warmth. "He stays out of it."

Zendy raised both hands in a gesture of complete, unhurried peace. "Hey, don’t get me wrong, but I never wanted to be a knight."

She looked at him for a moment. Then she looked back at Ryker. "Dawn. Southeast wall, by the old mill. Don't be late."

She picked up her pack, adjusted it on her shoulder, and walked out of the alley. She didn't look back. Her footsteps were quiet on the stone, and then she rounded the corner and was gone.

Ryker stood in the empty alley for a moment. The ash was coming down again. It settled on his coat, on the ground, on the tops of the crates stacked against the far wall.

Zendy came to stand beside him. He was quiet for a beat.

"Dawn," he said. "That's early."

"It's fine."

"You looked like you were going to say something else for a second there. Right before the guards."

"I wasn't." Ryker turned and started walking back toward the main street. His pulse was still moving faster than normal. He pressed his tongue against his teeth and breathed through his nose and let it settle.