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Before the stadwatch hit the Crow Club, Kaz still believed that his leg would recover. After all, he’d never broken a bone before, but Jordie had broken his arm when Kaz was eight and made a huge fuss over the pain for weeks. When the cast had come off, his arm had been fine.
But Jordie had been able to rest it, whereas Kaz… well, he’d been able to rest a bit, but free room and board in the Slat weren’t given for long, especially if your injury was your own idiot fault. He hadn’t walked on it, of course– he wasn’t stupid – but the jarring that his leg recieved hobbling around on crutches still hurt like a bitch.
Luckily, even foggy-headed with the opiate mixture he’d been having to use to dull the pain, Kaz could deal cards. Haskell had—as a favor to Kaz, he said—fired one of his dealers so that Kaz could take her shifts.
It wasn’t a favor. It was a demotion. Kaz had been on his way to becoming one of Haskell’s lieutenants, and everyone knew it. Haskell couldn’t plan a job the way Kaz did, but he could read people in a way Kaz was still trying to learn. He knew Kaz’s potential. He was waiting until Kaz got the height and breadth of shoulder to come off as more than a vicious kid with a nasty reputation. Waiting until he’d risked his life for enough of the Dregs and they’d risked theirs for him in return that his loyalty wasn’t in question. A child without a conscience couldn’t be trusted, but a man without a conscience who you knew had your back?
In a place like the Barrel, that sort of man was not a treasure one could afford to part with.
Haskell was a patient man. He was willing to wait.
But Kaz hadn’t been. He’d been impetuous and overconfident and now he had a broken leg to show for it. And that was why, the day the stadwatch burst into the Crow Club and everyone else sprinted for the exits, he hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. He’d grabbed his crutches and swung to his feet with reflexes as sharp as any other Barrel rat, but a fleeing pigeon had shoved past him and knocked him over, and he hadn’t been able to get back upright quickly enough in the chaos. They’d hauled him in with the other poor fools who hadn’t been able to make their way out in time.
He’d made a token attempt to fight back but subsided, grumbling, and let them cuff him. In spite of his instinct to escape, he’d resisted the urge to pick the lock as they were taken to the local jailhouse. He couldn’t get away fast enough even if his hands were free. They hadn’t brought his crutches, of course. Kaz’s best hope was to let them hold him in the cell for a night or two, then let him go.
After all, he wasn’t one of the intended targets. While ostensibly the raids were on suspicion of criminal actions on the premises, they were actually a way for the stadwatch to line their own pockets. Wealthier gamblers would pay good money to be let out at once without a mark on their records. Unless they were already wanted for a crime, the dealers, barmen, and servers who didn’t get out of the way fast enough were held, interrogated in a perfunctory way, and then let go after a few nights in lockup to teach them the error of their ways.
Kaz was technically wanted for several burglaries, assorted murders, and an assault with the intent to kill, but the sketch on his wanted poster didn’t look much like him. He could just give a fake name the way he had when he'd been caught in a sting at the docks last year. The indignity of being captured burned, but he forced himself to swallow his frustration. Just because it had been a while since he’d had to keep his head down and trust in the safety of being overlooked didn’t mean he’d forgotten how. He would not risk a longer stay in a worse cell for the fleeting satisfaction of putting up a fight.
After all, he’d spent the night in far worse places. All sorts were held here, and you didn’t keep a middle class criminal in inhumane conditions. There were no beds, but the straw on the floor was clean and plentiful. He’d be fed regular meals. Haskell would be annoyed, but Kaz managed to annoy Haskell daily in some way or other. He had a talent for it, and they did say that not using your natural blessings was an insult to Ghezen, didn’t they?
When they herded the prisoners into the room– one of the guards was forced to half-haul Kaz along since he didn’t intend to put weight on a broken leg for someone else’s convenience– Kaz automatically took stock of his surroundings. Solid brick walls, the sort of sturdy but generic furniture that the carpentry workshops by the dock made their living churning out. There was a surprisingly long fire poker, and Kaz wondered if they kept it to beat unruly prisoners until its more mundane purpose was revealed a few minutes later: the officers used it as a lever to wrench open a cell door that had been set on its hinges crookedly. No windows and only a single door in view, though he’d wager there was another somewhere at the back of the building, one that was supposed to stay locked but was probably regularly opened so guards could step out for a smoke in the alley. There would be–
Stop that, he told himself firmly. You’re not going to escape. They’re going to let you out if you can just be patient for a couple nights.
Several plans spun through his mind anyway, on reflex. Kaz ended up sharing a cell with one of the steerers, a fortyish woman named Maud who’d finished her shift and who’d been having a drink at the bar when the raid hit. She was one of the old guard of the Dregs who’d survived both the Queen's Lady Plague and the Zwartstrat tenement fire that had consumed the building that had served as headquarters before the Slat. She was tough; Kaz respected her.
They got my knives and brass knuckles off me, but I still have my gloves. They didn’t find the picks in the hem of my sleeve or the garrotting wire in my pocket lining. Wait until dark, get the cell door unlocked– Stop that. Not escaping.
After a bit, the guard making the rounds of the cells stopped outside theirs with his little notebook. “Name and age,” he said from behind an impressive salt-and-pepper moustache.
“Maud DeVries, thirty-seven." she replied. Kaz had no idea if it was her real last name or not—for that matter, Maud might not even be her legal first name.
“Karl Jansen,” Kaz volunteered for himself. “Thirteen.” They might let him out sooner if they thought he wasn’t of age yet. The concept of being “of age” was idiotic to him. Why should a fourteen year old have a different legal status than a thirteen year old? Why should a year’s difference matter when either could work a factory job, be hired onto a merchant vessel crew, or beat someone to death in an alley? But it was important in the Barrel for one reason: criminal penalties on children were lighter. Any proper gang recruited more than a few kids—besides being trainable and quick on their feet, children could take the fall if a job went bad and let the older members escape.
“He’s lying,” Maud said, and Kaz actually froze in shock. You never, ever ratted out your own people. But she continued. “He’s wanted. All I was doing was having a drink at the bar. Let me go and I’ll tell you his real name.”
The guard gave her a long, considering look, then squinted at Kaz as if trying to recognize him. He shook his head. “I’ll ask the captain.”
Kaz wanted to launch himself across the cell and give her a taste of what would happen if she dared to turn on him. But she was taller than him and stockily built, and she’d been experienced in taking a man down in a dirty fight since before Kaz was born. He didn’t have a chance. Instead he glared at her, murder in his eyes.
“You’re done if you talk ,” he hissed. “You know what Haskell does to informants.”
“Your word against mine, isn’t it?” Maud said, raising an eyebrow. "The guards just recognized you. I never said a word.”
His word against hers. And even if Per Haskell had suspicions about Maud’s quick release from custody, Kaz had no way to tell anyone she’d sold him out. No reason to think they’d believe his story even if he did. Choosing to believe a seasoned, well-liked member of the Dregs over a fourteen year old bound for Hellgate, even if he did have potential, was only common sense. Kaz wouldn't be any use to him anymore. Not unless he managed to get out.
It felt like a scab had been ripped off of him. Stinging. Vulnerable. “Why?”
"It's nothing personal, Brekker," she said with an almost sympathetic look. "Bastard landlord's been coming round trying to mess with my daughter. Until I get the kruge to lodge somewhere else, I’m not leaving her alone two nights in a row and letting him get ideas. She’s twelve."
So? Kaz wanted to snarl. Half the rats in the Barrel had had to fight off predators when they were even younger than that. Even Kaz, a time or two, though Ghezen knew he'd been more a target of opportunity than any kind of temptation. She can block the door with furniture, can’t she? If it’s not heavy enough, give her a pistol or a club with nails in it and she’ll be fine. Most of us had to make do with pocket knives and fists and nowhere to run.
But Kaz said nothing. He'd learned about the stubborn ferocity of a mother here in the Barrel, of all places. He'd seen skinny, ragged girls fight people twice their size for a bit of food to bring home to their baby. He'd seen the fury a woman could unleash if someone tried to take away her child. A lot of their kids still grew up neglected or beaten or hungry, but by and large, mothers lived by an unspoken rule: no one hurts my family but me.
He would still make Maud pay for this. But that would have to wait. First, he had to escape.
He half listened as the captain came and Maud ratted him out like the two-faced bitch she was. She was released from the cell and left without looking back. This much could be said for the stadwatch : they honored their deals, and when you bribed them, they stayed bribed.
Kaz struggled to keep his breathing even. The cell door wouldn’t be a problem. The cuffs would be trickier because of the angle of his hands, but doable. But escaping unseen and unheard with his leg in a cast and several guards watching the doors? Making his way back to the Slat? How did you plan an escape when you couldn’t fucking walk?
He’d have to try to walk. Of course he would. He’d end up in debt to Haskell for the price of having a new plaster cast put on—this one already had a couple ominous cracks in it despite the care Kaz had taken to avoid putting weight on it. Trying to walk on it—run on it, even? It would break beyond repair. But better in debt than in Hellgate. In the Barrel, he had a gang to watch his back. There, he’d be alone and injured: not easy prey for all that, but prey nonetheless.
This was going to hurt.
All right, so… he’d wait for nightfall. Take care of the cuffs. A guard would be left in the main room to watch over the prisoners in their cells. Kaz would have to lure that guard into his cell with some con or other, garrotte him before he could call out, steal his wallet and any weapons he had on him, and limp or crawl to the back door. Pick that lock too, if they’d bothered to lock it. Get as far as he could, as quickly as he could from the jail. Sleep a few hours in an alley near the market district. Find a food vendor or rag and bone man with a cart or trolley early the next morning, and bribe or threaten them to wheel him back to the Slat before the day shift of the stadwatch came on duty.
Right. That was the plan and as long as he had a plan, he could keep going. Just another job. If the guard had enough money on him or a gold ring or two, Kaz thought bleakly, that would go a good way towards paying for a new cast and some food to eat until he’d recovered enough to resume his shifts at the Club again.
Contingency plans, details, possible obstacles all spun through the ordered steps and turned each one into a maze. He walked through it, anxiously tracing and retracing his options.
In his years in the Barrel, he’d become Dirtyhands, criminal and killer. He’d shaped himself into precisely what he had to be to survive and seek his revenge. He knew the Barrel, the harbors, the staves, the streets… he knew how to talk, how to carry himself, how to find what he needed and demand the respect he deserved. It had taken him years. He’d shed his softer, rural accent for the sharp, short tones of the city as quickly as he could– it reminded him painfully of the way Jordie’s voice had sounded during the last few days he’d been alive, his voice torn up from coughing but his quietly rasped words sounding like home.
Kaz didn’t like the prospect of having to create yet another self to survive in Hellgate, to learn a new set of rules, collecting allies and enemies and clawing his way to the top again. It was agonizing, frustrating… terrifying.
He waited for nightfall, the time passing too slowly and too quickly at once. He kept still, desperately willing his leg to rest so it could hold up long enough to get free.
The light through his window shifted and he watched it, silently going over the steps over and over. It was beginning to take on the purplish tinge of dusk when his cell door opened.
There were three of them, but it was the shortest guard his eyes paused on. The other two looked angry, determined… but this one looked at Kaz with pure hate.
They dragged Kaz to his feet, and he made himself a dead weight in their grasp. He couldn’t fight three, cuffed and weaponless, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for them. He met their leader’s eyes.
He wants to kill me, Kaz thought, his mouth twisting into a snarl and his stomach hollow with dread. I wonder how far his friends will let him get before they stop him.
He stared at Kaz silently for a long moment, then spat in his face.
“This is the part where you tell me why you’re going to beat me,” Kaz reminded him, keeping his voice steady with an effort. He couldn’t wipe off the gob of saliva now dripping down his cheek, so he acted as if it didn’t exist.
(Tom, he decided. He’d name the guard Tom. He didn’t want to be hit by a man he didn’t have a name for.)
“You killed the man I loved, you filth.”
Kaz raised an eyebrow. “Which man you loved? You’ll have to be more specific.”
He was prepared for the blow– teeth parted, head ready to turn with the impact, tongue flat to the bottom of his mouth so he couldn’t bite it. It hurt like hell anyway when it came. Tom had a good left hook.
Kaz gasped in a couple breaths before he raised his head to look at him again. “Which… man?” he repeated. “Klaus Schaar, Gerrit Kolk, Ab DeGroot…” Had it been one of them? Or one of the killings that wasn’t officially linked with his name?
(Some men counted their kills, carved notches on their gun barrels or tattooed marks on their skin. Kaz had made a point of not doing so. The idea made his skin crawl. He knew what he was and he had come to rely on the fear it inspired in others. But it wasn’t an accomplishment or a skill. Killing was horribly, shockingly easy once you set your mind and body to doing it.)
“Marco Hassebrok,” Tom growled.
“Hassebrok,” Kaz mused, the name sparking his memory. “Guardsman. Liked catching younger gang members alone, telling them he knew who they were, and then offering to let them go instead of taking them in… for a price. Such a generous fellow.” The price he’d asked hadn’t been the sort that came in coins or bills. Kaz had made it publicly known that that killing was the work of Dirtyhands. It had been effective. Guards didn’t try that one on Dregs territory anymore.
“He was worth fifty of you.”
Kaz smirked, though it stung his lip. “I don’t know. I’m a fairly valuable piece of Barrel filth. According to the stadwatch , I’m worth a couple hundred kruge, alive.”
(These men wouldn’t get any sort of bounty, of course. They hadn’t been the ones to bring him in. But Kaz dropped the word alive purposely. Alive, alive, alive. Your captains and higher-ups want me alive, he thought at them desperately. He had no clue if it was true. No clue if he was worth anything to anyone but the Dregs, who knew what he was capable of.
And worse, even if they did mean to keep him alive, there was an art to beating someone only half to death and knowing when not to take that one step too far. Some guards were experts at it. Some were not.)
The next punch was to the stomach. Kaz clenched his stomach muscles in preparation, but he didn’t have much muscle there to shield the organs beneath. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, and before he had time to recover it, he was punched in the eye so hard that he thought he felt something crack. His head swam—the pain was both dull and sharp at once.
Pick the lock on the cuffs, get a hand free, grab the knife of the man behind you and stick it in his gut, he thought senselessly.
Another blow– his stomach again, making him heave acid. Kick the other in the kneecap. Knock aside the blow of the one hitting you. Charge. Head butt him. Aim for the solar plexus.
Tom kneed him in the balls, sending brutal, white-hot agony through every nerve he had. The world lurched. Kaz would have collapsed if not for the arms holding him up, but he couldn’t, couldn’t even cringe away. Couldn’t even clutch himself, couldn’t protect himself. Take his knife. Cut their hamstrings, then their throats once they’re down. Get out of the cell before the others come, out the back entrance.
He’d learned years ago that being silent under a beating just made them hit you harder. But he couldn’t get enough breath to cry out, couldn’t make a sound if he wanted to other than a faint wheezing. Use the alleys. Run. Run. Run.
He couldn’t run, and it didn’t stop. Wrap the chain between his wrists around one of their ankles, drag him down, slam his head into the bars. Red and black and white flashed through his vision. Get his knife. Get a weapon get something–
At some point, they threw him to the floor and used their boots. He protected his face and head with his arms, curled to protect his groin and stomach on instinct. Wait until dark… stay quiet… pick the lock on the cuffs…
He felt a rib break, sharp and almost audible. Garrotte the guard… pick the lock…
Well-aimed kicks to his kidneys sent streaks of pain stabbing down his legs. The guards… the back alley… get far away as fast as… Then one of them began to pay special attention to the leg that was in the cast. It only took two good kicks to shatter the plaster and then–
He wasn’t able to think clearly enough anymore to feel terror. There was just the vague, half-remembered sense of something important about protecting that leg, but no way to do it.
Shock was beginning to set in and Kaz let himself spin into the sweet relief of it as his body stopped being his own. The sickening impact, the gut-wrenching wrongness of bone grinding against bone, the feeling of something tearing in his knee– all those things were happening to someone else. Kaz Rietveld had died years ago, after all. He was a ghost. Ghosts drifted, and so that was what he did.
Dirtyhands coughed up blood and struggled to keep their boots from his skull, tried to pull back a leg that would no longer move the way he wanted it to. His lips moved almost imperceptibly, mouthing words. Pick the lock. Take down the guard. Get his wallet… weapons… get out… get out.
Kaz thought of his Da. He’d had a bad stomach bug once, dizziness and throbbing pain in his abdomen, and Da had come and sat on his bed and smoothed his hair. Talked to him.
His Da was talking to him now, his voice strangely different. Captain’s coming in a minute, lads, finish getting your kicks in and go. Ghezen, did you actually kill the little fucker? Get another prisoner in there so we can say they did it and get out.
The city is winning, Jordie said from far away. Kaz tried futilely to reach for him. The city is winning so far. But we’ll see who wins in the end.
Pain. Darkness.
-
When Kaz woke, it was slowly, in lurches and spins. Agony like fire. The scratch of straw under his face. Bone-deep pain that followed him through the spells of waking and unconsciousness. A sound. Hands on his arms. Thrashing, fighting them, and as he tried to kick and the pain seared up his leg and everything was drenched in blinding light that came from behind his own eyes.
Then he was somewhere else. No straw. Something wet dripping into his mouth. Water. Breathing, choking on it. A sharp pain in his chest as he coughed and gasped. A throbbing ache in his face. More drifting through cold, violent seas of pain. Not fighting it anymore. He let go, like he should have done that night in the harbor, let go and gone to Da and Jordie and not become a monster, stayed himself, stayed Kaz…
After what could have been days or only hours, the remnants of the shock faded and the full force of the pain seared through Kaz with a vengeance, dragging him out of his delirium. It was worse than anything he’d ever felt– worse than the beatings, the fever aches, worse than having his leg set and then reset because they’d done it wrong the first time.
Kaz opened his eyes—one of them wouldn’t open. He was in a dim room; he couldn’t see clearly. Something was wrong with him. He was making a weak sound that might have been a groan or a sob.
“Drink,” said a voice, and a hand passed through his field of vision holding something, and there was wetness in his mouth again. He swallowed with difficulty, once, then twice. Then he managed to turn his head. There was a man in a guard’s uniform. He was the wrong height. No, Kaz was too high off the ground. Not on the floor. Not on a mattress. On… a table? Too short. A desk. His knees were bent, legs dangling off the edge, the right one on fire with unspeakable pain.
He spread out a hand to feel the wood and realized that his hands weren’t cuffed anymore. Pick the lock of the cuffs . The person who’d given him the water was whistling tunelessly.
“Where,” Kaz managed to say.
“We’re in the back. Funny how that man in the cell with you managed to do such a number on you without even bloodying his knuckles, wasn’t it? Figured you’d be safer back here with me while I do the paperwork. I’m no medik, but you’re still breathing, so you just might make it to Hellgate alive.”
Kaz rolled onto his side in the direction of the voice. It was hard. Wrenching pain in his side and hip, dizziness that made the world ripple slightly. Sickening wrongness from his right leg—it didn’t move right, didn’t hang right. Through his good eye, he saw a ginger-haired man at a chair, writing something on a clipboard. Because Kaz was on his desk.
You might just make it to Hellgate alive.
Safer back here with me.
Pick the lock on the cuffs. Garrotte the guard. Escape through the back entrance.
It was like seeing underwater. Things rippled that weren’t supposed to ripple. Time slowed for a moment, and he saw the man’s mouth move again.
The city is winning, he told Kaz, his face fuzzy in the lamplight. The city is winning. The city is winning.
Fumbling, Kaz reached into his pocket. Found the hole in the lining. Felt metal wire.
We’ll see who wins in the end.
-
He was never sure, looking back, how long it had taken him to drag himself off of the guard’s body and crawl out the back door into the alley. He knew that he’d lain in the alley for some time, listening to water from the roof gutters drip onto the cobbles through the rusted downspout pipe.
Then he reached for the pipe. Dragged himself up to a sitting position. Tried to pull himself up further, but there was a horrible creak and the pipe itself came away in his hand. The bolted strip that had fastened it to the wall had been rusted through. It fell with the dull sound of poor quality metal.
He stared at it. Then he carefully braced it on the ground to lever himself up, grabbed an uneven brick that jutted out from the wall in the other hand, and—slowly, agonizingly—got to his feet. Kaz’s broken leg would not support him-he couldn’t put even the smallest amount of weight on it. When he tried even to touch it to the ground, both his knees buckled from the pain and it was only the hand he threw out to brace himself against the alley wall that kept him from collapsing.
Kaz gripped the rusted pipe with white-knuckled desperation and then, slowly, using the pipe to take his weight instead of his destroyed leg, pulled himself forward. The pain was so all-encompassing that it wasn’t even pain anymore. The walls of the alley swam around him. One hobbling step, his weight on the leg that worked, then levering himself forward with the pipe, half swinging his leg forward, half hopping. One slow step, then another.
Step by step. Brick by brick.
Get as far as he could, as quickly as he could. Find someone with a cart or trolley the next morning. Something… get back to the Slat. Get back to the Slat.
It took what felt like years. He had to stop often, propping himself up against a wall and wheezing for breath, broken ribs and bruised organs and throbbing face all protesting, revolting, shrieking at him silently to stop, lie down, cry.
Get back before the day shift comes on duty. Get back before they find the body.
The body. The ginger-haired guard. He’d been trying to do right by Kaz, in a way. He’d given him water. Put him where he could watch over him and keep him from being hurt more. Tried to make sure Kaz would make it to Hellgate alive. That was the only type of kindness men like that were capable of—the type that spared your life but took away everything that made life worth living. The type that came too late, after the damage had already been done.
Kaz wasn’t sorry he’d killed him.
Balance was hard and painful without the other leg. He lurched and wobbled and, excruciatingly, fell to the ground more than once. The moments in which he wasn’t sure if he would stay upright felt distantly familiar, like sunlight and grass under bare, unsteady feet. Jordie holding out his hands. ( Come on, walk to me, you can do it. C’mon, Kaz, show Da! ) Just when he was about to fall and opened his mouth to cry out, he’d been caught by his brother’s hands. Only there were no hands, nothing but the air and the cold cobblestones and the impact jarring his bruised body and broken bones.
No one to catch him.
When he was no longer able to get back up, he managed to crawl behind a rubbish bin and wrap his jacket around his head, hiding his face, just another piece of gutter refuse sleeping on the streets. He wasn’t sure how far he’d gotten—close to the Barrel, he knew that much. But was he close enough that the owner of the shop whose rubbish this was would just rummage through his pockets to see if he had anything worth taking, or would Kaz be chased off for fear customers might see him?
Putting thoughts together in any way that made sense made his head throb even harder. He clutched the jacket around his head with one hand and the pipe that was his makeshift crutch in the other. He didn’t sleep—couldn’t, not with the pain an endless, exhausting shriek. But he lay there unmoving as the city woke and murmured around him, as the shouts of street hawkers filled the air and he learned from them that he was not far south of the Hoogstrat fish market.
He’d forgotten to look for the wallet on the guard he’d killed. Forgotten to do anything but get out. He had nothing to bargain with and no strength to go on alone. He realized distantly that he might die in this alley and be thrown onto the Reaper’s Barge one last time.
He didn’t want to explain what he’d become to Da and Jordie. Wasn’t even sure he’d see them again—the priests of Ghezen were full of shit about everything else. There was probably nothing and no one waiting for him.
No, that was wrong. There was one person who was waiting for him, and they didn’t even know it yet. There was one score still to be settled.
Brick by brick. Brick by brick.
Kaz felt the slow burning coals of hatred in him flare, and a heat began to creep through his chilled, throbbing flesh and bones.
He’d been an idiot. He had forgotten who he was. Kaz Rietveld would have been cold, frightened, and weak after a beating. But Brekker did not submit to pain or death or hunger. He survived. He survived , because he wouldn’t let go until he’d had his revenge.
Slowly, he pulled the jacket off of his head—arms cramping and shaking, ribs stabbing with pain– and forced his arms through the sleeves. He braced the pipe on the ground and grasped the edge of the rubbish bin to pull himself up. It overturned, showering him with trash. He breathed, slow, deliberate, gathering his willpower, then let go of the pipe, balanced his weight on one arm and his good knee, and reached for his bad leg. A cry was wrenched from his lungs as he pulled it forward and bent it at the knee and he heaved uncontrollably for a moment, blind with agony. Then he braced the pipe. Gripped it with both hands and all at once, because if he did it slowly he’d lose his nerve, he let his weight fall on his bad leg so that he could get his good leg under him, get his foot under him so he could pull himself up and stand and–
His vision went black and gray and red and he thought he heard himself scream, a ragged rasping sound that was barely human. But he didn’t let go of the pipe, didn’t fall forward, and he was pulling himself up. He was standing. He stood. His broken leg was a useless, leaden weight. HIs arms could barely hold him. But they did. They would. He couldn’t keep the knee bent anymore, so the foot dragged when he pulled himself forward.
It’ll never heal, he realized distantly. Not properly. Might not be able to walk again.
Then, I have to heal. I have to walk again. There’s no other option. I will walk.
I won’t have to walk forever, after all. Just long enough.
Fifth Harbor, and a pile of abandoned crates. He sat, the sun harsh but welcome on his skin. He was conspicuous, visible. He couldn’t rest for more than a few minutes, but he needed those minutes. He was too dizzy, and if he fell over one more time, he wasn’t sure he could get back up.
Breathing was growing difficult. He could feel his body trying to slow, to stop, and he refused to let it. Took one breath, then another. The pipe was a grounding weight in his hand. It was bending from the use he’d put it to; it hadn’t been designed to hold the weight of even his scrawny form. But he was too weak to bash it straight. Shitty dock wood under him would probably have splintered if he’d tried.
A few more minutes and then he could use the bent pipe and the last flickers of his strength to pull himself the few streets left into Dregs territory.
Wood broke too easily. Like bone. Like faith. Once his leg had been set again, he'd have to find something to hold him made from stronger metal.