Prologue

As I stared into the Rogue's eyes, I knew I was going to die. I had been too hasty, too clever; now I was going to pay the price for my foolishness. I called upon the Trickster to curse the damned cur who betrayed me. Cut him into tiny pieces, starting with his ears; he hadn't been listening when I said he had to keep my secrets.

"Why bother?" a voice hissed. The hairs on the back of my neck rose; this was no natural whisper in my ear. I felt the taint of magic around me, flooding me with strength. My head spun, and my sight of my opponent blurred for a moment to reveal a tall man with peppered hair and a maniacal grin. "You're going to do it yourself, Cooper."


My ma raised me on stories of Beka Cooper, our legendary ancestor, defender of the Lower City and its poor, a Provost's Guard who wreaked vengeance on all evil, no matter where it came from. One of the thousands of heroines buried in our history, before women were taken from the ranks of the guard and the army, before their shields were hung up and their swords given to their sons. But unlike so many of those law enforcers in Corus, she was raised in the Cesspool; she understood the proverb of poverty: steal or be stolen from, break the law or die.

From the stories, I knew there were good folk and bad on either side of the line. There were the hardened, cruel killers, rotten to the core, and there were the city officials willing to look the other way in exchange for a bit of hand grease. Those who abused their positions for their own gain.

But there were also the merciful, and those who dealt out rigid justice indiscriminately, and even criminals who looked out for the unfortunate. Men who broke the law but exacted their own justice, giving hope and, more importantly, money to the destitute and desperate. The hypocrites and the inept stood with the clever and the honest, and those lines were often blurred; I knew that the king of thieves could be kinder and more fair than the man garbed in finery that sat in the palace, with all his legions.

I was never a fool. Even when I was very young, I knew there were all sorts of people, for the law and against it.

I just didn't know who was who.

My magic is rare and little known among most of the common folk who regarded all magic, even the Gift, with the same caution they give to a leper. I do not have the Gift, like my mother; being the good woman she is, she never showed her disappointment, if she had had any at all. She was a healer, one with unusually honest ability in a world full of fakes and cons. She could have served the wealthy, and been paid well for it, but she chose to help the ones who had no chance of hiring any true healer; she had been a priestess in the Temple of the Goddess, before she met my da. She told me little of him, but I did not care- why trouble myself about a man who never troubled himself about me? Better to worry about my ma, who had nobody but me to look after her. Fortunately, I had a skill I put to good use from a young age.

I have the Sight, which tells me more about a person than what is outwardly apparent. I could tell lies from truth and sense deception; a small but valuable talent in the Lower City.

Without my Sight, I wouldn't be alive today; I doubt I would have survived six years on the street. As it was, I was able to avoid getting myself mixed up with trouble. I saw trouble for what it was, and stayed as far away from it as I could get. I was pretty successful, for a time; it wasn't until trouble came for us that it all began.