He'd never been hit in the stomach so hard before in his life. Unable to breathe, with the cold rain falling on top of him, his eyes filled with tears. He felt himself thrown onto the concrete ground again, scraping at the skin of his arm as he skidded.
It was just the way the Buddies worked. Buddies. They couldn't be anything further from the meaning of the word.
"Get up, you little shit," the big one who'd thrown him roared. Jonas, was his name.
Garrett stood up, slowly. He didn't understand. He was just eight years old.
"I didn't do anything," he barely choked out to the big boy who'd beaten and thrown him. His black hair fell over his eyes and he pushed it backwards.
"Damn right, you didn't do anything! Give me what you took."
"No." A bad move.
"What did you say to me?"
He walked toward him, with the little boy holding onto the rings he'd stolen in his fist.
"When I tell you to do something, you fucking do it, Garrett. How many people did you kill for those anyway? You've got four gold rings in your little hand there. You killed four for one each? Or two for two?"
"I didn't kill anyone."
Jonas lowered his eyebrows.
"You didn't kill anyone."
Garrett knew telling him had also been a mistake.
"You didn't fucking kill anyone, huh? Did I hear that right?"
He turned to the other Big Buddies. There were four of them. All of them laughed.
"Hey Jonas," one of them said, "You didn't teach that one how to do his job right, or what?"
Jonas walked up to Garrett and squeezed his face with one hand, thumb and fingers on opposite cheeks. He whispered harshly in his ear, "You'd better start following the rules, or your value's going to drop significantly."
Garrett looked up into Jonas' eyes and spoke clearly, "I'm worth nothing to you already."
He let go of Garrett's face and slapped him across the cheek so hard that he spun around and fell down again.
Jonas paced around, a quiet anger building up in him.
Doug, another of the Big Buddies asked, "So if that one didn't kill his marks, does that mean they know where he is? That they followed him here? What if they find us? The Baron'll have us swingin' from his damn mansion if he knows what we're up to."
Some of the other Buddies - even some of the Littles - started murmuring in agreement, some yelling. Garrett got up off the ground again, the pain in his stomach, chest and face never letting him forget it was there. He looked around at everyone that stared at him with disgust and fear in their eyes.
"I-I wasn't caught," he said, a little scared to speak any more near Jonas. "They never saw me, they never heard me, I swear."
"Hah! You swear! You trying to tell me you got in there and you robbed those folks blind without even touching them? Looks like we got a little ghost here!" The kids and Bigs laughed again. "You make more noise than my old man when he catches me home past midnight, you squealer! You couldn't sneak your way into a ward for deaf people." He stopped talking and took in a deep breath, exhaling to calm himself down. "I haven't forgotten about you, Garrett. But I'll deal with you later. Give me what you got."
The child didn't say anything, just walked up to Jonas and dropped all four rings into his fingers. and when Jonas pointed to the line of other boys and girls, he walked in the direction of his finger and joined the line.
He looked at the girl to the right of him. She had a bloody knife in her hands.
The boy to the left of him also had a red-stained blade, the color of the blood a bit darker. They were just kids, and they'd become murderers.
Garrett unsheathed his own knife and took a look at it. It was pure silver. No blood on it. He wondered why they'd bother to give them such expensive weapons, they could have forced them to do it with any old rusty razor. But the Buddies were adamant on a kill being made right - and young children often didn't have the physical strength to kill someone if their weapon wasn't helping them most of the way.
He shook the thoughts out of his head as he heard Jonas address the crowd.
"So!" he said. "All of you have given me your takings. That's good. Most of you will be just fine, so rest easy. However, we have to let one of you go. We just don't have the ability to keep all of you with us. Now… We'd really like to say that we'll just let you walk into the city and do as you please… But we don't really trust you much, see."
This took some time to sink in. One of them was going to die. Right now. One of these kids, not even ten years old.
"Garrett," Jonas spoke up. The young boy's heartbeat spiked and his face paled. Was he going to die now?
"Come here."
He swallowed and walked up to Jonas, slowly.
"Look that way," he said. "What do you see?" His eyes following Jonas' outstretched finger to a railing on the opposite side of the yard they were in, Garrett saw what he should be looking for.
"A few glass bottles."
"That's right. Here," Jonas told him, giving the young Garrett a small bow. He wasn't very strong, but his mother had taught him how to shoot, at least.
Mom…
He tried to forget about it.
"Hit one of those bottles, will you?"
Garrett nodded. He understood that sometimes, the Bigs would make the Littles take part in their tests. If they passed, that usually meant something a lot better for them than if they failed.
He took an arrow off the table beside Jonas and pulled back, holding his breath to try to steady the shot. After aiming in complete silence for four seconds, he released the strung arrow and was congratulated by the sound of shattering glass.
"Well done," Jonas told him. "Now you're ready."
Ready for what? Garrett thought to himself.
"One of you," the Big Buddy walked around the crowd, glaring at each one frighteningly, "Has come to me tonight with nothing in his hands. No rings," he looked at Garrett. "No necklaces," he looked at the girl who had been standing beside him in line. "And not even a few coins," he took several of the golden discs out of his pocket, flipped one of them in the air and stuck them back in - catching the falling one as it came down.
His hand snatched the shirt-collar of a slightly fatter boy and yanked him toward the end of the courtyard, kicking him so he fell onto the ground.
"Garrett," Jonas turned back. "Prove your worth, and that you're not a complete waste of attention. Kill this boy."
The eight-year old thief looked at the boy he was meant to shoot, and his stare was returned by the boy looking back at him. Garrett could see how afraid he was.
"He'd do the same to you," Jonas said, "If I ordered him to."
The boy's eyes looked like they were begging him not to do it. He knew that look. He'd carried that look on his own face, so many times before.
Garrett raised and drew an arrow, aiming it at the other kid. He didn't close his eyes. And Garrett released it. It pinged off the ground next to him, and the boy immediately scampered up onto his feet, tearing through the night and running for dear life.
Garrett dropped the bow and looked at Jonas.
The Big Buddy came up to him and put his hand on top of his head. He didn't hit him, he didn't slap him or yell at him. "Garrett…" he spoke. "You missed."
Garrett didn't say anything.
"You hit that bottle… From quite the distance, didn't you?"
Garrett nodded, swallowing a fearful gulp.
"AND YOU COULDN'T HIT A FAT TARGET THAT WAS THAT MUCH CLOSER TO YOU!?"
"My mom told me not to hurt people…"
"What was that?"
"My mom told me not to-"
"YOUR MOM IS DEAD, KID! DEAD! She drew her last breath! She's in the ground somewhere! She doesn't care about you! She doesn't care what you do! You know who cares about you!? Me! The guy that has to deal with your shit and make sure you grow up to be a proper damn person!"
He looked at the broken bottles. The glass littering the ground where he'd shattered the practice target would be dangerous, but it was the only chance he had, by his estimate.
"Buddies," Jonas began preaching, "We've seen today how dangerous it can be, when one of us betrays the others, and even worse, how chaotic our lives become when it's not just one traitor we need to deal with - but two. So I'm going to make you all a deal."
He took a huge amount of gold coins from his pocket and clutched them in his fist.
"All of these go to whoever kills Garrett."
As soon as he heard the words leave his mouth, the young Garrett tore straight for the railing and bottles. He hopped into the air as he reached the broken glass, his shoes crunching on the edge of the scatter-zone and used his hand on the railing to vault over it. As he flew, his other hand reached to one of the other bottles on the railing and snatched it.
He heard sprinting and running behind him, and he dived into the shadows of an alleyway, blowing out a candle that someone had left burning there. Three Littles sprinted past the mouth of the alley with their bloody knives drawn. He knew the Bigs wouldn't be so easily fooled.
Sure enough, Doug, Jonas' friend came walking toward him, and Garrett stayed absolutely still, pressing up against the inside of a doorway in the alleyway. He waited for Doug to walk past him - a huge sword drawn - and saw a keyring with a single key hanging off his hip. Garrett's tiny fingers slowly gripped the key in such a way that it couldn't jingle against the other metal and swiftly removed it from Doug's hip. As soon as he did, he heard Doug ask, "Garrett? Where'd ya go?"
Peeking out at the edge of the alley, he stealthily moved back to the outskirts of the courtyard that was now empty. Everyone had begun looking for him in the direction that he'd run into. And just as he thought, the only one he saw was Jonas pacing around. He was guarding the door that the kid Garrett failed to kill had escaped from. Now it was locked. But he knew all the Big Buddies carried the exact same key, and it would be a while before Doug noticed his was missing.
When Jonas had his back turned, Garrett swooped into the shadows behind him, looking out at the courtyard with the bottle still in his hand. He was looking for a place that was out of sight, not quite a corner, but a low wall maybe… Somewhere in the direction that Jonas was walking to.
He quickly found what he sought, and threw the bottle over a wall that was fairly short, but still tall enough to hide an animal… Or a small boy.
The shattering of glass made Jonas turn to look at the place the noise had come from and draw his sword. "I've got you now, little runt," he said. "Told you you're useless at hiding. You know, I should thank you for doing me a favor, knocking that over. All I have left to do is deal with you, so I never have to again."
The words became quieter and quieter as he walked away, and Garrett silently walked behind Jonas as he turned the corner behind the wall. He didn't have much time. Sticking the key into the keyhole, Garrett opened the door with a huge metal creak.
"Hey!" he heard Jonas yell behind him. But Garrett was already gone, running through the City's darkness like a creature who belonged in it. He knew most of these streets. Whenever the other Littles fought each other, Garrett had taken to exploring. He liked it better than fighting. He liked looking around and seeing all the little things everywhere. It was an ugly, dirty place. But to him it looked somewhat beautiful.
Out of breath, he leaned next to wooden barrel in someone's backyard.
Just then, he heard the sound of someone dropping down beside him and spun around to see…
The fat boy from before.
"Hey…" he said to Garrett. "Thanks for eh, for not killing me, ya know?"
"What are you," the thinner boy panted, "Doing here?"
"I just wanted to thank you, that's all."
"Me not killing you had nothing to do with you," Garrett replied. "I just don't like hurting people…"
"Well, that's different from any of those Buddies, that's for sure."
"My mom told me never to hurt people…"
"Your mom sounds like a good person. Where is she?"
Garrett was quiet for a bit. The other boy hadn't been around to hear what had happened.
"Those were the last words she ever said to me. 'Garrett, it's not good to hurt other people.'" His voice caught in his throat and he held back tears. It was the saddest he'd ever allowed himself to be in front of anyone.
"Hey," the other boy said, putting a hand on his back. "We're gonna be alright. Uh, do you have a plan for what we want to do next? I mean, we can't very well go back to the Buddies. They'll skin us alive!"
"I'll sell my dagger. Use that to get us started," he said, his voice still shaking.
"You can't sell a dagger, unless it's brand-"
Garrett unsheathed his knife and showed it to the other boy. It was completely clean. Silver gleamed in the few rays of firelight that snuck into the shadows they sat in.
"Wow. You really never did kill anyone."
The young thief smirked at the other boy. He asked him, "Why are you really here? There was no need to go to all this trouble just to thank me."
"I felt like uh… Like you could use a friend."
"Heh… I guess so… You look like you could use one too."
"I'll take that," the bigger boy said, grinning back. "I know a place we can sell that knife to for a good buck. Your name's Garrett, right? I heard 'em talking to you."
"Yeah."
The other boy stuck his hand out. Garrett took it and the two kids shook hands.
"I'm Basso."