Twelve years ago, Luskan, Luskan Territory

On the first day of school, Kyrwan realized quickly that he was quite far behind the other boys his age. He knew how to read, Mum had made sure of that, but it had never occurred to him that he would be required to read dense, dry texts, full of words he had never heard anybody use. The first day, two middle class boys, the sons of merchants, tackled him in the schoolyard and stolen two of his books and a charcoal pencil they all used in their exercises. The third day, he and four other boys whose mothers were barmaids or whose fathers swept the streets, took down the merchants' sons, bloodied their noses, and took their pocket money. The fourth week, he had amassed a notebook full of words he'd read and didn't know, and every day he would go to the teacher, an absentminded by kind old man whom everyone, even the parents, knew only as 'Schoolmaster' and make him sit there and explain them to him.

By the time he was ten, he was getting good marks, and had begun to be bored with his lessons. He swiped books from the local merchants, reading under his desk of the lore of the country surrounding Luskan and Neverwinter. He didn't care much for stories of high-meaning heroes and their improbably pliant ladies – he found most of the fiction of the day to be full of disingenuously good knights and virtuous mages and all sorts of unrealistic characters. What he loved were the true stories, the diaries written by ladies in waiting or hunters, and the journals kept by adventurers that explained how to track animals, how to survive in the wilderness. He began to dream of leaving the walls of Luskan and living off the land in a hut he would build for himself.

Kyla was absent a lot during those years. She worked nights. More often than not, he would awake to find her sound asleep in her bed, having come in the wee hours of the morning, and then find her gone when he came home from school. She would leave him money to pay the landlord and Schoolmaster, and money to buy bread and vegetables and meat from the butcher downstairs when the money was good. Some days there wasn't much left over after the rent and his tuition were paid, and he would steal or hunt pigeons with his slingshot, never telling Kyla where the mysterious meat had come from. He would keep the flat reasonably clean, wash the laundry twice a month. He became quite adept at getting blood out of his sister's bedclothes.

He pretended he didn't know what she was doing. More than once, he snuck out after dark and peered in the window of the bar called the Cuckoo's Nest. He saw her, through the window, dancing with one man or another, the black rose tucked into her bodice marking her as one of the ladies of the evening. He could see the bags under her eyes, poorly disguised with face paints. The other girls, some young, some old, all had the same tired look to them. The first time he saw her, he felt like he'd been punched in the gut, but the more times he saw, the less it hurt, seeing what she was doing. Then one of the barmaids, a little woman with black hair scarcely taller than he, had chased him off, calling him a little pervert and to come back when he was grown and had some money.

He heard a low chuckle as he headed off into the alley, his cheeks scarlet and his hands in his back pocket, "She's a real ball-buster."

He looked up to see Dayven, the assassin he'd met the first night he was in Luskan. He was leaning against the outside of the building, swigging out of a flask.

"Hello," Kyrwan said, cautiously.

"That one," Dayven said. He stepped out into the gaslight, his gait a bit unsteady. He was drunk, though it was barely past sundown. He pointed at the barmaid as she sauntered back into the bar, "My Addie, she's a ball-buster."

"That's your girl?" Kyrwan asked, and went back to the window to get a closer look at her. She had gotten back to the bar, which he could see through the window, and was filling up mugs at the keg, a smoke dangling from between her lips.

"Aye," Dayven said, "She just tossed me out on the curb, said I'd drank too much already. That's the problem with womenfolk, always thinking they know what's best for you."

Kyrwan looked at him skeptically. He was lurching about. He wondered if the little barmaid weren't right.

"Don't ever," Dayven said, all of a sudden getting down in the boy's face, breathing a hot breath that stank of rum all over him, "Don't ever let some bitch boss you around, not ever, not your sister, not your boss, not your girl if you ever get one. You make your own path. You be your own man."

"Yes sir," Kyrwan said.

"You ever think of being an assassin, kid?" he asked. He tried to get up, but lost his balance, and fell on his ass in the street. He looked around, laughed, and said, "You'd be good at it. You just can't get caught when you're spying on ladies like you just were."

"I wasn't spying," he replied, "I was keeping Kyla safe."

"What do you mean by that, lad?" he asked.

"She comes home, her face all bruised, bleeds all over," Kyrwan said, "I wanna see who's doing it to her."

"You don't wanna do that," Dayven said, "It'll just be trouble for you."

"She's my sister, I want to protect her."

"Oh, lad," he said, "You can't protect her. Only the gods can protect a girl in her line of work. All you can do is pray."

"I don't pray," he said, looking back through the window. Kyla was talking to a man, and old fat one with rings sparkling on his fingers, "What's the point. Nobody listens. I prayed every night for Dad to die, and he's still walking Toril while Mum's in the ground."

"You pray for a man to die?" Dayven said, "Now that… that's something different. There's no sense in praying for a man to die. You want a man to die, you kill him. I could show you to do that."

"Could you?" asked Kyrwan. He looked through the window, watching the fat man, and thinking how amusing it would be if he got all apopleptic and died, redface, right there in the bar.

"Well not now," Dayven said, chuckling, "Your sister'd have my balls. You're too young. Someday, you'll be old enough to come to us of your own accord."

"Really," Kyrwan said. He was watching through the window. The fat man was stroking his sister's cheek, and then had seized her by the jaw. Kyla never stopped smiling through the whole thing, though she had the same look in her eye as when Dad used to beat her, "How old?"

"Sixteen," Dayven said, "Though we take orphans at fourteen."

"I'm an orphan. Kyla and me. Our mum's dead."

"Like I said, she'd have my balls if I took you before you were of age," Dayven said, "But someday. Anyway, I need you to do me a favor. Walk me back to the flat, it's across the street from yours. I fear my dear Addie was right, I need to sleep this off."

Kyrwan let Dayven hold himself up on his shoulder as they made their way home. He couldn't sleep that night. He looked out at the night sky, wondering how long it would be before he was no longer a helpless child.