Lil nerva's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The horn call came too late, but it came. By dawn Lil Nerva heard the raiders fanning through the district. They had found their dead comrade. Boots hammered the alleys. Voices barked door to door. She pressed against a cold wall and counted them by sound. Too many to fight. If she ran now, they would see her green skin from a street away. She needed a way under them, not through them. She remembered the old blind man. People in the district called him Scar, a killer who had quit the trade years ago. Her mentor once said he owed debts to no one and favors to few. Lil Nerva found his door and knocked twice. It opened before her hand dropped. Scar filled the frame, tall, a long coat hanging off his shoulders. One eye was dark and sharp. The other had gone white and blind. He looked at her face, then past her, as if he heard the raiders himself. "The green one," he said. "They're hunting you." He did not ask to come in. He stepped back and let her pass. "I need out of the district," she said. "Unseen." He studied the dagger at her belt. The red stone caught the lamplight. His jaw tightened. "That blade killed one of theirs. That's why they're sweeping." He said it flat, not a question. "He would have talked," she said. Scar grunted. For a moment she thought he would send her back into the street. Then he turned and crossed the room. He kicked aside a rug. Beneath it, worn stone steps dropped into dark. "Smugglers used these before the warlord came," he said. "The tunnel runs under three streets. Comes up past the wall. They don't know it's here." A fist pounded a door nearby. Then another, closer. Scar lit a short candle and held it out. "Why help me?" she asked. "Your teacher kept a man alive she should have killed," he said. "Me." He pushed the candle into her hand. "Go. Don't light it until the stairs end." She went down. The air turned wet and close. Behind her she heard the front door burst. Scar's voice rose, calm, lying easy. Boots stamped above her head. She froze, candle dark, hand on the hilt. The voices argued. Then they moved off. The tunnel ran long and low. She counted her steps the way she counted patrols. When the stone ended she lit the candle. A ladder climbed to a hatch. She pushed it open and came up in a quiet yard beyond the wall. The district lay behind her, still crawling with men who wanted her dead. But they searched empty streets now. She was out, and no one carried her name. She wiped the hatch dust from her hands. Scar had given her one thing more than passage. He had named the man he worked for before he quit. The warlord. And he had told her where the warlord slept.