Nyx Silverwing's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Nyx Silverwing won her fight in the second round and felt the crowd's hunger before she felt her own knuckles. She knelt in the chalk circle and checked each finger, the way she had since she was sixteen. Her lavender hair stuck to her neck. The silver at the tips caught the lantern light, brighter than it had been yesterday. Three weeks ago her hair was one color. Then she knocked out a man who was terrified the whole fight, and for ten seconds afterward she felt nothing at all. No fear from the crowd. No grief from the bouncer near the door. Quiet. She had been chasing that quiet ever since, and the silver kept spreading while she chased. The gambling hall sat at the edge of the woods, two stories of warped boards and lantern smoke. Fighters used the lower room. Gamblers crowded the rafters above, leaning over the rail to throw coins and shout odds. Nyx fought here twice a week because the purses were honest and the owner did not ask why a small woman could drop men twice her weight. Tonight the shouting had a new word in it. Silver. She heard it from the rafters and from the bench behind her. A bookmaker by the stairs asked another bookmaker if the hair was a trick or a sign. She stood up. Across the room, half-hidden behind one of the support pillars that held the upper floor, a man watched her. Dark jacket. Hood down. He had been at her last three fights. He never bet. He never drank. Tonight he met her eyes and did not look away. She started toward him. He stepped back into the dark between two pillars and was gone before she crossed the floor. Where he had stood, something sat on the boards. A glass bottle, corked, packed with dirt and pale roots, a rolled paper tied with string inside. She picked it up. The roots inside the bottle were still damp. She worked the cork loose and shook the paper into her palm. Six words, in careful ink. I know what your hair means. No name. No place. No instruction. She turned the paper over. Nothing on the back. Nyx closed her fist around the paper and felt the crowd's noise press against her again, thick as wool. She had wanted answers since the morning she found the silver. She had asked the gym, the old fighters, the woman who cut her hair. None of them knew. Now a stranger did, and he had chosen to be seen before he chose to be found. She pushed the bottle into her jacket and went to the back door to wait for him in the cold. Whoever he was, he would come back. He had already shown her he wanted her to look.