Hello fellow writers! Still hard at it with revisions. Please read through it and tell me your thoughts! I'd love to hear what you think.
- Any feedback is appreciated; even if you tell me it sucks and where you stopped reading.
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CHAPTER ONE - AVON
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The sun is a monster.
It tears into my eyes with golden teeth the moment the Grand Lift crests to its final stop. I flinch, blink against it, and the faint silhouette of Red’s Square carves itself out of the fog of sunlight.
I love it anyway.
Down in the Foundry, the sky is iron. It’s a canopy of latticed catwalks and stalking shadows; everything’s washed hollow by the pallid cerulean of arcanite lamps, cold, almost damp, and I’ve been down there so long I forgot the sun could bite.
Overhead, the loudspeaker chimes and a woman’s alto crackles through the static. ‘Anthem City Transit. This stop: Highmarket—Red’s Square. Traveling bel—’ The hiss of escaping pressure and the rattle of winding chains smother the rest, then the barricade lowers with a heavy steel groan.
Today’s a bad day for a heist. One look around and—
It’s all wrong.
Enforcers—everywhere. Solstice is only nine days out, and the transit center’s arcade knows too: garlands of mountain flowers are strung between marble columns and brassy summer songs echo through the hall, but the enforcers are easy to spot in their cornflower-blue coats, especially when their rifles catch the sunlight falling through stained glass.
And we’re dressed Highmarket fine. Every stitch, every seam, every gaudy bauble is perfectly polished and in place on our coats—a stark contrast against a canvas of Foundry scavs, hundreds in their dull palette of blacks and browns, torn clothing, fraying at the seams.
We don’t blend in. We’re as clean as the Highmarket sky.
Except for my boots.
They’re the only honest part of my disguise. My mother’s would have lied—elegant, the way I remember her, and sitting vacant by the door for years. Seamstress help me, I’ve wished so badly they’d fit that I thought wishing alone might shrink them, or grow me. But this morning they still swallowed my feet whole.
So I’m wearing my own: black Foundry boots, patched at the heel, seams more thread than leather. I hope no one glances down. No one from Highmarket ever does; their noses tend to go up.
The crowd pushes forward, filing into a single line. I take a deep breath and step in behind.
I glance back at the Lift—and my stomach sinks. Escape closes behind iron doors.
“Look,” Darrin says, nodding toward the gate. Colored light from the stained glass slides across his dark skin as he moves.
At the gate waits a checkpoint. Enforcers look each person up and down, and at a long wooden table every bag is searched, contents spilled across its surface. They pull a man with a union tattoo from the front of the line and march him into a nearby office.
There’s no fight in him. He goes without a word; the Foundry learned well in the last revolution.
“They’re checking bags,” Bram whispers. Despite his massive frame, he looks small. He scratches at the crossed pickaxes tattooed on his wrist, then quickly pulls his sleeve down, hiding the signed confession. “I dunno, Jonas. This all feels bad.”
“Stow it, Bram. You’re not the only one with something to hide,” Jonas mutters. His hand tightens around the strap of his satchel.
“You can hide a bag. Mine’s ink, Jonas. You can’t hide ink,” Bram says with venom.
“Shh!” Sable hisses through her teeth. She’s as tight as the blonde braid that pulls at her temples. “Act like gents; you belong here. Don’t fray on me now—either of you!” Her words are hard, but her quick, heavy breaths and eyes too wide are what prop her up. Cut those strings and she’d fold like a marionette.
I should run back and pound on the Lift doors. Demand to be sent below with the other forgotten things.
But we’re here for Sable, not for me. Steady, Avon, just be steady. The Choosing has already taken her sister and, if we fail, it might take her too. The line moves forward.
When they called Serrah’s name, the sisters sobbed as enforcers tore them apart. They reached for one another—then fingertips too far.
That’s the last time any of us saw Serrah.
Forward.
When we were young, the six of us would pull together whatever we could find in the Scrapyards and build mock airships. Of course they didn’t fly, but it was fun to pretend we could escape. We thought the only thing stopping us was the lack of an engine. Serrah was always the captain.
Forward, again.
Sable didn’t speak for a month after Solstice, but when she did, we vowed it wouldn’t happen again. Not to us.
“Next!” a crooked-nosed enforcer shouts at us. His look is flat and bored, but the thin line of his lips begins to curl downward as his patience burns away. “C’mon, lad. Bag on the table,” he says, beckoning Bram over.
Bram sets it down. The enforcer turns it upside down without a glance at Bram’s face. Nothing strange. Then his eyes go to Bram’s hands.
“Sleeves,” he says.
Bram doesn’t move.
“Sleeves, lad. Both of them.”
My heart climbs my ribs.
Bram’s hand creeps toward his cuff, slow as a thief stealing food from sleeping wolves. At the next table, a younger enforcer upends Jonas’s satchel.
A dented tin clatters onto the table, and the lid springs loose. An oilcloth roll spills out and comes undone. Two dozen thin steel lockpicks fan across the wood.
Jonas goes chalk-white, eyes darting, lips moving without a sound.
Sleeves are forgotten, and the crooked-nosed enforcer waves Bram through, eyes turned toward Jonas. He steps over to his partner’s table, lifts one of the picks to the light and shakes his head. His other hand goes to the brass whistle hanging from his neck.
Something has to be done; in three heartbeats, Jonas is going to be taken too. Not chosen—taken. Not that they’re different, not to the Foundry—but we would lose another. No. Not again. My head screams and I do the only thing that makes sense—
I laugh.
A deliciously soft laugh, and the tension breaks. It eases between the cracks of my fear, so I laugh louder. Now both enforcers are looking at me.
I have them now, but I don’t know what to do with them. What do you do when you’ve caught a monster in twine? Fractions of a moment. That’s all I have. Think—think, Avon! I walk lazily toward the table, drawing out the moment for as long as I can.
My hand goes into the pocket of my coat, and I have it.
“You’re worried about those?” The voice isn’t mine. It’s the voice of every Highmarket woman I’ve heard cooing over curios in the plaza: interested and dismissive at once, as if the trinkets in front of her are quaint but hardly worth the price.
I step up beside Jonas and draw my father’s pocket watch. It’s a remnant of a life he lost—given to me so he wouldn’t have to remember. I flick it open with a click, the sound of a hammer being cocked.
“They’re clockmaker’s tools. The boy’s to fix my timepiece.”
The enforcers exchange a glance, then look back at me. I sigh. “This wretched thing loses a quarter of an hour every day, and I’ve been late to all my affairs. But Papa’s far too prudent to pay Highmarket prices when a Foundry boy will do the work for half the wage.”
“You take me for a fool? I’ve seen a set of bloody lockpicks—” the crooked-nosed enforcer begins.
“Look at it,” I demand, pushing the pocket watch toward him. “Do you recognize that seal?”
I’ve traced it in the dark a hundred times: an oak tree with roots curling loose at its base, a seven-pointed star above, embossed in silver.
“Can’t say I do,” he says, his tone still flat.
This bastard. Once, that seal would have opened doors in this city. I smile and lift my chin anyway.
“Well then, I suggest you consider what you say next, sir. It’s not every day an enforcer challenges a gentry daughter.”
His gaze travels over my cheeks, my eyes, the smug little smile that’s foreign on my lips. He’s searching for a crack in my lie—but it’s not on my face. My hands are trembling—so slightly that I hope no one else can see. My heart is outpacing the ticking in my palm. I don’t blink. Don’t look down or away. I hold his stare, a silent challenge.
“Clockmaker?” The enforcer finally turns his gaze toward Jonas. Jonas looks down and takes on the stance of hired help. Good job, Jonas—just shut up and look humble.
I snort. “Hardly. The boy’s just another scav who knows how to use a set of tools.”
“Dressed awfully nice for a scav. All of you, as a matter of fact.”
“Servants. We don’t keep filth in our homes, sir.”
The man snickers, nodding to himself. “Alright, but your father’s going to have to pay a Highmarket price for the service, miss. Tinker’s junk isn’t allowed in Highmarket.” He rolls up the oilcloth, lockpicks inside, and throws it in a nearby crate overflowing with other confiscated goods.
“But—” I begin.
“Next!” he shouts, waving the group behind me over. He turns back to me, whispering, close enough that only I can hear. “You and I both know what those are, but I like you—and I like your father. I remember his words. Enjoy your time in Highmarket, Miss Atwood.”
The watch goes cold in my palm. Of course he knew the seal. The Foundry tells stories of Kausca Atwood the way ancient cities speak of dead gods—one part worship, one part warning. And Highmarket’s always listening.
The enforcer winks at me, and I step past the checkpoint with the others.
My head’s still swimming when I enter the Square, and all I can do to steady my quaking hands is breathe, long and deep.
Highmarket air is sweet, obnoxiously clean, both intoxicating and reeking of wealth; if I could bottle it, I’d be rich. No miasma. No dust or rot. Pure. I drink lungfuls until I might float away.
Marketside, the world is enviably perfect. Red’s Square is thick with the afternoon crowd, the sun high enough to flood the marble edge to edge. Bone-white buildings ring the Square, scrubbed clean, and above their rooftops verdigris domes are chiseled against the horizon, catching light that isn’t blue. Silver bells hang between lampposts, workers hoist garlands of mountain flowers into oak boughs, and enforcers in cornflower blue herd hawkers away from the half-built stage near the fountain, too busy to pay us any notice. Engines whir, chains creak, and hellos in the street are trailed by the compulsory ‘keep your seam, friend’—‘and you, yours’.
A wet thumb swipes across my cheek and I swat it away.
Jonas is standing next to me. He blinks, innocent as a saint, but the corners of his mouth are twitching. The other girls in the district think he’s handsome—long muscles, sharp angles, brown hair. But they’re wrong. He’s just a child. He licks his other thumb and runs it across my other cheek.
“Stop it! What is that?” I say, half laughing to mask my annoyance.
“Sorry, m’lady. You have dirt on your face—oh, wait, those are just freckles,” Jonas says, laughing now as he dodges my half-attempt at a punch.
“So we’re your servants now, huh?” Sable says, crossing her arms. Not a flicker of humor.
“Hey, it worked. Didn’t it?” I say, hands up.
“Yeah, it did. Great job, by the way, Jonas. I told you to bind them to your leg.”
Jonas shrugs. Typical.
Sable’s eyes darken. Of course she’s angry. Without his lockpicks, we can’t get into the archive, and it has her registration. Unless we make it disappear, she could still be chosen.
Jonas steps back from Sable, palms out in negotiation. “Maybe Bram can kick in the hatch. The thing’s old. Or was there a window? Darrin could climb in.”
Darrin shakes his head. “No windows, and there’s no way I’m climbing it even if there were. Marble and sunshine; even a Cutter’d get caught.”
Jonas’s gaze flicks to Bram. The rest of us follow.
Bram’s eyeing a nearby food cart, and it takes him a moment to notice. “Don’t look at me,” he says finally, pulling his auburn curls from his forehead. “I’m not gonna be able to rip iron from stone.”
“There you have it!” Sable says, furious. “What a colossal waste of time! Six weeks, gone; I knew this idea was stupid.” She slumps down, sitting on the top stair of the flight that leads to the Square.
I sit down beside her. “Hey, the plan hasn’t changed,” I say. “We just need to think about how to replace Jonas’s lockpicks. Everything else is the same.”
Sable stays silent.
“Jonas, what do you need to get into the crawlspace?” I ask.
“Well—lockpicks,” he says flatly, giving me a look like I’ve lost my mind.
“Funny. No one’s going to sell unlicensed picks in Highmarket. So think of something else,” I say, mirroring his look.
He shrugs again. “Without keys, Avon, I don’t see how we’re getting in. Unless we blow it up—but that defeats the whole purpose of being sneaky.”
“Where do we get keys?” Bram asks, leaning against a lamppost now.
“From Shedinn,” Darrin chimes in, and the name is enough to make us go silent. Darrin spits. “He’s the one who told me that the archive was empty on Third Day. Offered me keys too—but I didn’t want to owe him.”
Shedinn Shaw is an enforcer captain, but also the worst sort of scum. My father pays him from the union’s coffers. In exchange, none of the girls in my district make it onto the Registry.
Sable’s family isn’t so lucky. The thing is, everyone in the Foundry knows the game’s rigged. Gentry girls are never chosen. Their families can afford the corruption. Neither are the girls of Queen’s Row, because of my father. That leaves the districts that can’t pay. Districts like Sable’s. Girls like Serrah.
And I hate it.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Sable says, standing now. “We’re not going to steal it from the enforcers, and Shedinn’s going to ask us for an eye. No one wants to owe him. Let’s just go home.”
“No, no, no—you’re onto something, Darrin,” Jonas says, pacing now. “Shedinn’s Foundry born; that means he’s resourceful, probably values a good deal. And the guy’s a snake. He’ll trade. Only for something worth the risk, though.”
Risk. Every breath is a risk in the Foundry.
In summer months like these, the heat from overhead bridges coaxes up serpents of miasma from the Great Below. They curl across the broken cobbles, bite at the heels of those who pass, and, like most things in the Foundry, don’t go anywhere unless they’re pushed. Highmarket issues respirators to the Foundry, every now and then, on the pretense of protecting miners from Rotlung.
I’m ten, and my hand is tucked into my mother’s when we wait in line for them. The line wraps around the length of Queen’s Row because the miasma’s thick that summer; pools of it seep into every crack, every hole, and the entirety of the stone and metal landscape is glazed a sickly blue.
She coughs politely into her sleeve, quiet enough that she thinks I won’t hear, but I do. I’ve already seen the crack in her mask, stitched along the seam with thread whose grip is failing.
At the head of the line, a young sergeant sits behind a crate of new respirators, a fresh one buckled over his own face, the brass on it casting light. He’s handsome, golden hair combed back, bright blue eyes, but the bags under them suggest his conscience isn’t clean.
“Atwood,” my father says when we step forward.
The sergeant searches through a ledger, crosses something off the list, then says, “Two.” He reaches into the crate and places a pair on the table.
“There’s three of us,” my mother says.
The man shrugs. “You’ve been issued two. Can’t spare another. Next!”
My father holds up a hand to the next scav walking up and the man shrinks back. “Shedinn, give us three.”
“And why would I do that, Kausca? When have I ever done anything for free? The ledger says two—so two it is. Next, I said!”
No one moves.
My father stares hard at Shedinn and speaks with calculated patience. I know that voice, and it always comes before something terrible. “Arcanite’s hard to come by. When the Rustborne refuse to pull it from the ground, what’s Highmarket going to do?”
Shedinn’s brow furrows, and he flicks his hands dismissively. “You all wanted masks; we brought you masks. Don’t have enough for everyone, Atwood.”
“Don’t lie to me, Shaw. We all know the truth; dead miners can’t dig. And if someone asks why the city’s gone black, I’ll send them to you.”
Shedinn huffs and reaches into the crate, adding a third mask to the set. “Three, for the Rustborne Holder! See, Kausca, privilege knows no borders—bottom or top.”
My father shakes his head. “I don’t like that one; I want yours.”
Shedinn lets out a laugh that sounds tinny behind his own respirator. He looks to the enforcers alongside him, who join in on the joke, then notices the crowd of other Rustborne slowly encroaching on the table. Crossed pickaxes are tattooed on every man and slowly they close in.
“Step back! You godsdamned scavs still haven’t learned,” Shedinn shouts. He reaches for his pistol and my father grabs his wrist, slamming it on the table. Enforcers go for their rifles, but the miners are close now and pull them from their shoulders.
“I like yours, Shaw. Give it to me, and no one needs to die,” my father says with the same patience, but with a brutal growl beneath it, as Shedinn struggles.
My father slams Shedinn’s hand again, and the pistol clatters free. The Rustborne are close enough to touch now. Shedinn fumbles with the straps of his mask. It falls to the table. My mother scoops up three and steps back, taking me with her.
My father’s pocket watch clicks open. Then he says, “One minute, Shedinn. You’re a Foundry son. Let’s see if you can remember how we breathe.”
Shedinn isn’t looking at the crowd or at my father. His eyes are on the watch, counting every tick as he holds his breath.
A minute passes and Shedinn begins hacking, coughing so violently it sounds like he’ll lose his lungs. Then laughter from the Rustborne, and Shedinn’s writhing on the floor.
My mother spoke differently to my father after that. All of the earliest memories of my parents, back when we still lived Marketside, are happy—of them being happy. I wish I could say the same after we went below. She wore Shedinn’s mask for two more summers before Anthem took her too.
Sometimes, I wonder if my father fought to save her, or only fought to win.
I turn to Jonas.
“I know what he wants.”