The Orphan. Peter Lerangis

      With an effortful groan, another guard clambered onto the roof. I reached into my belt pouch to take out another stone.

      I found nothing. I’d used the last one I had. Dropping the sling back into the pouch, I turned and ran across the roofs, leaping from building to building.

      The guard was laughing. Taunting me. “The lion gets the rat!” he shouted.

      I knew if he didn’t catch me, he’d shoot me in the back. On an instinct, I darted left, across another row of rooftops with patched tiles and cracked surfaces—a poorer neighborhood.

      A neighborhood I knew well. Very well.

      As a small child, I’d lived in an old, abandoned place close to the city wall. I needed to get to it. Now. It was my only hope. It would save me.

      I felt an arrow whoosh past my ear as I jumped from a higher building down onto the old shelter’s roof. I landed near the wall shared by the two buildings. Carefully I walked sideways across the roof’s edge. It was the last building on the block. If I jumped, I would be seriously hurt.

      The guard appeared at the ledge above me. His chest heaved with the effort. When he saw I was trapped, he grinned.

      “Nowhere to run now, thief,” he said, leaping down toward the roof.

      It was a strong leap. It launched him far forward. In midair, he drew his sword with a dramatic flourish. He landed with a loud thump, in the center of the roof.

      I sidled farther along, my eyes on his feet. I knew that section of the roof well. It was rotted and patched with clay and netting. Unless, of course, it had been repaired.

      “Please,” I said. “You must hear me out! You’re a father, are you not? Haven’t you ever had a sick child?”

      “You dare compare yourself to a child of a royal guard?” he replied, charging toward me. “Prepare to meet your maker, street raaaaaa—”

      Just like that, he was gone.

      Through the roof.

      His shocked scream echoed upward as he fell down two stories of rotted wood onto the earthen floor below. Getting as close as I safely could, I peered through the hole into a silent, rising cloud of thick dust.

      From far away came a muffled sound of commotion. I looked into the street. It was empty. The guards had taken another turn. In the confusion, they’d somehow been drawn off course. Unless …

      Shirath. She must have done something to confuse them. Pointed the guards into another alley, perhaps, or sent them into a different quadrant. This was her way. I knew it in my soul. This was how we protected each other. In the absence of power, you had to use brains.

      With no one chasing me now, I could lower myself over the edge of the wall, grabbing onto holes and window ledges. I landed quietly in a dark alley.

      Alone at last. My chest burned. My body cramped. I stood with my back against the wall, trying to calm myself down. I’d eluded the guards for now, but I had to keep moving, just to be sure. Commotion had a way of shifting. Guards had a way of finding their prey.