She could remember clearly being in the circle herself. She stood now as she remembered Linnet standing, smiling the way Linnet had smiled. Only not quite, because she wasn’t Linnet. She was Alys, who had been Linly’s Alys, and Darro’s. Who had been a flea for Orrel when he was cutting and a lookout for Korrim when he’d been breaking into merchant stalls in Riverport. And now she was this, and maybe would be for the rest of her life. Or maybe not.
“We all do the rules,” she said, as Linnet had done. “What’s the first rule?”
They all spoke together, a little chorus of voices above the rush of the water. “Don’t go into the river.”
“That’s right. Water’s hungry. Everybody knows that. What’s the second rule?”
“Don’t go into the trees.”
“There’s nothing there that’s our business, and too much that isn’t. Third?”
Little Salla looked over at Elbrith and grinned. He grinned back. So at least the flirting went both ways. “Always stay together.”
“And what do we do with the things we find?”
“Bring them to Alys.”
“Yes. Everything comes to me, and I’ll make sure it’s shared out fair. Anyone who holds out is a cheat. We don’t let cheats come with us.”
We drown them in the river, Elbrith shouted, gleeful at the prospect. Alys let it go. Those were the rules that Linnet had given, every day since forever, it seemed. But there was a new rule.
“And what,” Alys said, “do we do if we find a knife?”
“Throw that bastard back,” the children shouted together.
From the edge of the trees a sound came that might have been wind or might have been a man’s laughter. Or a spirit’s. Or a god’s.
“All right,” Alys told the children of Longhill. “Let’s go find some treasures…”
Here ends the first book of the Kithamar Trilogy, where not even grief endures forever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Danny Baror and Heather Baror-Shapiro at Baror International for having my back in this tumultuous industry, the team at Orbit who made this possible (particularly my always-patient editor Bradley Englert and publisher Tim Holman, who took the chance of picking up this very odd project), and the small council (Ty Franck, Kameron Hurley, Paolo Bacigalupi, Carrie Vaughn, and Ramez Naam) who helped to keep me sane during the writing. And, as always, thanks to my family for supporting me all the nights I spent wandering the streets of Kithamar.
Any failures and infelicities in the story are exclusively my own.
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As Daniel Abraham
THE KITHAMAR TRILOGY
Age of Ash
THE LONG PRICE QUARTET
A Shadow in Summer
A Betrayal in Winter
An Autumn War
The Price of Spring
THE DAGGER AND THE COIN
The Dragon’s Path
The King’s Blood
The Tyrant’s Law
The Widow’s House
The Spider’s War
Leviathan Wept and Other Stories
Balfour and Meriwether in the Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs
Hunter’s Run (with George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois)
With Ty Franck as James S. A. Corey
THE EXPANSE
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon’s Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat’s Wrath
Leviathan Falls
Memory’s Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection
THE EXPANSE SHORT FICTION
Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
Star Wars: Honor Among Thieves
As M. L. N. Hanover
THE BLACK SUN’S DAUGHTER
Unclean Spirits
Darker Angels
Vicious Grace
Killing Rites
Graveyard Child