Blood thrummed in my veins as I ducked under the slash of a machete. I freed my grappling hook and swung it like a flail. Round and round it flew, warding off my would-be assailants from the opposition. I retracted it into the apparatus on my forearm and drew my vicious little cutlass, a lightweight blade I had pilfered from the armory of a Dassanian warship.

These were the moments the world made sense. My brain shut off and I did not have to think about anything except self-preservation.

There were a hundred of us against less than fifty of them, and we were better armed by far. A proper pirate always had a sword on his hip, a dagger in his boot, and a pistol holstered over his heart. These merchants had naught but their swords. Their captain and his officers had pistols, but those had been spent. They were finished.

It was my experience, that in battle, time slowed, and I became more at peace than ever since before the revolution. Weapons collided and produced a rhythm like the ticking of machinery, punctuated by a cry that tore through the brain like an engine coming to life. I slashed and parried, spinning out of Death's reach whenever an attacker stole advantage. Every breath of gunpowder charged me with adrenalin and hurled me deeper into a flow of evasion.

As a child, I had known nothing of battle. All I needed back then were my threadbare boys' clothing to keep me safe. Each day, I rose early to ready my master's pawnbroker shop for business. Mr. Greyson had found me wandering the streets asking for work as a seamstress, the only trade I knew. My parents both died in the revolution. Had I not found the old pawnbroker, had he not made me a boy, I would have surely perished or been sold to a house of pleasure.

The little shop, tucked away up a side-street from the market square, dealt in secondhand treasures. Beside a velvet armchair, a clothing rack overburdened with coats sunk in the middle. A writing desk, a pipe organ, and a cider press lined one wall. Bookshelves, full to the brim, lined another. We stacked the books vertically, for there were too many to do otherwise. Beneath our glass counters, a thousand trinkets glittered, each with its own individual story, perhaps of the date a couple came to be married, of the rare gem's journey from Leridia, or of the lady who needed money to leave her husband. In the window, we showcased a singing automaton, one that I found frightening and uncanny with its unblinking and unseeing eyes.

I put the utmost care into my work for Mr. Greyson, for all I craved in the world was his approval. Even though it was often cold in the mornings, even though my fingertips would be numb through my torn-up mittens, I scrubbed every last smudge of oily residue from the windows until they sparkled clear as day.

I could still see it in my mind's eye. Mr. Greyson, a white-haired old man with skin like wrinkled parchment and a beard as wispy as raw cotton, waddled out of the shop with some porridge for me. He adjusted his black-rimmed spectacles and inspected my work.

"You're too ambitious for your own good, Clikk. I'm sure you imagine you'll own this shop the day I croak. Eh, boy?" With his cedar wood cane, the old grouse prodded my arm.

I turned my head down and rung the water out of my shammy. "No, sir. A girl cannot own property."

"What nonsense is this about girls? Go on and practice your letters, son. If you're to manage a business, you'll need to know how to read and write."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Greyson!" I took up my bucket and scurried inside. The old man's chuckle bubbled up as he came in behind me. I loved the sound of that more than anything. He might have seemed cantankerous, but he had a soft heart, the sweet old bear.

I descended into the basement, where the old man let me sleep. My books were still lying open on a trunk.

I liked to read boys' adventure stories about pirates and treasure and bad-tempered captains. In fact, I was reading something about pirates the day Mr. Greyson died.

I'd heard the store bell clatter overhead, muffled through the floor, but sharp and violent.

Steel lightning crackled in my ears. I had to focus on the swords coming at me. I battled on, still swept up in the memory.

While I could block these merchants' steel and clubs, I could not block the images of that terrible day. I had been a little older. Fifteen. And my hair looked wretched. By then, Mr. Greyson's gout had turned him bitter, and he always gave me the worst haircuts he could devise. He could be a cruel, old bastard; he used to laugh at how ugly I looked and tell me I was lucky he made me a boy when he did.

I remembered reading about a young woman who stole her father's ship and crew, a woman pirate who proved more vicious than any man alive. And when she took a prize and cut down a ship captain, she would remove her bandana and let her long, golden hair dance on the wind. This image would flash through my head whenever I imagined my hair growing long. I never dreamed I could be as bold as that.

"Open the cash drawer!" I heard a man shout upstairs.

The drawer clanged. Heavy thuds on the glass counters rattled noisily. "Give me a moment!" shouted Mr. Greyson.

"Open it, or it's your life, old man!"

"It's jammed!"

A clatter of coins rang out as the register crashed against the floor.

"Agh!"

Every soft part of my body ached at the sound of Mr. Greyson in anguish. The odious silence that followed was worse yet.

"Nuffin' but ten coppers in here," said the assailant.

Blood dripped down through the floorboards over my head, falling into the crease of my book.

"You..." Mr. Greyson's voice was fading, but I could hear him through the floor. "Bloody thief."

More red splotches bled the ink.

I was only a child, a child of the revolution no less. I should have been afraid and kept hidden. I should have at least known well enough to run, but in a rage, I jumped up, hands shaking. "Mr. Greyson!" I dashed upstairs.

There I found the brigand breaking the glass of the display cases and stuffing watches into his sack. He was no older than me, a kid with sallow cheeks, his head shaved bare, and his face darkened by soot. When he saw me, he drew a knife and backed away slowly. "Easy," he said. "Don't make the same mistake as the old man."

Crimson spread across the length of Mr. Greyson's white shirt above his belt. Blood flowed over the ridges in the floorboards, slipping in between the cracks.

"Look what you done to him!" I shrieked. "For coppers and cast-off jerries!"

"Shush now, Clikk," wheezed Mr. Greyson. "Let him go."

"It's not right what he done!"

"He's a kid. Like yourself. He's what you might have been without my charity. Go on, kid. Take the jerries and run back to your master."

The little thief fled through the front door.

I knelt to staunch Mr. Greyson's wound with my own hands. He just smiled, teeth pink and glittering. "My boy," he said, holding the side of my head. "It's no use."

"What do I do?"

"Nothing. He stuck me deep."

"I should have killed him for this. I will. I'll find out who he is and—"

"Stop that, Clikk. Stop it now. It's not his fault. He's a symptom of a greater evil. Now listen to me. Find someone to teach you how to fight, so you don't end up like me and your pa. This world has no place for gentle folk like us anymore. You stay a boy, or this world will eat you alive. You hear me?"

I didn't want to remember how I wept . After losing my mother and father in the war, I had been too much in shock to weep for them. I had been exhausted, starved, and wounded. I had to walk miles through lavender country before I found another villager still alive. And so the grief for my parents and my master came all at once, compelling me to spill bitter tears over the old man.

Mr. Greyson held my shoulder and said, "Stop that, child. Don't you shed a tear for me or any man—you hear me?" He swallowed hard, arching his back as he wheezed pitifully. "Not one tear."

I came out of the memory with a start as I watched one of my brothers sink his sword into a merchant's midsection. Blood slithered down the length of the blade. A soul-rending war cry erupted from a man who came running in our direction.

The pirate had killed someone's friend; the man was screaming the bloke's name—"Pete! Pete!—" his face red and shiny with tears. And he kept yelling it. "Pete!"

A loud thwack cut the air as the man's sword lifted my crewman's head from his shoulders. His eyes trained on me next. "Bloody thief," they seemed to say. Mr. Greyson's voice was loud in my head as I held a defensive stance.

I could barely focus as I deflected his sword twenty different ways. Was I any different from the boy who killed my master? What did it matter? I was going to die today. This man was older than me and experienced enough to have killed me three times over. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe not. Either way, I wouldn't waste my breath begging for my life like a dog.

A cold sweat broke out onthe back of my neck. I held my breath as I saw his blade tricked mine intosubmission and reeled back for a swift decapitation. Dread surged in my veinsas I anticipated the fatal blow.