Chapter 1 1
At first all she knew and all she felt was a vast, endless nothingness. No sense of time, no sense of place, just herself enfolded, trapped, caught in… nothing.

She couldn’t tell whether she was awake or asleep, or something else altogether. Maybe caught in a dream? If so, it was a waking dream. She kept trying to open her eyes, but even a crack of light sent pain lancing through her head.

She felt so weak. Utterly depleted. Unable. She tried to move her hands and couldn’t. She tried to move her feet. They didn’t respond. It took all her effort to hold her panic at bay so she could think when thought gradually became possible.

What’s happening to me?

And… who was she, even? At first she didn’t know. It took a long, vertiginous moment just for her to remember her own name. Wren? Yes, that was it. But what had happened to her? She had no memory. No recent memory. Just a blank. She decided to focus on what her senses were telling her.

She knew she was moving. She could feel the air rasping across her skin. It seemed as if she was moving above the ground. Was she flying? If so, it was a bouncy kind of flight.

Sounds began to intrude, distorted and echoing, impossible for her to understand. Then the sounds gradually coalesced into a rhythmic pulse, like a distant, messy heartbeat thumping in time to the bounce of her flight.

With a sudden, violent shock, the pulse was no longer distant. It was right there, hammering at her brain. BOOM BOOM BOOM! A man’s voice rang out, rough and harsh, as if emanating from inside her own head.

“Spread out! Make an example of the wounded! Make sure this never happens again!”

She recognized that voice! She knew who it belonged to. But his name… His name…

Oh! Her eyes flew open, and she ignored the pain of it.

She was being carried over someone’s shoulder, feetfirst, surrounded by men and men only, marching angrily, their long braids swinging aggressively from side to side. Ropers!

Wren knew where she was now—in Halfway. As she bounced along, she saw crumpled piles of clothes dotting the otherwise empty streets, along with a scattering of broken chunks of mud brick and stones. Strange. Not how she remembered the city at all.

Kennett! That was his name. She was being carried by Kennett, the leader of the Ropers. The sour odor of sweat rose from his back. The oil he used to add shine to his braid smelled slightly rancid—the day before yesterday’s oil. Ugh!

“Stay close,” Kennett ordered loudly. Wren could feel iron tension in his shoulders. Four hulking Ropers stayed with them, surrounding them as they moved. “I don’t trust a single one of these city scum,” Kennett continued. “Not after today.”

After what today?

Then, another lurch of memory: There’d been an uprising against the Ropers that morning! But it had failed. People had fought bravely. People had… Wren suddenly realized what those crumpled heaps of clothing on the street were and felt sick.

“You can leave once we reach my house,” Kennett said to his men, curtly.

Kennett’s house? That was where her mother lived. Lilit. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? Instinctively, Wren knew not to reveal she was awake. She kept her head down, stealing glances left and right.

Once, on the edge of her vision, she thought she saw the stealthy form of someone following them. But when she risked raising her head for a moment, there was no sign of them.

One more sharp turn and there were the distinctive ocher walls of House Belton. Where her mother lived after leaving her three years ago. Her and her brother! She had a brother. His name was… It was Tell. The ocher on the walls was now fading in patches, overdue for repair.

She also remembered tiptoeing along the top of the wall in the dark, the first time she and Tell had been in Halfway. She expected to be taken in through a narrow side doorway, but she was wrong.

Without pause, the Ropers continued past House Belton and deeper into the Desert quarter, through streets Wren had never set foot on before.

Where are they taking me? Wren felt a cold wash of fear as Kennett snapped “Leave us!” to the other four and swerved toward a featureless mud-brick wall, where a door suddenly materialized and opened inward without being touched.

As Kennett hauled her inside, Wren felt a spine-tingling shimmer of power course through her.

He slung her down off his shoulder. Unable to hold herself upright, she collapsed clumsily onto all fours just as the door closed by itself, then disappeared, turning back into a blank wall. Which was when she knew for certain. She was trapped inside the house of a treacherous and unstable sorcerer—who wanted her alive for some reason.