Kilyan's heart thrummed behind his ribs, twisting and spinning as violently as a snake in a trap. Sick rose up the back of his throat, coating the membrane of his mouth with acid. He could not shake it from his mind--the man and the sound of his pleas.

"Ksana-" he choked. His words fell victim to the goo clogging his trachea. "Why did he-"

"Shush, Dewdrop." She whispered from the other side of Doblest's pounding heart. "Do not allow yourself to be so worked up. You could fall ill."

"He-"

"Is clearly a criminal." She dismissed. "You saw him! His clothes, tattered and stained. However he got that salt, it was not by us. You think Rurik would have granted him a trader's permit? Come on, Dewdrop. Be logical for one single second."

"He asked for my horse," Kilyan whispered. "He was going to run away--but I pushed him! I pushed him! Why would I do something like that? Oh, saints."

"Lucky for us." Ksana said. "If that guard had recognized us, we would be sent before the Tsar in seconds."

Kilyan tumbled to a halt. Doblest froze beside him, leaving Ksana to trail ahead alone. She took a handful of lonely steps before pausing, glancing over her shoulder at her brother. "What?"

"What?" Kilyan snarled. "Ksana, that man is going to be sent to jail for breaking the trade laws! He could be killed! And it is my fault! How can you act that way? How can you act like shopping for new dresses is more impor-"

"New dresses?" She snapped, her ice-pale eyes narrowed into knife points. "New dresses?"

Kilyan's words dried in his throat. Had he ever seen his sister so mad at him? He did not speak, afraid that she would slap him across the cheek.

"You are an idiot, Kilyan. My darling brother, who I have sheltered from so much pain. Perhaps I should not have. Perhaps I should have allowed you to experience a sliver of the pain our family labors beneath--but I thought your life difficult enough. I thought, my darling idiot brother, is already so burdened by his curse--I can not be the one to worsen his condition. I have been so lenient with you, Dewdrop. I allow you to train, I allow you to venture outside. But you mistake my kindness for something you deserve. Do you understand the risk I place myself under to give you these opportunities? If Rurik found out-" she scowled down into a sigh and pressed her fingertips against her lips. "Nevermind that."

"Ksana-"

"It was not your fault, Kilyan." She whispered. "It was his own fault for being desperate enough to encroach on a tithe, and stupid enough to not even attempt some foraged papers. If you feel so guilty, I will send an anonymous letter of support for his trial."

"Anonymous?" Kilyan sputtered. "What good is that letter without our family named attached to it?"

"Dewdrop." She whimpered. "No one can know we were here."

"Ks-"

"Please." She begged. "Please, just allow us to move on. You do not understand what is at risk right now."

"Then tell me!" He snapped.

His sister sighed, dragging her fingers through the lengths of her white hair. "Enough, that is more than enough. I understand how startled you must have been. Let us go, I will be quick and we can begin the council meeting."

Kilyan's heart squeezed painfully behind his ribs. The council meeting--and the pain he would inflict there, too, seemed much too taxing to think of. He turned his rolling mind elsewhere, before he could choke on the weight of his sins. "Do they. . . do they always have guards patrolling the market like that?"

Ksana sighed and shrugged, "not often. Just on important days such as this."

"What is so special about this day?" Kilyan asked. "For arrival of the council? There are council meetings more often than there are rains."

Ksana rolled her thin shoulders, working them off to ease the tension simmering on the capital's streets. "Most likely for Rurik."

Kilyan blinked--his heart twisted behind his brittle ribs. "Rurik?" He stammered. "Rurik is coming home? Today--Rurik is coming home today?"

Ksana tossed him a snort, which Doblest agreed to with a shake of his thick neck. "When we speak to you, does it do anything at all? Dewdrop, it has been a quarter season. When did you think Rurik would return? When you are older than Lord Komarov's crusty cat?"

"No, yes, I-" He shook his head, running his slender fingers through his tumbled yellow hair. "I did not know. I had no idea the length of his travel. Where was he?"

Ksana made a harsh bark of laughter and sighed. "Hearing to a matter of petition."

"Petition?" Kilyan echoed dizzily. It did not sound familiar in the slightest. "Who told you that? Dejan?"

Ksana pressed her lips together--momentarily knocked from her disdain. "No." She winced. "Rurik did, before he left. Did he not speak to you?"

"No." Kilyan muttered, running his fingertips down Doblest's soft white muzzle. Ksana was not the only sibling to shut him out of such important matters, it seemed. The ancient yellow wallpaper of their eldest brother's study was more well informed than he. "A petition of tithing?"

"Of course." Ksana nodded.

"Who's?" Kilyan asked, raising his pale eyebrows. It was always interesting gossip amongst the council, and yet he had heard none of it. If a new family was easing out onto the market, attempting to carve themselves a fiefdom and a tithe, the royals of the council should have been well aware.

Ksana wrinkled up her nose. "Oh, some northern family. I hardly recall."

Kilyan rolled the thought over in his mind. "Northern? There is nothing north but flats of ice and mountains. What is it they want to tithe to the kingdom? Rocks? We already accepted the tithe of the Kutznetsov clan for limestone, marble, and gems."

Ksana shrugged. "Common nonsense, Dewdrop. We are obligated by trade law to hear their petition--it does not make them lords."

"How many plots?" Kilyan asked.

Ksana glanced at him. "As if I remember. This was a conversation from a quarter a season ago! I only recall that it was remarkably little. The size of the western gardens--oh, seven! Seven plots."

"Seven plots?" Kilyan scoffed. "How do they expect to make a fiefdom of seven plots? Shall they lord over sticks and pigs?"

"I do not care." Ksana sighed. "It is their pitiful land, their pitiful futures. I have my hands full of so much here already, I can not spare them a single prayer. They have something of value and will fit into the new hierarchy of royalty, or they will be laughed out of the hearing, and none of it will matter to us, Dewdrop. We already hold the most powerful resource in all of Empyrean country. No one will sit above us."

Until we run out.

Those words were held in silence between them, echoing as loudly as cannonfire.

"We are here." Ksana announced. She slipped out in front of Doblest, stilling the stallion's advance with a palm pressed against his soft nose. He grunted, shaking off her touch with a lash of his thick head.

Kilyan glanced at her, and then at the marketfront she had stopped them at the steps of. It seemed a seedy place. The windows had been blackened with paint, the door painted a startling red. The swinging wooden sign over the entrance, creaking with each pass on iron chains, was a simple white flower--an omen of death to many Empyreans. Kilyan shook his head. "Surely not, Snowflake."

"This is the right place." She sighed. "I will be quick."

"Why must you go at all?" Kilyan hissed between his teeth.

"Yad Tsvetok is the best at what he does." She answered. "I am in need of an item, just a small little thing, and then I shall return."

She turned on her heels. Kilyan snagged her wrist before she could make her escape, dragging her back towards the safety of Doblest's side. "Ksana, I-"

"Saints, Dewdrop." She laughed, flicking a stray strand of his yellow hair. "You are going to bruise my wrist."

"I am scared." He whispered. "Please do not go in there. I have a feeling that it is a bad place."

"Yad's place?" Ksana asked, as if he could mean any other. "Oh, Dewdrop. It is just a place of medicines. Herbs I will not be able to find without his help. I swear, little brother. It is okay."

"What about the guards?" Kilyan asked. "Please, I want to go. I want to go home. Rurik is going to be so furious with us if we do not show our best manners at the council meeting."

Ksana sighed. She pressed the tips of her fingers against her eyelids and shook her head. "I can not turn back, Dewdrop. Just wait here--I will be back." Before he could protest any further, she slipped away. She dashed up the steps and disappeared behind the stained glass. Kilyan sunk into Doblest's side, causing the stallion to snort in displeasure.

"Come on, Lest." He muttered, steering the horse by his reins out of the street. He moved them towards the side of the marketshop, so that Doblest was half squeezed into an alley full of crates. Partly to calm him, to take him to a place where people did not slip up past his ribs, but also to shelter him from more hungry gazes. Kilyan ran his flattened palm down the horse's nose.

His mind, against all his efforts, slipped from his grasp. It turned back towards the old beggar, lying on his back on the streets.

Kilyan sunk his teeth into the soft pink flesh of his bottom lip. If the man was truly a registered tithe trader, then his family only had to bring the papers to the jail. If they could just prove it--but what if they could not? Because he was not. Then, he would be punished for encroaching on the sacred tithe of a noble family.

Kilyan gasped, flinching as his teeth coaxed a small droplet of blood from the skin of his lips.

Doblest snorted, tossing his head in protest. Kilyan hushed him softly, stroking his fingers through the lengths of his silken black mane.

"It is all right." He murmured. "Ksana will be back soon. It is all-"

For the second time that day, the shop door nearest Kilyan was flung violently out. The front door of Yad's suspicious flower shop swung on its squealing hinges, careening into a violent smack against the painted windows.

Doblest jerked on his led, squirming hard to escape the commotion. Kilyan tried to hold on--until his fingers threatened to pop from their sockets and then some--but it was the sound of his twin sister's startled scream that had him abandon the effort. He dropped the horse's lead and whirled around to face his sister.

A man, Yad most likely, was dragging her down the steps. His face was red with the effort, a grim sneer across his lips so that Kilyan could see his yellowed teeth. His sister was kicking and swearing, her hands battering at the grip held on the back of her neck.

"Let go of me!" Ksana snarled, throwing her legs up into the air. Yad huffed, gripping the railing of his front door to keep from tumbling down the steps from the pitching of her bodyweight.

"You're stupid to have come here," the man snapped. "Don't you know what day it is? Inspection day! You stupid, stupid girl."

"If you do not unhand me-"

"Thief!" Yad screamed into the streets.

Ksana went still. Her blue eyes widened. A small whimper eased past her trembling lips. "I did not!" She begged. "I told you--those hair pins are mine! They belong to me! I may trade them any way I like."

Yad laughed, a rough barking sound that filled the hallow market. "Those hair pins are Empyrean silver. From the Levanovik clan's tithe. You expect me to believe a dirty little beggar like you didn't steal 'em?"

Kilyan could not move. His head detached from his shoulders to roll across the cobblestone. Kilyan's fingertips grew numb, his limbs began to tremble. He wished to call for her--his lips opened but no sound emerged.

"Guards!" Yad shouted into the abandoned streets. "I caught a thief!"

Thump-thump--clang!

Kilyan's wildly beating heart pulsed behind his ribs, slamming with mallet-like fists against the inside of his ribs, which bucked back in response to cinch down on his whimpering lungs. He wheezed, a soft pathetic noise that vanished beneath the sounds of Doblest's cries and his sister's pleas.

Kilyan bent over, gasping. His heartbeats rushed to fill his ears, flushing his skull with fuzz and chaos. His lips parted, his lungs begged--and he gasped. Drowning right in the market square. His vision fogged, his knees bent. He collapsed, spilling across the cobblestone.

"Kilyan!" Ksana screamed from an ocean's distance away. "My brother! Let me go to my brother!"

Kilyan's fingers spread out across the rough stone street, absorbing the cold and grit of the dirty pathway. The cobblestone beneath him remained the last string in the world, tying him down to keep him from floating away. It was through the earth that he first felt it--the rumble of the approaching horses.

They spilled into the market square, steeds snorting and dogs braying. Kilyan knew if he could find the strength to raise his head, he would see each man and horse decorated in blazing golden suns.

"Guards!" Yad shouted. "I caught this damn girl stealing-"

"No!" Ksana squealed, thrashing hard against Yad's hold. Kilyan could hear the rush of her breath and the slapping of her feet against the street as she kicked to escape. "I need to get to my brother!"

Kilyan's skull pressed inward, condensing on his head like a boot to a rotten pumpkin. His throat burned, an insatiable scratch that could only be filled by fresh air--which evaded him still.

It seemed that for the first time, his presence caught the attention of the growing crowd. Yad sucked in a breath, Ksana gasped as his shock loosened his hold--and then she was there, throwing her arms around his shoulders and shoving him back onto his knees.

"Sit up straight!" She hissed into his ear. "Look at the sky."

Kilyan did not know where he was looking. His eyes had shut some time ago, and he could not bear to open them. Ksana's fingers found his, wrapping tightly around his palm. He gathered all the strength he could harness and squeezed her fingers back tightly.

"Saints," the flower-peddler cursed. "He's got it. That boy has the curse."

Ksana did not let go of his hand, Kilyan could feel the flinch of her shoulders through her tight hold. "Help me!" She screamed.

"Oh, saints." Yad whimpered. "I didn't know!"

Kilyan forced his eyelids apart. He stared up at the sky, until it was blotted out by the guard glaring down at him. "You two are coming with us." He snarled. "You must answer to the crown."

3 | Worse Sorts

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