Excerpt

Marani crouched in the blackberry bramble. Thorns tickled her skin, so she sank down further, well out of sight of the road. A contrary branch rebounded against her nose, and she snapped it off, momentarily forgetting what that would sound like in the still night air.

Crrrack.

It sounded like her blowing the robbery before it'd even begun. It sounded like amateur work, and she'd upgraded from "amateur" over a decade ago when she'd robbed her first prince with a pointed stick and attitude. She was a damn good highwayman, a damn good guild leader, and at forty-three years old, being sloppy was an embarrassment. Especially with her little brother right across the road, waiting for her to secure enough coin for tomorrow's food.

Marani crushed the branch in her hand, thorns and all, and let the woody shards fall onto her pants. The night was clear, not a cloud or pegasus in sight, but humidity hung thickly in the air. The right side of her rear was wet from sitting on a purple jelly fungus that looked like brains, and while the road edges were distinct enough to allow a decent view in either direction, the dense packing of hardwood trees meant that she had to keep shooing away small, curious predators. The air buzzed with the hum of nightflies. Nightflies and…snoring?

Marani pushed her head from the bramble and scowled. Jacks had fallen asleep, nestled in his own bramble. How he could sleep through the sheer volume of nightflies that swarmed in the moonlight, she had no idea. One of these nights a fox would bite his nose clean off, and she wouldn't help him sew it back on out of sheer spite.

Click clack. Click clack. Click click clack. No time for lectures. Marani squinted into darkness. Click clack, click clack. She fixed her breathing to the rhythm, moved an arm across thorns and down to her hip, to the hollow reed looped onto her belt. This was her favorite part—the anticipation right before the score. Knowing some pompous, unsuspecting royal was going to lose their favorite ring, or shoes, or whatever fine thing they'd thought so important to bring along on a cross-island carriage ride because they were too cheap to book a pegasus. Peasants, peasants walked the road. Marani left them alone. Merchants had solitary horses and sometimes a cart. They knew to toss a bag of pennies the moment she emerged from the bush, and she'd let them pass.

Carriages, however…

Click click CLACK.

"Jacks!" she hissed through the blackberries. The man could sleep through anything. "Wake up!"

Another snore.

"Wake up!"

A snore caught in the back of Jacks' throat. He gasped, choking on the air, and grumbled unintelligibly.

CLICK CLICK CLACK

Much closer now, the sound rustling through the blackberry leaves. It was the same royal carriage she'd tagged in the morning just outside of Pianto, a city on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Two Spires. The driver had been trying to repair their dented wheel and a few extra pennies from Marani to the local woodworker had ensured that the wheel's fixing hadn't removed its clacking. The princess inside would no doubt be irritated. Delightful. Princesses were just so, so…entitled. Also pretty, generally speaking—a combination of righteous anger and painted lips that trembled like the world would crack open if they just pouted enough.

Marani removed the reed from her belt, the smell of fresh lacquer assaulting her nose. She shifted her weight onto her right knee and extended her arm, snapping off a short blackberry branch and using her thumb to push the berries free. Nightflies buzzed around her, desperate for the juice. She collected the berries from the ground, loaded them into the reed, and waited.

CLICK CLACK.

"Jacks!"

Jacks stuttered awake and coughed. It sounded like phlegm and probably smelled like the expensive tea they used to keep him alive.

A yellow light swung back and forth across the dirt and bricks, highlighting the insects that choked the air.

Marani put the reed to her lips and grumbled at the achingly slow pace of the carriage. She saw the horses first—mud brown with the occasional patch of white; small, useless wings protruding from their sides, and their eyes reflecting the lanterns swinging above. The carriage was darker, only one door lantern still lit. The flame shone sickly yellow, the candle having burned down to a nub.

One of the horses snorted. A wing twitched. The carriage door came up level with Marani's head. A curtain—black, probably some expensive velvet that was worth more than Jacks' life, stuttered in the breeze.

Marani took a deep breath through her nose, aimed right at that dusty, plush obscenity, and fired.

The nighttime split apart.

"Gah!" screeched the driver as blackberries hit with a telltale splat, both from her and from Jacks. Thank every frothing pegasus in the night sky that Jacks hadn't missed the shot. He shot again at the horses, and they reared.

The terror level was great, but the whole scenario was taking too long. It wasn't so late at night that other carriages might not come by. Marani took a shot at the driver. He swatted at his neck and cheeks at the double assault, pulling too hard on the reins. The carriage stopped, tilted onto its right wheels, then slammed back down again. In the same moment a woman cried out—high-pitched, indignant—and a smile the size of their future tea stash broke across Marani's face. She broke off another handful of berries, loaded the reed, and fired at the little window. Three blackberries slicked down the velvet-whatever but two got past with a splunk as they juiced on something, or someone, within the carriage.

"I lost my peanuts!" berated the woman in the carriage, yelling loud enough that half the forest could hear.

"Peanuts," Marani muttered under her breath. Jacks couldn't breathe basic air half the time, and the woman inside was worried about peanuts. She reloaded and fired, sending four berries in quick succession.

"Carn, what is going on out there? I…are these berries?"

Marani snapped another twig off.

"One moment, Princess." Carn rubbed his neck and cheek, likely smearing berry juice down his coat. The nightflies would love that. "There are rules on some of these roads. I mentioned that before we left."

"Well get it done with, whatever it is," the woman commanded from inside. "Tell them we have an appointment to keep and let's go."

The sheer audacity. Ignoring the tolls, like the guild hadn't labored to make road travel a pleasurable experience that cost just a few pennies and maybe a bracelet or two. Had they lost a wheel to a pothole? No. Had one of their horses nicked a hoof on a stone? No. Had they been attacked by marauding, feral pegasi? Marani didn't have any control over that, but the answer was still no. She gestured to Jacks, her hands low to the road, where the driver wouldn't see.

Carn hunched over and squinted into the dark forest. He swatted at a fly near his face, clipping his ear. "Ow. Damn this road. You want me to toss the bribe money?"

The woman huffed in the same high-pitched exasperation Marani had heard from every other royal she'd met. "If no one is there, there is no sense in wasting pennies. Give me another minute before you resume. I'm still trying to find all the peanuts."

Marani made the gesture again, twice, in quick succession.

Jacks shot from the undergrowth, scaled the carriage in two steps, slammed into the driver, silencing him with one very well-placed punch to the head.

"Carn!? Who is out there?"

"The locals," Marani said as she stood and walked to the carriage. She could hear the smirk in her voice and decided she didn't care. "Back away from the door." Jacks saluted down at her, tightly curled brown hair falling in his eyes, his cheeks dimpled. On his face, she saw her own smugness mirrored. Royals. So easy, like every mark. God. How were they not all just…suffocated in their sleep with their own pillows?

She flung open the unbolted carriage door and stepped up. Inside the bare, wooden interior sat a woman with unattractive stone-grey hair sloppily braided down her back. Bits of whatever chalk she'd used to cover her natural hair color smeared across her cheeks. Her skin was a fawnish yellow brown, almost sallow-looking in the light of the interior lantern. She wore trousers, badly fitted, and what looked like a man's nightshirt, which was tucked into the top of the pants like she'd never once bothered to look at how men clothed themselves. She had nothing on underneath the nightshirt, which the chill in the air made very apparent. Her boots were brown, worn, caked with mud, and much, much too large for her frame. Marani could have fit the entire princess, whole, into one of Jacks' trouser legs.

"Princess," she said, nonchalant, tapping the handle of a knife sheathed at her belt. "Welcome to Dragon's Road, part of the United Network of Highways. There's a toll, as you might have guessed." She leaned in, whispered into the princess's ear. "We've changed our procedures, so if you're good, I'll let you keep your clothes. The real ones, which you probably have in the trunk you're sitting on that's supposed to look like a bench." Trunks always had the goods you really wanted. Stealing coins made people angry, but you could sell a nice lace shift for more than a handful of pennies, and people didn't come hunting you over their lost underwear.

The princess stared at her.

"Hey." Marani shoved the princess, hard enough that her shoulder hit the back wall. "Money. Jewels. Nice clothes. Lacy underthings, if you wear them. Whatever you have, I want it. You are currently being robbed."

The princess blinked. One of her hands twitched at her side.

Marani snorted. "You'd better be reaching for your lip gloss."

"M…Marani?"

The name hit like a slap. "My name is Grey. Highwaymen call me Grey, my brother calls me Grey, merchants call me Grey. You don't get to use any other name except that one."

The princess kept staring. Her hand kept twitching. No tiny compacts of makeup appeared, but neither did anything sharp, either.

Marani leaned back further. Unease sent goosebumps across her arms. She squinted and tried to make out features by dying candlelight. The princess's nose seemed… average—button shaped with a wide bridge. Her eyes were mostly shadows but the candlelight lit her lips enough that Marani felt certain she'd never been near them before. She'd have remembered the combination of thinness with the come-hither bow lip. The princess's chest had been heaving, which Marani enjoyed for several reasons, but in the space of a word, the color had returned to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled with…tears?

The princess reached out and touched a rebel strand of grey hair that fell in front of Marani's eyes. Actual grey, not a dirty, chalk grey that a three-year-old could tell was fake.

"God help me, it really is you, isn't it?" The princess let Marani's hair fall. It tickled Marani's nose and she puffed it away while drawing her knife.

"Can we get to business, please?" Marani leaned into the princess, bringing the knife to her chin.

The princess raised an eyebrow and remained maddeningly silent.