Chapter 1:  A New Life

            “Shadow!”  The hiss from behind her sounded almost panicked.  Shadow turned to glare at the kid tailing her.  Didn’t he know better than to jeopardize a job by talking?

            “Oh, good, you’re still there.  I couldn’t see you!  How do you do that?”  He was still talking!  What kind of idiot was this?  He was going to get them caught.  Could I ever have been that stupid?

            Oh, yes, I was.  Actually, she had probably been even worse.  She was the ten-year-old who’d marched off, determined to destroy the wyverneers single-handedly, not even knowing where she was going.  She’d ended up in this city, lost, starving, and helpless.

            Why am I thinking about all this now?  She’d successfully stopped remembering what had happened to her before she met the Cats for almost six years now; why was it coming back to haunt her?  I don’t care about that life.  It’s over.  I’ve got a new life now, a new family.  My gang.

            But don’t you owe something to your old family? a nagging voice whispered in the back of her head.  Almost frantically, she shoved that idea down, along with the hatred of the wyverneers she thought she’d lost.  Apparently, it was still there.

            And it’s going to get us caught!  Tersely, she hand-signaled the kid to shut up, the motions reflecting her turmoil.  Amazingly, he noticed, understood, and obeyed the command.  Maybe he’s not hopeless.  Now, if I can just keep myself under control …

            She turned back to survey the target, firmly locking her mind on trivial things.  The house ahead of them was grandiose and ostentatious, and unguarded.  Prime pickings.

            She could see people walking to and fro through the side door; if she’d been alone, she’d have slipped in behind one of the chattering groups of servants and trusted to the flickering shadows thrown by the torches to conceal her.  She’d earned the name “Shadow” from similar entrances, which she insisted were simply a matter of split-second timing.  But she couldn’t trust the kid behind her to make it through, and she was supposed to be teaching him.

            With an inward sigh, she surveyed the walls.  They were climbable; going from cracked brick to window sill to drainage pipe would eventually get them to the attic windows, which she recognized even from a distance as the work of a particular artist.  They were decorative, almost beautiful for an attic, but Master Frenar never used anything more than a simple catch, one that she was confident even her companion could jimmy open given enough time.  I love stupid merchants.

            She studied the back of the house until she was certain she had the pathway up branded into her memory, then hand-signaled the boy to retreat.  They slipped out of the alley from which they had been observing the house and ghosted from shadow to shadow until they reached streets where their tattered appearance was nothing out of the ordinary.  Shadow led the boy across several crowded intersections to be certain they weren’t followed, then stopped in a random alley inside Cat territory.

            “What …”  Shadow cut the kid off once again with a gesture and crouched down.  Picking up a stick, she scratched a rough approximation of a stones board in the dirt and tossed out her first move.

            The boy still looked confused, but followed her lead.  Shadow let several moves go by in silence before murmuring, “OK, what did you see?”

            “Why are we doing this?” he asked, ignoring the question.  She stifled another sigh.

            “If the Watch looks in here, what’ll they see?”

            “Us …  Oh, I get it!”  Shadow nodded as enlightenment dawned in his eyes.  He wasn’t stupid, not really, just naïve.  She could fix that.  “We look like two street kids playing a game.”

            “Exactly.  So, how would you get in?”

            “Um…  Sneak through the door?”

            Shadow shook her head.  “I might try that, but you don’t have the training for it.  Besides, we’d never get two of us inside that way.”

            “A window?”

            “Better – which one?”

            The kid looked blank.  Shadow decided to help him out a bit.  “The higher you go, the less concern people have for locking up well – it’s not easy to get to the third story without being seen by the Watch.  But if you can do it, it’s the best way to go.  Picture the house.  Can you see a way up?”

            The kid closed his grey-blue eyes, a tiny furrow appearing beneath his sandy forelock as he concentrated.  “Let’s see …  There’s a missing brick by the left corner, I could start there.  I think I could get onto that window sill to the right …”

            Shadow listened in awe as he apparently found the route without even being in front of the house.  He’s got a perfect memory; he’s got to, to be able to do that.  This’ll come in very handy!

            “Very good,” she told him when he finished working through it.  It took him longer than it had taken her, and he got stuck once and needed her to point out the crack nearby, but considering how long it had taken her to memorize the house once she figured it out, she decided they were about equal.  “Now, we go back and observe when the lights go out, when the neighbors go to sleep, when the Watch passes, and anything else that might be useful.”

            He didn’t look too happy, and she didn’t blame him; it was going to be a long night.  Still, she was used to it, and he’d have to get used to it; with a perfect memory, there was no question but that he’d pass the Trials and be accepted into the Cats.

*          *          *

            They were both yawning in the pre-dawn light when they finally made their way back to their den, a tiny basement the Cats rented.  Only Lioness, the gang leader, ever saw or spoke to their landlord or other tenants; the rest of them came and went through various entrances they’d installed.  Presumably, at least some of the other tenants had noticed, and maybe some even guessed that they were a gang of thieves, but in this part of town no one would do anything about it, as long as the Cats didn’t steal from them.

            They didn’t need to; the Cats were above such poor prey as others living in the slums.  Lioness had managed to find and hang on to a double handful of kids with various talents that allowed them to burgle some of the wealthiest merchants in the city.  Shadow’s hiding ability was only one such talent; Butterfly was a pickpocket with such light fingers that even when you knew he was taking your purse, you couldn’t feel a thing, and Crowbar could open any door or window ever invented, with less noise and mess than his namesake.  But it was Lioness’ leadership abilities that kept them together and made them profitable.  Shadow admired her immensely; she was the daughter of a prostitute, thrown out on the streets as a child, and she’d managed to form and lead this gang to prosperity.

            As her companion stumbled over to his pallet, yawning as if his head would split, Shadow moved to greet Butterfly, the only one of her gang siblings who was in and awake.

            “How’s it going, ’Fly?” she asked cheerily as she passed.  The brown-haired boy lifted up a pouch and jingled it.  From the sound, he’d pulled off a good haul.

            “Hitting the drunks who spent too long in the taverns?”  She shook her head.  “Well, we have to teach them not to waste their money on drink, now don’t we?”

            “Sure do,” he grinned.  His hazel eyes flashed green with mirth.  “And how better than making sure they don’t have money to waste, huh?”

            “Makes perfect sense to me.”  Shadow snatched the pouch out of his loose grip. “So I’d better make sure you don’t go out and waste this.”

            “Hey!” he shouted, trying to reach the money, which she held mockingly over her head.  She was petite for sixteen, but even though her friend was a year older, he was half a head shorter.  “Give that back!”

            “Keep it down, children,” Lioness called from her position by the stove.

            “Sure, Ma,” Shadow called back mockingly, tossing the purse onto Butterfly’s bed.  She yawned.  “I’m too tired to make trouble right now, anyway.”

            As she moved toward her own bed, she passed behind Lioness.  “He’s got perfect recall,” she whispered without breaking her stride.  The kid appeared to be asleep, but she wasn’t taking any chances.  He wasn’t to know anything about their deliberations until after the Trials.

            Lioness showed no response, but Shadow knew she’d heard.  With an obvious and not-entirely-feigned yawn, Shadow collapsed onto her own pallet and fell asleep almost instantly.

*          *          *

            Shadow awoke to the kid’s chatter.  “That’s crazy!  How can she practically disappear when I know exactly where she is?”

            “It’s why she’s called Shadow, lad,” Watchdog answered in his usual lazy drawl.  “All of us can do something ‘crazy.’  I don’t know how I tell that the Watch is about, but I know before anyone else.”  He shrugged.  “Just accept that it works and use it.”

            “Like an Aptitude,” the kid nodded.

            Ears pricked up all around the group.  “Do you have one, kid?” Crowbar asked with forced nonchalance.

            “Of course; doesn’t everyone?”  The kid looked around.  “I mean, mine’s only a touch of Telepathy, not enough that I need training, but once in a while I can hear things.”

            The gang relaxed again.  “Oh, yeah, almost everyone has that kind of thing,” Watchdog drawled.  “Most of us have that kind of Telepathy or Telekinesis.  Lioness is a Pyrokinetic, though.”

            “Just enough that I can light the stove fire,” Lioness said tartly in answer to the kid’s excited look.  “I finished my training at a temple in about a week.”

            “How about you, Shadow?” the kid asked as she came over to get a bowl of stew.

            “I don’t have anything,” she answered shortly.

            “Nothing?  But …  I mean, I’ve seen the Testers lots, and I’ve never heard them say that someone had nothing.”

            “Well, I don’t have anything.”  Shadow forced herself to serve a tiny portion of stew and eat it, despite the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach.  I refuse.  I will not think about Aptitudes.  The Tester was wrong; if I had it, I could’ve saved her.  She tried to ignore the memory of her mother, as she had over the past six years.  None of the gang ever asked; they all had things in their pasts they didn’t want to talk about.  They knew her parents were dead, and that was all.

            And it’s going to stay that way.  Suppressing her memories, Shadow finished her stew.  The conversation had turned to other topics, allowing her to relax.  I have a new life now, a good one.  I don’t need to remember all that.  Her conscience tried to bring up the fact that she’d vowed to revenge herself on the wyverneers.  Her fury had kept her alive on those first few weeks on the streets.  I’m not ready, she told herself, as she had for the past six years.  Someday I will, but not yet.  She looked around at her gang.  I’m not throwing away my new life just yet.

-           -           -           -           -

Is there anyone out there who knows more about gangs than me?  As in, knows anything beyond a couple of fantasy books with this same idea?  I could really use someone to tell me the errors I’m making.  Please?

And even if you don’t know more than me about gangs, please give me some constructive criticism.  This is still a very rough draft, and I need lots of advice.  If you review mine, I’ll review yours!