Chapter 6 : Fate

Even earlier that day

The first thing Kaz noticed was the smell.

Not rot. Not filth. Just… wrong.

The kind of wrong that sinks into your ribs. That makes your breath catch even though nothing’s chasing you. That clings to the air like fear that forgot how to leave.

The sun hadn’t risen yet. The room was still thick with the heavy breath of sleep. But something in it was off.

And then Kaz saw him.

Pip. Curled in the corner like a crumpled note someone meant to throw away. Arms locked around his knees. Eyes wide and red, wet with tears that had run out of reasons. Rocking, just barely. Like he didn’t know he was doing it. Like he was trying to keep from falling off the world.

Kaz moved.

No sound. Just quiet steps across the stone. He knelt, reached out, gently, slowly. Pip flinched like he’d been struck.

“Don’t.”

A whisper. Sharp as glass.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t pretend.”

Kaz froze. His hand hung there, awkward and open. Then he lowered it. Let it rest on the floor between them. A gesture, not a question.

Pip wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“You always talk like it’s a story,” he said, barely audible.

“Like we’re heroes. Like something’s coming to save us. Like it’s all gonna mean something.”

Kaz said nothing.

Pip sniffled. His lip trembled.

“I’m not in your story, Kaz. I'm not good enough, I'm not like you.”

The words came too fast after that, like a dam breaking.

“I c-can’t talk right. I mess things up. I get scared when it’s loud, or fast, or bright. My hands shake when I try to hold things. I stutter. I freeze. I forget words and everyone thinks I’m stupid. I I I wear socks to bed because I think if I don’t, the floor will eat me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“I wet the bed. Not every night. But enough.”

He dragged his sleeve across his face.

“Miss Lorrimore says it’s not a problem. But it is. I am.”

Silence.

“I’m not good enough to be loved.”

Kaz didn’t move. He didn’t breathe, but he rejected that statement in every dialect of silence he knew.

Pip stared at the floor, shaking.

“I know what happens when people like me don’t get picked. I know. I heard the others talking. I saw the letter. The one with the red seal. I know what termination of charitable stipend means.”

His voice dropped. Whisper-thin.

“I heard Miss Lorrimore crying. In the pantry. She had a rag in her mouth so we wouldn’t hear her. But I did.”

He looked up.

“I always hear it. When things are about to break.”

Kaz swallowed.

“They’re coming, Kaz. The people with clean boots and kinder voices. They smile, but not with their eyes. The big boys go to the forges. The little ones go up chimneys. The girls get sent where their mothers worked. But me,”

His voice cracked.

“Where do the broken ones go?”

Kaz wanted to reach for him again.

But Pip wasn’t done.

“They say Lorrasca’s not a real place. That it’s a story to scare us. But I know better. I remember.”

He was shaking harder now. Eyes gone somewhere far away.

“I saw them. The men with the button eyes. They weren’t men. At least not in any way the gods would accept.”

He was trembling all over, like a leaf trying not to fall.

“They took my sister. The littlest one. They didn’t knock. They didn’t ask. They just waited in the doorway like they were already inside. And my mum,”

He stopped. Then:

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“She kissed us all goodnight like it was normal. Like she wasn’t selling us while we slept.”

A breath.

“She smiled while they took her.”

Kaz’s jaw was clenched so tight it hurt.

“I asked her why,” Pip said. “She said it was for the best. Like that meant anything. Like it didn’t sound like goodbye in an indifferent costume.”

His voice got small. Too small.

“I still have the toy my sister gave me. I hide it in my mattress. I don’t sleep on that side anymore. I’m scared it’ll disappear if I do.”

He blinked, slow and broken.

“I forgot my brothers’ names. But I remember how they looked back at me. Like they were already ghosts.”

Kaz felt something cold curl in his stomach.

“They’re already here,” Pip whispered. “I saw them yesterday. Clean coats. Shiny pins. Eyes that didn’t match their smiles. I know what they are.”

He looked up.

“They’re not here to help. They’re here to feed.”

And then, like a prayer whispered to a god that had already turned away:

“Please, Kaz. Don’t let the city eat me.”

No drama. No raised voice.

Just a child who had run out of time.

Kaz moved.

He wrapped his arms around Pip, tight, sure, steady. Like maybe, just maybe, he could build a wall around him out of skin and warmth and willpower.

Pip didn’t hug back. Not at first.

He just sat there, frozen, bones drawn tight like bowstrings. But then, slowly, he leaned forward. Just enough.

And Kaz held him.

Held him like maybe that could be enough.

Held him like maybe the city wouldn’t get him.

Not tonight.

Not while he still had breath in his lungs.

A Little Later, In the Quiet

Kaz got dressed without speaking.

White shirt. Pants that used to be curtains. Buttons in his pocket, hat too big. All the usual pieces, assembled with mechanical care. Like armor. Like a disguise.

The mirror showed a boy again. A boy who smiled like he didn’t have a care in the world.

But for a moment, he just stood there.

Then he looked over his shoulder.

Back toward the sleeping room.

Back toward Pip.

Kaz looked away.

He stepped outside.

The air was damp and bitter. Somewhere far off, the city coughed.

He walked down the alley with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders set tight.

Each step louder than the one before, like he wanted the cobbles to remember him.

At the edge of the square, he stopped.

He closed his eyes.

Took a breath.

When he opened them again, the smirk was back.

So was the twinkle.

So was the show.

Into this warped bit of the city strolled Kaz Swindleton, ten years old.

He wore a shirt that had once been white and still pretended it was, pants that had clearly once been curtains, and the kind of smirk that made adults suspicious and children devoted.

Pockets jangled with buttons he insisted were antique coinage from the lost principality of Cobblovia, and his hat was three sizes too large, but he wore it like a crown.

Kaz stopped dead center in Dritch Alley, struck a pose that suggested he was about to make either a speech or a miracle, and bellowed:

“THERE HAS BEEN A NEW LAW.”

Three heads shot out of the windows.

A baker’s assistant dropped a tray of day-old scones.

A runaway princess leaned forward, intrigued.

And fate,

Fate, that smug old tyrant,

was about to crack its teeth on the one stone that bit back.

“As of this morning, by order of the City Registry of Urban Stone and Pavement Affairs,” Kaz intoned, pulling out a scrap of paper with nothing written on it (but it looked official, which was half the trick),

“ALL FEET MUST PAY THE COBBLE TAX.”

There was a pause.

Someone coughed.

The goat bleated in legal confusion.

A small boy named Pip who was stronger than Kaz would ever be asked,

“What’s a cobble tax?”

Kaz gave him a pitying look.

“It’s to protect the cobbles from excessive wear. Every footstep is another chip, another scrape. These stones are heroes, Pip. Heroes. Holding up the weight of society.”

He tapped the cobbles reverently with his shoe.

“Tax is one button per foot. Or, for wheelbarrows, a carrot.”

And somewhere,

watching from a window,

or behind a city desk,

or atop a marble seat,

the High Seat of Ferenwyld felt the world tremble.

Because Kaz wanted it to.

Because sometimes, to save a place like home, you had to make enough noise to get arrested.

And if that meant standing trial for trickery, for fraud, for making the city laugh when it wanted to cry?

So be it.

He had a court to disrupt.

And a promise to keep.